Sept. 3, 2023

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - On Saturday, August 26, three African Americans were murdered by a 21-year-old white gunman at the Dollar General Store in Jacksonville, Florida, who then shot himself. The murderer was motivated, Jacksonville Sheriff T K Waters reported, by an “ideology of hate.” The shooting took place 15 months after 10 African Americans were murdered in another racially motivated shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo.

Sept. 3, 2023

To Be Equal
 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “With Trump, you don't need to look for a dog whistle. It's a bull horn when it comes to race. And I do think that's deliberate. We've seen the -- I mean, slanderous attacks that he has put out against Fani Willis, you know, alleged things I won't even repeat. So, he's not really hiding that he's going to lean into that element, and this is, you know, taking place just outside of Atlanta. When you saw the courtroom, it was a lot of Black men and women who are serving in that courtroom  …  It's textbook Donald Trump but it comes as no surprise.” – Former White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah 

If anything illustrates the depths to which Donald Trump and his supporters have sunk in responding to his racketeering indictment in Fulton County, Georgia, it’s his reference to those he falsely accuses of voter fraud as “riggers.” 

MAGA extremists, who have been using the word as a substitute for the n-word on far-right social media sites, responded with racist delight. 

Trump has put a dishonest, racist, and misogynistic spin on the old legal adage: If the law is against you, pound the facts. If the facts are against you, pound the law. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell. 

But amount of pounding and yelling can obscure the breathtaking lawlessness outlined in the sweeping indictment Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis filed this week against Trump and his 18 alleged co-conspirators.  By charging them under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act Willis has at last cast their brazenly corrupt conduct in the proper legal light.  

While the narrowly-focused federal indictment that Special Counsel Jack Smith filed against Trump earlier this month acknowledges six alleged co-conspirators, they are neither identified nor charged.  Fulton County’s indictment of 18 co-conspirators – and reference to 30 more unnamed, unindicted co-conspirators – illustrates the far-reaching scope of the massive scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election. 

Trump’s alleged criminal enterprise operated not only in Fulton County, but “elsewhere in the State of Georgia, in other states, including, but not limited to, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and in the District of Columbia.”  Its members engaged in “various related criminal activities including, but not limited to, false statements and writings, impersonating a public officer, forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, computer theft, computer trespass, computer invasion of privacy, conspiracy to defraud the state, acts involving theft, and perjury.” 

Omitted from the federal indictment was an alleged conspiracy to breach voting equipment and access voter data. “In Georgia, members of the enterprise stole data, including ballot images, voting equipment software, and personal voter information. The stolen data was then distributed to other members of the enterprise, including members in other states.”  Nor does the federal indictment refer to a bizarre plan, advocated by Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, to use the military to seize voting machines around the country and re-run parts of the election. 

Future historians will rely on Fulton County’s case, not the federal government’s, for the full story of one of the darkest chapters in American history. The meticulous work of Willis and her team is all the more remarkable given the constant abuse and threats of violence, incited by Trump, that his supporters have hurled at them. Regardless of the outcome, Team Willis as well as the witnesses and grand jurors whom MAGA extremists also have targeted, will emerge as the heroes. 

July 31, 2023

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The College Board is a nonprofit organization that runs an association of institutions, including over 6,000 schools, colleges, universities, and other educational entities as part of its membership. It develops and administers standardized tests and curricula used by K-12 and post-secondary education institutions nationally.

While the College Board provides resources and services to students, parents, and universities in promoting college readiness, it has no predetermined political agenda. The same cannot be said for the Florida Department of Education, which oversees its state’s public K-12 and college education systems. The department is under the direct responsibility and control of the governor. As of 2003, the commissioner of education, who manages the day-to-day operations of the school system, is no longer a position elected by the people.

It became an appointed position by the governor in addition to the six other members of the Board of Education. A governor is not a historian; therefore, providing an accurate depiction of history within a school curriculum should be left to those who are the most qualified to do so. By abusing his authority, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis adjusted the state’s education standards to align with his personal, politically, and racially motivated vision for a state “where woke goes to die.”

