August 26, 2018

 

Mourning Kofi Annan, Remembering Ron Walters

By Julianne Malveaux

 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Kofi Annan made his transition in August.  The seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, he worked up from the lower ranks (starting at age 24) of the international organization, to serve as head of peacekeeping operations, and four years into his term as UN Secretary-General, earning the Nobel Peace Prize.  Annan, born in the kente-weaving province of Kumasi, Ghana, was the first African to lead the United Nations.  After leading the UN for a decade, he continued to serve the world in a peacekeeping role through his foundation and in a leadership role in the Elders, a peacekeeping group.

 

Kofi Annan’s contributions to the United Nations are twofold, in my opinion.  First, he was committed to peace, and to the UN’s peacekeeping role.  He saw human rights as more important than “state sovereignty” and felt that the UN had a role in maintaining citizen rights in the face of state brutality.  To be sure, he failed to recognize the threat to human rights in Rwanda (as did the Clinton administration and the rest of the world).  Still, he expanded the role of the United Nations by asserting the importance of human rights.

 

Kofi Annan’s second significant contribution was his expanded definition of human rights, which included the fight against global poverty, global warming and AIDS.  In other words, he felt that human rights included the right for us all to live in a better world, and he focused on the ways that predatory global capitalism shaped the ways many in the developing world lived.  Annan, the consummate diplomat, would not use the same[ words that I have.  But he was passionate in advancing the vision of global politics that was both peaceful and expansive.

 

In these moments after his transition, African Americans must celebrate the legacy of Kofi Annan.  We must commemorate an African man with a global vision by widening our lens to acknowledge our global view of, in the words of the late Dr. Ron Walters (the dean of African American political science) "foreign policy justice".  Walters decried inconsistencies in US foreign policy, in the many ways that some nations were favored and others were not, with Israel often having too preferred a status compared to Palestinian nations , as well as the uneven ways our country chose to intervene in country conflicts.  Through the lens of Walters, too little conversation about foreign policy justice took place, and African Americans were too often missing when these conversations took place.

 

 Walters was among those who felt that African American people needed to be more fully involved in the development of US foreign policy, not only around Africa but in general.  He was a trusted advisor to Rev. Jesse Jackson, a longtime political science professor at Howard University (and later at the University of Maryland), and a prolific writer and speaker.  He embraced the legacy of Kofi Annan and the vision of Afroglobalism.  When we embrace Annan, we also recognize the many ways that Dr. Ron Walters was pivotal in lifting awareness of African American people around global issues.

 

 Both Annan and Walters were born in 1938, both would have turned 80 this year (Walters made his transition in 2010).  Both provided a foundation of critical thinking around foreign policy issues and foreign policy justice.  Thanks to Walters, African Americans   embraced foreign policy issues more closely and critically.  Thanks to Kofi Annan, the United Nations began to look at human rights more globally.

 

 I do not hesitate to celebrate the legacy of Kofi Annan, a legacy that the Nobel Prize  committee was "an excellent representative of the United Nations and probably the most effective secretary-general in its history."  At the same time, when I celebrate Annan’s legacy, I remember the legacy of Dr. Ron Walters, the civil rights activist (leading sit-ins in his hometown of Wichita, Kansas), iconic political science professor, and pioneering political activist and advisor to leaders, and submit that his legacy should motivate African Americans to be more fully committed to foreign policy justice.  Two men, Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Professor Ron Walters, embraced the vision of a safe, peaceful, equitable world and must be celebrated for it.  Their legacy is in contrast to US leadership where our 45^th President sows dissent and disparages the countries Annan and Walters so loved as “shithole” countries.

 

 Julianne Malveaux is an author and economist. Her latest book “Are We Better Off? Race, Obama and Public Policy” is available via www.amazon.com for booking, wholesale inquiries or for more info visit www.juliannemalveaux.com

August 20, 2018

Aretha Franklin the Legendary Singer Called the 'Queen of Soul', Will Be Buried August 31 in Detroit
She Will Lie in Repose August 28th and 29th
By Frederick H. Lowe

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Aretha Franklin, who died last week, will lie in repose August 28th and 29th at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit.

