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Cops Shot an Unarmed Black Man 43 Times...So What?

Dec. 5, 2023

Jayland Walker

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from BlackManstreet.Today

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Cops who killed an unarmed 25-year-old Black man, Jayland Walker, by shooting him 43 times last June in Akron, Ohio, did not violate the law, even after the medical examiner's office ruled the murder was a homicide.

Steve Mylett, the Akron chief of police, found that the officer’s actions during the fatal encounter were “objectively reasonable.”

His ruling came on November 29, more than a year after Jaylan Walker was gunned down by police during a traffic stop on June 27, 2002.

The decision to clear the cops was already signed, sealed, and delivered to the anger of some.

On April 17, 2023, a special grand jury in Ohio declined to indict the Akron police officers after a car chase and foot chase last year.

The grand jury concluded the officers were legally justified in their use of force against Jayland Walker, according to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.

Following the shooting, Walker was put in handcuffs by police and was found with his hands cuffed behind his back when EMTs arrived on the scene.

According to police, officers attempted to administer first aid to Walker after he was shot many times. Walker was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police shot Walker 17 times in his pelvis.

One bullet struck his face and fractured his jaw.

Eight gunshot wounds injured his arms and his right hand.

Five gunshot wounds injured his knees, right lower leg, and right foot, according to Lisa Kohler, MD, the Summit County Medical Examiner.

No firearm was found on or near Walker's body, though the cops on the scene all claimed that they saw him reach for a weapon or for what they assumed was a weapon. No illegal drugs were found in his body.

The Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled his death a homicide seven months after the deadly shooting.

Eight cops, including a Black officer, fired 94 shots within 6.7 seconds at Jayland Walker. Three cops fired 18 shots each. But the deadly shootings complied with the department’s rules, said  Police Chief Mylott.

Walker worked as a delivery driver when police stopped him for a traffic violation because his license plate was broken.

Gun residue shows he did not have a gun in his hands. A gun was found in his car near his wedding ring.

The Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled his death a homicide.

Police killings over minor traffic violations has become routine by cops.

Police often argue that low-level stops and the searches they conduct during those stops allow them to root out dangerous crimes by identifying guns and drugs.

However, according to the Vera Institute of Justice, data shows that searches that begin with traffic stops seldom yield contraband.

Encounters with police during traffic stops, including minor infractions, disproportionately harm people of color, according to data collected by Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group, which argues that armed police should not be involved in the majority of these cases.

Community organizations want the U.S. Justice Department to investigate Walker's murder. Walker’s family has filed a $45 million lawsuit against the city of Akron and the police department. The cops involved in Walker's murder are back on duty.

Blacks Led Whites in Supporting Cease-Fire Between Israel and Hamas By Richard Prince

Nov. 28, 2023

Journal-isms hosts Dec.19, 2023 Malcolm Nance a former counterintelligence agent who has written books about ISIS, Team Trump’s “Plot to Betray America” and related subjects; Christopher Shell, fellow, American Statecraft Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has surveyed African American attitudes toward the Israel-Hamas War and will give a sneak preview of the results. Journal-isms toasts Ashanti Blaize-Hopkins, first Black woman to become president of the Society of Professional Journalists, and the new NABJ – Philadelphia chapter leaders, Michael Days, president, and Melanie Burney vice president.

Christopher Shell (PHOTO: Sharon Farmer)

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Journal-isms

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - In a survey nearly three weeks after the Hamas terror attack against Israel, one in four Blacks said the U.S. should play no role in the conflict.  Forty-three percent of Black Americans were supporting some form of a cease-fire, versus 35 percent of White Americans. Ninety-five percent of Blacks rejected the idea of unwavering support for Israel while only 77 percent of Whites did.

After an international clamor, such a pause is now in effect. “Hamas released a second group of hostages on Saturday night, the Israeli military said, after an hourslong delay raised fears that a fragile truce in Gaza could collapse altogether. Israel was expected to release Palestinians prisoners within hours,” The New York Times reported Saturday evening, Nov. 25.

The figures on attitudes toward a cease-fire were part of a preview of a survey by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace presented Sunday, Nov. 26, at the Journal-isms Roundtable. They were delivered by Christopher Shell a fellow in Carnegie’s American Statecraft program, who introduced himself as having “done extensive surveys looking at Black American opinion on some pressing foreign policy issues like the war in Ukraine, looking at opinion on issues like US.-China relations, so on and so forth.”

