Urban News Features

Women Activists to Senate Leader: Don’t Make Loretta Lynch a "Sacrificial Lamb" By Joyce Jones

March 30, 2015

Women Activists to Senate Leader: Don’t Make Loretta Lynch a "Sacrificial Lamb"
By Joyce Jones

Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner lead members of the Black Women's Roundtable and women members of the Congressional Black Caucus in prayer outside the office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The women, led by BWR convenor Melanie Campbell are demanding that McConnell allow a vote on the attorney general candidacy of Loretta Lynch, a Black woman. PHOTO: CG at Citvisual

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Civil rights leaders and activists have in the past two weeks conducted a flurry of conference calls to vent their growing frustration and anger over Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's refusal to bring to the floor a vote to confirm Loretta Lynch.

The federal prosecutor is poised to make history as the first African-American woman to serve as U.S. attorney general. But at 140 days and counting, Lynch is instead making history for being forced to wait longer for a confirmation vote than any nominee for the position in 30 years.

Tired of talking among themselves, a group of about 20 women faith and civil rights leaders on March 26 took Lynch's case directly to the source of the delay by staging a protest outside of McConnell's leadership office in the U.S. Capitol. The protest took place just as the Senate prepared to recess for Easter recess. The members are set to return April 13.

Melanie Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and convener of the Black Women's Roundtable, and Barbara Williams-Skinner, president and co-founder of the Skinner Leadership Institute organized and led the protest.

"We will not be moved, we will not go back, we will not stop," declared Williams-Skinner as she led a prayer at McConnell's door.

Earlier in the morning, the group met with the Kentucky lawmaker's chief of staff to discuss the reasons for the delay. Since the Republican Party took control of the Senate in January, the list has grown: President Obama's executive actions on immigration; a human trafficking bill with controversial abortion language that Democrats oppose; and passing a federal budget. The staffer's responses boiled down to a series of talking points that only added to the group's frustration.

"At the end of the day, she is being used as a political football and that is not acceptable," said Campbell.

So instead of leaving the Capitol after being informed that McConnell was "too busy" to speak with them, the group formed a circle a few feet away from his office, held hands and prayed, asking God and the Senate majority leader to not allow Lynch to be used as a sacrificial lamb.

"We think it's ironic and distasteful that during this upcoming Holy Week that she would be used as a sacrificial lamb, like a pawn being played. No other nominee has had a more than an 18-day wait on average," said Williams-Skinner. "If it looks like a duck and talks like a duck, it is a duck," she added. "The duck is that [Lynch] is being treated differently. That's a standard that allows some people to call this both racist and sexist."

Her sentiments echoed other Black leaders' speculation in recent weeks that there might be more sinister reasons for the delay. After all, she is imminently qualified for the position, as even those who've said they'll vote against her agree. Moreover, she has already been confirmed by the Senate twice before. So, what's left, her supporters ask.

Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who met with the women between House votes and accompanied them to McConnell's office, did not want to accuse anyone of racism, but did acknowledge that the historic delay raises questions that need to be answered.

"This is a group of women representing thousands of women, thousands of African-Americans, who are appalled and outraged that Loretta Lynch, a qualified African-American woman, who's been confirmed twice by the Senate, hasn't even gotten a date [for a vote] and it's been five weeks since she was confirmed out of the Judiciary Committee," said Jackson Lee. "We can't think anything other than she has been discriminated against."

McConnell has some explaining to do to the American public, the women agreed. Williams-Skinner said he may not even be aware of the message he's sending to the nation by holding up the vote, but it strongly suggests gender and racial inequality.

"History is a great teacher. If you study it you see this is the second woman and the first African-American woman [attorney general nominee] and the only difference in what's going on is [race]," Campbell observed. "She's imminently qualified. She's jumped through all the hoops and is ready to serve. And that's what we're talking about – serving the country. The American people know fairness and it's not fair what's happening."

Fairness is really the bottom line for the women leaders. Ideally, when the time comes, Lynch will be confirmed but, they acknowledged, the outcome is not a given nor is that what they're asking for.

"Mitch McConnell doesn't have to guarantee that she's confirmed. He only has to make sure that a vote is made possible. That's all we're asking him to do, not to guarantee confirmation – that's up to the 100 members of the U.S. Senate," said Williams-Skinner. “Our issue right now is he has the authority today to call for a vote. It has nothing to do with human trafficking; it has to do with his lack of will. It's an issue of leadership and we want him to step up as a leader and do what's morally right."

Before convening for a two-week recess March 26, the Senate held what's known as a vote-a-rama – a blizzard of amendment votes before passing a final budget bill – that lasted until 3.00 a.m. Lawmakers voted to repeal Obamacare, but a confirmation vote for Lynch was not on the table. That vote will now not take place before mid-April and will most likely happen later.

Until then, the group declared, lawmakers have not heard the last from them.

"We plan to continue through the recess in the districts," Campbell said. "We're going to the district offices and we'll be right back here on April 13.”

