Make Presidential Race About Issues, Not a Spitball Fight by Jesse Jackson

June 5, 2016

Make Presidential Race About Issues, Not a Spitball Fight
By Jesse Jackson

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Donald Trump has now won the delegates needed to give him the Republican presidential nomination. The Bernie Sanders surge continues — he may even win California — but Hillary Clinton apparently has the superdelegate support needed to give her the nomination. We’re headed to a presidential race with two candidates burdened with record levels of disfavor.

This leads to the widespread expectation of a spitball brawl for a campaign. Trump has already begun branding Clinton. The Clinton campaign has begun attacking Trump as reckless and unqualified. A negative campaign of branded insults will drive down turnout. It would be a disservice to this country and its people.

The United States faces major challenges. We have an economy that does not work for working people, who struggle with stagnant or declining wages, increasing insecurity, and soaring costs of basic needs from health care to college education to retirement security. Record numbers are in poverty. Shameless tax scams allow billionaires to pay lower tax rates than the police who protect their homes. Global corporations stash trillions abroad and pay lower tax rates than mom-and-pop small businesses.

Climate change is a real and present danger that the Pentagon rightly says poses a rising national security threat. The president’s efforts to extract us from the endless wars in the Middle East have been frustrated. Tensions are rising with both Russia and China. We’re running trade deficits of $500 billion a year, undermining good jobs here. In our cities, the impoverished are more concentrated, more isolated, with less hope and more dope and violence.

We need a real debate about the choices we face. Donald Trump has used insult more than policy to win his nomination. But he’s begun to make policy addresses. Last week, he gave a speech on energy policy. He vowed to unravel the Paris climate agreement, rescind the Obama climate change rules, revive the coal industry and redouble our efforts to achieve pure energy independence. He vowed to “deal with real environmental challenges, not the phony ones we’ve been hearing about,” presumably climate change.

Clinton has a detailed agenda on energy policy. She believes climate change is a real threat. She wants to build on the Paris agreements and capture the lead in the emerging clean energy economy. The differences between the two positions are stark and worthy of a great debate.

Similarly, Trump earlier gave a speech on foreign policy in which he challenged many of the shibboleths of our foreign policy. He wants a stronger military that is used less. He wants our allies to pay a greater share of the burden. He seems more willing to negotiate and more skeptical about intervention. Again, there are major substantive differences in direction and policy from Clinton.

The American people would benefit greatly if the election debate were focused on these and other fundamental policy choices. Both candidates should continue to detail their policies and debate their differences. The media should focus less on gotcha questions, stop recycling insults and feeding the spitball fight, and start probing about policy and direction.

The problem, of course, is that insult draws attention. Attention means viewers. Viewers mean advertisers. The media are constantly driven to highlight the latest insult, the outrage and the fake scandal — rather than to focus on the needs of the people and how each candidate proposes to address them.

Similarly, as Trump showed in his primary, insults gain free media. Free media means attention from voters — and saves money. So the candidates are tempted to descend into a brawl of jabs and counterpunches. Instead of a debate about the direction of the country, we get a campaign based on branding the other. This is a recipe for dividing and misleading the country.

We’re going to be electing a president in a country that faces big challenges. It is time to take this out of the back alley. The only way that happens is if everyone is more responsible: the candidates in choosing issues over insults, the media in the questions they ask, and the voters in what kind of behavior they will reward.

Accountability by James Clingman

June 5, 2016

Blackonomics

Accountability
By James Clingman

clingman

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Black people talk a lot about accountability, especially as it relates to politicians. How do we do that? How can you hold someone accountable who is not accountable to you? Most politicians, Black ones included, couldn’t care less about what we think or what we do, so where is the incentive for them to be accountable to us? Throughout the Obama terms certain Black folks have met with him, supposedly to let him know what to do for Black people, but nearly eight years of that has resulted in nothing specific for Black people—even with the highest percentage of votes cast among all voter segments.

It’s all about power, as we know too well, yet we settle for lip service from political lackeys and the politicians themselves. How can Black people hold anyone accountable if we have no real power over them? Our power resides in holding Black dollars accountable.

What power does the NAACP hold over politicians? This so-called “Black” organization flaunts itself before the world as the “biggest and baddest” Black organization in this nation, yet its national leaders have proven to be corrupt, money-grubbing, hypocrites who hide behind the transparent veil of “nonpartisanship.” What a joke; but the joke is on us because we give them our money, which allows them to continue living their lavish lifestyle while pretending to have real sway over the political system on behalf of Black folks.

