Dec. 16, 2014

Marchers Declare Fight for Justice in Police Shootings Not Nearly Over 
By Hazel Trice Edney

[This photo will rotate once it is downloaded]. 

Despite the fact that he was not killed by a police officer, Trayvon Martin remains symbolic of young Blacks males
killed by authority figures. PHOTO: Roy Lewis/Trice Edney News Wire

Rev. Al Sharpton, surrounded by families of Black men killed by police, speaks to thousands of marchers across from the U. S. Capitol. PHOTO: Roy Lewis/Trice Edney News Wire

Determined marchers head toward the U. S. Capitol. PHOTO: Roy Lewis/Trice Edney News Wire

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Tens of thousands of protestors in Downtown Washington, D.C., Saturday sent a message to the nation that the fight against police brutality, profiling and killings of unarmed Black men will only grow if nothing is done about it.

“Look at these thousands of people! They’re Black; they’re White; they’re young; they’re old! This is what America looks like!” proclaimed the Rev. Al Sharpton, who led the throng. “You can bury us, but you didn’t know that we were a seed! When you bury us, we sprout up and start blocking traffic! Our seed grows into civil disobedience. Our seed grows into nonviolence. Bury us if you want; but we’ll grow stronger and last longer!”

Quoting the proverb he said was given to him by his daughter, Sharpton received cheers and applause from the massive crowd that had just ended a 10-block march to a rally near the foot of the U. S. Capitol building.

“I stood in this city and saw a Black man put his hand on the Bible and be sworn in as president. But I am also proud today to see young White men holding up signs saying Black Lives Matter!” Sharpton said.

The marches began in Ferguson, Mo. after the Aug. 9 shooting of unarmed Michael Brown, who witnesses say had his hands up when shot by Officer Darren Wilson. The protests have grown and intensified across the nation since a grand jury refused to indict Wilson and then another grand jury refused to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who killed Eric Garner of Staten Island, N.Y., a husband and father of six children, who Pantaleo killed in a videotaped chokehold.

White protestors have joined in with the predominately African-American crowds in marches and so-called “die-ins”, lying down in the streets while blocking traffic. Days before Saturday’s march on Washington, hundreds of Harvard Students staged a “die in”, blocking traffic in Cambridge, Mass.

On Saturday, thousands marched through D.C. and New York City, carrying signs proclaiming, “No Justice, No Peace!” and “Black Lives Matter!”

Chants of “No Justice, No Peace! No Racist Police!” echoed through the Downtown D.C. streets. Civil rights organizations were joined by scores of other groups like nurses associations, colleges, sororities and fraternities. One White man carried a sign that said, “Stop Police Terror” while an Ethiopian man simply held up two books. One was titled, “The U.S. Constitution”. The other was titled, “The New Jim Crow”

Marchers wore T-shirts inscribed with the words, “I Can’t Breathe”, the plea repeated 11 times by Garner before dying from the chokehold.

Families of Brown, Garner, and family members of a list of other Black men killed by police officers or authorities stood on the platform alongside Sharpton. Others included Samaria Rice, the mother of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, shot and killed by a Cleveland police officer last month while playing with a toy gun; and the family of John Crawford III, a 22-year-old fatally shot by police inside an Ohio Walmart while carrying a BB gun.

Leaders of the march warned against complacency, declaring that the protests across the nation are only the beginning.

“You guys look good out there and we’re very proud to stand here, but it cannot stop here,” said Sybrina Fulton, the mother of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, killed by exonerated neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman two years ago. “This has to be the start.”

March leaders came with specific demands:

Sharpton said his National Action Network would press Congress to establish a law that dismantles the high threshold that appears to block citizens from obtaining justice in police matters.

“We’re not saying all police are bad…We’re not anti-police, but we’re anti-brutality and the federal government must have a threshold to protect us,” Sharpton said. He added that he wants the Justice Department to have a specific budget to deal with such a threshold and finally, he said special prosecutors must be appointed in cases involving police instead of local prosecutors who are usually prosecuting people for the police.

President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder largely got a pass from march leaders who appear to bypass them to pressure Congress for new laws.

“President Obama and Eric Holder; they’re doing their jobs,” said Melanie Campbell, president/CEO of the National Coalition for Black Civic Participation. “But they can’t do it alone. We need Congress to act to end police brutality and excessive force.”

National Urban League President/CEO Marc Morial compared the new movement to the demands that came forth after the wrongful deaths of Emmett Till in 1955; the 1963 deaths of the four little girls, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, killed in a bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham; and the 1964 death of civil rights organizers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney in Mississippi. Goodman and Schwerner were White.

Those killings led to a movement that “knocked down the walls of segregation; passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” Morial said. “This movement cannot be a movement without objectives.”

Morial outlined a list of objectives, including body and dashboard cameras for police; a review and revision of policies on use of deadly force by police; review and strengthening of police hiring standards; mandatory reporting of police lethal force incidents to federal authorities; creation of a national data base of complaints against police and a national comprehensive anti-racial profiling law.