Selma Celebrant Observes: State of Selma Belies Civil Rights Victories By Zenitha Prince

March 30, 2015

Selma Celebrant Observes: State of Selma Belies Civil Rights Victories
By Zenitha Prince

Friends of Forrest billboard. (Courtesy photo)

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

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - During the recent spring break, Alexis Toliver, a senior neuroscience major at Johns Hopkins University, forewent the sandy beaches of Cancun, Mexico, for the southern climes of Selma, Ala. Toliver said she wanted a hands-on volunteer experience in a place that defined a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. But she was shocked by what she saw.

“After a few days in Selma, I felt like Jim Crow was still in effect…everything felt separate and unequal,” Toliver told the AFRO.

The Baltimore-based co-ed said she was “perplexed” by the “disorder and horrifying state” of the city, particularly in light of the nostalgic and triumphant media coverage accompanying the 50th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday,” demonstration that precipitated passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The first thing she noted was an “air of White supremacy,” with which she was confronted almost immediately upon crossing the infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge to enter the city. There she was met by a huge billboard honoring Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general remembered for his brutality, including the massacre of hundreds of Black soldiers.

With a Confederate flag as the backdrop, Forrest’s image was accompanied by a quote adopted by his men: “Keep the skeer on ‘em.”

Additionally, during the recent commemoration of the Selma-to-Montgomery marches, thousands of KKK fliers were distributed to Selma homes, according to local media. Robert Jones, the grand dragon of the Loyal White Knights of the KKK, told AL.com the campaign was meant to remind people that the White supremacist group still existed and to recruit new members.

“The Klan is still out there and we are watching,” Jones said.

Toliver also cited ongoing school segregation and economic blight as continuing concerns in the historic city.

According to the Los Angeles Times; Dallas County, where Selma is located, ranked as the poorest in the state last year, with unemployment at 10.2 percent. In the city itself, 40 percent of families live below the poverty line, and violent crime is five times that in other towns around Alabama.

Toliver has appealed to media to cover the current state of Selma in an attempt to make a difference.

“The current state of Selma Alabama is appalling. If nothing is done, future generations will have to fight for civil rights rather than regard it as a successful movement of the past. Activists have fought and died, yet Selma is in a state similar to that of 1965,” she wrote in her appeal. “Please educate your readers on the severity of this situation. Raising awareness will incite a movement…. Start a national discussion that will lead to the end of discrimination and poverty in Selma, Alabama.”

The Retreat from Equal Justice By Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.

March 30, 2015

The Retreat from Equal Justice
By Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - We celebrate our history as a march towards justice. The limited franchise of the early Republic was slowly extended to all white men, then after the Civil War, to blacks, and then to women. Citizen movements – abolition, worker rights, populist, women, environmental, civil rights, gay rights – struggle and win, making America better.

But justice and freedom are not inevitable. The march towards justice is not unopposed. Particularly when it comes to race, America’s progress has always been contested, and too often reversed. And a new reaction is what we witness today.

Many of the Founders – even slaveholders like Washington and Jefferson – were haunted by slavery and hoped that it would slowly die out. But as the South a plantation economy based on slave labor, the practice spread rather than declined. In the end, it took the Civil War, the bloodiest war in American history, to bring an end to slavery.

After the War, the 14^th and 15^th Amendments were passed; the former guaranteeing equal protection under the laws; the latter outlawing discrimination in voting on the basis of race. The defeated confederate states were allowed back into the union, but only with what became known as reconstruction.

Across the South, newly freed slaves, endowed with the right to vote, forged multi-racial Lincoln Republican coalitions. Sixteen African Americans served in Congress, including two in the US Senate, and more than 600 in state legislatures across the South.

Reconstruction governments established the South’s first state funded public school system, made taxation more equitable, and outlawed racial discrimination in public transportation. They also sought to entice railroads and other industries to help develop a “new South.”

That political revolution spawned increasingly violent opposition from former slaveholders. Terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan targeted local Republican leaders for beatings or assassination. Lynchings grew in number.

Eventually, federal troops cracked down on the extremists, but Southern resistance continued to thwart progress. In 1876, a corrupt political deal returned federal troops to their barracks, and allowed Jefferson Davis or Confederate Democrats to take control across the South in return for helping to elect Republican Rutherford B. Hayes to the presidency.

By the turn of the century, the South had once more asserted states rights, and installed a new, racially segregated system, locking blacks out of schools and public accommodations, disenfranchising black voters, and limiting African Americans to low wage jobs. Slavery was still illegal, but racial apartheid took its place. It was enforced by both legal decision --with the Supreme Court ratifying segregation – and by extralegal violence. The Civil Rights Amendments were shorn of their meaning.

It took another 100 years and the Civil Rights Movement to end legal apartheid in the South. Once more, African Americans joined in multi-racial coalition to win political office. One more a “new South” sought to develop new industries – CNN, automobiles, and more.

But reaction set in immediately. As Kennedy-Johnson Democrats became the champions of civil rights, Nixon-Goldwater Republicans provided the home for the former segregationists. Private charter schools were developed to avoid desegregated public schools, and sap funding from them.

