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SOURCE: BLACK AMERICA WEB

OCT 12 - 28, 2020

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MBE/DBE Certied | Woman-Owned Business OCT. 22 1936 – Political activist and Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale is born in Liberty, Texas. 1953 – Clarence S. Green is certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery as the first-ever African American neurosurgeon.

OCT. 23 1940 – Soccer legend Pelé is born in Três Corações, Minas Gerais, Brazil. 1947 – The NAACP issues a formal petition against racism in America to the United Nations. 1958 – Famed academic and author Michael Eric Dyson is born in Detroit.

OCT. 24 1855 – James Henry Conyers, the first Black person admitted to the United States Naval Academy, is born in Charleston, South Carolina. 1992 – Toronto Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston becomes first African American to manage a team to the World Series title. OCT. 25

1940 – Benjamin O. Davis,

Sr. is promoted to brigadier general, becoming the first African American general in the U.S. Army.

1997 – The Million Woman

March is held in Philadelphia.

OCT. 26 1911 – Gospel music great Mahalia Jackson is born in New Orleans. 1952 – Actress Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Academy Award, dies of breast cancer at 57 in Los Angeles.

HATTIE MC DANIEL

OCT. 27 1891 – Black inventor Philip B. Downing receives patent for the street letter box, a precursor of the modern-day mailbox. 1922 – Famed actress and civil rights activist Ruby Dee is born in Cleveland.

OCT. 28 1798 – Abolitionist Levi Coffin, known as the

“President of the Underground Railroad,” is born in Guilford County, North Carolina. 1914 – The Omega Psi Phi fraternity, founded at

Howard University, is incorporated under the laws of the District of Columbia. 1981 – Edward M. McIntyre is elected the first African American mayor of Augusta, Georgia.

WI

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BY SARAFINA WRIGHT

Celebrities such as Ice Cube and Diddy have been vocal about the upcoming presidential election, with Diddy recently launching “Our Black Party” to mobilize Black voters and possibly hold votes “hostage” if Blacks’ needs aren’t addressed. What are your thoughts?

ANNETTE KESSEE /

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA Why are these entertainers speaking out at the 11th hour? Some things need to wait until after the election because there are a lot of impressionable voters, especially younger individuals. … Do your research and stop listening to people on social media and other noisemakers.

DANITA BAILEY /

WASHINGTON, D.C. Diddy has not done anything for the past four years, but now, right before the election, he wants to mobilize?

FRANCYNE DYKES /

WASHINGTON, D.C. No new party, Diddy! Just vote for Biden/Harris. IF YOU WANT QUALITY WORK, JUST CALL!

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GLORIA NGEZAHO /

AUSTIN, TEXAS To play the other side, where were all these suddenly “caring” celebrities during Barack Obama’s administration? Wasn’t that the best time to push for a Black agenda?

NICOLE JACKSON /

JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA Really? He wants to start a party but can’t keep a group together? What he should’ve done is team up with Ice Cube and some other rich dudes and start their own conglomerate. Not a bright idea at the 11th hour.

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HEALTH CARE from Page 1

Additionally, adult children under age 26 would lose the right to remain on their parents’ health plans and Medicare patients would lose enhanced prescription drug coverage. Women would lose guaranteed access to birth control at no out-of-pocket cost.

The high court plans to hear arguments on Nov. 10.

An NPR report noted that “a sudden elimination would affect more than just patients. Insurance companies, drug companies, hospitals and doctors all have changed the way they do business because of incentives and penalties in the health law.”

If the Affordable Care Act [ACA] is struck down, many of the “rules of the road” would be wiped away, including billing and payment mechanisms.

It’s noteworthy that a new Democratic president still could not drop the lawsuit because Republican attorneys general – not the Trump administration – serve as the plaintiff.

However, a Biden win and a Democratic Congress could “in theory make the entire issue go away by reinstating the penalty for failure to have insurance, even at a minimal amount, says Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan specializing in health issues, who added, “the Affordable Care Act now dangles from a thread.”

Dr. Giuseppe Aragona, a general practitioner and family doctor at PrescriptionDoctor.com, said he’s concerned for many of his patients currently covered by Obamacare and who may soon have to look for other plans.

“There are reports of over 4.1 million Americans signed up to new plans this year, which is a 12 percent decrease from last year,” Dr. Aragona noted.

“The judge will rule on the fate of Obamacare but it is looking like a replacement is going to be needed for the people who are on the plan, if the Affordable Care Act is going to be deemed as unconstitutional. A lot of people rely on the act, and without it, they may not be able to afford another plan, leaving them in a very dangerous situation, which could cost them their life,” he added.

Health care expert Seth Denson said it’s essential to understand the specifics about the case that the Supreme Court will hear next month.

The Constitutionality of the individual mandate will be determined because, in 2018, Judge Reed O’Connor, a federal judge in Texas, ruled that the individual mandate, a result of the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act, is no longer constitutional.

