Nov. 14, 2017

Trump’s Assault on Barack Obama’s Legacy Will Fail
By Jesse Jackson

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Donald Trump defines his administration as against all things Obama. Beneath the current president’s insults and outrages, his lies and antics is a remarkably consistent attempt to undo his predecessor’s entire legacy.

With Republicans in total control of the White House and the Congress, Trump can dismantle much of what Barack Obama accomplished, but he will ultimately fail to overturn his legacy. Obama had the right moral compass; Trump’s reaction will not be sustained. Consider the contrast: Obama passed health care reform, enabling 20 million more people to afford health insurance.

The centerpiece of his Affordable Care Act was the expansion of Medicaid to cover more than 10 million low-wage workers and their families. Trump and Republicans still vow to repeal Obamacare. Their plan and their budgets seek harsh cuts in Medicaid and Medicare. Trump continues to invent ways to undermine Obamacare administratively. He may do damage, but he will not succeed.

After Obama, Americans have come to accept that affordable health care is a right, not a privilege. In Maine last Tuesday, voters overwhelmingly voted to extend Medicaid, despite the passionate opposition of the state’s Trump-lite governor. On health care, Obama was on the right side of history; Trump gets it wrong.

Obama helped create the Paris climate agreement, getting virtually every country in the world to agree to the necessity of addressing global warming. His climate policies helped accelerate the transition to sustainable energy. Trump denies the reality of climate change, and he pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Accord and has systematically reversed Obama’s policies.

The damage Trump will do is incalculable, but he will fail. Even the Pentagon understands that climate change is a real and present danger. Obama was on the right side of science; Trump gets it wrong. Obama inherited an economy that was losing 800,000 jobs a month, as financial speculation had blown up the global economy.

He saved the auto industry, bailed out and tightened regulation of the banks, passed the largest stimulus plan in our history, and — with the help of the Federal Reserve — saved the economy, cutting unemployment by more than half and setting a record for consecutive months of private sector growth.Trump is systematically deregulating the banks and corporations, and slashing vital public investment and services.

He benefits from the momentum of the Obama economy, but as his plans take hold we will witness a return to bobbles and busts as the financial casino heats up. Obama saved the economy; Trump is putting it back at risk. Obama declared that inequality had reached unsustainable extremes. He let some of the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire and imposed higher taxes on the wealthy to help pay for health care.

He called for raising the minimum wage and pushed to enforce worker protections and labor laws. Trump sides with the plutocrats. His tax plan would lower taxes on the rich, eliminate taxes on massive estates, allow investors to continue paying at lower tax rates than their secretaries, and perversely expand incentives for multinationals to move jobs and report profits in tax havens abroad. Inequality continued to get worse under Obama, but he understood the threat. Trump gets this wrong.

Obama taught us that the war on terror, like all wars, must eventually come to an end. He sought to close Guantanamo and to get the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan. He resisted immense pressure to escalate in Syria and Ukraine. He signed a nuclear treaty that required Iran to dismantle its potential nuclear weapons program.

Trump campaigned against the wars, but since becoming president he has escalated across the board in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq while embracing Saudi Arabia’s massive war crimes in Yemen. He pledges to tear up the Iranian accord despite the urgings of his advisers. Obama understood the importance of law and diplomacy. Trump gets this wrong. Obama sought to bring Americans together, across lines of race, religion and region.

He built a rainbow coalition that won a majority of the popular vote twice. He celebrated the recognition of LGBTQ rights and defended voting rights. Trump has consistently sought to drive us apart, practicing a race-bait politics that appeals to our fears. He won office despite losing the popular vote. His Justice Department turns a blind eye to efforts to suppress the vote. He gets this wrong. Obama’s administration was remarkably free of corruption. His family was a model that parents could point to across the country.

Unlike every modern president of both parties, Trump refuses to release his tax returns. His administration has been marked by scandal and conflicts of interest from day one. Agency after agency has had its mission subverted from the top. Barack Obama was not a perfect president. He faced entrenched partisan obstruction from day one. But in stormy weather and treacherous crosswinds, his moral compass pointed us in the right direction.

