SB American News Week Ending 3/4

Page 1

Vol. 50 No. 45

February 27, 2020 -March 4, 2020

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them and these will continue till they have resisted either with words or blows or words or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress. —Fredrick Douglass (1849)

Vanessa Bryant sues helicopter operator over crash that killed Kobe Bryant, 13-year-old daughter By Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — Kobe Bryant’s widow on Monday sued the owner of the helicopter that crashed in fog and killed the former Los Angeles Lakers star and their 13year-old daughter last month. The wrongful death lawsuit filed by Vanessa Bryant in Los Angeles Superior Court said the pilot was careless and negligent by flying in cloudy conditions Jan. 26 and should have aborted the flight. Pilot Ara Zobayan was among the nine people killed in the crash. The lawsuit names Island Express Helicopters Inc. and also targets Zobayan’s legal representative, listed only as “Doe 1” until a name

US basketball player Kobe Bryant and wife Vanessa Laine Bryant attend the 2019 Vanity Fair Oscar Party following the 91st Academy Awards at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills on February 24, 2019. (Photo by JEAN-BAPTISTE LACROIX/AFP via Getty Images) can be determined. Vanessa Bryant’s lawsuit asserts that

Zobayan was negligent in eight different ways, including failing to

WILL YOUTH VOTE TRANSFORM THE NEVADA CAUCUSES? The Silver State's new workforce is younger and more likely to skew Democratic, but its members’ political affiliations remain opaque. Devin Boone

Early voters line up prior to Nevada’s February 22 caucus date. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Cesar Marquez in Reno before Andrew Yang ended his presidential bid. (Photo: Devin Boone) Cesar Marquez had an epiphany last spring while listening to then-Democratic Party presidential candidate Andrew Yang tell podcaster Joe Rogan that approximately three million truck drivers would soon be automated out of their jobs by self-driving trucks. Marquez, who lives in Reno, Nevada and works as a production supervisor at Tesla, had a special insight about Yang’s claim, because he is one of the people building the type of drive

unit, or engine, that will go inside the self-driving trucks. It is not a responsibility Marquez takes lightly. Marquez, who is 29 and typically dressed head to toe in Yang merch, voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016, but didn’t volunteer or donate money to the Vermont senator ’s campaign. In this election, however, he wanted to do things differently. So after hearing Yang and deciding the entrepreneur was The Guy,

Marquez made his first of 15 donations. Soon YANG FOR US and YANG 2020 stickers were plastered on Marquez’s laptop and car. He textbanked, canvassed and even flew to Iowa for Yang Week, so that he could talk to people about automation and what that had to do with so many of their brick-and-mortar stores closing — which, Marquez said, “resonated with Iowans a lot.” Marquez came to Reno from Northern California — he is one of many to have moved here in the last four years to work in the city’s burgeoning tech sector. Beside Tesla, Panasonic, Apple, Switch, Blockchains and others have opened outposts here, attracted to Northern Nevada not just for the large swaths of cheap land, but for the speed at which things can be built on it. Today the story of how Tesla picked Nevada in 2014 over Texas, Arizona and California as the site for its Gigafactory– a lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle assembly factory in what is expected to become the largest building in the world–is a well-known parable. While touring the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, the scout for Tesla supposedly asked how long it would take to get a grading permit. In response, a county official handed the Tesla scout a signed permit on the spot — and a developer told him he had a shovel in his trunk and could start digging right now, if he (continued on page 3)

properly assess the weather, flying into conditions he wasn’t

cleared for and failing to control the helicopter. The lawsuit was filed as

a public memorial service for Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and all the victims, including Zobayan, was being held at the arena where Bryant played most of his career. Calls to Island Express seeking comment were not answered and its voicemail was full. The company issued a statement Jan. 30 on its website saying the shock of the crash had prompted it to suspend service until it was appropriate for staff and customers. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the cause of the crash into a hillside in Calabasas on the outskirts of Los Angeles County.

Publisher’s Corner Publisher of The San Bernardino AMERICAN News Clifton Harris Editor in Chief

Email: sbamericannews@gmail.com

Civil Rights Groups Seek Critical Information on Trump’s Muslim and African Ban Eric Naing Washington, DC — Muslim Advocates and the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking crucial information about the Trump administration’s recently expanded Muslim Ban. Proclamation 9983, which took effect last Friday, imposes immigration and travel restrictions on six African and Asian countries, all of which have significant Muslim populations. This new ban prevents more than a quarter of all Africans—including nationals from Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country—from immigrating to the U.S. It likewise impacts approximately 180 million Muslims worldwide. The FOIA request asks U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Department of State to disclose documents, communications and other materials related to the expanded Muslim Ban as well as the “worldwide review” conducted in 2019 of countries’ security practices that allegedly informed the ban. The crucial information sought by the requests include: Government guidance on how Proclamation 9983 is being implemented and enforced by the agencies Information on how agency officials are assessing waiver requests under Proclamation 9983 Reports created by DHS regarding suspending or limiting foreign entry that led to

Proclamation 9983 Records related to countries identified as potential targets for Proclamation 9983 “So far, the administration’s expanded Muslim Ban has only been justified by opaque and highly questionable, at best, security concerns. But we know that President Trump’s words and actions demonstrate a repeated hostility towards Muslim, black and African people,” said Muslim Advocates Executive Director Farhana Khera. “The American people deserve answers about why and how the U.S. government is banning people of color, including a quarter of all Africans, from reuniting with their families and becoming Americans.” “Almost three years to the day after enacting the Muslim Ban, the Trump administration expanded it. Just like the previous bans, the government is attempting to mask its bigotry under layers of process,” stated Muslim Advocates Staff Attorney Nimra Azmi. “We are owed an explanation for this discriminatory ban that tears more and more families apart and damages this country’s foundations of freedom from religious and racial discrimination.” “The expanded Muslim travel ban will result in separation and trauma for even more families around the world. It effectively bans immigration from four countries making up over 25% of the entire population of Africa, as well as two countries in Asia, all

of which have significant Muslim populations. Our FOIA request demands comprehensive information regarding the development, implementation, and enforcement of this ban and complete details of the worldwide review conducted by the Department of Homeland Security that purportedly justifies this new ban,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. “LDF and its allies remain deeply concerned about how this expanded ban will be implemented and whether the countries affected by it were selected as a result of antiMuslim, anti-Black, or antiAfrican bias. The information we acquire as a result of this FOIA request will be critical for shedding light on this matter.” “Two years ago, President Trump reportedly stated that Nigerians would never ‘go back to their huts’ after seeing the United States. In another instance, when referring to individuals from various African and Latin American countries, he rhetorically asked, ‘Why do we want all these people from shithole countries coming here?,’” stated Sam Spital, LDF’s Director of Litigation. “Now, the administration has largely prohibited immigration from four African countries, including Nigeria. The American people have a right to know how and why this alarming policy was undertaken—and today’s FOIA request is an imperative tool for making this determination.”


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.