April 15, 2018

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Winnie Madikizela Mandela has been laid to rest and honored at a state funeral in South Africa. To many, she was loved as the “mother of the nation” even in her final days.

When the roll is called of freedom fighters who changed the world and made it better, the name Winnie Mandela will rank near the top of the list. She was the fourth of eight children born to two teachers in what is now Eastern Cape Province in South Africa. Her Xhosa name was Nomzamo (She who tries).

Despite all the obstacles of apartheid, she graduated from college and moved to Johannesburg as the city’s first black social worker. Her research on the high infant mortality rate in a black township was central to her politicization.

At the age of 22, she met and married a young lawyer and anti-apartheid activist, Nelson Mandela. They had two daughters together before he was sentenced to Robben Island, where he was kept for the next 27 years. Even before Mandela was locked away, she was active in the anti-apartheid movement, jailed while pregnant for two weeks for participating in a women’s protest against apartheid. With Mandela in jail and other leaders exiled or jailed, Winnie Mandela became the public face and voice of the anti-apartheid movement. She had children to raise and a nation to help emancipate.

Few outside of South African knew much about the ANC or Nelson Mandela or Robben Island where he was locked away out of sight. This is before cell phones, social media or cable networks. For 27 years, she was his voice, his social media, his Facebook, spreading the word, keeping the faith. She faced death threats, house arrest, torture, internal exile, banishment, isolation and government slander. She took the hits within and without. But she never bowed. She never surrendered.

Upon her death, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa paid public tribute to her sacrifice and leadership: “For many years, she bore the brunt of the senseless brutality of the apartheid state with stoicism and fortitude. Despite the hardship, she faced she never doubted that the struggle for freedom and democracy would triumph and succeed.” I will never forget the Sunday morning when she left Robben Island with Nelson Mandela, even as he forgave the prison guards that had kept them apart.

“The wife of a freedom fighter is often like a widow, even when her husband is not in prison,” Mandela wrote. And he added: “Winnie gave me cause for hope. I felt as though I had a new and second chance at life. My love for her gave me the added strength for the struggles that lay ahead.”

Winnie Mandela was always admired and loved by the people she helped to free. She served in parliament from 1994 to 2003, on the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress and was the head of its Women’s League. Winnie and I talked for many hours about liberation and life, hopes and dreams in South Africa, Europe and the United States. One of the last times I saw her was in Selma, Ala. She had traveled to that small, historic city to join in honoring the struggle against apartheid in America.

The punishment she suffered took a brutal toll physically and psychologically. She and Mandela divorced a few years after his release, and as she later regretted, in the midst of the struggle, “things went terribly wrong.” In 2003, after being convicted for her misdeeds, she resigned from the parliament and the ANC Executive Committee.

Her political career seemed finished. But she internalized her pain, paid for her mistakes and kept moving forward. She was knocked down, but she always got up. She knew the ground is no place for a champion. The love and respect of her people never left her. In 2009, the ANC, which had condemned her earlier misdeeds, listed her near the top of their election list, a true testament to her enduring popularity.

South African apartheid was a remorseless system of repression, as a small white minority brutalized an African majority. Standing up to that system took immense courage and required great sacrifice. By her stripes, many are healed and apartheid is behind us. She lived the first 50 years of her life under a violent racial apartheid system and now she goes on to live in eternal peace. Now she stands with the righteous judge of all nations and all people.

For years, Nelson Mandela and the ANC were labeled terrorists by a U.S. government that saw the apartheid government as its ally. Against those odds, Winnie Mandela stood tall. She fought for freedom and demanded respect. I am proud to join with millions across the world in paying her that respect.

April 9, 2018

Reality Check
Positive Black Folks in Action
By A. Peter Bailey

 (TriceEdneyWire.com) - Sometimes, when witnessing the basic apathy of too many Black folks in this country, it is tempting to throw one’s hands in the air and say, “Forget it.”

Fortunately, there are numerous Black folks who are involved with and contributing to our economic, cultural and political interests. They are most definitely positive Black folks in action. They are the kind of people the great journalist/historian, Lerone Bennett Jr., was referring to when he wrote, “Given the way we were forced to live in this society, the miracle is not that so many families are broken, but that so many are still together. That so many Black fathers are still at home. That so many Black mothers are still raising good children. It is the incredible toughness and resilience in Black people that gives me hope.”