The public will be able to view her body in an open casket each of those days from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. A private funeral for family and friends will  be held 10:00 a.m. on August 31 at Greater Grace Temple, a 4,000-member church in Detroit.  The funerals for Rosa Parks and Levi Stubs of the singing group the “Four Tops” were held at Greater Grace.

The undisputed “Queen of Soul,” whose recordings dominated the charts for 40 years, died August 16 at her home in Detroit from pancreatic cancer. Publicist Gwendolyn Quinn told The Associated Press that Franklin passed away Thursday at 9:50 a.m.

“Franklin’s official cause of death was due to advanced pancreatic cancer of the neuroendocrine type," said her oncologist, Dr. Philip Phillips of Karmanos Cancer Institute” in Detroit.

She sang classics “I Say a Little Prayer,” “Respect,” “Think”, I  Never Loved a Man The Way I Loved You”,  “Do Right Woman” and “Soul Serenade.” She won 18 Grammy Awards and in 1987, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2009, Franklin sang at President Barack Obama’s first inauguration.

Her death had been expected. She had canceled concerts and friends and relatives had visited her at home where she was undergoing hospice care. Pancreatic cancer is an aggressive form of cancer that develops in the tissues of the pancreas. Located in the abdomen behind the lower part of the stomach, the pancreas aids in digestion. Incidences of pancreatic cancer are higher among Blacks compared to Whites, but the cancer is misunderstood because of its high death rates, according to the book “Minorities and Cancer.” The Sol Goldman Pancreatic Cancer Research Center at Johns Hopkins Medicine reported the incidence rate for pancreatic cancer among Blacks is 30 percent to 70 percent higher than other racial groups in America.

Not only is the incidence rate of pancreatic cancer higher among African-Americans, they also have the poorest survival rates because their cancer is often diagnosed at more advanced stages.Cigarette smoking, growing older, diabetes and obesity increase the risk of pancreatic cancer. Some 37.1 percent of Black men and 56.6 percent of Black women are obese, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation’s largest public health philanthropy.

Aug. 22, 2018

Trump World Finally Crumbling
By Hazel Trice Edney

 

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort


Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – For the first time since his election, the world of President Donald Trump appears to be actually crumbling.

In one day, Thursday, August 21, his former lawyer Michael Cohen confessed that he conspired “in coordination” with Trump to pay two women to keep quiet about their affairs with Trump. In the plea, entered at the Manhattan federal courthouse, said Trump directed him to break the law in order to influence the 2016 election. Cohen says he did so, "in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office," meaning Donald Trump.

Cohen also pled guilty to violating eight laws pertaining to bank, tax evasion and campaign finance, including the payoffs of the women.

Meanwhile, in a Northern Virginia federal courthouse, after a jury deliberated the fourth day, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was found guilty of eight of 18 charges against him. The eight convictions include filing five false tax returns; not disclosing a foreign bank account; and two instances of bank fraud in order to obtain a combined 4.4 million in loans from two banks. The jury was deadlocked on 10 other counts. U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, prosecutors and defense lawyers will discuss the possibility of a retrial on those counts.

The Manafort verdict was announced just before the Cohen plea deal. At Trice Edney deadline, the double news blasts, along with analysis, had only begun to permeate the airwaves and social media. The news stories appear to represent the undoing of an administration that has heretofore seemed immune to political damage regardless of how egregious the offense - including Trump's constant racial insults and dog whistles to White supremacists. 

So far, Trump’s responses to the announcements of the two felony convictions have leaned toward his reframe that the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has still not turned up any Russian collusion, the basis for the original investigation. But the investigation now continues as members of Congress watch closely. As mid-term elections draw closer, a Democratic majority in the House could spell certain impeachment for the President if there is sufficient evidence of criminal activity on his part.

