Vol. 49 No. 39
January 17, 2019 - January 23, 2019
This publication is a Certified DBE/ SBE / MBE in the State of California CUCP #43264 Metro File #7074 & State of Texas File #802505971 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)
Government Shutdown Hits African Americans the Hardest
By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Correspondent @StacyBrownMedia
Editor in Chief’s Corner Email: sbamericannews@gmail.com Clifton Harris Publisher of The San Bernardino AMERICAN News
7 Takeaways From President Trump's Oval Office Address by Domenico Montanaro
President Trump delivers his first prime-time address from the Oval Office on Tuesday. Kevin Dietsch/Pool/Getty Images
Maryland Rep. Anthony Brown/Courtesy MD|DC CUA & WSSC FCU With over 50,000 federal employees, the fourth congressional district in Maryland represents the fifth largest number of workers, and Maryland likely counts as the third-largest impacted state by the government shutdown, according to Democratic Rep. Anthony Brown. “So, I’m hearing about this, like my colleagues, each and every day from my constituents while this shutdown is set to become the longest in the nation’s history,” said Brown, who joined Congressional Black Caucus Chair Karen Bass (D-Calif.); Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), on a media conference call on Friday, Jan. 11. The CBC members said they were calling for an end to the shutdown so that workers can again begin to collect their paychecks and critical government services can resume. During the call, the members discussed the debilitating effects of the ongoing government shutdown as thousands of federal employees are unable to collect their paychecks. They also denounced President
Donald Trump’s threat to declare a state of emergency if Congress refuses to fund a border wall – one in which the president claimed during his campaign that Mexico would pay for. “This shutdown and the whole issue of the wall is a fake crisis,” Bass said. “At the end of the day, even if he had all the money, it would still take eminent domain to build his wall. That process will take years. This is further evidence that this is a fake crisis and, in my opinion, just an attempt to change our attention away from the numerous impending investigations,” she said. Thompson, the chair of the Homeland Security Committee, said the shutdown is taking its toll on workers and government operations. “It is a challenge for us in Homeland Security. We have 80 percent of the workforce not being paid. That goes from TSA employees in airports, to the Coast Guard, to the Secret Service, to Custom Border Protection individuals, and all of those individuals who have sworn to keep us safe, are not being paid,” Thompson said.
“That’s not fair and we are compromising our national security strategy by reducing the morale of the employees.” On Saturday, Jan. 12, the shutdown entered its 22nd day, a record. NBC News and other outlets estimate that 800,000 federal employees are furloughed or working without pay because Trump and Congress cannot reach a deal to reopen the government. They are at an impasse over $5.7 billion for construction of a wall along the southern border. The number of furloughed employees does not include federal contractors, according to a report by NBC News. It’s unclear how many contract or grant employees are affected by the shutdown — or even how many there are in total — but a Volcker Alliance report estimated that nearly 5.3 million worked as contractors in 2015. Unlike furloughed federal employees, who have received assurances that they will be paid once the shutdown ends, contractors are not owed back pay and that has left them in an even murkier economic position.
Further, communities of color are probably the hardest hit by the shutdown, said Lee, who cochairs the Steering and Policy Committee and serves on the House Committee on Appropriations. Black people comprise 12 percent of the country’s population but are 18 percent of the federal workforce, according to the Partnership for Public Service. “We know that communities of color are disproportionately affected by this irresponsible Trump government shutdown. And today is especially painful for so many workers because it should be payday,” Lee said. Without these paychecks, many federal workers are hanging on by a thread, she said. “I know there are hundreds of thousands of families out there who are grappling with the anxiety, and really fear, of not being able to pay the bills as this shutdown drags on. “Let’s be very clear: what’s happening here is President Trump is holding this government hostage and holding people hostage in order to get his useless, wasteful wall,” Lee said.
