16 minute read
OpEd
EDITORIAL
If You Believe Black Lives Matter, Make Sure You’re Counted in Census 2020
The Labor Day weekend has come and gone and schools are back in session – the majority adopting a virtual learning model due to the continuing health pandemic. So, as you take a moment to exhale, we urge our readers to be sure that they’ve completed the Census 2020 questionnaire and returned it to the U.S. Census Bureau.
In case you didn’t know, the deadline has been moved one month earlier to Sept. 30 – the last day on which residents in America can make a difference for their communities by participating in the census counting process. While it may take a little longer for the District to finally secure statehood status and its accompanying rights, it only takes a few minutes to complete the Census 2020 questionnaire, either by phone, mail or by employing the newest way to reply – online. And don’t forget to include all babies and young children on your form.
Census results matter as they shape the future of communities across the nation. Census data informs how billions of dollars in federal funds will be distributed for health clinics, school lunch programs, disaster recovery initiatives and other critical programs and services for the next 10 years.
One of the most memorable quotes from the iconic film, “Jerry Maguire,” “show me the money,” continues to resonate within American culture nearly 24 after the movie’s release. But if you fail to participate in the Census, your community could find its urgent pleas to “show me the money” falling on deaf ears. Communities that fail to fully participate risk missing out on billions of federal dollars – funds that are now more important than ever given COVID-19 and its unprecedented impact on our lives and livelihoods.
D.C.’s response rate, 58.4 percent, ranks 34th among states and in the 51st percentile for cities, based on data released several weeks ago. But nearly a four-fold difference exists within different portions of the City – from the highest self-response rate at 86.6 percent in Ward 3’s American University Park neighborhood to 26 percent in the Barry Farm area in Southeast.
Ironically, as most residents have been moved out of Barry Farm, the self-response rate cannot provide an accurate assessment of the mostly low- income and Black neighborhood. After all, the Census counts people, not empty chairs and vacated apartments.
Still, most of Ward 8 and many neighborhoods in Ward 7 continue to lag far behind – in the bottom 20th percent of self-response in the nation. But there’s still time.
Over the next few weeks, community activists promise to pound the streets in Southeast ensuring that every resident has been counted. Canvassers hired by the Census Bureau will still be knocking on doors.
Perhaps in the wake of the death of George Floyd, among others, you’ve joined thousands of protesters, waving posters and shouting in unison, “Black lives matter.” You may even be among those who both in the past and in recent days, have been compelled to invoke that phrase from “Jerry Maguire” lore, “show me the money.”
But if you’re really serious – if both phrases have become part of your DNA and philosophy of life – then you must complete the Census 2020 form. It’s just as important as casting your vote in November. Why? Because similar to why exercising one’s right to vote can have longtime ramifications on America in cities great and small, the impact of your participation in the Census 2020, or lack thereof, will be felt by U.S. communities – all neighborhoods – for years to come.
WI
Remembering the Victims of 9/11 and the Vote
This year marks the 19th anniversary of 9/11, remembered as the deadliest day in U.S. history. Four planes flown by terrorists slammed into the World Trade Center’s twin towers in New York and the Pentagon just outside of Washington, D.C. in Arlington, Va. and a fourth that crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pa. Hundreds of people were killed instantly, including men, women, and children of every race and ethnic group. Hundreds of others died trying to escape the flames and collapse of the 110-story New York skyscraper hit by a plane on the 80th floor, and moments later, a plane sliced through the 60th floor of its twin tower. The attacks were captured on television broadcasts raising shock and fear across the country and the world. Among those who survived, thousands still suffer from grave illnesses, including cancers of all sorts. Many continue to seek compensation for their life-threatening conditions, including the first responders and their
OPINIONS/EDITORIALS
Rest in Power
What a wonderfully penned tribute to the great Chadwick Boseman by D. Kevin McNeir. I personally get triggered seeing the constant “dead at 43,” so I’m grateful that you took a different approach to the horrid news of such an icon. We appreciate you.
Fatima Reynolds
Washington, D.C.
survivors. Others are still grieving the loss of loved ones, and their wounds reopen on the anniversary of the attack.
