OpEd

EDITORIAL

As Schools Slowly Reopen, the Importance of Education Returns to the Spotlight

Schools in the Greater Washington Area and across the U.S. have slowly started the process of reopening their doors to eager students and educators. And while this process will undoubtedly undergo both ebbs and flows because of the challenges that remain prevalent due to the coronavirus, we believe that not even a virus will be able to keep classrooms closed for much longer.

Still, the configuration of our schools and classrooms may look markedly different from versions with which older Americans are more accustomed. Some students will find themselves attending school once or twice a week with portions of their educated being supplemented by Zoom calls or lectures videotaped for later reference on their computers.

In fact, in his efforts to clarify how public schools will now qualify for federal funding, President Biden recently indicated that a school must only hold in-class learning once a week to be labeled as “open.” Of course, many educators, parents and teachers have great reservations about saying school is “open” when being open doesn’t translate to five days a week of in-person instruction.

That’s another issue.

Nonetheless, COVID-19 has forced us to reconsider how education can best be facilitated – not only as we consider health concerns but ensuring that all students receive a quality education.

And while the safety and health of educators and students cannot and will not be overlooked or minimalized, we feel it necessary to return the spotlight to the quality of education that youth will receive.

Less than a century ago, many Blacks still did not know how to read. Blacks were routinely denied admittance to the nation’s top colleges and universities. Blacks could not attend schools in many parts of the U.S. because of laws that allowed for segregation. And so, we fought against these various means of injustice – through political, religious and social means. As the story goes, victory would be ours – but not before generations of protests.

Education has long been recognized as the best means of leveling the playing field in America. And whether classrooms shift to hybrid versions of instruction or not, education and the benefits and opportunities it provides for those who “learn their lesson” have not changed – even in our new COVID-19 influenced world.

Maybe the real challenge many parents face is that they can no longer send their children and grandchildren to school so the “babysitter” can take over.

Now, the adults in the lives of school age children must bear more of the burden in the daily education of their children. It can be a daunting proposition for some but so be it. It’s the new reality we all face.

Let’s get busy! WI

Censure Trump: What Do Americans Have to Lose? Teacher's Death a Tough Lesson

Very sad to read about the death of Ballou STAY cosmetology teacher Ms. Helen M. White due to COVID-19. If this doesn't story doesn't make officials reconsider opening schools, I don't know what will. God bless her family.

Teniele Jackson Washington, D.C.

TO THE EDITOR

Cracking the Glass Ceiling

Shout out to Miss Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for becoming the first woman and the first African to lead the World Trade Organization. That's major news and a sign of progress for Africans around the world. We are just as capable if not more.

Abu Olowokandi Washington, D.C.

From day one, Donald Trump has been a nightmare to America. He proved to be as toxic to the American people as a local drug dealer is in the communities they occupy. By promoting, or pushing the lie that he would make “America great again,” Trump convinced voters – whites, Latinos, Blacks and others – to support his perilous, COVID-19 super-spreader bid for reelection. In the end, he received more than 74 million votes, according to reports, from those duped into believing “what the hell do you have to lose?” by supporting him.

After four years of ineffectively tackling issues impacting Americans and people worldwide, and nearly one month since his departure from office on Jan. 20, victims who swallowed the “Trump pill” are suffering more today than they were before he entered the White House. His ultimate desire, however, has not changed: to make money for himself, to acquire more power and to lead people into places where he will not go.

That’s what he did on January 6 when he instigated an insurrection in the nation’s capital, directing his troops to “charge” but staying back. He ultimately caused five people’s death and criminal charges levied against hundreds more, all while he continues to stoke the flames after playing golf on his private course in Florida.

Meanwhile, the FBI and other law enforcement officials continue to track down Trump’s peddlers at the expense of U.S. taxpayers who are footing the bill to house these lackeys in places as near as the D.C. Jail. Still, despite arrests, convictions, loss of jobs and income, and even death, it seems that those who have come under Trump’s spell simply cannot cut the strings. In fact, most Senate Republicans proved to be Trump’s greatest allies when they voted not to convict him for inciting a riot, although many acknowledged he did – after the vote, that is.

