OpEd

EDITORIAL

Remembering Liz Davis, Honoring Bill Simons

Condolences continue to pour in over the passing of Washington Teacher’s Union President Elizabeth Davis, who died April 6 – Easter Sunday – in a car crash on Route 301 in Bowie, Maryland.

Davis, 70, was a firebrand, and a no-nonsense advocate for D.C. public school children, their teachers, and their parents. The union she was first elected to serve in 2013, and reelected in 2019, credited Davis for the WTU’s “transformation into a social justice, solution-driven organization.” Her passion for “advancing and promoting quality education for all children,” irrespective of their zip codes or test scores, drew admiration from a broad range of individuals across all sectors.

Before Davis, the WTU experienced ongoing turmoil within its leadership, repeatedly challenged for not providing educational opportunities and access for all students. A former classroom teacher for more than four decades and as a member of the WTU before becoming president, she proved her mettle by challenging the school system’s chancellors for actions she believed would result in inequitable treatment of Black teachers and students.

Originally from North Carolina, Davis moved with her family to D.C. when she was in the third grade. In high school, she was an activist. She organized a school walkout at Eastern High School, where she attended, over the curriculum’s lack of African American History and culture. But it is no wonder she took the path of resistance as a school leader following in the footsteps of another WTU firebrand, William Simons, WTU’s first president, who served for more than 25 years.

Simons was known for his “militant” stand on issues, and he would threaten and carry through on plans to organize teachers’ strikes and marches to demand better pay for D.C. teachers. He fought policies that set teachers up for failure and initiatives that had a deleterious effect on students. Simons died December 7, 2016, in Atlanta. He was 92.

Born in an era and growing up in another that leaves one no choice but to fight for educational equity are the choices both Simons and Davis made. And, for those who call themselves proud DCPS graduates, much is owed to these two who were dedicated firebrands on their behalf. WI

No Justice, No Peace

Reverend Al Sharpton and Attorney Ben Crump held a press conference in New York, this week to address the separate cases of the George Floyd and Duante Wright’s police-involved killings in Minneapolis. Floyd’s killer, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is currently on trial for first, second, and third-degree murder. The blue shield that too often protects cops from punishment for their wanton acts is no longer there as numerous of his former colleagues lined up over the past two weeks to testify against him. As for Wright, not only has the veteran female police officer resigned after shooting the 20-year-old by “accident,” as she called it but her boss, the chief of the Brooklyn Center Police Department, resigned, too. The investigations that will follow will more than likely result in a trial with another cop attempting to defend her acts, including multiple failures to follow police procedures as pointed out by former D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey, who reports regularly on the police shooting incidents on CNN.

What Sharpton and Crump addressed does not heal the pain of the mothers and fathers, siblings, and friends who’ve lost a loved one by a policeman’s bullet. As Wright’s and Floyd’s family convey, they want justice, but they would rather have their loved ones alive instead. Not only are Black American’s debating the issue of justice, but others’ eyes are opening, and now they, too, are questioning if there is justice for the Black man or woman in America.

Black Americans are on edge, and once again, just like in Minneapolis, cities across the country are powder kegs for protests and violence in reaction to these repeated injustices. The skills needed to manage a police-involved situation don’t exist for those who all too often end up with a gun in their face for minor infractions that they are not allowed to explain. Even a military uniform is no defense against a cop with a gun and a badge.

President Biden called the killing of Duante Wright “tragic” but said, “I think we’ve got to wait and see what the investigation shows — the entire investigation.” It’s taken decades to get an investigation for the murder of Black people, and their patience is too thin to wait and see. A change has got to come now.

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Rest in Paradise

I was heartbroken to read about the death of Washington Teachers' Union President Elizabeth Davis. What a force she was. Every time she spoke, she always had something poignant and touching to say. She was a fighter, warrior and a powerful voice for education that will be cherished and missed.

Debra Cunningham Bowie, Md.

TO THE EDITOR

Soldier for Justice

I'm proud of the work Tony Lewis Jr. is doing to bring attention to his father's clemency plight. I pray that the work pays off. It's truly an injustice to sit behind bars for life for a nonviolent crime. He has paid his debt to society! Free Tony Lewis.

Hadiya Jackson Washington, D.C.

Readers' Mailbox The Washington Informer welcomes letters to the editor about articles we publish or issues affecting the community. Write to: lsaxton@washingtoninformer. com or send to: 3117 Martin Luther King Jr Ave., SE, Washington, D.C. 20032. Please note that we are unable to publish letters that do not include a full name, address and phone number. We look forward to hearing from you.

Guest Columnist

Knock at the Door

There's no doubt that there are faults and flaws in the American system of democracy. When I taught, my students learned that American democracy was established under the principle of one-man-one-vote/majority rules. Indigenous people, Black people, women and other groups weren't allowed to vote. Whichever white man got the most votes "ran the show." There were, and always have been, schemes to unfairly shift the balance of political power. My students also learned that our political model was established under a two-party system where compromise was ostensibly sought to achieve consensus.

