August 18, 2014

Ferguson Shooting Called America's ‘Tipping Point’ Amidst Demands for Officer’s Arrest
By Hazel Trice Edney

Police officers face down protestors in Ferguson on Saturday night. PHOTO: Lawrence Bryant / St. Louis American

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Arrest him. That is the outcry that continues among crowds of peaceful protestors and rioters in Ferguson, Mo. this week, following the police killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown.

As the police officer Darren Wilson remains protected on paid leave, one action appears to be the hope for calm. That action is what Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, described as justice: “Arresting this man and making him accountable for his actions,” she said.

“The shooters must be held accountable for killing our children,” says Brown family attorney Benjamin Crump, in an interview with the Trice Edney News Wire. “When you have a Michael Brown, we have to say it’s not right to execute our children in broad daylight whose hands and arms are up. Despite everything, once his hands are up, you don’t keep shooting… This is the universal sign of surrender,” Crump said.

President Obama - breaking from his vacation - spoke again from the White House this week, obviously steering clear of an opinion in the case, but seeking to express empathy with the racial divide:

"In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear.  Through initiatives like My Brother’s Keeper, I'm personally committed to changing both perception and reality.  And already we're making some significant progress as people of goodwill of all races are ready to chip in.  But that requires that we build and not tear down.  And that requires we listen and not just shout.  That's how we're going to move forward together, by trying to unite each other and understand each other, and not simply divide ourselves from one another. We're going to have to hold tight to those values in the days ahead. That's how we bring about justice, and that's how we bring about peace," Obama said.

Attorney General Eric Holder was scheduled to visit Ferguson this week as the Department of Justice and the FBI continue to investigate.

“Hands up! Don’t shoot!” has been the clarion cry for protesters, many who walk with their hands raised to illustrate the ultimate injustice that has hit Black communities around the nation – mainly the killing of unarmed Black men. Some have worn t-shirts or carried signs saying, "I'm Michael Brown", denoting that the shooting could happen to any Black man in America. Across the nation, people are showing signs of agreement that Officer Darren Wilson must be arrested for peace to begin. 

Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson has claimed Brown was killed after a struggle over the officer’s gun and that Wilson was treated for a facial wound after the shooting. Jackson also released video showing a man appearing to be Brown shoving a store clerk as he leaves a story with a pack of cigars. Sparking even more outrage, Jackson conceded later that Wilson only drove up and confronted Brown and a friend “because they obstructing traffic by walking in the middle of the street.”

Preliminary autopsy reports by famed forensic pathologist Michael Baden – hired by Brown’s family – says he was shot at least six times with most bullets apparently entering into the front of his body, four in his right arm and two in his head, according to Baden speaking on a press conference aired live on Monday. At least one of the bullets could have entered from the back of the arm, he said. The fatal and what appears to be final shot entered the top of the head, indicating that Brown was leaning forward when he was hit, supporting eye witness testimony that he was trying to surrender or falling.  Preliminary analysis also indicates that Brown may have been at least eight feet away from the officer when he was shot multiple times, in what many have described as an “execution”.

Two additional autopsies are underway, one by the St. Louis County Police Department and the other by the U. S. Department of Justice.

From the protestors’ perspective, on any given day in a Black neighborhood, if someone is killed and the police knows who did it, the suspect is regularly arrested on the spot and an investigation follows.

Yet, in Ferguson, more than a week since the August 9 shooting in broad daylight, federal and city investigations are underway, but no arrest has been made and protestors are wondering how, when, and whether Michael Brown will ever get justice.

This is part of what’s fueling the rage that has continued to build. Their anger is exacerbated by the sight of the same police officers perceived to be protecting Brown’s killer and by the fact that they are being asked to suppress their rage in the face of a perceived injustice. It is also exacerbated by statistics in cities across the country showing racial divides through economic and social oppression as well as unequal justice on a regular basis.

These ingredients have erupted into nightly chaos in Ferguson with a mixture of peaceful protests, Molotov cocktails (improvised fire bombs), gun fire, tear gas, looting, arrests, and police in riot gear and military vehicles.

Some of the more violent behavior is reportedly coming from some who have come in from other cities. But, the mass unrest in Ferguson – a predominately Black suburb under largely White political rule – has become what some believe is a “tipping point” that will ultimate lead to change in police-community relationships around the country.

In interviews with the Trice Edney News Wire, civil rights leaders say they believe only justice will bring calm.