With all that said, we agree with D.C. Congressperson Eleanor Holmes Norton that there must be some action Congress can take to give Trump a strong message to end his game now. Norton is calling for Trump to be censured. “It is the only method available now to send a bipartisan, bicameral message to the country and the world that the U.S. is a nation of laws and it’s the only avenue left to prevent Trump from holding public office again.”

We stand by Mrs. Norton and affirm that Trump needs to know that his business is no longer welcomed here. America will remain great despite him and not because of him. WI

Guest Columnist

Julianne Malveaux

When Will Workers Get a Break?

Now that the impeachment trial of the 45th president is over, perhaps our legislators can turn their attention to working people — or, more accurately, those who used to work and are not now working. There were 18 million unemployment insurance claims now than a year ago, and nearly 10 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic. The first Friday report that the unemployment rate has dropped is misleading when the number of people fleeing the labor market is alarming. Most disturbing, of course, is the departure of women from the labor force. Last month alone, more than 250,000 women left the labor market, compared to 71,000 men.

Further, many of those working, especially in meat-packing, manufacturing and most service occupations, don't have the luxury to physically distance at work. Some of these folk earn appallingly low wages, in some cases hovering near the $7.25 minimum, the same rate it has been for more than a decade. To be sure, minimum wages are higher in some cities and states, with the District of Columbia, San Francisco and Seattle establishing a $15 minimum. Other jurisdictions have passed legislation gradually moving the wage to $15.

President Biden promised to support new minimum wage legislation, and Sen. Bernie Sanders is pushing hard. The Raise the Wage Act of 2021 was introduced on Jan. 26, and House Speaker Pelosi has said a version of the bill will be sent to the Senate for approval. There is likely to be pushback, especially from states that have not raised their wage above the federal level. It is useful to note that in Florida, where the former president enjoys popularity, a ballot measure supporting a $15 minimum wage passed. Even conservatives have to eat!

Senate Bill 53, the Raise the Wage Act, would gradually raise the federal minimum wage from the current $7.25 level to $15 by June 2025. The first increase would happen this year, raising the wage to $9.25 this year. In subsequent years the wage would rise to $11.00 in 2022, $12.50 in 2023, $14.00 in 2024, and $15 by June of 2025. The most significant bump is 31 percent, from the current $290 per week (for a full-time week) to $380 per week. Even with that increase, though, a family of four is living below the poverty line of $26,500. The minimum wage for a family with one worker won't exceed the poverty line until 2024 when the wage is $14 an hour.

Some households with minimum wage workers have more than one person contributing to household expenses. But many minimum-wage workers work part-time, not fulltime, and don't work part-time by choice. Many employers offer less than a 40-hour workweek to avoid paying benefits.

Raising the minimum wage gives

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Guest Columnist

Sarafina Wright

Cancel Culture: Is It Real or Just Another Example of ‘Fake Media?’

In December 2018, we learned that comedian Kevin Hart would serve as the host of the 2019 Academy Awards. For comedians, hosting the Oscars is a big deal. It’s what sets you apart from the pack — from those ordinary comedians who tour in smoky small clubs year-round to make a living so they can keep the lights on and one achieve a semblance of success.

But for a small group of performer – “comedian royalty” – life plays out differently. Their talent and the public’s appreciation of this skills, allows them an extended hiatus from the long nights and irascible promoters. They’re A-listers in big films, they perform in arenas and they have demand and receive exorbitant fees for their services. They make millions of dollars every year.

These comedians include: Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Whoopi Goldberg, Jon Stewart and Jerry Seinfeld have reached levels that put them on the Mount Rushmore of comedy. One of those highly treasured markers remains the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor with another being tapped to host the Oscars.

Unless you’ve been under a rock, you know that Hart has emerged as the preeminent comedian of the last 10 years. With movies, concerts, commercials endorsements, he’s everywhere. When it was announced that Kev’ from Philly would host the Oscars, the world cheered for him – at least most of the world.

Others weren’t so pleased. Several years ago, Hart posted homophobic tweets which popped up periodically for one reason or another. Each time, he’d apologize and the conversation would die down.

