To Be Equal 

Razor-Thin Election Results Show the Importance of Voting
By Marc H. Morial

 (TriceEdneyWire.com) - “Eight days after Bloody Sunday, President Lyndon Johnson spoke to a joint session of the Congress and made one of the most meaningful speeches any American president had made in modern time on the whole question of voting rights and introduced the Voting Rights Act. And at one point in the speech, before President Johnson concluded the speech, he said, ‘and we shall overcome.’ I looked at Dr. King. Tears came down his face. And we all cried a little to hear President Johnson say, ‘and we shall overcome.’ And he said to me and to others in the room, we will make it from Selma to Montgomery, and the Voting Rights Act will be passed.” – U.S. Rep. John Lewis

As the nation this month marks the 53rd anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights marches, the nation’s attention was riveted to a special election to fill Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional district, widely seen as a bellweather for the upcoming Congressional elections in November.

The buzz around the Pennsylvania race centered on the possibility of a solidly-Republican district flipping into Democratic hands. But as a civil rights organization staunchly committed to defending voting rights, we were much more interested in the voter turnout.

In the last midterm election for Pennsylvania’s 18th district, about 166 thousand people voted. In this year’s special election, more than 228 thousand people voted – an increase of about 37 percent. And the margin of victory there was less than one half of one percentage point.

Pennsylvania was seen as one of three states where a razor-thin margin decided the Presidential race in 2016. It’s also a state where a strict voter ID law, passed in 2012 as a deliberate effort to reduce turnout among people of color, was struck down by a federal court.

Despite the court’s action, voters in Pennsylvania reported they were wrongly asked for photo identification by poll workers in the 2016 election.

With the future of the nation dependent upon extremely thin margins like those in Pennsylvania, communities of color must remain vigilant. In 2016, 14 states had new voting restrictions in place for the first time in a presidential election. In 2017, seven other states added even more restrictions.

The unexpected competitiveness in the Pennsylvania race is sure to spark interest in an upcoming special election in Arizona, in a district where one-party dominance was seen as so insurmountable, Democrats didn’t even field a candidate in the last two elections.  Arizona does have a strict voter ID requirement in place and for years required proof of citizenship, until the Supreme Court struck down that provision.

The National Urban League is part of the national non-partisan Election Protection coalition, formed to ensure that all voters have an equal opportunity to participate in the political process.

Election Protection focuses on the voter - not on the political horse race - and provides guidance, information and help to any American, regardless of who that voter is casting a ballot for.

Deadlines to register to vote in this year’s congressional elections are fast approaching. Call or log onto 866OURVOTE.org for help with registering, finding your polling place, voting by absentee ballot, or to volunteer.

Marc Morial is President/CEO of the National Urban League.

March 18, 2018

Natalie Cofield: The Living Walker Legacy

By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) Nine years ago, when she was just 26, Natalie Cofield was looking for a mentor.  A young woman with entrepreneurship hard-wired into her spirit, she was discouraged that many did not take her seriously and disheartened that she could not make the connections she needed to further her entrepreneurial mission.  So she started reading biographies of businesswomen hoping to read up on the inspiration on the page that she could not find in real life.

Madame C.J. Walker jumped off the page for Natalie, and she found a kindred spirit.  Few names are more lauded in Black Women’s History than that of Madame CJ Walker.  She was the first African American woman millionaire, it is said.  The first to create a multi-level marketing platform.  The woman who used herbs, hair knowledge, and a hot comb to create an empire.  The woman who funded civil rights activity, and also boldly admonished the men of her era for their exclusionary attitudes. 

Because many of her eras dismissed her as a “mere” hairdresser, her business success did not get the attention it deserved.  Thus, she disrupted Booker T. Washington's National Negro Business League Convention in 1912 by demanding the microphone.  She boldly told the gathered men that she “promoted myself” from the washtub to the kitchen to manufacturing.  “I have built my own factory on my own ground,” she told the National Negro Business League.  Natalie Cofield could not have found more fitting inspiration.

Natalie Madeira Cofield founded Walker’s Legacy (https://www.walkerslegacy.com to fill the gap she found when she looked for mentors and connections.  It started as a quarterly lecture series and has evolved to “a digital platform for the professional and entrepreneurial multicultural woman. We exist to inspire, equip, and engage through thought-provoking content, educational programming, and a global community.”  The for-profit platform is the wave of the future, as imagined by a millennial businesswoman who is committed, in the words of the late Ron Brown, to “doing well and doing good.”

Along the way, Cofield has attracted the strong support of established business leaders and thinkers, and especially the endorsement of A’lelia Bundles, the great-great-granddaughter of Madame C.J. Walker, her biographer and the keeper of the Walker flame, which she shares with Natalie.  “Every step of the way she has impressed me with her ability to organize, ramp things up, create partnerships.  Every step of the way as she has tried to expand, she has met my expectations.”

