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Volume 122 No. 29
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FEBRUARY 22, 2014 - FEBRUARY 28, 2014
Holder Favors Voting Rights for Ex-Felons By Freddie Allen NNPA Washington Correspondent
Mayor Vincent Gray addresses the group.
Council member Tommy Wells answers a question.
Mayoral Candidates Lock Horns on Top Issues Voter registration deadline March 3
By LaTrina Antoine Special to the Afro Ramping up to the April 1 Democratic primary, the Missionary Baptist Ministers’ Conference of Washington, D.C. Continued on A4
If America is ever to end the revolving door of prison recidivism, it needs to ease the re-entry of former offenders back into society by allowing them to vote, Attorney General Eric Holder believes. Holder announced his position during a recent conference on criminal justice reform at Georgetown University Law Center at Washington, D.C. He called on state officials, state leaders and other elected officials to reform or repeal laws that block exfelons from voting, more than two million of them Black.
District Heroin Overdose Deaths Skyrocketing
INSIDE
By Zachary Lester AFRO Staff Writer
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Valentine’s Day Rebranded
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Sam Lacy: He Made a Difference
Stanice Anderson remembers the sensation of floating that came after she injected heroin. She also remembers the agony of trying to quit—the stomach cramps, nausea, the feeling
time, which is why you have to keep going back for more and more.” That need to go back for more is fueling what law enforcement officials are calling an epidemic of heroin use. Men, women, many of them young, are finding their way to the highly-addictive
“It’s no longer limited to a particular demographic or geographic area.” – Joseph Moses, DEA
INSERTS • Character Education • Walmart
of desperation that she would never be free. “The rush is euphoric. It felt like I was really light,” Anderson, of the District, told the AFRO. “There were no cares, no worries, no past. There’s just right now. I felt like it was floating and it was just beautiful, [but] you only have that for short periods of
drug. They are smoking it, snorting it and shooting it into their veins, shocking law enforcement officials and addiction counselors alike with the startling rise in its use in recent years. Special Agent Joseph Moses of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s national headquarters in
Washington D.C. said heroin has always been popular in urban cities, such as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore. In the last five or six years, however, the drug’s use has increased in those areas while it has also surged in places where it was once rare. “What we are seeing is that it is no longer an urban drug,” said Moses, a DEA spokesman. “We are seeing it now in places where we had never seen it before—the suburbs and even poor, rural America. It’s no longer limited to a particular demographic or geographic area.” The expansion of the drug’s use has had shocking consequences, Moses and other experts said. According to DEA statistics, the number of heroin overdoses increased by 45 percent between 2006 and 2010.
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Stanice Anderson is a blogger and author who chronicled how she conquered her addiction.
afro.com
By Jonathan Hunter, Zachary Lester and Courtney Jacobs AFRO Staff Writers
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Photo by Kevin Allen
Young Black Men Respond to Dunn Case Verdict
Your History • Your Community • Your News
Hear the AFRO on The Daily Drum, Wednesday at 7 p.m.
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Holder said that some of the laws date back to the Reconstruction era and were crafted to weaken Blacks’ voting power. According to the Sentencing Project, 1 of every 13 African Americans can’t cast a ballot due to felony disenfranchisement. In Florida, Kentucky and Virginia more than 20 percent of the Blacks are barred from voting. Last summer, Holder announced the Justice Department’s “Smart on Crime” initiative that includes provisions to reform sentencing guidelines, eliminate unfair disparities and Attorney General Eric reduce overcrowding in prisons Holder favors ex-felon Continued on A3 voting rights.
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AP Photo
President Obama signing an executive order to raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers Feb. 12.
Minimum Wage is Going Up
Federal, Maryland and County initiatives gaining momentum By Alexis Taylor AFRO Staff Writer
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Efforts to raise both the federal and state minimum wage continued this month. At the
federal level, information from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported a change could have wide-reaching positive and negative effects. “The $10.10 option Continued on A5
To many young Black men in the Washington-Baltimore area, the failure of a Florida jury to convict a White man who fatally shot unarmed 17 year-old Jordan Davis for murder said a lot about the way the nation thinks about the value of the lives of its young Black men. To several young Black men interviewed by the AFRO in the District, Baltimore and Prince George’s and Howard counties, the failure of the jury to convict White computer programmer Michael Dunn of Jordan’s murder means a young black man’s life is not to be protected. Dunn was convicted of three counts of attempted second degree murder, but the jury deadlocked on the first degree Minilik Yewondwossen murder charge in Jordan’s had a strong reaction. killing.
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Photo by Zachary Lester
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