Politics

Republican Chaos Fuels Threat of Government Shutdown by Rev. Jesse Jackson

Oct. 1, 2023

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(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Unless warring factions of Republicans in the House of Representatives can come to their senses, the United States government will shut down next Sunday. Some may not notice – we tend to rely on government only when we are in need. But the impact – and the hurt – will be immediate – and will grow over time. Nearly a million federal employees will be furloughed and sent home without pay until there is a resolution. Everything we rely on from the government will slow down or be halted. Home mortgage and loan applications will be delayed.

The inability to get government permits will impede everything from commercial fishing to health research to visas and passports. National parks will struggle to stay open, but they will overflow with human waste. Health and scientific research will be disrupted. As we continue to get hit with extreme weather, the emergency help provided by the government will start to run out. Some vital services will continue. The military will stay on the job – although civilian defense workers will either be sent home or work without pay. Social Security and Medicare checks will go out – but the newly retired are likely to find their applications delayed. As always, the vulnerable will be hurt the most. The janitors that clean offices, the food workers that serve food in cafeterias, the security guards who provide safety and others who work for government contractors will not be paid – and may never be paid for what they lose. Many of these earn poverty wages. Their families will suffer if they lose income for a few days, much less a few weeks.

The White House reports that 10,000 children from low-income families would lose access to the Head Start preschool program. Pell grants will continue, but new applications will be delayed. An extended delay will constrict federal aid to schools, parks, police, and arts programs. Families living in public housing will get hit. With HUD employees sent home, funding to fix furnaces, roofs, and windows will be disrupted. As contracts for low-income housing expire, HUD will be unable to renew them. Those seeking to start a new business will be unable to secure loans from the Small Business Administration. Subcontractors across the country – the smaller businesses that supply vital services to bigger government contractors – will go without pay; many will be forced to the edge. This shutdown – if it occurs – will be worse than the one that took place when Donald Trump was president. At that time, Congress had passed appropriations for several major agencies – from the Defense Department to the Department of Education. They continued to operate as normal. This time, the House has failed to pass any appropriations bill.

Republicans could not even agree on a Defense Appropriations Bill to send to the Senate. The threat comes directly from the chaos in the Republican Party. This isn’t a battle between the parties. The Republican majority in the House hasn’t even begun to negotiate with the Democratic majority in the Senate. Republicans can’t agree among themselves on what to pass, with their leaders held hostage by an extreme right that even Republican House members call the “clown show.” The objectors claim to be concerned about deficits but that’s not true. Any serious effort on deficits would have to include reversing the deep tax cuts given to the rich and getting control of soaring medical and defense spending. The objectors want more tax breaks for the wealthy, more money for the Pentagon, and oppose even modest steps to rein in prescription drug costs. Their main target is any provision that goes to the vulnerable. Republicans already blocked extension of the child tax credit that reduced childhood poverty by 40 percent during the pandemic.

Now they want to cut aid to schools, food stamps, support for low-cost housing, Pell grants for students and more – and, of course, reverse Biden’s programs to rebuild our infrastructure or begin to deal with the climate crisis. In order to avoid a government default on our debt earlier this year, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy negotiated an agreement with Joe Biden on funding levels for the coming year. Now the zealots in McCarthy’s party refuse to abide by that deal. McCarthy could sidestep them and put together a majority, drawing from the bulk of his party and moderate Democrats, but he refuses to reach out to Democrats. The result: a handful of right-wing zealots are barreling toward forcing a shutdown of the entire government.

Efforts will be made this week simply to pass a short-term “continuing resolution (CR).” That would fund the government at current levels for a few weeks or months providing more time to figure a way out. Hopefully, there are enough sensible Republicans in the House to join with Democrats to pass the CR and keep the government running. Millions will suffer if that doesn’t happen – and they will suffer for no good reason at all.

