April 30, 2019

GOP, Not Russia, is Greater Threat to Free Elections
By Jesse Jackson

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - We all have heard about WikiLeaks and Russian interference in the 2016 election. The report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller has once more put that on the front pages.

Too often lost in the furor, however, is the far more damaging TrikiLeaks — the tricks and laws used to suppress the vote by partisans, largely Republicans here at home. After the Supreme Court’s right-wing gang of five gutted key sections of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby v. Holder, Republican-controlled states immediately ramped up efforts to create obstacles for voting, particularly for people of color.

They mandated specific forms of state ID, made it harder for students to vote, eliminated same-day registration, reduced early voting days, closed polling booths in African American neighborhoods leading to long delays, purged voters from the rolls, perfected partisan gerrymandering and more.

In some cases, as in North Carolina, their discriminatory intent was so public that the laws were overturned in federal court, but in most places, the new barriers were in place in 2016. Did it make a difference? Voting rights expert Ari Berman says, “absolutely.”

Overall 14 states had new restrictions in place, passed since the Shelby decision. Look at Wisconsin. Trump won by 22,000 votes. In Wisconsin, 300,000 African American voters didn’t have the newly required strict photo ID. Black voter turnout in Milwaukee declined by 51,000 votes from 2012, while as Lawyers Committee President Kristen Clarke noted, voter turnout rates were depressed across the state. Now we’re headed into 2020.

Republican bastions like Texas, Tennessee and Arizona witnessed surges of Democratic support in 2018. Not surprisingly, they are launching new efforts to suppress the vote. In Texas, the secretary of state announced a plan to purge 95,000 people from the voter rolls because they weren’t citizens.

Independent research then demonstrated that in Harris County, which includes Houston, 60 percent of the 30,000 people on the list had received citizenship long ago. Some of the supposed research was 25 years old. Once more citizens had to go to court to try to stop the suppression. 

In Texas, state lawmakers are also moving to add criminal penalties for people who improperly fill out voter registration forms, an effort to intimidate nonprofit groups that work to register people to vote. In Arizona, Republicans are making it harder to cast an early ballot. In Tennessee, GOP lawmakers are pushing legislation to fine voter registration groups that submit incomplete forms, even by mistake, up to $10,000.

Tequila Johnson, co-founder of the Equity Alliance that focuses on registering people of color, called them out: “We have never seen a bill like this on the floor, until we dared to register 86,000 black and brown people to vote. This screams racism.” Much, much more attention should be paid to this battle.

Happily, the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has made voting rights a priority. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, has launched an investigation of voter suppression in Georgia in 2018, where the victor, Brian Kemp, oversaw the election as secretary state.

And, as Cummings detailed, 1.4 million people were purged from the voting rolls from 2012 to 2016, 53,000 — 80 percent of them people of color — had their registrations put on hold; 214 polling places were shuttered, contributing to lines of more than four hours in heavily black precincts. Some states, happily, are moving to make voting easier and more accessible.

Florida citizens passed a historic referendum restoring the right to vote for felons who have paid their debt to society. (Now, Republicans in the legislature are trying to undermine that initiative). Automatic Voting Registration laws have passed in several states.

More states are providing longer times for early voting, adding voting booths to reduce long lines and more. Cases to rollback partisan gerrymandering have been successful in federal courts — and now are headed to the Supreme Court. The Brennan Center reports that bills that expand voting rights have seen some movement in 35 states, while those restricting rights have moved in 10 states. 

What’s clear is that interference with our elections and with the right to vote will come far more from the efforts of domestic politicians than it will come from whatever mischief the Russians plan.

It is revealing that the Trump White House has little to say about Russians. It is even more telling that the Justice Department is absent without leave in the fight against voter suppression at home. The right to vote — the most basic right of a democracy — is still contested in too many states — and must be fought, state by state, by citizens of conscience.

April 28, 2019

State of Black America: Foreign Interference in American Democracy Specifically Targeted African- Americans
By Marc H. Morial

NEWS ANALYSIS

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “In the days leading up to the election, the IRA [Russian Troll Farm] began to deploy voter suppression tactics on the Black-community targeted accounts … As the election became imminent, themes were tied into several varieties of voter suppression narratives: don’t vote, state home, this country is not for Black people, these candidates don’t care about Black people.” – U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Report, “The Tactics and Tropes of the Internet Research Agency”

The U.S. Intelligence community announced it was “confident” that it happened.

A Senate Intelligence Committee report confirmed it.

And now the Mueller Report has documented its scope in breathtaking detail.

Russia interfered to disrupt American democracy on a massive scale.  An administration official recently falsely downplayed this unprecedented act of sabotage as “a few Facebook ads.”

