17 minute read
OpEd
EDITORIAL
Sept. 18 ‘J6 Rally’ Expected to be a ‘Dud’
Here we go again. The “Justice for J6” protestors announced plans to rally at the U.S. Capitol on Saturday, Sept. 18, to show their support for the defendants arrested for the attempted insurrection and damage to the U.S. Capitol they caused on Jan. 6.
More than 500 men and women have been charged and several are keeping company with inmates at D.C. jail. The charges they face include destruction of property, using pepper spray on police officers, unlawful entry, and disorderly and disruptive conduct, to name a few. The violence and mayhem following a rally promoted by former President Donald Trump resulted in several deaths.
U.S. Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick was reportedly struck in the head with a fire extinguisher by protestors and later died. Ashli Babbit, an Air Force veteran, died after a U.S. Capitol police officer shot her as she and other protestors attempted to break down the doors of the U.S. Senate chamber.
In the wake of the Jan. 6 protest, local authorities admitted they were ill-prepared for what became a forceful and violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. Many of the protestors brought weapons, demonstrating their intended plans to wreak havoc and cause harm to those who dared stand in their way. And, nothing stood in the way but the bravery of U.S. Capitol police and members of MPD.
Once again, authorities report that Internet chatter tells them that the J6 protest will not be a repeat performance of Jan. 6. They are predicting it will be a “dud.” Just in case, however, the fencing surrounding the U.S. Capitol will be reinstalled, and more law enforcement is in place.
There is a justifiable concern about the intentions and plans of the protestors. And, even if their protest is peaceful, their motives and messages must not be ignored. A fence may protect bricks and mortar, but their words continue to stoke the fire of dissension and divisiveness, ignited by their leader Donald Trump. The hats they wear promoting Make America Great Again cast a shadow on a country broken by their rhetoric and violent acts. WI
Women of Color and the Poor Stand to Lose the Most in Latest Abortion Rights Showdown
While the state of Texas represents ground zero in the recent battle for abortion rights in the U.S., when the smoke clears and the courts make their rulings, the biggest losers will inevitably be poor women and women of color.
To be clear, it is not the intention of The Washington Informer to make a stand on either side of the wide delta which exists within our nation over a woman’s right to choose versus those who support the right to life for the unborn.
Our concern remains with women and their having equal access to an abortion, should that be the decision they make. We understand that the decision to abort a child is not one which most women make lightly. But a woman’s economic status should not be the factor that allows some women to have the choice while other women have no choice at all.
Since the law in Texas went into effect several weeks ago – one which for all practical purposes has resulted in the majority of patients seeking an abortion being ineligible for the procedure – experts have witnessed a significant rise of women traveling to states that include Oklahoma, New Mexico and even Illinois where eligibility requirements are not as stringent.
But as all circumstances for women considering an abortion are not equal, women who cannot afford to take time off from work, who do not have the finances to travel to other states or who cannot afford to pay for childcare while they travel and have the procedure performed, have little choice but to carry their child to term. It’s a “choice” whose consequence, for some, will further exacerbate the economic hardships which they and their families already face.
In addition, some abortion advocates fear that women denied the right to an abortion stand a far greater chance of being impacted by physical and mental health challenges.
Before Roe v. Wade, rich women, mostly white, simply traveled to Europe where they were able to secure a physician, undergo the procedure, take time to recuperate and then return to the U.S.
Meanwhile, poor women, often disproportionately including Black women and other women of color, were forced to have backroom abortions performed by those without proper medical training, often in unsanitary conditions leading to horrific outcomes.
Choosing an abortion is already a difficult and painful decision for women. But it should be a choice that they and their family make. Economic stability, or lack thereof, should not be the factor that determines that right.
WI
Unity of 9/11 Has Faded
I can’t believe it's been 20 years since 9/11, a horrible, tragic day in our nation’s history. I can’t remember a time where I’ve ever been so scared to be an American, but I also can’t recall a time where I’ve seen the country so united. Following that day, Black, brown and white stood together. Now it didn't last, but it indeed happened.
