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Part 1 - YOUTH VIOLENCE: The Annihilation of a Generation by Michael Radcliff

Nov. 6, 2011

YOUTH VIOLENCE: The Annihilation of a Generation 

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By Michael Radcliff

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Louisiana Weekly 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - In 1933, 75 percent of the deaths of young people between the ages of 15 and 19 were a result of natural causes. By 1993, some 60 years later, 80 percent of these deaths were caused by homicide and unintentional injury. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, homicide is now the second-leading cause of death for young people ages 10 to 24 years old. In 2007, 5,764 young people ages 10 to 24 were murdered at a rate of 16 kids each day. Of this group, 86 percent or 4,973 of these victims of homicide were male and 14 percent or 791 were female. According to a recent survey, nearly one out of four — or 25 percent — of high school boys reported taking a weapon to school at least once in the past year.

 

As Dr. Edward Cornwell, Professor of Surgery and Director of Adult Trauma Service at The Johns Hopkins Hospital explained in a lecture to a group of faculty, staff and students at Stanford University entitled “A Trauma Surgeon’s Perspective on Youth Violence, “The new public health problem [today] is kids thinking violence is cool. The upcoming generation will be more exposed to direct violence and violence in the media, with easier access to guns, and with fewer non-violent role models than any other generation in history. Arguments that used to be played out in after-school fistfights are now resulting in kids dying… We live in a country that glamorizes violence… Kids from all ages and all backgrounds are inundated with images of violence that glorify it..”

 

As alluded to by Dr. Cornwell, the culture of youth violence is a direct result of a lifestyle that includes readily available guns, illicit drugs, promiscuous sex, and other risky behaviors. Ad­ditionally, according to the AMA’s report on Youth and Violence, “In the United States, almost 16 million adolescents — including 70 percent to 95 percent of children in America’s inner cities — have witnessed some form of violent assault, including robbery, stabbing, shooting, murder, or domestic abuse.” On a global skill, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), “Youth violence takes many forms including bullying, gang violence, sexual aggression, and assaults occurring in streets, bars and nightclubs. The victims and perpetrators alike are young people, and the consequences of youth violence can be devastating. Across the world an average of 565 young people aged 10 to 29 die every day through interpersonal violence, with males at greater risk, and for each death there are an estimated 20 to 40 youth that require hospital treatment for a violence-related injury.

 

Who Are These Young Perpetrators?

 

According to the Surgeon General’s Report on Youth Violence, “there are two general onset trajectories for youth violence — an early one, in which violence begins before puberty, and a late one, in which violence begins in adolescence. Youths who become violent before about age 13 generally commit more crimes, and more serious crimes, for a longer time. These young people exhibit a pattern of escalating violence through childhood, and they sometimes continue their violence into adulthood. It goes on to say that, “most youth violence begins in adolescence and ends with the transition into adulthood.” Surveys consistently show that about nearly one-third of all male youths and nearly one in four female youths reported having committed a serious violent offense before reaching the age of 18.

 

Recent attention has focused on those young people researchers classify as bullies. Research has determined that nearly 60 percent of boys who bully other children — in grades six through nine, were subsequently convicted of at least one crime by the age of 24; and nearly four out of 10 of these same bullies, were found to have had three or more convictions by age 24.

 

What Are The Risk Factors For Becoming A Violent Juvenile Offender?

 

Over the years, much research has gone into identifying risk factors relating to personal characteristics, environmental conditions, societal conditions, etc.. that place children and adolescents at risk for falling into a lifestyle of violent behavior. It was determined that risk factors exist in virtually every area of life — individual, family, school, peer group and community. The Surgeon General report on youth violence determined that “each individual interacts in complex ways with other people and conditions in the environment to produce violent behavior.

 

“The strongest risk factors,” the report went on to state, “during childhood are involvement in serious but not necessarily violent criminal behavior; substance use; being male; physical aggression; low family socioeconomic status or poverty and antisocial parents — all individual or family attributes or conditions. The more risk factors a child or young person is exposed to, the greater the likelihood that he or she will become violent.”