Dr. Martin Luther King taught us that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” He knew, however, that justice is not inevitable. Its advance comes from the struggle, work and sacrifice of citizens of conscience. And that is why Trump’s misdirection will fail — not simply because it is wrong but because Americans in large numbers are not willing to go backwards. It is easy to lose faith. The damage that is being done at home and abroad is immense, but as the old gospel song teaches, “We’ve come too far, we can’t turn back now.”

 Nov. 12, 2017

Stunning Rebuke of Trump Presidency: Voters Elect Democrats to Top Offices in Virginia
By Jeremy M. Lazarus

In a result seen as a wholesale rejection of a president many see as unfit, and a message to the political party that has backed him, fired up Virginia voters ensured Democrats retained control of the top tiers of state government and replaced at least a dozen seasoned Republican lawmakers in the General Assembly to boot. PHOTO: Richmond Free Press

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Richmond Free Press

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Take that, Donald Trump.

In a result seen as a wholesale rejection of a president many see as unfit, and a message to the political party that has backed him, fired up Virginia voters ensured Democrats retained control of the top tiers of state government and replaced at least a dozen seasoned Republican lawmakers in the General Assembly to boot.

The big winners of the Nov. 7th general election include Gov.-elect Ralph S. Northam, the bland, mild-mannered pediatric neurologist and current lieutenant governor who surprised many by handily winning the race to succeed current Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

Along with Dr. Northam, voters also elected his Democratic ticket mate Justin E. Fairfax as the second African-American lieutenant governor in Virginia’s history and re-elected Democrat Mark R. Herring as attorney general.

Dr. Northam won the keys to the Governor’s Mansion after decisively defeating Republican nominee Ed Gillespie by a vote of 1.46 million votes, or 53 percent, to about 1.17 million votes for Mr. Gillespie.

Fairfax, who called for increasing access to health care, raising the minimum wage and expanding job training, defeated GOP state Sen. Jill Vogel by nearly the same margin.

And Herring, who won by only a handful of votes four years ago, also had no problem defeating Republican challenger John Adams by a wide margin.

The victory was even sweeter as Democrats surprisingly won 15 more seats in the House of Delegates to claim a total of 49 seats, moving them closer to retaking control of the 100-member chamber from Republicans who have used their majority to block expansion of health care.

Turnout was the key to the Democratic sweep. Unofficial results indicate about 500,000 more people turned out to vote in this year’s statewide contest. Overall, about 47 percent of the state’s 5.4 million voters turned out, up from 42.7 percent four years ago.

University of Richmond law professor Jonathan K. Stubbs said the election showed that “Democrats were more energized than some appeared to think in the waning moments of the campaign.”

While Trump foes turned out in large number, Stubbs said the legions in Virginia who backed President Trump in the November 2016 presidential race failed to show the same enthusiasm for Gillespie.

Stubbs and others credited President Trump and the hostility he has created with generating the extra Democratic enthusiasm, although the results followed Virginia tradition in which the party that holds the White House loses the governorship. Gov. McAuliffe, who won in 2013 when President Obama was re-elected, was the only person in the last 10 elections to buck that tradition.

Still, the results suggest that voters wanted to send a message, said Stephen J. Farnsworth, a University of Mary Washington political science professor.

“This was really an extraordinary rebuke of Donald Trump and all he stands for,” Farnsworth said.

President Trump is highly unpopular in the state, he said, with polls showing the president’s approval rating in Virginia hovering around 34 percent.

In Farnsworth’s view, the Gillespie campaign’s decision to go all in “on a Trump-style advertising campaign really hurt him. He campaigned, at least in his ads, like Donald Trump and was punished for it.”

Exit polls in Virginia showed that one-third of the voters went to the polls to oppose President Trump, and only 17 percent went to support him.

Post-vote surveys also indicate that health care was the most important single issue to voters, which benefited Northam. During the campaign, Northam touted his medical service in the military, his medical practice and his volunteer service as medical director of a children’s hospice in Portsmouth.