“It is a tipping point as was the murder of Trayvon Martin,” says pioneer civil rights leader Julian Bond. “Will it stop the murders of black young men?  No, but it will serve as a marker, as has other deaths. Emmett Till's death is still with us; this one will be with us too.”

“I think it’s a tipping points that’s going to at least cause a conversation to ensue,” says the Rev. Markel Hutchins, 37, a civil rights activist who once headed the Atlanta-based National Youth Connection, described as a modern-day SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee). “I think what we see in Ferguson today is a powder keg that has exploded.”

Also on Monday this week, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon had deployed the Missouri National Guard to assist the Missouri State Highway Patrol amidst escalating tensions. The Highway patrol, under the command of Captain Ron Johnson, a Black man, was appointed by Gov. Nixon to oversee security in the city given the community distrust of the vastly White police force.

But even amidst weekend marches, rallies and church services with national civil rights leaders Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Johnson giving moving speeches, the fact that an unarmed teenager was killed while apparently fleeing and then surrendering with his hands raised - is too much for many to bear. The nightly chaos and resistance to the midnight to 5 a.m. curfew has continued even amidst peaceful protests – all undergirded with the demand for an arrest.

“I think that the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri is a sign that the Black community has had enough and they are going to take matters into their own hands… I think that finally mothers and fathers are saying, ‘What about my son?’” says Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree, founding director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard. “I think that the protests that we’re seeing in Ferguson is just a tipping point of what we’re going to see – not just in Ferguson – but around the country.”

The only way to circumvent the escalation, Ogletree says, is to “Indict the police officer, have a jury decide what happened and I think that will tell a lot about what’s happening in America today. There really is no justification for what happened to Michael Brown.”

August 17, 2014

U. S. Media Fall Short in Covering African Summitt
By George White

News Analysis

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from New America Media

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – For decades, the mainstream American media has depicted Africa as a tortured continent beset by disease, famine and poverty. That image hasn’t changed despite dramatic changes sweeping the region – rapid economic growth, cutting-edge innovation and shifting perceptions of Africa in the rest of the world.

For the Obama Administration and the African Union (AU), a coalition of 54 states on the continent, the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C. last week was an opportunity to help expand the narrative beyond the story of American aid, to reflect the current opportunities of investment and trade.

Journalists from around the world assembled in the nation’s capital to hear the opportunity stories. Among the American-based news media, it was those either managed by nonprofits or owned by African Americans or African immigrants that proved the best at providing context as well as coverage.

Consider this excerpt from a report on Aug. 4, the first day of the week-long summit, in Mshale, a Minneapolis-based news outlet founded by a Kenyan immigrant.

“White House officials say the American interests in Africa are immense. The continent is home to some of the world’s fastest growing economies and a rapidly expanding middle class. The U.S. is also competing for those consumers with China, which surpassed the United States in 2009 as Africa’s largest trading partner.”

However, the Mshale report also noted that it would be difficult for the mainstream American media to establish a new narrative on Africa, as long as global headlines are dominated by news from other regions.

“Even as Obama immerses himself in talks on regional security, democracy building and business investment in Africa, the world’s attention – and much of his own – will be on an extraordinary array of urgent overseas crises. Among them: Gaza clashes, Russia’s provocation in Ukraine and mounting extremism in Iraq, to name just a few.”

That point was observed by Uchenna Ekwo, a Nigerian journalist working in the U.S. for a non-profit organization. In a column, he concluded that a more expansive Africa narrative “is not important to Western media” after witnessing President Obama and reporters at a press conference that was designed to highlight the achievements of the summit. During the question and answer session, Obama called on reporters from the Associated Press, ABC News, Bloomberg, NBC News and the Nairobi-based The Standard.

“In the end,” Ekwo noted, “only one question by Nairobi’s Standard newspaper specifically referenced Africa and the Summit that necessitated the press conference in the first place... Nothing exemplifies the ignominy of Africa in international policy agenda than for the president of the United States to hold a press conference to discuss the outcome of a three day summit that literally uprooted Africa to Washington D.C., only for reporters to divert the attention of the president to other issues.”

Meanwhile, African-American media focused on trade and investment opportunities on the continent. The Washington Informer, for example, produced an article that quoted U.S. Rep. Karen Bass, a stalwart supporter of trade policies that promote African development. Newsone produced a video roundtable dubbed, “What you missed from the U.S.-Africa Summit.” Black Enterprise magazine had two reporters at the summit and produced several reports.

