CELEBRATING
BLACK HISTORY MONTH
News Observer Los Angeles
Volume 34 Number 13
Observer Group Newspapers of Southern California
A Dream Deferred — Is the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Just Another Elusive Dream?prioritizing the education of our children. Research shows that just one year with a bad teacher can put a child three years behind. Now, think about what happens after years of neglect and lack of advocacy.
By Dr. Elizabeth V. Primas, Program Manager, NNPA ESSA Awareness Campaign In 1951, Langston Hughes laid bare the anxious aspirations of millions of Black people in America with his poem, “A Dream Deferred.” In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded America of the promissory note written to its citizens guaranteeing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, in his “I Have a Dream” speech. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson attempted to make good on that promise by signing the Civil Rights Act into law. And in 1965, President Johnson sought to ensure equitable access to these unalienable rights by signing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) into law. As a part of Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” ESEA was supposed to assist students of color in receiving a quality education, thereby helping lift them from poverty. To date, ESEA remains one of the most impactful education laws ever ratified. ESEA established education funding formulas, guided academic standards, and outlined state accountability. Since Johnson, presidents have re-authorized and/or launched new initiatives safeguarding the intentions of ESEA. Some of the most notable re-authorizations have been “No Child Left Behind” (2001, George W. Bush) and “Race to the Top” (2009, Barack Obama). The most recent re-authorization, the “Every Student Succeeds Act” (ESSA) was signed into law by President Obama in 2015. In previous re-authorizations of ESEA, emphasis was
Thursday, February 7, 2019
Officer Demoted for Video Taunting Black Woman
DETROIT (AP) – A Detroit police officer has been demoted and reassigned from the field while the department investigates racially demeaning comments made during a traffic stop and posted on social media. Officer Gary Steele and another, unidentified officer stopped 23-year-old Ariel Moore for driving with an expired license plate Tuesday night and seized the vehicle, leaving her to walk one block to her home in the cold and dark. WXYZ-TV reports video posted to Steele’s Snapchat account shows Moore walking home as he says “priceless’’ and “bye Felicia’’ with caption tags that read, “What black girl magic looks like’’ and “celebrating Black History Month.’’ Police Chief James Craig told a news conference Thursday that he demoted Steele from corporal and apologized to Moore. Police said Friday that Steele was unavailable for comment.
Actor Kristoff St. John Dead at 52 Dr. Elizabeth V. Primas, Program Director for the NNPA ESSA Awareness Campaign.
placed on students’ ability to pass rigorous standards in order to proceed from one grade to the next. However, data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP) show that a measurable achievement gap has persisted. Continued on page A3
Moore Reveals Cancer Diagnosis By Stacy M. Brown NNPA Newswire Correspondent Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore has made a strong and very personal case for lawmakers to keep the Affordable Care Act. In a televised interview, Moore revealed her cancer diagnosis and where she believes she’d be if it weren’t for former President Barack Obama’s signature piece of legislation which allows her to afford the treatments and necessary medication to fight the deadly disease. “If I had to pay $15,000 a month for this medicine, I’d be here writing my obituary perhaps instead of talking to you,” Moore told MSNBC in an interview this week. She said her oral medication, Imbruvica, helps to keep her in remission. Without the insurance coverage, she’d be on the hook for $15,000 per month. Prior to taking Imbruvica, Moore said she had intravenous therapy twice a month at a whopping $20,000. “The GOP is always talking about the costs of the ACA: the cost of protecting pre-existing conditions, the cost of essential health benefits, the cost of the individual mandate,” Moore said. “But what about the value of life? The lives of your kids? Your parents? That’s the core of this debate,” she said, adding that she’s “alive today because of comprehensive insurance that covers most” of the money in medication costs per month she now needs. First diagnosed last summer with small lymphocytic lymphoma – a non-Hodgkin lymphoma where the cancer originates in the lymphatic system – Moore said the disease is manageable because she caught it early and she takes her medicine every day. After her MSNBC appearance, Moore spoke before the House Ways and Means Committee in which members held a hearing on protecting those with pre-existing conditions – a major component of the Affordable Care Act which President Donald Trump and most Republicans have fought against. Moore and other Democrats, who’ve now taken control of the House, have said they want to reverse the GOP’s decision to take away the individual mandate in the health care law. A decision late last year by a Texas judge who ruled the individual mandate unconstitutional, is currently being appealed and Moore said she hopes Congress will act to protect the law. In their attempt to maintain the law that’s commonly
FREEEE!!
