Nov. 11, 2013

Nov. 10, 2013

Stand Up to Bigotry of ‘States’ Rights’
By Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - In 1980, after receiving the nomination of his party, Ronald Reagan kicked off his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., at the Neshoba County Fair. Neshoba County is not someplace you just drop into; you have to want to go there.

It’s a small town remembered largely for being the site of the horrid 1964 murders of three young civil rights volunteers, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney. Reagan went to Mississippi to give a speech that focused on states’ rights and the dangers of big government.

He went to send a message — and it was heard clearly across the South. States are rightly hailed as laboratories of democracy, places that can experiment and try out programs and ideas that, if successful, spread across the country. But from the earliest days of the Republic, states’ rights has always been the doctrine of reaction. It has been invoked to stop national reform and to protect local privilege. States’ rights was invoked by slave owners to protest abolition, even to the point of seceding from the union.

States’ rights was then used to defend segregation from national reform. Later, it was trotted out to oppose integration of schools, as demanded by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education. To this day, it is used to justify state restrictions on voting, often imposed to constrict the right of the minorities and the poor to vote. America has one of the weakest systems of social support in the industrial world.

And the right of states to make their own decisions — on food stamps, on Medicaid, on public schools, on welfare — contributes directly to how bad it is. And now we’re seeing the same doctrine — states’ rights — used to undermine health care reform.

Empowered by the same Supreme Court decision that upheld the Affordable Care Act as constitutional, Republican governors across the country have refused to participate in creating their own health care exchanges. They’ve even turned their backs on billions of federal dollars in Medicaid funding to keep lower income Americans from having access to affordable care.

Their resistance has made an already complicated reform plan even more difficult, even as they call for its repeal. State and local control is inherently attractive. The states have different populations and different conditions. Local governments are more attuned and responsive to local voters and local challenges. State administration can help make federal programs more manageable.

But too often, particularly in the South, local control is less a way to serve people than to lock them out. If health care reform had simply extended Medicare to all at the national level, it would have been a huge program. But it would have been far simpler to get up and running, and far simpler to administer.

The combination of conservatives who invoke states rights to stop or weaken change, and so-called “progressives” who embrace state and public-private partnerships to make programs more “efficient” led to the complexity that’s built into health care reform with its state level “exchanges” and its partnership with private insurance companies.

At the end of the day, real reform will come when the claims of states’ rights are denied, and federal rights are enforced. That was true in school desegregation, in voting rights, in welfare, and with the minimum wage. Presidents Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson all had to assert federal authority to enforce the law against resisting states.

That burden now rests on President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder concerning the provision of affordable health care for all. In this rich nation, every person should have access to comprehensive, affordable and high quality health care. And that won’t get done until the federal government exercises its full weight on the side of the poorest Americans, the “least of these” that most need a hand up.

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

Nov. 4, 2013

NNPA Chairman Blasts NFL for ‘Almost a Slave Mentality’
By Hazel Trice Edney

NNPA Chairman Cloves Campbell

Richmond Free Press Editor/Publisher Ray Boone

Roslyn Brock, chair, NAACP; vice president for advocacy and government relations, Bon Secours Health System, Inc.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The chairman of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a federation of more than 200 Black-owned newspapers, says the Washington Redskins’ team - under fire from a Richmond, Va. publisher - is in sync with the entire National Football League in its apparent oppressive treatment of Black businesses and consumers.

“It’s almost a slave mentality. They put us on the field and we entertain the master but we’re not reaping any benefits from the business side of it,” Campbell says. “It’s not just the Redskins. If you look around the country, the NFL as a whole pretty much neglects Black businesses and the Black community,” said Campbell, publisher of the Arizona Informant Newspaper.

He continued, “Here in Arizona, our Arizona Cardinals does zero with the Black community. Every now and then they might show up for a token Black event. But, I don’t see our African-American newspaper here in Phoenix or in Arizona being supported by the Arizona Cardinals. I believe if you called other newspapers that have [teams] in their markets, I don’t believe they’re doing much for them either. I believe the NFL as a whole takes the Black community for granted although we are their major product on the field.”

Campbell was responding to questions pertaining to a conflict between NNPA member Ray Boone, editor/publisher of the award-winning Richmond Free Press, and the Richmond-based Washington Redskins Training Camp, which is partially owned by Bon Secours Health System.

In a letter to NAACP Chairman Roslyn Brock and CC'd to Campbell, Boone states that the team contracted no business with Black-owned or locally owned businesses at its first Richmond training camp between July 25 and August 16. That includes the failure to advertise in the Black-owned Richmond Free Press while advertising with the White-owned conservative daily, the Richmond Times Dispatch which has a history of pro-segregation leadership. The conflict is steeped in an age-old battle constantly waged by Black newspapers, which are historic targets for advertising discrimination.