But about one month before the 2019 Oscars, social media users resurrected the buzz relating to his homophobic tweets. This time Hart chose not to apologize.

Paraphrasing Hart, he noted that he’d apologized over and over. Why apologize again and to whom?

Hart referenced those on social media who began to demand that he be replaced from the Oscars.

Eventually he acquiesced once more but he also decided to step

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Guest Columnist

Steve Descano Justice for All Means Dismantling Federal Death Penalty, Commuting Death Row Sentences

After enduring four years of white nationalism in the White House, it was a refreshing shift to see President Biden announce a series of executive orders in his first week in office addressing systemic racism. The Biden Administration’s commitments to drop federal private prison contracts, promote fair housing practices at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and combat the wave of xenophobia aimed at Asian Americans during the pandemic constitute a welcomed first step in confronting racism. However, if President Biden is truly intent on leading America toward a reckoning with its original sin, he should use every tool at his administration’s disposal to dismantle the federal death penalty.

America’s death penalty is among the most egregiously racist institutions – in both its origin and application – to persist in a criminal justice system defined by inequity. In 19th century Virginia, state law only provided for the execution of white people for first-degree murder, while enslaved people could be executed for less serious alleged offenses. Although the explicit racial distinction disappeared from the code during the 20th century, these disparities persisted.

Per the Death Penalty Information Center, 185 Black Virginians and 46 white Virginians were executed for murder between 1900 and 1969. A total of 73 Black Virginians were executed for crimes like rape, attempted rape, or armed robbery. No white Virginians were executed for such crimes in that timespan. This racist application of the death penalty continues to this day and is not unique to Virginia. Nationally, 42 percent of individuals on death row are Black, as are 34% of those executed – despite Black Americans constituting 13 percent of our population.

What’s more, not only is the death penalty racist but it’s also woefully ineffective at preventing crime. In fact, the Brennan Center found that the average homicide rate in states without the death penalty is lower than that of states with the death penalty.

Thankfully, the movement to abolish the death penalty has gained considerable momentum in recent years. Ten states have outlawed the death penalty since 2004 and a growing number of local prosecutors are refusing to seek it, a pledge I have honored since taking office last year.

DESCANO Page 53

Guest Columnist

Where We Go from Here?

More than a month into a tumultuous start of a new year, a new year following the most chaotic year in America that any living person can remember, I am seeing signs that the work in the streets and in our hospitals and at our voting booths far and wide, even in states no one thought we would have captured after 2016, that even though we have been hit hard on so many fronts, it's our front line that is now advancing for the greater good. It is divisiveness and hate that must retreat; it is science that will now confront COVID-19. And it is Americans of color who overcame at the polls to deliver the House, the Senate and the Presidency.

Contentious as it was, more Americans voted in the 2020 election than in any other election in 120 years. And look at what we did together.

We elected the first Black, female and Asian vice president in Kamala Harris.

We elected in a historic runoff election, the first Black senator from Georgia in more than a decade in Rev. Raphael Warnock. Rev. Warnock, the pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church — where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once was pastor — has dedicated his life to service and ministry. And we tipped the U.S. senate for hard working men and women by also delivering his fellow Georgian Jon Ossoff.

Out west, Wyoming elected their first female senator. Missouri sent its first Black congressperson to D.C., and Delaware elected its first transgender senator.

The voters of New Mexico became the first state to send a delegation to the House of Representatives made up entirely of women of color. And this 117th Congress is the most diverse in our country's history, just as President Joe Biden's Cabinet promises to be.

So, for me, 2021 is about hope and about working for a better life for all and a better nation together as we rise from the terrible test that 2020 has been. It is about recommitting to one another and to good works to help our brothers and sisters in need. And even before we voted for inclusion, we were already making good trouble. White, Black and Brown nationwide took to the streets this past spring and summer to ask our nation — to demand of our nation — that we address the systematic racism that has plagued this country since its founding. That has torn the very fabric of our country and created so much pain and loss. With one voice, all were saying: "Please, at long last, fix this."