Now, we are at the height of that reaction. The Civil Rights reconstruction is under assault. The Supreme Court has disemboweled the Voting Rights Act, effectively ending prescreening of laws designed to limit the right to vote. Now efforts to constrict the vote – voter ID, closing the polls on Sundays, limiting voting hours and days, gerrymandering districts – are moving in states controlled by Republicans. Our criminal justice system deeply biased against people of color, has stripped millions of their voting rights. Segregation is still illegal, but our public schools are still largely separate and unequal. African Americans suffer about twice the unemployment, greater poverty, greater homelessness, more children going hungry.

We cannot watch another 100 years go by before this new reaction is confronted. We cannot allow the reactionary gang of five on the Supreme Court to once more dishonor our laws by elevating states’ rights and trampling on equal rights. In a country that is more and more diverse, equal protection under the laws, and liberty and justice for all become ever more essential. It's time to stop celebrating and to start organizing. This new reaction is serious and intent on turning back the Civil Rights revolution. We must not let it succeed.

The Retreat from Equal Justice By Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.

March 30, 2015

The Retreat from Equal Justice
By Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.

The State of Black America—By the Numbers: Part 1, Education Marc H. Morial

March 25, 2015

To Be Equal

The State of Black America—By the Numbers: Part 1, Education

Marc H. Morial

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - "What the people want is very simple: they want an America as good as its promise.” - Texas Congresswoman Barbara C. Jordan

There’s no other way to say it. Black America is in crisis.

Over the past year, we have been bombarded with headlines that continue to drive home the longstanding challenges faced by Black and Brown communities in our nation. From the killings of unarmed Black males at the hands of police officers to the introduction of new voter suppression laws that make it more difficult for people of color to exercise their constitutional right to vote, it is clear that for many in our nation, equality under the law remains dangerously out of reach.

But beyond the headlines, anecdotes and agenda-fueled debates lie the real numbers – all facts, no chaser.

Last week, the National Urban League released the 2015 State of Black America® report - “Save our Cities: Education, Jobs + Justice.” The report is the 39th edition of the National Urban League’s annual analysis of Black and Latino equality in America, and for the first time, this year’s report is available in an all-digital format available at www.stateofblackamerica.org, where visitors can find the e-book, Web Series, select data, videos, articles and other frequently updated features (as well as download a free copy of the 2015 State of Black America® report until March 31st).

This year’s report again includes the Equality Index™, in its 11th year for the Black-White Index and its sixth year for the Hispanic-White Index – measuring how well Blacks and Latinos are doing in comparison to their white peers in five categories: economics, education, health, social justice and civic engagement.

What we’ve found is that while strides have been made in our communities, tremendous gaps continue to leave us with a crisis in education, jobs and justice. There are tremendous challenges before us, but the good news is that they are not insurmountable. For the next few weeks – and beginning with education, I will explore the findings of the 2015 State of Black America®, and better still, suggest solutions to these challenges.

As our nation enjoys historically low dropout rates, the highest high school graduation rates in history and more students of color studying on college campuses, we must also contend with the reality that school districts serving the highest percentage of low-income households spend fewer state and local dollars in those districts than ones that have fewer students in poverty. In addition, a lack of consistent education standards and equity and excellence at scale means that the quality of education that our children receive is far too often dependent on their zip code or how much money their parents make. Without a new formula for school funding that puts the dollars where the need is greatest, the education achievement gap will grow to the detriment of our nation as we educate a workforce incapable of meeting the challenges of tomorrow.

To underscore the National Urban League’s commitment to education and our belief that quality education is a key driver to opportunity, for the first time in the report’s history, we have included a state-by-state Education Equality Index™ and ranking. This index examines state-level racial and ethnic disparities in K-12 education, documenting Black and Hispanic achievement gaps in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in comparison to white students. Key findings from the Education Index include:

The smallest gaps were commonly found in states with relatively small minority populations and where test scores were relatively low for each group – white, Black or Hispanic.

Higher graduation rates for Black and Latino students were also found in states where these groups are a smaller share of the population.

On average, larger gaps were found in states with large urban areas home to large populations of people of color living in highly segregated neighborhoods with high rates of concentrated high poverty.

With inequitable resourcing and the disproportionate impact of factors such as poverty and teacher quality, African American and Latino children consistently fair worse in reading/math proficiency.

We have also included essays that feature commentary from leading figures and thought leaders in politics, the corporate arena, NGOs, academia and popular culture. This year’s contributing authors who highlight education include Sacramento Mayor and President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors Kevin Johnson, NEA President Lily Eskelsen García and best-selling authors “The Three Doctors” (Dr. Sampson Davis, Dr. Rameck Hunt and Dr. George Jenkins).

This report is more important than ever. It is important because armed with data, we can all go back to our cities and create relevant plans to address stubborn problems. It is important because we, as a nation, cannot expect to sustain growth and compete globally while millions of our citizens are denied the opportunity to become productive citizens because of misguided policies or neglect. It is important because America can only be as good as its promise if that promise is kept to all Americans.