Urban News Features

Judge Orders Kenyan Former President to Pay $10 Million for Stolen Widow's Land

May 28, 2019

Judge Orders Kenyan Former President to Pay $10 Million for Stolen Widow's Land

D. Arap Moi

(TriceEdneyWire.com/GIN) – A Kenyan High Court has ordered former President Daniel arap Moi to compensate a widow whose land was illegally seized 36 years ago.

According to the court, the ex-president falsely claimed ownership of 64 acres of land which actually belonged to Susan Cheburet Chelugi, the widow of a local chief. Because arap Moi was unable to provide any evidence that he was the actual owner, the judge recognized the 85 year old Mrs. Cheburet Chelugi as the rightful owner.

The case is a rare instance of an ex-president or any high-ranking government official being found guilty of the crime of “land grabbing” and being forced to pay a fine.

Judge Ombwayo said Moi behaved in a way that was "unconstitutional, irregular, unprocedural" and "tainted" when he ordered land officials to register the property in his name. He then sold it to Rai Plywood Limited, a timber firm owned by the wealthy and politically-connected Jaswant Rai family of Kenya.

Judge Ombayo stated further: “There is not one iota of evidence as to how the former President was registered as the proprietor of the land, which was part of (property) that belonged to Noah Kimngeny Chelugui. “

“This court cannot protect property that was acquired through impropriety.”

Now both arap Moi and Rai Plywood Ltd will have to cough up $10 million – the sum being the current market value of the prime property.

This ruling is hugely significant for Kenya, as there have been numerous cases of land grabbing by high-ranking government officials and wealthy business people over the years, but the victims generally have neither the will nor the money to fight back.

Global Information Network creates and distributes news and feature articles on current affairs in Africa to media outlets, scholars, students and activists in the U.S. and Canada. Our goal is to introduce important new voices on topics relevant to Americans, to increase the perspectives available to readers in North America and to bring into their view information about global issues that are overlooked or under-reported by mainstream media.

We Can Free a Generation from Burden of College Loan Debt By Jesse Jackson

May 28, 2019

We Can Free a Generation from Burden of College Loan Debt
By Jesse Jackson

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The reaction — shock, joy, disbelief, euphoria — revealed the importance of Robert F. Smith’s stunning gift, when he announced, unexpectedly, that he would pay off all the college debts of Morehouse College students graduating this year. His gift literally changed the prospects and the lives of the vast majority of those 396 graduates. Morehouse is a proud, historically black college, the alma mater of extraordinary leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Julian Bond, Howard Thurman, Maynard Jackson, former head of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, former head of the black caucus Cedric Richmond, Hollywood legends Samuel L. Jackson and Spike Lee, Olympic champion Edwin Moses and many more.

Full-time tuition costs $25,368, with room and board and other expenses, a year at Morehouse can cost nearly $50,000. Ninety percent of Morehouse students get some kind of financial aid, cobbling together Pell grants, federal and private loans, family loans and more. Morehouse seniors who borrow to pay for college carry an average of $26,000 in federal student loans. Private loans, federal Parent Plus loans, credit card and other debts are on top of that.

The federal student loans alone would result in a monthly payment of $276. Robert F Smith’s generosity has literally transformed the lives of those students. Now instead of putting off graduate school or being forced to live at home, and later postponing marriage and children, they are free to benefit from the hard work they have done to graduate from college. They can seek jobs that they want, without being forced to take one or more that can help them pay down their loans. They are free to dream. Many of those benefiting from Smith’s remarkable generosity expressed what one student, Myles Washington, called a “level of survivor’s guilt.”

All had friends who could not afford to go to college, or who were forced to withdraw early in the face of growing debts. Robert F. Smith is a billionaire, the brilliant founder of Vista Equity Partners, who has made a fortune largely in purchasing and selling software firms. Raised in Denver, the child of two parents with Ph.D.s, he graduated from Cornell and later got his MBA at Columbia. His gift to the Morehouse students is only a small part of his philanthropy, which has included major support for Cornell, his alma mater, and for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, as well as his service as chair to The Board of Carnegie Hall and much more. With this gift, he has set a standard for others of great wealth. He has, as he put it at the Morehouse commencement, “paid it forward,” by freeing the potential of young graduates.