Marie Johns, former Deputy Administrator of the Small Business Administration met Natalie when she was leading the Austin Black Chamber of Commerce.  “Austin was hardly a hotbed of Black Business activity,” said Johns, “but Natalie impressed me with her energy and her acumen.”

She was “a standout” as a Black Chamber exec, Johns recalls.  She expects Natalie to be a “transformative leader who will build the infrastructure to provide Black businesswomen with their rightful place in the economy. Like A’lelia Bundles, Marie Johns is an Indianapolis native who grew up appreciating Madame C.J. Walker’s legacy.  But like Cofield and Bundles, Johns places the legacy in a contemporary context.  “Black women open businesses more rapidly than other groups,” the Obama appointee shared.  “We need the kinds of support that organizations like Walker’s Legacy provides.”

A quick peek at the Walker’s Legacy website makes it clear that Natalie Cofield is building a Black business women’s community.  The organization, which has grown from a one-person operation to four full-time employees, a number of consultants, and directors in Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, New York, Houston, and other cities.  The website gets around 40,000 unique views each month, and the number is growing.  It’s networking events sell out.

In addition, Cofield created the Walker’s Legacy Foundation, providing entrepreneurial training to young girls, low-income women, and single moms.  Last fall, the organization collected business suits for Howard University students to wear for job interviews.  Cofield fully expects that the women who work with the Walker’s Legacy Foundation will become members or supporters of Walker’s Legacy.

“We are a go-to organization for women of color who are looking for motivation, connection, education, personal finance and career advice,” says Cofield.  With a growing membership base of highly educated (48 percent have a master’s degree or more) enterprising young women (average age of 32) Cofield has her finger on the future of Black women’s entrepreneurship.

If you want to enjoy Madame C.J. Walker’s legacy, you can visit the Walker Legacy Center, the national landmark to which the Lily Foundation has just committed $15 million to renovate the space that was part of the original Walker company office. Or, you can peruse the Walker papers, now donated to Indiana Historical Society.  Villa Lewaro, the Madame Walker estate, has been restored and is part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  It is a monument to the spirit and tenacity of Black women’s entrepreneurship.

March 18, 2018

Extraordinary Sisters
By Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq. 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) — For the past 13 years, I’ve worked almost exclusively for Black Women and their families which means I spend my time working for our entire community, including male spouses, brothers, fathers, sons, nephews, cousins. I know many Black women who do just as much as I do or more. We’re not always the first to be mentioned as worthy of honor during Black History Month. More often than not, Black men come to be rightly celebrated for their achievements—but what about Black women? We then come to Women’s History Month and often hope for recognition of more of our sisters, but the first generally mentioned are white women. We endure that without bitterness, and we continue serving our causes as Black people and as women. It’s often left up to sisters to celebrate sisters (Black women, I mean).

A white male friend often says, “If you want to get a job done, give it to a woman; if you really want to get it done and done well, give it to a Black woman.” Most Black women believe as Dr. George W. Carver did when he said, “It’s not the kind of clothing we wear, nor the kind of car we drive, nor how much money we have in the bank. It is simply our service that measures our success.” By that formula, Black women deserve celebration not just in March, but every day! I, therefore, never fail to mention some Black woman in every public speech I make. Dr. Dorothy Irene Height is one example. She said, “Black women don’t always get to do what we want to do, but we always do what we have to do.

One of my favorite all time women begins with my mother, Mrs. Frances Lacour Williams-Johnson. She is nearly 96 years old now, still advising her children and grandchildren. She reared 9 children without the benefit of our father being in our home at the time all of us were under 12 years old. Yet, I never remember being hungry, without proper clothing or school gear, without getting to school every day—rain, shine, sleet or snow or without knowing that we were all loved. My mother is my most extraordinary sister!

From her, I learned to respect and appreciate other Black women. Many of my sheroes were neighbors, teachers, aunts, and my own sisters by birth. These women were ordinary women who did extraordinary things.

Yes, there were, and still are, others from history that I cherish. Sojourner Truth worked not only for our rights as Black people, but for the rights of all women. There is Harriet Tubman who loved her people so much that she forced some into freedom. Ida B. Wells-Barnett protected our brothers from lynching at great danger to herself.

Wednesday, March 21^st at 10 AM Eastern Time, I have the honor of starting as a host on WPFW FM 89.3 Radio—the station for Jazz and Justice. I look forward to introducing many phenomenal women to my readers through my program called “Wake Up and Stay Woke.”