Ray Curry

Guest Columnist

Ben Jealous

The Warning Bells in Trump's Impeachment Trial

Donald Trump's defenders are shameless. And that makes them dangerous.

It has only been a month since a mob enraged by Trump's lies about the election being stolen attacked the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from confirming Joe Biden's victory. The terrorists killed one police officer and injured more than 100, leaving some with head injuries and one with three fingers missing; two have since died by suicide.

The mob wasn't able to stop the transfer of power and keep Trump in office. And, thank God, they didn't get their hands on members of Congress or on former Vice President Mike Pence, who in their minds betrayed Trump by following the Constitution.

The terrorists had a noose waiting outside. Inside, members of Congress were calling loved ones to say goodbye, fearing that they were about to be killed.

If you have any doubt that's what would have happened if the mob had broken into the House or Senate chamber before members of Congress were evacuated, watch the opening arguments from Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate. Rep. Jamie Raskin, one of the impeachment managers presenting the case against Trump's incitement of insurrection, showed a video with clips from the attack.

It is hard to watch. But it is necessary.

It is important not to turn away from the violence provoked by Trump's lies, as his defenders want us to do in the name of false unity.

Trump's lawyers had no case. Trump spent weeks generating rage and resentment with his lies about the election. He urged people to come to Washington to fight for him. And on Jan. 6, he rehashed his lies about the election and Pence's ability to overturn it, and then sent his angry supporters to storm the Capitol.

The claim that it would be unconstitutional to hold Trump accountable now that he is out of office was completely demolished by Raskin — and by legal scholars, conservative as well as liberal.

From the very start of the trial, Trump's desperate defenders in Congress, right-wing media and the Make America Great Again movement turned to more shameful arguments.

They continued to repeat the lie at the heart of the violence: Black voters and corrupt Democrats stole the election from Trump and his supporters.

They tried to distract from Trump's weeks of incitement by showing irrel-

OUR PATH IS CLEAR

It is time to think not of ourselves, not of what divides us, not of our differences, but of our common good. It is time once again to remember that there is much, much more that unites us than divides us. Those that would seek to divide us, do not want us to

CURRY Page 54

JEALOUS Page 54

Askia-At-Large

When the Guilty Go Free

Whenever the "guilty" get away with it, a scar is left for those who are the victims. Donald J. Trump, O.J. Simpson, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam — notoriously infamous acquittals.

We've known for weeks that Trump, the TWIMPRIC (Twice Impeached Private Citizen) would never be convicted by the Repugnikkkan Party sycophants in the U.S. Senate who blithely tried to ignore the hours and hours of damning and compelling evidence that conclusively proved that the draft-dodging whoremonger who filed multiple bankruptcies before assuming the highest office in this Wilderness of North America committed treason, not to mention a "high crime and misdemeanor" worthy of his public humiliation. But alas.

A solid, bipartisan majority of the U.S. Senate (his jurors — more like a the country were delighted that the racist L.A. cops and prosecutors had not strung him up, but most folks were certain that O.J. really did it.

There is certainly a big difference between acquittal and innocence.

Before The Donald got away with the most egregious betrayal of the U.S. rule of law in history, the most horrible crime I can recall that went unpunished was in September 1955 when Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam were acquitted after just one-hour of deliberation by an all-white jury in Greenwood, Mississippi of the brutal murder of Emmett Till. This probably deserves to be The Crime of the 20th Century.

Emmett, a 14-year-old from Chicago was visiting relatives in rural Money, Mississippi, near Greenwood. Roy's wife Carolyn Bryant claimed that the lad had grabbed her, made lewd advances and wolf-whistled at her as he left her husband's store.

Askia Muhammad

jury of his accomplices) voted 57-43 to convict the Guy, but the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority, so they fell 10 votes short. He got off. Where were you when you learned the news of a crooked exoneration?

I was at New York's JFK International Airport, Oct. 3, 1995, retrieving my luggage to clear customs in a Black Press delegation of National Newspaper Publishers Association personnel returning from Nigeria when the news broke that O.J. had gotten off. Most Black folks around ASKIA Page 54