(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The recent massacre of three students and three adults in Nashville is alarming. How and why did a former student invade the school locked and loaded with an automatic weapon and ruthlessly kill innocent students and their caretakers? While it is useless to speculate on the thought process that led someone to kill people, perhaps to make a statement, it is clear that the multiple school shootings that have taken place in the last several months have encouraged many to continue the trend by executing shootings of their own. In the wake of the March 27 Nashville shooting, we were treated to the usual rhetoric of "thoughts and prayers" and even calls for stronger gun legislation. But the gun lobby is so strong and gun-toting zealots so politically powerful that attempts to limit the availability of automatic weapons get caught in the political crossfire. Anyone can offer thoughts and prayers. Who is willing to change policy to protect our students?

While I am wondering how students are reacting to the ever-present school shootings, the American Association of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), and the Children’s Hospital Association declared a national emergency in children’s mental health two years ago (https://www.aap.org/en/advocacy/child-and-adolescenthealthy-mental-development/aap-aacap-cha-declaration-ofa-national-emergency-in-child-and-adolescent-mentalhealth/), citing the severe toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on top of existing challenges. While their report does not explicitly reference school shootings as part of the problem, Lee Savio Beers, AAP President, said, "Young people have endured so much throughout this pandemic, and while much of the attention is often placed on its physical health consequences, we cannot overlook the escalating mental health crisis facing our patients.” The mental health crisis shows up through increasing incidences of child suicide, the second leading cause of death for young people 10-24 in 2018.

The number has likely increased since we have experienced much disruption since the COVID epidemic that shifted life paradigms between 2019 and 2021. If adults have problems handling this disruption, how do we think our children and young adults are faring? “We are caring for young people with soaring rates of depression, anxiety, trauma, loneliness, and suicidality that will have lasting impacts on them, their families, their communities, and all of our futures,” said AACAP President Gabrielle A. Carlson, M.D. “This is a national emergency, and the time for swift and deliberate action is now.”

The 2021 report noted that young people in communities of color had been impacted by the pandemic more than others and how the ongoing struggle for racial justice is inextricably tied to the worsening mental health crisis. When young people witness the heinous killings of Black motorists or people simply "walking while Black," how does it affect their mental health? While our attention is focused on young people who are students, we have often ignored the children who, as young as twelve or thirteen, are working in unsafe environments. There are federal child labor laws that restrict the hours that those under 16 can work, especially during school hours. Too many employers ignore the rules and are rarely held accountable.

The National Child Labor Coalition (https://stopchildlabor.org/)ß has documented the reckless use of children in manufacturing plants, especially automobile manufacturing plants in Alabama (Kia and Hyundai are especially egregious violators). Nearly half of all employed children work in agriculture, where they are exposed to, among other things, life-threatening pesticides. While laws prevent child labor, enforcement is lax when regulatory agencies are understaffed. Louis Hine photographed jarring images of children working in agriculture, mines, and other dangerous places.

His work, much of which was documented at the turn of the twentieth century, was responsible for the child labor legislation from 1912, and was part of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938. Our nation is moving backward in protecting children, but that is no surprise since we are going backward using legislation to prevent exploitation. Still, too many of us mouth the platitude that we believe that children are the future while ignoring our children's mental health in the classroom, the workplace, and the world. Our indifference to our young people will likely result in their indifference to us a decade or two from now.

Can we expect the young people we have ignored to protect our Medicare or Social Security? Why should they care for us when we have not cared for them? Dr. Julianne Malveaux is an economist, author, and Dean of the College of Ethnic Studies at Cal State LA. She can be reached at juliannemalveaux.co

TriceEdneyWire.com – DISPOSE - the root word of the word disposable makes it one of the simplest of words to understand.  It suggests to all that something has reached the end of its usefulness and should/will/must be discarded or eliminated.

I began taking a harder, deeper look at the word “disposable” when cloth diapers were replaced by disposable diapers.  I think that folks in, and preceding, my generation were accustomed to “durable goods” which would have a lengthy, useful service life.  So often at the end of the original service life of these “durable goods,” they were re-purposed for additional utility.  The aforementioned diapers often served two or more infants consecutively.  Some remember, when they were no longer fit for infant use, old diapers (cleaned and washed) were found as rags used for washing cars, dusting, or other down-to-earth purposes. That was then!

Nowadays there are far fewer “durable goods.”  “Useful service-life” has gone the way of “durable goods” and is, if at all, marginally applicable in the contemporary lexicon.