known as Obamacare, Democrats have also pushed a “Medicare-for-all” proposal that NPR noted has gained in popularity. Several Democratic presidential hopefuls are getting behind the idea, according to NPR which cited California Sen. Kamala Harris who said her aim would be to eliminate all private insurance. “Who of us has not had that situation, where you’ve got to wait for approval and the doctor says, well, ‘I don’t know if your insurance company is going to cover this,’” Harris said during a CNN Town Hall event. “Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on,” she said. Harris was a co-sponsor of a 2017 bill written by Sen. Bernie Sanders, (I-Vermont), that would have created a national, single-payer health system, eliminating the private insurance system. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., both presidential hopefuls, also cosponsored the Sanders Bill, according to NPR.
Everyone would get a Medicare card and doctors would have to sign annual agreements to participate. For Moore, that would be ideal, particularly for those who suffer with life-threatening illnesses like cancer. “The mere suggestion that it could be cancer was anathema to me because nobody ever wants to hear the C-word,” Moore said. “All of the while that I was going through the diagnosis and the care that I was getting, I thought about the number of people that I knew who die needlessly from cancer because they didn’t get early diagnosis.” Moore continued: “It’s our job as legislators to ensure that no American has to choose between seeking treatment & providing for their families. “I personally know people who marched into the emergency room two weeks before they died because they didn’t have health insurance. I am just a grain of sand on a beach.”
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Kristoff St. John, who played the struggling alcoholic and ladies’ man Neil Winters for 27 years on “Young and the Restless ,’’ has died. He was 52. Los Angeles police were called to his home Sunday and his body was turned over to the coroner. The cause of death was not immediately available Monday. St. John had played Neil Winters on the CBS soap opera since 1991, earning nine daytime Emmy nominations. He won a Daytime Emmy in 1992 for outstanding younger actor in a drama series and won 10 NAACP Image Awards. His business guy character wended his way through romances, deaths of loved ones and other daytime travails that descended into alcoholism, until his Winters went to rehab. St. John announced in September that he was engaged to model Kseniya Mikhaleva. “So early.....so early,’’ she wrote in her Instagram Stories. “Why you are leave so early????Why...you are always in my heart.’’ St. John was twice married and divorced and was the father of a son and two daughters. His 24-yearold son, Julian, died in 2014. On Jan. 21, St. John retweeted “Grieving the loss of a child is a process. It begins on the day your child passes, and ends the day the parent joins them.’’ CBS and Sony Pictures Television said in a joint statement that St. John’s death is heartbreaking. “He was a very talented actor and an even better person. For those of us who were fortunate enough to work with him on `The Young and the Restless’ for the last 27 years, he was a beloved friend whose smile and infectious laugh made every day on set a joy and made audiences love him,’’ the statement said. Fellow cast members and friends were shocked and saddened. “Sitting by myself in my car! It’s raining outside, with dark clouds and wind outside... am reading your tweets about my friend KRISTOFF! Thank you all for your kind words! I have none right now! He was a hell of an actor and simply one of the nicest guys ever! Can’t believe it!’’ tweeted Eric Braeden, who plays Victor Newman on the show. Viola Davis and Yvette Nicole Brown were among others. Brown tweeted: “No!!! This news has truly broken my heart. Kristoff was pure & so kind. I will never forget how wonderful he was to me and everyone else he came into contact with. He was just a good, good man.’’
