Sept. 17, 2017

Waters, Morial, Sanders Push Black Wealth 2020 as 'Urgent' Movement Spreads
By Hazel Trice Edney

Marc Morial, president/CEO, National Urban League

New York State Sen. James Sanders

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Black Wealth 2020, a new movement aiming to change the course of Black wealth in America, is gaining swift support from national advocates of economic justice.

"The struggle for Black wealth is a legendary struggle. And so whether we're talking about what we have attempted to do in the past or what we should be doing now, the fact of the matter is that African-Americans have not really realized their potential in this country," says U. S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee in a recent interview about the necessity of Black Wealth 2020. "If Black people are to have a future and to move forward, we've got to not only build wealth by home ownership, where we can build up our equity and have money to turn around and invest in business opportunities, but we must also learn more about and be aggressive in going after franchises and getting involved with investment opportunities - all of that is extremely important. And now is a very crucial time in the history of Black people."

Two years ago, Waters was among the first to interact with the then fledgling group, founded by Michael Grant, president of the National Bankers Association; Jim Winston, president of the National Association of Black-owned Broadcasters (NABOB); and Ron Busby, president/CEO of the U. S. Black Chambers Inc. At that time the groups worked with Waters in an attempt to assure Black economic participation in a merger between NBC Universal and Comcast.

They were successful. The merger failed. But, the groups continued to meet and has since grown to about 10 heads of organizations with economic justice as core values. They convene monthly to strategize on ways to significantly strengthen Black homeownership, Black businesses and Black banks by 2020 and beyond.In addition to Waters, their goals have attracted growing attention - and respect - from other major national leaders.

"What they are talking about is aligned directly with the work that we do on the ground," says National Urban league President/CEO Marc Morial, who, through the NUL, manages one of the nation's largest homeowner counseling services - 30-40,000 cases a year in 50 cities nationwide. NUL also has about a dozen small business entrepreneurship centers "where we're providing coaching and counseling classes to approximately 10-12,000 small businesses," says Morial.

Morial said he has discussed the goals of Black Wealth 2020 with the organization's leaders and they are in sync with the goals of the NUL.

"I've met with them and I'm aligned with them," he said. "We invited Michael to come to our conference. I mean, my philosophy is I believe in being supportive of everyone because we're all aligned. We're not competing with each other...What they are doing in their thrust is very welcome because for a long time the Urban League has been sort of holding up the economic empowerment banner in the civil rights community." Morial agrees the work of economic justice is crucial, but he also concedes it is daunting.

"It's a very tall order because we lost so much Black wealth in a 10-year-period. In the period since the recession, we've lost almost 10 percent of our homeownership and it's difficult to rebuild it and renew it because Black people are also - like many Americans - suffering from income inequality, earnings suppression, and wage stagnation," Morial said.The success of Black Wealth 2020 is contingent upon it remaining consistent, expanding and strategizing, says New York Sen. James Sanders Jr., who was so impressed by the organization's goals that he has established what he calls a chapter of Black Wealth 2020 in South East Queens, N.Y.

"We consider ourselves a chapter of this amazing movement which is led by the people in DC. Now, having said that, we do hold the right to local creativity. The local group knows its community best and there will be no cookie cutter model that is right at all times for all people. There has to be local initiative, local ingenuity to achieve our purposes," says Sanders.

"Black Wealth 2020 right now is a movement. It's an idea whose time has come. And people all over the U. S. are coming to this independently with varying degrees of success of course. With that, we need to institutionalize. We need to figure out what is the best approach and how do we go about this approach."
In New York, Sanders has pulled together a group of local people who meet bi-weekly and envision, discuss and strategize on how they will economically impact the South East section of Queens. The meetings are private, he said, mostly so that they will remain focused.

"We have created three or four different committees - housing, banking, business and a marketing committee for the timing and strategy to get our message out," he describes. "We have not spent much time going before the wider public as we are working out some of the finer points. We've been in this situation for 400 years. We can wait just a little longer."Like the D.C. model, first, they are studying and gathering information, Sanders said. Then they will decide how to go about impacting the economic lives of the people in that area of New York. He says, viewing themselves as a "test case", realistic change will be the key evidence of success.

"In politics we do well what I call impression sessions where we announce some major victory that really isn't and, you know, we get the accolades and people believe that something is happening...But this is too serious an issue - the issue of our survival - is far too serious for impression sessions," Sanders said.

