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“People Without a Voice Vol. 60 No. 5 | Thursday, January 30, 2020
WWW.SDVOICE.INFO
San Diego Mayoral Candidates Take on Questions at MLK Jr. Promenade
Cannot be Heard”
Serving San Diego County’s African & African American Communities 60 Years
Blacks Make up Majority of Inmates
in Mississippi’s Debtors Prison LAMPLIGHTERS ANNUAL SCHOLARSHIP FUNDRAISER See page 12
NAACP HEALTH & HOUSING SYMPOSIUM See page 3
Photo: iStock
By Stacy M. Brown
Photos: Shea McGee
NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent
By Shea McGee
Mississippi — a state described as having been suffocated by its history of racial prejudice — appears to be the only state where people are jailed while they work to pay off court-ordered debts.
Contributing Writer
A gathering of community members and leaders collected on the Martin Luther King Jr. Promenade January 11th for what would be an afternoon of San Diego’s Mayoral candidates Councilmember Scott Sherman, activist Tasha Williamson, Assemblymember Todd Gloria, and Councilmember Barbara Bry answering the community’s concerns and inquiries. The candidates were also challenged with questions relevant to not only the surrounding communities, but San Diego as a whole. See CANDIDATES page 3
EXCLUSIVE REV. DR. WILLIAM BARBER ADDRESSES
Systemic Racism and Voting Rights
HBCU EXPO See page 11
An investigation led by The Marshall Project and the nonprofit Mississippi Today discovered that hundreds of Mississippi residents — the majority being black — were sentenced to the state’s little-known restitution center. See INMATES page 5
Are You Unemployed? No Children? You Could Lose Your Food Stamps By California Black Media In early January, the state of California joined 13 other states — as well as New York City and the District of Columbia — in a lawsuit filed against a new Trump Administration food stamp policy scheduled to take effect April 1. The federal government rule will require all “able-bodied” recipients of food stamp ben-
efits between the ages of 18-49, who do not have children, to work at least 20 hours a week or enroll in a vocational training program to be eligible for low-income food assistance. The federally-funded food assistance program is known as CalFresh in California. See FOOD STAMPS page 5
TIME TO RING CENSUS ALARM BELL, ADVOCATES WARN CONGRESS Photo: Freddie Allen/AMG/NNPA
By Stacy M. Brown
By Mark Hedin Ethnic Media Services
NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent
Rev. Dr. William Barber II believes that everyone has a right to live. Through his Poor People’s Campaign, Dr. Barber is continuing to build a movement to overcome systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, militarism of the budget and the false moral narrative of white religious nationalism. See VOTING RIGHTS page 5
With the United States about to begin its monumental task of counting everybody in the country once every 10 years, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing on Thursday, Jan. 9, to see what the Census Bureau is doing to avoid overlooking so-called “hard to count” communities. See CENSUS page 5