THE SAN BERNARDINO
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AMERICAN
“A Man In Debt is So Far A Slave” -Emerson
NEWSPAPER A Community Newspaper Serving San Bernardino, Riverside & Los Angeles Counties Volume 51 No. 38
Mailing: P.O. Box 837, Victorville, CA 92393
January 7, 2021 - January 13, 2021 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)
COMMENTARY: Remembering the Silver Linings of 2020 NNPA NEWSWIRE — So, as the calendar turns to 2021, and many wish friends, family and associates, “Happy New Year!” we’ll place an overwhelming emphasis on the “New Year” portion of the sentiment.
New White House Could Permanently Remove Public Charge Rule, Easing Anxiety For Immigrant by Sunita Sohrabji
By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent @StacyBrownMedia
The Joe Biden Administration has an opportunity to immediately revoke implementation of the Trump-era public charge rule.
While some might argue that detecting a silver lining over the past 365 days is difficult, there was good news. (Photo: iStockphoto / NNPA) There was little to celebrate or be happy about in 2020, particularly for Black America. So, as the calendar turns to 2021, and many wish friends, family and associates, “Happy New Year!” we’ll place an overwhelming emphasis on the “New Year” portion of the sentiment. The year began with devastating news as the world learned that a helicopter carrying NBA legend Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gigi, had crashed into a mountainside just outside of Los Angeles. Bryant, his young daughter, the pilot and six other passengers were all killed in the accident. In unfortunate, but anticipated news, 2020 headlines continued to report on two areas of disproportionate death tolls for Blacks: Police killings of unarmed African Americans, and the novel coronavirus pandemic, or COVID-19, which dispropor tionately affected communities of color. While some might argue that detecting a silver lining over the past 365 days is difficult, there was good news. The outgoing year saw many firsts and accomplishments for Af r ican A mer icans, including many from the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), representing the Black Press of America. Presidential candidates Joe Biden, Tom Steyer, and Michael Bloomberg all sat for interviews with NNPA President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. Chavis, a civil rights icon, also helped raise the profile of the Black Press when he launched The Chavis Chronicles, a national television show with American Public Television.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation continued a campaign with the NNPA to raise awareness about education barriers for students of color and bridging the learning gap for minorities. That partnership has proven even more vital during the pandemic. The United States, and much of the world, underwent an awakened awareness that Black Lives Matter now more than ever in 2020. Following the murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and others, major sports leagues, corporations, and others began acknowledging their responsibility in the fight for social justice and civil rights. Led by LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers, NBA players exerted their popularity and authority by successfully demanding that the league honor the Black Lives Matter Movement. Because of the players’ actions, the NBA opened its arenas to use as polling places, and the league agreed to promote social justice and civic engagement. Major League Baseball and the National Football League also instituted initiatives with promises to do more for minorities at all levels. The Google News Initiative (GNI) Innovation Challenge awarded Black Voice News (BVN) $300,000 in support of “Save the Black Press,” a bold call to action to innovate revenue and sustainability solutions at Black news organizations through the creation of the Data Access and Content Discovery Hub (DACDH). Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts announced that Comcast would fight injustice and inequality against race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual
orientation, or ability. With that, Roberts committed $100 million to a three-year plan to advance social justice and equality. The initiative includes a $75 million cash commitment and $25 million in media. Facebook announced that 15 member publishers of the NNPA would receive $1.288 million in grants through the Facebook Journalism Project’s relief fund for local news. The social media giant said more than 200 news organizations would receive nearly $16 million in grants, which stem from $25 million in local news relief funding announced in March as part of Facebook’s $100 million global investment in the news. MSNBC named Rashida Jones the first Black person and Black woman president of the network. Jones, who quickly becomes the most prominent woman in cable news, is scheduled to step into the top role on Feb. 1, Black History Month, replacing Phil Griffin, who had been at the cable news channel for more than 25 years. Mellody Hobson, a Princeton graduate who, in 2019, earned the Woodrow Wilson Award, the university’s highest honor, was named Chair woman of the Board of Starbucks. With the promotion, Hobson became the only African American woman to chair a Fortune 500 company. Midshipman First Class Sydney Barber, a mechanical engineering major from Illinois, was named Brigade Commander for the spring semester at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Barber, a track star with a stated desire to work as a Marine Corps ground officer, becomes the