Simultaneously, back in D.C., the shared leadership team of Black Wealth 2020 continues to meet monthly. Attracting others with like minds, the group acts as a catalyst for economic growth.

In addition to Morial and Sanders, among those who have met with the D.C.-based group are Jim Coleman, president/CEO of Prince George's County's Economic Development Corporation; Robert  Greene president/CEO of the National Association of Investment Companies, which represents diverse-owned private equity firms and hedge funds; and Andy Ingraham, President/CEO, National Association of Black Hotel Owners, Operators and Developers (NABHOOD).

Ingraham credits Black Wealth 2020 for supporting his efforts to connect with major African-American groups in order to encourage them to hold conferences at Black-owned hotels.

"This has been ongoing with a number of African-American and other minority-owned organizations - about creating MOUs (Memorandums of Understanding) and a relationship so that they can use our hotels around the country," he says. "At least $90 billion represents the total market value of the multi-cultural minority travel industry. And our goal is to get more of that business - not only in our hotels - but get more cities and more entrepreneurs to focus on gaining a share of that market."

Among the connections facilitated by Black Wealth 2020 is one between NABHOOD and Dr. Paulette Walker, who was then president of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and also chair of the National Pan-Hellenic Council's Council of Presidents, an umbrella organization for all nine Black Greek-lettered fraternities and sororities.

In addition to discussing the use of Black-owned hotels, Walker also passed the information to the Greek-letter organizations and has left information on the movement for her successor.

"Having that kind of information was very helpful in terms of how we -when considering hotels, barber shops or whatever it might be - can spread the knowledge and the information base. Because sometimes we have an information void," Walker said. "The more people are aware of the concept of Black Wealth 2020 and are aware of what can be done, the more widespread the agenda can be."

Sept. 17, 2017

Obama's Last Year Brought Economic Success

By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The income, poverty and health insurance data released by the Census Bureau on September 13 confirm what many already knew.  President Obama’s last year was one of economic improvement for many individuals.  

The median income rose from $57,230 in 2015 to $59,039 in 2016, an increase of 3.2 percent.  Black income rose 5.4 percent, from $37, 364 in 2015 to $39,400 in 2016, while white income rose from $63, 745 to $65,041, an increase of two percent.  

The income gap narrowed very slightly, with African-Americans having 58 percent of white earnings in 2015 and 60 percent of white earnings in 2016.  This income ratio typically hovers around 60 percent, and this situation has not improved since 1967!  Despite an absolute improvement in incomes, the racial income disparity remains.

Fewer than one in ten whites earned less than $15,000 per year, compared to 20 percent of African Americans at that low earning level.  While 18 percent of whites earned less than $25,000 a year, fully one-third of African-Americans earned so little.  At the same time, while 7.4 percent of whites earned more than $200,000 a year, only 2.8 percent of African- Americans had similarly high earnings.  

At the top, there was significant improvement for African-Americans – we didn’t cross the 1 percent line on high earning until 1997, and now our percentage has more than doubled.  Still, it would take hundreds of years, at the rate we are going, to close the gap with Whites.

With incomes as low as they are, it is unsurprising to find African Americans more heavily represented among the poor than Whites are, but again, President Obama’s last year in office saw a real drop in the poverty level.  The poverty rate dropped from 13.5 percent in 2015 to 12.7 percent in 2016, and the Black poverty rate dropped from 24.1 percent to 22.0 percent.  There were 800,000 fewer African-Americans in poverty in 2016 than in 2015.  That’s good news!  

Child poverty was also overwhelming.  With 15.1 percent of white children living in poverty there were nearly twice as many Black children living in poverty at 29.5 percent.  Among elders, 8 percent of white seniors were poor, compared to 18.5 percent of African American seniors.  And when Black women headed households, 34.2 percent of those households lived in poverty.

While these numbers make a clear case that President Obama improved the situation for all Americans, it is also clear that his unwillingness or inability to target programs toward the African-American poor maintained the size of the income gap, and maintained the fact that African-Americans experience twice as much poverty as whites, earning only 60 percent of the incomes that Whites do.  This gap will not be closed unless there is some intervention, some form of reparations, or some special program that will empower African-Americans.  If that didn’t happen in the Obama administration, it is unlikely to happen in this one!

President Obama’s singular success, of course, was health care.  More than 93 percent of whites, 92 percent of Asian Americans, 89.5 percent of African-Americans and 84 percent of Hispanics had health care in 2016, continuing an upward trend that began in 2011 with the introduction of Obamacare.  Of course, Republicans have promised to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act.  They have been unsuccessful because so many use and like the program, even with it flaws.  The program should be tweaked, but not replaced, but we’ll see what happens in coming months.