This year’s State of Black America®, due for release on May 6, will show how wrong that characterization is.  We’ve taken a close look at the state of the Black vote, from racially-motivated voter suppression laws, to wrong-headed U.S. Supreme Court decisions that hampered voting rights, to the race-based manipulation of African American voters by Russian trolls.

What we determined is alarming.

The report will be released at a special event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., starting at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. The event will feature presentations by our partners in the report, the Brennan Center for Justice and the German Marshall Fund, and a dynamic panel discussion featuring the nation’s top journalists. Watch live on the National Urban League Facebook page.

Since the release of the Mueller report, the administration has careened among wildly contradictory positions, from flatly denying the interference as a “hoax,” misrepresenting it as “a few Facebook ads,” to declaring cooperation with hostile foreign agents to be a perfectly legal and natural course of action for a political campaign.

As the State of Black America ® details, we can accept nothing less than a clear-eyed accounting of what really happened and an aggressive, comprehensive plan to combat it.

For African-Americans, the unobstructed right to vote has been an ongoing, centuries-long battle. Russian interference is just the latest chapter in the blood-soaked saga. Prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, Black Americans who were not enslaved had voting rights in some jurisdictions. In Dred, the court held that the rights and privileges of citizenship afforded by the U.S. Constitution did not apply to Black people.

This remained the official status of African Americans until five years after the Civil War, when the 15th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted, ensuring the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

The Jim Crow era, from the late 19th century to the mid-20th Century, made a mockery of the 15th Amendment. Poll taxes, literacy tests, indiscriminate incarceration and violence kept most Black Americans off the voter rolls for nearly a century. White supremacist terrorists carried out nearly 5,000 documented lynchings to enforce their ideology. Dozens of Americans who were murdered for their voting rights efforts are immortalized as civil rights martyrs. The shocking images of violence helped galvanize the nation in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

But the growing power of the Black vote has triggered a devastating backlash. The State of Black America® documents a resurgence of racially-motivated voter suppression over the last decade, including efforts by Russian trolls to stop African Americans from voting.

We look forward to sharing our findings on May 6 and anticipate a lively and robust dialogue as we put forward our policy recommendations to end the crisis. Watch the event on Facebook, and follow the National Urban League on social media. @NatUrbanLeague, and participate using the hashtag #StateOfBlackAmerica.

Biden Enters Presidential Race Bringing White Supremacy to the Forefront of Issues
Calls campaign against Trump as ‘battle for the soul of America’ – but will he get the Black vote?
By Hazel Trice Edney

 Biden campaign video screenshot.

Biden campaign video showing 2017 Hate March in Charlottesville.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Former Senator and Vice President Joseph Biden, after much suspense, has finally entered the Democratic campaign for president – immediately surging ahead of a crowded field with a message against White Supremacy.

“We saw Klansmen and White supremacists and Neo Nazis come out in the open, their crazed faces illuminated by veins bulging and baring the fangs of racism”, Biden said in a video announcement with images of the violent 2017 White supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va. juxtaposed with images representing America’s promise that “all men are created equal.” He called the incident in Charlottesville in which the young activist Heather Higher was killed, “a defining moment of this nation.”

Biden’s entry not only brings a new voice to the field of at least eight candidates who have announced so far, but a voice taking direct aim at incumbent Donald Trump.

He continued in the video, “And they were met with a courageous group of Americans. And a violent clash ensued. And a brave young woman lost her life. And that’s when we heard the words of the President of the United States that stunned the world and shocked the conscious of this nation. He said, there were quote, ‘some very fine people on both sides.’”

Biden said with those words, “the President of the United States assigned a moral equivalency between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it. In that moment, I knew the threat to this nation wasn’t like any other I’d ever seen in my lifetime. I wrote at the time that were ‘in the battle for the soul of this nation."

He said eight years of the Trump Presidency would “forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are. And I cannot stand by and watch that happen.”

Biden has since catapulted to the forefront of the other Democratic candidates. But his race will not be easy. Trump has already taken aim, calling him, “sleep Joe” an attempt to pin a nickname on him as Trump has successfully done to many other candidates.

Trump spokespersons have defended his words about Charlottesville, saying he did in fact condemn racism and antisemitism as well. But despite his successes with maintaining economic growth started by President Obama, the Trump years have been so far full of insults to people of color including calling members of the National Football League “Sons of Bs” for protesting unwarranted police violence against Black people.

No viable Republican candidates have challenged Trump so far. And most Black Republicans and even conservative Christians have remained silent amidst what some deem as deplorable conduct; such as the SOB remark as well as hundreds of documented untruths.