Thomasina Belks Washington, D.C.
TO THE EDITOR
Support Black Businesses
Looking forward to trying the Angry Jerk restaurant in Silver Spring by Jason Miskiri and supporting Black business! The menu looks delicious, and I’m all for Caribbean food and flavors. Thanks for letting the community know about this place.
Dylan Canter Silver Spring, Md.
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Guest Columnist
Bridging Gaps This School Year
"To America's children, families, and educators, the last two school years have not gone the way you planned. You've missed chances to connect, share, and help each other. Outside of the classroom, you've struggled with loneliness, fear, anxiety, and maybe much more. You've lost chances to learn new skills, and you may even have worried about having enough to eat or having a safe place to live. You've made the very best of a difficult situation, but I'm fighting to make sure that this year, you get the safe and fulfilling school year you deserve…"
So begins an open letter Children's Defense Fund supporters are sharing with students, parents, and educators across our country at the start of another extraordinary school year. Back-to-school season always brings some uncertainty about the unknown, but for the second year in a row the COVID-19 pandemic has created significant new worries and anxieties as schools continue to navigate uncharted ground.
There are ongoing concerns about how we can help children recover from the academic disruptions so many of them have faced, and children who were most at risk before the pandemic still have the most at stake. A recent New York Times editorial, "The School Kids Are Not Alright," put it this way: "Virtually every school in the nation closed in March 2020, replacing face-to-face schooling with thrown-together online education or programs that used a disruptive scheduling process to combine the two. Only a small portion of the student body returned to fully opened schools the following fall. The resulting learning setbacks range from grave for all groups of
Marian Wright Edelman
students to catastrophic for poor children … [T]he pandemic amplified disadvantages rooted in racial and socioeconomic inequality, transforming an educational gap into a gulf."
The editorial cites an analysis by the nonprofit N.W.E.A. that found Latino third graders scored 17 percentile points lower in math in the spring of 2021 than in the spring of 2019, Black students 15 percentile points lower, and Native American students 14 percentile points lower, and studies showing that schools with higher numbers of Black, Latino, and poor students were more likely to remain closed, providing their students fewer opportunities for in-person learning. It also cites a McKinsey report that found the pandemic "has widened existing opportunity and achievement gaps and made high schoolers more likely to drop out. As the authors say: "The fallout from the pandemic threatens to depress this generation's prospects and constrict their opportunities far into adulthood. The ripple effects may undermine their chances of attending college and ultimately finding a fulfilling job that enables them
EDELMAN Page 53
Guest Columnist
Marc H. Morial
"He was a Hollywood star with an off-Broadway paycheck that mostly went up his nose. He was a pacifist with a barroom-brawl, razor scar down the middle of his face. He played a sneering killer but started his career in dance tights. On set, he was Omar Little, the Robin Hood of the hood feared by fictional street thugs who feared nothing else. Off it, he was an aimless soul begging for someone — anyone — to love and accept him for who he was, not who he played." — Kevin Manahan, Newark Star-Ledger
Of the many tributes to gifted actor Michael K. Williams, who passed away Monday at the age of 54, the most enduring and consequential may be namesake legislation aimed at curbing mass incarceration in his home state of New York. growing up in Brooklyn's then-crimeridden Vanderveer Estates and childhood abuse that left him conflicted about his sexuality.
Despite his professional success, Williams never overcame the demons that drove his struggle with drug abuse. Even in the years following his well-publicized recovery, he hinted of the turmoil beneath the surface. "People often think that when a person puts down the drugs or the alcohol, that all the problems go away," he told journalist Tamron Hall in February.