His gift should also rouse Congress to redress the folly of shackling the best of the young generation with often unpayable debt simply to get the education this country says they need. Student loan debt now totals over $1.5 trillion. After home mortgages, it is the largest source of debt, exceeding car loans and credit card debts. Almost two-thirds of all students are forced to borrow to pay for college; they end with an average debt of nearly $29,000.

The debt of African-American students is, on average, $7,400 more than that of white students, reflecting the wealth gap that has built up over years of slavery, segregation and housing and employment discrimination. Democratic presidential candidates like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont are calling for making public colleges tuition-free. Warren has put forth a detailed plan to pay off a substantial portion of existing student loans. Some like Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) say we can’t afford to do that. But we are a wealthier country than Germany, yet college there is free.

This is a question of priorities not resources. The number of corporations that pay nothing in taxes has doubled under Donald Trump’s tax cut. The cost of that tax cut, most of which went to the already wealthy, is estimated at $1.7 trillion over 10 years. That alone would have been able to pay off all current student debts. Robert Smith’s generous promise should goad all of us into action. It is a personal tragedy and a national folly to burden an entire generation with often unpayable loans simply to get an education. We all benefit from a well-educated, active population. We all suffer when an entire generation is locked into debt from the day they get out of college. Smith has freed nearly 400 Morehouse graduates from that burden. We should demand that Congress act to offer every student that relief.

Four Hundred Years and We Still Ain't Clear: Distortions of Black History by Julianne Malveaux

May 27, 2019

Four Hundred Years and We Still Ain't Clear: Distortions of Black History
By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - According to some historians, Afrodescendents first entered these united states in 1619 off the coast of Virginia. If we believe that narrative, Afrodescendents have been in this country for 400 years. If the people who were kidnapped and brought here had to tell the story, would they tell the same one? Would they say that we came before Columbus? That some of us might have been here even longer? There were captured Africans that came from the mother continent in 1619, but also, thanks to the transatlantic slave trade, Africans here who had come from Bermuda, Jamaica, and other places.

Why is this relevant? Because there is this misguided group of Afrodescendants, who are throwing shade at those who are not "American descendants of slaves" ADOS. Their shade is an odd version of the "am I Black enough for you" game that some folks ran against President Barack Obama, and are now running against Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Corey Booker. What is Black enough, when we, Afrodescendant people, all have enslavement in our background? Let's make it plain. Europeans went to the African continents, kidnapped people (sometimes with African acquiescence), brought them to the Western Hemisphere and sold us. Goods and people flowed between England (or New England, the Americas, and Africa), including sugar, tobacco, manufactured products, guns, and humans. Understand that everyone in the triangle was affected and that enslaved people were freely traded between the United States and other parts of the Americas!

I am not sure what kinds of warped brains dreamed up the realities of enslavement and the ways that a minority in the South was able to control a majority. The laws that managed enslavement included laws that prevented literacy, ownership, and much else. The laws often detailed the terms of punishment if restrictive conditions were breached. A North Carolina law said, "teaching slaves to read and write, tends to excite dissatisfaction in their minds, and to produce insurrection and rebellion." Disobeying this law was punishable by thirty-nine lashes or imprisonment for a free Black person, or a fine of two hundred dollars then, or about $5000 now. People violated the laws, of course, but the warped sensibility that prohibited the dissemination of knowledge is the basis for many sick stereotypes, such as "if you want to hide something from a Black person, put it in a book."

Fast-forward four hundred years, or even two. Why are teachers in Louden County, Virginia, forcing fifth and sixth-grade students to simulate enslavement with an obstacle course they called "The Underground Railroad"? Why were many of these students Afrodescendents? Why are the leaders of the school silent about the discipline that was ordered on the rogue teachers who took it upon their ignorant selves to construct such an exercise? Why has David Stewart, the principal of the Madison Trust School in Louden County, sent out a vapid apology for a "culturally insensitive" exercise, and not a more strongly worded condemnation of the racism implicit in this nonsense.

We have been here at least 400 years, and still, some folks aren't clear about the ways enslavement has shaped our nation. In Virginia, where both the governor and the Attorney General (two of the top three elected officials in the state) have admitted to masquerading in Blackface, albeit thirty-odd years ago, teachers don't see anything wrong with subjecting Black students to a reenactment of enslavement. Oh, they said they were teaching "teamwork." Really.