 

During adolescence, the influence of family is largely replaced by peer influences. The strongest risk factors are ties to antisocial or delinquent peers, belonging to a gang, and involvement in other criminal acts. The CDC adds that “individual risk factors leading to teen violence include: attention deficits/hyperactivity; antisocial beliefs and attitudes; history of early aggressive behavior; involvement with drugs, alcohol, or tobacco; early involvement in general offenses; low IQ; poor behavioral control; social cognitive or information-processing deficits.”

The CDC goes on to state that family factors in youth violence include “authoritarian child-rearing attitudes; exposure to violence and family conflict; harsh, lax, or inconsistent disciplinary practices; lack of involvement in the child’s life; low emotional attachment to parents or caregivers; low parental education and income; parental substance abuse and criminality; poor family functioning and poor monitoring and supervision of children.”

Cain Denies Sexual Harassment Charge, But Guess What Else He Denies by Hazel Trice Edney

Cain Denies Sexual Harassment Charges, But Guess What Else He Denies

By Hazel Trice Edney

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Al Teich/National Press Club

WASHINGTON (TriceEdneyWire.com) - Herman Cain, the only Black presidential candidate among eight Republicans vying to challenge President Obama in 2012, has surprisingly surged to the forefront – only to face sexual harassment charges that he vehemently denies.

But, yet another denial at the National Press Club on Monday also raised eyebrows. He said race has nothing to do with widespread angst against President Obama.

The atmosphere was hyped as members and guests at the Press Club luncheon awaited his response to the allegation that had surfaced in the newspaper, Politico. Cain’s tax plan numbers “999” colorfully emblazoned on the tops of the cupcake deserts belied the seriousness of the moment as a standing-room-only horde of media lined the club, cameras and recorders ready for Cain’s defense.

“Number one, in all of my over 40 years of business experience, running businesses and corporations, I have never sexually harassed anyone,” he said in response to the first question for NPC President Mark Hamrick. “Number two, while at the restaurant association, I was accused of sexual harassment – falsely accused I might add – I was falsely accused of sexual harrassment and when the charges were brought, as the leader of the organization, I recused myself and allowed my general counsel and my human resource officer to deal with the situation. And it was concluded after a thorough investigation that it had no basis.”

He continued, “As far as a settlement, I am unaware of any sort of settlement. I hope it wasn’t for much because I didn’t do anything. But, the fact of the matter is I’m not aware of a settlement that came out of that accusation. Per the article, two anonymous sources claim[ed] sexual harassment. We’re not going to chase anonymous sources when there’s no basis for the accusation.”

In a follow up question from Hamrick, Cain said he would not ask the Association to release any records to further “verify or shoot down” his version of the story.

“No, there’s nothing to shoot down. Secondly the policy of the restaurant association is not to divulge that information…As far as we’re concerned, enough said about the issue. There’s nothing else there to develop,” Cain said.

Concluding that conversation, Cain said, “We have no idea the source of this witch hunt.”

Politico quoted anonymous sources saying that two female members at the National Restaurant Association, where Caine was board chair, not only charged him with inappropriate behavior, but was paid five-figure settlements in an agreement that included their confidentiality and commitment not to publicly discuss the issue.

In his trademark humorous style of communicating with audiences, Cain, former chairman and CEO of God Father's Pizza, drew lots of laughter and applause during opening remarks, but has left open the door for further investigation into his denials of the accusations.

Only hours after the National Press Club appearance, he appeared to contradict himself in an interview on PBS: “I am aware that an agreement was reached. The word settlement verses agreement. I don’t know what they called it,” he said. Then he mention how small the settlement was, indicating that he did know that there was a monetary settlement after all.

The sexual harassment denial wasn’t the only denial from Cain. He said that the widespread discomfort with President Obama has nothing to do with race.

“I don’t think people being uncomfortable with this President has anything whatsoever to do with race. It’s bad policy,” he said to loud applause from supporters in the audience.