Some African-American owned media posted coverage produced by other outlets. For example, The Africa Channel curated a wide range of summit reports on its home page. Many African-American newspapers – the Afro American chain and the San Diego Voice among them – posted summit reports produced by the National Newspaper Publishers Association, which serves the black press.

Media owned or founded by African immigrants also devoted extensive coverage to the summit. For example, a report on an Obama pledge of $14 billion in commitments from U.S. companies for Africa is one of a half-dozen stories on the summit posted on the website of Arise News, a global broadcast team with offices in London, New York and Washington D.C.

As for analysis, the New York-based Sahara Reporters published a commentary by Sonala Olumhense on the alphabet soup of economic development initiatives related to Africa –NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development), the ACP-EU Partnership Agreement (African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States and the European Union) and the current MDGs (Milennium Development Goals) among them.

Olumhense’s point: “...it is not a shortage of conferences or summits or resolutions that Africa suffers from. The principal challenge is that the philosophy of democracy, and the accountability that underpins it, has yet to be accepted by most of Africa’s so-called leaders. They love to wield power, but resent the responsibility that comes with it.”

African immigrant media also covered some of the many summit “side events.” For example, the New Jersey-based African Sun Times produced a report on a forum on civil society organizations in Africa, an event attended by Presidents Mahama of Ghana and Kikwete of Tanzania, Secretary of State John Kerry and Dr. Nkosazana Diamini-Zuma, chairperson of the African Union Commission, which conducts the work of the AU.

To be sure, the African Union Commission (AUC) recognized the potential of the African immigrant press and the African-American media to provide a broader and more nuanced narrative on Africa before the summit began. The AUC had scheduled an Aug. 4 town hall meeting with African immigrant and African-American media “to not only raise awareness of AUC activities, but also engage the Diaspora journalists and the international media interested in covering... the development agenda of the continent.”  Before the planned gathering, the AUC cancelled that forum but currently has plans to organize such a session in New York, during the United Nations General Assembly in September.

However, without a news exchange involving African media on the continent and diaspora media in the U.S., it will be difficult to expand the dissemination of news related to economic development on the continent.

Many African-American news organizations have expressed interest in expanding their African coverage. For example, the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), which represents more than 200 African-American newspapers, has expressed an interest in doing so despite the fact that NNPA members do not have the resources to assign reporters to cover African affairs.

“We have to come up with creative ways of covering Africa,” said NNPA Chairman Cloves C. Campbell, Jr. in a statement, “because the Motherland is too important for us to ignore.”

African immigrant media also face technology challenges -- many outlets are limited to newspapers, and lack a web platform.

Without correspondents or Internet presence, it is difficult for diaspora African media in the United States to discover and relay information on encouraging developments, such as the elections monitoring and the oil and gas industry watchdog activities of the International Institute of ICT Journalism, or the agribusiness promise of the Songhai Centres for development in West African states.

To be sure, news media based in Africa is also seeking to improve its coverage of business and government corruption. Media mogul Michael Bloomberg plans to aid this effort with his recently announced Bloomberg Media Initiative Africa, a three-year, $10 million pan-African program to build media capacity to improve business coverage and help advance government accountability. Bloomberg also demonstrated his interest in Africa by co-sponsoring the day-long U.S.-Africa Business Forum, a major summit event.

Nigerian banker and philanthropist Tony Elumelu was among those participating at the business forum. The Wall Street Journal published his summit-related op-ed in advance of the week-long conference. During a brief press conference at the summit, he was asked about his entrepreneurship development programs. However, his most animated comment was in response to a question about the media coverage of African development.

“Much of the coverage of Africa is so negative and imbalanced,” he said. “This discourages many from investing. We have to do a better job of telling and sharing our story.”

August 18, 2014

There's a 'Ferguson' Near You
By Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Look around you. The absence of noise isn't the presence of justice. Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old African American male in suburban Ferguson, Missouri, who had just graduated from high school and planned to start college, has joined a long line of blacks, especially black males, who have recently been gunned down, wrestled down and killed by white men and/or white police officers who claim "reasonable fear" or "self-defense" as their defense. However, Chicago has experienced a rash of young blacks in gangs killing each other over "territory" or in "retaliation," so it's not just whites killing young black males.

