NAACP Presenting Minority Concerns to UN This Week by Zenitha Prince

March 10, 2014

NAACP Presenting Minority Concerns to UN This Week

By Zenitha Prince

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

Hilary Shelton, Washington Bureau Chief, NAACP

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - An NAACP delegation will take the concerns of minority communities in the United States to the UN Human Rights Council’s review of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, scheduled to take place in Geneva, Switzerland from March 9 to 15.

The International Covenant is a treaty that outlines broad and fundamental civil and political rights that should be available to all people, including the right to self-determination, the right to participate in the electoral process, the right to due process and a fair trial, the right to freedom of speech and religion, and the right to be free from slavery and torture, among others.

The covenant was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on Dec. 16, 1966. The U.S. signed onto the covenant on Oct. 5, 1977, and Congress ratified it in June 1992.

“As you can imagine, an oversight audit of a treaty signed by the United States along these lines is particularly important and crucial to the mission, goal and challenges of the NAACP,” said Hilary Shelton, the NAACP’s senior vice president for Policy & Advocacy and director of the Washington Bureau. “Going to the United Nations and participating in this process is a way for us, at the NAACP, to see to it that as the UN is evaluating the effectiveness of what the United States has been able to do to meet these goals and its promises…that voices from our communities are also heard.”

One of the key issues the organization plans to address is the abrogation of voting rights in the United States.

“We intend to raise our continued concern with voter suppression laws that are taking place at state and local levels across the United States,” said Jokata Eaddy, NAACP senior director for voting rights. “We will also raise the issue of the denial of voting rights to District of Columbia residents, and the continued practice of felony disenfranchisement.”

Last September, the NAACP, in partnership with the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Florida, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the Hip Hop Caucus, co-authored a shadow report on felony disenfranchisement, or the removal of voting rights due to previous criminal convictions. That report was submitted to the UN Human Rights Committee ahead of the review.

According to that report, 7.7 percent of Black adults, or one in 13 people, are disenfranchised. In Florida, Kentucky and Virginia, that number rises to one of every five people. Nationwide, a total of 2.2 million African Americans cannot cast a vote because of involvement in the criminal justice system, 40 percent of whom have concluded their sentences.

“Denying citizens the right to vote is counterproductive to any goal of successful re-entry and of lowering recidivism rates,” said Jessica Chiappone, vice president of the Florida Rights Restoration and an ex-felon who was unable to take the Florida Bar exam because of her conviction on conspiracy to possess cocaine charges 15 years ago. “People like me are already punished once through the criminal justice system and once we serve our time we shouldn’t be further punished for the rest of our lives.”

The delegation will press the UN to recommend that voting rights be automatically restored to felons upon their release from prison, that a study be conducted on the disproportionate impact of felony disenfranchisement on minority populations and that defendants be advised of the voting rights implications of their cases and that ex-offenders be advised of the steps to restore their voting rights upon release from prison.

The NAACP also co-authored another shadow report advocating the repeal of “Stand Your Ground” laws.

“These laws make it easier for people to murder other human beings without facing legal consequences,” the report stated. “They essentially eviscerate any deterrent to gun related homicides, and provide a road map to getting out of jail with blanket immunity.”

The 30 shadow reports submitted to the UN council address a range of issues, including living wage, stop-and-frisk policies, food insecurity, violence against women, human trafficking, the death penalty and more.

Solving Inequality by William Spriggs

March 10, 2014

Solving Inequality

By William Spriggs

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The job numbers came out for February last week. The preliminary numbers show that private-sector employment grew by 162,000, meaning it is very likely that in March, private-sector employment will top its previous peak of 115.9 million in January 2008. That is the good news. The bad news is we will still be down 666,000 jobs from the employment peak in January 2008. While private-sector jobs will recover in March, public-sector jobs will not.