The surveys also found that Democrats won with a diverse coalition of African-Americans, young people, women, Latinos and Asian-Americans from cities and suburbs, while Gillespie was most popular among white males.

The Democratic trio won big in Richmond, but also did surprisingly well in usually Republican-friendly Chesterfield County, which Gillespie only won by a few hundred votes.

Dr. Northam also won big in Northern Virginia, home to tens of thousands of federal government workers.

The Democrat trounced Mr. Gillespie by up to 22 percentage points in some localities, or bigger margins than Democrat Hillary Clinton ran up last year in winning the state during the presidential contest against President Trump.

And once Republican Henrico County also provided a large margin for the Democrats.

Calling it the largest margin of victory for a Democratic gubernatorial candidate since Gerald Baliles’ victory in 1985, Northam promised to be a governor “for all the people,” even those who opposed him.

Dr. Northam also used his victory address Tuesday in Northern Virginia to call for an end to the bigotry, intolerance and nastiness that was the hallmark of candidate Trump and that has remained a characteristic of President Trump’s messages since taking office.

“Today, Virginians have spoken,” Northam said in rejecting that style of politics. “Virginia has told us to end the divisiveness, that we will not condone hatred and bigotry, and to end the politics that has torn this country apart,” he said.

“’It’s going to take a doctor to heal our differences,” he continued, “to bring unity to our people, and I’m here to let you know that the doctor is in. This doctor will be on call for the next four years. We need to close the wounds that divide and bring unity to Virginia.”

Fairfax called the resounding victory an opportunity to “rise to the better angels of our nature, to take our country on a different, more positive course, to turn back from the political darkness that we are seeing out of Washington, this White House, and it is incredibly fitting that Virginia leads the way.”

He continued, “I look forward to fighting for progress and making sure that everyone, no matter where they’re from, who they love, the color of their skin, what God they pray to or whatever ZIP code they’re in gets a shot at the American Dream and a chance to rise.”

For most of the public, the election brought a thankful end to the barrage of attack ads that took over TV screens during the campaign.

The National Rifle Association, which became notorious for its attack ads on behalf of Republicans, was perhaps, after President Trump and the Republican Party, the biggest loser.

Voters rejected the group’s fear-mongering ads that called for the election of the Republican candidates to prevent the confiscation of guns.

President Trump, who endorsed Gillespie but did not campaign with him, quickly disavowed the former chairman of the Republican National Committee shortly after Dr. Northam was determined to be the victor.

“Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for,” President Trump tweeted, a theme quickly picked up by conservative talk show hosts who back the president.

“With the economy doing record numbers, we will continue to win, even bigger than before!”

Democrats worried that if Gillespie won, Republicans would see it as a green light to emphasize divisive cultural issues in their campaigns for next year’s elections, when all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 33 of the U.S. Senate’s 100 seats come up for election. Republicans now control both chambers.

Now it is Republicans who must worry that siding with President Trump, as Gillespie did, could be a losing proposition.

Nov. 12, 2017

Grueling Rescue Operation in Mediterranean Unable to Save 26 African Girls

(TriceEdneyWire.com/GIN) –Shivering immigrants pulled from icy Mediterranean waters huddled under aid workers’ blankets hardly move the hearts of wealthy nationals in developed countries these days.

But the story this week of 26 young African women whose bodies were recovered near a smuggler’s boatload of migrants caused some heads to turn and tears to fall.

Their bodies were plucked from the sea on Sunday in one of four separate rescue operations that brought 400 people to the Italian port town of Salerno.

“The sea continues to be a graveyard,” the medical aid group Doctors without Borders was quoted to say.

Italian authorities say they have launched an investigation into the cause of death of the 26 teenage girls believed to have been migrants from Niger and Nigeria, who had boarded a flimsy rubber dinghy from Libya with hopes of reaching Europe this past weekend.

Lorena Ciccotti, Salerno’s head of police, told CNN that coroners would be investigating whether the girls had been tortured or sexually abused.

Of the 400 who were rescued, 90 were women and 52 were minors, including a week-old baby.

