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'Good Trouble' Lives On Across the U. S. by Hamil Harris

July 22, 2025

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Barbara Arnwine, president/CEO of the Transformative Justice Coalition, at a Good Trouble Still Lives On Rally in Chicago.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - When U. S. Rep. John Lewis died on July 17, 2020, instead of somber memorial services, his family and civil rights leaders and activists held rallies and marches and got into what he had described as “good trouble,” meaning pushing for truth and justice even when it means taking a risk.

Five years later, in his memory and honor, “Good Trouble Lives On,” a string of protest events took place in more than 1,700 communities across the country July 17. A growing coalition of leaders says their ranks are growing to challenge President Trump's agenda and hopefully restore crucial public policies that he and his administration have destroyed.

“We had more than 1700 events across the country Thursday night, and it was beautiful,” said Barbara Arnwine, president/CEO of the Transformative Justice Coalition, and a co-leader of Good Trouble Lives On.

The flagship event for Good Trouble Lives On was held in Chicago with other rallies in major cities like Atlanta, St. Louis and Washington, DC, but also in many smaller venues like Annapolis, Md.; Portland, Ore.; and San Diego, Calif.

“People said that it couldn’t be done because they are too angry and were skeptical,” Arnwine said. “But we started to organize and people, black and white, took to the streets.”

“This is what Democracy looks like,” said Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, during the Chicago rally. “Congressman John Lewis, a man who put his body on the line for Justice. There are times when we must defy the status quo and push back against unjust laws and that time is now.”

One of the common themes about the Good Trouble Lives On events is that they are positive, diverse, and upbeat. In Washington, DC Rep. Al Green said in a TV interview that the march that Rep. Lewis led across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 was the “crown jewel of the City Rights Movement.”

In New York City, protesters marched and chanted, “We want justice, we want peace, we want ICE off our streets!”

In Deland, Fla., protesters yelled “This is what Democracy looks like!” and in St. Louis, Denise Lieberman, director of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, said, “We are standing up for the freedom of all people.”

While many events are held in Washington DC, Arnwine said she planned for a “flagship,” event to be held in Chicago because she had strong support from city officials as well as labor and Civil Rights leaders.

The Mayor of Chicago spoke and even the Rev. Jackson came in his wheelchair alongside labor and civil rights leaders,” said Arnwine, noting that there were major turnouts in other cities.

“Chicago as chosen as the national flagship because of its bold and defiant Mayor Brandon Johnson, because it is the headquarters of Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and it’s a union town,” Arnwine said. “It also has great voting rights organizations and a wonderful chapter of Indivisible,” a progressive movement and organization that has vowed to fight against infringements upon civil rights gains.

Arnwine says she is expecting the events to continue and grow, including additional rallies later this summer. In August a rally for voting rights, a labor rally in September as well as a rally in support of the Constitution.

“Transformative Justice Coalition is pleased that more than 1,700 activations took place on July 17th through rallies, teach-ins and marches now planned across America’s communities and neighborhoods in the spirit of getting in ‘good trouble’. This has been created in honor of the late Congressman John Lewis, who coined the phrase ‘Good Trouble.’” Arnwine said. “John Lewis once famously quipped, ‘If not now, when. If not us, then who?’”

We are determined to reach and activate every American impacted by the poorly thought-out, poorly calculated, and callous budget bill passed on our country’s 249th birthday.

While the majority of people impacted by these cuts are White, it will also have a significant impact on Black, Brown, and other communities of color.

“The nature of the struggle has changed. It's a different era that requires a different response ,”  Arnwine said. “The beautiful thing is that we are under attack but we have each other's backs and there is more good trouble to come.”

 

Denying Food Has Caused Misery by Recklessness By David W. Marshall

July 21, 2025

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(TriceEdneyWire.com) - When Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, the change in administration provided our nation with a four-year reprieve from much of the misery we are currently experiencing during the early months of Trump’s second term in office.