So far, Democratic candidates have dealt mainly with key issues with little or no mention of Trump’s leaning on a base that often appears largely White nationalists.

Among the dominant issues dealt with thus far have been the economy, whether all incarcerated people should be allowed to vote while in prison and whether there should be a commission to discuss ways to issue reparations for slavery.

CNN reports that Biden now tops the field with more than 37 percent of Democrats saying they would vote for him if the election were elected today. He is followed in diminishing order by Sen. Bernie Sanders Sanders of Vermont; South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg; Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.); Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.); Congressman Beto O’Rourke of Texas, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Cory Booker (N.J.).                                                                               

Biden will also face opposition from Democrats who point to his political record. They include his treatment of now Professor Anita Hill during the confirmation of Clarence Thomas for which he recently tried to make amends. She did not think his apology was strong enough. Biden is also remembered for his leadership on legislation that led to the growth of mass incarceration of Black people; including the so-called “war on drugs.”

April 21, 2019

 

Time to Wake America Up from its Student Debt Nightmare

By Charlene Crowell

 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Higher education has always offered opportunities to learn and earn a better quality of life. But in the 21^st Century, higher education has also become synonymous with ever deepening debt. More than 44 million consumers of varying ages and occupations struggle with $1.5 trillion in student debt.

 

The nation’s nagging racial wealth and income gaps translate into Black families borrowing more than others to finance college costs. If a combination of scholarships, grants, student loans, and work-study jobs cannot meet the costs of an academic term, the only option remaining is for parents and other relatives take on debt too.

 

From 2006 to 2016, aggregate student loan balances nationwide rose 170 percent. This debt burden worsened the nearly $1 trillion of lost wealth that Black and Latino families also bore due to the foreclosure crisis.

 

“During the recession the public sector stepped back its appropriations in higher education and cut aid in several areas,” noted Andrea Harris, a nationally-known policy expert, now serving as a Senior Fellow with Self-Help, one of the nation’s largest and most successful community development financial institutions in the nation.

 

Today the average student loan balance among baccalaureate graduates is $34,000. For those who continue to graduate studies, their indebtedness often surpasses $100,000.

 

As high as these debts incurred by students are, additional loans taken out by parents and other relatives are often necessary. Some parents, grandparents or other relatives have also taken on student loan debts, trying to close the gaps that remained after students borrowed the maximum amounts allowed.

 

It’s a costly cycle that begins anew each academic year, often with higher interest rates that lead to higher and longer repayments.  No parent should be forced to choose between their own financial stability and a college education for their children.

 

Yet the reality of the student loan crisis is that often multiple generations of the same family struggle with loan repayments. When these loans default, another dimension of financial stress begins.

 

Student loan defaults degrade credit scores, lowering them by as much as 50-90 points, according to the Urban Institute, a Washington, DC-based nonpartisan research group. As credit scores drop, the cost of any future credit goes up, making it even harder for affected consumers to manage their personal finances.

 

With Congress and the Trump Administration both agreeing that the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act cannot be further delayed, multiple ideas have been offered on how to manage the deepening college debt crisis with no consensus yet to emerge.

 

Central to the public policy debate should be the future of the nation’s economy. Students need to acquire skills and knowledge that lead to stable careers and incomes that enable graduates to earn their way into the middle class.

 

For many education advocates, the current college federal aid system is simply unsustainable, nor is it in the best interest of the nation. Hence, it seems sensible to directly increase federal college aid that does not come with repayment.

 

For example, the formula-based Pell Grant award currently averages $4,251 per participating student. Next year as proposed by the Department of Education, the average award would shrink slightly to $4,149. As college costs increase, more grants, not fewer are needed.

 

A recent Wall Street Journal article delved into the particular effects of student debt on Black America. According to the article, “Tuitions have risen faster than a traditional funding source for low-income students – federal Pell grants. A weak post- crisis economic recovery meant lagging income for many low-income families, federal data show, leaving proportionately less to pay for education.”

 

Some might argue that incomes across the country are rising. Such beliefs are not completely true.

 

In 2017, the national median income stood at $61,372, after three consecutive years of increases and a 1.8 percent increase over 2016’s median of $60,309. But much of Black America was omitted from these financial gains with median incomes of $40,258, more than $2,100 less than levels earned in 2000.

 

Other studies have found that over half of young Black households – 54 percent – have student debt, compared to only 39 percent of similar white households.

 

“A nation educating its citizens is simply in the common good,” concludes Harris.

 

I would agree. When it comes to higher education, lawmakers must understand that Black America never asked for a free ride – just a fair one.

 

 

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Charlene Crowell is the deputy communications director with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached atThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..