Sept. 28, 2014

New Report Finds Gender-based Violence 'Too Costly to Ignore'

 
Women against gender violence in Zambia

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Global Information Network

(TriceEdneyWire.com)  – On the heels of the Ray Rice scandal in the U.S., a new report by the accounting firm KPMG says that violence against women in South Africa costs the country between $2 and $4 billion yearly.

The lost funds could pay wage subsidies for all unemployed youths, build half a million houses, or give healthcare to a quarter of all South Africans, the report says.

“We aren’t always able to put a number to human suffering, and it is controversial to do so,” said KPMG staffer Laura Brooks. “But this [figure] puts gender-based violence in a language that people can understand – if we can try put a number to it, it at least draws attention to it.”

The report “The Economic Impact of Violence Against Women” also follows the manslaughter conviction of Olympian “Blade Runner” Oscar Pretorius who claimed to have shot his girlfriend four times by mistake.

In South Africa, a woman is killed by domestic violence on average every eight hours. The rate of intimate femicide, the killing of women by their partners, is five times higher than the global average.

To put that figure into perspective, there are more than seven times as many murders in South Africa than there are in the US, and the country has a population of just 51 million – compared with 317 million in the States.

The cost to government of $45-million a year includes expenses associated with preventative programs, medical and aftercare services as well as police and judicial services.

A related study by researchers at Stanford and Oxford Universities found that domestic violence, mainly against women and children worldwide, kills far more people than wars and is an often overlooked scourge that costs the world economy more than $8 trillion a year.

The authors urged the United Nations to pay more attention to abuse at home that gets less attention than armed conflicts from Syria to Ukraine.

“For every civil war battlefield death, roughly nine people … are killed in inter-personal disputes,” Anke Hoeffler of Oxford University and James Fearon of Stanford University wrote in the report.

From domestic disputes to wars, they estimated that all violence worldwide cost $9.5 trillion a year, mainly in lost economic output and equivalent to 11.2 percent of world gross domestic product.

In recent years, about 20-25 nations suffered civil wars, devastating many local economies and costing about $170 billion a year. Homicides, mainly of men unrelated to domestic disputes, cost $650 billion.

But those figures were dwarfed by the $8 trillion annual cost of domestic violence, mostly against women and children.

Bjorn Lomborg, head of the Copenhagen Consensus Center which commissioned the report, said household violence was often overlooked, just as car crashes attracted less attention than plane crashes even as many more died in road accidents.

“This is not just about saying ‘this is a big problem’,” he told Reuters. “It’s a way to start finding smart solutions.” 

Sept. 28, 2014

First of a two-part feature

Jamal Bryant: Pastor, Preacher, Purveyor of Peace

- See more at: http://www.afro.com/jamal-bryant-pastor-preacher-purveyor-of-peace/?utm_source=AFRO+Weekly+News+E-Blast%2C+September+25%2C+2014&utm_campaign=weekly+eblast&utm_medium=email#sthash.a4NUQnZI.dpuf

Man Charged for Attempting to Firebomb Black Congressman's Office
By Frederick H. Lowe

U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II. Law enforcement officials arrested in mid-September a Kansas City, Mo., man
for attempting to firebomb Cleaver's office.

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from TheNorthStarNews.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri has charged Eric King, a 28-year-old Kansas City, Mo., man with throwing two Molotov cocktails into the congressional office of U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, a member of the 42-member Congressional Black Caucus.

No one was in the office at the time and there was no substantial fire damage.

U.S. Attorney Tammy Dickinson charged King with using a dangerous instrument to oppose, impede, intimidate and interfere with a federal official engaged in the performance of his duties.

King allegedly used a hammer to break an office window before lighting and throwing the Molotov cocktails at the building around 3 a.m. on September 11. The hammer was found at the scene.

A video camera filmed King walking around the building's parking lot before pulling two bottles and a white ignition source from his backpack. The first device bounced off the side of the building. He ignited the second device before throwing it at the window, according to the U.S. Attorney.

He then ran away.

Police arrested King on September 16th in his apartment. Law-enforcement officials found spray paint, Kingsford Charcoal Lighter Fluid and a clear plastic soda bottle, which contained an unknown liquid.

In a hand-written letter, King charged that members of Missouri Congressional Delegation were willing partners in the U.S. government's "capitalist war hungry agenda."

The attempted firebombing of Cleaver's office was first disclosed September 11 by the Congressional Black Caucus.

In a statement, John Jones, Cleaver’s chief of staff, said this was the second such incident within the last three years. Jones did not explain if Molotov cocktails had been thrown at the building years earlier.

It is not known if law enforcement officials believe King was involved in the first incident.

Cleaver, former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, represents Missouri's 5th Congressional District.

Sept. 28, 2014

Emerging Leaders Discuss Pressing Issues in Black America
By James Wright

(Courtesy Photo)

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

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The facilitators of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Emerging Leaders program decided not to have a traditional panel of speakers for its 44th Annual Legislative Conference forum on Sept. 26 named “Power to the People: Training up the Next Generation of Leaders.”

Instead, they opted for an approach that allowed participants to speak on their experiences as African Americans. During the event, a robust discussion ensued about what it means to be young and Black. “It is very important that young people of color feel that they can express themselves,” said Ciara Taylor, political director for the Dream Defenders, a Florida-based activist group. “There was no space for that in the past legislative conferences and we don’t need someone to tell us what our experiences are. We have our own power.”

The CBCF’s Emerging Leaders program is designed to train and organize youth and students in civic engagement and action. It is one of the most established entities of the foundation. Topics at the forum included the murder of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his killer, George Zimmerman; the problems that Blacks face in the country’s criminal justice system and the unfairness of patriarchy in the American society. Devon Douglass, a graduate of the University of Tulsa School of Law and a St. Louis native, told a moving story about facing racism at her own school.

“My mother left me off at the law school one time, and there were several cars backed up,” she said. “When I went into the building, a man harshly told me that I had held up the line and asked for my identification.” Her mother tried to engage him in a friendly way but the man did not let up. She walked away and he called six police officers and the dean of the law school to talk about the situation. “What I remember about that experience is that the dean, who is a female, yelled at me in front of my law school colleagues, saying, ‘If you didn’t do anything wrong, why were six officers called?’ I could not say anything to that. No suit, no pumps can protect me from the color of my skin,” Douglas said.

While females constitute the majority of the American population, they still continue to suffer gender discrimination. Brittany Claybrooks, who works on Capitol Hill, said that she was advised not to work for the female members of Congress because they were harder on their employees.

“In Congress, as a woman, sometimes you have to prove yourself more than if you were a man,” she said. “I want to be a leader someday but I want to be just who I am, not taking on a role as a man.” Dante Daniels, another participant, explained that he had a different experience with patriarchy. “I was running track in high school and in a race, a girl came out ahead of me,” he said. “I remember my coach telling me that I shouldn’t have been beaten by a girl.

The girl who beat me was well-trained and very athletic but I still was yelled at because she beat me.”