Labor Day 2023: We've Celebrated the Union Difference and Building Tomorrow’s Public Service Workforce By Lee Saunders

Sept. 3, 2023

Lee Saunders

Lee Saunders

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - As we celebrated Labor Day, it was an exciting a time as any in recent memory to be a part of a union. Working people are seeing what the union difference is all about, and they want to be a part of it.

Unions are overwhelmingly popular as the newest Gallup poll on attitudes toward labor unions shows.

Across the country, there is a bold surge of worker activism, as more people raise their voice on the job and claim their seat at the table. Workers are organizing with renewed vigor and winning some of our best contracts in decades. In the cultural sector, for example, 6,000 workers at museums, libraries, zoos and other cultural institutions have joined AFSCME since 2019. Municipal workers in New Orleans – a part of the country that hasn’t historically been labor-friendly – won collective bargaining rights this summer.

In city after city, we are seeing that same energy and enthusiasm during local job fairs that AFSCME is sponsoring as part of “Staff the Front Lines” – our new initiative to recruit qualified people for vacancies in public service. Job seekers are flocking to these hiring events in droves – nearly 200 people showed up in Philadelphia on a recent Monday afternoon.

They have heard our message that public service jobs are good jobs that can support a family and provide a career path. These are very often union jobs that come with strong protections, plus a unique sense of solidarity and fellowship with your co-workers. You get excellent benefits, including a pension so you can one day retire with dignity. These are also jobs with a purpose that allow you to make a difference in the lives of your neighbors.

Our strategy is working. After a huge drop in public sector employment during the pandemic, we are seeing a bounce back, especially in places where we enjoy strong partnerships with employers. Those best-in-decades contracts we’re negotiating are helping retain valued public service workers. And many employers are making steady progress bringing in new people who want to do work that strengthens their communities, while enjoying the rights and freedoms of union membership. Nationwide, July was the 16th consecutive month of growth in state and local government jobs, with a total of 315,000 added since the beginning of this year.

But there are still many positions to fill, and so we are casting a wide net. In many places, we are doing grassroots outreach to young people, to communities of color and to populations that are underrepresented in these jobs. That means, for example, working with faith leaders, asking them to spread the word in their churches and mosques that public service employers are looking for new talent – for nurses, corrections officers, sanitation workers, school bus drivers and more. We will do what it takes, because it’s critical that the public service workforce look like our communities.

Diversity in the public service has a rich history. Jobs in state and local government have been an economic lifeline for generations of Black people, especially when other doors of opportunity were slammed shut. This is my family’s story, so this is personal for me. My father drove a city bus in Cleveland, Ohio – a good union job that gave us some modest security and stability. We weren’t living on Easy Street for sure, but there was food on the table for dinner and a roof over my head at night.

We want to give more people of all races that chance – the chance to be one of the everyday heroes of public service, the chance to be a part of something bigger than yourself by joining a union.

This Labor Day, we honored the sacrifice of all working people. And we affirmed that life is better in a union. In the months and years to come, through “Staff the Front Lines” and other campaigns, we will keep fighting to help more people discover the union difference.

Lee Saunders is president, American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

Thousands Gather at Lincoln Memorial for the 60th Anniversary March on Washington by Hamil R. Harris

August 29, 2023

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Martin Luther King III speaks as his wife, Andrea Waters King, and daughter, Yolanda King, prepare to march alongside him. PHOTO: Roy Lewis/Trice Edney News Wire

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Rev. Al Sharpton gives the last speech before leading the march from the Lincoln Memorial to the King Memorial. PHOTO: Roy Lewis/Trice Edney News Wire

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March on Washington 2023. PHOTO: Roy Lewis/Trice Edney News Wire

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Sixty years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood at Lincoln Memorial and offered his dream for a racially diverse America, his 15-year-old granddaughter, Yolanda Renee King, said her generation is ready to carry MLK’s unfinished legacy in new ways.

While the size of the crowd on Saturday was a fraction of the 250,000 people who gathered in Washington on August 28, 1963, the gathering was more diverse and those who spoke said racial and economic challenges were more daunting than ever before.