Denson noted that when Obamacare first came before the high court, Chief Justice Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion, was the swing vote upholding the ACA’s mandate. He did so, stating the penalty found in the ACA wasn’t a penalty, but a tax.

The 2012 argument stated that the ACA violated the Commerce Clause and that the government couldn’t require individuals to buy something.

“However, Justice Roberts upheld the law saying the Congress has the right to tax and the ACA did not require someone to buy health insurance, rather it imposed a tax which could be avoided by purchasing health insurance,” Denson stated.

In 2017, Republicans passed the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act which, reduced the penalty/tax to $0.

Texas and multiple other states then argued that because the tax was no longer in place, the ACA was therefore in violation of the commerce clause and unconstitutional.

Judge O’Connor agreed, and the 5th circuit upheld the ruling but O’Connor stayed it so as not to destabilize the healthcare market.

The second component of the case judges will hear next month is “severability.”

“In their haste to pass the ACA in 2009, Democrats failed to include severability language in the draft of the law,” Denson said.

He explained that severability, in short, is a process where if one part of the law is found unconstitutional, it can be severed from the remainder of the law.

This provision isn’t part of the ACA.

“The 5th circuit did not rule on whether the individual mandate can be severed and sent it back to the lower court for further clarification; however, SCOTUS is ex-

HEALTH CARE Page 17

‘The World According to Dominic’ will return next week.

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Josey-Herring Sworn in as D.C. Superior Court’s First Female Chief Judge

By James Wright WI Staff Writer @JamesDCWrighter

In a historic ceremony, conducted virtually, Oct. 16 D.C. Superior Court Associate Judge Anita Josey-Herring became the first African American woman to lead the D.C. Superior Court as chief judge.

As chief judge, Josey-Herring will serve a four-year term and assign the 61 associate judges of the Superior Court’s nine divisions.

The ceremony took place in H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse in Northwest. The outgoing Chief Judge Robert Morin presided over the event, U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan read the commission of Josey-Herring becoming the chief judge and D.C. Superior Court Senior Judge Herbert Dixon administered the oath while her husband, Albert Herring, held the Bible.

D.C. Court of Appeals Chief Judge Anna Blackburne-Rigsby, D.C. Supe-

Significantly, voters remain afraid because they understand that U.S. elections and American democracy continue to be under attack.

“And a power grab is still unfolding, marked by legal games, voter suppression, a crippled postal system and a politicized Supreme Court, which may decide a disputed election,” three political observers wrote in an op-ed for NBC News.

Leanne Watt, a clinical psychologist, Richard Painter, the former chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush and Philip B. Stark, an associate dean of mathematical and physical sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, opined, “Americans are scared … regardless of what the polls suggest.”

“Meanwhile,” they continued, “all electronic voting machines, whether directly connected to the internet or not, remain vulnerable to hacking and fraud.”

The efforts to suppress the vote have become more apparent. Most recent examples include the California Republican Party acknowledging that it placed containers deceptiverior Court Senior Judge Rhonda Reid Winston and National Legal Aid and Defender Association President JoAnn Wallace spoke about the importance of Josey-Herring’s appointment and its meaning for female attorneys and judges. A proclamation from D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser praised Josey-Herring’s career while D.C. Superior Court Magistrate Judge Tara Fentress sang her rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

Josey-Herring, in her five-minute address, thanked her colleagues and the residents of the District “for this unique opportunity and solemn responsibility.

“I put my name in for this position because I believe in justice,” she said. “Justice without respect to persons. I believe in equal rights for the rich and the poor and I will defend the U.S. Constitution.”

Josey-Herring said many Washingtonians are struggling during the coronavirus pandemic and stressed that judges understand what they are ly marked as “official” mail-ballot drop-boxes in Los Angeles, Fresno and Orange Counties.

State election officials describe such sites, which could be used to eliminate ballots, as illegal.

In Texas, a federal court of appeals ruled to reinstate restrictions allowing one ballot drop-off location per county, a measure that forces thousands of potential voters to travel hours if they wish to cast their ballot.

Last week, on the last official day of voter registration in Virginia, a system crash suddenly halted voting. Longer than usual lines have confounded voters in Georgia, North Carolina and several other states with some individuals reporting a wait of more than 11 hours to vote.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s benchmark touts a wait of not more than 30 minutes.

However, reports have demonstrated that unusually long wait times regularly occur in communities with high minority populations.

A 2019 study by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Chicago

5 New D.C. Superior Court Chief Judge Anita Josey-Herring. (WI File Photo)

going through.

“We as judges are called to resolve critical issues for those we serve,” she said. “We serve as the final arbiters on many matters that come before us. Therefore, the public trust in the courts are vital to our democracy and I am willing to work across lines for jus-

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VOTE from Page 1

tice for everyone.” WI used smartphone data to quantify the racial disparity in waiting times at polls across the country.

The study revealed that race counts as the strongest predictor of how long a person waits in line to vote. Residents of all-Black neighborhoods waited 29 percent longer with 74 percent more likely to spend more than 30 minutes waiting to vote.