The lack of action will cause demonstrations to escalate, leaders warn.

Marveling at the crowd, Lesley McSpadden, the mother of Michael Brown, said, “What a sea of people. If they don’t see this and make a change, I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Said Sharpton, “I want Congress to know we are serious. We organized these thousands in eight days…Don’t let us go home and organize three weeks on you because we will be back over and over again!”

Gwen Carr, the mother of Garner, echoed, “We will come here as many times as it takes. We will come here over and over and over again.  But, when we come, we want to come [because of] a celebration; not an assassination”.

Giving the benedictory prayer, the Rev. Jamal-Harrison Bryant declared, “This is not the end; it is the beginning…We want to make sure that 'our lives matter' is not a slogan, but it’s a lifestyle.”

Dec. 15, 2014

Obama’s legacy: Defining the Course Forward
By Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.  

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The president has paid his courtesies to the Republican leaders who now control the Congress. Mitch McConnell has indicated that he’s prepared to cooperate with the president, if he’s prepared to capitulate. Others, like Sen. Ted Cruz, have declared that the scorched earth obstruction will continue.

The real question is how President Barack Obama acts. Many talking heads urge him to find common ground — on fast track trade authority, on tax breaks for multinationals, on various “reforms” of Obamacare, on lifting restrictions on exporting natural gas. He can, he’s told, consolidate his “legacy” by getting things done. But these accomplishments take the country in the wrong direction. They deal with none of the true challenges facing the country. Why tax breaks for corporations that already capture a record percentage of the national income? Why more corporate trade treaties that ship good jobs abroad?

Why join in denying the reality of catastrophic climate change? Instead, the president can and should make his legacy clear by defining what his presidency stands for. He needs to address the pressing challenges facing this country — and contrast that starkly with the wrong-headed corporate and special interest agenda of Republicans.

Here are five ways he can help secure a true legacy that points the way forward: In foreign policy, he can open a new chapter with neighbors in our own hemisphere. A bold first step would be to issue executive orders doing what he can to ease the boycott, open up travel and normalize relations with Cuba. Our failed policy toward Cuba now isolates the U.S. in its own hemisphere. An opening to Cuba could be the dramatic step needed to open real cooperation on economic development, drug trafficking, public health and immigration. In economic policy he should, as promised, push as far as possible toward immigration reform. It is vital that the millions now locked in the shadow economy be liberated from the exploitation that allows. That is not only humane; it lifts the bottom of the economy helping all.

Republicans argue that if he acts unilaterally, they will never pass comprehensive reform, but they have already made it clear that sensible reforms will never pass this Republican Congress. On basic justice, the president can use his bully pulpit and his pen to accelerate the attorney general’s efforts to reform our racially troubled criminal justice system from police practices to judicial sentencing. He can ensure that the events in Ferguson — too frequently mirrored in communities across the country — help crystallize a bold agenda for reform. He can convene governors, mayors, public safety officials and civil rights and citizen leaders to drive that reform. On inequality, the president likely will have to wield his veto pen to counter Republican efforts to offer more tax breaks for the rich while cutting basic investment in support for the vulnerable.

One effort the president can make on his own is to issue a Good Jobs Executive Order. Now he should put government on the side of good employers, giving preference to employers who pay their employees well, don’t allow excessive CEO pay, respect workplace laws and allow their employees the right to organize. We will never rebuild the middle class unless workers regain the right to negotiate for a fair share of the profits and productivity that they help to produce. On national security, the president should turn our attention to the real security threats that have no military response. In addition to issuing new regulations on carbon emissions from power plants, he could describe the extreme crisis we now face from climate change, and detail how meeting that challenge can be a source of good jobs, better foods, better transport and healthier communities. He should lay out a bold agenda to capture the lead in the green industrial revolution that must sweep the world — and make it clear who is standing in the way. The president still has the best pulpit in the land.

He can still help Americans understand the challenges that can no longer be ducked and the bold steps needed to meet them. His proposals will be dead on arrival in the Republican Congress. His words will be mocked by conservative hawks. But he can define the choice, and that may be the most important legacy of all. 

Dec. 15, 2014

Winnie Mandela Lays Claim to Madiba's Estate, Opening Old Wound

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Global Information Network

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Last December, Madiba’s ex-wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and his last wife, Graca Machel, were seen comforting each other in the wake of the statesman’s death.

The warmth has cooled, if not frozen over, as Winnie opens a court fight for the estate of the former president, the validity of the will, and the legitimacy of the handover to Mrs. Machel of the rural house.

“I let him live on my property. I wasn’t going to evict him simply because he was married to a third wife,” she said in a combative tone that surprised many. “It is such a pity he is no longer there for me to ask what on earth would have brought him to elect that he would take my land and give it away to someone who actually has a whole world in Mozambique because [Machel has] her four houses in Mozambique.”

According to the will. Mandela's homes in Qunu and Houghton, Johannesburg, would be held in the Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela Family Trust and the Nelson Mandela Trust.