According to Italy’s interior ministry, more than 111,700 people have reached the country by sea in the first 10 months of 2017.

Traffickers are still sending migrant boats out into the Mediterranean - the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Friday that more than 2,560 migrants had been saved over four days.

In all, 2,839 people have died while attempting the crossing so far this year, it said.

"Currently, there is no reason whatsoever for celebration,” said a spokesman for Alarmphone, a network of activist and migrant groups providing a 24-hour hotline for refugees in distress at sea.

“The root causes for migration and flight have not changed."

GLOBAL INFORMATION NETWORK creates and distributes news and feature articles on current affairs in Africa to media outlets, scholars, students and activists in the U.S. and Canada. Our goal is to introduce important new voices on topics relevant to Americans, to increase the perspectives available to readers in North America and to bring into their view information about global issues that are overlooked or under-reported by mainstream media.

To Be Equal 
Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali's Diverse Career, Commitment to Social Justice, Earn Accolades from National Urban League
By Marc H. Morial

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “I absolutely love this country, but like so many people have some real questions and concerns about how things have gone down over the years and where we’re at. And that’s from a place of love, because I want the country to be what it says it is on paper. I sincerely believe we have the capacity to actually make this country great. There are enough people, there are enough believers out there, there are enough intelligent, empathetic souls out there that want good for the whole. I don’t know if it’ll happen in my lifetime, but I believe in time the pendulum will swing in the right direction.” – Mahershala Ali

Academy award-winning actor Mahershala Ali’s journey has been one of bridging divides.  Between the crime and poverty of 1970s and ‘80s Oakland, where he lived with his mother and stepfather, and the musical theater scene of Manhattan, where he spent summers with his Broadway dancer father.  Between basketball, which earned him a college scholarship, and theater, which captured his heart. Even his name bridges Christianity, Judaism and Islam – his Baptist minister grandmother chose a Hebrew name from the Bible: Mahershalalhashbaz, the second son of Isaiah. He converted to Islam in his 20s.

His impassioned Screen Actors Guild Award acceptance speech was a plea for bridging divides.

“We see what happens when we persecute people. They fold into themselves,” Ali said, noting that his character, Juan, in Moonlight, “saw a young man folding into himself as a result of the persecution of his community, and taking that opportunity to uplift him and tell him that he mattered, that he was ok and accept him. I hope that we do a better job of that.”

Ali’s portrayal of Juan, though he appeared in just 16 minutes of the film, earned him every major acting award including the first Academy Award presented to a Muslim actor.

The National Urban League is proud to be honoring Ali with our Arts Award next week at our Equal Opportunity Day Awards Dinner.

Reaching the pinnacle of his profession hasn’t shielded him from discrimination as an African-American and as a Muslim.  He’s been stopped and ordered to produce I.D. in Berkeley, and found himself on a terrorist watchlist. “‘What terrorist is running around with a Hebrew first name and an Arabic last name?” he joked to NPR’s Terry Gross.

It was no joke, however, when he skipped the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards ceremony in February because he feared the recently-enacted “Muslim ban” might make it difficult for him to re-enter the United States.

Experiences like being followed in a department store, and watching people on the subway try to hide their jewelry from him are the source of the expression he used in his SAG speech – “folding into himself.”

“I think I identify with characters who have to make themselves smaller,” he told GQ. “Because that’s been my experience, as a large black man, to make people feel safer. Just because I always found witnessing other people’s discomfort made me uncomfortable.”

He has a track record of choosing the roles of powerful and In Free State of Jones, his haunting portrayal of Moses, an escaped slave who is lynched for registering freedmen to vote, earned him one of the five BET Awards he won for films or television series released last year. In addition to Free State of Jones and Moonlight, he was honored for the Netflix series Luke Cage and the films Kicks and Hidden Figures

When he won the Academy Award, the first people he thanked were not the people who made him famous, but the people who nurtured his gift: his teachers.

With roles that range from comic-book supervillain to White House Chief of Staff, Ali exemplifies the diversity of the 21st century entertainment industry, and the future of the performing arts. We are proud to honor his commitment to both his craft and to social justice.