On this day, we join those who remember the six D.C. Public Schools teachers and students who were killed on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. They were en route to California to study ecology by invitation of the National Geographic Society. We take this moment to say their names: Asia Cottom, Bernard Brown and Rodney Dickens, along with their teachers Hilda Taylor, James Debeuneure and Sarah Clark, from Leckie and Ketchum Elementary Schools and Backus Middle School.
Nearly 20 years later, Americans ask if we are saf
TO THE EDITOR
Trending Upward
Happy to read about the HIV rates declining in the District. For a long time, D.C. had such an ugly stigma attached to HIV. The stigma had a major impact on residents and even more so those living with the virus. Prevention campaigns and programming need to continue. It’s working!
Beatrice Smalls
Laurel, Md.
er today. The Obama Administration abandoned the color-coded warning system, leaving most Americans with no idea of our daily susceptibility to an attack. And, what are the current warning systems?
The increasing incidents of internal terrorist attacks lay bare the fact that we are not safer. And this president makes us feel less safe with acts and statements that stoke the fires of conflict domestically and across the globe.
As we reflect on 9/11, it’s also a time to remember why it’s important to vote on Nov. 3. The security of this country also rests in the hands of its voters.
WI
OPINIONS/EDITORIALS
Guest Columnist
By Julianne Malveaux
Is the Economy Rebounding?
On the Friday before Labor Day, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly report, The Employment Situation. It reported good news — the unemployment rate dropped to 8.4%, higher than in February before the pandemic hit. We added 1.4 million jobs last month, the highest gain since the corona recession began. But while this is progress, it is no cause for celebration.
The Black unemployment rate
For 82 years, the Greater Washington Urban League, an historic civil rights organization and affiliate of the 110-year-old National Urban League, has been providing vital services and fighting for Blacks in the Washington Metropolitan Area since 1938. We are proud to continue to be serving, fighting for and giving voice to families and individuals.
“And so this march must go beyond this historic moment. We must support the strong. We must give courage to the timid. We must remind the indifferent, and we must warn the opposed. Civil rights, which are God-given and constitutionally guaranteed, are not negotiable in 1963.” — National Urban League President Whitney M. Young, 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Justice remains double-digit and has not dropped as rapidly as either the overall rate or the white rate, 7.3%. Eleven million fewer people held jobs in August than in March. And the “rebound” is not spread evenly across populations. The top 10% have already recovered. The bottom 40 or 50% are still struggling.
Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris told CNN that “one in five mothers is describing her children as hungry.” The lines at the food banks have not gone down, and in some communities, they are getting
The events of the past several months have revived demands for action on systemic racism and police reform, igniting a renewed passion for change. The convergence of two pivotal events, the coronavirus pandemic and the senseless murder of George Floyd, has led us to this seminal moment. The protests have heightened awareness of police brutality, while the pandemic has illuminated health, social and economic disparities in Black communities.
We applaud the initial responses by
Fifty-seven years to the day after Whitney M. Young stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to declare that civil rights are not negotiable, I stood on the very same spot to say: racial justice is not negotiable in 2020.
Transforming our racially biased criminal justice system and mass incarceration crisis is not negotiable.
Protecting and defending our sacred right to vote against racially motivated suppression and foreign sabotage is not negotiable.
Guest Columnist
longer. Once thought to be relatively immune to the virus, small-town America is now being hit, and forcefully. The challenge is that there are fewer hospitals or health care facilities in rural areas. Economic recovery is dependent on the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, which the current president says will be ready in October or November. More realistic voices, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, say a vaccine might not be ready until next summer or even later.
The bottom line is that the macro-indicators may show some progress, local political leaders. In D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser’s steadfast resistance to the president’s blatant disregard for peaceful protests, in creating the Black Lives Matter Plaza, sparked similar expressions on streets across America. The D.C. Council adoption of the Police Reform Commission is a significant step in addressing public safety and building stronger communities. The mayor’s recommendation allocating $1.3 million for violence interruption and the city’s Employment Pathways program and the July
By Marc H. Morial
Dislodging the structural racism that infects our institutions and paving a patriotic pathway to shared prosperity, economic parity and educational opportunity is not negotiable.