At the end of the survey, taken Oct. 20-25 among 800 Black and 800 White respondents, was this question, Shell said: “How would you rate the media’s coverage” of the Israeli-Hamas conflict?

“And what’s quite interesting is equal shares of Black and white Americans. . . . 30% say that they’re not sure,” he continued. “They’re very unsure about how the media is covering the conflict. So I’m trying to think through this; whether it means that they don’t know they can trust the media and they don’t, maybe they’re not watching the media at all. . . .But what was also quite interesting as well was that Black Americans are more likely than white Americans to think that the media is providing fair coverage to both sides.

“So, 29 percent of Black Americans said the media is providing fair coverage of both sides. 19 percent of white Americans said so.”

However, the survey also showed, “Black Americans are slightly more likely, 35 percent, to believe that the media is providing more coverage in favor of Israel versus 31% of white Americans, and then, on the question of Palestine, only 7 percent of Black Americans think that the media is providing coverage favorable of Palestine versus 20 percent of white Americans.”

Forty people attended the Journal-isms Roundtable by Zoom, with 60 more having watched on Facebook by Thanksgiving day, and 85 more saw it on YouTube before the video was taken down temporarily on Tuesday for editing. 

Sunday’s primary speaker was Malcolm Nance, the former counterintelligence agent, author and former MSNBC commentator. Toasts were raised to the new NABJ-Philadelphia chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, and to Ashanti Blaize-Hopkins, new president of the Society of Professional Journalists, the first Black woman in the role. NABJ-Philadelphia was represented by chapter president Michael Days, vice president Melanie Burney and other chapter leaders.

In other survey findings, Shell said 24 percent of Black Americans told survey-takers that the United States should not be involved in any way in the Israeli conflict, versus about 19 percent of White Americans.

Also, 65 percent of Black Americans said, “I pretty much feel the same about [President] Biden,” after the president’s initially unequivocal support for Israel, but 20 percent of independent Black voters and young voters said they felt worse about Biden in the wake of the attack.

Nearly 5.5 Million Borrowers Lower Student Loan Payments With SAVE Plan - 2.9 million borrowers reduce monthly payments to $0 By Charlene Crowell   

Nov. 21, 2023

National Education Association Image Black Student Debt

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Nearly 5.5 million borrowers have applied for the newest federal program for student loan debt relief since it was announced about three months ago. Nearly 3 million borrowers who enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan completely eliminated their monthly loan payments.   

“Under President Biden, the Department created the SAVE Plan so that young people and working families can climb the economic ladder without unaffordable student loan debt weighing them down,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. “I’m thrilled to see that in less than three months, nearly 5.5 million Americans in every community across the country are taking advantage of the SAVE Plan’s many benefits, from lower monthly payments to protection from runaway student loan interest.”   

The bulk of these loan savings benefit students with the greatest financial need – those eligible for federal Pell grants – including Black, Latino, Native American and Alaskan Native borrowers.  Most SAVE borrowers will see their lifetime loan repayments cut in half.   

As long as SAVE participants maintain their regular payments, their loan balances will go down due to the Education Department no longer charging interest.   

Further, the SAVE program creates lower payment rates for both undergraduate and graduate loans. Required payments for undergraduate loans will be cut in half to five percent from the previous 10 percent. Borrowers who incurred both undergraduate and graduate loans, under SAFE, will now pay a weighted average of the original principal balances on their loans. The payment range for the combination borrowers is from 5-10 percent of income.      

The $0 payment remains available for borrowers who earn less than $32,800 per year or those in a family of four making less than $67,000. Borrowers earning more than these annual amounts also benefit with an estimated savings of $102 a month ($1,224 a year), compared to earlier income-driven repayment programs.   

Geographically, every state and congressional district has SAVE participants. California and Texas each have more than 450,000 borrowers enrolled in SAVE, while congressional districts in Missouri, Ohio, and Michigan have the highest identified enrollment. Additional data can be found here.  

Consumer advocates are emphasizing the program’s targeted reach.  