You’ll hear more about radio personality Bev Smith, brilliant attorney Roz Ray, President/CEO of NAFEO Dr. Lezli Baskerville, NAN–GDC Chapter President Nia 2X, NAACP—DC Chapter President Akosua Ali, Delaware Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, Dr. Theresa Buckson, United Food and Commercial Workers’ VP Robin Williams, Anti Sexual Abuse Visionary/Survivor Lakisha Davis-Small, owner of JMA Solutions that provides 100’s of jobs and a major donor in our community Jan Adams, an extraordinary journalist who had the courage to start a wire service to tell our stories Hazel Trice Edney, and many more.

Look around you and celebrate a Black woman this month and every month hereafter. Black women are amazing!

(Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq., National President of the National Congress of Black Women, www.nationalcongressbw.org. 202/678-6788.)

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March 12, 2018

Trump-Kim Jong-un Meeting Could Make War Less Likely
By Jesse Jackson

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Donald Trump is taking a lot of heat for his snap decision to talk face to face with Kim Jong-un of North Korea. His aides caution that the meeting may never take place, that concrete conditions must be met for it to happen.

Conservative pundits and foreign policy pundits fret that Trump has given Kim recognition that North Korean dictators have sought for decades in exchange for a mere promise to pause missile and nuclear tests. Republican Sen. Corey Gardner calls for “concrete, verified steps towards denuclearization before this meeting occurs.”

Even Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren describes a face-to-face meeting as “a win for them. It legitimizes, in their view, their dictatorship and legitimizes their nuclear weapons program.” Admittedly, President Trump’s sudden agreement is a head-spinning reversal of direction from schoolyard taunts and threats of war to an agreement to meet and talk.

But I would rather Trump and Kim talk to each other than threaten each other with war and nuclear weapons. It may be that Kim craves the recognition and Trump the flattery, but these caricatures are irrelevant. Whether they agree to agree or agree to disagree, their meeting can make war less likely. I have always believed that one can talk without conditions toward an agreement with concrete and verifiable conditions.

The notion that Kim will give up his nuclear weapons program as a precondition to any talk is nonstarter, a recipe for increasing tensions and escalating crisis. It is time to get real. North Korea is a dictatorship and an impoverished country, crippled by a failed economic system and harsh international sanctions. It is also a nuclear power, in possession of 20 to 60 nuclear weapons. It has sustained its nuclear weapons program in the face of immense international pressure.

After George Bush named it part of the “axis of evil” with Iraq and Iran, North Korean leaders had every reason to believe that nuclear weapons – and their ability to destroy South Korea’s capital with conventional weapons – were essential to deter any attack on them. Kim no doubt noticed when the U.S. and its allies took out Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi after he got rid of his nuclear weapons.

There is no rational military “solution” to North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. An attack by the U.S. is unimaginable, with millions of lives in South Korea at risk. Threats and juvenile taunts about having a bigger nuclear button only ratchet up tensions. Escalating and ever more aggressive military exercises only increase the possibility of a war by miscalculation. This opening comes from the initiative of South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, who has worked tirelessly to lessen tensions between North and South and to broker a meeting with U.S. and North Korean officials.

He embraced North Korea’s participation in the winter Olympics. Kim sent his sister with an invitation to a summit. While Vice President Mike Pence startled Koreans with his lack of manners and hard line at the Olympics, President Moon responded positively, dispatching envoys to North Korea to continue the talks and begin to arrange a summit. At that meeting, Kim stunned the diplomats by saying that he was open to talking with the Americans about his nuclear program, willing to suspend nuclear and missile testing to open the way for talks without insisting that the U.S. and South Korea suspend their joint military exercises that have always been a source of tension.

This caught the U.S. by surprise. We have no ambassador in South Korea. The State Department’s top diplomat in charge of North Korea policy, Joseph Yun, recently retired. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was essentially out of the loop when Trump made his snap decision to agree to a meeting. Can the talks take us from the edge of co-annihilation to the possibility of co-existence? That’s surely unknown. The hermetic kingdom of North Korea is one of the most closed countries in the world. It is separated from the world by a wall, so it lives in the shadows, which allows propaganda, fear, lies and rumor to define reality. It will take more than one summit to resolve this crisis.

South Korea’s president will meet with Kim before Trump does. Trump and Moon would be wise to suspend this spring’s U.S.-South Korean military exercises unilaterally, as a gesture of good will before the talks. Any agreement will meet formidable obstacles. Could an agreement be verified, given North Korea’s fear of outside observers? Will the U.S. and its allies ease sanctions if Kim agrees to discontinue nuclear and missile tests, as a first step toward peaceful relations? What would be necessary to make North Korea confident that they won’t be attacked if they disarm?

One thing is clear. It is far better that Trump and Kim are moving toward talks rather than escalating threats. Negotiations are preferable to name calling and missile rattling. Trump’s decision to accept Kim’s offer was characteristically impulsive, abrupt and unbriefed.