This is a large part of the reason that, while most mainstream voices now talk about inequality, it will be difficult to solve. There is a common view that: "Only businesses create jobs." But, that mantra is at the core of the neo-liberal policies that drive inequality and brought about the Great Recession. It is true that businesses create jobs. It is also true the public sector creates jobs.

Jobs are a derived demand. That is, most people do not go around hiring airline pilots or chefs. But when you fly by buying an airplane ticket, you and your fellow passengers are creating a demand for the airline to hire a pilot. When you go to a restaurant to eat a meal, you and your fellow diners are creating a demand for the restaurant to hire a chef. When someone says "only businesses create jobs" they are declaring that only individual demands for private goods are legitimate demands. And that our policies must be tilted so "businesses" can respond to those individual private demands.

That view has many problems. First, it removes the legitimacy of people speaking with a democratic voice to demand something. If we demand high-quality public schools with low classroom size, that creates a demand we expect our government to respond to by hiring highly skilled teachers in enough numbers to give our children small classes. If we demand an efficient way to get to work, we expect our government to respond by building mass public transportation networks and hiring the construction firms and transportation workers to make that function. These are examples of legitimate demands that "create jobs."

Second, if only individual demand for a private good is legitimate, then the high level of inequality means that the sum of our society will be determined by only a few people. Because income is unequal, so is consumption. The marketplace responds to dollar votes, not people votes. Since the 7.4 percent of households earning more than $150,000 a year account for 18.4 percent of all consumption expenditures in the United States, they have 2.5 times more votes than their share of the number of households on what will be produced based on individual demands.

Those households account for 34.6 percent of all private education dollars spent in the United States. That means they get 4.7 votes on shaping education decisions like what colleges should provide. The bottom 60 percent of households, by income, has to make do on 38 percent of the goods and services that private households buy. That means the bottom 60 percent by household count each get two-thirds of one vote on what our society will produce.

Third, is the often repeated fallacy that businesses alone create jobs, because government needs tax revenues to provide services. So, government does not create jobs unless the private sector creates the income to tax. But, a restaurant or airline does not create revenue. Workers have to have incomes to demand products to create the revenues for restaurants and airlines.

There is a circular flow of money and economic activity between government, business and the household sector. The business sector needs the government to enforce contracts, provide the infrastructure ofroads and port facilities to move their goods and a literate workforce. The business sector also needs well-paid workers in the household sector to afford the goods and services the business sector sells and still have savings to provide the investment funds for business to expand. So, the business sector is not an island.

Public demand must not be squelched by the plutocracy, because the governmentreacts to one person, one vote and is democratic. The plutocracy wants the economy run by their votes. The bottom 60 percent of households need more than 38 percent of the economy to thrive. That can't happen if we don't see that the solution is job creation to get the more than 300,000 public-school teachers, whom our children have lost since the recession began, back to the classroom.

Follow Spriggs on Twitter: @WSpriggs. Contact: Amaya Smith-Tune Acting Director, Media Outreach AFL-CIO 202-637-5142

Black Women's History is Women's History Too By Julianne Malveaux

March 9, 2014

Black Women's History is Women's History Too
By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Since March is Women’s History month, who are the women you are celebrating? Do you know about Elizabeth Keckley? Maggie Lena Walker, Sarann Knight Preddy, Gertrude Pocte Geddes-Willis, Trish Millines Dziko, Addie L Wyatt or Marie-Therese Metoyer? What about Ernesta Procope, Dr. Sadie Alexander, Or Dr. Phyllis Wallace? What about Bettiann Gardner, Lillian Lambert, or Emma Chappell? What about Ellen Holly, Mary Alice, or Edmonia Lewis? If we knew anything about these women, it might cause all of us, African-American men and women, to walk a bit more lightly, hold our heads a bit higher, and revel in the accomplishments of our foremothers and fathers.

Ancestors.