Multiple times during Trump’s first administration (2017–2021), the United States objected to U.N. resolutions that asserted the right to food as a legal and enforceable human right. Israel frequently joined the U.S. in casting opposing votes. The two allies were sometimes the only nations voting against the resolutions.

Officials under the Trump administration made it clear: while recognizing the importance of fighting hunger, they were unwilling to endorse the concept of a “right to food” as an obligation under international law. The votes reflect a consistent strategy of opposing the recognition of food as a binding human right. This pattern of inhumanity has continued into the second Trump term while producing needless suffering that has a direct impact on our nation’s foreign and domestic policies.

With 319 million people on the brink of starvation in places such as Gaza, Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, and Haiti, the State Department was recently forced to destroy 500 metric tons of warehoused food, which eventually expired and was no longer considered safe to send to potential recipients. The high-energy biscuits that were destroyed are typically used to meet the immediate nutritional needs of children in crisis situations.

Was this a situation that could have been avoided? If the Trump administration had not been reckless in dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) while suspending most foreign assistance, what are the chances that the destroyed emergency food could have been properly distributed?

Can humanitarian needs of any scale be handled with a sense of urgency and compassion when there is a political mindset that does not view the “right to food” as a binding human right? Is the “right to food” also ignored when the nation’s largest anti-hunger initiative, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), is suffering deep cuts from the so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act.”

For many, this program is truly a legitimate lifeline, saving individuals from hunger. It is not just impacting the urban poor. The repercussions will be felt hard in rural communities and food deserts—areas where people overwhelmingly voted for Trump. SNAP benefits are not just a humanitarian effort; they play a critical part in small-town grocery stores and rural economies that rely on the steady and reliable income that SNAP benefits provide. It’s the ripple effect. When a local store loses a critical number of SNAP shoppers to government cuts, many stores will have no choice but to shut their doors for good. These rural stores immediately lose a major source of stable income, far greater than supermarkets in more affluent areas. When the only grocer in a town shuts down, it can automatically create a food desert.

St. Johns, Ariz. is a community that overwhelmingly supported Trump in the 2024 election. It sits halfway between Phoenix and Albuquerque with its one grocery store and one local food bank serving over 3,500 people. If the one grocery store closes due to the food aid cuts, the next closest option for groceries is approximately 30 miles away.

“I lean pretty heavily right most of the time, but one of the things that I do lean to the left on is we’re a pretty wealthy country, we can help people out,” said St. Johns Mayor Spence Udall. According to a study from the Commonwealth Fund, the Republicans’ cuts to the nation’s anti-hunger program will lead to thousands of job losses and a drop in revenue across the agriculture, retail grocery, and food processing industries.

Hunger relief organizations are also bracing for the ripple effect. Food banks are likely to bear the brunt of the cuts because they are often the last resort in the fight against hunger. Cuts to food assistance programs and other benefits could force millions of people to seek help from charitable organizations that currently lack the infrastructure to handle the potential surge of vulnerable individuals seeking assistance.

“A misperception of the public is that when needs go up, we do more. We can only do more when resources go up. We can’t magically produce more food,” said Brian Greene, president and CEO of the Houston Food Bank.

All the pending human misery comes from shortsighted lawmakers who are afraid and intimidated by President Donald Trump. They gave the dictator his megabill, even though it means people are going to encounter more stress of not knowing where their next meal is coming from, forcing people to rely on overwhelmed charities that will be faced with more people seeking help and less food to meet the need, and the continued destruction of the social safety net. In six months, America has found different ways to deny people the basic right to food. It’s reckless and cruel.

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.”

The State of Black America: The Call, the Crisis, the Charge by Marc H. Morial

To Be Equal 
July 20. 2025

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(TriceEdneyWire.com) - A war has been declared in this country. And the fight isn’t just for diversity, equity, and inclusion or for fair economic and criminal justice practices. It’s for the soul of America. It’s to determine which of us will have an opportunity not to prosper, but merely survive in a future clouded with uncertainty at every turn.
 
