Sept. 29, 2013

Where Do We Go From Here?
By Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Many talk about post-racial, post-civil rights, and post-March on Washington, but reaching certain milestones doesn't mean that our journey is complete.  Often, our accomplishments clearly contrast with the setbacks we presently experience.  Regressive efforts against voters’ rights and the waging of War Against Women evidence the unmistakable design to turn back the clock on our rights.

Acknowledgment of the value of citizens, regardless of difference, is the offspring of a Civil Rights Movement which has dismantled many barriers for people of color and expanded access for Disabled Americans, the LGBT community, senior citizens, immigrants and workers.  Although past struggles have resulted in unexpected achievement, our present challenge is remaining vigilant against those who'd reverse the gains we've made and retard future progress.

Violence against US is framed in police practices such as Stop and Frisk; in the vigilantism that spawned the murder of Trayvon Martin; the audacity of the mindset that justified the murder of Jordan Davis because of the volume of music in a car.  The violence we experience is also measured by disparities in education, employment and opportunity.  We see millions mired in the oppression of poverty while politicians debate properly funding education, creating jobs, or mandating a living wage.  We can’t support this violence by allowing the denigration of women, especially single mothers, and we must not ignore the abuse of our fellow humans who happen to be labeled LGBT.

I believe that the necessary action steps toward these goals include:

1. Removing the egos that prevent us from accomplishing our goals.  The "WE" is more important than the "I."   We must act from a position of unity and common purpose or organize under the banner of an umbrella organization that speaks for a larger, more powerful segment of Black America.
2. Working to build/expand Black businesses to provide jobs and circulate more of our money in our own communities.  We must compete for jobs in the corporate sector which provide the authority to hire and to promote.  It’s not enough to secure a well-paying job and miss the opportunity to be a greater asset to our community.
3. Making a greater impact on education in our communities.  I applaud those who support education in Africa and other places, but we who are successful must give greater attention to improving schools in the neighborhoods in which we live.  If we accept unique educational challenges in our communities, we must work to create unique remedies.  We must increase mentoring so each one can reach one or more.
4. Encouraging the accurate teaching of OUR history.  This must involve the contributions of women.  While we honor the accomplishments of our men, more of the story must be told about Diane Nash, Ella Baker, Vivian Malone Jones, Harriett Tubman, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks, Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordan and more.  Children without an historical anchor are bound to drift in obscurity.
5. Registering and getting more people out to vote.  We've made a strong first-step in that direction by electing President Obama, but we must give reasons to continue and expand the process.  We must teach the importance of all elections - local, state and Federal - to our community.
6. Coalescing with others who share our interests.  Our activism must increase on immigration, election of more Blacks, more women, more Hispanics and others who have common goals.
7. Supporting the Black press and media.  They're often the only outlets telling our positive stories.
8. Finally, by reading the 2013 “21st Century Agenda for Jobs and Freedom" plan developed by our major Black organizations and doing all we can to make the plan work.

Despite thoughts to the contrary, THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES!!!!

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

Sept. 23, 2013

President Obama Calls for End to Gun Violence in City Streets
By Hazel Trice Edney

President Obama speaks to the CBCF Annual Phoenix Awards Dinner Saturday night. PHOTO: Roy Lewis/Trice Edney News Wire.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – In rare remarks about his hometown of Chicago, President Obama has called for an end to the scourge of gun violence that has plagued America for decades in Black neighborhoods and is becoming increasingly common in mass shootings in unpredictable places such as schools, movie theatres and among civilians on military bases.

“And finally, we can’t rest until all of our children can go to school or walk down the street free from the fear that they will be struck down by a stray bullet,” the President said to applause  at the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Phoenix Awards Dinner Saturday night.  “Just two days ago, in my hometown of Chicago, 13 people were shot during a pickup basketball game, including a 3-year-old girl.  Tomorrow night I’ll be meeting and mourning with families in this city who now know the same unspeakable grief of families in Newtown, and Aurora, and Tucson, and Chicago, and New Orleans, and all across the country - people whose loved ones were torn from them without headlines sometimes, or public outcry.  But it's happening every single day.”

The last time President Obama spoke as strongly about gun violence, it was in his State of the Union Address Feb. 12, only weeks after the Jan. 29 shooting death of majorette Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old Chicago teen, who had participated in his inaugural parade. That was also only two months following the mass shooting of 20 children and six adult staff members at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

“We fought a good fight earlier this year, but we came up short.  And that means we've got to get back up and go back at it.  Because as long as there are those who fight to make it as easy as possible for dangerous people to get their hands on a gun, then we've got to work as hard as possible for the sake of our children.  We've got to be ones who are willing to do more work to make it harder,” he said to applause.