Trump said, “This is a witch hunt that ends in disgrace.”

Aug. 15, 2018

Trump’s Hateful Public Demeanor Continues - Even After Private White House Meeting With Black Pastors
AME Bishops Organize Ecumenical Gathering of Church Leaders and Parishioners in ‘Call to Conscience Day of Action’ Sept. 6

By Hazel Trice Edney

Bishop Reginald Jackson is issuing a "Call to Conscience" for the Black Church.

Bishop Harry Jackson was among the Black pastors who met with President Trump Aug. 1. He says he is not called to publicly criticize Trump.

Pastor Jamal-Harrison Bryant says insider pastors are apparently having no impact on Trump's vitriolic conduct.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Only two days after President Donald Trump met with nearly two dozen predominately Black pastors, he tweeted yet another racially charged message calling CNN news anchor Don Lemon the “dumbest man on television”. In that same tweet, he insulted the intelligence of basketball star Lebron James, saying Lemon “made Labron look smart, which isn’t easy to do.”

In yet another angry tweet days later, he called his former White House assistant Omarosa Manigault Newman a “crazed, crying low life” and a “dog” amidst her release of taped White House conversations as promotion for her new book.

This most recent public vitriole  – despite  private meetings with clergy and advisors – have added to a long list of equally unsavory tweets the President has unleashed – many of which appear to be racist at the core. What’s more, First Lady Melania Trump has unveiled a platform, “Be Best”, which in part, campaigns against cyberbullying.

He has also verbally or electronically portrayed the media as the enemy of the people, African nations as “shithole” countries; NFL players as sons of bitches; Congresswoman Maxine Waters as a person with a “very low eye Q” and President Obama as establishing "stupied" policies. 

These racial stereotypes - attempting to denigrate the intellect of Black people - and other obscenities and absurdities are among the reasons that Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, president of the Council of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), is organizing an ecumenical “Call to Conscience: Day of Action”, set for Lafayette Park across from the White House at 10 am Sept 6.

“We are calling pastors, congregants, and citizens from across the country to join us in Washington DC on September 5th and 6th, as we call the nation to conscience. Additionally, Sunday, September 2nd is designated as ‘Social Justice Sunday.’ We are asking every pastor to preach a sermon related to ‘social Justice’,” Jackson says in a statement. “There are some who think the Black Church is weak and has little strength or influence. This thinking is incorrect. We are at war, and we call all soldiers to active duty.”

The demonstration was largely inspired by the news that almost two dozen Black pastors, led by Trump's spiritual advisor, Paula White, met with Trump at the White House Aug. 1, saying they had been invited to discuss criminal justice issues, including prison reform and other urban issues. But the meeting appeared to be little more than a photo op.

Bishop Harry Jackson, pastor of the Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Md., was among those who attended the meeting. But, he says much of what was reported about the meeting was all wrong.

The White House only released an approximately 30 minute video from the meeting, showing the pastors introducing themselves and praising the president as if his vitriolic public behavior did not exist. But, Bishop Harry Jackson said there was a substantive meeting after the introductions. That meeting, he said, lasted approximately two and a half hours with Trump remaining in the meeting for as much as 90 minutes.

“It went on for at least two hours with others – the criminal justice reform people, the outreach people, and his staffers in the room with us. And we’re planning to have some ongoing dialog,” Bishop Harry Jackson said. He said he has maintained ongoing communications with the President about his urban agenda.

“I’ve been talking with the president for 15 months plus and with Jared Kushner about prison reform. So, the presupposition that this was just a photo op and you just ushered these Black guys in was not true,” he said.

But he conceded that no one in the Aug. 1 meeting brought up the destructiveness of Trump’s public conduct.

“So, yes. I think the concern is valid. Is anybody saying anything to the president?” Bishop Harry Jackson answered that question by noting that although he has not publicly criticized the president, that doesn’t mean he has not spoken to him behind closed doors.