It’s for the fundamental right of Americans to protect themselves against predatory corporate practices, destructive environmental policies, and state-sanctioned violence by vigilantes and uniformed officers alike. And it’s for the right etched in the very fabric of what it means to be an American, which is the right to vote in a fair and free democracy where every vote is counted and every vote matters.
 
That is the war that has been brought to the feet of every American and the doorstep of the civil rights community at the top of this year. It’s the war being waged in courtrooms across this land, from local jurisdictions to the Supreme Court.
 
It is no secret that we are in a state of emergency. The hard-fought victories of the Civil Rights movement, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Equal Employment Opportunity laws, and the establishment of the Department of Education, are being systematically dismantled.
 
But as we’ve stated in our D3 framework, we doubled down on our advocacy on Capitol Hill and at the White House, and moralized in the 49th edition of the State of Black America Report, State of Emergency: Democracy, Civil Rights, and Progress Under Attack, the National Urban League movement is not backing down.
 
We are defeating poverty through every program offered through our affiliates. We’re defeating poverty through the work of our Equitable Justice and Strategic Initiatives division to correct a discriminatory and punitive system that keeps our people economically and civically disadvantaged and causes our communities irreparable trauma.
 
We are defending our Democracy through every action taken by our Washington Bureau to hold elected officials accountable for their actions and inactions in this moment. We are demanding diversity through the collaborative work of our Demand Diversity Roundtable and by suing this administration for an outright racist executive order that is undermining our Democracy, eroding trust in our systems, and dismantling our government.
 
For the Urban League movement, this state of emergency and scourge on our nation and community is a call to action.

This week at our national conference in Cleveland, we convened affiliate leaders, community advocates, and thought leaders from across the country with one mission and a unified message: we are not backing down.
 
We shared economic strategies to equip our communities and partners with the tools needed to help navigate an employment landscape that has become increasingly hostile towards people of color, especially Black women. Provided support and training for entrepreneurs and small business owners to thrive in the face of changing economic headwinds.
 
Invested in our young people at our annual youth summit as a reminder that even in a state of emergency, their dreams and ambitions are worth investing in and fighting for.
 
Developed civic engagement action plans to prepare our communities for the midterms in 2026 and support grassroots and civic engagement groups with the resources they need to fight back against rapidly expanding discriminatory voting laws.
 
We are taking the time to recognize every single person in this fight, thanking them for their contributions and reminding them why we do this work.
 
The Urban League movement is banding together to weather the storms to come, fight for our freedoms and Democracy in the face of tyranny, and equip our leaders every day to build a nation that reflects its values and its citizens.
 
                                                                               

Harvard Report: Black Homeownership Gains Have Halted By Charlene Crowell

 
July 1, 2025
 
Harvard Report Cover The State of the Nations Housing 2025
(TriceEdneyWire.com) - For the first time in 30 years, rising home prices and interest rates have translated into a drop in existing home sales and worsening affordability challenges for middle class  families.
 
Among the nation's 46 million renter households, only one in seven - 6 million - in 2024 earned at least $126,700, the amount needed to afford a $2,570 monthly payment on a $412,500 median-priced home. And these escalating costs likely contributed to the 771,480 people who were unhoused in 2024.
 