Those tough and resilient positive Black folks in action include the following:

1. James Clingman and Bill Reid whose writings about economic affairs regularly warn us that we are not making maximum or even minimum use of our individual and collective economic resources. The basis of their positions is that until we do so, we will not empower ourselves in any real way.
2. Joomay Odongo, who is a pivotal figure with the emerging, visionary Pan African Federalist Movement. It is based on the proposition that only the continent of Africa, assisted by Africans in the diaspora, can effectively negotiate with the continent of North America (aka USA) or the sub-continent of China. Anything else is basically just blowing smoke.
3. The Brothers and Sisters who founded and support the Ujamaa School in Northwest Washington, D.C. Some of their students recently participated in a tribute to Carter G. Woodson. Their drumming was both very moving and very inspirational. The response to the young drummers and the other students in attendance clearly showed the value of an Afrocentric education.
4. Haile Geroma, who produced and directed the masterpiece film, “Sankofa.” What made Haile’s film so important and unique was its focus on the enslavers’ attacks on the minds of African people as well as the physical attacks. His Sankofa Café is an absolute cultural haven for serious people of African descent from throughout the world.
5. Shirikiana Aina who produced and directed the engrossing and invaluable film, “Footprints of Pan Africanism.” The film shows Pan Africanism in action by featuring black folks from the continent of North America who actually moved to Africa in the late 1950s and 1960s to actually participate in its emergence from European colonialism.
6. Dr. Indira Etwaroo who is executive director of the Billie Holiday Theatre in Brooklyn, New York. She has made that space into a compelling center where one can receive a total Black cultural experience. In January, she provided that experience for over 30 black theatre and dance students from a dozen colleges and universities.
7. Thomas Muhammad, whose documentary, “Malcolm X: Impact on the Black Power Movement,” provides an opportunity to learn more about Brother Malcolm from primary sources such as Earl Grant, one of his top aides who knew him better than anyone else still around; Calvin and Eleanor Sinnett, whom Brother Malcolm called the night before he was assassinated and Joanne Bland, who as an 11-year old marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on Bloody Sunday and who heard Brother Malcolm speak in Brown’s Chapel, the headquarters for the civil rights cause in Selma.
8. The Rev. Howard-John Wesley, the pastor of historic Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia. His is noted for delivering modern-day Bible-based sermons with an old school style. The compelling young pastor is, in every sense of the word, a communicator par excellence.
9. The Howard University Students who, instead of heading to a beach or other hot spots during spring break, participated in the Alternative Spring Break Project. They travelled to numerous cities and towns in the United States, Haiti and Puerto Rico to assist people in need. That was a righteous move.

A quote attributed to Nelson Mandela says “A good head and a good heart are a formidable combination.” The tough and resilient positive black folks in action cited above have that formidable combination.

My plan is to do one such column in each quarter in 2018. If a reader wants to submit a candidate, please send me the name and accomplishment.

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A. Peter Bailey, whose latest book is Witnessing Brother Malcolm X, the Master Teacher, can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

April 9, 2018

Gentrification Threats Against Housing and Health in the U. S. Capital is a Microcosm for the Nation
By Barrington M. Salmon

Barry Farm resident Detrice Belt. PHOTO: Miriam Machado-Luces

Sign in window of Barry Farm resident. PHOTO: Miriam Machado-Luces

Dominic Moulden, resource organizer, ONE DC. PHOTO: Miriam Machado-Luces

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - By many measures, the revitalization of neighborhoods across Washington, D.C. has been a windfall for the city. Fueled by higher tax revenues and property values, the city is awash in construction cranes, new libraries, restaurants and retail, and more than 70 miles of bike lanes—all welcomed signs of gentrification in the nation’s capital.

Lost in the city’s waves of new amenities and newer, more affluent inhabitants, are the long-time Washingtonians who have been pushed out or who are fighting to stay in the city.

Shirley Williams is one of those residents, who decided to fight. For Williams, that fight came with debilitating consequences.

