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Blacks Must Control Their Own Community
AUDITED BY
•C•P•V•S•
VOLUME LXXIII NUMBER 26—SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2013
PUBLISHED SINCE 1940
25 Cents and worth more
Grieving parents seek tougher gun laws By Wendell Hutson A group of Black parents who lost their children to gun violence joined Mayor Rahm Emanuel at a recent news conference to urge state lawmakers to pass tougher gun laws. The parents of slain teenager Hadiya Pendleton and Chicago police officer Thomas Wortham IV said until tougher penalties, such as lengthy prison sentences, are put in place gun violence would continue. “Every day I wake up with the reminder that I’m in a world without her, without her love (and) laughter,” Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton said of her 15-year-old daughter Hadiya, who was killed in January. Pendleton, along with Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, are urging lawmakers in Springfield to pass House Bill 2265, which would increase the mandatory minimum sentence for illegally having a gun. Michael Ward, 18, is one of two men charged with shooting Hadiya in a park and was on probation for a gun offense the day she was shot. Not everyone however, is convinced man- datory prison time is the solution to
reducing gun violence. The Illinois Office of Management and Budget expects that if passed, the law would add 3,860 inmates to state prisons and cost nearly $1 billion
in combined operating and construction expenses over a 10-year period. “Mandatory minimums undermine the integrity of the justice system by weaken-
ing the role of judges in determining proper punishments, increasing the powers of (Continued on page 17)
CHICAGO POLICE SUPERINTENDENT Garry McCarthy joined a group of Black parents at a recent City Hall news conference to urge lawmakers to get tough on gun laws.
Senate Leaders Reach Deal to End Shutdown By George E. Curry NNPA Editor-in-Chief WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Despite their well-known animus for each other, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) reached a last-minute deal Wednesday that will end the federal government shutdown and raise the debt limit through Feb. 7. The House and Senate were expected to vote on the compromise measure late Wednesday, just hours before the U.S. Treasury Department was scheduled to run out of borrowing power. “There are no winners here,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said at his daily briefing Wednesday. “We said CRUSADERNEWSPAPERGROUP
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floor. “After weeks spent facing off across a partisan divide that often seemed too wide to cross, our country came to the brink of disaster,” Reid said. “What we’ve done is send
a message to Americans…and in addition to that, to the citizens of every country in the world, that the United States lives up to its obligations.” (Continued on page 3)
Shutdown deal could have been better
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid that from the beginning, and we’re going to say it right up to the end because it’s true. The American people have paid a price for this.” After numerous meetings at the White House and repeated efforts by House Republicans to use the threat of a government shutdown to repeal the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature health legislation that is loosely referred to as Obamacare, Reid and McConnell announced their agreement on the Senate
Congressman Danny K. Davis (D-7) said he obviously was pleased with the agreement that will end the shutdown of the federal government and raise the nation’s debt ceiling temporarily; the deal would have been better if the debt ceiling increase was openended. The agreement lifted the debt ceiling until Feb. 7, 2014. Davis explained, “When you have debt you don’t necessarily know what the future will bring so you want to be in a position to address those future needs. We will be back at the table and we will continue to negotiate and we have the reprieve of being able to do it without our head being in the barrel of the gun.” Davis, who has represented his West Side district since 1996, is a member of the House Committee on Ways and Means, as well as the Committee on Oversight and Congressman Government Reform. Danny K. Davis “This shutdown has not done anybody any good.” He added, “If we look for winners and losers, the winners are the citizens of the United States, and the losers have been the citizens of the United States because this (the shutdown) was unnecessary.” Initially, the impasse between President Barack Obama and Republicans focused on repealing the Affordable Care Act. Davis described the Act as “an idea whose time has come.” He explained that its passage and confirmation by the United States Supreme Court means millions of Americans, who previously could not get health care will now be covered.