Trump's Lies!!! By Dr. E. Faye Williams

July 16, 2017

Trump's Lies!!!
By Dr. E. Faye Williams

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - I'm a product of the "Southern Experience." Many of my views are shaped by the "mother wit" and logic learned growing up there. There's something unique to the down-to-Earth "common sense" of the "Old Folks" as they reckoned with and evaluated their circumstance and environment.

One of the frequently repeated axioms I distinctly remember goes like this: "If you lie, you'll cheat! If you cheat, you'll steal! And, if you steal, you'll kill!" This evaluation of human character may appear overly-simplified, but it presents a concept of progressive immorality that's not altogether unreasonable. In fact, among many practitioners of these vices, we find the connection between those sins the rule rather than exception.

Unlike today, the "Old Folks" took a dim view of those who couldn't deal in The Truth. Honesty and personal integrity were attributes that were essential to the level of esteem one commanded in the community. Of course, there were Liars and Conmen who victimized their communities, but they were usually transients who claimed no communal foundations nor places where they were welcomed. Once discovered, they were shunned or run out of town and little could be done to rehabilitate their reputations. There are no justifiable reasons for the breakdown of the communal values of truthful, plain-dealing, but a breakdown has happened and our nation is the worse for it.

Sadly, rejection of truthful dealings has become more pervasive. Many accept situational ethics as a standard for dealing with others. Rather than the "Golden Rule," far too many practice principles of "do it to them before they do it to me." Their standard interaction accepts the elevation of personal interests as superior to all else. This has led to a coarsening of personal interaction and discourse.

In times past, we could reconcile that some among us would embrace the dark side, but we could always count on a core element to, at least, exemplify the image of personal integrity, honesty and values consistent with them. Now, even among those traditionally held to the highest of standards of personal integrity, we see an erosion in truthful dealing. Sadly, unlike any time in my past, the current President of the US is a principal exemplar of this abhorrent behavior.

When candidate Trump's behavior was considered "out of line" with behavioral norms expected of one seeking the presidency, many observers believed it would disqualify him from gaining office. Incredulously, others excused him with the caveat that he would "turn around" after using his bizarre behavior as an election tool.

Trump's lies prior to the election pale in contrast to those experienced post-election. His lies about President Obama's birthplace, about divesting himself of his business interests and releasing his tax returns seem benign when compared with the avalanche of lies that have flown from the White House since Inauguration Day.

The New York Times has constructed a list of all of Trump's lies since January 21st (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html).

As I see it, our future is to be inundated with Trump's lies. Many will believe him unconditionally. Others will grow frustrated and weary of dealing with the deluge of lies.

Our ultimate task will be an on-going vigilance and challenge to the lies, cheating, stealing and potential killing this man has the capacity and authority to render. How many more lies must we endure?

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

Civil Rights Icon Rev. Barber Charts New Course Down Beaten Paths By Marc H. Morial

July 16, 2017

To Be Equal

Civil Rights Icon Rev. Barber Charts New Course Down Beaten Paths
By Marc H. Morial

(TriceEdneyWire.com)- “This is America’s opportunity to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The question is whether America will do it. There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., American Civil Rights Activist, “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” March 31, 1968

After 12 historic years leading the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, the Reverend Dr. William Barber is stepping down from his post and stepping up to the challenge posed by the late Martin Luther King Jr. nearly five decades ago to unite the poor and put an end to the social inequities and universal indifference that breeds poverty in our nation—and our world.

Rev. Barber’s activism—powered by morally induced outrage to unjust policies and the abuse of the most vulnerable—has taken on many forms and roles, moving him from national stages to the streets.

As the chief architect of what would become the ongoing “Moral Mondays” movement, an extension of the NAACP’s Forward Together movement, in the spring of 2013, Rev. Barber stood and protested with impacted people, civil rights activists and community leaders in front of the North Carolina state legislature to challenge discriminatory voter access laws and other state-sponsored attacks on civil rights.

