July 25, 2015

Calling All Church Leaders: Come Out of the Closets
By Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Homosexuals have come out of the closet and many churches have run into the closets and shut the doors. 

An Overstatement?   Could be.  But there is much dissatisfaction within Black church circles that many of their leaders are remaining silent and accepting of the U.S. Supreme Court’s scandalous redefinition of marriage.

Also there is silence as more politicians legalize marijuana, as the slaughter of Christians in Africa and the Middle East heightens and as Blacks die by the thousands at the hands of other Blacks. Inside the churches souls are being saved; praise and worship is inspirational and the preached Word generally ensures the congregants that better and more prosperous days are ahead. 

But, is that it? Shouldn’t the church be more prophetic in speaking truth to power? Shouldn’t the preachers be the headlights instead of the taillights on moral and social issues in our community? In these crisis-infected times is there nothing to be done or said differently than what is going on within the four walls of our churches?

How dare the Supreme Court ignore thousands of years of marriage as a sacred sacrament and covenant between male and female.  For those who believe that the Bible is the Word of God, the definition of marriage was clearly established in the Garden of Eden. When God created Adam, He declared, “It is not good for man to be alone.” He then created Eve from Adam and brought her to him with the words: “a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”  Genesis 2:24-25.  Those words were also repeated in the New Testament.

The first wedding was sacred and repeated in ceremonies between male and females down through the ages. In addition, the Bible repeatedly condemns homosexuality—as well as adultery—as sins that without repentance could deny entrance into heaven.  The Court cannot change those laws any more than it can turn a donkey into a frog.

The same-sex issue is a landmark decision that can change the character of our nation for decades to come.  Textbooks are being re-written with children having two men as “husbands” and two women as “wives.”  Teachers are already being told they have to teach same-sex parents as “normal” or lose their jobs.  Homosexuality, transgender, unisex are being touted in the media as the “cool” thing to be. It is not too much of a leap that a male with a husband will become president of the United States in our lifetime.

Far too few preachers preach sermons on what the Bible says about homosexuality—as well as adultery and “shacking.”  That presents a problem because the American Bible Society says more than 77 percent of those studied think the nation’s morality is headed downhill but only one in five read the Bible regularity.  So if the preachers don’t preach nor defend the Word, people look to the amoral crowd - Hollywood, the media and the biblical illiterate for guidance.

There are other issues where the silence among church leaders is deafening. In Washington, DC. one of the first major actions of the new mayor Muriel Bowser was to help legalize marijuana. Scientific studies show pot as a “gate-way” drug that opens the door to the more serious addictions to crack and heroin use. And now the approval of pot has morphed into an upswing in the sale of synthetic drugs which is resulting in dangerous violent incidences.  Unfortunately once again the push back on drugs from clergy—Blacks and White alike - is minuscule.

As Christians in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, are being beheaded, slaughtered there is no massive outcry from clergy for President Obama and the United Nation to use their power to find solutions.  Must we wait until ISIS and the Boko Haram train their sights on Christians in the USA to take action?

With the steady stream of children and other civilians being murdered in our major cities, churches should be calling for revival, more prayer and spiritual power to chase the demonic onslaught of homicide out of our communities?  Maybe churches should declare neighborhoods the new mission fields and dispatch evangelists, prayer warriors and worship leaders to street corner tent services to change hearts and souls.

Why are so many pressing issues in our Black communities going unaddressed and unexamined by many who preach Jesus Christ? Is the social justice ministry of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. dead?

Marvin McMickle, in his book “Where Have all the Prophets gone?” blames an overzealous preoccupation with praise and worship, a narrow view of patriotism and personal enrichment themes. I would also add the fear of losing federal funds and tithes, not wanting to be involved in politics, or not seeing social justice issues as their calling or being afraid to go against popular culture.

There are many reasons for the silence from the pulpits, some honorable, other questionable. Yet when you look how drugs and murder entered schools after the Court chased prayer out of schools, you wonder what will be the result of the Court once again crossing the line between the separation of church and state with so little push back from people of faith.

The Court does not have to have the final word on same-sex marriage.  Legal segregation under Plessy v. Ferguson was the law of the land for more than 50 years until the hard work of Atty. Thurgood Marshall and his team worked to overturn it through Brown vs. the Board of Education.

My hope is that the best answer from our churches to the crises of our time will not be to look the other way and stay hidden in the closet.

Dr. Barbara Reynolds is an ordained elder, professional journalist, and author of seven books.

July 23, 2015

Let Non-Violent Drug Offenders Go!
By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Jerry Alan Bailey was sentenced to more than 30 years in federal prison for conspiring to violate federal narcotics laws. Shauna Barry-Scott was sentenced to 20 years for having cocaine in her possession and intending to distribute it.  Jerome Wayne Johnson grew marijuana plants and was charged with intending to distribute marijuana.  He was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.  Douglas Lindsay initially was sentenced to a life sentence for possessing cocaine with intent to distribute, but early on his sentence was reduced to 24 years.

