By Hazel Trice Edney Stateswomen for Justice - Kim Keenan, NAACP; Laura Murphy, ACLU; Leslie Proll, NAACP-LDF; Barbara Arnwine, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; Tonya Robinson, the White House discuss modern-day civil rights issues and strategies as forum organizer, Hazel Trice Edney, looks on. PHOTO: Roy Lewis/Trice Edney News Wire (TriceEdneyWire.com) – When Barbara Arnwine sensed the pending attack on voting rights across the country by a string of Repubican politicans attempting to enact voter identification and other questionable laws last year, she immediately tried to warn everybody who would listen. But, it was her son, Justin, 25, who gave her the ultimate tool by which to warn the nation. “He said, ‘Mom, you need a map…And he said it would ‘go viral,’” she recounted at an annual forum at the National Press Club last week. From that concise suggestion was born the now famous “Map of Shame”. With this map, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and its partner organizations charted and fought the legislative movements of dozens of states as they attempted voting changes that would ultimately result in a civil rights backlash. That backlash included a grassroots ground operation, church to church get out to vote inspiration, social media strategies, phone banking and word of mouth that galvanized the largest Black turnout in voting history in the Nov. 6 presidential election. Arnwine, president/CEO of the Lawyers' Committee, credits youth ingenuity, coupled with seasoned civil rights minds for the successful result. “We’ve got to have that intergenerational and multigenerational fight,” she told the audience at the “Stateswomen for Justice” luncheon and forum March 28. “Let’s unite, let’s stay vigilant, let’s remember that we never prevail by sitting back and thinking others will take care of our issues.” As a part of the Third Annual forum, - a celebration of Women's History Month - Arnwine was being honored by the host, Trice Edney Communications and News Wire, for her 30 years of civil rights leadership with the Lawyers’ Committee, now in its 50th year. The forum, moderated by Dr. Elsie Scott, founding director of the Ronald W. Walters Center at Howard University, featured Arnwine alongside four other leading women in civil rights. They outlined crucial issues and future methods of engagement five decades since the March on Washington and founding of the Lawyers’ Committee. Tonya Robinson, special assistant to President Barack Obama for justice and regulatory policy pointed out yet another important anniversary this year, 50 years since President John F. Kennedy’s signing of the Equal Pay Act, a goal that has yet to be attained. “In the five decades since the signing, [there has been] tremendous progress, but women on average still earn only 77 cents for every dollar that a man earns,” she said, noting the significant difference of 23 cents. “Perhaps unsurprisingly to this crowd, the gap is even more stark for women of color with African-American women earning 64 cents” and Latino women earning only approximately 50 cents for every dollar. With 23 million working mothers, “Regardless of where you are, your race or your age, the 23 cents matters,” she said. She said President Obama drew a “line in the sand” with the Lilly Ledbetter Act as the first piece of legislation he signed in his first term, extending the time that a woman can sue over pay issues. Still, she said, there remains “a compelling economic case that especially impacts women of color and African-American women with respect to the need for African-American women to finally close the pay gap.” For the most part, the string of modern-day civil rights battles discussed among the leaders reflected a continuum of the battles of the 1960s. “All of these anniversaries are coming at us at a single moment in time – WEB Dubois’ death, whether it’s the assassination of Medgar Evers or whether it’s the March on Washington for Jobs and Justice…And here it is, here we are 50 years later and guess what we need to march for - jobs and justice,” said Kim Keenan, NAACP general council. “That work is not done. The work isn’t based on the color of the president.” Civil rights battles take place from the streets to Congress to the courts. Diversity and conscious people on the inside of institutions have historically made a difference said Leslie Proll, director of the Washington, D.C. office of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “Civil rights laws are only as strong as the judges who enforce them,” she said. “We need to get some African-American women nominated and confirmed. It’s very important that new people get nominated to take over the mantle.” Proll cited startling numbers. She said there are only 75 African-American judges on the district court benches and 50 of them are men. “I hope you will join in this fight,” she said. She said Obama's judicial nominees are often slowed by partisan politics in the U. S.  Senate. One of the reasons fair judges are needed is because of the disparate numbers of African-Americans and other people of color coming through the system, said Laura Murphy, director of the Washington Legislative Office of the American Civil Liberties Union. “From the moment that we enter the criminal justice system, African-Americans are treated differently…There is still rampant racial profiling in the United States,” Murphy said. For this reason, Murphy disagrees with Vice President Joe Biden who wants more security officers in public schools. “Those police officers in the schools are much more likely to send African-American and Latino students into the criminal justice system. I’m not just talking about teenagers, I’m talking about” elementary-aged children, she said. “I am very concerned because this is the first step in the school to prison pipeline …Once kids are brought into the criminal justice system, they get records, they are more likely not to graduate, they are more likely to get suspended. We’re talking about young people who often encounter police officers when they need guidance counselors or tutors. We’ve over-criminalized America. We have more people in prison than any nation in the world.” Murphy said current immigration laws are exacerbating the arrest rate of people of color as some go to jail “merely for crossing the border…The Department of Homeland Security spends more money on border security than the DEA, the FBI and the Justice Department combined. We are talking about billions of dollars…I’m appealing to taxpayers to look at how many people’s lives we’re ruining because they have to have encounters with the criminal justice system.” The civil rights leaders told the audience what must be done to heighten public involvement in those issues: Those recommendations included the following: Become more active in the community. “Don’t stand there and let this happen,” said Keenan. “We have been chosen to carry on this legacy, to carry on this work. I submit to you that it’s never done because once it’s done, we have to make sure it’s not undone.” She told a group of Maya Angelou Public Charter School students in the audience, “We need you all coming hard and strong with the biggest, baddest of everything you can bring because this fight must go on and we will not give up.” Get on the email list of civil rights organizations, including the ACLU, and make sure notices don’t go to the SPAM folder, said Murphy. As for influencing members of Congress, "Never underestimate the power of one visit or one call,” says Proll. “Your weighing in on the ground is really the most important thing. Call the local office.” Arnwine stressed the importance of remembering the enemies of justice and how they work. “Those of us who are driven by a vision of inclusion and diversity and love have got to realize that there are people who are equally driven by a vision of exclusion, privilege, racial superiority and other thoughts,” she said. “We can have an African-American president in the White House but at the same time have people trying to take our voting rights so you must be vigilant.”