Cain made this statement despite polls, experts, and scientific research that have clearly exposed racism as the basis for widespread angst against President Obama from the very beginning of his presidency. Clear evidence and proof have included hate images, such as Obama drawn as a chimpanzee; death threats, and a record Secret Service security force that was established at the beginning of his election

In a report written early this year by race hate expert Mark Potok, “The Year in Hate and Extremism, 2010”, he reflected on President Obama’s tenure. Potok wrote, “For the second year in a row, the radical right in America expanded explosively in 2010, driven by resentment over the changing racial demographics of the country, frustration over the government’s handling of the economy, and the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and other demonizing propaganda aimed at various minorities. For many on the radical right, anger is focusing on President Obama, who is seen as embodying everything that’s wrong with the country.”

Meanwhile, Fox News commentators and other conservative pundits came to Cain’s rescue over the sexual harassment charges. Conservative analyst Ann Coulter called it a “high tech lynching”, quoting Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas when he was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill during his Senate hearings process.

However, that defense will not stick given that White male conservative Republicans and Democrats have been held to the same scrutiny. Among those who have made national news due to alleged and/or proven sexual indiscretions are President Bill Clinton, a Democrat; New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican; New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat; House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican; U. S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat; U. S. Senator John Edwards, a Republican; and the late U. S. Senator Strom Thurmond, a Republican.

Cain’s Press Club visit ended with his singing a song at Hamrick’s request. He chose to sing, “He Looked Beyond My Faults and Saw My Needs.”

Occupy D.C. Taps Deep Reservoir of Anger by Barrington M. Salmon

Oct. 30, 2011

Occupy D.C. Taps Deep Reservoir of Anger

By Barrington M. Salmon 

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Washington Informer

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Protest signs fill the sidewalk as Occupy D.C. continues to express its outrage with government and corporate America. Courtesy Photo.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) -  At McPherson Square in North West Washington D.C. on a recent Friday night, a large crowd of mainly young protestors participated in a general assembly where a plethora of issues, ethereal and practical, were considered and agreed upon.

Members discussed, among other things, a march the next day and whether marchers could walk on sidewalks without being troubled by law enforcement; they asked whether the goal was to be arrested and the consequences of that; and they also talked about the location of tents; how not to kill the grass; and how best to safeguard people's personal belongings as the group settles in. An interesting interactive feature included the 'mic checks' – a novel way to ensure that everyone heard questions and other information by participants who repeated, word-for-word, what each speaker said.

About 30 tents in neat rows covered most of the grassy area. Small knots of people chatted, a Jewish group, led by two guitarists, sang, not far away, while a trio comprised of a guitarist, accompanied by a tuba player and a trombonist, worked on perfecting some impromptu arrangements. At one entrance to the park stood a fading red and white Occupy DC sign and a large American flag attached to a length of white PVC piping bending in the night breeze.

One sign read: "The whole world is watching – we are the 99 percent." Back at Freedom Plaza, retired Col. Ann Wright eyed the tent city around her with undisguised pleasure. "It is encouraging to see the numbers and to see this all over the country," said Wright, who traveled to the District from Honolulu, Hawaii. "There are 150-200 people left from the 1,500 who were here over the weekend. I certainly hope for more ... I think the politicians are getting the sense that people are pissed off. City governments are going down the toilet."

Wright, a former diplomat and soldier – who said she was "on the ground" in Somalia, Grenada and Panama – said she is deeply concerned about certain government policies and wars "that are sucking us dry."

"We have lost our financial and moral standing in the world," said Wright, who spent 16 years as a diplomat and resigned in 2003 because of her opposition to 'Bush's war.' "So much funding goes into these wars and at the same time, we're dealing with the pitiful state of education, roads and healthcare. The corporate greed is appalling and Wall Street is sucking us dry, too."

Wright added that it's heartwarming to see the growing numbers of city councils, mayors and other elected officials around the country endorsing the protestors. A mantra of the Occupy movement is that "the 99 percent will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 percent."

The 1 percent includes banks, and the insurance and mortgage industries which are said by the group to control 99 percent of the money, and the 99 percent encompasses the rest - the have-nots. In actuality, the wealthiest 1 percent is thought to control about 40 percent of the nation's wealth.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), first described the protestors as "a mob" before backtracking and calling them, instead, unpatriotic, while Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), warned that the media shouldn't be allowed to cover the protests for fear that it would give the movement legitimacy and "as it did in the 60s, end up shaping policy." According to the website, the Raw Story, GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain said the protests are a conspiracy to help President Barack Obama. He called the occupiers "anti-American and anti-capitalist to criticize bankers."