We have been here at least 400 years, and our nation is not yet clear about its flawed foundations. There would be no house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, which should not be called the White House, but the House that Enslaved People Built, were it not for the labor of kidnapped people and their descendants. There would be no banking system if enslaved people were not used as collateral for European devilment. There would be no insurance industry were it not for the enslaved. But our collective ignorance allows us, all of us, African Americans, European Americans, and others, to live in denial, pretending that there is fairness in a racist, patriarchal, predatory, capitalist society.

We have been here at least 400 years, but we still aren't clear about the nonsense and exploitation that affects and infuses our very foundation. Our entire nation needs to go back to school to learn some history. But there is a special place in hell for teachers in Louden County, Virginia who think that enslavement is some kind of game!

Julianne Malveaux is an author and economist. Her latest project MALVEAUX! On UDCTV is available on youtube.com. For booking, wholesale inquiries or for more info visit www.juliannemalveaux.com

School Vouchers Are a Failed Experiment By Marc H. Morial

May 27, 2019

To Be Equal

School Vouchers Are a Failed Experiment

By Marc H. Morial

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “How bad are school vouchers for students? Far worse than most people imagine. Indeed, the use of school vouchers—which provide families with public dollars to spend on private schools—is equivalent to missing out on more than one-third of a year of classroom learning.” – Center for American Progress study, “The Highly Negative Impacts of Vouchers”

School privatization has been a dismal failure, leaving students stranded in low-performing schools while transferring millions of taxpayer dollars into private, for-profit institutions.

The latest proof that private school vouchers don’t work for students emerged from an investigation in Louisiana conducted by several news outlets. “The Cost of Choice” revealed that the state’s $40 million-a-year voucher program has pulled thousands of students out of public schools into failing private schools that receive almost no oversight.

A full two-thirds of all students in the voucher system attended schools rated “D” or “F” under the state’s assessment system.

There are 86 private schools that have accepted voucher students but most don’t have enough students enrolled to be assigned a grade. But of the 37 that do, not a single school scored “A” or “B” and only three received a “C.” The investigation found that students have left “C-rated” public schools to attend “D-” and “F-rated” private schools.

The Louisiana investigation is hardly the first to demonstrate the failure of voucher programs. When the Trump Administration unveiled a budget that sought to divert public funds from bipartisan education programs into privatization efforts, Senator Patty Murray, Ranking Member of the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, compiled a devastating memo detailing the damaging impact of school privatization programs across the country.

Private schools that siphon taxpayer dollars from public schools are able to skirt the accountability and reporting requirements to which public schools are subject. In many cases, there’s simply no way for parents to compare student performance in private schools with public school, or to make sure that the private school meets even the most basic standards required of public schools.

Furthermore, the cost of attending private schools, including those that accept vouchers, usually exceeds the amount of the voucher, putting the voucher program out of reach for low-income families. In many cases, voucher programs merely publicly subsidize tuition for students who already were attending the private schools – often violating the principle of separation of church and state, since many of the schools are religiously affiliated.

Of particular concern to the Urban League Movement is the way in which voucher programs undermine civil rights protection. In response to the nation’s long history of discrimination in schools, Congress passed civil rights laws to give every child in the United States access to a quality education. Most voucher programs fail ensure that private schools receiving taxpayer dollars be held to these civil rights standards.

“Under privatization programs, schools receive an ever-growing share of taxpayer funding but are free to choose the students they want, the rules they follow, and the practices they believe in, ignoring accountability and transparency for public dollars.,” Murray and her staff wrote in the 2017 memo. “In addition, voucher programs across the country have shown evidence of fraud, such as embezzlement of funds and submitting applications and receiving funding for nonexistent students. This occurs while simultaneously depleting needed resources for public schools and shortchanging students.”

It’s clear that we, as a nation – and as communities invested in providing all children with a quality education that prepares them for college, work and life – must turn away from the failed voucher experiment and toward strengthening and improving our public schools. As the National Urban League made clear in its recent analysis of state plans to comply with the Every Student Succeeds Act, we believe students, parents and community stakeholders should adopt a vision of education reform and innovation that expands and deepens opportunity, upends inequity, accelerates progress and delivers more fully on the promise of education.

Learn more about how the National Urban League’s Equity and Excellence Project is supporting local, state and national advocacy, engagement and education reform efforts, and join the conversation by following @NatUrbanLeague on social media.