Reality Check
By A. Peter Bailey

NEWS ANALYSIS

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - April 4, 2013 will be the 45^th Anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. It always puzzles me why so many of those who so vocally celebrate Dr. King’s birthday, let the historic day of assassination go by so quietly. I am cynical enough to believe that their quietness is another payment for having President Reagan sign a bill making his birthday a national holiday.

I am using this opportunity not only to remember April 4 as the day when the Civil Rights Movement was, for all practical purposes, shattered. But I am also using this opportunity to remember the 33 Blacks and seven Whites murdered by White supremacist/racist terrorists between May 7, 1955 and April 4, 1968.

They are: George Lee, Lamar Smith, Emmett Till, Mack Charles Parker, Herbert Lee, Medgar Evers, Roman Duckworth, Louis Allen, Paul Gulhard, Rev. Bruce Klunders, Henry Hezekiah Dee, Charles Eddie Moore, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Vernon Dahmer, Ben Chester White, Wharlest Jackson and Benjamin Brown were murdered in Mississippi.

Also, Willie Edmonds, William Louis Moore, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Virgil Lamar Ware, Jimmie Lee Jackson, Rev. James Reeb, Viola Gregg Liuozzo, Willie Wallace Brewster, Jonathan Daniels and Samuel Younge Jr. in Alabama.

Also, Earl Reese in Texas, Lemeul Penn in Georgia, O’Neal Moore and Clarence Tiggs Louisiana, and Samuel Hammond, Jr., Delano Middleton and Henry Smith in South Carolina. Nine of the Blacks slain were between 11 and 19 years of age. All these names are documented on the walls of the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala.