Former Georgia Congressman Newt Gingrich said the protests are "a natural outgrowth of Obama's 'class warfare,' and described the unrest "as a strain of hostility to free enterprise." At the same time, House Budget Committee Chair, Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), used the television forum of "Meet the Press" to blame the president for sowing class envy and social unrest and preying on people's emotions, envy, fear and anger. However, former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold (D), is encouraging more Americans to support the occupy protests around the U.S.

"My sense is that there's a great fear that this sweet deal that a lot of people have in Washington and New York, this unholy alliance between our government and our media, the financial markets and the financial businesses, that this unholy alliance is being threatened and challenged," he said. "It is a threat and attack on every working American and it's time we upset the apple cart. I think they are nervous and that this has great potential."

Naismith and Evans theorize that the movement is fostering a new reality and building a refreshing consciousness and concern for others that was lost in the me-ism and selfishness that are often by-products of a capitalist society. Both said they welcome the changes this movement could foment. For Chapel Hill, N.C. resident Tracey Wall, coming to the District was precipitated by his concerns about the direction the country has taken.

"I have a 20-year-old son and I'm concerned for his future," said Wall. "I can't believe how far things have gone. I am taking a stand and representing people who have been disenfranchised. We have a war economy and there has been a rapid erosion of our freedoms. I would like to see this all end with single-payer healthcare that is affordable, corporate power out of politics, the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and taking the money from the military budget and giving it to the people...I have seen the unparalleled growth of people power that has usurped the dialogue between one capitalist party – the Democrats, and the other political party – the Republicans. People have growing needs such as unemployment, joblessness, foreclosures, homelessness, and the never-ending wars. This is a wake-up call to all politicians. If you stand in the way, or stand on the tracks of the Peoples' Freight Train, you will be run over. Choo-choo!"

Some Convictions Overturned in New Orleans' Shooting Case

Oct. 30, 2011

Some Convictions Overturned in New Orleans' Shooting Case

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - A federal judge has acquitted a police sergeant of a charge he stomped on a dying, mentally disabled man who was gunned down on the Danziger Bridge in eastern New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, overturning parts of a jury verdict that convicted five current or former officers of civil rights violations.

While U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt upheld the majority of the officers’ convictions, he ruled on Oct. 27, that jurors didn’t hear sufficient evidence to convict Sgt. Kenneth Bowen of stomping on 40-year-old Ronald Madison after another officer shot and fatally wounded the man. The shooting occurred just days after several levee breaches flooded 80 percent of New Orleans in 2005.

Engelhardt also ruled that there was insufficient evidence to convict Bowen and three other officers of con spiring to falsely prosecute shooting victim Jose Holmes, who wasn’t arrested or charged with wrongdoing after police wounded him.

But the judge left most of the verdict intact and rejected defense attorneys’ bids for a new trial.

U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said his office is reviewing Engelhardt’s ruling and weighing options, including whether to appeal.

“The majority of the counts and the serious counts are intact, but all the counts are important to us,” Letten told The Associated Press.

Police shot and killed Madison and 17-year-old James Brissette Jr. and wounded four others on the bridge less than a week after Katrina’s landfall.

All five defendants, including a retired police investigator who wasn’t charged in the shootings, were convicted of engaging in a brazen cover-up that included a planted gun, fabricated witnesses and falsified reports.

Jurors convicted them of all 25 counts they faced. Engelhardt ordered acquittals in three of those 25 counts.

Bowen’s attorney, Frank DeSalvo, said he hopes the ruling will help the officers at sentencing by Engelhardt.

“Nobody is going free. How much it helps us at sentencing, only time will tell,” he said. “The more serious counts are still there.”

The judge said the only testimony supporting federal prosecutors’ claims that Bowen stomped on Madison came from Michael Hunter, one of five former officers who pleaded guilty to participating in a cover-up. Hunter cooperated with the government.

Engelhardt, however, said Hunter’s trial testimony didn’t match the account he gave an FBI agent in an interview.