Protestors sang “We Shall Overcome,” held signs, blocked the doors to the Senate chambers and got arrested. Described in his own words as the “largest state-government-focused civil disobedience campaign in U.S. history,” the first protest would, thankfully, not be the last. Crossing traditional barriers of religion, race, class, political affiliation or sexual orientation, that first Moral Monday has inspired tens of thousands of people to lock arms in solidarity and protest beyond the state of North Carolina, undeterred by the very real threat of arrests, with over 1,000 protestors handcuffed and jailed—including Rev. Barber, several times.

Under the umbrella of Repairers of the Breach—a nonprofit founded by Rev. Barber that develops church and lay people into leaders who strategize and organize for progressive, moral agendas—Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign will find new life. The new campaign, now the New Poor People’s Campaign: National Call for a Moral Revival, will pick up where his assassination left the nascent movement.

A year before his death, Dr. King shifted his focus to economic inequality, and as he did with civil and voting rights, he was committed to making poverty and the plight of all our nation’s poor a top priority on our federal government’s agenda. Dr. King announced the Poor People’s Campaign at a staff retreat for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1967. He described the campaign as a “highly significant event,” adding that the campaign was “the beginning of a new cooperation, understanding, and a determination by poor people of all colors and backgrounds to assert their right to a decent life and respect for their culture and dignity.” He planned on descending on our nation’s capital with scores of poor people to demand fair wages, unemployment insurance and quality education. He would not live to join the protestors who would eventually descend on Washington, erect a protest camp and demand economic justice, but the campaign was short lived, and we continue to fight for that same justice Dr. King understood was essential to achieve, if our nation was truly committed to giving everyone, regardless of color, gender or zip code, a fair chance at life.

Today, Dr. King’s legacy in the fight for economic justice for all Americans has been passed on to Rev. Barber, and I am pleased that Rev. Barber has answered the call to lead this effort in the affirmative.

As a historic civil rights organization dedicated to economic empowerment for the poor and underserved, The National Urban League will honor Rev. Barber and his long-time commitment to civil rights and justice during our annual conference this year. We live now in worrisome times where a robust movement is afoot to limit Americans’ access to the ballot box, where millions of people worry that they will not have healthcare next year, and where the stock of private prisons continue to soar as the Trump administration finds more people to criminalize and occupy prison beds. So we are fortunate to have men and women on the side of right, like Rev. Barber, who contemplate action in the face of abuse and refuse to remain silent in the face of injustice.

Facing the Assault on Civil Rights By Jesse Jackson

July 10, 2017

Facing the Assault on Civil Rights
By Jesse Jackson

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The Trump administration has launched an unprecedented rollback of civil rights and voting rights. Those who care about building a more perfect union face harsh headwinds. We’ve gone from an administration seeking to fulfill these rights to one seeking to repeal these rights.

Instead of a reconstruction, we are faced with a retrenchment, an effort to radically reverse the gains that have been made by women, people of color and the LGBTQ community. Instead of understanding that expanding civil rights is a vital therapy to heal this nation, the Trump administration views it as a threat to its rule.

The rollback is government wide. The Labor Department has announced plans to disband the division that polices discrimination among federal contractors as a “cost cutting measure.” The Environmental Protection Agency plans to eliminate the environmental justice program that focuses on the environmental threats to minority communities. The Education Department is decimating staffing of its Office of Civil Rights. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has revoked guidance on a rule that allows transgender people to stay in sex-segregated shelters matching their gender identity.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, formerly a senator representing Alabama, has led the rollback. The DOJ has reversed its opposition to a Texas discriminatory voter ID law. Sessions has announced that he would review consent decrees that the Obama Justice Department made to reform police departments. Sessions has ordered U.S. prosecutors to seek the maximum sentences, while moving to revive private prisons. The administration is gearing up for a national assault on voting rights, pushing measures that will make voting more difficult.