Bailey, Barry-Scott, Wayne and Lindsay were among the 46 people whose sentences President Obama commuted a week or so ago.  They are the lucky ones.   There are more than 95,000 people incarcerated in federal prisons for drug-related crimes. Too many were convicted for marijuana-related crimes that would carry much lighter sentences in, for example, Colorado.

President Obama’s commutations of non-violent drug sentences are a step in the right direction.  By choosing non-violent drug offenders, he highlights the draconian sentences that those committing these crimes receive.  The American Civil Liberties Union says that of the nearly 3,300 people getting life sentences for petty crimes, almost 2,600 will spend decades in jail for non-violent drug offenses.

According to AlterNet, thanks to the “three strikes” law, Tyrone Taylor got life for selling an undercover agent $20 worth of crack.  Taylor says he was a drug user, not a dealer.  Still he got more time than a killer would.  Leland Dodd, 59, got a life sentence for conspiracy to traffic marijuana, and has already served 24 years in federal prison. Army veteran David Lincoln Hyatt had no prior record when he got a life sentence in 1993 for his role in a cocaine conspiracy.   Now 65, he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and hopes to receive a compassionate release.  Even the judge who sentenced him under mandatory minimum sentencing laws has advocated for his release.

If just half of the 47,000 convicted of drug-related crimes were involved in non-violent crimes, then 23,000 people are incarcerated needlessly.  It costs about $30,000 a year to feed and house an inmate, so the total drain on the federal budget is more than $695 million.  In contrast, according the White House Initiative on HBCUs, these colleges got between $600 and $700 million from the Department of Education on grants and contracts.

I applaud President Obama’s step forward in pardoning 46 non-violent drug offenders. Many of whom would have been better off had they been sentenced under the less harsh Fair Sentencing Act of 2010.  After passage of that act, inmates were invited to apply for lighter sentences and about 20,000 did.  The Office of the Pardon Attorney reviews these requests, and forwards those they deem worthy of commutation to the President.  The 20,000 applications are delayed because of a “backlog” in reviewing them.

It costs the federal government $82 per day to support one inmate.  If even only half of those who have applied for clemency deserve it, that’s a savings of $822,000 a day.  This is money that could go for all kinds of initiatives around job training, drug treatment and education.  Imagine that, instead of incarcerating addicted people, they were sentenced to residential drug rehabilitation programs.

President Obama has solid ideas for criminal justice reforms, but it is not likely that this Congress will pass any of them.  So he is left working with presidential commutation, an inmate at a time.  Is it possible to grant “mass” commutations for those convicted of relatively minor drug crimes, especially those who had clean records before arrest?  In addition to saving lots of money, it would, in many cases reunite families.  Strict conditions of probation would likely prevent recidivism.  Nearly 150,000 children have mothers in prison, some for poverty-related, non-violent drug crimes.  Some of these mothers desperately want contact with their children, and many of them deserve it. Most would gladly comply with restrictive probations conditions if they could just hug there child.

Julianne Malveaux is an author and economist based in Washington, DC.

July 25, 2015

Reality Check

The North Won the Civil War, the South Won the War’s History
By A. Peter Bailey

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Finally, amidst all the commentary in the so-called “mainstream” press on the 150^th anniversary of the end of the Civil War and the recent flap over the Confederate flag, White historianl, James W. Loewen, wrote in the Washington Post, “Confederates lost the war but won the history.”

Having had the life-changing, mind-expanding experience in my twenties of personally listening to and learning from brilliant, committed intellectuals/activists such as Dr. Harold Lewis, who taught me history at Howard University, Brother Malcolm X, who taught me about the pervasiveness of white supremacist psychological attacks on our minds and Professor Mahmoud Boutiba, who taught me propaganda analysis, I am well aware of the whole lies and half lies presented to the world as true American history.

One of the most persistent of these self-serving falsehoods is that the terrorists who had enslaved African people for nearly three centuries launched the Civil War mainly to protect states’ rights. Keeping Africans enslaved was not high on their list of priorities, insists the defenders of the enslavers who, in every possible sense of the word, were traitors to the United States. Any person who presents that lie is ignorant, probably willfully so, of the declarations of secession by the legislatures of states such as Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas. The following are those declarations:

Georgia:

The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation.

For the last 10 years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have ... persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic.

The party of Lincoln …is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. …anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. …Northern anti-slavery men of all parties asserted the right to exclude slavery from the territory by Congressional legislation… The prohibition of slavery in the Territories … the equality of the black and white races …were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers. … The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization.