“Hunter’s assumed and self-serving license to change the ‘truth’ to suit his (or the government’s) purposes or moods is clear on the record,” the judge wrote.

Engelhardt also said prosecutors didn’t present any physical evidence that Madison was beaten or kicked.

Hunter, who is serving an eight-year prison sentence, was the only cooperating officer to provide an eyewitness account of the shootings. He had driven a group of officers to the bridge in a rental truck in response to another officer’s radio call for help. Hunter also testified that he saw Bowen randomly spray gunfire at wounded, unarmed people seeking cover behind a concrete barrier on the bridge.

Engelhardt also overturned the jury’s convictions of Bowen and Sgt. Robert Gisevius on charges they conspired to give false statements that would lead to the bogus prosecution of Ronald Madison’s brother, Lance. Lance Madison was arrested on attempted murder charges and jailed for three weeks before a judge freed him.

Engelhardt refused to acquit a retired police sergeant, Arthur Kaufman, of the same count.

The case was a high-stakes test of the Justice Department’s effort to rid the police department of corruption and brutality. A total of 20 current or former New Orleans police officers were charged last year in a series of federal probes. Most of the cases center on actions during Katrina’s aftermath, which plunged the flooded city into lawlessness and desperation.

The officers convicted of charges stemming from the shootings — Bowen, Gisevius, Officer Anthony Villavaso and former officer Robert Faulcon — face possible life prison sentences. Kaufman, who was convicted in the cover-up, also is scheduled to be sentenced in December.

Faulcon was convicted of fatally shooting Madison, but the jury decided his killing didn’t amount to murder. Faulcon, Gisevius, Bowen and Villavaso were convicted in the death of 17-year-old James Brissette. Jurors didn’t have to decide whether Brissette was murdered because they didn’t hold any of the defendants individually responsible for causing his death.

“Why does it always seem like someone is trying to chip away at the fair and just convictions handed down in the post-Katrina cases that have gone to trial so far?” Ramessu Merriamen Aha asked The Louisiana Weekly. “Why can’t these cases be over and done with so that the families of these shooting victims can at least try to being the healing process?

“Just like the lawyers representing these rogue cops who think they have the right to take innocent lives and conspire to cover these murders up, we’re going to keep fighting for Henry Glover, Raymond Robair and the Danziger Bridge shooting victims. We owe them and ourselves that much.

“We’re also going to keep fighting to make sure that what happened in these cases never happens again to another New Orleans family,” Aha added. “That starts with making sure that the federal consent decree regarding NOPD reforms is implemented properly and demanding that the mayor fires (NOPD Supt.) Ronal Serpas and hires a police chief that is capable of making substantive changes in the department.”

“We are not at all happy about about this latest turn in the Danziger case,” the Rev. Raymond Brown, president of the New Orleans chapter of the National Action Network, told The Louisiana Weekly. “We are still demanding justice for the families of Ronald Madison, James Brissette Jr. and the others who were shot like animals by New Orleans police on the Danziger Bridge. The trial may be over but it is obvious that the struggle to secure justice for these victims of police brutality and murder is far from over.

“None of these officers have apologized to the families of the people they shot or accepted responsibility for their actions,” Brown added. “We are not asking for justice in these cases — we are demanding justice. And we will be watching this case and its aftermath very closely.”

Supreme Court Could Decide to Review Health Care Reform Nov. 10

Oct. 30, 2011

Supreme Court Could Decide to Review Health Care Reform Nov. 10

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro-American Newspaper

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(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The nation’s highest court could decide whether to review President Barack Obama’s health care reform law as soon as Nov. 10, Politico reports.

Five opponents of the law and the Obama administration have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review whether the law’s requirement for all Americans to buy insurance is constitutional. Five of the six requests have been sent to the court already, according to Politico.

Opponents of the law, including 26 states, the National Federation of Independent Business, Liberty University and the Thomas More Law Center, and petitions from the Obama administration will be under consideration.

In a private conference on Nov. 10, the court could decide if they want to hear the issue, and would announce their decision on Nov. 14. Justices could also defer a decision until a later conference.

Politico said the Supreme Court is expected to hear the issue because the administration has asked and circuit courts have issued conflicting decisions on whether the mandate is constitutional.

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