Women, people of color, the poor and the LGBTQ are the targets and the direct victims of this assault. But the entire country will suffer, as basic rights are denied, prisons are expanded, and hopes and dreams are stuffed out.

In Chicago this week, leaders from across the country will gather for the annual Rainbow Push National Summit. We will use this time to map out our response to this assault on all that we have fought for. Now is the time for citizens of conscience to join together to defend and expand basic civil rights.

We will work to defend voting rights, building the movement to add the federal right to vote to the U.S. Constitution. As some move to constrict voting, we will move to expand it. Illinois is about to become the ninth state to pass automatic voter registration, with the potential addition of an estimated 1 million voters to the voting rolls. We will push to pass automatic voter registration in states across the union. If successful, we will add a stunning 51 million new voters to the rolls.

We will demand that President Trump fulfill his promise to invest $1 trillion in rebuilding America, helping to generate real jobs doing vital things that need to be done. We will defend sanctuary cities providing some support for undocumented workers with children. As the Department of Justice retreats from the enforcement of civil rights, we will expand the pressure on corporations and governments to adhere to equal employment opportunity from the boardroom to the basement, from their contracts to philanthropy.

Dr. Martin Luther King taught us that “human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable . . . Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle — the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”

Now, in this headwind of injustice, it is time for the tribunes of justice to move forward. Now is the time for citizens of conscience to come to the aid of their country.

Hugh Price's African American Life: Lessons and Blessings By Julianne Malveaux

July 16, 2017

Hugh Price's African American Life: Lessons and Blessings
By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Hugh Price was the seventh leader (from 1994 through 2002) of the National Urban League, the civil rights organization founded in 1910 to help African American migrants assimilate into urban life, to provide opportunities for urban migrants, and to eliminate segregation in our nation. Price, an attorney, activist, writer, and foundation executive was well-suited for that work, for which he may be best known, but Urban League work is only part of his legacy. Price is scheduled to share his reflective autobiography This African American Life (Blair, 2017) during the National Urban League convention that begins July 26 in St. Louis. I’m sure that many of his colleagues will enjoy his reflections, much as I did when I read his book.

In his inspirational book, Price weaves his thoughts about public policy with an accounting of his amazing life. His is a life that he might not have imagined -- he came of age at a time when African Americans had access to new possibilities after rigid educational and occupational segregation. So what young man, a product of segregation, would have imagined himself navigating influential and integrated waters, and making a profound difference. Throughout this book, you get a sense that Hugh Price, though well grounded, is also amazed at the many ways our world has changed. This African American Life reads just like Hugh Price sounds, chock full of self-deprecating humor and tongue-in-cheek reflections. And while Price takes African American life quite seriously, he manages to take himself somewhat less so. Thus, even in his laid-back way, he is able to convey the excitement he feels at certain high points in his life, such as when he visits South Africa, or when he first, as President of the Urban League, gets a multi-car police escort. I am struck both by Price’s humility and by his ability to put himself, and important issues, in context.

Hugh Price is the product of “good stock”, middle-class Black Washington, D.C. Reading the first few chapters of his book is like taking a romp through African American history. Price is the descendent of escaped enslaved people, and it is clear that he inherited enough of their hunger for freedom to make that hunger his own. The inventor, Lewis Latimer, is one of his ancestors, and his pride in his legacy shines thorough in his book. Price is not reticent probing race and skin color conflicts when he references a white relative of Lewis Latimer, or when he talks about tensions in his own family when his darker skinned father, a physician, pursued his lighter-skinner mother. Skin color discrimination is still, unfortunately, alive and well; few are as forthright in dealing with it as Hugh Price. He deals with it, as he does with just about everything else, with a sage equanimity. It is clear that he is annoyed by the ignorance of skin color discrimination, but he is not so annoyed as to produce a tirade about it. Instead, it is simply a factor to reflect on in “this African American life”.

