August 3, 2014

First Lady Michelle Obama: 'The Blood of Africa Runs Through My Veins'
She Shares World Vision for Girls and Women at African Summit

By Zenitha Prince

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

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Michelle Obama engaged in some “real talk” on the issue of female education at the Summit of the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders July 30. “As an African American woman, this conversation is deeply personal to me,” Obama said. Citing her ancestry and her  husband, President Barack Obama’s close ties to Kenya, where his father and other family are from, the first lady added, “The roots of my family tree are in Africa . . . . The blood of Africa runs through my veins, and I care deeply about Africa’s future.”

Obama referenced some “heartbreaking” statistics on the issue of girls’ education: 62 million girls worldwide are not in school, including nearly 30 million girls in Sub-Saharan Africa. And even for those girls who get the chance to attend school, they do so at their peril. This was made clear recently in Pakistan, where Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen, and in Nigeria where more than 300 girls were kidnapped from their school dormitory by Islamist terrorists. In fact, according to a 2014 report from the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack, the desire to block girls from being educated is one of the leading reasons behind attacks on schools worldwide.

Obama said most of the solutions to this undermining of girls’ education have focused on resources – more schools, teachers, better infrastructure, etc. – but a key component has been overlooked. “I could give a perfectly fine speech today about increasing investments in girls’ education around the world,” the first lady said. “But I said I wanted to be honest. And if I do that, we all know that the problem here isn’t only about resources, it’s also about attitudes and beliefs. It’s about whether fathers and mothers think their daughters are as worthy of an education as their sons. It’s about whether societies cling to outdated laws and traditions that oppress and exclude women, or whether they view women as full citizens entitled to fundamental rights.”

Michelle ObamaFirst lady Michelle Obama speaks to participants of the Presidential Summit for the Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders in Washington, Wednesday, July 30, 2014.

Obama urged the young African leaders to advocate on behalf of women and to challenge practices such as female genital mutilation, forced child marriages, human trafficking, rape and domestic violence. “While I have great respect for cultural differences, I think we can all agree that [these] practices . . . are not legitimate cultural practices, they are serious human rights violations and have no place in any country on this Earth,” she said, eliciting applause. “These practices have no place in our shared future, because we all know that our future lies in our people – in their talent, their ambition, their drive. And no country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half of its citizens.”

The Obama administration last month launched an initiative, Let Girls Learn; led by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), that committed $230 million for new programs to support education around the world. Several of Hollywood’s biggest actors, singers and athletes also got behind the project, appearing in an online PSA that offers examples of how girls’ education benefits society. “A threat to girls’ education anywhere is a threat to progress everywhere,” “Modern Family” star Julie Bowen said in the two-minute video.

Obama also used her life as an example of the things that are possible when women are treated as equals and supported by the males in society. “See, what I want you all to understand is that I am who I am today because of the people in my family – particularly the men in my family – who valued me and invested in me from the day I was born,” she said.

“My ancestors came here in chains. My parents and grandparents knew the sting of segregation and discrimination. Yet I attended some of the best universities in this country. I had career opportunities beyond my wildest dreams. And today, I live in the White House, a building . . . that was constructed by slaves,” Obama later added. “Today, I watch my daughters – two beautiful African-American girls – walking our dogs in the shadow of the Oval Office. And today, I have the privilege of serving and representing the United States of America across the globe.

“So my story and the story of my country is the story of the impossible getting done. And I know that can be your story and that can be Africa’s story too.”

August 3, 2014

With Over 1,000 Infected, Can the Ebola Virus Be Stopped?

D. Sawyer

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Global Information Network

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – As an Ebola epidemic sweeps relentlessly across West African borders, with the death toll topping 600, some are now asking if the virus can be stopped.

The Ebola outbreak started in Guinea and spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone. It has been called the deadliest in recorded history, with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and the World Health Organization declaring the situation out of control.