Madikizela-Mandela, however, disputes that, asserting that Mandela may have committed land fraud when he registered a plot of land in Qunu, Eastern Cape, in his own name.

According to the longtime ANC activist, abaThembu King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo gave her the land when Mandela was imprisoned and that it was rightfully hers. She contends the registration of the house in Mandela's name was unlawful and should be set aside.

President Jacob Zuma has filed a notice to oppose the ex-wife’s reported application to access government documents relating to the Qunu property.

The property claim began over the summer when a letter by Madikizela-Mandela’s lawyers sought to repossess the house for Winnie’s children. "It is only in this home that the children and grandchildren of Mrs Madikizela-Mandela can conduct their own customs and tradition and the house cannot be given to the sole custody of an individual nor can it be generally given to the custody of any person other than the children of Mrs Madikizela-Mandela and/or her grandchildren," the lawyers stated.

Traditional leaders also have the power to allocate parcels of land to people, but they do not become the official owner. Therefore, the issue may have to be decided under traditional customary law, said Professor Stephen Tuson from Wits University in Johannesburg.

“My first crisp question would be what was Nelson Mandela’s title to that home - if anything? That would be definitive in my view," said Tuson. "If he had the title deeds then he can do with his home what he wishes. If he was not the title holder, if it was not his, but allocated to him, well then there is a little more wiggle room here. Then we would have to look at undocumented, largely, customary law and here the lines can get very blurred.” 

Dec. 15, 2014

Stolen Christmas?
By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Walmart will earn about a third of its profits from this Christmas shopping season.  Jewelers earn nearly the same amount between November and December.  If spending were evenly spread during the 12 months of the year, sales and profits would be about 8 percent a month. Instead, lots of retailers depend on holiday spending to meet their bottom line. Even car sales peak at the end of the year in August and December.

Consumers are barraged with ads urging them to spend, spend, and spend, even as many are resisting spending. The unemployment rate has remained level at 5.8 percent; enough consumers were expecting the rate to fall, leading to a sharp decline in consumer confidence.  While the consumer confidence rate was 93.8 in October, it dropped to 87 percent in November.  This means that many are likely to stay home or spend less rather than participate in the annual spending orgy.

Last year, the average consumer spent 42 hours and $800 shopping.  This year, it is projected that those who earn more than $50,000 a year will spend more, while those earning less that $50,000 will be more modest in their spending.  Why?  Consumers say they have limited or insufficient money to do much shopping, or they say that they are considering the high cost of living as they shop.

Another factor might be our nation’s rising debt.  The average consumer has more than $15,000 in credit card debt.  The average recent graduate owes more than $32,000 in student loans.  For these folks to spend is utter folly, yet many will get caught up in holiday drama and spend money that they do not have.

Meanwhile, those who make public policy have been hostile to consumers and benevolent toward the bankers who played a major part in wrecking the economy in 2009.  Large corporations spend millions and billions of dollars attempting to influence public policy their way, tightening laws that allow consumers to discharge bankruptcy, making it more difficult, in some cases, for people to get home loans.  Many banks have attempted to increase interest rates for student loans, denying young people the low-interest benefit they had when they were perceived as “too big to fail”.

Every macroeconomic indicator suggests that our economy is improving.  Nearly every microeconomic indicator says the opposite.  From relatively high unemployment rates (the reported rate of 5.8 percent is 11.4 percent when hidden unemployment is considered; African American unemployment, reported at 11.1 percent rises to 22 percent), to dire perceptions of economic conditions (72 percent say economic conditions are the same or worse than a year ago), consumers, especially those at the bottom (which means most folks), are not happy with the economy despite happy news.

Consumers could be the Grinch that stole Christmas.  What if, instead of dropping hundreds of dollars on “stuff”, people chose to consciously reduce profits by staying home?  Would Walmart become an advocate for consumers if they felt the pinch from lower spending?  Would the other industries that count on year-end spending be hurt if people constructively withdrew dollars from commercial enterprise?

Will the same activists who are taking it to the streets also taking their dollars to the cash registers.  Consider the retail establishments that have been silent in the face of the massacres of Michael Brown, Eric Gardner and Tamir Rice, the 12 year old whose execution was especially heinous.  What if people of conscience explained that they cannot spend money in business’ that are silent in the face of oppression.  Can those who are offended by the state of our nation cooperate with the evil that too many retail establishments are part of.  To see evil and to participate in evil is evil.

Some will say that they must shop because their children and loved ones will feel deprived if they don’t get a bunch of goodies for the holidays.  What about if you spend a bit less and use this holiday as a way to talk to children about capitalism, spending, and the ways excess spending hurts families in the long run.  Explain that less spending now might mean a larger college fund later.  Explain how retailers are hurt when we refuse to cooperate with their oppression.

And don’t you dare believe the hype that Kwanzaa is a spending holiday.  As envisioned by Maulana Karenga, Kwanzaa was developed to lift up the seven principles and to develop families. Dr. Karenga never envisioned Kwanzaa as a Hallmark profit center.  Yet in our spend, spend, spend, culture it is often seen that way.

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