The one undesirable application of the term disposable is as it is currently applied to African Americans.  As we see increasing incidents of acts of genocide against African Americans, we can only infer that perpetrators of this genocide view us as “disposable.”  Certain names bring this brutal reality into focus.  Floyd, Bland, Taylor, Brown, Till, and a myriad of other decedents illustrate my point.

Recently, at Tyson’s Corner, a Northern Virginia shopping center 14 driving miles from Washington, DC, a young Black man was shot to death.  According to WTOP, a local news radio, website:

Police in Fairfax County, Virginia shot and killed a man who they said was suspected of stealing from a store in Tyson's Corner Center. Police did not say whether the man was armed.

Fairfax County Police Chief Davis said the alleged theft happened inside the mall. The man ran from the police into a small, heavily wooded area nearby the shopping center. A uniformed officer and a plainclothes officer gave chase, and Davis said police issued commands. At some point during that chase, the two officers discharged their firearms but Davis did not say what caused them to shoot.That man was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries and was pronounced dead. No officers were hurt, Fairfax County police said.

That man, unarmed 37-year-old Timothy Johnson, was suspected of shoplifting a pair of sunglasses. According to Washington’s NBC4, after viewing the eight-minute body-camera video, Johnson's mother, Melissa Johnson, said, "No parent, no parents should have to view the killing of their child and then be asked to give remarks." She added, "The only thing they knew was that he was black and male and had allegedly triggered an alarm at a store for some sunglasses.  Was shoplifting right? Absolutely not. But we have laws in place to addressshoplifting.  Should my son have been murdered because he shoplifted from the mall?"

Ms. Johnson asks a valid question.  Stated differently, is shoplifting a capital crime?  Should we continue to lose lives at the hands of individuals who, arguably, perceive us as “disposable?”  Sergeant Wesley Shifflett, a seven-year veteran has been terminated for a “failure to live up to the expectations of a particular use of force policies, protocols, and procedure.”

As African Americans, we must also focus on our collective disposal.  I recently read a social media meme by Milan Kundera which states the obvious:

"To liquidate people, you start by depriving them of their memory.  They destroy your books, your culture, and your history.  And someone else writes other books, gives them another culture, and invents another story; after that, people slowly begin to forget what they are and what they were.  And the world around you forgets even faster."  Familiar?

March 13, 2023
By David W. Marshall

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - In 2021, the bill to award gold medals to the U. S. Capitol Police officers who responded to the Jan. 6 insurrection passed, despite 21 GOP lawmakers voting against it. The Congressional Gold Medal is Congress’s highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished contributions made by individuals. Surprisingly, party members that pride themselves as supporters of law and order opposed honoring the officers who upheld law and order on that tragic day. It is both shameful and insulting that the lawmakers who benefitted from the officers’ bravery and sacrifice found reasons to ignore the fact that five officers died carrying out their sworn duty to serve and protect.

No officers were killed on the day of the riot, four died by suicide and the fifth died of natural causes triggered by the events of the riot]. The men and women of the U.S. Capitol Police are worthy of the nation’s recognition. Rep. Andrew Clyde argued a month before the vote that the riot at the Capitol was nothing more than a “normal tourist visit,” regardless of the multiple photos of Clyde helping barricade the doors of the House chamber after rioters breached the Capitol building. With the help of Fox News, Clyde's assessment would later prove to be part of the GOP’s ongoing narrative in recreating the events of Jan. 6. Fox News, like its competitors CNN and MSNBC, are cable opinion outlets rather than pure news outlets.

Unlike the news received from traditional TV networks, cable “news” channels cater to the political interests of their viewers. For entertainment purposes, each cable network presents stories with opinions, facts, and a degree of conservative or liberal spin. But the manner of omissions, outright lies, and the sacrificing of facts for extreme political spins (and ratings) separates Fox News into its own special category.

Fox News viewers are more likely to accept and believe misinformation than viewers of other opinion outlets. Fox News may have once been an outlet for “enjoyment and entertainment, but it has now evolved into a propaganda machine disguised as an entertainment outlet. We see how Donald Trump uses the network to disseminate information—facts, arguments, rumors, name-calling, half-truths, and lies—to influence conservative viewers' and voters' opinions and beliefs. Now, Kevin McCarthy, as House Speaker, is using his position to do the same. Speaker McCarthy gave Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive access to over 40,000 hours of sensitive Capitol security camera footage from Jan. 6. As a result, Fox News was given the freedom to spin, edit, and spin again as they saw fit. Carlson took advantage of a unique opportunity to pick up the talking points of lawmakers such as Rep. Clyde and others who downplayed and attempted to normalize the insurrection. He released to Fox News viewers a manipulated and bogus version of Jan. 6, seeking to change the narrative of the event as peaceful. In doing so, Fox News has become a state-sponsored propaganda machine typical of non-democratic nations.