When those Black people who get some big time job or appointment or other recognition begin thanking people for their good fortune, they almost never take the time to thank those listed above and the many others who were brutalized, often by those who were supposed to be enforcing the law, who lost their jobs and saw their homes and places of business firebombed by white supremacist/racist terrorists. Instead of giving thanks to the warriors for equal rights, equal justice, and equal opportunity, too many of those who benefit from their sacrifices go before mostly White audiences and give the impression that they got their news-making job or appointment because they prayed and worked hard. They often leave the impression that things in this country changed because the Whites voluntarily decided that “We haven’t been doing right to our Black citizens. Now we are going to repent and do the right thing.”

That delusionary position is a bald-faced falsification of history and a supreme insult to those who put their lives on the line in the late 1950s and 1960s. April 4 is an important day in our history and should be a day to remember and pay tribute to Dr. King and the other warriors for daring to confront what can only be described as terrorism in several of the former Confederate states.

 

 

By Jacqueline Williams

Among a string of meetings with both Republicans and Democrats to discuss sequestration, President Barack Obama greets House leaders before a meeting with the House Democratic Caucus at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., March 14. Standing with the President, from left, are: Assistant Democratic Leader James “Jim” Clyburn, D-S.C.; Chairman Xavier Becerra, D-Calif.; Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y.; Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; Vice Chairman Joe Crowley, D-N.Y.; and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md. PHOTO: Pete Souza/The White House

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - With the sequestration in full effect, many students and educators are upset with the large budget cuts to education and lack of compromise in Washington.

“You always hear children are our future and how we must educate the younger generation, but I don’t see how the government expects us to do this if they are playing tug-of-war with them and their education,” said 42-year-old mother of a college junior at the University of California, Riverside, Roberta Martin.

Education is taking a big hit from the sequester, with approximately $3 billion being cut from education alone according to the National Education Association’s official website. Many education programs such as Head Start as well as after school programs for children will lose considerable amounts of funding. According to www.whitehouse.gov, the sequester will cause over 30,000 teachers and school faculty to lose their jobs.

“It’s a very scary thought because I cannot imagine or afford to lose my job. I never thought it would come to this because they’ve always found some way to figure everything out,” said 38-year-old Stephen Wright, a Corona, Calif. middle school teacher.

The country entered into this period of sequestration because Congress and the President failed to reach an agreement on how to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion. It is the result of a 2011 agreement that stated if an agreement was not met, automatic cuts would take place the first day of March. These spending cuts were originally constructed by Congress and President Obama to discourage its implementation and encourage compromise.

“The whole design of these arbitrary cuts was to make them so unattractive and unappealing that Democrats and Republicans would actually get together and find a good compromise of sensible cuts as well as closing tax loopholes and so forth. And so this was all designed to say we can't do these bad cuts; let’s do something smarter. That was the whole point of this so-called sequestration,” said President Obama according to www.whitehouse.gov.

With large cuts to defense, education, and many other areas, many people are frustrated with Congress and the president. “These cuts hurt everyone, it’s not just one area either, and it bothers me that the people that are most affected by it are those who really cannot afford to have anything else against them - people are struggling to get by,” said 21-year-old San Jose State University Junior,Vanessa Parks.

Students enrolled in colleges and universities are also upset with the sequestration state as it affects their tuition rates. “I can barely afford to pay for school now and it’s not easy getting loans, this sequester is just making it that much harder on me to be honest,” said 20-year-old Shaw University student Paul Schatz.

Students who are enrolled in school that are also enrolled in the military are affected by the sequester as well. There will be a decrease in the benefits received by those in uniform, including a cut in tuition assistance. This poses a large problem because many young people often join the military so they can get financial assistance for school.

“I joined the Navy so that I could go back to school and these tuition assistance cuts are upsetting, especially because many of us risk our lives every day and earn and deserve those benefits,” said 22-year-old Navy officer Chadwick Johnson.

Many are hoping that something is done quickly and a compromise is met in order to avert the sequester because of its harmful effects. Wright stated his faith in an end to the sequester, “I don’t think this will  go on too much longer, but only because I think the federal government will eventually understand the disgust the public feels toward it all and act to fix it quickly.”