Last month’s Commitment March, “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks,” was convened in support of police accountability in solidarity with the families of African Americans killed or injured at the hands of the police.
In conjunction with the March, the convening organizations — but a deeper dive is far less optimistic. Hundreds of thousands of small businesses, including 40% of Black-owned companies, have closed, resulting in permanent job loss. Some of the hardest-hit industries include the leisure industries — travel, dining and more. Women, especially women of color, heavily populate some of these industries. While COVID-19 hit women of color harder than others, recovery will not make these women whole.
The economy will not regain its position from early March. Indeed, the slight comeback in leisure industries has 18 town hall on policing, are hopefully the beginning of many recommendations and communitywide conversations on reimagining policing.
The League also serves Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland and thus supports efforts throughout the region. We urge the State to enact such reforms as Anton’s Law, proposed by Montgomery Del. Gabriel Acevero, to reform the Maryland Public Information Act to enable the sharing of pertinent police officer personnel file information to promote National Urban League, National Action Network, NAACP, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., along with Martin Luther King III — have issued a Statement of Principles to establish a shared civil rights and social justice agenda. These principles are: • Fundamentally transforming the criminal justice system. • Protect and defend voting rights during the pandemic and beyond.
By George H. Lambert, Jr.
been partly a function of people enjoying safer, outdoor dining. The colder it gets, the more likely it is that people will choose to pass up dining out in favor of eating at home. People bought more groceries between March and August, not wanting to risk the possibility of contagion. Many have cautiously begun to eat out again, but restaurants lose money when they reduce seating because of social distancing.
By mid-September, we will know whether the Labor Day weekend has
From Protest to Action: Imagining Policing in the D.C. Metropolitan Area
MALVEAUX Page 53 greater transparency.
In Montgomery County, we support the establishment of an independent entity to investigate officer-involved deaths, taking this responsibility from police to investigate themselves through an independent federal, state, or local entity to conduct these investigations. The Law Enforcement Trust and Transparency Act
LAMBERT Page 53
Guest Columnist Get Your Knee Off Our Necks
introduced by County Councilman
• Achieve economic parity for African Americans. • Promote equity in educational opportunity. • Promote a fair and accurate census. - Promote a healthier nation by eliminating disparities and prioritizing testing, treatments and cures for COVID-19 in communities of color.
The Commitment March, like the March in 1963, happened as
MORIAL Page 51
Guest Columnist
By Charlene Crowell
The Aug. 23 police shooting of an unarmed Black man in Kenosha, Wis., triggered yet another round of community protests and national news coverage of a Black man. A series of multiple gunshots fired by a local police officer was not fatal for 29-year-old Jacob Blake, but may have permanently paralyzed him from the waist
In a 1992 column for the Richmond Free Press I wrote, “Someone should tell young Black males who are killing each other with such deadly efficiency that they are being allowed to do so precisely because they are killing each other. The harsh reality is that there are many white people in this city who believe that it is cheaper to let them kill each other off than to educate them or to keep them in jail.”
Two years later for the same news
To paraphrase the immortal Gil Scott-Heron: The Revolution will not be on Netflix. ESPN, maybe, but not Netflix.
We’re already seeing some remarkable, courageous behavior from athletes in almost every sport, but truth be told, the “jocks” have been “down” for 53 years, but that’s just since I’ve been following them, down.
Days later on Aug. 28, the National Action Network served as a major organizer for a Commitment March, rededicating the yet-unaddressed dreams of the historic 1963 March on Washington. Assembled again at Washington’s Lincoln Memorial, the day’s speakers spanned nationally known leaders like Rev. Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King III, and attorney Ben Crump to the family members of George Floyd, Breonpaper I wrote, “I have a suggestion on how to more effectively combat street crime in Black neighborhoods in Richmond which is to put all Black police officers in our inner-city neighborhoods. … This would eliminate race as a major factor in crime control by taking this cover out of the hands of the minority of residents who indulge in criminal behavior mainly against their own people. Many Black people, for legitimate historical reasons, don’t trust white police officers. Black criminals are well aware of this situation and take advantage of it.”