For example, this October, the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research and policy organization noted, “Payment reductions and larger loan forgiveness benefits under the SAVE plan will occur broadly across racial and ethnic groups but are skewed toward programs enrolling more Black and Hispanic students.”  

Even earlier this year, the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) stressed to the House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development how the escalating costs of higher education surpassed the financial capabilities of many Americans.   

“Education was sold to working-class families as the great equalizer, giving unlimited opportunity to those who would seize it” wrote CRL.  “Yet, according to the Federal Reserve, every $1,000 increase in student loan debt lowers the national homeownership rate by about 1.8 percentage points for public 4-year college students.”   

“Between 2009 and 2022, median household income grew from $63,011 to $70,784, or about 12 percent,” CRL continued. “Comparatively, the average student loan debt grew nearly 32 percent, from $27,874 to $36,096, during that period.”  

Student loan borrowers who have financially struggled to keep up with monthly payments may still enroll online at: https://studentaid.gov/announcements-events/save-plan.    

“The SAVE Plan will significantly cut monthly bills for most borrowers, reduce loan default, and ensure that students loans don’t need to come before life necessities,” said Under Secretary James Kvaal. “With nearly 5.5 million people enrolled after only two months, it’s clear how much borrowers need a plan like SAVE. President Biden and our Administration remain committed to giving borrowers breathing room on their monthly payments and ensuring student loans aren’t a barrier to opportunity.”   

Charlene Crowell is a senior fellow with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..   

Somali-American Woman Scoops Race for Major in Minnesota

Nov. 21, 2023

SomaliMayor

(TriceEdneyWire.com/Global Information Network) - Voters in the Minnesota city of St. Louis Park turned out in force for Nadia Mohamed, a 27-year-old Somali-American, choosing her as the city’s first Black, first Somali, and first Muslim mayor.

Mohamed easily defeated Dale Anderson, a former banker and continuing education teacher, by a margin of 58% to 41%.

“I am very happy to win as Somali-American, Muslim, migrant and Black,” she told VOA’s Somali Service. “I say thank you to all of those who supported me in this. It is our victory.”

Maine State Rep. Deqa Dhalac was the first Somali American to serve as mayor of an American city in 2021, when South Portland's six-member council selected him for the role. Mohamed becomes the first Somali mayor in American history elected directly by voters.

“I have lived in this city for 18 years,” said Mohamed. “I grew up and finished my school here, so it was easy for me to get elected because people know me.”

Over the past few elections, racially and ethnically diverse candidates have won elections and bring new perspectives to Minnesota city government.

Mohamed said she and her family moved to the suburban city west of Minneapolis when she was 10 years old. Nearly two decades later, the 27-year-old celebrated an election night victory with her family and the community she loves.

“I was thrilled and over the moon,” Mohamed said. “It’s been like a moment of a lifetime.”

Mohamed said she plans to dedicate her tenure to elevating and addressing the concerns of St. Louis Park’s roughly 50,000 residents.

In 2019, Mohamed was elected to the city council when she was 23 years old. After serving for four years, she decided to launch a bid for mayor.

The campaign was hard fought, she said, and critics often hurled insults at her on social media for not only her young age, but also her Somali heritage.

“People are filled with hate and don’t want you to be a part of their neighborhoods or part of their community because they don’t want to share that,” Mohamed said.

But her victory Tuesday put an end to any questions of belonging, she said.

“If you don’t want to share, you can go somewhere else,” she said. “But I’m staying here.”

SOMALI-AMERICAN WOMAN SCOOPS RACE FOR MAYOR IN MINNESOTA

Nov. 12, 2023 (GIN) - Voters in the Minnesota city of St. Louis Park turned out in force for Nadia Mohamed, a 27-year-old Somali-American, choosing her as the city’s first Black, first Somali, and first Muslim mayor.

Mohamed easily defeated Dale Anderson, a former banker and continuing education teacher, by a margin of 58% to 41%.

“I am very happy to win as Somali-American, Muslim, migrant and Black,” she told VOA’s Somali Service. “I say thank you to all of those who supported me in this. It is our victory.”

Maine State Rep. Deqa Dhalac was the first Somali American to serve as mayor of an American city in 2021, when South Portland's six-member council selected him for the role. Mohamed becomes the first Somali mayor in American history elected directly by voters.