On July 19, the DeSantis-controlled Florida Board of Education approved new guidelines for its Black history curriculum requiring middle-school students to be instructed on how “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” The new standards teach elementary school students how to identify famous African American individuals but do not push their knowledge beyond surface-level awareness. The public school teachers are pushing back on the weak and inaccurate guidelines. The same is true of the College Board, NAACP, and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican U.S. Senator. “We resolutely disagree with the notion that enslavement was in any way a beneficial, productive, or useful experience for African Americans,” the College Board said in a statement to USA Today. “Unequivocally, slavery was an atrocity that cannot be justified by examples of African Americans’ agency and resistance during their enslavement,” While the new guidelines still allow teachers to provide instruction about Black history in schools, the Board opted to do so in a way that the NAACP says “convey a sanitized and dishonest telling of the history of slavery in America.”

These latest changes result from the state’s Stop Woke Act, enacted in July 2022. The law says discussions about race must be taught in an “objective manner” and should not be “used to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view.” It also states that students should not feel guilty for actions taken in the past by people of their same race or origin. This would not be necessary if the same history they are whitewashing focused on the stories of whites, such as John Brown, who held anti-slavery views and was a leading figure in the abolitionist movement. Our public schools should not protect the interest of one race at the expense of another.

The true story of the Black experience in America has always been shallow, filled with omissions in history books. The desire to develop a watered-down version of the truth is not just limited to Florida, and it predates the Stop Woke Act. Protecting the feelings of white students and their parents does not justify denying Black students the uplifting and encouraging experience of knowing their ancestors’ full stories and contributions. For example, when presenting the painful facts in depth regarding the transatlantic slave trade, it illustrates to a Black student the strength, courage, and resilience of enslaved Africans from which they are an extension. That important connection for all Black students gets lost in the skimmed-over teaching of valuable history. The long list of Black massacres is unknown to most middle and high school students today. The Orange County Regional History Center in Florida called the 1920 Ocoee Massacre “the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.”

For high school students, the DeSantis-controlled Board of Education will now require events like the Ocoee Massacre to be depicted as an “act of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans. From the DeSantis version of the massacre, students may never know that the massacre was a white mob attack on Black residents in northern Ocoee. The motive was to prevent Black citizens from voting in the 1920 presidential election. Most of the Black-owned buildings and residences were burned to the ground, and approximately 30 to 35 Blacks were killed. “Most of the people living in Ocoee don’t even know that this happened there,” said Pamela Schwartz, chief curator of the Orange County Regional History Center. Sadly, a culture of silence existed. For almost a century, many descendants of survivors were not aware of the massacre that occurred in their hometown. The memories of the victims from 1920 don’t deserve to be forgotten and then misrepresented. In 1920, the culture of silence concerning Blacks came out of fear. A traumatized community may never heal when racially driven politicians and appointees use their power and positions to perpetuate the white denial of the truth behind the sometimes-uncomfortable Black American experience.

David W. Marshall is the founder of the faith-based organization, TRB: The Reconciled Body, and author of the book God Bless Our Divided America. He can be reached at www.davidwmarshallauthor.com.

July 29, 2023

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - When asked about Brother Malcolm X, I always praise him as a Master Teacher who taught me and many others the importance of reading, learning from and acting on our history. By doing so, we can more effectively promote and protect our economic, cultural and political rights in the United States and the world. One thing I did because of Brother Malcolm’s guidance has been to collect important quotes that provide sound guidance from serious Black folks including journalist/historian Lerone Bennett, Jr., academician Mary McLeod Bethune, business executive Earl B. Dickerson, psychologist Frances Cress Welsing and historian Carter G. Woodson.

Brother Bennett stated, “Given the way we were forced to live in this society, the miracle is not that so many Black families are broken, but 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 give me hope.” 

Sister Bethune wrote in her last will and testament that “I leave you (Black people) the challenge of developing confidence in one another. This kind of confidence will aid the economic rise of the race by bringing together the pennies and dollars of our people and ploughing them into useful channels.”

Brother Dickerson stated that “As more and more Blacks move into the middle class, they owe a responsibility to the Black community. If Blacks go into the white community to get the know-how and then stay there, they are only pushing further away from the possibilities of Blacks ever becoming economically self-sufficient.”

Sister Welsing noted that “Black children are our most valuable possession and our greatest potential resource. Any meaningful discussion of the future of Black people must be predicated upon Black people’s plans for the maximum development of all Black children….If the children of a people are not fully developed at whatever cost and sacrifice, the people will have consigned themselves to certain death.”