U.S. Representative Gwen Moore. (Photo: Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association/flickr/cc)
Public Policy is Problematic for People of Color
“Once you get a felony conviction, your life is practically ruined based off of the current laws on the books in many states,” said nationally-recognized civil rights attorney Benjamin L. Crump while speaking to attendees and members of the Black Press at the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) Mid-Winter Training Conference last week in Orlando. “It is as if you are walking dead, but they just haven’t given you the death certificate.”
By Jeffrey L. Boney NNPA Political Analyst According to the World Prison Brief, which is a unique database that provides free access to information about prison systems throughout the world, there are over 2 million people in prison and jails throughout the United States, which is approximately 0.66 percent of the country’s entire population. Out of those incarcerated individuals, more than 50 percent of them are detained or convicted for non-violent offenses and roughly 56 percent of them are Black. It is, and always has been, a huge issue. One of the primary issues is the money associated with mass incarceration. Mass incarceration is a multi-billion dollar business — the annual cost of incarcerations is over $87 billion dollars. Many of the people who have played a major role in ensuring that this economic engine remains intact are legislators and other elected officials at the federal, state and local levels. This is why voting matters and elections have consequences. Speaking to attendees and members of the Black Press at the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) Mid-Winter Training Conference last week in Orlando, nationally-recognized civil rights attorney Benjamin L. Crump spoke passionately about the need to have people in office who care about the rights of people of color through public policy. “Once you get a felony conviction, your life is practically ruined based off of the current laws on the books in many states,” said Crump. “It is as if you are walking dead, but they just haven’t given you the death certificate.” In looking at each state and county, legislators
and District Attorneys have the power to decide which rights they can strip away from people once they have been convicted of a felony. Of course, many of those rights continue to remain stripped away even after those individuals have served time for the criminal offense that they were convicted of. On the flip side, legislators and District Attorneys also have the power to decide which rights individuals can regain once they are released from prison and/or are no longer on probation. This is extremely important across counties and states in the United States, where, according to a study done by the Equal Justice Initiative in 2014, roughly 95 percent of the 2,437 elected state and local prosecutors in the U.S. in 2014 were White. The study went even further to show that although White men made up 31 percent of the population nationwide, approximately 79 percent of the elected prosecutors were White men, and 66 percent of the states that elected prosecutors had no African Americans working for them in those offices. Although the rights of formerly incarcerated individuals are slightly different from state to state, there are some common rights that are customarily taken away*. Federal law states that any person who is convicted of a crime that is punishable by a minimum of 12 months in prison, is prohibited from purchasing or owning a firearm, regardless of whether that person actually served time in prison or not. Of course, voting is extremely important and voting rights vary from state to state. The majority of states across the country deny convicted felons the right to vote, although there a few states where convicted felons are still allowed to vote while
they are in prison or jail. However, once a person is released from jail, the majority of states continue to deny formerly incarcerated individuals the right to vote until after they complete some form of probation. Even worse, there are a few states that prohibit formerly incarcerated felons from voting ever again in life. There are several other rights that are impacted, such as prohibiting formerly incarcerated individuals from serving on a jury, stripping away their ability to travel outside the country, impeding their ability to obtain gainful employment in certain professions, impacting their parental rights, making it difficult to receive public assistance and housing, and many other quality of life issues that make life in America so much more manageable. The prevailing culture within America’s criminal justice won’t change overnight, and it won’t change at all unless there is a conscious effort to advocate for that change. Crump challenged the Black Press to “go to any courtroom across America and sit in the back of the room” to observe the visibly apparent disparate treatment that people of color often experience on a day-to-day basis. Crump also expressed the importance of working with the Black Press to raise awareness and push for changes in the criminal justice system across America. “We have to stand up for our children and speak up for our children,” said Crump. “We are together in this. The Black lawyers, Black law enforcement officials, and my Lord, the Black Press, are needed more now than ever before.”