Congressional Lawmakers Introduce Bill to Examine Disparities that Impact Black Men and Boys by Jane Kennedy

May 21, 2019

Congressional Lawmakers Introduce Bill to Examine Disparities that Impact Black Men and Boys

By Jane Kennedy

U. S. Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), center, introduces a Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Nearly five years after Daniel Pantaleo, a New York City policeman, recklessly choked Eric Garner to death, he is just now facing prosecution at a disciplinary trial that may—or may not—lead to his firing. The officers who stood idly by during the incident that was just one of a series of needless police killings of African-American men and boys, will likely not have to pay for their inaction.

It is this casual disregard for the safety and well-being of Black males that led Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.) to create the Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys Caucus. Co-chaired by Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Cedric Richmond (D-La,), and Lucy McBath (D-Ga.), the caucus publicly introduced at a press conference last week legislation to establish an advisory body that will examine the societal inequities that adversely affect this demographic.

They were joined by several other lawmakers, representatives of national organizations, and Tracy Martin, father of slain teenager Trayvon Martin. In addition, dozens of boys who are members of the 5000 Role Models of Excellence Project mentorship program Wilson founded 25 years ago traveled to Washington from Miami and Jacksonville to participate in the event.

“We are here because we acknowledge a tragic truth: All too often, Black males in America are treated as their own class of citizen. They are rarely given the benefit of the doubt. They are labeled delinquent, not rowdy. They are hardened criminals, not misguided youth,” Wilson said. “Their very existence is often seen as a threat.”

The Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys Act of 2019 calls for a bipartisan commission to be housed within the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ office. Led by a staff director, its 19 members would include appointees from the Senate and the House, the Congressional Black Caucus chairperson and five CBC members, as well as representatives from federal agencies and nongovernmental organizations. Duties include examining homicide rates, arrest and incarceration rates, poverty, violence, fatherhood, mentorship, drug abuse, death rates, disparate income and wealth levels, school performance at various grade levels, and health issues.

One year after their first meeting, members will be required to produce an annual report that includes recommendations to address these issues. In addition, the report, which will be publicly available, will be submitted to the president and cabinet secretaries, Congress, and the chairs of the appropriate committees of jurisdiction.

Rep. Jeffries noted in his remarks that while African-Americans have made “tremendous progress,” there is still a long way to go.

“We understand that when America catches a cold, the black community often catches a fever. When the black community catches a fever, it’s young black men and boys at the center of the affliction of economic pneumonia. You can’t continue to ignore realities of this situation, which is why this Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys is so incredibly important,” the New York lawmaker said. “We all recognize that unless we take the time to give our young men and our young black boys the opportunity to be successful, the system will seize the opportunity to give these men and young black boys some [jail] time.”

Jamonza Clark, a sophomore at Miami’s William H. Turner Technical Arts High School, feels blessed to be a part of Wilson’s Role Models program and a strong family unit, but recognizes that there are countless boys who look like him whose futures are very uncertain.

“Many of us live in ZIP codes that don’t have the same resources and opportunities that give our white counterparts head starts in life,” he said. “How are we supposed to get ahead when on the day we are born, we’re already behind?”

Rep. Richmond empathizes with boys and men who are judged by the color of their skin or what they wear. Sports, he said, is the one area where all the rules are the same for everybody, and African Americans excel. “So when we start talking about the game of life and making sure that our young men achieve the success that they should, then we have to look at all of the barriers,” Richmond said.

Rep. McBath, who is serving her first term in Congress, experienced every parent’s worst nightmare when her 17-year-old son, Jordan Davis, was gunned down at a Jacksonville gas station because his killer thought the music in the teenagers’ car was too loud.

“I was teaching him to stand up against unrighteousness and to stand up in the face of injustice. I was preparing him to take his place in this world at the decision-making table as a powerful young black man. My son, like so many others, was a victim of implicit bias and racism and I feel an obligation in my core to address these issues on behalf of each of the young men that are standing here today full of potential and destined to do great things,” she said, adding that any form of discrimination, “both explicit and implicit” is unacceptable.

Turning to the 5000 Role Models of Excellence students, she continued, “I implore each of you to stand up. You deserve to have a place at the table and decide the course of our world. I believe in all of you. This is what democracy looks like, and this is how we will change our world.”