THE SAN BERNARDINO
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AMERICAN
“A Man In Debt is So Far A Slave” -R.W. Emerson
NEWSPAPER A Community Newspaper Serving San Bernardino, Riverside & Los Angeles Counties
November 11, 2021 Thursday Edition
Volume 52 No. 30 Mailing: P.O. Box 837, Victorville, CA 92393
Office: (909) 889-7677
Email: Mary @Sb-American.com
Website: www.SB-American.com
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 with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance those of whom they suppress. —Fredrick Douglass (1849)
Fighting the Cycle of Violence with Stipends and Mentorships By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
Advance Peace is breaking the cycle of a response to trauma that says, “I don’t give a [damn]” to a healing approach that treats our most vulnerable to get to a place where they say, “Maybe I do.” (Photo: iStockphoto / NNPA) More than 117,000 people are shot in America annually, and gun homicides disproportionately are concentrated in urban areas, particularly in impoverished and underserved communities of color. According to officials at Advance Peace, a program that provides mentoring, job training, and a $1,000 per month stipend to participants, such neighborhoods often are plagued by homicide rates on par with warzones. “Frequently, both public and community-based systems of care fall short in their efforts to provide responsive opportunities and resources to those most involved with and affected by urban gun violence,” officials at the program wrote. “Because those who are suspected of gun crimes in urban communities have often already been failed by the available systems of care, those who need the services most are least likely to trust the systems that provide them.” A recent example of how the program works centered on 17-year-old Devrick Hill, arrested for allegedly firing multiple weapons out of a car in a fight with gang members. Advance Peace change agents recruited Hill for the program to help to turn his life around. The program seeks to steer vulnerable individuals like Hill away from violence. It provides participants as much
as $1,000 each month to meet antiviolence goals like completing classes or acquiring a job. The Wall Street Journal reported that Advance Peace’s fellowship program is now running or set to launch soon in nine cities, including Rochester, N.Y.; Fort Worth, Texas; and Fresno and Sacramento, Calif. Another 18 cities are using elements of the program, according to Advance Peace and law-enforcement officials. “I know a lot of people who got allowances growing up. I know a lot of people who got a little extra dough when they did well in school,” DeVone Boggan, chief executive of Advance Peace, told the newspaper. “These guys haven’t had a childhood.” The publication reported that Boggan founded the program more than a decade ago in the Bay Area city of Richmond, Calif., to address a growing murder rate. “He hired former gang members and ex-cons to identify and mentor young men who had spent time behind bars for shootings, had been shot themselves, or suspected in recent shootings,” the report’s author wrote. In the first five years of the program, 94 percent of the 68 fellows were alive, 79 percent hadn’t been arrested or on gunrelated charges, and 60 percent had received monetary incentives, according to an evaluation by the
National Council on Crime and Delinquency, a nonprofit research group. Jason Corburn, a University of California, Berkeley professor who has evaluated the group’s work in Sacramento and Stockton, Calif., noted in the article that throughout an 18-month Advance Peace fellowship, less than $20,000 is typically spent on a cohort of 30 to 50 individuals and an average of 20 to 50 shootings are prevented. “If you were an economist, you’d say that’s a great return on investment,” he said. Advance Peace officials noted that its program interrupts gun violence in “American urban neighborhoods by providing transformational opportunities to young men involved in lethal firearm offenses and placing them in a high-touch, personalized fellowship – the Peacemaker Fellowship.” Officials wrote that Advance Peace bridges the gap between anti-violence programming by working with and supporting a targeted group of individuals at the core of gun hostilities. They also work with a hardto-reach population at the center of violence in urban areas, thus breaking the cycle of gun hostilities and altering the trajectory of these men’s lives. Advance Peace works with public and community-based stakeholders to establish responsive community-driven
strategies that achieve high-impact outcomes for those caught in the cycle of urban gun violence. Julius Thibodeaux, program manager of Advance Peace Sacramento, and his team of neighborhood change agents co-authored a blog detailing the importance of Advance Peace. “What we used to hear, and our young boys today hear too often, is: ‘Be a man, you little punk. Quit crying and be a man. Wipe those tears and shut up before I give you something to cry for,” Thibodeaux asserted. “Yet he’s only four years old. Even if he can afford to go to the doctor when he gets older, he probably won’t. We’ve been conditioned to be tough. To suppress our pain and hide our emotions. All this combines to damage our immune system and our brain’s ability to make healthy choices. It’s no wonder we are suffering from dual epidemics: gun violence and coronavirus,” he explained. The group of change agents led by Thibodeaux insisted that the goal remains to offer “real nutrition” to the community, which they define as daily doses of love, caring, and support. “We work to boost the immune systems of those traumatized and at the center of gun violence through healthy food and housing, but also through stable mentorship,” the agents declared. “We are breaking the cycle of a response to trauma that says, ‘I don’t give a [damn]’ to a healing approach that treats our most vulnerable to get to a place where they say, ‘Maybe I do.’” No juvenile has lost life because of gun violence in Sacramento over the past two years that the program has operated there. “We have a long way to go to stop our young people from continuing to solve their problems by pointing a gun at someone who looks just like them and squeezing the trigger,” Thibodeaux wrote. “This pandemic hasn’t changed much since it’s still just another day in the hood, and interrupting death is needed more than ever.”