Hugh Price’s book is extremely thoughtful and transparent. While he expresses extreme joy in the high points of his life, for example joining the Urban League as CEO, his tone is not much different as when he experiences disappointment at missed opportunities. The African American community has gained when Hugh Price felt he “lost”, and agrees with his daughter Traer, when she notes that missed opportunities opened doors to new possibilities. Thus, it is engaging to read through his path as youth mentor, New Haven community leader, mayoral appointee, New York Times editorial writer, public television leader, foundation executive, then President and CEO of the National Urban League. In his “back nine” he has been a professor and thought leader, connected with prestigious organizations like Princeton University and the Brookings Institution. Candid about the ways he lobbied for and secured some of the positions he attained, as well as the ways that some opportunities “fell in his lap”; his transparent revelations should be “must” reading for young people with aspirations. Without lecturing, Hugh Price makes powerful statements about the importance of relationships.

Hugh Price has been passionate, improving possibilities for young people through his career. As a young law student and paid mentor to New Haven youth, he learned the importance of consistency. There is no place, he learned, for drive-by mentoring that takes place only at a mentor’s convenience. This is a lesson for the present; so many well-intentioned helpers feel that they can alter the course of a life with well-meaning, but tenuous engagement. Price used his early lessons to develop programs to combat Black youth unemployment, both through the Rockefeller Foundation and through the military. His commitment to youth continued in his Urban League years with his work on quality education and the achievement gap. He describes his work as “Spreading the Gospel of Achievement” in a chapter of his book; it is a gospel he continues to spread.

While I enjoy Price’s policy conversations, I equally enjoy the way he recounts his love of family, and the early struggles that he and wife Marilyn faced as they raised their family while he completed law school. Equally enjoyable is his conversation about baseball, a sport he is passionate about. Reading this book made me want to engage Hugh Price is a rambling interview that dug even deeper into his work than the book does. It makes me want to further explore his love for baseball and the ways baseball metaphors reflect contemporary life. For sure, Price hit a home run with this book, but it makes me want to engage him in another inning, another game, and more reflections from this phenomenal man!

Julianne Malveaux is an economist, author, and Founder of Economic Education. Her podcast, “It’s Personal with Dr. J” is available on iTunes. Her latest book “Are We Better Off: Race, Obama and public policy is available via amazon.com

More Than 100 Federal Agencies Fail to Report Hate Crimes to the FBI’s National Database By A.C. Thompson and Ken Schwencke

July 9, 2017

More Than 100 Federal Agencies Fail to Report Hate Crimes to the FBI’s National Database

By A.C. Thompson and Ken Schwencke

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from ProPublica

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - In violation of a longstanding legal mandate, scores of federal law enforcement agencies are failing to submit statistics to the FBI’s national hate crimes database, ProPublica has learned.

The lack of participation by federal law enforcement represents a significant and largely unknown flaw in the database, which is supposed to be the nation’s most comprehensive source of information on hate crimes. The database is maintained by the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which uses it to tabulate the number of alleged hate crimes occurring around the nation each year.

The FBI has identified at least 120 federal agencies that aren’t uploading information to the database, according to Amy Blasher, a unit chief at the CJIS division, an arm of the bureau that is overseeing the modernization of its information systems.

The federal government operates a vast array of law enforcement agencies — ranging from Customs and Border Protection to the Drug Enforcement Administration to the Amtrak Police — employing more than 120,000 law enforcement officers with arrest powers. The FBI would not say which agencies have declined to participate in the program, but the bureau’s annual tally of hate crimes statistics does not include any offenses handled by federal law enforcement. Indeed, the problem is so widespread that the FBI itself isn’t submitting the hate crimes it investigates to its own database.

“We truly don’t understand what’s happening with crime in the U.S. without the federal component,” Blasher said in an interview.

At present, the bulk of the information in the database is supplied by state and local police departments. In 2015, the database tracked more than 5,580 alleged hate crime incidents, including 257 targeting Muslims, an upward surge of 67 percent from the previous year. (The bureau hasn’t released 2016 or 2017 statistics yet.)