History belongs to she who holds the pen, she who will speak up, speak out and tell the whole story. If the names of the sisters above aren’t as well known as others, like Harriet Tubman, Sojourner TRUTH, and Mary McLeod Bethune, it is because no one has chosen to tell those stories. There are a thousands of unsung heroines for every one we lift up and know, women who have made phenomenal contributions to the arts, literature, money, finance, and economic development. Why write this now? African-American history month is usually about notable Black men; women’s history month (March) is about notable and mostly White women. Then, as Gloria T Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith wrote in All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men Some of Us Are Brave.

What difference would it make to our daughters and nieces if they knew about Septima Clark or Claudette Colvin? Had they read Lucille Clifton’s poetry, would they find it easier to breathe life into their words? It pains me to watch Black Women’s History so swallowed that we are almost invisible. The most benign interpretation of this phenomenon is that those who lift history up are too myopic to consider African-American women. Is there is a sinister interpretation? Is it that both racism and patriarchy combine to swallow Black women’s history?

International Women’s Day is March 8. Annually, the United Nations sets a theme for the commemoration. This year, ‘Equality for Women is Progress for All’ is the theme. According to the United Nations, Countries with more gender equality have better economic growth. Companies with more women leaders perform better. Peace agreements that include women are more durable. Parliaments with more women enact more legislation on key social issues such as health, education, anti-discrimination and child support. The evidence is clear: equality for women “means progress for all."

We can’t make progress if we bury our history. We can’t put Melody Hobson in context if we don’t understand Maggie Lena Walker. WE can’t celebrate women’s history unless we celebrate black women’s history, because black women’s history is women’s history too, and because both the African-American community and the world community cannot progress if any segment of that community is sidelined.

THE place African-American women hold in our history celebrations is quite similar to the space we occupy in contemporary life. We can get tens of thousands or more folks to turn out (as they should) in response to the massacres of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, but the killing of unarmed Renisha McBride has caused much less of an outcry’s swallowed. Theodore Wafer, the White man (yes, race matters) who shot young Renisha, will be tried for second-degree murder in June. Will we remember this effrontery in the same way that we remember our black history heroines? Will we be their chanting and demanding justice as we have for Trayvon and Jordan?

The sidelining of Black women is one of the reasons that the late C. Delores Tucker worked tirelessly for more than a decade to ensure that a bust of Sojourner Truth be placed in our nation’s Capitol building. And why not? Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are there. But it took a fight and a victory C. Delores, a lifelong leader and a founder of the National Congress of Black Women, did not live to see. Who was Hon. C. Delores Tucker? That’s another Black women’s history moment that will be swallowed unless we lift it up. C. Delores is an example of utter tenacity, and a passionate belief in recognition of Black women. If we celebrate women’s history month - we must celebrate Black women.

If you know nothing about the women I’ve mentioned, Google them, or check my website, www.juliannemalveaux.com for more information on them.

Julianne Malveaux is an economist, author and speaker based in Washington, DC

A Little Common Sense for the Ukraine By Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

March 9, 2014

A Little Common Sense for the Ukraine
By Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

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(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Suddenly the crisis in Ukraine engulfs the US. As Russian troops move into Crimea, the White House goes into crisis management.

Secretary of State Kerry takes off to the Ukrainian capital. Our media is barraged with 24/7 instant analyses. Republican Senators and retired generals call for moving American troops to the Polish-Russian border, placing missiles into the Czech Republic, dispatching a fleet to the black sea.

Threats are issued and rhetoric escalates. The Russian dispatch of armed forces to occupy Crimea is a direct and clear violation of basic international law. The moral force of America’s objection is weakened since we trampled international law ourselves in our unprovoked invasion of Iraq, but that does not justify the Russian invasion.

The international community should speak clearly to condemn the invasion and to demand that the Putin regime remove Russian troops from the Crimea. At the same time, the administration, increasingly bellicose Republican Senators and the legions of macho strategists should take a good look at reality.

Crimea is ethnically Russian speaking, and historically part of Russia itself. The Ukraine only became independent 22 years ago when the Soviet Union broke apart. It borders on Russia, and is intertwined economically, politically, and culturally with Russia.

