Dec. 23, 2024

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - In case you haven’t noticed, there is an uptick in the war on women. The tragedy is the war isn’t just coming from men.  The hate is coming from every direction.  If you didn’t notice it before, I suggest you take a look at how so many women voted in the November 5, 2024 election.

Vice-President Kamala Harris supported women’s rights every time she did a rally. She never failed to carry the concerns of women, but what did women do—except tor Black women who always vote in our best interest, yet so many of our sisters with whom we have marched, protested for, stood up for on rights they claimed to be for all women and we thought they were women in the struggle.  Well, there was a slap in our faces when you look at how so many voted in this last election.

When there was such a contrast in who joined us and worked in their best interest, along with ours, it is clear that we must reassess where we spend our time, and on which issues we concentrate.  Once Donald Trump interfered and had his Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade, while Black women in larger numbers, as were made public, were dying. So many of our allies seemed to think that was okay, and decided to vote for the man who was responsible for this tragedy.  So many of our so-called allies turned away their attention to the issue.

So, what do they want?  Choice of what to do with our bodies for women is not the only issue on which we were deserted. Take a look at what is happening with smart and accomplished Black women around the country.  The case of former Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby worked brilliantly for the people under her jurisdiction in Baltimore, Maryland. She worked her heart out for justice for those in her community, and helping her colleagues in other geographical areas. She was applauded by many.

She did nothing wrong, but if you read or listen to what is said in the news, you wouldn’t know that she was selectively prosecuted for the great things she did! Trump and his allies, on the other hand, thrive on doing the wrong thing by continuing to threaten a lot of people who do the right thing—something that seems to be a foreign idea to him and his cohorts. I find the vulgar things he says and does and can still be chosen by so many people to be their leader, using people who have no leadership skills to be insane!

Look at some of the things happening or recently happened to brilliant Black women and we see either no or a smidgen of other women coming to their aid. District Attorney Fani Willis of Georgia, has been stripped of her racketeering case against Trump and 18 of his aides and associates. This is a stunning ruling from a Georgia State Appeals Court to please the already convicted 34 times Trump, with more cases on the horizon, but who is punished? D.A. Fani Willis! 

Kim Foxx, Kim Gardner, Aramis Ayala all punished for their great work. Monique Worrell has faced her challenges. New York's Atty. General, Letitia James, is definitely doing her job, but Trump denigrates her because she’s making him pay for his wrongdoing!  All of these, and I’m sure there are more, were just doing their job. I’m left wondering where my sisters of another color are in standing up for them?

There’s a war on women, but most of them seem to be Black women who are just doing their job. Please do the right thing for one Black woman. Go to www.justiceformarilynmosby.com and sign the petition to have President Biden pardon her now so she can go back to work!

• The number of transactions processed by these providers grew by over 90% from 2021 to 2022, with more than 7 million workers accessing approximately $22 billion in 2022;

• The average transaction amount ranged from $35 to $200, with an overall average transaction size of $106, and the average worker accessed $3,000 in funds per year.; and

• The average worker in their study had 27 earned wage transactions per year, and a strong growth in frequent usage of at least once a month rising from 41% in 2021 to nearly 50% in 2022.

• Many cash advance app borrowers are trapped in a debt cycle and the heaviest users drive the business model. Repeat use of advances is common and high-frequency users accounted for 38% of users and 86% of advances. Many users borrowed from multiple apps simultaneously. Nearly half of all borrowers had used multiple companies in the same month.
• App use is associated with increased overdraft fees and payday loan use. 
• Consumers across states are experiencing similar harms. The eighteen states analyzed had similar patterns of repeat borrowing and overdraft use.

Dec. 18, 2023

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Soil. It’s where our food comes from and the foundation of all life on land.

The way human beings have traditionally farmed in the modern era devastates the soil. It impacts the quality of the food that people and farmed animals eat, and thus our collective health. It’s not sustainable, vastly reducing the amount of farmable land available to us and our ability to continue to feed the planet.

There’s a solution. One that we need to consider carefully, that offers a path towards sustainability and environmental health. It’s called regenerative farming.

The recent documentary film Common Ground provides a groundbreaking look into this critically important crisis and how we can fix it with regenerative farming. Normally when I’m asked to watch the latest “environmental documentary,” I admit to being susceptible to that mild sense of dread we all get when we’re about to be presented with the problems of the world further solidified before our eyes. But Common Ground is anything but bleak. To the contrary, it offers desperately needed hope at a time when environmental degradation, the climate crisis, the extinction crisis, and threats to our natural resources are driving cynicism among even the most optimistic.

Common Ground explores how, as Gabe Brown, a Bismarck, North Dakota regenerative rancher featured in film, puts it, the current dominant system industrial agriculture, “is working to kill things,” while regenerative agriculture “works in harmony and synchrony with nature, with life.”

The status quo system of industrial agriculture abuses and degrades our soil with tillage, synthetic substances, monocultures – that is, the cultivation of just one crop in a given area – and not sequestering carbon. Regenerative agriculture, in short, doesn’t rely on these things. In contrast, it relies on methods that protect the soil and offers a sustainable, healthy alternative.