In a 2009 column distributed by and courageous athletes go back decades before that.
On the other hand, folks in the entertainment industry all seem to be WAP-whipped and are tuned out, spinning their wheels trying to get on TMZ, trying to get photo shoots so they can show off their beautiful bodies in super-revealing bikinis, plunging neckline blouses, and skirts split up to their belly buttons. The 24-7 Hollyweird bacchanal has corrupted the morals and the vision for all but a notable few na Taylor, Jacob Blake and others.
The irony is that despite the passage of nearly 60 years between the original march and its 2020 recommitment, many of the issues that have plagued Black America remain the same. Black America and other people of color still cry for justice, equality, and freedom. Yet noticeably, what formerly focused national attention on events in Selma, Montgomery and Birmingham have now emanated from Ferguson to Kenosha,
By A. Peter Bailey
the news wire service of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, I noted that my all Black police officer position “…was based on the premise that many, if not most, Black officers either live in inner-city neighborhoods or have relatives or friends who live there. Thus, they have a much more vested interest in safety in such neighborhoods than their white counterparts. … I believe that Black police officers have a better chance of sifting out information from people in the neighborhood than white cops most of whom don’t give a you-know-what about inner-city neighborhoods. Their chief goal is to celebrities.
As tantalizing as their adventures appear to be, they are simply decadent distractions. Game shows, boats and pools and fancy houses and nonstop glitz has corrupted, even the hip-hop community to where it’s hardly recognizable from the time of Public Enemy and Tupac Shakur.
The athletes, though, are as serious as a heart attack. From Bubba Wallace leading the march in NASCAR, of all places, to LeBron Minneapolis, Portland and other locales.
Why measurable forward strides in policing, or economic progress have remained elusive after decades of calls for reforms may partly be explained by the findings of a new policy analysis by the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis. Using U.S. Census Bureau data, Ana Hernandez Kent, a policy analyst with the St. Louis Fed, found that America’s racial poverty gap continues to suppress social prevent inner-city street crime from spreading into other parts of the city. It must be admitted that they have been very successful in doing this; it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that if Black street criminals were killing or brutalizing Whites on any income level, from street bums to corporate executives, the way they kill and brutalize each other, they would be stopped by any means necessary. … What the young street criminals fail to comprehend is that their destructive behavior towards each other and towards their communities is allowed, sometimes encouraged, by a system which regards James rising in stature to the pinnacle that Muhammad Ali once occupied alone.
When Wallace took his stand, his entire industry — the most Dixie-fied in sports — stood with him. They banned the popular Confederate flag, folks draped race cars with Black Lives Matter paraphernalia.
The NBA, WNBA, Major League Baseball, tennis shero Naomi Osaka all canceled games — playoff games in some instances — and economic justice. Moreover, Wisconsin, not a southern state, claims the dubious distinction of having the largest poverty gap in the nation.
Nationally the St. Louis Fed found that in 2018, Black households earned 61 cents for every $1 of white household median income. Further, the Black-white median household income gaps ranged from 87 cents per dollar
Guest Columnist
CROWELL Page 54 them as expendable. By their behavior, the minority of young Black people who disrupt their communities have, for all practical purposes, become allies of white supremacists/racists.”
That is as true in 2020 as it was in 1992 when I first wrote about the subject.
There are organizations within inner-city communities throughout the country who are trying to deal with this unfortunate situation. They have earned and deserved support from all of us who really care about the present and future of
Askia-At-Large
By Askia Muhammad
The Revolution Will Not Be on Netflix
Black folks in this country. to take a stand against the rampant, wrongful murder of innocent Black people by Ku Klux Kops all over the country. Bravo. Something to cheer for.
And just think, just four years ago, Colin Kaepernick was mocked and scorned, and the Super Bowl quarterback couldn’t even get a job as a backup. This summer, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell issued a mea culpa of sorts, admit
ASKIA Page 54