Today, rather than seeking compromise, legislating is tantamount to combat. Data tells us that nationally the Republican Party stands in the minority, yet rather than adhering to founding principles, they use every available tactic to ensure the "rule of the minority."

Recently, the Republican legislature sent a bill to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp which he signed en-

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acting voting restrictions aimed at communities of color. Objective observers view this new law as a "revenge law" for Democratic success in the 2020 general elections designed to prevent future election successes of non-Republican candidates.

Analysts attempt to justify the Georgia law by comparing it to laws of more progressive states. This is a false narrative. The history of discriminatory voting practices in southern states in general, and Georgia specifically, is proof. My friend Dick Gregory often said, "Just because it's legal doesn't make it right."

Commonly, objection to the new law is that it was enacted in response to "Trump's Big Lie" of a stolen election. The length of the 98-page law prevents a complete review, but research by Georgia Public Broadcasting reporter Stephen Fowler condensed the law and I will attempt to condense it further. The new law provides for:

A FOOD-AND-DRINK RESTRICTION

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported an average wait time for an African American voter in Georgia was 51 minutes, in contrast to the average wait time of seven minutes for a white voter. Criminalizing the distribution of food and beverages to waiting voters has an obvious and irrefutable disparate impact upon African American voters.

Guest Columnist

Marc H. Morial

HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge Will Put Racial Equity at the Forefront

"We need to make the dream of homeownership — and the security and wealth creation that comes with it — a reality for more Americans. That will require us to end discriminatory practices in the housing market, and ensure that our fair housing rules are doing what they are supposed to do: opening the door for families, especially families of color who have been systematically kept out in the cold across generations, to buy homes and punch their ticket to the middle class. There are so many issues we need to come together to address — everything from bringing capital back to disinvested communities, to increasing energy efficiency in housing, to dealing with the dangers of lead-based paint, to taking on our crisis of homelessness with compassion and resolve. These are only some of the challenges — and I know that many of you have additional priorities as well. These problems are urgent, but they are not beyond our capacity to solve." — U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge

Video of the exchange went viral on social media. Veteran correspondent April Ryan of The Grio, a fellow Delta Sigma Theta sister, wrote on social media, "Soror Madam Secretary @repmarciafudge had me feeling like I was back in church during announcements."

Aaron Thomas of Raleigh's WRAL-TV News wrote, "If speak when you're spoken to were a person…"

It was an apt introduction to the nation for Secretary Fudge, described by those who know her best as "down-to-earth" and "a straight shooter."

Immediately following her lighthearted moment in White House Briefing Room, she called on Congress to add up to $100 billion to her agency's budget, saying it does not have the resources to serve the more

Guest Columnist

Michelle Mabson Eric Garner, Earth Day and the EPA at 50

Eric Garner, Earth Day, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) share common bonds. Each was born in 1970. Each are examples of how the power of pollution can destroy our environment, endanger public health, dirty our air, or kill African Americans. Each will mark 50 years this year, except Eric Garner.

When Eric Garner, face down in a chokehold, pleaded, “I can’t breathe,” eleven times to the po-lice, they ignored him. But Black communities heard him. Almost five years after his death, the doctor who performed Garner’s autopsy testified that the police choked him with a force that triggered a “lethal cascade” of events resulting in a fatal asthma attack. Eric Garner suffered from chronic asthma, a disease which African-Americans are nearly three times as likely to die of than whites.

Earth Day now 50 necessitates a closer look at the air we breathe. The air may be cleaner than it was fifty years ago, but it’s still not clean enough in all communities. In too many African Amer-ican communities, the air breathed is polluted. With COVID-19, the world is finally seeing what our communities have been saying forever: the combination of deep-rooted environmental injus-tices, bad public health policies, and pollution are deadly to Black lives. According to prelimi-nary tracking data compiled by some cities, Blacks in the U.S. are dying from COVID-19 at dis-proportionately higher rates than other populations. People who contracted COVID-19 and live in areas with high levels of air pollution before the pandemic are more likely to die from the virus than those living in less polluted areas. A study points out that this could be connected to longterm exposure to air pollution based on living near polluting coal plants, refineries, and other places emitting fine particulate matter – the tiny pollution particles linked to lung disease, heart disease, and premature death. Blacks are ex-posed to 1.54 times more of this form of pollution than the population at large. There is little to celebrate.

In fact, one rural town in the center of “Cancer Alley” has the highest per capita COVID-19 death rate in the country. Residents of St. John the Baptist, a majority Black parish

INCREASED STATE POWER OVER COUNTIES

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than a half-million homeless people in the country, repair crumbling public housing buildings and eliminate lead in subsidized homes.

Most of the housing measures that lawmakers have passed to address the pandemic crisis should be made permanent, she said. "This past year has reminded us just how important it is to have access to safe and stable housing," she said. "But too many Americans are

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Guest Columnist

Kristine A. Kippins

Recent Attacks on Voting Rights Underscore the Need for a Black Woman Supreme Court Justice

With voting rights under attack, we need Supreme Court justices who will follow the clear commands of our Constitution’s voting rights amendments now more than ever. Across the country, Black women are leading the charge to protect our democracy — in our communities, in Congress, and in our courtrooms.

