Wade Henderson Stepping Down from Leadership Conference Next Year by Hazel Trice Edney

Nov. 9, 2015

Wade Henderson Stepping Down from Leadership Conference Next Year
Announcement stresses need for ‘generational shift’ in civil rights leadership
By Hazel Trice Edney

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Wade Henderson, nationally known for his searing, but smooth speaking style as president/CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, says he will step down at the end of 2016 after 20 years of leadership.

“This announcement is just one step on a very long path in ensuring the long-term health, integrity and effectiveness of The Leadership Conference and its coalition of more than 200 civil rights groups,” said Henderson. “There’s an unmistakable generational transition happening in the civil and human rights movement. The day-to-day work of civil rights advocacy is extremely important, but on its own, is not enough. Leaders also have the responsibility to cultivate, encourage and make paths for the next generation to lead and to thrive.”

Henderson, 67, is preparing to leave the organization amidst several years of intense youth-led civil rights activity on the national stage and highly covered by national and social media.

Last week’s announcement placed heavy emphasis on the need to transition to younger leadership. The release described Henderson’s pending departure as another step in a “multi-year plan to prepare the organization for a generational shift in civil and human rights leadership.”

Previous steps have included “a restructuring of the organization’s board, a strengthening of its staff capacity, improved fundraising and fiscal controls, and a renewed emphasis on civil rights as human rights.”

Henderson joined the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in 1996 after serving as Washington Bureau chief of the NAACP and associate director of the ACLU. A statement said that under his leadership, the coalition has grown from 180 to more than 200 member organizations and has grown from a staff of 7 to 45.

High profiled leaders from multiple segments of the civil and human rights communities applauded Henderson’s leadership upon last week’s news of his pending departure in a statement released by the Leadership Conference.

“Wade has led The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights for the last two decades with integrity, honor, and grace,” said former Attorney General Eric Holder. “He has changed our nation—and made it better. Wade is an exceptional leader, a true champion of the voiceless, and a good friend. This announcement truly marks the end of an era, but we are all grateful that he has agreed to stay on to help shepherd The Leadership Conference through this transition, demonstrating his trademark generosity of spirit and commitment.”

Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said, “Just watching him lead our coalition, manage conflict and keep our civil right troops motivated and focused has been inspiring. Wade manages to combine optimism with a strong streak of pragmatism. He knows what should be done and he also knows what can be done.”

U. S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) described him as “a reliable, dependable ally in the struggle for both civil and human rights. He has been a champion for an increase in the minimum wage, equal compensation for women, protecting the environment, and against voting discrimination. His commitment, dedication, and leadership will be missed, not just on Capitol Hill but around the nation.”

Henderson is credited with leading the non-partisan Conference through “the passage of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, the Voting Rights Act reauthorization of 2006, the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, and the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010.”

He also advocated for “the historic confirmations of Justice Sonia Sotomayor and former Attorney General Eric Holder in 2009, the first director of the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau Richard Cordray in 2012, Attorney General Loretta Lynch in 2015, and countless federal judges.”

Over the next year, a national search will be conducted for new leadership of The Leadership Conference and its sister organization, The Leadership Conference Education Fund.

Meanwhile, Henderson continues to work with Congress on issues of criminal justice reform and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. He also continues to push for police body camera programs and the restoration of the Voting Rights Act.

“You want to leave at the top of your game,” Henderson said. “The landscape of Washington has clearly changed, but The Leadership Conference has adapted and evolved, and some of its best work is taking place right now.”

Black Presiding Bishop Installed As Head of the Episcopal Church By Frederick H. Lowe

Nov. 9, 2015

Black Presiding Bishop Installed As Head of the Episcopal Church

By Frederick H. Lowe

Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Michael B. Curry, installed on Sunday as the 27th Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, is the first African-American man to hold the post in what many argue is the nation’s most-influential church because of its wealthy members.

After knocking on the west door in the traditional manner at noon, he was admitted to the cathedral by the Very Rev. Gary Hall, the cathedral’s dean, and Diocese Mariann Budde, who asked Curry, “tell us who you are.”

“I am Michael Bruce Curry, a child of God, baptized in St. Simon of Cyrene Church in Maywood, Illinois, on May 3, 1953, and since that time I have sought to be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ,” he replied.

He succeeded the 26th Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman to hold the post. “In the name of Christ, we greet you,” Schori told Curry, according to the Episcopal News Service. He will serve nine years.

More than 2,500 people attended the ceremony.

