Tri-County Sentry
Friday
AUGUST 29, 2014
Page 7A
National News EPA to Require Air Pollution Renisha McBride's Family Sues Measurements in Black Communities Convicted Killer for $10 Million
Hilton Kelley forced EPA to protect Black communities. By Jazelle Hunt WA S H I N G T O N (NNPA) – For the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency may require oil refineries to regularly measure the air quality at their perimeters. These fence line measurements will give surrounding communities – largely low-income communities of color – data on the level of pollution they are exposed to each day. The EPA’s proposed rule changes are the result of a lawsuit brought against them by environmental advocacy nonprofit, Earthjustice and a few grassroots
Flaring at Shell Deer Park Refinery, Deer Park TX, located on the Houston Ship Channel. (Roy Luck/Flickr/Creative Commons) groups around the country, “For almost 20 years, the including the Community EPA has done nothing to reIn-Power Development visit their guidelines and say, Association. The group is wait a minute…it’s time to based in Port Arthur, Texas, push these guys to upgrade a historically Black neigh- and use better technology to borhood turned fence line protect human health,” Kelcommunity surrounded by ley explains. four oil refineries, six chem“We’ve been asking for ical plants, one international at least six or seven years incineration facility, and one to get them to revisit these pet coke facility. Pet coke is guidelines and take look at both a refining byproduct the possibility of updating and a fuel source that, when them. I think it’s every five burned, emits more carbon years or so, they’re supdioxide than coal. posed to look at ways they Hilton Kelley founded can increase protection of the association in 2000. He citizens who live next to says the lawsuit was years these kinds of facilities.” in the making. EPA, See page 10B
Moral Monday Movement Expands to 12 States for Week of Protests
North Carolina General Assembly’s leaders asking them to meet and consider MORAL, See page 10B
The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber attends Mountain Moral Monday 2014 at Pack Square Park in Asheville, North Carolina. (Photo Credit: Alicia Funderburk) WASHINGTON -- Near- tion under the law (such as ly 51 years ago, Martin Lu- LGBT rights and immigrather King, Jr. exhorted the tion status), women’s rights, 250,000-strong March on environmental justice and Washington audience to health care coverage. “go back to Mississippi, go The movement’s North back to Alabama, go back to Carolina chapter, composed South Carolina, go back to of the state’s NAACP and Georgia, go back to Louisi- a variety of other groups, ana, go back to the slums and says it will hold voter regisghettos of our northern cit- tration canvasses each day ies, knowing that somehow after marching to the state this situation can and will be capitol in Raleigh, culmichanged.” nating in a voting rights Leaders of the “Forward rally on Aug. 28 to comTogether Moral Monday” memorate the March on movement said on a press Washington anniversary. call they are putting King’s “Today, statehouses words to practice by expand- like ours in North Carolina ing the movement beyond are engaging in a modits origins in North Carolina ern form of nullification for a “Moral Week of Ac- and interposition, so we tion” in 12 states: Alabama, are mobilizing to critique Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, these regressive policies,” Indiana, Mississippi, New Rev. William Barber, presYork, North Carolina, Ohio, ident of the North Carolina Pennsylvania, Tennessee NAACP, said on the call, and Wisconsin. borrowing the language of The week will focus on Dr. King’s speech in 1963. a different social justice Barber said that the theme each day, starting movement -- comprised of with labor rights and fair “transformative fusion cowage issues this Friday, fol- alitions led by indigenous lowed by education, crimi- leadership” -- would be nal justice, equal protec- delivering a letter to the
The family of Renisha McBride, the woman who was shot to death on a Detroit-area porch last year, is suing her convicted killer for $10 million. Theodore Wafer, 55, shot McBride in the face through his locked screen door in Dearborn Heights, Mich. when she appeared on his porch around 4:30 a.m. on Nov. 2. He allegedly feared a break-in, though she was injured, intoxicated and unarmed, and did not call 911 until after shooting her. A jury convicted Wafer of second-degree murder and manslaughter in the 19-year-old's death earlier this month. Attorney Gerald Thurswell filed the wrongful death civil lawsuit in Wayne
Renisha McBride County Circuit Court on be- negligence, emotional dishalf of McBride's estate and tress and wrongful death. parents, Monica McBride "She was a beautiful and Walter Ray Simmons, young lady, you know. She citing counts of assault and had things going for her," battery, negligence, gross MCBRIDE, See page 12A
By Emily Wagster Pettus JACKSON, Miss. — A Mississippi sheriff says a man was beaten and shot two weeks after calling authorities to report a cross burning in his yard, and investigators are trying to determine whether the attack was prompted by people being upset that the man was visited by his mixed-race grandchildren. Deputies were called to a disturbance in a rural community outside Raleigh. Craig Wilson, 45, had been shot in the stomach and beaten and was taken to University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, said Smith County Sheriff Charlie Crumpton.
Investigators heard numerous reports from relatives about what might have started a confrontation between Wilson and 37-yearold Jeff Daniels, Crumpton said. Among other things, the sheriff said investigators were checking whether it might have been connected to people being upset about visits from Wilson's mixed-race grandchildren. The children's mother — Craig Wilson's daughter — is white, and their father is black, the sheriff said. Crumpton said Daniels was arrested and booked with aggravated assault. He was released on $20,000 bond. Wilson and Daniels are both white. The victim is the
Mississippi Man Shot After Reporting Cross Burning in Yard
boyfriend of the arrested man's mother, Crumpton said. Crumpton said he doesn't know whether there's a connection between the cross burning and the shooting. He said Wilson called the sheriff's department and investigators went to see the burned cross, but Wilson didn't press charges. The cross burning and the shooting and beating took place in the Cohay community of Smith County, about 45 miles southeast of Jackson, where Wilson and Daniels are neighbors, the sheriff said. Crumpton said a case against Daniels could be presented to the grand jury, probably in October.