For Black Americans, the homeownership gains that occurred between 2019 and 2023 have halted. Last year, the white-Black homeownership gap remained stuck at 27.7 percentage points, and the same measure for Latino families was 25.2 percentage points. 
These are among the findings in The State of the Nation’s Housing 2025, an annual report published by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS). Regarded by researchers and housing stakeholders as one of the most comprehensive assessments of the entire housing market, its findings share year-to-year changes and trends in construction, housing for owners and renters, as well as the effects of policy changes and proposals on the market.
Beyond its substantive findings, this year’s report is also a call to action.
“There must be a concerted effort to do more to address the affordability and supply crises,” says, Chris Herbert, Managing Director of the Center. “The potential consequences of inaction are simply too harmful to the macroeconomy and the millions of households striving for a safe, affordable place to call home.”  
As of early 2025, home prices are up 60 percent nationwide since 2019 and are increasing 3.9 percent year over year. This year, a median-priced new home comes with a price tag of $459,826. Additionally, last year marked the fewest home sales on record since 1995.  
“This is a shocking five times the median household income,” says Daniel McCue, a Senior Research Associate at the Center. “This is also significantly above the price-to-income ratio of 3 that has traditionally been considered affordable.”
Two key factors affecting the costs of homeownership -home insurance and taxes – continue to rise. Home insurance premiums jumped 57 percent from 2019 to 2024, according to Freddie Mac.  
Locales with the most severe weather-related disasters were hardest hit. Tornadoes, floodings, wildfires, and hurricanes impose financial tolls on renters and homeowners alike. For example, in Miami where weather-related disasters frequently occur, the cost of home insurance for a median-priced home is $920 per month, or more than $11,000 per year.
“The scale and frequency of climate disasters has prompted private insurers not only to raise premiums, but in some cases to reduce coverage or pull out of markets entirely, as in California, Florida, and Louisiana”, states the report.
Rising property taxes add yet another affordability challenge.  
In states considered ‘low tax,’ average annual property tax costs can be as low as $1,100, as in Alabama, or as high as $10,100 in New Jersey, generally considered a ‘high tax’ state. Nationwide, the average 12 percent increase in 2021 and 2023 led to an annual $4,380 tax bill.   While tax abatement programs have been implemented by some state and local governments, these cost-saving options tend to be limited to either senior citizens and/or low-income households.  
Additional report findings show:
  • 22.6 million renters are cost-burdened, spending more than 30 percent of theirmonthly earnings on their leases - the third consecutive year that this metric has increased. It is also 7.8 million more than in 2001.
  • Among renters, 12.1 million households - 27 percent - spend more than half of their income on housing.
  • 20.3 million families, or 24 percent of homeowners, are also cost-burdened , an increase of 646,000 in 2023.
  • Insurance costs remained a substantial driver of rent growth, up 26 percent year over year in 2023 and twice the previous year’s rate. Other cost increases include repairs and maintenance (12 percent), administration (12 percent), property taxes (10 percent), and payroll (6 percent).
Amid these developments, there remain other looming possibilities: a national economic downturn, and the FY 2026 budget that would cut in half funding for the nation’s only housing agency. Should either become reality, the nation’s already-enormous housing challenges would be exacerbated.
 
“For too long, families of color and first-generation buyers have faced insurmountable barriers to owning a home due to predatory lending, high downpayment requirements, and increasing home prices,” said California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the Ranking Member on the House Financial Services Committee. She is also the co-lead of refiled legislation entitled, The Downpayment Toward Equity Act that would provide $100 billion in direct assistance to help first-time, first-generation homebuyers purchase their first home.
 
Two Texas Members of Congress, Al Green, and Sylvia Garcia, are also co-leads.
 
“With Black and brown families historically denied the opportunity to own homes and build wealth, our bill will empower first-generation homebuyers to access robust homeowner assistance and build wealth… this is exactly the type of policy this moment demands – and Congress must pass it without delay,” added Massachusetts Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley,  another co-sponsor.
 
The legislation has the support of diverse housing stakeholders: Americans for Financial Reform, the National Council of State Housing Agencies, the National Fair Housing Alliance, and the National Association of Realtors.
 