“The Republican party is actively orchestrating a well-calculated comprehensive voter-suppression agenda that involves GOP leaders at the federal, state and local level,” said Kris Parker, an attorney and political consultant who has worked on several campaigns including as a regional director for President Barack Obama.

“The absolute and unequivocal intent of their actions is to suppress voter turnout,” Parker declared.

“When you consider the president’s repeated undermining of mail-in-voting with his administration’s dismantling of the post office, along with the actions by state leaders to limit ballot drop-off locations,

VOTE Page 37

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“We look around the world today and we look around at home right now and we see that oppression exists. We know that the workers are exploited and that most of the people in this country are exploited in one way or another. We know that as a people, we must seize our time.”

– Bobby Seale “Seize the Time” [1970], co-founder of the Black Panther Party, born Oct. 22, 1936.

AROUND THE REGION

election coverage 2020 Ward 4 Council Seat Race Features Political Novices he is waging a grassroots campaign “to fight for the people.” The race has stirred little attention By James Wright of the Ward 4 Democrats said her where the newer residents aren’t sensi- compensation for advisory neighbor- among ward residents. Bobby Curtis WI Staff Writer organization supports George in the tive to the long-term residents.” hood commissioners, calls for refining King II resides in the Sixteenth Street @JamesDCWrighter general election. Redd ran for the D.C. Council in the concept of community policing Heights neighborhood. He confesses “We didn’t endorse anyone in the the April 23, 2013 special election for and endorses solar energy jobs for Dis- he hasn’t paid attention to the George-

In the Nov. 3 general election, res- June 2 primary,” Nelson said. “We the at-large seat vacancy and received trict residents. Redd race. idents of Ward 4 will choose between held candidate forums so that the 1.92 percent of the vote as the D.C. He said as a lawmaker he will ad- “I just starting seeing signs for Perry political newcomer and Democrat candidates could air their views. The Statehood Green candidate. Anita vocate for returning citizens noting Redd a week ago,” King said. “I think a Janeese Lewis George and D.C. State- Democrats in Ward 4 made their Bonds won that race. Redd won the he was convicted of gun and drug lot of people have made up their mind hood Green activist Perry Redd, who choice and we are behind George.” 2018 race for advisory neighborhood charges in Tennessee but the charges who they will support. I am impressed once ran for the D.C. Council at-large George said she has campaigned commissioner race for single-member were dropped after he served years in with George still going out in the composition, as their next councilmember. without the formal backing of Todd district 4B05. federal prison. munity after she won the primary with

George has never held elected office. since the primary and has been “seek- Redd said he is campaigning for Redd acknowledges that George her listening tour. I think it is great she She defeated D.C. Councilmember ing to reach out to the people.” term limits for lawmakers, wants to see has political advantage but insists that is making herself available.” WI Brandon Todd and resident Marlena “Our campaign launched a ‘Listen Edwards in the June 2 Ward 4 Demo- While We Climb Tour’ that started on cratic Party primary. George ran with July 15 and ended on Sept. 23,” she the support of D.C. Attorney General said. “We visited each neighborhood Karl Racine and D.C. Councilmem- in the ward, from Chevy Chase to Laber Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) and mond Riggs and invited residents to the backing of progressive groups such listen to me and get to know me. At as the Jews United for Justice Cam- our tour events, we had a range of 50 paign Fund, Black Lives Matter DC, to 100 residents. After the meetings, DC for Democracy and Working we sent surveys through email to parFamilies as well as labor unions such as ticipants to find out what their top isthe Washington Teachers Union, Lo- sues were. We are synthesizing the data cal 500 of the Service Employees Inter- to get a sense of what is on the minds national Union and the United Food of residents.” and Commercial Workers Local 400. George said her campaign has also George, a District native and former participated in “meet and greets” and assistant attorney general, supports one-to-one meetings with residents Medicare for All, combating crime and works with its own get-out-thefrom a public health perspective, an vote effort that distributes literature on environmental platform that includes fully enforcing the D.C. Clean Energy Act and strictly regulating fossil fuels in the city, expanding rent control and the election process. Redd describes himself as a progressive, too, and agrees with George on a number of issues. However, he said VOTE fully funding universal child care. his candidacy rests on doing the right

Ward 4 has an 81 percent Demo- thing for Ward 4 residents. cratic Party voter registration and the “The previous representatives party’s third largest numerical bloc of cheated the citizens of Ward 4,” he Democrats—51,169—in the District according to data from the Sept. 30 report of the D.C. Board of Elections. said. “Ward 4 has the highest rates of COVID-19 infections and one of the highest rates of COVID-19 deaths. #2 On The Ballot Nov. 3, 2020 Candace Tiana Nelson, the president We have gentrification in this ward

5 Janeese Lewis George is the Democratic Party nominee for Ward 4 Councilmember. (Photo courtesy/Janeese Lewis George)

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