The President also indicated his understanding that gun control alone is not the answer.  Among the hardest hit neighborhoods around the country, including Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia; and New Orleans are places that are also plagued by gross poverty, drugs, gangs and hopelessness – topics that the President also rarely address, but, vaguely alluded to on Saturday.

“So we've got to do more to rebuild neighborhoods, help some of the hardest-hit towns in America get back on their feet,” he said. “We've got to raise the minimum wage.  Nobody who works full-time in the wealthiest nation on Earth should have to raise their children in poverty. Those are fights we need to win.”

In Chicago, the 3-year-old boy, among the 13 shot Sept. 19, remains in critical condition after he was shot in the cheek. No one was killed in that particular shooting, but at least two other minors were also injured. Deaths by homicide have become a regular occurrence in American cities. Last year, more than 500 were killed in Chicago,

Talks of gun control legislation fizzled out early this year as Republicans and Democrats remain polar opposites on the political issue. As Black newspapers and media have long reported on the struggle to end the carnage based on the need to address deep social issues, the debate over guns and gun laws was thrust back into the national media last week after 12 people were killed by a mass shooter at the Navy Yard in Washington. The shooter was then killed by police.

The morning after the CBCF dinner, President Obama spoke at a memorial for the victims. His remarks recalled just how common violence really has become in America.

“On the night that we lost Martin Luther King Jr. to a gunman’s bullet, Robert Kennedy stood before a stunned and angry crowd in Indianapolis and he broke the terrible news.  And in the anguish of that moment, he turned to the words of an ancient Greek poet, Aeschylus:  “’Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’”

Robert Kennedy himself would be felled by an assassin’s bullet only two months later. His brother, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated five years earlier.

Despite the increasing commonness of America’s gun violence, the press to end it has been mainly by those who refuse to accept it.  President Obama has promised to be one of those – driven by the quest to end the human suffering.

“The tragedy and the pain that brings us here today is extraordinary.  It is unique. The lives that were taken from us were unique.  The memories their loved ones carry are unique, and they will carry them and endure long after the news cameras are gone,” he said at the Navy Yard Memorial.  “But part of what wears on as well is the sense that this has happened before.  Part of what wears on us, what troubles us so deeply as we gather here today, is how this senseless violence that took place in the Navy Yard echoes other recent tragedies.”

Facing a political uphill battle, what the President is able to do about the tragedies and how, remains a mystery. But, concluding his speech to the CBCF, he at least promised to stay committed:  “We're going to have to keep marching.  And I'm proud that I'll be, at least for the next three and a half years here in Washington and then a whole lot of years after that, I'm going to be marching with you.”

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - I have no idea whether Congress finally evaded the government shutdown that would happen on October 1.  I do know, however, that I am sick of the budgetary brinkmanship that plagues our government.  Every few months there is some crisis or another that has the House of Representatives and the White House at loggerheads.  This time, Republicans in Congress want to defund Obamacare as part of the budget that must be passed and say they are willing to let government close to meet their goal.  Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid says that Republicans are holding a gun to the American people’s heads and he isn’t lying.  

Indeed, Republicans are gearing up for the debt ceiling debate, which is another opportunity for brinksmanship.  If they remove the Affordable Care Act from negotiations, it will surely resurface when the debt ceiling is discussed.  We can spend the rest of this year, and part of next, with this budgetary brinkmanship, all driven by the fact that many Republicans simply cannot stand the notion of the Affordable Care Act.

Actually, it’s not just about the Affordable Care Act, it is about President Obama and Republican resistance to anything he proposes.  Their attitudes go beyond partisanship to venomous distaste.   You’d have to go back to the nineteenth century to find members of Congress so rude as to holler out “you lie” as a President spoke, assertions that that thing would happen “over my dead body” are far more common.  It has always amused me when people so quickly offer their dead bodies up for discussion, as if they so lightly value their living bodies that they’d offer their dead one in the name of public policy.  Just recently, Rand Paul said the federal government would bail out Detroit over his dead body, and years ago Dick Armey (R-TX) said the minimum wage would pass over his.   Last I heard the minimum wage rose and Armey is still living, though no longer in Congress.

Sept. 22, 2013

Former CBC Chair Rep. Barbara Lee Joins World Leaders at U.N.
By Zenitha Prince