Nov. 17, 2013

Tale of two cities: Chicago, New York Struggle for Economic Justice
By Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Bill De Blasio is garnering national attention for his landslide election in the New York City Mayor’s race. De Blasio campaigned on a populist agenda, highlighting the stark contrast between the poor and the mega-rich in New York’s “tale of two cities.”

De Blasio’s analysis is sadly true for cities across the country, which too often feature two worlds, one of privilege and wealth, another of poverty and despair. In Chicago, for example, the contrasts are stark between the affluent North Side and the impoverished south and southwest.

On the Near North Side, the average income is over $87,000 a year; in West Englewood, it is $10,599. Almost half (44.4 percent) of the households in Englewood are below the poverty line; in the North Center neighborhood, 7.4 percent are poor.

Unemployment is a staggering 35.9 percent in West Englewood, compared with 4.7 percent in Lincoln Park in the north, or 4.8 percent in the Loop, the central business district. In poor neighborhoods, poor people are deprived of basic services. There’s no community bank in Englewood or West Englewood.

There are no hospitals in West Englewood and only one in Englewood. The professional standard for an ambulance run is 20 minutes or less in Chicago, but 43 percent of trauma-related hospital runs in Englewood take longer than that. Chicago closed 50 public schools this year, the largest single wave of school closings in U.S. history.

The great bulk of these were schools in the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods. Not surprisingly, poverty, unemployment and poor services bring misery. Since 2008, nearly one in five homes in Englewood (18.2 percent) have suffered foreclosure; only 1.6 percent were foreclosed in affluent Lincoln Park. There are more than 1,000 vacant city-managed lots in West Englewood, but only six in affluent Lake View.

There have been at least 50 shooting victims this year in Englewood and at least 47 in West Englewood, but not a single shooting victim in Lincoln Park or Lincoln Square, and three in the Loop (last updated July 2, 2013). The rich and the poor live in the same city but in two different worlds.

Bill De Blasio swept to victory in New York City by decrying these disparities and promising to do something about them. He vowed to lift taxes on the very wealthy and use the money to fund pre-kindergarten for every child, a proven method to prepare kids to learn.

He has promised to require that developers of high-end properties contribute to build affordable housing. He’s vowed to end the racially biased stop-and-frisk policies that were trampling the rights of young people of color. In cities across the nation, poor neighborhoods struggle with school and hospital closings, dangerous streets, high unemployment and crushed dreams.

For years, politicians have promised to get tough with mandatory sentences, three strikes and you’re out, stop and frisk. But these are reactions, not remedies. They treat the symptoms, not the underlying conditions. De Blasio’s victory suggests the possibility of a new, more promising direction. Peace requires some sense of justice. And justice requires opportunity. The cities that refuse to learn that may well end up envying those that act on it. 

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

Nov. 17, 2013

Blackonomics
The Mis-Education of Black People
By James Clingman

To borrow from the title of Carter G. Woodson’s famous book, it is shameful and quite sad to hear and read some of the things, in reference to Black people, that are purported to be facts. 

In many cases we are our own worst enemies because we promulgate much of the nonsense that takes hold in our neighborhoods, and we suffer tremendously for doing so.  As the saying goes, we are entitled to our own opinions but not to our own facts, and our penchant for being “experts” in everything not only makes us look silly and ill-informed, in many cases it causes us to play right into the negative self-fulfilling prophecy of subordination and subjugation.  That’s a sad state of affairs, especially in light of the “fact” that Dr. Woodson did his best to warn us about the dangers of being mis-educated.

Take economic empowerment, for instance; we hear so much information about what we need to do to achievement it, what we need to have to obtain it, and how we can overcome our third-class economic position in this nation.  Admittedly, there are quite a few Black people in this country that have achieved very high levels of individual economic empowerment, and they should be commended.  However, our collective economic position is in great jeopardy, one of the main reasons for which is mis-information and mis-education.

I encourage folks who read my column, watch my television show, and hear me on radio programs, to always check out what I say.  Do your own research and study to determine if what I assert to be “facts” is true.  That’s really the only way we can be truly informed; additionally, checking for ourselves many times leads to a stronger collective position and a more acceptable economic strategy—long term and short term.

Take a look at political empowerment and ask yourself why we lack real power in the halls of Congress, on the Supreme Court, and yes, in the White House.  Much of our condition in that arena can be attributed to the messages and sound-bites we get every day from political pundits many of whom have no real interest in educating Black people; they simply adopt an agenda that someone has given them and regurgitate it to us, thus, further mis-educating and mis-leading our people.  And by the way, they get paid very handsomely to play that role.