Even before today’s high-tech agribusiness, industrial farming methods used by small and large farmers alike were causing devastation to our topsoil. Brown points out that the Dust Bowl of the 1930s wasn’t caused by drought alone but by “copious amounts of tillage.”  

Common Ground uses historical examples in its storytelling that, as a lifelong student of history, I love. One highlight is a newly told account of the revolutionary agricultural genius, George Washington Carver (told by Leah Penniman, herself a farmer and author of the book, Farming While Black). While Carver is known in history books as “the peanut guy,” he was far more. Carver understood that to take farmers out of poverty, you had to build healthy soil. Peanuts, it turns out, put nitrogen into the soil. Using peanuts and various techniques he developed by studying nature, Carver taught an entire generation of Black farmers how to farm in harmony with nature, like the indigenous peoples of America. 

Common Ground also strikes an important chord in addressing climate. Healthy soil has the potential to sequester tremendous quantities of CO2. From large farms to urban gardens, the caretaking of soil can produce more profitable and more nutritious food and help mitigate the climate crisis. 

The entertainment industry, through film and television, can be a powerful catalyst for change. It can motivate, enlighten, and inspire us to tackle daunting challenges.

“The slap heard around the world” by Sidney Poitier’s character in 1967’s In the Heat of the Night was an important symbol of the right and need to stand up for Black dignity. And, of course, how can we forget the societal impact of the TV shows like All in the Family, The Jeffersons, and Good Times, created by Norman Lear – my dear friend who recently passed away at the age of 101.

Common Ground’s celebrity narrators open the film by passing on reflections in the form of a letter to current and future generations. One of them, Woody Harrelson, mentions that what viewers are about to receive are “hard truths.” I couldn’t help but think of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which was instrumental in sounding the alarm and raising global awareness about climate change.

The impact and influence of An Inconvenient Truth got an important cultural boost when the film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature of 2006. It would benefit all of us for Common Ground to gain similar recognition (for the Academy’s and America’s consideration).

To borrow a phrase from Woody Harrelson, “the one thing that’s keeping us all alive is that soil you’re standing on.” Let’s get hopeful again about environmental solutions (including soil). Let’s work to find our common ground. 

Ben Jealous is executive director of the Sierra Club, professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free.”

Oct. 27, 2023

Former Congressman Al Wynn

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - In state legislatures across the country the “right to repair” movement is gaining momentum. Thirty-three states and Puerto Rico considered right to repair legislation during the 2023 legislative session. And while this might be a good idea for some products, policymakers should oppose any attempts to weaken regulated safety requirements for repairing life-saving and life-enhancing medical devices. Patient safety is too great a risk.

In theory, expanding repair options might seem like a good idea. It is the democratization of product repair. And certainly, there are many industries in which this is the right path forward.

In fact, advocates for this movement notched a symbolic win in California after tech giant Apple unexpectedly supported a bill that would require electronics companies to provide more access to the parts and instructions to fix their products.

What the right to repair movement ignores though is that not all product classes are created equal. And a one-size-fits-all solution is not a real solution, especially when it comes to regulated products like medical devices.

Medical devices are an important part of the healthcare services industry. Every single person has been helped by a medical device – whether it’s an EKG machine, a defibrillator, dialysis pump, x-ray machine, or any of the other more than 24,000 devices that medical professionals use every day.

Now imagine if that device didn’t work.

It is this risk that should give policymakers considering these right to repair laws pause. Given the influence medical devices have on public welfare, do we really want to introduce more risk? Risk that could impact functionality?

During my time in the House of Representatives, I served on the Subcommittee on Health whose jurisdiction included oversight over the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency in charge of the effective regulation of these devices to guarantee their quality and safety. I know firsthand the diversity and sophisticated nature of these products. By granting broad, open access by repair shops unregulated by the FDA, we could be undermining device integrity maintained by the whole regulatory system. 

Essentially, if a smartphone or tablet malfunctions from a bad repair job, there’s sure to be some headaches, but you’ll survive. On the other hand, if a sophisticated medical device experiences the same type of error because a hospital chose unregulated repair options, it can be a matter of life or death.

It is also important to consider possible unintended consequences this type of policy might have on underserved and racial minority communities, which are most often among the truly disadvantaged.

One report from researchers with UCLA, Johns Hopkins and Harvard shows that hospitals with a large share of African American patients have significant funding disparities and receive lower payments for care from programs like Medicare. Unfortunately, these facilities are the ones that will most likely use the unregulated repair option to fit necessary maintenance into tight budgets. Therefore, we could be unintentionally putting our community on the front lines of the increased risk a broad right to repair policy would enable.

Cutting corners in the medical field should never be an option. A 2016 study by the National Library of Medicine found that cutting corners was a “common practice” that contributes to adverse outcomes. That’s simply unacceptable.

Albert R. Wynn is a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Maryland’s 4th Congressional District. While in the House, he served as a member of the Subcommittee on Health.