“If I could speak to my grandfather today, I would say I’m sorry we still have to be here to rededicate ourselves to finishing your work and ultimately realizing your dream,” she said. “Today, racism is still with us. Poverty is still with us. And now, gun violence has come for places of worship, our schools, and our shopping centers.”

Miss King’s speech came before her father, Martin Luther King III, and Rev. Al Sharpton spoke. They, along with her mother Andrea Waters King, organized the event that brought thousands to the nation’s capital to essentially continue the 1963 fight for freedom, justice and equality.

Martin Luther King III said, “I’m very concerned about the direction our country is going in. And it is because instead of moving forward, it feels as if we’re moving back. The question is, what are we going to do?”

In his speech, Sharpton said it is time to push back against racial and social injustices at a time when conservatives are fighting more than ever to turn back the clock.

“Sixty years ago Martin Luther King talked about a dream. Sixty years later we’re the dreamers. The problem is we’re facing the schemers,” Sharpton said. “The dreamers are fighting for voting rights. The schemers are changing voter regulations in states. The dreamers are standing up for women’s right to choose. The schemers are arguing whether they are going to make you stop at six weeks or 15 weeks...They are trying to tell gays to go back in the closet but we are not going back in the closet,” said Sharpton. "We are going to stand up for who we are and where we are and what we are and we are going to make changes. They are not going to turn back the clock. “

Like at the August 28th, 1963 March on Washington, busloads of people rolled into DC from Detroit, Cleveland, and Atlanta while others drove in or flew in from cities across the country.

Dr. Ben Chavis, President and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association didn't speak at the March but had a special moment when he ran into Larry Hirsh, a Jewish man who recognized him.

“We were here 60 years ago and we were both 15,” Chavis said. “As I reflect on the last 60 years there is a tendency to underestimate the progress we have made,” Chavis said. We still have problems, racism is still alive, antisemitism is still alive and hatred is still alive however we have made significant progress.”

In her speech, young Yolanda King challenged veterans of the movement.

“All my life we have worried about environmental Justice for communities of color and under-resourced people but this summer we will be worried about global boiling,” she said. “We need to do more than to end racism on our planet, we need to do more than to end poverty on our planet, we need to save our planet.”

On Sunday, Rev. Sharpton told students at Howard University’s Rankin Chapel that African-Americans have come far since the 1963 March on Washington but often they can't believe what is being said about people of color.

Sharpton, who quoted from the 13th chapter of Numbers in the Old Testament, said the problem with the children of Israel was not the size of their enemies but they were reading a bad report.

“And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, who come of the giants. And we were in our sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight,” he quoted Numbers 13:33.

“The problem we had in America is that we were getting a bad report, we had a grasshopper complex,” Sharpton said. “Sixty years ago we came to Washington in the back of the bus because they couldn't ride in the front, they came with paper bags because they couldn't stop in the road to eat in a restaurant. It was against the law. They had to go into the woods to relax and release their bodies because they couldn't use the toilet.”

Sharpton said after the March he learned about the fatal shooting of three Blacks by a white man with an AK-47 at a Family Dollar in Jacksonville Florida.

“This shooting was racially motivated, and he hated Black people," Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters told reporters at a press conference. Reports say that the assailant attempted to enter Edward Waters College, an HBCU, but was turned away.

“Before we could rest, hate jumped back up again to remind us,” said Sharpton who reminded the students that despite the oppression African Americans have endured there were “some folks who didn't have a grasshopper complex.”

Sharpton’s message was proceeded by musical selection by the student choir that included one of Martin Luther King’s favorite songs: “If I Could Help Somebody. Then my living shall not be in vain.”

Sharpton reminded the students that their parents, and grandparents sacrificed so they could come to Howard, which just completed its first week of classes. "Don’t forget that people paid a price for you."

Sharpton reminded the students that in their lifetime, “We have elected the first Black President, one of your alumni is the Vice President, and if you have faith over few things you can be rulers over much.”