Mississippi:

A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery--the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

South Carolina:

Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union

We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

This stipulation was so material to the compact that without it that compact would not have been made. We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States ... have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

... A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,' and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

... On The 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

... We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled ... have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved.

Texas:

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution know as negro slavery—the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits—a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.

... We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment. That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave–holding states.

The White supremacists/racists fought for the states’ rights, alright—the rights of their states to continue enriching themselves, economically and psychologically, by enslaving African people.

And that, my readers, is the TRUTH.

A. Peter Bailey, whose latest book is Witnessing Brother Malcolm X, the Master Teacher, can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

July 21, 2015

Obama Unveils Plans for Aggressive Criminal Justice Reforms to NAACP 
By Hazel Trice Edney

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - For the $80 billion that America spends annually to keep people incarcerated, the nation could have universal preschool for every 3-year-old and 4-year-old in America; could double the salary of every high school teacher; could finance new roads, bridges, airports, job training programs, research and development.

This according to President Barack Obama. In a speech to the NAACP’s Annual Convention in Philadelphia last week, he called for criminal justice reforms that would bring an end to the extreme spending by reducing mass incarceration.

With the U. S. being home to “5 percent of the world’s population, yet 25 percent of the world’s prisoners,” the president described the issue as an “aspect of American life that remains particularly skewed by race and by wealth. Heavy on statistics, he laid out his case before ticking off a string of criminal justice reform that he would like to see in place before leaving office.

With 2.2 million people behind bars in America, he said, “There’s a long history of inequity in the criminal justice system in America.”

Obama conceded that in recent years, more Americans have come to realize the level of racism in the criminal justice system due to cameras and statistics “cannot be ignored.”

Despite violent criminals that need to be in prison, he said his administration has succeeded in steps to reduce the federal prison population. They included “the 100-1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine” and the commutation of the sentences of “dozens of people sentenced under old drug laws that we now recognize were unfair.”

But this is not nearly enough, he said, listing other policies for which he will push. They include:

• Shorter sentences for low-level drug dealers.
• Reduced sentences for prisoners who complete programs that make them less likely to commit a repeat offense.
• Innovative new approaches to link former prisoners with employers and help them stay on track with good jobs.
• “Ban the Box” on job applications that ask about incarceration histories “so that former prisoners who have done their time and are now trying to get straight with society have a decent shot in a job interview.”
• The right to vote upon reentry to society for people who have served their time.

Of course, most, if not all of these proposals must also be vetted and approved by Congress. But, the President said he is hopeful; especially given that some of them have "bipartisan support in Congress", he said.

The speech was received enthusiastically by the thousands of NAACP members, who applauded often. Three days earlier, the President had commuted the sentences of 46 non-violent prisoners with federal drug convictions. It was also two days before he became the first U. S. President to actually visit a federal prison.

Obama told the audience that a third of the Justice Department’s budget now goes toward incarceration. “But every dollar they have to spend keeping nonviolent drug offenders in prison is a dollar they can’t spend going after drug kingpins, or tracking down terrorists, or hiring more police and giving them the resources that would allow them to do a more effective job community policing,” he said.

He added that there are immeasurable costs – those that come from the racial disparities of the system and the disproportionate impacts on people of color.

“African Americans and Latinos make up 30 percent of our population; they make up 60 percent of our inmates.  About one in every 35 African American men, one in every 88 Latino men is serving time right now.  Among white men, that number is one in 214,” he said. “The bottom line is that in too many places, black boys and black men, Latino boys and Latino men experience being treated differently under the law.”

The president continued, “This is not just barbershop talk.  A growing body of research shows that people of color are more likely to be stopped, frisked, questioned, charged, [and] detained.  African Americans are more likely to be arrested.  They are more likely to be sentenced to more time for the same crime.  And one of the consequences of this is, around one million fathers are behind bars.  Around one in nine African American kids has a parent in prison.”

The details of the speech appeared to be long-awaited as the applause were often not only enthusiastic but thunderous. He praised Chairman Roslyn Brock and President/CEO Cornell William Brooks for their sometimes thankless work as civil rights leaders.

“It's not always received with a lot of fanfare.  Sometimes it's lonely work; sometimes it's hard work; sometimes it's frustrating work.  But it's necessary work.  And it builds on a tradition of this organization that reshaped the nation,” he said.

President Obama has spoken to the NAACP just about every year since he’s been in office, but never with as much detail about the perils of racism and injustice.

“What is that doing to our communities?  What’s that doing to those children?  Our nation is being robbed of men and women who could be workers and taxpayers, could be more actively involved in their children’s lives, could be role models, could be community leaders, and right now they’re locked up for a non-violent offense,” Obama said. “So our criminal justice system isn’t as smart as it should be.  It’s not keeping us as safe as it should be.  It is not as fair as it should be.  Mass incarceration makes our country worse off, and we need to do something about it.”