Despite improvements in income data, too many Americans aren’t feeling the improvements.  That’s how 45 was able to manipulate people into believing that they were worse off than they had ever been, and that he was going to improve their quality of life.  To be sure, while the unemployment rate is way down, there are also people sitting on the sidelines of the labor force.  

Raises seem to be coming, but quite slowly, and a 3.2 percent increase in income, after several years of declining income, seems not to be enough. Additionally, there are millions of millennials who came of age during the recession, having spent years marginally employed, and are shouldering the burden of high student loans. Small increases in income don’t make these folks feel flush.  Many still feel that they are just getting by.

Julianne Malveaux is an economist, author, and Founder of Economic Education. Her latest book “Are We Better Off: Race, Obama and public policy is available via amazon.com. For booking, wholesale inquiries or for more info visit www.juliannemalveaux.com

Sept. 17, 2017

Thousands of Celebrities, Luminaries and Ordinary People Bid Dick Gregory Farewell
By Barrington M. Salmon

Minister Louis Farrakhan gives the eulogy of Dick Gregory. PHOTO: Paulette Singleton/Trice Edney News Wire

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Several thousand mourners packed into a Landover, Md. church listened as friends, family and admirers lionized comedian, social justice warrior, civil rights activist and provocateur Dick Gregory. The spirited, electric memorial service on Saturday, Sept. 18, turned out to be more celebration than funeral.

Gregory’s passing brought together a constellation of local, national and international celebrities and luminaries from the arts, entertainment, politics and sports as well as ordinary people, all whose lives Gregory touched over the course of his 84 years.

Among the descriptors used: Firestarter, agitator, freedom fighter, legend, peacemaker, genius, artist, teacher, guide.

Farrakhan had been proceeded by a parade of stars of sorts bring reflections about Gregory from every walk of life.

“I’m so pleased that you organized a real celebration where you’re not ending quickly and trying to shut people up. I’m going to take as long as I want,” said U. S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) to peals of laughter and applause. “I have talked to Dick for hours. We would talk – no, he would talk – about things going on in the world. He brought me to this time and place in my life.”

For more than six hours, in a service “Celebrating the Life of a Legend,” people regaled attendees spread over the City of Praise Family Ministries with stories about Richard Claxton Gregory. The speakers also included Stevie Wonder, Bill and Camille Cosby, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, members of the American Indian Movement, The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and the Hon. Louis Farrakhan.

“I praise him who has brought us all together,” said Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of slain Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers and a close friend of Gregory’s. “I give thanks to Dick Gregory for this. I recommend that we love each other, recommend that we hold the memories and hopefully rededicate ourselves to the ideals that Dick Gregory believed in.”

Evers-Williams’ husband, Medgar Evers, the NAACP’s first Field Secretary in Mississippi, was shot and killed in an assassination in his driveway in 1963. She said the work of civil rights is clearly not finished.

“Seeing the children of the leaders, I saw them speak the truth of their parents, speak the truth of their generation and speak the truth of what America should be…Let us not forget who we are and remember that each of us has a responsibility to keep on doing the job.”

Interspersed with the speakers were musical performances by India Irie, Ayanna Gregory, Sweet Honey on the Rock, the Morgan State University Choir, Farafina Kan, and ‘Scandal’ star Joe Morton reprising a portion of his one-man biographical play on Gregory, “Turn Me Loose,” among others.

One extraordinary moment brought together several children of slain Civil Rights activists and Rain Pryor, daughter of comedian Richard Pryor. Renee Evers-Everette, Martin Luther King, III, and llyasah Shabazz, the third daughter of Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz extolled Gregory.

“Baba was part of my Pryor life of laughter and that special attention he gave you,” said Pryor. “He said that truths were soul food and a map to live by. He told me to always choose my words wisely. Today, as we honor our newest Ancestor, we are reminded not to morph, not to imitate, but to speak the highest truth. We have to keep them lifted in our actions as we become the change they sought.”

Evers-Everette said she initially refused strenuously when asked by Ayanna Gregory to speak but, “There’s no way I could not be here,” she said. “My father and Dick Gregory were brothers of the spirit and the hearts … They (her father and other slain Civil Rights activists) spilled the blood of truth for our freedoms. The words, wisdom and spirit they powered out in us was given to the world. The time given may have been small but it was enormous. They made the most impact on our minds and hearts.”