“I have lived in this city for 18 years,” said Mohamed. “I grew up and finished my school here, so it was easy for me to get elected because people know me.”

Over the past few elections, racially and ethnically diverse candidates have won elections and bring new perspectives to Minnesota city government.

Mohamed said she and her family moved to the suburban city west of Minneapolis when she was 10 years old. Nearly two decades later, the 27-year-old celebrated an election night victory with her family and the community she loves.

“I was thrilled and over the moon,” Mohamed said. “It’s been like a moment of a lifetime.”

Mohamed said she plans to dedicate her tenure to elevating and addressing the concerns of St. Louis Park’s roughly 50,000 residents.

In 2019, Mohamed was elected to the city council when she was 23 years old. After serving for four years, she decided to launch a bid for mayor.

The campaign was hard fought, she said, and critics often hurled insults at her on social media for not only her young age, but also her Somali heritage.

“People are filled with hate and don’t want you to be a part of their neighborhoods or part of their community because they don’t want to share that,” Mohamed said.

But her victory Tuesday put an end to any questions of belonging, she said.

“If you don’t want to share, you can go somewhere else,” she said. “But I’m staying here.”

Artificial Intelligence Could Impact Black Voting During 2024 Elections Black Leaders Call for Safeguards Against It By Barrington M. Salmon

Nov. 14, 2023

DamonHewitt

Damon Hewitt

CampbellMelanie

Melanie Campbell

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - For much of the last century, segregationists and their anti-Black racist allies who were intent on ensuring that African-Americans couldn’t exercise the right to vote, erected an assortment of barriers to that end.

Segregationists used the courts, local and state laws, literacy tests, poll taxes, fraud, brute force, violence and intimidation by the Ku Klux Klan to impede and prevent Black people from exercising their constitutional right.

In the 21st century, voter suppression has gone high-tech with the same characters still plotting to control who votes, when and how. They are employing an assortment of methods including Artificial Intelligence (AI). Concerns about misuse of AI in the electoral ecosystem is what brought Melanie Campbell and Damon T. Hewitt to testify before the U. S. Congress.

Campbell, President & CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation (NCBCP) and Convener of the Black Women’s Roundtable (BWR), spoke of the urgency around creating safeguards and federal legislation to protect against the technology’s misuse as it relates to elections, democracy, and voter education, while fighting back against the increasing threats surrounding targeted misinformation and disinformation. 

“AI has the potential to be a significant threat because of how rapidly it’s moving,” Campbell said. There was Russian targeting of Black men with misinformation in 2020 to encourage them not to vote. It started in 2016.”

Both civil rights leaders warned that misinformation driven by artificial intelligence may worsen considerably for African-American voters leading up to the 2024 presidential election.

“What we have seen though our work demonstrates how racial justice, voting rights, and technology are inextricably linked,” said Hewitt, president and executive director of The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law during his testimony. “Voters of color already face disproportionate barriers to the ballot box that make it more difficult and more costly for them to vote without factoring in the large and growing cost of targeted mis- and disinformation on our communities.”

Hewitt said AI technologies could be used to refine and test data to generate targeted lists of voters based on the patterns, interests, and behaviors of specific individuals.

“Forget using zip codes as a proxy for race; the targeted lists of tomorrow will weaponize sophisticated machine learning technologies, using individual identities or behaviors to target Black voters with surgical precision, all in order to mislead and harm them,” he warned.

Campbell and Hewitt said that during recent election cycles, African Americans have been specifically targeted by disinformation campaigns.

“AI technology threatens to turn already fragile conditions for our democracy into a perfect storm,” Hewitt said. “The spread of misinformation and disinformation online to influence elections and disenfranchise voters, often specifically Black voters, is already commonplace. Communities of color who already sacrifice so much to cast a ballot and make our democracy work are increasingly subjected to new downsides of technological innovation without reaping the rewards.”

The pair referred to a lawsuit, NCBCP vs. Wohl, filed by the Lawyers’ Committee and involving NCBCP which was a plaintiff two men who targeted Black voters in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio disinformation via robocalls in an effort to sway the outcome of the 2020 Elections.

“In the weeks before the 2020 Election, the Election Protection hotline received complaints from voters about robocalls using deceptive information to discourage people from voting. After investigating, we found that two individuals, Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, had sent 85,000 robocalls largely to Black Americans,” Hewitt said.