It is time for America to have its first Black woman justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Attacks on voting rights in the wake of the 2020 election are so numerous that it’s easy to lose track. Right now, the Supreme Court is considering a case that the conservative justices are likely to use either to strike down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act or to narrow its enforcement so much that states will be able to get away with even more voter suppression than they already do.

There is a long history of voter suppression coming from the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Many of the worst abuses that target Black Americans’ ability to vote today follow from a 2013 Supreme Court decision that ignored the plain text of the Fifteenth Amendment and gutted the Voting Rights Act, opening the floodgates for politicians to employ tactics that would have previously been blocked. Racist voter roll purges, voter ID laws, and poll closures are just some examples of the kinds of abuses that have been sanctioned or enabled by the conservative justices on the Supreme Court.

Attacks on protections for voting rights are not the only anti-democracy rulings from the conservative justices that disproportionately hurt communities of color. In decision after decision, they swept aside the Constitution’s text and history, and Supreme Court precedent, to lift limits on spending in elections, giving an outsized voice to the overwhelmingly white and male group of ultra-wealthy Americans with the means to spend big influencing elections.

We need a plan to fight back, and that plan needs to include Black women in decision making positions throughout our constitutional democracy, both federal and state, in legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Black women have been at the forefront of the fight to outsmart and out organize the Republican voter suppression machine. That’s not surprising; Black women have led the fight for a real democracy for centuries, and we have a unique position from which to understand the intersecting forms of oppres-

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Guest Columnist

Ben Jealous

Biden's Promise to Diversify the Courts

People who care about equal justice under the law should be very happy about President Joe Biden's first set of judicial nominees.

I am especially excited about the three outstanding Black women that President Biden nominated to the circuit courts—the appeals court level just below the U.S. Supreme Court.

You will soon be hearing more about all these highly credentialed and accomplished women: Ketanji Brown Jackson, Candace Jackson-Akiwumi and Tiffany Cunningham.

Biden is fulfilling his promise to bring professional diversity to courts that are dominated by former prosecutors and corporate lawyers. Ketanji Brown Jackson and Candace Jackson-Akiwumi both have experience as public defenders. Jackson is now a federal district judge who was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 2013.

Biden has pledged to nominate the first Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court. These nominees are a good sign that he intends to keep that promise, too.

It is shameful that the Seventh Circuit, which has jurisdiction over diverse cities like Chicago, Milwaukee and Indianapolis, currently has only white judges. The confirmation of Jackson-Akiwumi will change that. The confirmation of Tiffany Cunningham will make her the first Black judge ever to serve on the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.

These brilliant women will also bring other perspectives that are sorely lacking on the courts.

Judge Jackson was vice chair and commissioner on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, where she advocated for ending the brutally unjust and anti-Black discrepancy between sentences for crack cocaine and powder cocaine.

As a public defender, Candace Jackson-Akiwumi represented more than 400 people who could not afford a lawyer.

Tiffany Cunningham has been nominated to the specialized federal circuit, which needs judges familiar with science and technology issues. Cunningham not only has a law degree from Harvard, but a degree in chemical engineering from MIT. She has been repeatedly named to legal publications' lists of the country's best lawyers. She is impressive.

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Askia-At-Large

Askia Muhammad

Voter 'Integrity' Another Word for Race Hate

Let me be perfectly clear. The recent national wave of state laws to ensure "accountability" in the voting process has absolutely nothing to do with the integrity of the electoral process and everything to do with maintaining white supremacy in the country's governance. Period.

Never mind the 300 or so laws proposed in statehouses around the country, just remember this incident from a couple of elections ago, even before Donald J. Trump and the Republikkkans in Georgia were decisively routed from power.

An elderly Black woman, in Alabama I think it was, had worked as a maid in the state capitol building, literally for decades, but was not permitted to vote because she didn't have a driver's license.

That's unbelievable. She had ID sufficient to permit her to clean illegally vote against racist tyrants masquerading as patriots.

Yes. Black folks were packed into boats and transported to this country, but not so they could illegally vote in some jive elections where wicked White folks are being removed from governing positions. Naw. Naw. Naw. Voter fraud is a myth.

The conservative Heritage Foundation has unearthed a total of 1,285 voter fraud cases, dating back to the 1980s, a timespan when hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of ballots were cast. On the other hand, there were 20,000 gun deaths in this country in 2020 alone, and not a single measure to tighten ID requirements for gun ownership has even a snowball's chance in hell of making it into law.

But the Big White Lie persists. In Texas, a leaked video reveals a Harris County Republican offi-

the filthy chambers of the legislature, but was not permitted to vote?! Election officials wanted to defend against "voter fraud?" She's like the millions of Black people in particular who are in danger of being challenged and prevented from voting by the new wave of voter ID requirements. These Black souls didn't pack themselves into boats to cross the Atlantic so they could sneak into practically every state in the union, learn English, get jobs and residences just so they could ASKIA Page 46