first Black woman to lead the Naval Academy’s student body. The Brigade Commander heads the Academy’s day-today activities and trains the class of approximately 4,500 midshipmen. Barber becomes the 16th woman to serve in that role. There were significant changes in the world of entertainment as Valeisha Butterfield Jones, a leader, global influencer, and culture shifter, who co-founded the Women in Entertainment Empowerment Network (WENN) and served as the National Youth Vote Director for President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, was named the Recording Academy’s first Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer. While the traditional annual festival which hosts more than 350,000 people on Los Angeles’ Crenshaw Boulevard wasn’t in the cards because of the pandemic, Bakewell Media and the Los Angeles Sentinel found a new way to bring even more people together. The 15th annual Taste of Soul, the largest one-day street festival in Southern California, took place virtually in October. Carol H. Williams received Ad Age’s Vanguard Award during this year’s Women to Watch Awards event. Williams, the CEO of Carol H. Williams Advertising, was honored for a lifetime of significant achievements, including being named to the AAF Advertising Hall of Fame. 2020 also answered the question, “What do Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Delores Tucker, Roland Martin, Gayle King, and Brent Staples have in common?” Each has made the Ebony Power 100 List, which continued on page 2
T he i ncom i ng BidenHarris administration has an opportunity to immediately revoke implementation of the public charge rule, easing anxiety for millions of immigrants who have denied themselves federal benefits over the past three years for fear of losing their ability to upgrade their immigration status. “Public charge will be a front-burner issue for the new administration because it is so entwined with our current public health crisis and connected to the pandemic,” said Daniel Sharp, chief of the Office of Immigrant Affairs in Los Angeles County’s Department of Consumer and Business Affairs. “We do expect the new administration to prioritize the issue,” he said in an interview with EMS, noting that President-elect Joe Biden had committed to ending the rule while campaigning for office. If Democrats take back the Senate with the Jan. 5 Georgia run-off election, the incoming Congress has an opportunity to permanently remove public charge from the immigration code, said Sharp. He noted that if it is not permanently removed, a future administration could once again implement the rule, which has had an enormously chilling impact on immigrants even before it was formally rolled out by the outgoing Trump administration. “It is going to take a multi-year effort to undo the harm that this rule change has set in,” he said. The public charge rule, which was introduced with the Immigration Act of 1882, is a means test used to determine ineligibility for immigration or residency status. The seldom-used rule can be used by consulates abroad to determine whether an applicant could ever become completely dependent on public benefits; and by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to deny a green card to those unable to essentially pass a wealth test. Factors such as age, the ability to speak English, and future earning capabilities are used as determinants of whether or not to grant a visa or green card. USCIS can deny a green
card to immigrants who have ever used Supplemental Security Income; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; general assistance cash benefits (welfare); Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly called food stamps); Section 8 Housing or Rental Assistance; or federally funded Medicaid. Public charge is not invoked during the naturalization process. Critics of the rule have called it a “cruel wealth test,” used to keep poor immigrants out of the U.S. In the early 1900s, the rule was frequently invoked to bar immigrants from the developing world for permanent residency in the U.S. In more recent years, the rule has been less frequently invoked: prior to 2019, less than one percent of all immigration cases were denied based on the public charge rule. Currently, more than 10.3 million immigrants use some form of federal benefits. Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, noted that when President Donald Trump hinted in 2017 that he was going to implement the little-used rule, “the news spread like wildfire in the immigrant community.” Even before the rule was finalized in August 2019, immigrants began denying themselves federal benefits, i nclud i ng school lu nch programs, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which are not considered in public charge determinations; immigrants nonetheless disenrolled their children from the benefits, fearing possible impact to their immigration status. Kulkarni referred to data from Health Affairs which reported that 260,000 immigrant children had been dis-enrolled by their families from receiving Medicaid since 2018 and 70,000 children were no longer enrolled in SNAP. A paper published by the Journal of Pediatrics in December noted the severe impact of the public charge rule on children. “By tying the use of vital public continued on page 3