Approximately 140 police officers were injured during the insurrection. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was sprayed by chemicals and collapsed, according to witnesses, and died the following day. The family of Sicknick joined Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manager in condemning Tucker Carlson for airing “cherry-picked” video from the calmer moments of the riot rather than the “chaos and violence” that occurred on a day that officers described as medieval warfare with officers slipping on their own blood and vomit. Manager called Carlson’s accusation about Sicknick the most disturbing of the program.

“The Department maintains, as anyone with common sense would, that had Officer Sicknick not fought valiantly for hours on the day he was violently assaulted, Officer Sicknick would not have died the next day,” Manager said. Sicknick’s family issued a statement to CBS News that said they were “outraged at the ongoing attack on our family by the unscrupulous and outright sleazy so-called news network of Fox News.”

Kevin McCarthy, who seeks to maintain the power of House Speaker, gave Fox News viewers exactly what they wanted. The same is true for Tucker Carlson and Rupert Murdoch, who aims to increase ratings and revenue. Therefore, the propaganda and misinformation continue, as does the viewership. But the right-wing media giant may have met their match.

Fox News is facing a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, a Denver-based manufacturer of voting machines, over the network’s coverage of the 2020 presidential election and Donald Trump’s bogus claims that the election was “rigged.” “Yet despite knowing the truth—or at minimum, recklessly disregarding that truth–Fox spread and endorsed these ‘outlandish voter fraud claims’ about Dominion even as it internally recognized the lies as “crazy,” “absurd,” and “shockingly reckless” the filing claimed. Dominion is seeking $1.6 billion in lost profits and reputational harm. With the lawsuit, Fox News is now trapped in a spiral of lies and conspiracy theories of its own making. Should Dominion succeed in winning its case, it could have a devastating financial impact that would threaten the media giant’s ability to survive. Fox News has no shame and should be held accountable for its misinformation. The network will also have a loyal following. I am sure there are U.S. Capitol Police officers and officers elsewhere who will also continue to be Fox News viewers. The events from the last two years should be eye-openers to the fact that the network and many of its viewers are not true supporters of law enforcement as they claim but followers of a political and cultural cult.

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.

Feb. 25, 2023
He Wants To Make Sure No One Else Learns The Right Ones.
By Marc H. Morial 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - "Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” ― George Orwell, 1984

The Jacksonville ballfield where Henry “Hammerin’ Hank” Aaron played as a 19-year-old minor leaguer in 1953 now bears his name.

It’s where he and two of his teammates, Felix Mantilla, and Horace Garner, endured hostile taunts from fans. Off the field, they received death threats.  When the team traveled, they couldn’t stay at the same hotels where other teammates stayed or eat with them at the same restaurants.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis doesn’t want the high school students who play on that field – at least the white ones – to know why.  Other governors and elected officials, looking to capitalize on the racial resentment and white grievance DeSantis hopes will propel him into the White House, are following his lead. This insidious campaign is an effort not merely to warp Americans’ view of our past, but to thwart the dismantling of systemic and institutional racism.

To paraphrase an old business adage, you can’t manage what you can’t measure, and you can’t measure what you can’t see.

White students might feel “guilt” or “anguish” to learn that Aaron was forced to hide under his bed as a child when the Ku Klux Klan marched through town. Or that after he and his teammates ate in a Washington D.C. restaurant, they listened as the staff shattered every dish they’d used. Or that he received as many as 3,000 racists, threatening letters a day as he closed in on Babe Ruth's home run record.

That’s why school administrators in Duval County, where Jacksonville is located, temporarily barred the children’s book Henry Aaron's Dream from its libraries and classrooms. Other books  Click or tap to follow the link." data-linkindex="0" data-auth="Verified">kept off the shelves were Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Thank You, Jackie Robinson, Sonia Sotomayor (Women Who Broke the Rules Series),

Following a nationwide outcry, those books and others that broached the topics of racism and discrimination  have been reinstated, and DeSantis has tried to pass off the ban as “a joke” and a publicity stunt. But DeSantis’ own Stop WOKE Act, which restricts the discussion of race and diversity in schools, and the Parental Rights in Education law – better known as "Don't Say Gay" – explicitly require the reviews that forced the district to remove the books.

Among the 47 books the district returned to the publisher after the review was The Life of Rosa Parks, and Separate is Never Equal.