Williams said that she developed diabetes a year after she and fellow residents were displaced, for eight years, from their 54-unit garden-style apartment complex at 7th and Q Streets in the Shaw neighborhood. She has since returned. Now, there’s a new apartment building at 7th and Q named Jefferson Marketplace; an upscale pet store, a Thai restaurant and a French wine bar are located on the street level. Like her old neighborhood, Williams said that she’s not the same either.

Williams connects many of her health problems to the uncertainty of her housing situation, a rootlessness that has spanned nearly a decade.

“I’m on dialysis now; I can hardly get around,” said Williams, a mother of three grown children. “I wasn’t weak. I could walk down to those ONE DC meetings, but I can’t do that anymore. I’m pretty sure it affected my health; I lost my eyesight…can’t see anything anymore.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the displacement associated with gentrification around the nation has many health implications that contribute to disparities among special populations, including the poor, women, children, the elderly, and members of racial/ethnic minority groups.

“These special populations are at increased risk for the negative consequences of gentrification,” the CDC said. “Studies indicate that vulnerable populations typically have shorter life expectancy; higher cancer rates; more birth defects; greater infant mortality; and higher incidence of asthma, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.”

Dominic Moulden, a veteran activist, housing advocate and resource organizer for Organizing Neighborhood Equity (ONE DC), knows Williams well and spoke of her challenges and those faced by thousands of other residents who have been displaced by rising housing costs or who have decided to fight for their homes in court and on the streets. ONE DC is a grassroots organization that advocates on behalf of residents who are in danger of losing their homes.

Moulden said that he’s watched the city change in significant and seemingly all-encompassing ways, usually to the disadvantage of native Washingtonians.

“I’ve been here for 32 years and I organized on 14th and U Street in the ‘90s. If we talked then, I could have told you what was going to happen in every quadrant,” he said. “Our focus is on displacement—the economics of land and housing impact health and wellness, as people are moved around this chessboard.”

Moulden said that Williams’ story of declining health during a prolonged housing battle, is a familiar one.

“I’ve seen people get sick and die in the years [after they were] forced out of their homes and that includes mental health issues,” Moulden said.

In the mid-90s, according to Census data, the district had a population of 528,000 and by 2015, the population had climbed to 681,170. Washington has seen a net population gain of more than 70,000 people since the 2010 Census and more than 100,000 residents since the 2000 Census. In the mid-1990s, the city boasted a 72 percent Black population and in 2016, according to the Census, it now stands at 48 percent. To the chagrin of the city’s Black residents, “The Chocolate City,” has become a vanilla swirl, replete with dog parks, street cars, bike lanes and cobbled streets as physical evidence of the changing demographics.

Washington, D.C is one of the most expensive cities to live in anywhere in the United States. Million-dollar homes are commonplace in areas of the city like Kalorama and Congress Heights and it’s fairly certain that buyers would have to ante up hundreds of thousands for a home, apartment or townhouse. In 2015, the median household income in Washington, D.C. was $75,628, a 5.55 percent growth from the previous year.

Statistics from the U.S. Census, a combination of studies conducted and compiled by researchers at Georgetown University and an investigative series centering on gentrification by the nonprofit, independent news organization Truthout, estimates that more than 50,000 D.C. residents have fled the city, as housing costs spiraled out of reach. Washington has the second highest rents in the country and more than 50 percent of the city’s affordable housing stock has vanished since 2009.

Researchers, policymakers and physicians have only begun to scratch the surface of the effects of gentrification on residents who have lost their homes or those who refuse to leave their neighborhoods, who have chosen, instead, to do battle with wealthy landlords, real estate developers and newcomers. A number of reports and studies over the past year detail the scope and depth of the health effects caused by the dismantling of low- and middle-income neighborhoods and the displacement of residents, some of whom have lived in Washington for decades.

Maurice Jackson, a history professor at Georgetown University and the chairman of the DC Commission on African American Affairs and Christopher King, an assistant professor at the university’s School of Nursing and Health Studies (NHS), produced a report in 2016 that found that gentrification has had a major impact on the health and welfare of the city’s African American population.

Researchers reported that many of Washington’s long-time, Black residents, who remain in the city, have experienced increased stress and financial hardship, as the cost of living continues to rise.