You would think that a 100 year-old Black organization would be able to make a couple of phone calls and get some appropriate results for those who have supported and sustained it for a century. You would think they would be able to hold politicians accountable; but they cannot.

The corporations across this country, while they do have the power to hold politicians accountable, even to the point of forcing them to change legislation by threatening to move their companies and boycott various cities and athletic events, do not exercise their power on behalf of Black people. Eric Garner was killed before our eyes and no corporation said it would move out of New York because of it. Tamir Rice was executed and no corporation stood up against that heinous act. Look back at how they responded to Michael Vick and the dog fighting, or Ray Rice, or Adrian Peterson.

As Bob Law has stated so appropriately, these corporations, many of which earn their profit margins from Black consumers, have a “depraved indifference” to the plight of Black people in this country. Corporate execs know they only have to pay off a couple of selected lackeys and things will soon cool down; Black folks will fall back in line and continue to buy their products and services as if nothing ever happened.

Facing that sad reality, where do Black folks go and what do we do in order to hold accountable those whom we support? Back in 1951, then President of the National Negro Business League, Horace Sudduth, said, “Economic freedom is the greatest cause before the Negro today.” In the early 1960’s Elijah Muhammad called on Black folks to “do for self,” and Malcolm X continued that refrain. Then in 1968 MLK said, “The emergency we now face is economic.” In the 1980’s and 1990’s it was Tony Brown, Claud Anderson, Bob Law, Brooke Stephens, Robert Wallace, Kelvin Boston, Julianne Malveaux, the very astute and dedicated Kenneth Bridges of the MATAH Network, and yours truly, sounding that same alarm and giving economic prescriptions for empowerment.

With all of those and others like them, Black people continued to follow the empty path of no-win politics, abandoning our economic base along the way and seeking the largess of politicians who either ignored us or took us for granted. Amateurish? Child-like? Naïve? Uniformed? Misinformed? Apathetic? Call it what you will; we blew it, brothers and sisters. We really blew it.

But that was then and this is now, as the saying goes. The Calvary has arrived. It’s called the One Million Conscious Black Voters and Contributors. This movement encompasses and melds together all of the basic principles espoused by those Black champions mentioned above.

The One Million focuses on three primary factors that must be done in order to meet the goals promoted by our true economic empowerment leaders. First, we must “Organize.” The One Million has done that. Second, we must have a vehicle through which our problems can be solved; the One Million is that vehicle. Third, we must make Black dollars accountable to Black people. By pooling and leveraging our dollars, creating more conscious Black millionaires by supporting their businesses en masse, and by using our own dollars to help one another. The One Million is leading the way to economic empowerment for Black people. To join the movement go to: iamoneofthemillion.com

The 'Rosa Parks of Wall Street' Continues the Fight for Economic Empowerment by Marc H. Morial

June 5, 2016

To Be Equal

The 'Rosa Parks of Wall Street' Continues the Fight for Economic Empowerment

By Marc H. Morial

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “Don’t just give us money, and don’t just show up for the Equal Opportunity Day dinner. That is not enough when you look at black consumer power in this country. It’s not enough for you to come and shake our hands and be our friends. We want in.” - Vernon Jordan, National Urban League President 1971 -1981, on his message to corporate executives

The National Urban League last week released our annual report on the social and economic status of people of color, the State of Black America®. This year’s edition, “Locked Out: Education, Jobs & Justice,” was especially significant because it marked the 40th anniversary of the report, first issued in 1976 by Vernon Jordan.

In a video message Jordan recorded for the State of Black America® release, he recalled the tears he wept the night Barack Obama was elected President.

“It dawned on me that my tears were not really my tears, but they were the tears of my grandparents and my parents. They were the tears of all those black people who toted that cotton and lifted that bale. The notion that Obama was going to be President, or that any black person was going to be President, is stunning.”

While we reflect this year on how far we’ve come since Jordan first issued State of Black America®, Jordan’s own life is a vivid illustration of the progression of civil rights throughout the latter half of the 20th Century and into the 21st.

“He is kind of the Rosa Parks of Wall Street,” Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr., told Bloomberg. “He realized that the first phase of the modern civil rights movement was fighting legal segregation, but the roots of racism were fundamentally economic.”

According to the Bloomberg profile, published on the occasion of his 80th birthday last year: “As a young man in Jim Crow Georgia, his first job was chauffeuring a white banker who was shocked that he could read. Now he counts some of America's most wealthy and powerful citizens as friends and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are proud to call him a mentor.”