Shabazz said Gregory fought for people trapped on the periphery of economics and justice.

“He challenged the social climate and challenged a superpower that has been systematically and historically unjust to certain populations,” she said. “I’m honored to be here today for my parents and Ancestors. The Ancestors are lining up to welcome Baba in anticipation of a progress report on the status of life down here.”

“When it came time to say who took Malcolm’s life he rose to the occasion. He clarified Martin Luther King Jr’s death and raised his voice for those slain by bullies and bigots,” Shabazz explained. “And when this new generation reminded the world that Black Lives Matter, he stood up with them and spoke truth to power.”

In 1961, Dick Gregory’s big break came when he was asked to fill in for another comedian at Chicago’s Playboy Club. What was supposed to be a one-night gig lasted two months and led to an appearance on the Tonight Show and a profile in Time Magazine. Fifty-dollar-a-night gigs became $5,000 a night appearances. Gregory waded into Civil Rights leading and joining marches and often getting arrested for his involvement in demonstrations for justice and equality, for Native American rights, DC statehood and an assortment of other causes. Several people said he gave up millions as he assumed the mantle of activism.

Master of Ceremonies the Rev. Mark Thompson, host of Sirius XM radio’s ‘Make It Plain’ recalled that commitment.

“He helped us lead the statehood movement in 1993,” Thompson recalled. “We were the original Tea Party – no taxation without representation. We went to jail every week for the entire summer.”

Waters, who has gained notoriety as an outspoken and acerbic critic of President Donald Trump, promised that she would continue to be “this dishonorable person’s” worst nightmare.

Waters concluded, “I’ve decided I don’t want to be safe. I’m not looking for people to like me. It’s time for us to walk the walk. If you cared about him, loved him, stop being so weak. It’s time to stop skinning and grinning. It’s time for us to have the courage to do what we need to do, especially at this hour.”

Sept. 15, 2017

To Be Equal 
Reinstate DACA and Protect Dreamers
By Marc H. Morial

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “As the leaders of communities across the country—individuals and institutions that have seen these young people grow up in our communities—we recognize how they have enriched and strengthened our cities, states, schools, businesses, congregations, and families. We believe it is a moral imperative that the administration and the country know we are with them. We also join together to send our assurances to Dreamers: we see you, we value you, and we are ready to defend you.” – open letter signed by more than 1,800 governors, attorneys general, mayors, state representatives, judges, police chiefs and other leaders

An overwhelming majority of voters – about 85% - are opposed to deporting immigrants who are eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. These “Dreamers,” as they are known, were brought into the United States as children, most of them younger than 7. About 90 percent of Dreamers are employed, more than 70 percent have attended college.

Despite widespread support for allowing Dreamers to remain, the Trump Administration has acquiesced to 10 state attorneys general who threatened to sue if it did not end the program. But even President Trump does not want to deport Dreamers. “Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military?” he wrote on Twitter. “Really!.....”

Sadly, many of the people who voted for him do, and voted for him because he said he would do it. But even among the most hard-core supporters of the President, those who say they “strongly approve” of his performance, only a third favor deportation of Dreamers.

With this kind of support, it’s hard to understand why 800,000 hard-working, law-abiding contributing members of society are in danger of being wrenched from the only country they’ve ever known. Many do not even speak the language of the countries of their birth.  

In addition to the human catastrophe deportation of Dreamers represents, the U.S. would lose about $460 billion in GDP over the next 10 years and about 700,000 people could lose their jobs.

Earlier this month, fifteen states and the District of Columbia filed a suit seeking to stop the repeal of DACA. Last week, California filed a separate lawsuit, which was joined by Maine, Minnesota, and Maryland. Meanwhile, President Trump has struck a tentative agreement from the House and Senate Minority Leaders to support legislation protecting Dreamers in exchange for enhanced border security 

While there is a chance that deportations of Dreamers will not occur, it’s shameful that they should be in a position to fear it at all.  Dreamers trusted the United States government in enrolling in the program, now that very trust could be used against them. There is no justification for ending the program even as a legislative solution is sought.

Protecting Dreamers is quite simply the right thing to do. It is the moral thing to do.  It’s the economically sound thing to do.  And even though it shouldn’t matter, it’s the popular thing to do.  We urge Congress to immediately pass legislation protecting Dreamers and call upon the Trump administration to reinstate DACA so no Dreamer has to fear deportation from the home they love.