Brother Woodson warned us in 1926 that “In the schools of business administration negroes are trained exclusively in the psychology and economics of Wall Street, therefore made to despise the opportunities to run ice wagons, push banana carts and sell peanuts among their own people. Foreigners who have not studied economics, but have studied negroes take up this business and grow rich.”

The advice and guidance provided by these master teachers and others have just as much relevance in 2023 as it did when given. If we don’t follow their advice and guidance as a group of people we will never be in a position to effectively promote and protect the rights of people of African descent in this country and the world.

July 24, 2023

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - If things don’t add up, it makes sense to see if something has been left out of the equation. That’s the case today. The experts tell us that the economy is as good as it has been in decades – unemployment at record lows, inflation under control, wages finally rising faster than prices.

Yet, most people are unhappy and pessimistic. President Biden’s approval rating is still underwater. Donald Trump, his likely opponent in the presidential race, is even less popular. What’s going on?

Americans aren’t wrong. They struggle every day with what pundits call a “polycrisis.” That’s a fancy word for a lot of big things going wrong in a big way all at once. Catastrophic climate change, pandemics, extreme inequality, a broken and unaffordable health care system, a dangerously decrepit infrastructure, a growing Cold War amid unending forever wars – this list can go on.

These crises are real and present. Families and communities take the hit again and again.

Extreme heat—or floods or forest fires or hurricanes – take lives and destroy homes. Ancient pipes serve up poisonous drinking waters. People can’t afford to get sick. Big money and powerful lobbies block vital reform. Now billionaires are paying for a new party – the No Labels (and Dark Money) Party, as if owning the two major parties were not enough.

Joe Biden – much to the surprise of many – stepped up to address some of this. He passed the biggest bill to rebuild America in decades, the biggest investment in renewable energy ever. He made a small start in making some drugs more affordable. He broke with our ruinous trade policies and began to crack down on the merger mania. First steps – but not nearly enough.

Trump’s MAGA Republicans, meanwhile, are missing the bus. They – aided and abetted by a zealously right-wing majority on the Supreme Court – are focused on social reaction – rolling back the progress of the civil rights movement, stripping women of the right to control their own bodies, trying to make voting harder and opening the door to big money in politics, waging war on “wokeness” as if diversity were the source of our problems. They just overloaded the Defense Appropriations bill with a bevy of anti-woke provisions – while utterly ignoring the reality that we’re starving basic investments at home while wasting billions of dollars and millions of lives trying to police the world. They may add to our problems, but they surely are not addressing the crises we face.

It is clear what gets in the way. In each area, powerful interests, deep pockets, entrenched lobbies benefit from what is – and stand in the way of what must be. Big oil and King Coal still

Impede a needed transition to renewable energy. The military-industrial-think tank complex defends endless wars and ever more bloated Pentagon budgets. Big Pharma and the health insurance complex defend a health care system Americans can’t afford.

It is easy to get depressed, to give up, or to turn on one another rather than toward one another. But change – and survival – will come only when citizens come together, confront the powers that be, and force the change. Modern America has seen two periods of profound reform. The New Deal under Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s ended the Depression,

built a modern infrastructure, guaranteed the right to organize, Social Security, and much more.

The Great Society under Lyndon Johnson that brought a final end to segregation, revived the right to vote, provided Medicare and aid for mothers with children and much more. Both were driven by citizens in motion – workers forced the New Deal reforms, the civil rights movement inspired Johnson to act.

Now we see stirrings once more. Occupy Wall Street exposed extreme inequality. Black Lives Matter challenged systemic racism, particularly in our criminal justice system. In response to reverses, the women’s movement and environmental movement are growing more powerful. Across the country, workers are striking for better pay and conditions, and for the right to a union. The Bernie Sanders campaigns inspired the young and provided the agenda. The progress Biden made came largely from that energy.

Much more is needed. We need leaders who will show up at the point of challenge. We need citizens who will come together to demand change. The “polycrisis” makes dramatic reform necessary. And that will come only from the people up – not from the interests and the big money down.

When I ran for president in 1984 and 1988, I sought to build a progressive coalition, across lines of race, region, religion, gender and sexual preference. We need, I argued, to move from racial battlegrounds to economic common ground and onto moral higher ground. Now, in the face of the many crises that are disrupting us at once, that citizens coalition is needed now more than ever. It is time to act.