While Bon Secours placed paid advertisements for the training camp in the Times Dispatch, the Free Press was sent press releases, Boone said in an interview.

Brock, who has served as NAACP chair since 2010, is vice president for advocacy and government relations for the Bon Secours Health System, Inc., in Marriottsville, Md. Boone believes her corporate position has caused her to compromise her stance for economic justice in the Richmond case.

“Bon Secours, along with Mayor Dwight C. Jones and the Washington team, blatantly denied, contrary to the Mayor’s pledge, black businesses and other local businesses the opportunity to receive vendor contracts inside the training camp,” Boone wrote in a Sept. 27 letter to Brock. “Characteristic of Richmond government and big businesses, this Bon Secours decision disgracefully enhanced Richmond’s shameful reputation as ‘The Capital of Poverty,’ with 25 percent of Richmond’s population suffering in poverty.”

When Brock had not responded to his letter for more than a month, Boone followed up with a Nov. 1 email pointing out, “This raises the unavoidable question of whether Bon Secours is restricting you from living up to your responsibility to honor the NAACP mission?”

He continued, “In the interest of fairness and the image of the NAACP, I respectfully suggest that you break your silence.”

Brock responded to Boone by email that same day, stating, “The matter you reference in your letter is local in nature and should be handled directly by the Richmond Branch NAACP and Salim Khalfani at the Virginia State Conference NAACP.  I have forwarded your correspondence to them and shared the information with the leadership of Bon Secours Health System in Richmond.”

In an email, responding to a question from the Trice Edney News Wire this week, Brock said that she had not publically commented on Boone’s complaint because it is a local issue.

Brock’s email said she had “also discussed the matter in detail with” Campbell, who is serving his second term as NNPA chairman. At a Sept. 17 reception in D.C., Campbell, Boone and other NNPA publishers praised Brock for her leadership and gave her an award for social justice.

While Campbell verbally blistered the NFL, including the Redskins, he balanced his response by saying he agrees with Brock that the issue in Boone’s case is local since the economic decisions appear to have been made by the mayor and Bon Secours’ Richmond entities.

“At the end of the day, I think [the criticism of her] is unfair just because she works for Bon Secours. That’s her day job. We all volunteer at some time with the NAACP,” Campbell says, referring to Brock’s volunteer chairmanship. “While we want to see Mr. Boone and his publication get what it deserves and more so; that is definitely a local issue.”

Boone, who recently announced he has stopped using the term “Redskins” in the Richmond Free Press because it is “racist”, argues that the Redskins’ and Bon Secours’ exclusion of Black businesses underscores and illustrates the team’s mentality under the controversial name, which is receiving growing national pressure for change.

In her email to the Trice Edney News Wire, Brock also clarified that the NAACP has long stood against the Redskins name because of its roots in racism. “The NAACP passed a resolution more than ten years ago against racial slurs being used as mascots. In the last few months the NAACP signed on letters with the Oneida Tribe, based in Washington and the National Coalition on American Tribes especially in support of their efforts to change the Redskins name,” she wrote.

Neither Mayor Dwight C. Jones; nor Virginia NAACP President King Salim Khalfani could be reached for comment by deadline. Bon Secours representatives did not return repeated phone calls.

Meanwhile, Boone, a recipient of the State NAACP’s Oliver W. Hill Freedom Fighter Award, remains focused on his quest for economic justice, promising Brock "fairness and balance" in upcoming coverage of her leadership positions with the NAACP and Bon Secours.  

Such economic battles have been hard fought in Richmond and in Black and grassroots communities across the nation. Former Richmond City Councilman Chuck Richardson, known for his historic advocacy for Black businesses and contractors, recalls researching Washington Redskins’ racism as far back as 1961. That’s when he wrote a research paper in junior high school about the team and how the Redskins was “the last professional football team to allow Blacks to play for them,” he said in an interview. “This harkens back to that painful time. It hurt then and I would have thought that a greater degree of change might have occurred, but the mentality still exists. It seems so much has changed and yet so much remains the same.”

Nov. 10, 2013

Every Vote Critical!
By Dr. E. Faye Williams 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Two issues weigh heavily on my mind.  The first issue is that of hunger in America and the reactionary Republican effort to apply an even greater amount of downward economic pressure on the poorest of Americans by reducing supplemental food assistance.  Republicans seem not to be bothered that they are increasing poor people’s collective misery.