But it’s long been clear that hundreds of local police departments don’t send data to the FBI, and so given the added lack of participation by federal law enforcement, the true numbers for 2015 are likely to be significantly higher.

A federal law, the 1988 Uniform Federal Crime Reporting Act, requires all U.S. government law enforcement agencies to send a wide variety of crime data to the FBI. Two years later, after the passage of another law, the bureau began collecting data about “crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.” That was later expanded to include gender and gender identity.

The federal agencies that are not submitting data are violating the law, Blasher told us. She said she’s in contact with about 20 agencies and is hopeful that some will start participating, but added that there is no firm timeline for that to happen.

“Honestly, we don’t know how long it will take,” Blasher said of the effort to get federal agencies on board.

The issue goes far beyond hate crimes — federal agencies are failing to report a whole range of crime statistics, Blasher conceded. But hate crimes, and the lack of reliable data concerning them, have been of intense interest amid the country’s highly polarized and volatile political environment.

ProPublica contacted several federal agencies seeking an explanation. A spokesperson for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, which handles close to 50,000 offenses annually, said the service is adhering to Defense Department rules regarding crime data and is using a digital crime tracking system linked to the FBI’s database. But the Army declined to say whether its statistics are actually being sent to the FBI, referring that question up the chain of command to the Department of Defense.

In 2014, an internal probe conducted by Defense Department investigators found that the “DoD is not reporting criminal incident data to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for inclusion in the annual Uniform Crime Reports.”

ProPublica contacted the Defense Department for clarification, and shared with a department spokesman a copy of the 2014 reports acknowledging the failure to send data to the FBI.

“We have no additional information at this time,” said Christopher Sherwood, the spokesman.

Federal agencies are hardly the only ones to skip out on reporting hate crimes. An Associated Press investigation last year found at least 2,700 city police and county sheriff’s departments that repeatedly failed to report hate crimes to the FBI.

In the case of the FBI itself, Blasher said the issue is largely technological: Agents have long collected huge amounts of information about alleged hate crimes, but don’t have a digital system to easily input that information to the database, which is administered by staff at an FBI complex in Clarksburg, West Virginia.

Since Blasher began pushing to modernize the FBI’s data systems, the bureau has made some progress. It began compiling some limited hate crimes statistics for 2014 and 2015, though that information didn’t go into the national hate crimes database.

In Washington, lawmakers were surprised to learn about the failure by federal agencies to abide by the law.

“It’s fascinating and very disturbing,” said Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., who said he wanted to speak about the matter with the FBI’s government affairs team. He wants to see federal agencies “reporting hate crimes as soon as possible.”

Beyer and other lawmakers have been working in recent years to improve the numbers of local police agencies participating in voluntary hate crime reporting efforts. Bills pending in Congress would give out grants to police forces to upgrade their computer systems; in exchange, the departments would begin uploading hate crime data to the FBI.

Beyer, who is sponsoring the House bill, titled the National Opposition to Hate, Assault, and Threats to Equality Act, said he would consider drafting new legislation to improve hate crimes reporting by federal agencies, or try to build such a provision into the appropriations bill.

“The federal government needs to lead by example. It’s not easy to ask local and state governments to submit their data if these 120 federal agencies aren’t even submitting hate crimes data to the database,” Beyer said.

In the Senate, Democrat Al Franken of Minnesota said the federal agencies need to do better. “I’ve long urged the FBI and the Department of Justice to improve the tracking and reporting of hate crimes by state and local law enforcement agencies,” Franken told ProPublica. “But in order to make sure we understand the full scope of the problem, the federal government must also do its part to ensure that we have accurate and trustworthy data.”

Virginia’s Barbara Comstock, a House Republican who authored a resolution in April urging the “Department of Justice (DOJ) and other federal agencies to work to improve the reporting of hate crimes,” did not respond to requests for comment.