Every election cycle Black people are bombarded with all the clichés about why we should vote, how our vote is very powerful, and how others died for the right to vote. All of that is well and good, but how can a people that rallies, registers, and makes such a big deal about voting be so ill-informed?  How can we always be at the end of line when the perks are handed out, if we are the ones who put the most energy in the political process?   Are we that naïve?  Or, are we just mis-educated and uniformed?

Quite frankly, I don’t have all the solutions to our dilemma (I wish I did), but I do know a couple of things:  We must change our behavior toward ourselves and others; and we must select our  “leaders” very carefully.  Otherwise, we will surely continue to find ourselves at the bottom of the economic and political ladders.

In his response to the “Negro question,”  Frederick Douglass said, “Everybody has asked the question, ‘What shall we do with the Negro?’  I have had but one answer from the beginning.  Do nothing with us!  Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us.  Do nothing with us!...Give (the Negro) a chance to make his own way.  He will work as readily for himself as (for) the white man.”

Obviously, Douglass had great confidence in his people, but then again he was a true leader of our people, not some temporary puppet who took his orders from folks who wanted to keep us in our place.  He promoted independence and self-reliance and encouraged us, through his newspaper, the North Star, to stand up and take care of ourselves.  He and many others did not settle for rumors, gossip, and innuendo; they relied on facts, work, and sacrifice.

If we, Black people, would muster the same level of interest and energy in economic empowerment as we have for politics, we would be successful.  We would not fall prey to the charlatans and the talking heads. And we would be able to fulfill what Douglass said.  Unfortunately, today, if we were left alone and the establishment did “nothing with us,” many of us would be completely lost.

Nov. 11, 2013

Black Vote Wins Governorship for Former DNC Chair
By Jeremy M. Lazarus

Gov.-Elect Terry McAuliffe, former chair of the Democratic National Committee

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Richmond Free Press

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Black voters appear to have made the difference in businessman Terry McAuliffe’s narrow victory last week in the hotly contested Virginia governor’s race.

McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate who campaigned on promises to create jobs, expand Medicaid and health care and reduce partisan bickering, is estimated to have won at least 370,000 votes from Black Virginians or nearly 90 percent of the votes they cast in Tuesday’s election. That critical vote was six times his victory margin of 55,743 votes over Tea Party Republican Ken Cuccinelli and Libertarian Robert Sarvis.

Unofficial results show McAuliffe received 1,067,108 votes, or 48 percent, to 1,011,365 or, 45 percent, for Cuccinelli, the current attorney general. Sarvis was a distant third with 145,768 votes, or 6.5 percent, in the race to become Virginia’s 72^nd governor in January. McAuliffe needed a strong Black turnout to win just like other Democrats in recent decades. One of the big questions before the election was whether the he had done enough to court the most loyal segment of the Democratic base.

Aided by last-minute stumping from President Obama and former President Bill Clinton, McAuliffe seems to have done so in besting his most significant rival, Cuccinelli, to win the right to succeed current Republican Gov. Bob

McDonnell. Exit polls indicate the Black turnout was impressive by the standards of a governor election, fueled in part by Cuccinelli’s adamant opposition to Obamacare or the Affordable Health Care Act that is the president’s signature law to provide health coverage to the uninsured.

Cuccinelli, who was tarnished by a scandal involving Gov. McDonnell, also put off many Black voters with his opposition to abortion, his promises to reduce the size of government and his promotion of tax cuts that many saw as potentially damaging to public school funding.

The polls indicate Black voters represented about 20 percent of the total turnout of 2.2 million people who went to

the polls or about 445,000 of those who cast ballots. That’s a 38 percent jump from 2009 when an estimated 330,00 Black voters — 125,000 fewer — participated when Creigh Deeds was the Democratic nominee.

Richmond is a prime example of the increase in voter numbers. Tuesday, 57,774 residents went to the polls, a 28 percent increase from four years ago when 45,127 city residents voted in the governor’s race. The unofficial results show that McAuliffe received 42,756 of the Richmond votes, or 11,542 more votes than Deeds received.

Democrats also celebrated the victory of Dr. Ralph Northam, a physician and state senator, for lieutenant governor.

Northam won by a 55 to 45 percent margin over extremist Republican E.W. Jackson Sr., a Black Chesapeake minister who condemned gay people and non-Christians, among others, during the campaign and never garnered much Black support even though he was the only Black candidate on the ballot.

Northam’s win means he will become presiding officer of the 40-member state Senate and could aid Democrats to regain control of that body from Republicans. Like outgoing Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, Northam will be able to vote to break ties on legislation and help give the Democrats a majority.