The second issue is my concern about a decrease in those voting when no Presidential candidate is on the ticket.  Republicans tend to make voting more difficult since Democrats have found a way to get more people to the polls that tend to support more progressive outcomes. That’s a good thing!

In view of the first critical issue that’s plaguing our country and flooding our media, some may have missed the news that House Republicans have allowed the stimulus funding for SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, to expire.  On November 1st, monthly benefits for SNAP households decreased.  A family of four, for example, now receives $36 less each month to help put healthy food on the table.  These cuts come at a time when many hardworking American families are still struggling to make ends meet in the wake of the worst recession in decades.

A study by Moody’s Economy.com looked at the potential impact of each of these eliminated dollars.  The study shows that the fastest way to infuse money into the economy is through expanding the SNAP/Food Stamp program.  “If someone who is literally living paycheck to paycheck gets an extra dollar, it’s very likely that they will spend that dollar immediately on whatever they need -- groceries, telephone bill, electric bill,” said economist Mark Zandi.  That single dollar helps to pay the salaries of the grocery clerks, the truckers who haul the food and produce cross-country, and finally it goes to the farmer who grows the crops.  USDA research shows that each $5 of federal SNAP/Food Stamp benefits generates nearly twice that in economic activity.  Last year, the support provided by SNAP lifted 4 million people out of poverty.

This short-sighted failure by the Republican House majority is a part of a value system that is obviously rooted deeply in their animus for all persons and things outside the embrace of the top economic 1 percent.  It’s either this animus or their dedicated obsession to purge historical evidence of anything positive that is attributable to President Obama – or both.  In error, they believe themselves to be champions of the people they victimize by preventing them from dependency upon government and breaking the nasty habit of requiring nutrition at regular intervals.  In truth, the majority of those who fall victim to these Republican misguided policies are the elderly, children or the working poor.  These victims number in the millions.

Instead of reducing the  number of SNAP recipients by providing realistic training opportunities for those under-employed or passing a comprehensive jobs initiative for those prepared to enter the workforce, but, lacking a job opportunity, this Congress is doubling-down on their dramatic removal  of nutritional support.

The politics of this type of Congressional behavior is clear to me -- those who do not vote do not count.  If those impacted by these draconian actions were more of a threat to the political lives of those in power, ‘m sure a lesser number would support these cuts to nutritional programs.  If more voters were empathetic to human need and understanding of the real damage inflicted by these cuts, there’d be real change in Congress.

That’s why I have such great interest in all elections.  In the past week, the differing choices had never been clearer.  Those who voted in places like Virginia seemed to do so with the clear understanding that each opportunity to vote has evolved into a basic act of self-defense.

(Dr. E. Faye Williams, National Chair, National Congress of Black Women.  202/678-6788. www.nationalcongressbw.org)

Nov. 4, 2013

Special Commentary

White House Working to Curtail Food Stamp Cuts

By Valerie Jarrett and Cecilia Muñoz

Valerie Jarrett

Cecilia Muñoz

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - On November 1, millions of Americans felt the effects of an automatic cut to food purchasing assistance provided through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This is assistance that serves to help families get back on their feet, and children to receive the nourishment they need to stay healthy and competitive in the classroom. For many families, these cuts are devastating, and couldn’t come at a worse time as they begin to regain their footing following the worst recession since the Great Depression.

That is why President Obama has proposed an extension of pre-November funding levels in the 2014 budget. As the economy continues to grow and recover, SNAP is proven to effectively combat hunger and food insecurity while giving millions of hardworking Americans the temporary boost they need during tough times.

In the wake of this cut, the strategy currently underway in the House to remove millions more families from SNAP makes even less sense. The House’s current approach will stall our economic growth over the months and years ahead, while hampering our ability to build a stronger, more robust American workforce. That is why it is imperative that Congress pass a long-term, comprehensive Farm Bill that supports a strong agricultural economy, while ensuring healthy, affordable food for those who need it, when they need it.

The Obama Administration is committed to helping reduce the number of Americans who need SNAP the right way—by arming them with the skills they need to succeed in the workforce and opportunities to earn the income they need to support a family.

Working to end hunger in America should be a major priority for all Americans. Having boys and girls going to bed hungry and struggling to perform in the classroom is both heartbreaking and completely unacceptable. Stemming hunger is more than the right thing to do, it is also the smart thing for our economy, for business, and for ensuring the competitiveness of American workers.

Valerie Jarrett is a Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama. She oversees the Offices of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs. Cecilia Muñoz is the Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council.