Jordan himself often recounts what he calls his earliest political memory, listening to Georgia’s segregationist Governor Eugene Talmadge on the radio in 1943, when Mr. Jordan was only eight years old. “I have two planks in my platform,” Talmadge said. “N***rs and roads. I’m against the first and for the second.”

Persuaded by a recruiter to apply to an integrated college in the north, Vernon enrolled at DePaw University in Indiana over his parents’ misgivings.

“Here were Negro parents, both of whom had grandparents who were slaves, who to some extent were conditioned to the southern way of life,” Jordan told author Robert Penn Warren in 1964. “They could never quite adjust to the idea of their boy even being in Green Castle, Indiana, the only Negro in a class of 400 students, and they felt their boy, their baby, their prize, would be happier and have less frustrations if he went to a predominantly Negro institution.”

But his parents came to realize the significance of Jordan’s choice the night a white classmate came to stay at the Jordans’ home.

“In the middle of the night, my father got out of bed and came into my room and turned on the light and stood there with tears in his eyes, put the light out and went back to bed and said to my mother, ‘You know, this democracy thing is really here, and it’s right here in my house.’”

Having struggled in college due to his sub-standard segregated education in Georgia, Jordan determined upon graduation to pursue a career in civil rights. After receiving his law degree at Howard University, he returned to Georgia where he successfully challenged the University of Georgia’s discriminatory admissions policy.

Through the civil rights movement, he realized that economic empowerment would be the driving force for justice.

“In the 1960s, we conferred and defined the right to check into a hotel,” he said. “The 1970s were about providing the wherewithal to check out.”

In a commencement address at Stanford University last year he said, “It's much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee a livable income and a good solid job. It is much easier to integrate a public park than it is to make genuine, quality, integrated education a reality. But that is the challenge at hand.”

We are grateful that Vernon Jordan has dedicated his life to that challenge, and we are proud to continue his legacy.

What About Harambe? By Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq.

June 5, 2016

What About Harambe?
By Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Since his shooting at the Cincinnati Zoo on June 28, the death of Harambe, a 17-year-old male, western lowland silverback gorilla, has created a firestorm of controversy in contemporary "culture wars." There has been considerable second-guessing and "Monday morning quarterbacking" concerning the decision to shoot the animal and, even worse, there has been unreasonable vilification of the parents of the 3-year-old human, African-American male, who found his way past a barricade and fell 15 feet into a moat surrounding the zoo's "Gorilla World" enclosure.

Reacting to the child in his enclosure, Harambe jumped into the moat and took the child under his control. Although his treatment of the child may have been similar to the treatment given a baby gorilla, the force he used was excessive for the child. Some surmise that the screams of concern from onlookers agitated Harambe, who began to handle the boy more roughly. Whatever the cause, zoo officials determined that the gorilla's state of agitation posed a threat to the life of the child and ordered Harambe to be shot.

Zoo Director, Thane Maynard, stated that it was determined that the gorilla posed a threat to the child and that the only alternative was to kill him. Noted zoo keeper, Jack Hanna, agreed with Maynard who, after reflection, said he would make the same decision again if necessary.

In my mind, there is no greater value than a full and complete respect and appreciation for the sanctity and significance of life. In the most ideal situation, every living being would be afforded the respect commonly given for her, his or its position in the ecosphere. Unfortunately, this type of Utopia does not exist and we are often faced with making unpleasant decisions that are speculative, but have an immediate impact on life.

I have supported animal rights all of my life--but never at the expense of human life, and definitely not where a baby's life was threatened. I, like many others, initially had mixed emotions about the decision to kill Harambe, but I have trouble with the negative 'fallout' being rained upon the zoo because a gorilla was killed. Instead, I applaud the fact that the baby's life was saved.

I condemn those who sanctimoniously argue for the protection of animals, yet ignore oppressive conditions imposed upon their human neighbors. I wonder how many of those who protest Harambe's 'murder' number among those who will walk down a street and give a stray animal the most pleasant greeting while casting the glaze of disdain upon another human because of race, ethnicity, religion or some other characteristic.

Some still argue that Harambe could have been tranquilized as an option. Why is that same option not called for when police shoot human beings without cause. I missed 300,000 animal rights, or any other groups’, signatures for the deaths of Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin or for the deaths of the other young Black women and men who've died needlessly when an option truly was available.

Some will say that I have added an unreasonable "racial" component to this discussion, but, I ask, under the same circumstances, in what universe would White parents be vilified for not controlling their child? Where would it be argued for a White mother to be criminally prosecuted? Although he had turned his life around, when would a white father, who was not even at the zoo, have his entire criminal past made public (and how does it relate to the incident at hand)?

