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Vol. 61 No. 44
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PUBLIC H E A LT H ORDER & Covid-19
U p d at e s see pg. 12
Thursday, November 4, 2021
Covid-19 cases in southeast 9,222
92115 7,609
92105
9,526
5,869 9,225
92102
92114
92113
4,575 92139
SOURCE: County of San Diego a/o 10/27/21
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Tiny Wrists in Cuffs:
Returns see page 4
By Helen Wieffering, Colleen Long, and Camille Fassett Associated Press/Report for America
He was 8 years old.
COURAGE, ADVOCACY MARK
THIS WEEK MARKS THE
25th Anniversary How Police Use Force of California’s Ban on Against Children Affirmative Action Royal Smart remembers every detail: the feeling of the handcuffs on his wrists. The panic as he was led outside into the cold March darkness, arms raised, to face a wall of police officers pointing their guns.
Mikey Williams
Serving San Diego County’s African & African American Communities 61 Years
Neither he nor anyone else in his family’s Chicago home was arrested that night two years ago, and police wielding a warrant to look for ille-
gal weapons found none. But even now, he’s tormented by visions of officers bursting through houses and tearing rooms apart, ordering people to lie on the floor. “I can’t go to sleep,” he said. “I keep thinking about the police coming.” Children like Royal were not the focus after George Floyd was killed by police in See CUFFS page 2
Ward Connerly, pictured here, was a member of the University of California Board of Regents His tenure drew to a close after 12 turbulent years in which he led the university, and then the state of California, to drop affirmative action. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
California Black Media
FIGHT AGAINST BREAST CANCER For These Local Women
Since California banned affirmative action 25 years ago, experts say data shows significant drops in the numbers of Blacks and other minorities attending universities and securing government contracts in the state.
Jhaimarion, 10, reacts as he listens to his mother, Krystal Archie talking with an Associated Press reporter in Chicago Sept. 23, 2021. Archie’s three children were present when police, on two occasions, just 11 weeks apart, kicked open her front door and tore through their home searching for drug suspects. She’d never heard of the people they were hunting. Jhaimarion, along with his sister, Savannah, who was 14 at the time, was ordered to get down on the floor. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
In education, for example, Ed Trust West, an Oaklandbased nonprofit and research organization focused on equity, says the repealing of affirmative action in California has negatively impacted African Americans both at public schools and
Decades later, a new look at
the Black Panthers’ legacy Paula M. Williams poses. Photos courtesy of Paula M. Williams
By Barbara Smith Contributing Writer Local San Diegan Paula M. Williams is eager to share her story to encourage and uplift other women and families going through breast cancer. Diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer in 2018, she received aggressive chemotherapy and radiation through July 2019. Compounding the trauma of diagnosis and treatment, Williams was grieving the loss of her mother in 2018, for whom she had been primary caregiver. The passing of her
parents and the cancer diagnosis took a toll on her physically, financially, mentally and spiritually. Equality, fairness and consistency in the health care system are three priorities Williams sees as necessary to improve health outcomes with breast cancer. “I had to retire early from my job and I folded financially,” she says. Her application for disability was denied in less than 21 days with her submitted medical records numbering over 2100 pages. The fact of See COURAGE page 2
Fred Hampton Junior, from left, Fredrika Newton and sculptor Dana King, react during the dedication of a bust in memory of Black Panther Party co-founder and Newton’s former husband Huey Newton on Mandela Parkway at 9th Street in West Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, Oct. 24, 2021. The event was hosted by the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation in honor of the 55th anniversary of the Black Panthers. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group via AP)
By Aaron Morrison Associated Press It once would have been unthinkable for a city to erect a monument to Huey P. Newton.
The Black Panther Party co-founder was feared and hated by many Americans, and party members were dismissed as racist, gun-toting militants — Black avengers
who believed violence was as American as cherry pie. But the unthinkable has happened — in Oakland, the city of the party’s founding
colleges across the state. “California’s statewide ban on affirmative action has had lasting, devastating impacts on our K-12 and higher education system. Students, families, and educators of color have always found themselves shut out from opportunity, from a lack of additional funding to decreased college access,” said Natalie Wheatfall-Lum, Director of P-16 Education Policy at Ed Trust West. See ANNIVERSARY page 2
55 years ago. In an unrelenting deluge on an October Sunday, Newton’s widow Fredrika and sculptor Dana King unveiled a bronze bust of Newton. It is true that aside from Oakland, where the Panthers were born and Newton was murdered, there are few places where such a bust would be welcome; there is probably no other place in the world that could place his statue at an intersection of Dr. Huey P. Newton Way and Mandela Parkway, named for the late South A f r i c an re volut i on ar y Nelson Mandela. And it would be wrong to suggest that the Panthers are enjoying a resurgence, or even a moment; the party disbanded almost 40 years ago. But it is also true that in 2021, some activists and historians are taking another See page 9
Families of 9 killed in SC church settle with feds
South Carolina state senators Gerald Malloy, right, and Ronnie Sabb, left, look on as Malana Pinckney, 12, center, a daughter of the Reverend Clementa Pinckney who was killed killed in the 2015 Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting, speaks with reporters outside the Justice Department, in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
By Meg Kinnard Associated Press Families of nine victims killed in a racist attack at a Black South Carolina church
have reached a settlement with the Justice Department over a faulty background check that allowed Dylann Roof to purchase the gun he used in the 2015 massacre.
The $88 million deal, which includes $63 million for the families of the slain and $25 million for survivors of the shooting, was set to be announced Thursday in Washington, Bakari Sellers, an attorney who helped broker the agreement, told The Associated Press on Thursday, October 28. Sellers said the “88” figure was purposeful. It’s a number typically associated with white supremacy and the number of bullets Roof said he had taken with him to the attack. “We’ve given a big ‘F you’ to white supremacy and rac-
ism,” Sellers told AP. “We’re doing that by building generational wealth in these Black communities, from one of the most horrific race crimes in the country.” Months before the June 17, 2015 church shooting, Roof was arrested on Feb. 28 by Columbia, South Carolina police on the drug possession charge. But a series of clerical errors and missteps allowed Roof to buy the handgun he later used in the massacre. The errors included wrongly listing the sheriff ’s office as the arresting agency in the
drug case, according to court documents. An examiner with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System found some information on the arrest but needed more to deny the sale, so she sent a fax to a sheriff ’s office. The sheriff ’s office responded it didn’t have the report, directing her to the Columbia police. Under the system’s operating procedures, the examiner was directed to a federal listing of law enforcement agencies, but Columbia police did not appear on the See FAMILIES page 6
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