"The State of Equality and Justice in America" is a 20-part series of columns written by an all-star list of contributors to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The contributors include: U. S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) LCCRUL 50th Anniversary Grand Marshal; Ms. Barbara Arnwine, President and Executive Director, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (LCCRUL); Mr. Charles Ogletree, Professor, Harvard University Law School/Director, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice; the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., President/CEO, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition; the Rev. Joseph Lowery, Co-founder, Southern Christian Leadership Conference; U. S. Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.); and 14 additional thought leaders and national advocates for equal justice.

Here's the 12th op-ed of the series:

Marc Morial

The State of Equality and Justice in America
By Marc Morial

"It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared." - Whitney M. Young

In 1963, more than a quarter-million people gathered in Washington, DC to march for jobs and equality. The Great March for Jobs and Freedom was a watershed moment in American history - birthing now-iconic speeches that voiced the hardships facing blacks as they sought a fair shot at an elusive dream.

As we fast-forward 50 years and reflect on the progress we've made toward economic equality, we meet the sobering truth that much has been achieved, but much more needs to be done. Some people use apparent proofs of progress - that Blacks are no longer barred from living, learning and earning where they want because of their race, not to mention the election and reelection of our first Black president - to conclude that Blacks in America have overcome.

However, a shiny veneer of progress cannot justify the elimination of affirmative action in education and employment; the roll-back of voting rights protections and relegation of this precious franchise to increasingly partisan legislatures; or a cut back on social investments that can help current and future generations thrive in a fast-changing economy.

Taken alone, our achievements could be hailed as good progress in the pursuit of full equality. But unfortunately, the African-American condition has only improved primarily within our own community. This means that economic disparities with whites persist and cast doubt on what we thought was meaningful change.

These disparities underscore the need to reinforce our fight for lasting economic empowerment and for policies driving development in under-resourced communities. For example, the National Urban League launched our ongoing "War on Unemployment" in 2011, which included the release of our 12-Point Plan: Putting Urban America back toWork. We expanded the program in January of this year with a ground-breaking endeavor, Jobs Rebuild America - a series of public/private investments totaling more than $70 million over the next five years.

Beyond each of us actively working toward solutions, our ongoing struggle cries out for the kind of coalition advocacy that drove many of the civil rights and economic victories in the 1960s. Between November 2012 and January 2013, I helped to organize a historic convening of civil rights, social justice, business and community leaders to identify and push for public policy priorities to drive economic recovery and rebirth for African-American and urban communities and all low-income and working-class Americans. This policy agenda was embodied in an official Communique that included specific recommendations with clearly defined objectives to move us forward as a community.

When I compare these recommendations with the demands made on that August afternoon in 1963, I am struck by how little has changed.

In 1963, as today, the most pressing demands centered on economic equality, educational opportunity and parity, and civil rights. But instead of fighting against discrimination in hiring or a $2 minimum wage, we're fighting for job training and wage equity. Instead of calling for school segregation to end, we're demanding an end to disparities in educational investment. Rather than calling for meaningful civil rights legislation, we're fighting to preserve those very rights our ancestors fought and died for and to retain the practical application of civil rights and equality through affirmative measures to achieve diversity in jobs and education.

Our experience since the Great March says that we must be vigilant in protecting our hard-won rights. To paraphrase William Ernest Henley's poem "Invictus," we must become masters of our own fate to fully realize the economic prosperity we demanded on that day in 1963.

If we are to honor Whitney M. Young, one of the unsung visionaries of the Great March and the Urban League's leader from 1961-1971, we must not only be prepared to seize opportunity when it comes, we must be committed to creating opportunity when it does not.

Marc Morial is President/CEO of the National Urban League. This article - the twelth of a 20-part series - is written in commemoration of the 50^th Anniversary of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The Lawyers' Committee is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to enlist the private bar's leadership and resources in combating racial discrimination and the resulting inequality of opportunity - work that continues to be vital today. For more information, please visit www.lawyerscommittee.org