Also, when violence broke out in Charlottesville last year and Trump went on television calling White supremacists as “very fine people”, Jackson said he and others did pull Trump's coat.

“I personally talked with the president a few days after Charlottesville - about race - along with 15 religious leaders, and about how he could project himself better.”

Yet, a year later, some might argue that the daily tweets still coming from the President might need to be screened for suitability for children - and some adults.

“My question to Harry Jackson would be whatever you told him privately, how has it transformed him publicly?” asked the Rev. Jamal-Harrison Bryant, pastor of the Empowerment Temple AME Church in Baltimore, also an organizer of the Sept. 6 Call to Conscience. “Because whatever he said to him privately on Wednesday, on Friday he called [Don Lemon] the dumbest man … What is their prophetic impact? They don’t have any prophetic impact. The Bible says, ‘By their fruits shall you know them.’ So with all of that access and insight, we have seen no transformation?”

Both Bryant and Bishop Harry Jackson acknowledged that they were planning to sit down and meet with each other this week as a video of Bryant strongly criticizing the pastors is still circulating on social media.

Bryant says he has great respect for Bishop Harry Jackson as a committed Republican.

“He asked if we can get together. We are supposed to be meeting next week, but the meeting is his. I think we need some Black Republicans to give us a larger world view so that we’re not myopic because in many ways the Democratic Party has taken us for granted and has not delivered. So, I think that we need somebody on the other side of the aisle,”  Bryant said. “If nothing else; then we need to talk, have dialogue and discussion.”

But the rising up of the Black church to publicly speak truth to power is crucial, Bryant said.

“I just want to underscore the importance of clergy coming Sept. 6. That it’s not just an AME call but all of us who are conscience of what’s taking place in our community and want their voices heard and felt. It’s not just for clergy but for all of us, including our Congregants. And I think it’s a critical moment for the Black church.”

As he prepares to lead the “Call to Conscience – Day of Action”, Bishop Reginald Jackson says the White House and the Black pastors’ failure to report any substantive part of the meeting was a disservice to the community.

“My only concern is the ones who went to the White House, in fact, when they came out of the meeting, why didn’t they say to us that we discussed this or raised our objections to this or disputed him on that?” Jackson questioned.

A release on the “Call to Conscience” concludes:

“Today the Black Church is again called to be ‘the conscience of the nation.’ To speak to the nation about the rightness or wrongness of its policies and behavior. This is particularly important when the so called, 'Evangelical Christians' appear to be the dominant voice for people of faith in this nation, supporting the nation's leader who spouts racism, sexism, and repeatedly lies to the nation. They appear to be the dominant voice of people of faith in the nation, because the Black Church has largely been silent.

“It is time for the Black Church to speak, our congregations and the nation need to hear us. Therefore, Black denominational and faith leaders have scheduled a ‘Call to Conscience - Day of Action’ for September 5th and 6th in Washington DC, the nation's capital. It is not only time for us to say something, we must do something. We must fight against, "spiritual wickedness in high places."

Call to Conscience Schedule

• Sept. 2: Social Justice Sunday: Sunday, September 2nd is designated as "Social Justice Sunday." We are asking every pastor to preach a sermon related to "social Justice."

• Wednesday, Sept. 5^th: Reid Temple AME Church, 11400 Glenn Dale Blvd, Glenn Dale, Md.
  9AM - Strategic Planning Session for Bishops, Denominational Leaders, Pastors, Attendees
  12:30PM - Lunch - Reid Temple AME Church
  2PM - Leaders Meet with Congressional Leadership - Pastors, Laity visit their Congressional Members offices
  7PM - Worship Service - Reid Temple AME Church, 11400 Glenn Dale Blvd, Glenn Dale, Md. 

• Thursday, September 6^th: 

9AM - Assemble, Lafayette Park - Across from White House

10AM - "Call to Conscience - Day of Action" - Lafayette Park north of the White House on H Street between 15th and 17th Streets, NW

• More information: (770)-220-1770