OpEd

EDITORIAL

Science Should Guide Decisions to Lift COVID-19 Restrictions, Not Public Sentiment

As the number of infections, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 finally begin to show a slight but consistent daily decline, many U.S. officials have begun to tout their plans to lift current restrictions for cities, counties and states.

And while we are all anxious to remove our masks, board jet planes and cruise ships and send our children back to school, it remains imperative that we not move too quickly. Everyone has been impacted by COVID-19 as it has emerged as an equal opportunity virus.

Millions of Americans have already received their first vaccination – some have even received both doses of the vaccine. However, we have not reached herd immunity. Further, let us not forget that millions have already died from the coronavirus with more deaths reported each day.

One unarguable fact about a virus should not be ignored: viruses do not stop at the geographical borders of the cities, counties, nations or along the waterways in which and where we live.

So, while America, under the aggressive, science-based leadership of the Biden-Harris Administration have initiated policies and procedures at a national level that have slowly helped our nation turn the corner, we are not out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot.

The crisis faced by many African nations and those who live in India confirm with deadly emphasis that COVID-19 has not disappeared.

It would be wonderful if we could snap our fingers or clap our hands and the world could suddenly return to life the way it was before COVID-19 disrupted our lives. But such a possibility only exists for those who live in a fantasy world.

Officials in the state of Maryland have said they believe that most restrictions will be lifted as early as Memorial Day. In New York State, officials vow that they will return to business as usual by July 4.

We would like to see their predictions come true. But let’s remember that this is not a game of musical chairs where speed matters for the one who seeks victory.

Slow and steady remains the only way to safely win this battle. Are we racing to live or are we racing toward death? You be the judge.

WI

Black Lawyers Matter

Since the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012 by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain in Sanford, Florida, Attorney Benjamin Crump has become a familiar face in the national news. A renowned civil rights attorney specializing in wrongful death cases, Crump and his team of lawyers are ever-present at the side of families seeking justice, particularly for those killed by police officers, including Ahmaud Arbery, Martin Lee Anderson, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Duante Wright.

Crump accepts no legal fees “until we win” according to his website. He’s successfully won verdicts and settlements of more than $30 million in personal injury cases, $87 million in wrongful death cases, and $10 million in civil rights verdicts. However, the $27 million settlement he achieved in the Floyd case didn’t overshadow the guilty verdict his team also won against former Milwaukee police officer David Chauvin accused of murdering George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes.

Described by many as the “hardest working lawyer in the country,” Crump has become a legal giant among all lawyers and joins the ranks of the late Johnny Cochran and many other top Black lawyers in the nation in recent history.

Crump serves as an inspiration to thousands of law school students who will graduate in the coming weeks, sit for the bar exam and embark upon their legal careers. At Howard University alone, the school of law will send off nearly 150 lawyers after hearing from Attorney Bryan Stevenson, featured in the film Just Mercy and director of the Equal Justice Initiative, who will deliver the commencement address. Stevenson helped win a U.S. Supreme Court decision that prohibits sentencing children under

Congrats to Dr. Pines

Kudos to Dr. Darryll Pines, who has been installed as president at the University of Maryland. I am confident he will do great things! This is a big deal and we should support his efforts at the university. Go Terps!

Rachel Morrison Washington, D.C.

TO THE EDITOR

The True Wilson High

Oh, how I would love to see Woodrow Wilson renamed to August Wilson High School. How beautiful would that be to honor one of our greatest minds, playwrights and ancestors. Let’s make it happen, council!

Lydia Thomes Washington, D.C.

18 to death or life imprisonment without parole.

Planting the seeds that grow fighters for equal justice under the law comes much earlier. Two D.C. lawyers, Donald Temple and Georgetown Assistant Dean Everett Bellamy, were recently honored on Law Day by Washington Bar Association for tilling the soil. The two joined forces in 1979 to establish the Charles Hamilton Houston [CHH] Pre-Law Institute where they volunteered to teach for seven weeks and over 100 hours preparing students for law school. CHH graduates have attended more than 50 different law schools and serve in some of the nation’s most prestigious law firms.

Houston, a Harvard law school graduate and a former dean of Howard Law School, was born in Washington, D.C. in 1895. He taught and mentored Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Through his work as special counsel for the NAACP, he helped win the historic Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, among others.

Houston believed, “A lawyer is either a social engineer, or he is a parasite on society.” Law Day, celebrated annually on May 1, demonstrates how Black lawyers are changing society every day.

Black lawyers matter. WI

Guest Columnist

The Question

Question: "To defund or not to defund?" From my perspective, I see that question as a distraction from the "real" issue which is, "How do we reform 'policing' into true public safety?" I concur with those who advocate a realignment of law enforcement budgets to incorporate the employment of mental health and counseling personnel. De-escalation must be incorporated into the police culture. When other options are dismissed and the first instinct is the use of lethal force, I call it murder. Incorporating these options, we might then be able to bring this cycle of Blacks being murdered by police to a necessary end.