Crimea houses the Russian fleet on the Black Sea. Russia considers the Ukraine vital to its security, and is willing to pay a high price to keep it secure. The Ukraine itself is divided, with the Western part looking towards Europe and the Eastern and Southern parts looking to Russia. The country is bankrupt and in a state of virtual collapse.

The deposed government of Viktor Yanukovich was democratically elected. However unpopular or corrupt that government was, the demonstrators that ousted him overturned a democratically elected government. The current provisional government has neither popular mandate nor legal legitimacy.

The demonstrations, clearly encouraged by the US and the EU, began when Yanukovich abruptly turned away from negotiations to join the European Union. When Russian President Putin offered a tripartite arrangement, the EU insisted that the Ukraine choose between Russia and Europe. Putin put up $15 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine.

The Europeans didn’t come close to matching that, and were insisting on an austerity regime that will wreck further misery on the country. That’s when Yanukovich pulled out of the negotiations.

Neither the US nor the EU is going to offer Ukraine the kind of resources that Putin has put on the table. The Republicans calling for massive aid will have a hard time rounding up a majority of their own members in Congress to vote for it. Nor should they.

The US should not pretend to be the policeman of the world. We cannot afford to police every region or bail out every bankrupt country bordering a powerful neighbor. Instead of escalating tensions and issuing threats, the US and its European allies should be engaged in trying to avoid war or the breakup the Ukraine.

We should condemn the Russian violation of international law, and seek to organize international pressure on the Russians to get their troops out. At the same time, we should engage Putin, and seek to create the conditions for an easing of tensions: new democratic elections in the Ukraine, a revival of the Putin offer for a tripartite economic arrangement with Ukraine, the EU and Russia, and commitment not to integrate Ukraine into NATO or EU military planning in exchange for Russia reaffirming the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

Dispatching troops, threatening economic sanctions, deploying missiles all feels muscular. But the US and our allies should be careful not to threaten nor promise more than we are prepared to do.

A Mexican adage bemoans “Poor Mexico, so close to the US and so far from God.” That applies even more to the Ukrainians, far too close to Russia and too far from God. Neither this country nor the EU has the will, the resources or the desire to alter that reality.

And before we end up in a war we don’t want or a new Cold War we don’t need, we ought to recognize that fact. This column replaces an earlier version which was the draft of another writer published by mistake due to administrative error.

Jesse Jackson Sr. is President/CEO of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition

America’s Vladimir Putins By A. Peter Bailey

March 9, 2014

Reality Check

America’s Vladimir Putins
By A. Peter Bailey

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - When reading about or watching those trash-talking and belligerent politicians, television talk show “warriors” practically foaming at the mouth about Vladimir Putin, Russia and Ukraine, I wish I had an opportunity to ask them one simple question: “What would be your reaction if the people of Canada democratically elected into its presidency a man whose declared goal is to establish closer military and economic relations with Russia?”

The people of Canada would soon find out that they aren’t as independent as so many of hem believe. The John McCains, Bill Krtistols, Lindsey Grahams, Rush Limbaughs, Ted Cruzes and Sean Hannitys in this country would immediately demand that the U.S. proceed to get rid of that democratically-elected Canadian leader by any means necessary. They would talk about the desirability of assassination; they would overtly an covertly support “spontaneous” street protests by Canadians who opposed the leader’s plans; they would use every trick imaginable to undermine Canada’s elected government. And, if all those antics failed to get the job done, they would create an incident designed to justify military intervention.

In other words, there is absolutely no way that the U.S. operatives will allow an “independent” country on their border to form any kind of military or economic alliance with Russia. If the Canadians even attempted to do so, they would be thoroughly crushed by the U.S.equivalents of Vladimir Putin.

A. Peter Bailey, whose most recent book is Witnessing Brother Malcolm X: The Master Teacher, can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..