Where is the compassion for human life when the subject is Black? I sadly conclude that our country is so filled with hate that one must pass a litmus test of whiteness for a life to matter.

(Dr. E. Faye Williams is National President of the National Congress of Black Women. 202-678-6788. www.nationalcongressbw.org)

Muhammad 'The Greatest' Ali is Dead By Frederick H. Lowe

June 4, 2016

UPDATED June 4, 11 pm

Muhammad 'The Greatest' Ali is Dead

By Frederick H. Lowe

Muhammad Ali, the former world heavyweight boxing champion, is dead

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Muhammad Ali,”The Greatest,” is no longer with us. Ali, the three-time world heavyweight boxing champion, died Friday night in a Phoenix-area hospital, where he was being treated for respiratory complications. Ali was 74 and he died from septic shock.

“After a 32-year battle with Parkinson’s disease, Muhammad Ali has passed away at the age of 74. The three-time World Heavyweight Champion boxer died this evening,” Bob Gunnell, a family spokesperson, told NBC News.

Ali won the heavyweight title in 1964, 1974, and 1978. Between February 25, 1964, and September 19, 1964, Muhammad Ali reigned as the undisputed heavyweight boxing champion. He had a record of 56 wins and five losses.

His greatest fight was “The Thrilla in Manila,” which was held October 1, 1975, in the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City, Philippines. It was the third heavyweight boxing match between Ali and “Smokin” Joe Frazier.

And it was a battle between two Black gladiators, with Ali lifting his arms in triumphant before the 15^th round when Frazier’s trainer Eddie Futch threw in the towel.

I watched the fight with three friends over pay-per-view at Chicago’s Auditorium Theater. I screamed so loud and so often I couldn’t speak above a whisper for three days. An elevated train runs behind the Auditorium Theater. The motorman stopped the train and opened a car door as fight fans walked out of the Auditorium Theater after the bout ended.

“Who won the fight?,” he asked. “Ali! Ali!” the crowd chanted. The elevated train riders also began chanting “Ali! Ali!”

A funeral service is planned for Friday in Louisville, Ky., where he was born January 17, 1942. Muhammad Ali, who was born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr, was a boxer who transcended the sport becoming an international figure who created pride among blacks and anger among whites because he lived the courage of his convictions.

His celebrity, like his boxing skills were without equal. He coined the phrase “Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee.” He called himself “The Greatest” and “The Prettiest.” When he fought, his arms and fists were at his waist, not covering his face like most boxers, because he was such a fast puncher. He also started the “Ali Shuffle,” showing off his fast footwork in the ring. Black boys imitated his style and worshipped him. They called him “Champ.”

In one of many books written about Ali, the author discussed how people reacted to him when he walked near New York’s Central Park. Vendors left their hot dog carts; prostitutes stopped working; cab drivers got out their taxis and citizens chased after him begging for autographs.

At the age of 22, he won the world heavyweight championship in 1964 from Sonny Liston. Shortly after the fight, Clay joined the Chicago-based Nation of Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali in honor of one the great kings of Egypt.

In 1967, Ali refused to be drafted into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, saying ‘no Vietcong ever called me nigger.’ He was arrested and found guilty of draft evasion, stripped of his title. His license to box was revoked. Ali remained free on bond as he appealed his conviction.

His courage in refusing to be drafted did not endear him to the nation’s overwhelmingly white sports writers employed by the nation’s major newspapers.

They called him Clay instead of Ali. Most of them wanted him in prison. The Chicago Tribune published at least 30 anti-Ali stories in one edition. When he showed the first signs of Parkinson’s disease, including slurred speech, many sports writers speculated that he was taking Heroin.

Heavyweight boxer Ernie Terrell refused to call Clay Muhammad Ali and Terrell paid for it. During a 15-round championship fight on Feb. 6, 1967, in Houston, Ali beat Terrell without mercy. Ali taunted him throughout the bout screaming “Uncle Tom! What’s my name?”

Both of Terrell’s eyes were swollen shut from the beating.

I first met Ali after he had been stripped of his heavyweight title. I was Minister of Information for the black student union at Tacoma Community College in Tacoma, Wash. I wrote him a letter and said the Black Student Union would pay him $1,000 if he would come to Tacoma and speak to our group. He did. I introduced him to the audience.

In July 1970, a federal court forced the New York State Boxing Commission to reinstate Ali’s boxing license.