A St. Louis Post-Dispatch photo shows Brown's stepfather, Louis Head, holding a sign reading: "Ferguson police just executed my unarmed son!!!" Police report that Brown shoved the officer into his car, tried to take his gun and a shot was fired. Obviously, there are conflicting reports so it's premature to come to conclusions, but a full federal investigation into what happened is essential. I understand the community's anger, and protests are legitimate and in order, but Michael Brown's family said things should not be made worse with looting and vandalism. That will only cloud the real issues, will not bring Michael Brown back and will not facilitate justice.

How could this happen in suburban Ferguson, Missouri? Many African-Americans who grew up in St. Louis, got a good education, secured good jobs at McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) or elsewhere, and are better off economically, moved into various suburban communities in North St. Louis County — Normandy, Florissant, Bellefontaine Neighbors, Jennings, Berkeley (home of Cedric the Entertainer), Dellwood and elsewhere.

Ferguson is a suburban community of about 21,000 that has changed from a majority white to a 70 percent African-American community. Congressman Lacy Clay represents it. I know some of the families there, including two white families.

This is a hard working, church going and middle-to-working class community with families struggling economically to keep their heads above water. There is also a smaller but growing poor community in Ferguson. It reflects what's happening in America generally. When journalists and politicians speak of a dwindling middle class that's under economic assault and a poor community that's getting bigger, they're talking about Ferguson. Independent of the racial demographics and dynamics of Ferguson, Missouri, there's a "Ferguson" near you.

Since President Lyndon Johnson, there has been no significant urban, suburban, small town or rural policy to rebuild America. Thus we should not be surprised that urban and rural communities, and all points in between, have significantly deteriorated during the past 46 years of neglect. Republicans are the party of "no" and Democrats are the party of "don't know" because it hasn't fought for bold ideas, policies or plans to turn us in a new direction. Policies of community development are being replaced with policies of community containment. The absence of a domestic Marshall Plan is being replaced with martial law.

Here's America today: high unemployment and low graduation rates result in guns and drugs in and jobs out; hospitals and public schools closing; gym, art, music and trade skills taken out of our public schools; inadequate investments being made in our infrastructure with roads crumbling, bridges falling down and an outdated public transportation system; a failure to address climate change; denial of capital investment for entrepreneurs; abandoned homes and vacant lots; a lack of youth recreational opportunities; frivolous entertainment, texting and Twitter replacing serious news reporting, reading, writing and arithmetic; a cutback in funding and a denial of equal opportunity in public jobs such as for teachers, policemen and firemen; all of which leads to hopelessness, despair and cynicism.

Many are observing Ferguson and witnessing the anger, demonstrations, looting and vandalism and calling for quiet. But quiet isn't enough. The absence of noise isn't the presence of justice — and we must demand justice in Ferguson and the other "Fergusons" around America.

Too many Americans have adjusted to injustice and inequality. But injustice and inequality anywhere is a threat to justice and equality everywhere. To allow injustice and inequality invites a Ferguson to your community. We must stand together, black, white, brown, red, and yellow and fight for justice and equality for all. It's the only way to avoid more Fergusons.

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. is the founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.

August 17, 2014

Black Network Television Files Multi-million Dollar Suit Against Greensboro, N.C. 

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Target Market News

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Prominent trial attorney Willie Gary announced that he has filed a lawsuit lawsuit against the City of Greensboro, N.C. on behalf of Black Network Television and its owners, Michael and Ramona Woods (pictured). The Woods are suing the City of Greensboro for discrimination and losses related to an economic development loan from the City that was approved on June 18, 2013, and then reneged on one month later by a City Council vote of 6 to 3. 

"The City of Greensboro's discriminatory acts crushed our client's dream," said Gary. "Michael and Ramona Woods discussed with various city officials what a successful minority owned Greensboro-based television network would mean to the community in terms of job creation, skills and training and economic development. As a result, the Woods put full trust and confidence in the City's promise to grant the economic development loan, only to be misled, misguided, deceived and discriminated against," continued Gary.  "It isn't right and we will not stand for it!"

The lawsuit outlines the claim for damages caused by the denial of the promised funds. The loan was slated for network operations, including production of a new national comedy series titled, "Whatcha Cookin'?"

In 2011, Michael and Ramona launched Black Network Television, the first African American-owned television station in the state of North Carolina. BNT is a regional television network that focuses on being the voice of the community. It serves 28 counties including Guilford, Forsyth, Alamance, Randolph, and Caswell. Our viewership spans over 4.2 million viewers that reach as far north as Martinsville, VA, as far south as Laurinburg, as far west as Charlotte, NC, and as far east at Raleigh, NC.