The goal was to discourage African Americans from voting by mail, lying that their personal information would be added to a public database used by law enforcement to execute warrants; to collect credit card debts; and by public health entities to force people to take mandatory vaccinations.

“These threats played upon systemic inequities likely to resonate with and intimidate Black Americans,” Hewitt said. “We filed a lawsuit, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation v. Wohl, in which a federal court issued a restraining order to stop the robocalls and later ruled that this conspiracy to silence Black voters was intimidating, threatening, and coercive in violation of the Voting Rights Act and Ku Klux Klan Act. The methods used for those deceptive robocalls in 2020 look primitive by 2023 standards. But they hold three important lessons for democracy when surveying the AI technology of today and tomorrow.”

Campbell concurred. She said AI would allow this type of weaponization to be more significant using texts, video and audio.

“AI increases the ability to do that in larger formats. We are trying to address this. Elections and democracy is really, really important,” she said. “So many places that can go. So much you can do online now. You have open source where just about anyone who wants to can use AI for nefarious means. There is a lot of angst with those doing voting rights and elections work.

You don’t know how bad it can be until you know how bad it’s been.”

Campbell and Hewitt agree that the exploding capabilities of AI technology can drastically multiply the amount of harm to American democracy. Campbell adds that Google, Microsoft and Meta are the front line companies who activists hope will step up and put guardrails in place because the 2024 elections is overwhelmed by AI-driven misinformation and disinformation.

“In malicious hands and absent strong regulation, AI can clone voices so that calls sound like trusted public figures, election officials, or even possibly friends and relatives,” said Hewitt. “In malicious hands and absent strong regulation, AI can clone voices so that calls sound like trusted public figures, election officials, or even possibly friends and relatives. The technology could reach targeted individuals across platforms, following up the AI call with targeted online advertisements, fake bot accounts seeking to follow them on social media, customized emails or WhatsApp messages, and carefully tailored memes.”

Hewitt said the technology could send messages reaching targeted individuals across several platforms. Then the messages would be followed up with AI calls, targeted online advertisements, fake bot accounts seeking to follow these people on social media, customized emails or WhatsApp messages, and carefully tailored memes.

During his testimony, Hewitt detailed five principals that should guide AI regulation and legislation to protect US democracy, including regulation of AI to protect Americans’ civil rights, by including an anti-discrimination provision directed at online contexts and algorithms; AI should be evaluated and assessed, both before and after deployment, for discrimination and bias; developers and those deploying AI should “have a duty of care” indicating that their products are safe and effective. And if not, they should be held liable.

AI regulation should include transparency and “explainability” requirements so people are made aware of when, how, and why AI is being used; using data protection requirements, to ensure that AI is not used to grab data from those who have not given their consent; and voter information should not be tied to private information to target voters without safeguards.

The effort being led by the Lawyers’ Committee and the NCBCP comes against the backdrop of similar alarm from the Biden administration, some lawmakers and AI experts who fear that AI will be weaponized to spread disinformation to heighten the distrust that significant numbers of Americans have towards the government and politicians.

President Joe Biden recently signed what’s described as “a sweeping executive order.” The order focuses on algorithmic bias, preserving privacy and regulation on the safety of frontier AI models. The executive order also encourages open development of AI technologies, innovations in AI security and building tools to improve security, according to the Snyk Blog.

Vice President Kamala Harris echoed others concerned about this issue who fear that malevolent actors misusing AI could upend democratic institutions and cause American’s confidence in democracy to plunge precipitously. In her remarks, Harris cited the need for a more expansive definition of AI safety to encompass the "full spectrum" of threats, embracing the spread of disinformation, discrimination and bias.

“When people around the world cannot discern fact from fiction because of a flood of AI-enabled disinformation and misinformation. I ask, ‘is that not existential?” Harris said in speech at a Nov 1 press conference at the 2023 AI Safety Summit in London, England. “For democracies, AI has to be in service of the public interest. We see the ways AI poses a threat to Americans every day, certainly in politics and we are laying the foundation for an international framework to regulate AI.

Harris concluded, “We’re going to do everything we can. This is one of the biggest concerns most people have.”

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