'No Labels' Just More Political Nonsense

July 30, 2023

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(TriceEdneyWire.com) - People attend the launch of the unaffiliated political organization known as No Labels Dec. 13, 2010, at Columbia University in New York City. The group looks to find solutions to problems partly by getting politicians to put aside their partisan behavior in order to find common ground. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images/TNS)

Labels, as all consumers discover, are just packaging. And truth in packaging is almost a contradiction in terms. The purpose of packaging is to make a sale, not admit the truth.

The political group that calls itself “No Labels” is a perfect example. Its name, game, and claim all are poll driven and message centered. The billionaire-funded group praises bipartisanship as an end in itself. Now it is toying with running a Third Party candidate for president – peddling West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin as a “centrist,” running on a manifesto entitled, inevitably, “Common Sense.” The manifesto offers up a series of poll-driven, carefully crafted policy positions, wrapped in pretty paper and designed to sell.

If there were truth in packaging, “No Labels” would call itself “No Clue.” It seems perversely blind to the reality we face.

America faces severe, simultaneous challenges – what academics call a “polycrisis.”

They are pressing and apparent. Climate change threatens existence itself, with severe weather already savaging lives and communities. Extreme inequality corrupts elections and subverts decent government. The million plus lives lost to Covid have exposed our broken public health system. Our infrastructure is dangerously decrepit. Our healthcare system is simply unaffordable. Systemic racism continues to mock the promise of equal justice under the law. We’re taking on both China and Russia, while fighting endless wars trying to police the world, a mission even our military, the most expensive and powerful in the world, can’t afford.

We have guided missiles but misguided leadership.

How does “No Labels’ Common Sense” address these challenges? Mostly by ignoring them. On climate change, they worry not about the extreme weather but about the price of oil, wanting an “all of the above” energy policy that polls well but utterly fails to address the crisis.

On extreme inequality, they say nothing. On infrastructure, they praise Joe Biden’s infrastructure act (while preposterously trying to take credit for it), without talking about how it is but a first step to what is needed. On health care, they offer traditional nostrums that won’t offend insurance companies and Big Pharma – and won’t take us any closer to affordable and comprehensive health care for all. Systemic racism or even the Supreme Court’s assault on civil rights goes unmentioned.

They embrace the impossible mission of policing the world, calling for even more money for the military while demanding deficit reductions. That puts Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block, which they imply but don’t admit, promising not to cut the benefits of those already or near retirement. Fifty-five and under look out.

Their remedy is not new ideas, but “bipartisanship.” Bipartisanship polls well, but consider dealing with a Republican Party that overwhelmingly believes that the election in 2020 was stolen, that Donald Trump is innocent, that “wokeness” is the greatest threat to America, that taxes should never be raised, that we spend too much on education and too little on the military, that voter suppression and political gerrymandering is an imperative, that guns should be free and women’s bodies should be regulated.

We already suffer from the overwhelming bipartisan support for giving more money to the Pentagon, despite the fact that it is the greatest source of waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government. There is a bipartisan consensus not to move to Medicare for All, which is the only way for Americans to have good health care they can afford. There’s bipartisan support for the “all of the above” energy policy that is contributing directly to accelerating and catastrophic climate change.

Their prospective presidential candidate offers not new leadership but business as usual.

Joe Manchin, who grew rich in the coal business, primarily uses his Senate seat to protect subsidies to coal and big oil, and to impede investment in renewable energy. He embraced the filibuster to block electoral reform to limit big money in politics.

“Common sense?” No, just more political nonsense. “No Labels?” No, just no clue and no way out. Billionaires have the money to create a party. Pollsters and message gurus can figure out how to package it. Venal politicians can test to see how they can profit from it. But don’t fall for it. This is just another beltway bandit con job that the country can’t afford.