Curry, 62, former bishop of North Carolina, was elected Presiding Bishop-elect on the first ballot during the church’s 78th convention June 27th in Salt Lake City.

He received a Master of Divinity degree in 1978 from Yale Divinity School. Curry was elected eleventh bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina on February 11, 2000.

Curry spoke of evangelism and reconciliation, especially racial reconciliation, calling it “some of the most-difficult work possible.”

Curry and his wife, Sharon, are the parents of two adult daughters, Rachel and Elizabeth.

Rigged: Racial Bias in Jury Selection Marc H. Morial

Nov. 8, 2015

To Be Equal

Rigged: Racial Bias in Jury Selection
Marc H. Morial

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - "Illegaland unconstitutional jury selection procedures cast doubt on the integrity of the hole judicial process. They create the appearance of bias in the decision of individual cases, and they increase the risk of actual bias as well." – Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Peters v. Kiff (1972)

During the Reconstruction Era, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The act guaranteed all citizens, particularly African Americans, equal treatment and access to public accommodations, public transportation and protected their right to serve on juries. This week—140 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1875—the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a Georgia death penalty case that serves as an intolerable reminder that people of color continue to be unlawfully excluded from jury service because of their race.

In 1987, Timothy Foster, an African American, was convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white jury in the murder of an elderly white woman. Foster, who was 18 years old at the time of the crime, is seeking a new trial on the basis of racial discrimination by the prosecution, who he claims deliberately singled out and purged all prospective Black jurors. Coincidentally, Foster’s death sentence came only a year after the Supreme Court had ruled in Batson v. Kentucky that excluding potential jurors based on race was unconstitutional and violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The clear message of Batson v. Kentucky to not exclude jurors based on race failed to police the behavior of prosecutors in Timothy Foster’s case. And Foster’s case is a textbook example of racial discrimination that is often so hard to prove. In this rare instance of well-documented misconduct, prosecutors used a variety of methods to single out and remove potential Black jurors. After getting access to the prosecution’s jury selection notes in 2006, Foster’s lawyer found “an arsenal of smoking guns in this case,” including prosecutors highlighting the names of potential Black jurors, circling the word “black” on questionnaires, and taking note of Black jurors as “B#1” or “B#2.”

Despite the efforts of our federal government and the Supreme Court to address and eliminate racial discrimination in the jury selection process, the practice continues to run rampant, and unchecked, throughout our criminal justice system—a system where more than half of the people on death row are people of color. African Americans make up 42 percent of that number, while they make up only 12 percent of the United States population.

Deliberately excluding people of color from juries only serves to undermine our confidence in the credibility of our nation’s criminal justice system. How can we believe justice is being served if the system is so blatantly rigged? And studies have shown that diversity makes for a better jury. In comparison to all-white juries, racially diverse juries are said to take longer to deliberate, they consider a wider variety of perspectives when deciding and make fewer factual errors. We cannot allow our constitutional right to be judged by a jury of our peers to be abused based on a prosecutor’s implicit or explicit racial bias—lives are at stake.

If we are going to effectively address prosecutorial misconduct, there must be real enforcement of rulings like Batson v. Kentucky to prevent the exclusion of jurors based on their race. Along with enforcement, there must be punishment. Right now, prosecutors are not taken to task when racial bias rears its ugly head during jury selection. With enforcement and monitoring, we can discover the patterns and punish the offenders. Foster’s case has pulled back the curtain on an ugly and unlawful practice that we must remedy if we want a criminal justice system we can believe in.

Fortunately, we are decades past the all-white juries of the Jim Crow era, but we have a long way to go if we are committed to bring justice into our jury pools for all our nation’s citizens.

Black Caucus Cautious About House Speaker Ryan By James Wright

Nov. 8, 2015

Black Caucus Cautious About House Speaker Ryan
DC Leaders Hope to Change His Mind on DC Statehood

By James Wright

House Speaker Paul Ryan (D-Wis.)

delegateeleanorholmesnorton

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC)

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

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Following U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan's election by the House of Represenatives as Speaker of the House, DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton said she “will reach out and look forward to working with our new speaker, Paul Ryan” - including on the issue of DC Statehood.

“Paul is a friend who I have worked with in the past,” Norton said. “I first got to know him from his relationship with my good friend, the late representative and former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp, who was Paul’s mentor. I see Jack Kemp’s continuing influence on Paul in his outspoken leadership on a Republican approach to poverty, a subject that other Republicans often neglect.”