Many learned analysts state their belief that "modern policing" evolved from the activities of the pre-Civil War slave-catchers. I will not argue, but I see post-emancipation as white America's greater conundrum. What to do with and how to manage free Negroes became their larger question. Social norms provided partial answers — separate segregated residential areas

E. Faye Williams

and restrictive social interaction. Policing provided the other answer — keeping the niggers where they belong — away from them.

Formerly enslaved people were an estimated 20% of the post-Civil War South population. There was fear of Black retribution. Wherever Blacks congregated, it was the norm to perceive them as ignorant beasts. From the largest cities to the smallest towns, Black populations were confined to urban ghettos or "across the tracks," with police serving to maintain the distance. From the beginning, "policing" for Blacks in policy and practice equaled "control," not protection and service.

The civil rights era brought significant dissonance into the ranks of law enforcement. As the barriers and restrictions to social interaction gradually began to erode, "control" became an activity more difficult to define and justify. Exposure of police violence through the national media (i.e., the March on the Edmund Pettis Bridge) gave rise to fewer Americans willing to accept police abuse. Law enforcement was fortunate in that the "majority opinion" gave them the benefit of the doubt to act as they felt appropriate. They continued violence with renewed vigor.

Martial organizations generally form concretized cultures that change very slowly. When examined, military and police are shown to practice more rigid adherence to standardized procedures and practices. The old within the ranks of law enforcement teach the young and express the expectation an attitude of "we've always done things this way." Training Officer Derek Chauvin is a prime example.

Technology has been a godsend

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Guest Columnist

Marc H. Morial

At Biden-Harris 100-Day Mark, America is Moving Again But the Road is Long

"My fellow Americans, look, we have to come together to heal the soul of this nation … We have the giant opportunity to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice, real justice … We have a real chance to root out systematic racism that plagues America and American lives in other ways. A chance to deliver real equity: good jobs, good schools, affordable housing, clean air, clean water, the ability to generate wealth and pass it down to generations because you have an access to purchase a house. Real opportunities in the lives of more Americans — Black, white, Latino, Asian-Americans, Native Americans." — President Joe Biden, address to a joint session of Congress, April 28

One hundred days into their administration, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have made surprisingly bold inroads in confronting racial injustice and the COVID-19 pandemic, but significant challenges remain.

President Biden and Vice President Harris entered the White House at a moment of unprecedented multiple crises, and they have risen to confront those crises with remarkable speed and effectiveness. With the help of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, they have illuminated the systemic racial inequality that hinders our nation's progress and set a course for healing.

Whether the nation can stay that course remains to be seen.

President Biden has been purposeful and intentional about including racial justice components in every policy he has undertaken in the first 100 days. He has used his moral voice to create a distinction between the poisonous philosophy of white supremacy and the idea of an America for everyone, an America of opportunity and pathways to progress for all people.

Importantly, he has changed the tone of governing, adopting a tone of inclusiveness that stands in stark contrast to the reality-show, finger-pointing, disparaging tone of the recent past.

The 100-day mark is something of an arbitrary and artificial dead-

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Guest Columnist

Marian Wright Edelman Hope for Millions of Children on the Horizon

President Biden's April 28 address to a joint Congress called for an overdue investment in families and children with his American Families Plan. He listed many critical ways his previous American Rescue Plan has provided help already to millions of families.

President Biden said the most important of all might be putting our nation on track to cut child poverty in half this year. The Children's Defense Fund's long cries in the wilderness to end child poverty are finally being heard!

I hope all children have a chance to realize their God-given potential in a more just United States. President Biden's plan will provide a huge step forward.

CDF has prepared an analysis of the American Families Plan which includes extensions of recent Child Tax Credit (CTC), Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) expansions, universal pre-kindergarten, access to two years of community college, more adequate investments in child care, an expansion of community eligibility for free meals to more children, and other critical supports families and workers need.

President Biden would pay for these investments by eliminating some tax cuts for the rich, including raising the tax rate for the top one percent and ending capital income tax breaks and other tax loopholes.

The American Families Plan and the American Jobs Plan would lay the foundation for a stronger and more prosperous nation and I hope Congress will build on them to truly end child poverty and leave no child behind. Congress must make the full CTC expansion permanent and make additional investments in child care, housing, nutrition, and more.

Addressing our nation, President Biden said, "America is rising anew, choosing hope over fear, truth over lies, and light over darkness." Our nation's millions of poor children desperately need that hope and light far too long denied. I thank President Biden for his leadership.

WI

Guest Columnist

Glynda C. Carr

Black Women's Leadership During the First 100 Days

In 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched the tradition of assessing the first 100 days of new leadership when, during a speech, he offered it up as a good point for reflecting on the status of the newly implemented New Deal. The series of laws, which were quickly passed under his new administration, aimed to end the Great Depression and get the country back on its feet.

There is a parallel between the desperate mood of the country 88 years ago when Roosevelt took the reins and when President Joe Biden took leadership this past January in the midst of an ongoing pandemic, a worsening economy and rising racial tensions. One major difference, however, is that there is now a long-overdue focus on the role of Black women in righting the ship.