The skyrocketing infection rate reflects an ominous reality –under-funded public health systems, too few clinics for too many people, underpaid health professionals, and citizens distrustful of the prescriptions of unfamiliar foreign health aides. Traditional healers are viewed more favorably than unfamiliar health workers in many cases. This week, the Red Cross working in Guinea suspended some operations in the country's southeast after staff working on Ebola received threats.

"Locals wielding knives surrounded a marked Red Cross vehicle," said one Red Cross official, asking not to be named. An MSF center elsewhere in Guinea was attacked by youths saying the charity brought Ebola into their country.

The current outbreak has exposed the inadequacy of the region's health care systems.

In a World Bank survey, Guinea had one of the lowest numbers of hospital beds per person – with just 0.3 beds per 1,000 people. Sierra Leone, which offers free care to pregnant women, has three doctors per 100,000 people. Liberia has only 51 doctors, according to the World Health Organization.

Combined with that is a high turnover at public health units. Nurses in Sierra Leone earn roughly $1.80 a day – meaning that new, untrained staff are commonly at the frontline of the health care system. Meanwhile, U.S. health officials at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) tried to dismiss fears that the virus would reach American shores.

"Ebola virus disease poses little risk to the U.S. general population at this time,” advised a CDC “level 2” alert, which cautions people in the affected region to avoid contact with anyone who seems infected. “However, U.S. healthcare workers are advised to be alert for signs and symptoms of Ebola virus disease in patients who have a recent (within 21 days) travel history to countries where the outbreak is occurring," it reads.

“If we ever needed a reminder that we all live in a connected world, this horrible Ebola outbreak is it,” said Stephan Monroe of CDC’s National Center for Emerging & Zoonotic Infectious Diseases

That means the U.S. and other countries have a stake in investing in developing countries, whose needs may seem to be far from U.S. domestic priorities.

Back in the U.S., the American wife of Patrick Sawyer, was grieving the unexpected death of her husband, a U.S. citizen of Liberian ancestry, who had been traveling to Lagos, Nigeria, from a Liberia stopover when symptoms of the disease emerged. Decontee Sawyer, of Coon Rapids, Minnesota, said her husband had planned to return next month for the birthdays of his daughters.

The grieving widow said she hoped her husband's death would be a wake-up call about the global threat of the virus. “Patrick could've easily come home with Ebola," she told Minnesota’s KSTP-TV.

"It's close, it's at our front door. It knocked down my front door." 

August 3, 2014

Boko Haram in Daring Kidnap as Obama Meets With African Youth

Participants raise their hands as President Barack Obama asks for questions during a town hall-style meeting with young African leaders in the East Room of the White House. PHOTO: White House

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Global Information Network

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Militants appear to be gaining the upper hand in West Africa’s spreading ethnic/religious fighting. Last week, insurgents with Nigeria’s Boko Haram launched a cross-border attack on Kolofata, a town in neighboring Cameroon, kidnapping the wife of Amadou Ali, the vice-prime minister, and killing at least three people. It was their third incursion into Cameroon.

A local religious leader, or lamido, named Seini Boukar Lamine, who is also the town's mayor, was kidnapped in a separate attack on his home.

Cameroon, Nigeria’s neighbor to the west, had until recently been a refuge from the deadly violence aimed at students, market goers, and security forces. But the spread of Boko Haram hideouts in the French-speaking country prompted Cameroon to send troops against the militants.

Boko Haram has not yet revealed where the nearly 300 high school girls have been hidden since being kidnapped well over a month ago.

"The situation is very critical here now, and as I am talking to you the Boko Haram elements are still in Kolofata town in a clash with our soldiers," said Col. Felix Nji Formekong from the regional headquarters in Maroua.

At the same time, some 22 Boko Haram militants, charged with illegal possession of firearms and plotting a regional insurrection, were sentenced in a Maroua court to 10 to 20 years in prison. Efforts to exchange detainees for kidnap victims have met with little success.

Reports of heavily-armed insurgents lead to speculation that an Algerian airline that crashed July 24 in Mali killing all 116 aboard was taken down by rockets, however an investigation failed to find hard evidence and bad weather is believed to be the cause.