The delegate said Ryan’s vote on District statehood “in recent years has not been unlike others in his [Republican] caucus,” meaning that he isn’t in favor of statehood. “However, I believe Paul understands the importance of self-government, and I do not think he is unreceptive to our demands for home rule,” Norton said. “He has not been tested on the degree to which he would respect the District’s right to self-government.”

Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, was elected to lead the House Oct. 29. The only Congressional Black Caucus member to support Ryan was U.S. Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah), stating that she likes his “commitment to family.” The Democrats in the House, including the party’s CBC members, voted for U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a former House speaker and the present House Minority Leader, which was to be expected. The vote for speaker is always along party lines.

Statehood is of particular interest to DC represenatives and leaders. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) had a conversation with former House Speaker John Boehner earlier this year and she expects to talk with Ryan, as well. “We will reach out to the new speaker,” Bowser told the AFRO on Nov. 2. “We haven’t made contact with his office yet.”

Nevertheless, it is a courtesy on Capitol Hill for the speaker and District mayor to meet at least once while either is in power. When they do meet, District statehood is always a point in the discussion.

Anise Jenkins, the co-leader for Stand Up for Democracy! a pro-statehood organization, admits she doesn’t know very much about Ryan but is sure of one thing. “I know that he is not a co-sponsor of the present D.C. Statehood bill that is in the Congress,” Jenkins said. “There are no Republican lawmakers who support the bill at this time. However, we will lobby him on the issue like we’ve lobbied other speakers.”

Despite their caution, some CBC members wished Ryan well in his new role. U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), who has disagreed with Ryan regarding welfare and public assistance issues tweeted “Congratulations to my friend, colleague and fellow Wisconsinite Speaker Ryan.”

“Best of luck, Paul,” the tweet said. “Let’s get to work.”

Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) said, “Speaker Ryan is an outstanding public servant with a long record of service.

“He has the potential to be an effective leader that works with the whole House to move our great nation forward. I look forward to continuing to work with him in the House of Representatives.”

Charters and Heavy Testing Hurt Our Schools by Jesse Jackson

Nov. 8, 2015

Charters and Heavy Testing Hurt Our Schools

By Jesse Jackson

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Across the country, parents have been in revolt against high-stakes standardized testing, with kids tested over and over again while creativity is cut out of classroom curricula. Parents — particularly in targeted urban schools from Chicago to Boston — are also marching against the forced closing of neighborhood schools, displacing kids and shutting down needed neighborhood centers. Now there is more and more evidence that the parents have it right — and the deep-pocket “reformers” are simply wrong.

First, the Obama Administration — which has pushed high-stakes testing as central to its education agenda — announced that kids were being tested too often, with too much school time devoted to preparing for and taking required tests. In what a writer for the New Yorker described as a major “mea culpa,” the administration now recommends that standardized testing be limited to 2 percent of class time. Maybe music, art and creativity will have a chance once more. Second, a report by the Center for Media and Democracy on charter schools — the centerpiece of the so-called reformers’ agenda — reports that some $3.7 billion in federal money has been larded onto charter schools in the past two decades with virtually no accountability.

The result is often a simple rip-off: schools that never open or open for a few months and shut down. Some highly touted cyber charters — schools featuring online courses — are, as Education Week reported, essentially useless, like not going to school at all. Others, like the highly touted New York Success Academy Schools, apparently boost their test scores by identifying low-performing students who have “got to go” and finding ways to get rid of them.

And now the National Assessment of Education Progress, the gold standard for measuring progress, reports that American kids have lost ground in math, and either were stagnant (4th graders) or worse (8th graders) in reading. Charters are spreading like kudzu; wall-to-wall standardized testing is nearly universal — and the parents are right: It isn’t working. The reality, as National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen Garcia has pointed out, is that the nations that have outperformed the U.S. in recent years don’t do the things that the deep-pockets reformers have been touting.

They don’t terrorize teachers; they train, respect and pay them. They don’t set up private charters and drain money from public education; they devote more resources to the poorest students, not less. They don’t do repeated high-stakes standardized testing; they evaluate teachers and students carefully, mentor them and improve them. The school “reformers” are hurting, not helping. Closing neighborhood schools too often divorces parents from their students’ schools.

Demeaning teachers is leading to higher turnover, when experience is central to becoming a good teacher. Repeated standardized testing takes the joy out of learning, making kids less likely to find their strength. As Jeff Bryant of the Education Opportunity Network writes, parents are driving an “education spring,” revolting against an elite reform agenda that is driving away good teachers, undermining public schools, and draining funds and fun from our public schools. Parents are right to keep the pressure on.