King said that this form of “survival stress” can increase risks for or exacerbate chronic disease conditions.

“Native Washingtonians also recognize how their communities are changing, and that results in a loss of cultural identity,” King said, noting that some African Americans have been forced to leave the area even though their families have lived in the city for generations. “This dynamic can have a profound effect on mental health and the civic engagement [of city residents].”

Gentrification in Washington has produced tension and lingering resentment between Black and White residents—old and new.

Long-time residents have complained about newcomers who have lobbied to change the names of old neighborhoods, called the police to harass families sitting on their own stoops, and pushed city officials to ramp up parking enforcement, ticketing and towing churchgoers double-parked on Sundays—a custom in D.C. that has spanned generations. The stress and trauma associated with the city’s very real demographic and cultural shifts, not only affect where people live, but also how Washingtonians are living.

One area of particular concern to researchers and those in the medical community is the relationship between toxic stress and displacement. Experts like Amani Nuru-Jeter, a social epidemiologist at the University of California at Berkeley are studying the impact of stress on health disparities and outcomes. While Nuru-Jeter, Dr. Roberto Montenegro and other researchers are looking at the effects of racism and discrimination on the bodies of Blacks and Latinos, others are tying displacement to toxic stress, which many believe, is likely a precursor to a range of diseases that could afflict those who are being pushed out of the city or have already left.

Studies have connected a number of maladies to toxic stress, such as mental illness, substance abuse and behavioral problems, cancer, obesity, diabetes, auto-immune diseases, asthma, high blood pressure and heart disease, kidney disease, and gastro-intestinal problems.

Detrice Belt, a 33-year-old native Washingtonian and resident of Barry Farm, a public housing complex in Southeast, Washington, D.C. has been engaged in a six-year battle to stay in the community where she has lived for 20 years. She lives with her nine-year-old daughter, two pit bull terriers and a turtle. Belt vowed that she’s not leaving.

“Housing is a big issue in D.C. Right now, current residents are moving out,” said Belt, a licensed dental assistant who’s also the chair of the Barry Farm Tenants’ Association. “This property has [over] 400 units, but now there are about 100 residents left. People are in shelters, some are in other public housing projects, scattered.”

Belt continued: “These [apartments] are bad, but not so bad that they have to be demolished. We want redevelopment, but we want the developer to do it while [we’re] here. They told me about the noise; that my lights may be cut off and other things, but I’m not moving, whatever comes.”

Barry Farm, located east of the Anacostia River—a natural divider between the city’s visible progress and neighborhoods of concentrated poverty—has been targeted by the DC Housing Authority and developers who seek to have the 432 public housing units demolished; in its place, developers want to build a 1,400-unit, multi-phase $400 million mixed-income housing. The plan is part of the city’s New Communities Initiative, a public-private urban revitalization partnership modeled after the federal government’s Hope VI program.

According to the Washington City Paper, in 2017, a group of Barry Farm residents and housing advocacy organization, Empower D.C., filed a 65-page, class-action lawsuit against the DC Housing Authority (DCHA), which manages the property, as well as its two private developer partners, A&R Development Corp. and nonprofit Preservation of Affordable Housing Inc.

Belt said that one of her great fears is that neither the DC Housing Authority nor the developers have given the remaining residents a written guarantee that they can return when the property is redeveloped. And the past is prologue, she said, because once public housing residents are displaced, few ever return.

“They changed the language from ‘guaranteed return’ to an ‘opportunity to return.’ Despite our concerns and questions, this is a done deal,” she said. “I’ve been going to redevelopment meetings for the past six years. I’ve been trying to hear the other side. I told councilmembers that people are stressed and don’t know their rights.”

Belt said that her ordeal has left her and other Barry Farm residents stressed out, worried and fearful of what the future holds.

“They have been using scare tactics, like putting up a notice on my door about my dogs,” Belt said. “Children’s Protective Services has been called on people here, the Department of Health on others. I was born and raised here. I’m fighting back. I’m not moving.”

This article was published as a part of a journalism project for the University of Southern California Center for Health Journalism’s National Fellowship. Follow Barrington on Twitter @bsalmondc.