Michael K. Williams' Death Underscores the Need for 'Antiracist Public Health
Approach' to Substance Abuse "That couldn't be further from the Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn of Brooklyn plans to introduce a bill named for Williams, a criminal justice reform advocate and ACLU ambassador for ending mass incarceration. Williams gained fame in the early 2000s for his groundbreaking portrayal of Omar Little, an openly gay armed robber who preyed on drug dealers, in the HBO series "The Wire." His truth. Drugs and alcohol are not the problems, they're merely symptoms of the problem. And once those things go away, the real work begins." Williams death from a suspected fentanyl overdose underscores both the growing opioid crisis among Black Americans and the need for a more compassionate, community‐based approach to substance abuse and mental health problems. portrayal drew upon his experiences MORIAL Page 53
Guest Columnist
Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. American Business Leaders Step Up to Fight Inequities in the South
Even as the pandemic has laid bare societal inequities that have been eroding the foundation of our democracy, political leaders in Washington and in state capitols are mired in a level of rancor and partisanship not seen since the ideological struggles over the Vietnam War. This toxic atmosphere has left them incapable of addressing pressing, yet ingrained issues like the racial wealth gap, the digital divide, and vast inequalities in everything from health care to home ownership.
With COVID-19 still an omnipresent concern and the country's recovery still very much in jeopardy, individuals, families, and communities — particularly communities of color throughout the South — are struggling to deal with issues that have only been exacerbated by the pandemic.
From impediments to wealth creation opportunities and a dearth of education and workforce development to a lack of access to reliable broadband, substandard housing, and inadequate political representation, communities of color have suffered an outsized toll during the ongoing public health crisis. Yet political leaders can't even agree on basic facts that would allow the nation to implement a coherent national strategy for combatting a pandemic that appears to be entering a new wave amid the rise of the highly contagious delta variant that is currently ravaging parts of the South.
Against that disillusioning backdrop, there is at least some reason for hope. Moving to fill the vacuum created by the inaction of our political class, a group of business leaders in the technology and investment sectors have embarked on a far-reaching — and perhaps unprecedented — campaign to address the social inequities and systemic racism that has historically plagued our country's southern communities.
Known as the Southern Communities Initiative (SCI), the campaign was founded by financial technology company PayPal, the investment firm Vista Equity Partners (Vista), and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
SCI was formed to work with local elected officials and advocacy groups to tackle the ubiquitous problems of structural racism and inequalities facing communities of color in six com-
CHAVIS Page 53
Guest Columnist
Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr.
No Longer Any Serious Doubt Global Warming is Real — Now What Do We Do About It?
Record fires in Oregon and California. Floods in Houston and New York. Deadly winter storms in Texas. Droughts across much of the west. Flash floods in England and Germany. Blinding dust storms in China. One hundred year cyclones devastate Fiji and Indonesia. Deadly droughts across sub-Saharan Africa. Wildfires in Greece and Italy.
The year is not over yet, but in the United States and across the world, the toll in lives and destruction is growing in storms of biblical proportion. The poorest peoples and the poorest nations are most at risk, but no one is insulated against the impact. The wealthy on Lake Tahoe are evacuated in the face of unprecedented wildfires. Texan oilmen struggle when record winter storms shut down the electric system. Wall Street bankers are hit with floods sweeping through subways and streets.
As the storms increase, food supplies and prices will be hit. Millions will be displaced. There is no longer any doubt about the reality of global warming, the dangers of it, or the causes of it. Republicans who for years scorned the reality of global warming — Donald Trump dubbed it a "Chinese hoax" — now accept that it is real. Corrupted scientists paid by oil companies that argued the crisis wasn't manmade, now quietly reverse their opinions. Now the only question is: what will we do in the face of what the United Nations warns is literally an existential threat?
We can't undo what we have done, but we can alter how bad the future becomes. We can move to sustainable and efficient energy systems, make production and housing and transport more energy efficient, replant forests, invent new ways to generate or save energy, or more. In its last authoritative report, the UN issued what it called a "code red for humanity." The change must take place over the next decade or we will seed calamities too horrible to imagine. Already this year, the town Lytton, British Columbia, in Canada was erased by a hit so extreme — temperatures reached 121 degrees — that it literally went up in smoke and was reduced to ashes.