U. S. Black Chambers Ends Convention on High Note with Renewed Support from the White House by Hamil Harris

July 25, 2023

USBC Inc. President Ron Busby and President Biden during a recent visit to the White House.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The members of the U.S Black Chambers Inc. recently concluded their national convention in Washington, DC, bolstered by a meeting with President Biden and strengthened ties forged between business, Civil Rights, and Faith leaders.

The White House Office of Public Engagement and National Economic Council also held a June 21st meeting with the leaders of the USBC to discuss the President’s plan to expand economic access to African-American businesses across the US.

But then President Biden walked into the room and greeted Ron Busby Sr. President and CEO of the Black Chambers Inc and other leaders in the organization that represents 120 Chamber of Commerce chapters across the country.

“This is an exciting time for the US Black Chamber and for our members across the country,” said Busby in an interview on the eve of the White House visit. “The US Black Chamber is about advocacy, access to capital. contracting opportunities and chamber development.”

The White House statement talked about the meeting between Biden and the African-American business leaders, which comes at a time when Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris has been rallying the party’s African-American base as the 2024 Presidential election heats up.

“The President emphasized that, despite the progress being made, there is still work to be done to ensure equitable growth and wealth creation for communities of color,” the statement read.

President Donald Trump said this week that people who help people get into this country should get the death penalty and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis spent the last week talking about the merits of slavery.

But at the White House, Biden announced on Tuesday that monuments will be erected to remember Emmett Till, murdered by White supremacists at the age of 14. Today, July 25, would've been Till's 82nd birthday.

In April, Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman whose allegations resulted in Tills brutal death, died of cancer in a Louisiana hospice. She was 88.

During the USBC National Conference, Donald R. Cravins, Jr., the first African-American to serve as Under Secretary of the Department of Commerce for Minority Business Development signed a historic Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) designed to enhance economic opportunities for African-American-owned businesses through capital and contracting opportunities.

On July 20, Rev. Frederick Haynes, the new President of the Rainbow-Push Coalition, spoke at the US Black Chambers convention where he said the Montgomery Bus Boycott was effective because of Civil Rights activist “tree shakers,” and business leaders, “Jelly makers,” who work together for 381 days.

“The tree shaking changes the system, but have you forgotten about the jelly-making,” Haynes asked during his keynote speech. “While they did tree shaking in boycotting the buses they did some jelly making. They refused to ride the buses so they organized a carpooling system. The carpool system was over before it was Uber.”

In an interview, Haynes said, “If we can build a Black Wall Street back then (In Tulsa) we can build a Black Wall Street from San Francisco to DC and from Harlem to Houston as a sign of the future of Black Business.”

Earlier this month, the USBC honored two of the three living survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921. In the wake of a decision by a Donald Trump-appointed judge to dismiss a lawsuit seeking reparations for the Tulsa Race Massacre.

Judge Caroline Wall threw out the lawsuit that would have required the city and others to pay for the destruction of the Black business District named Greenwood. One of the survivors was Ms. Viola Fletcher, who was seven on the day of the attack. Today she is 109.

"The dismissal of the lawsuit seeking reparations for the Tulsa Race Massacre is a disappointing setback in the ongoing fight for justice and equity.,” Busby said in a statement after the judge's ruling. “ The events of that tragic day in 1921 continue to reverberate through generations, and the denial of reparations further compounds the deep-rooted wounds suffered by the Black community.”

Busby said the USBC has established the Women's Business Center in partnership with the U.S. Small Business Administration, in the heart of The Greenwood District, which serves as a vital resource for small businesses in the area.

Busby said, "Our Women's Business Center in The Greenwood District stands as a testament to our unwavering commitment to fostering economic development and empowerment.”

As the new head of Rainbow Push, Haynes said one of his major efforts will be to organize a protest in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a Donald Trump-appointed judge blocked payments to descendants of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre.

Dr. Ben Chavis, a Civil Rights veteran and president/CEO of the National Newspaper Association, said in an interview, “We should learn from our history and not necessarily repeat our history. When we find points that we can work together with, we should do it so we can be much more effective.”