Black women voters and political activists were on the front line of the effort to elect President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris — candidates who overcame long-held biases about age, gender and race to win their offices. As we assess the work of this historic leadership team at its 100 days mark, it's also a good time to take a look at how — in light of their growing political influence and visibility — Black women are faring in our efforts to break glass ceilings, increase their presence among the ranks of political and civic leadership, and effect policy.

If recent political history has reminded us of any truth it's that progress towards equity and justice doesn't travel in a straight line. Black women's efforts to diversify elected leadership have encountered significant resistance, and their achievements in one legislative branch have sometimes resulted in giving up ground in another. For example, Stacey Abram's nearly successful bid for Georgia governor and Black women's increased representation in Congress during the 2018 election triggered a rash of voter suppression bills. This year, following Black women's historic gains as mayors, in the U.S. House and on the presidential ticket, legislative bodies in 47 states have introduced 361 bills aimed at curtailing the voter access measures that are frequently used by Black communities to cast their ballot. And while Black women crashed through a glass ceiling when Harris was sworn in as vice president this January, they are consequently now devoid of representation in the U.S. Senate.

Despite these challenges, Black women have made unprecedented gains in occupying elected positions and governmental appointments during the first 100 day of the new leadership that their votes

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Guest Columnist

Ben Jealous

Chauvin Is Guilty. Our Work Is Cut Out for Us

Just a few days have passed since Derek Chauvin's conviction in the murder of George Floyd. But the images from that moment are seared in our memories forever: the murderer, led away in handcuffs. The Floyd family, Philonise Floyd speaking through tears, at the microphones after the verdict. The crowds outside the courthouse erupting in cheers when the verdict was read.

Our gratitude for this measure of accountability is soul-deep. And now we ask ourselves, will things really be different this time? The answer is that they can be, if we seize this moment.

Washington has sent encouraging signs that it is serious about addressing police violence and systemic racism. Congress should pass the imperfect but important George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. The Justice Department is forging ahead with investigations of police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, and the shooting of Anthony Brown in North Carolina.

We have work to do in our own neighborhoods, too.

Policing is a local function, controlled by city, county and state governments. These governments answer directly to us, the citizens. And there is a lot we can do to insist on change.

One of the most inspiring examples today is in Ithaca, New York, a college town led by a dynamic young Black mayor. There, Mayor Svante

Askia-At-Large

Askia Muhammad

The Problem with Joe Biden

As far as I'm concerned, the "problem" with Joe Biden is that he is a 78-year-old white man. That may also be his greatest strength: he is a "reformed" 78-year-old White man.

Being a white man of any age usually means being unalterably wired to think that white males are beings superior to all others in The Creation. That is far from the truth.

Being a reformed white man, who recognizes the errors of his past ways is a fairly worthless prize as well. Two such men I came to know, come to mind.

First, I met Sen. J. William Fulbright in 1978. I traveled with him to Col. Muamar Qaddafi's Libya in a peace delegation of 100 or so from this country in 1978. Fulbright, a former Arkansas senator, earned seniority in Congress by being elected as a white segregationist. He energetically opposed civil rights legislation. That's what senators from the South did.

But Fulbright changed, and by the time he took us to Libya, he was a beacon of peaceful reconciliation. He boldly diplomatically engaged with Qaddafi who was one of the staunch leaders of the Arab "steadfastness and rejection front." The front included the Palestine Liberation Organization, Syria, Iraq, Algeria and South Yemen, and they opposed the peace deal Egypt's Anwar Sadat negotiated with the United States and the apartheid state of Israel. Myrick and the city council approved a plan to do away with their traditional police department and replace it with a new Department of Community Solutions and Public Safety, in which some personnel would carry weapons — and, importantly, some would not.

Instead, unarmed social workers would respond to the many calls in which an armed response is unnecessary and even dangerous. The new department will have a civilian supervisor. It will focus on de-escalating situations in which people are at

Fulbright changed his wicked ways, became an advocate for peaceful U.S. intervention, and established an ongoing scholarship program which sends graduating seniors to countries all over the world with grants to foster intercultural relations and cultural diplomacy. Good for him. But he still did not move the needle very far when it came to Libya, which was eventually rendered a failed state by U.S. military intervention authorized by President Barack Obama.

The other reformed white man I risk, and restoring trust among the city's communities of color, homeless residents, LGBTQ residents and residents with disabilities.

The plan came together with input from local residents as well as city and county officials. It is the kind of innovative thinking we want in communities across the nation, and the energy around the Chauvin trial helped get it over the finish line.

We all can harness that energy where we live. Our year of speak-

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met was Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan who filibustered the 1957 Civil Rights Act, resulting in a substantially weaker bill than its supporters had proposed.

I met Byrd at Harpers Ferry in 2006 at the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Niagara Movement, the precursor to the NAACP. Byrd told us that his "come to Jesus moment" was when his teen-

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