And yet, we keep putting more and more carbon in the atmosphere. Like addicts on drugs, we know we are killing ourselves but can't resist the high. Feeding deadly drug addictions — from heroin to crack to fentanyl — are multitrillion-dollar enterprises, some corporate, some gangs, all criminal. They have the power not only to slake the thirst of the addicted, but to corrupt the guardians — the police on the street, the politicians in the suites, the CEOs in the boardrooms.
Can we summon up the awareness, the moral courage, and the popular
JACKSON Page 54
Guest Columnist
A. Peter Bailey
While watching, listening and reading about events surrounding the Afghanistan evacuation by correspondents, reporters, columnists and editorial writers for MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Washington Street Journal, I often find myself noting that they often came off more like propagandists than journalists.
For instance, many of them repeatedly stated that "thousands" of U.S. military personnel were killed in the war in Afghanistan. The actual number was slightly more than 2,400. It's for sure that those deaths were a tragedy to the family and friends of the deceased but that number by no means should be reported as thousands. It is repeatedly reported that way to arouse the American public about what the journalists/propagandists consider President Biden's too early evacuation of U.S. military personnel from the 20-year war in Afghanistan. If they report that thousands were killed and wounded that would have been accurate. Obviously, they didn't believe just noting 20,000 wounded would have sufficiently aroused the American public so they inflated the number killed.
As the journalists/propagandists rant on and on about President Biden's decision to remove U.S. military personnel from Afghanistan, I wonder how many of them had served time in military service. I seriously doubt that the number is very high. Though they speak and write reverently about U.S. military adventures to fight for "Justice and Freedom," it is very doubtful that most of them had volunteered for that noble cause. Their position is best reflected by a statement by Sen. Lindsey Graham who declared, "We will be fighting [in Afghanistan] again soon." Graham's "we" is very deceptive. People like him and the journalists/propagandists won't be fighting anywhere soon; neither will their sons or daughters. The fighters will be the children of low-income and working-class families. Usually from small towns for whom the military is a way to make a living. A recent front-page article in The Washington Post provided photos, names and ages of the 13 U.S. military personnel killed during the Afghanistan evacuation. One of them was 31 years old. The other 12 were between 20 and 25 years old with probably a short time in the military.
Finally, I have thus far not seen or heard a single journalists/propagandists ask American citizens in Afghanistan why they had to be so dramatically evacuated. President Trump
BAILEY Page 54
Askia-At-Large
Askia Muhammad Critical Race Teaching vs. Truth-Telling
I confess, I was barely a better-than-average student all through school. Even though I always scored in the 95 percentile on standardized tests, I followed no one's guidance, or counseling, I didn't care much for some of my classes, and I almost flunked out of high school after I took a full-time job, from 4 p.m. until midnight, loading trucks for the princely sum of $1.00 per hour.
I did a fair job of committing to memory all the lessons/stories of the American Adventure — the amazing life of blind and deaf genius Helen Keller, an amazing "New Deal" which lifted the nation from The Depression, and the Civil War, America's deadliest, which fought over "states rights" and not slavery.
I might have been better off had I been taught about the amazing life Dr. Dorothy Height instead of, or at least along with, the stories of Keller. I might have been shocked to learn that written into the New Deal was the practice of "redlining" which literally marked Black neighborhoods on maps in red, designating places where New Deal or post-war G.I. mortgage assistance was not available.
I knew about the Watts uprising, because I was there, but I had no clue that there had been even bloodier "race riots" in Tulsa and Greenwood and dozens of other places where Black people were murdered by belligerent White folks and law enforcement authorities in the 1920s.
I knew about Dixie and "Negroes" being consigned to pick cotton in The South, but learned nothing about the preservation of slavery — mentioned 80 times in the Confederate Articles of Secession.
All of that and libraries full of material amount to what I would describe as the "Un-critical American Pedagogy," or the method of teaching. But a challenge has arisen, in the form of the teaching of critical race theory (CRT), which is: a body of legal scholarship and an academic movement of civil-rights scholars and activists who seek to critically examine the place where race and law collide in this society and to challenge mainstream American liberal approaches to racial justice.
But White Americans — whose Original Sins are slavery and genocide — want no parts of the truth
ASKIA Page 54