San Bernardino City Unified Students To Los Angeles Teachers Strike For Receive Home Visits Tuesday, January 29 Smaller Classes, More Nurses And Community Education News
Librarians Elissa Nadworny, Laurel Wamsley, Francesca Paris
SBCUSD Superintendent Dr. Dale Marsden, along with a team of District employees and former San Bernardino Mayor Carey Davis, visit the homes of truant students in January 2017. WHO: SBCUSD Managers, Superintendent Dr. Dale Marsden, and community leaders WHAT: During Operation Student Recovery, San Bernardino City Unified School District (SBCUSD) managers and community leaders will visit the lastknown address of students who have missed 10 percent or more of the current school-year-todate. The goal is to help students return to school as soon as possible. WHEN: Tuesday, January 29, 2019, 8 a.m. to 12 noon
WHERE: A brief training will take place at the Professional Development Center (PDC), 4030 Georgia Blvd. in San Bernardino, before teams fan out across the city. WHY: Data from the September 2018 Operation Student Recovery indicate that 85 percent of students who were contacted returned to school the following day. For more information, please call the Communications/Community Relations Department at (909) 381-1250.
Educators from Hollenbeck Middle School in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles chant, "Teachers united will never be defeated!" in front of their school. Roxanne Turpen for NPR Updated Monday at 10:16 a.m.ET. Los Angeles public school teachers went on strike Monday morning, a result of failed negotiations between the teachers union and the school district. The strike has looked inevitable since Friday, when United Teachers Los Angeles rejected another offer from district leaders.
"We are more convinced than ever that the district won't move without a strike," declared union President Alex Caputo-Pearl at a Sunday press conference. UTLA has more than 30,000 members, including teachers, librarians, school nurses and counselors. The last time the city saw a teacher strike was nearly (continued on page 2)
President Trump delivered the first Oval Office address of his presidency Tuesday night — and it came in the midst of a protracted partial government shutdown. There were a lot of questions going into the address, but there were at least as many afterward — especially, and most importantly: What now? So what did we learn from the president's address and the rare Democratic response? Here are seven insights: 1. We are no closer to the shutdown being over Trump tried to insist that he had already compromised with Democrats, saying he had moved from a concrete wall to barrier made of steel slats. But Democrats see that as no compromise. Remarkably, he neither offered anything else (like, say, bringing some clarity to the situation of the so-called DREAMers, undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children) nor leveled any threat, like that he could declare a national emergency. Not offering a compromise or leveling a threat is particularly curious given the point of Oval Office addresses during a tragedy or a "crisis" is to affect some sort of outcome. Congressional leaders are again set to return to the White House on Wednesday for resumed negotiations, but don't expect much to come of that. The president on Thursday is headed to the Southern border, where he's expected to continue making the case for a physical barrier. 2. Trump's dark worldview holds The president's convention acceptance speech ("the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation") and his inauguration speech ("American carnage") were dark visions of the country. And, once again, when speaking to the whole country in a big moment, the president laid out a dark vision. "How much more American blood must we shed before Congress does its job?" Trump said, pushing for increased border security funding. Trump's view of
immigration and immigrants as causing exceptional crime and violence is echoed in conservative media, but is not borne out by facts or data. 3. The president's real audience: wavering congressional Republicans While Trump was trying to say he speaks for everyone, his real audience may have been congressional Republicans who are starting to feel the political pressure as the partial shutdown drags on. Three Senate Republicans have said they want the government back open, and Vice President Pence was on Capitol Hill on Tuesday meeting with House Republicans. 4. Instead of being empathetic to federal workers, he insisted this is what they want If the partial shutdown continues through the end of the week, hundreds of thousands of federal workers are going to miss their first paycheck since the stalemate began in late December. So, the pain is going to be felt more strongly soon. But Trump did not speak directly to those workers or show any degree of empathy for them. Instead, he argued, "This barrier is absolutely critical to border security. It's also what our professionals at the border want and need." 5. Trump did OK with the "optics," but that's not the most important thing Style is always the thing a lot of people talk about first when looking at a presidential address. And there are few people who don't like the president who will believe he did a good job in any way. But there were a lot of questions about how this president would do in an Oval Office address, a venue a lot of past presidents have struggled in. Trump was able to make and read his argument without much of a hitch, though it was a very dark speech. (In a tweet late Tuesday, the president seemed to almost congratulate himself, saying to his (continued on page 6)
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