While West Africa appears to be drowning in a widening insurgent war, diplomacy was being rewarded this week in Washington with the visit of 500 exceptional young African leaders who attended a six-week intensive leadership training in the U.S., capped by a meeting with President Barack Obama at a Young African Leaders Initiative Summit – to be renamed the Mandela Washington Fellowship. The program will double in size to 1,000 participants, Obama said, starting in the summer of 2015.

Muluh Hilda Bih of Cameroon was one of the young leaders at the summit. A journalist with eight years of experience in radio and TV, she plans to work with the disabled in workshops and seminars and continue to use mass media to effect change in Cameroon. She also mentors young girls through the ESTHER Project, an initiative she founded, by speaking at schools, churches and conferences throughout Cameroon.

The young leaders’ Summit preceded the inaugural U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, the largest gathering any U.S. president has held with African heads of state and government. 

This is the 105th anniversary of the NAACP. The conference was a constant reminder of the legacy of those who cut a long path in the fight for equality-not just racial equality-in America. But last year, this year and next also mark important 50-year anniversaries of the civil rights movement. Last year was the March for Jobs and Justice, this year was the Civil Rights Act and next year is the Voting Rights Act. But we should not forget that we also are marking the anniversaries of human sacrifice to justice.

Last year, it was the assassination of Medgar Evers and four young girls, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, who were murdered when the 16th Street Baptist church was bombed in Birmingham, Ala., during church services. This year, it was James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, murdered for registering African American voters in Philadelphia, Miss. Next year, it will be to remember the campaign to register voters in Alabama, the Bloody Sunday attack on marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge and Viola Liuzzo, who was murdered driving marchers for the march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.

It is important to note these events occurred when the NAACP was already more than 40 years in the struggle for justice. A solid reminder that this is a long struggle, and it is marked with the blood and sacrifice of many.

The labor luncheon at the NAACP convention is to rededicate the cooperation of two movements with one goal. The labor movement has a long history of struggle as well, fighting for equality and human dignity. Dignity for many begins with dignity at work.

I had a chance to hear from the Rev. William J. Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP and a leader of the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina. He coined a new phrase to capture the attack on democracy in North Carolina-"Grand Theft Democracy." Well, it is a grand theft of democracy when the laws being proposed in North Carolina by its reactionary governor and state legislature are considered in full. The hijacking of democracy is not lost on North Carolina voters. Only 18 percent approve of the job the legislators are doing. And, because many voters think Gov. Pat McCory is on the side of the legislators, his approval rating of 39 percent sits far below his 45 percent disapproval rating.

Our nation is engaged in a huge experiment, pitting low-wage states like North Carolina against states that want to make work pay. In 2012, 67.5 percent of working age (older than 15) poor people in North Carolina held a job during the year, including 8% who worked full-time year round.

There are now 23 states with minimum wages higher than the federal minimum wage. So far, this year, in the 13 states that raised their minimum wages on Jan. 1, job growth has been faster than in the states that did not raise their minimum wage.

This is where the agenda of Rev. Barber's civil rights meets labor rights. Only 4.8% of North Carolina's workforce is represented by a union. So there is no voice for workers on the plant floor or in the offices of North Carolina. The one place they can have a voice is in the state legislature, to campaign for decent wages.

Under Ronald Reagan, voting laws were updated in 1984 to make it easier for people with disabilities and older Americans to vote. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993-the Motor Voter Act-insured greater access to voter registration through state agencies interfacing with the public. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 aimed to clean up dysfunctional voting processes exposed by the "hanging chads" of Florida's paper ballots in 2000. And President George W. Bush signed the reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act after it passed the Senate 98-0.

So, after the continued progress on voting rights that was launched 50 years ago, you have to wonder why politicians would now take great efforts to make it more difficult to vote? Reversing democratic progress to silence the 99 percent only helps 1 percent of Americans. So, we must fight.