Politicians in other states are embracing the DeSantis Stop WOKE ploy like cynical moths drawn to the flames of a burning cross.

At least 36 states have adopted or introduced laws or policies that restrict teaching about race and racism. In North Dakota teachers are effectively forbidden to acknowledge the existence of systemic racism. Researcher Jeffrey Sachs, who tracks such legislation for PEN America, said, “The law now is saying that whenever a teacher talks about racism, they may only describe it as a product of an individual's own biases or prejudices. They cannot describe it — even when the facts command them to — as something more endemic or embedded within American society.

“It's a way essentially of preventing teachers, I think, from being honest about a lot of the uglier sides of American history and contemporary society.”

If DeSantis and his imitators get their way, our schools will produce an entire generation of Americans oblivious to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow,  to the decades of redlining that shaped our communities, trapping families within an endless cycle of poverty and violence, to the pervasive myths that deny Black patients medical treatment and pain relief.

When Americans saw the images of Elizabeth Eckford taunted by racists as she entered Little Rock Central High School, of Alabama state troopers bludgeoning John Lewis on the Edmund Pettis Bridge of police dogs attacking teenagers in Birmingham, they were galvanized into action by what they saw. DeSantis and his imitators have learned the wrong lessons from history. They want to make sure no one else learns the right ones.

Feb. 20, 2023
By Ben Jealous

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - People around East Palestine, Ohio, have been warned not to run their vacuum cleaners.

That was the reality two weeks after a train derailment in the village of about 4,700 people near the border with Pennsylvania that damaged public health and the environment in ways that still aren’t fully known.

Pennsylvania’s health department has told residents that data from its air quality monitoring “do not indicate a potential for long-term health effects,” but if people choose to vacuum after their evacuation they should do so “small amounts at a time and take frequent breaks by walking outdoors.” As confusing as those messages may be, Ohioans have gotten even less information from that state’s government.

Five of the derailed cars contained nearly 1 million pounds of vinyl chloride, a toxic flammable liquid; other cars carried butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate, and isobutylene. The spills from the wreck have left a long chemical plume moving down the Ohio River at about a mile an hour. The result has been at least 3,500 fish killed. The train’s owner Norfolk Southern said it is removing contaminated soil at the crash site, which can leach toxic chemicals into the water and air, after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) raised questions.

The immediate need is to respond to make sure that harm to people, wildlife, and waters now and in the future are limited to the extent we are able. As a starting point, residents need clear, understandable answers about risks they face and support to which they are entitled. While federal authorities generally defer to state officials in disasters, the simmering mistrust caused by the strange odors residents say they smell, the soreness of their throats, and the aching in their heads seems to cry out for a different response.

The EPA and Transportation Department must ensure that Norfolk Southern meets its obligation to make things right. The Sierra Club’s Ohio director Ericka Copeland captured it – “East Palestine and the surrounding communities in Ohio and Pennsylvania deserve full transparency from the EPA, Norfolk Southern, and state leadership…Residents deserve to be able to safely return to their homes and access drinking water without the risk of everyday activities like vacuuming exposing them further to these chemicals.”

Moving forward, we need to do more to protect people and places from hazardous materials that move in more than 2 million freight cars each year. To be fair, reports show that freight rail spills happen less often than spills from trucks or planes. But we know those trains don’t run through posh suburbs. They run through places like East Palestine, a working-class White village where median household income is about two-thirds the Ohio average. They are places that historically get overlooked.

The best news is we already know what to do. While the cause of the Ohio derailment hasn’t been determined officially, reports indicate a wheel bearing in the car that caused the accident overheated; there are sensors for that we can require. Similarly, we can replace braking technology that dates back more than a century with newer brakes that even Norfolk Southern said cuts stopping distances by 60 percent.

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Anyone who saw videos of the burning cars after the crash or the huge cloud of smoke when vinyl chloride was burned off to prevent an explosion may shocked to learn that the wrecked train wasn’t designated a “high-hazard flammable train,” which would trigger additional safety steps and more notice to state and local officials. This is an easy step to take.

These remedies have been proposed before. The railroad industry calls them too costly. But that claim must be weighed against nearly $200 billion in stock buybacks and dividends for the nation’s biggest rail companies since 2010 as they also cut their workforces.

We can start by restoring brake system and other safety rules rescinded during the Trump administration. Once we push for all these common-sense measures to protect ourselves and our neighborhoods, we should start asking another question – what was going to happen to all those toxic chemicals once they reached the railyard where they were headed?

Ben Jealous is incoming executive director of the Sierra Club, the oldest and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the country. He is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free,” published in January.