Charlene Crowell is a senior fellow with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Pell Grants Facing $9 Billion Program Cut By Charlene Crowell

 
 
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(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Each year approximately 7 million college students benefit from Pell Grants, a 50-year old needs-based program that can be used to cover costs for tuition, fees, living costs and room and board. Additionally, these funds have been available at both 4-year and two-year institutions.
For students of color and others who are the first in their family to attend college, Pell Grants have been an important part of financial aid packages for an estimated 80 million low-income  families with little or no wealth.
But the federal Education budget for FY 2026, recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, would cut Pell Grant funding by $9 billion to $22.5 billion, compared to 2024’s $31.5 billion.  If approved, this significant cut will mean that next year a vital program will serve fewer students with smaller grants, changed student eligibility, and fewer institutions that would be allowed to administer the program.
Currently,  the maximum Pell Grant award for the 2025–26 academic year is $7,395 and can be used by both full and part-time students.
If the Senate agrees to the House-passed budget, a maximum Pell award would drop to $5,710 for the 2026-27 academic year and be limited to only students completing 30 academic credit hours, or 12 to 15 credits per semester. Students completing at least 12 academic hours but fewer than full-time, would receive smaller, pro-rated grants.
Students enrolled in fewer than 12 credit hours would no longer be eligible for Pell Grants.  Both community colleges and the adult students they serve would be affected by this specific change. Adult students are often employed and have dependent children with responsibilities that do not allow for heavy class loads. Even so, these students choose to return to academic studies to enhance their skills, credentials, and earnings.  
At a recent hearing by the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee a prominent HBCU president called against enacting these steep cuts.
“Today, PELL Grants provide up to $7,395 annually to more than seven million low- and moderate- income students,” testified Tuskegee University President Mark A. Brown. “For context, a single parent with two children earning up to $51,818 adjusted gross income (225 percent of the federal poverty guideline) can qualify for the maximum award.”
“However, this maximum amount covers only 31 percent of tuition, fees, room and meals at the average public four-year college, compared to 79 percent in 1975,” he continued. “Cuts to the program would put college out of reach for many more low-income students, while increased would represent a true federal investment in education, reduce dependence on loans, and help address workforce skill deficits.”
Nor is Tuskegee alone in attacking proposed cuts. Other education stakeholders have also weighed in. 
“To reduce the maximum Pell Grant when we should be doubling it, reduce the number of students eligible for Pell Grants, increase the number of credit hours necessary for Pell without consideration for students who work their way through college, and to impose risk sharing on colleges who cannot force students to make student loan payments in an increasingly uneasy economy just seems as if those who wrote this bill are out of touch with reality,” said Lodriguez V. Murray, the United Negro College Fund’s senior vice president for public policy and government affairs.
For Katherine Meyer, a fellow in the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings, the proposed Pell cuts are a part of a broader retreat from a federal role in higher education.
“Between the ongoing budget reconciliation process and President Trump’s FY 2026 budget request, federal financial aid is at risk,” wrote Meyer in a recent post. “Provisions in the reconciliation bill would eliminate Pell grant eligibility for millions of students, and the budget proposes eliminating or dramatically reducing Pell and other federal grant aid. Without robust federal funding for financial aid, states and students will scramble to fill in the gaps, with the end result being fewer opportunities to pursue higher education for the lowest income students.”  
On May 21, Education Secretary Linda McMahon testified before the subcommittee of House Appropriations to defend the agency’s FY 2026 budget request.
“President Trump’s vision is to make American education freer, fairer, and more competitive globally by eliminating Federal bureaucracy and empowering states, parents, and educators,” testified McMahon. “Our FY 2026 budget request delivers on this promise by reducing spending for ineffective programs and prioritizing effective ones, while fully enforcing Federal law and giving power back to states, parents, and educators.”
The nation’s broad disagreement on these and other changes to the Education Department were perhaps best summarized in another testimony at the HELP committee hearing.   According to Mark Pierce, Executive Director of the Student Borrower Protection Center:
“Americans deserve more than a higher education system that acts as a finishing school for the children of millionaires and billionaires while systematically denying economic and educational opportunities to the rest of us. Our government should be relentlessly focused on making markers of middle-class American life—including education—cheaper for working families, not more expensive.”
Charlene Crowell is a senior fellow with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.">Charlene.crowell@responsiblelending.org.
 
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