NEW CAMPAIGN: MoveOn Holds AT&T Accountable for Creating White Supremacist Conspiracy Network OAN 75,000 people are calling for AT&T to Drop OAN, many considering canceling contracts Government/Local/Business News Washington, D.C.- Today, MoveOn Civic Action is launching a new advertising campaign to highlight the pressure AT&T’s DIRECTV is under from customers and MoveOn members to drop One America News, a right-wing
extremist network responsible for propagating lies about the 2020 election that spurred the deadly Capitol attack on January 6. A bombshell report from Reuters last month revealed court records indicating AT&T was instrumental in creating the
network and that DIRECTV, which AT&T owns, is responsible for 90% of OAN’s revenue, with the founder of OAN even admitting that without DIRECTV, OAN’s revenue would be “zero.” Now, pressure is mounting on AT&T to be responsive to
the demands of consumers who refuse to support Trump’s favorite propaganda network “In the face of vocal outrage from their customers, AT&T must decide if it is willing to continue to be a corporate sponsor of continued on page3
Federal Regulators Approve Pfizer Vaccine — Children Ages 5 to 11 Immediately Eligible for Shots By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
Dr. Walensky’s authorization allows healthcare providers, pharmacies, and clinicians to commence coronavirus vaccine shots to children ages 5 to 11. (Photo: iStockphoto / NNPA) Children ages 5 to 11 can now receive vaccination against C OV I D -19. On Tuesday, November 2, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky signed off on a recommendation from the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Dr. Walensky’s authorization allows healthcare providers, pharmacies, and clinicians to commence coronavirus vaccine shots to children ages 5 to 11. Off icials said shots would become available as early as Wednesday. T he Food a nd D r ug Administration had previously authorized the two-shot regimen. Each vaccine dose for the 5 to 11 age group contains one-third of that used for adolescents and adults. White House officials have determined that there’s enough of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for all 28 million children in America who are between the age of 5 and 11. Pfizer officials said they placed orders for the doses last month, and they’ve already begun the process of preparing
and packing the vaccines. Dr. Walensky had urged regulators to consider all variables. “We have been asking when we will be able to expand this protection to our younger children,” Dr. Walensky stated during the committee meeting. “As you review the data today, it will be key to keep in mind the specific risks to children from this virus and the pandemic, and to put that risk into the context of other vaccinepreventable diseases,” she said. Dr. Walensky added that committee members should recognize that children have historically received vaccinations against diseases like chickenpox, which reportedly kill far fewer children and put far fewer of them into the hospital than Covid-19. “As you will all be aware, in this most recent Delta [variant] wave, we saw pediatric admission rates higher than they had in any previous wave of the pandemic, reaching a rate of 25 hospitalizations per 100,000 per year in children between the ages of 5 to 11,” Dr. Walensky asserted.
MISSION STATEMENT Clifton Harris /Editor in Chief Investigative Reporter sbamericannews@gmail.com Mary Martin-Harris / Editor Legal /Display Advertising (909) 889-7677 Clifton B. Harris / Audio Engineering Editor Digital Online Banner Advertising (909) 889-7677 The San Bernardino American News was established May 6, 1969. A legally adjudicated newspaper of general circulation on September 30, 1971, case number 15313 by the Superior Court of San Bernardino County. The San Bernardino AMERICAN News subscription rate is $59.00 per year. The San Bernardino AMERICAN News is committed to serving its readers by presenting news unbiased and objective, trusting in the mature judgment of the readers and, in so doing, strive to achieve a united community. News releases appearing in the San Bernardino AMERICAN News do not necessarily express the policy nor the opinion of the publishers. The San Bernardino AMERICAN News reserves the right to edit or rewrite all news releases.