NATIONAL GOP Convention Ignores Reality; Disregards Plight of African Americans By Stacy M. Brown WI Senior Writer @StacyBrownMedia If a single tweet could sum up the Republican National Convention held last week, then the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser likely nailed it. “America right now has deadly pandemic, massive unemployment, and recession, schools unable to open, protests over racial injustice, a killer hurricane bearing down on the South… And I am watching Mike Pence talk about how bad things would be in Joe
Biden’s America,” Glasser wrote. Many who watched opined that the prevailing theme of the recently-completed four-day GOP affair seemed like a 1978 Jim Jones rally in San Francisco before he took his loyal disciples to Guyana and fed them the poisonous Kool-Aid. “That’s not a political party. That’s a cult,” “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert said. “Welcome to the convention, everybody. Take off your masks and put on your matching Nikes and your MAGA hats, then drink up our
5 Darryl Strawberry was among the African Americans spotted at President Trump’s acceptance speech at the White House during the Republican National Convention. (Photo via Report Door)
bleach-flavored Kool-Aid,” Colbert dead-panned. It was clear early and late that the GOP gathering took on a decidedly different tone than the Democrats’ held one week earlier. While Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden released statements condemning yet another police shooting of an unarmed African American, President Donald Trump invited among his guests, the gun-toting cou-
Request for Qualifications GAGA-2020-RFA-0030 Dedicated Aide & Nursing Services for Students with Special Needs DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS OFFICE OF CONTRACTS AND ACQUISITIONS The District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS), Office of Contracts and Acquisitions (OCA), on behalf of the Division of Specialized Instruction (DSI) in the Office of Teaching & Learning (OTL), is requesting qualifications for service providers to staff paraprofessional (“dedicated aide”) and nursing (“dedicated nurse”) roles dedicated to specific DCPS students with special needs attending DCPS at various locations. Services must be available both in-person and remotely to accommodate for remote learning. Dedicated aides must meet the requisite credentials for highly qualified paraprofessionals outlined in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 and have the capacity to provide support for students who qualify for dedicated one-on-one paraprofessional support as determined by the Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) team in an urban setting. Dedicated nurses must meet the requisites for providers of school health services as a related service, outlined in the IDEA. Nurses will document all medical care each day in relation to student nursing and/ or feeding plans. The Request for Qualifications form and related documents are available on the DCPS website at https://dcps. dc.gov/node/1433901 under Solicitations. Submissions will only be accepted via e-mail at justin.willis@k12.dc.gov. All submissions must be received later than 3:00 PM on Friday September 11, 2020.
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ple from St. Louis who pointed guns at unarmed and peaceful protestors. Meanwhile, Paris Dennard, the Republican National Committee advisor for Black affairs, sent daily email updates to journalists. While the messages included the text, “real Americans standing for our national anthem,” African-American athletes continued to exercise their right to protest not just by kneeling but by giving up their multi-million-dollar paychecks, striking in support of Black lives. In a response from the White House on Thursday, Trump condemned the athletes while his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, mocked the players. But perhaps more important, while Democrats observed social distancing and the wearing of masks during their convention, Trump and his more ardent supporters declared victory over the coronavirus. Trump also packed in an estimated 1,500 people on the White House lawn Thursday evening to deliver his formal nomination acceptance speech, clearly breaking social gathering guidelines and norms mandated and observed by most localities. Perhaps the convention’s highlight was first lady Melania Trump who spoke to Americans during the second night of the convention with a speech in which she declared that “total honesty is what we as citizens deserve from our president.” However, as noted by CNN and other outlets, the convention programming was littered with false or
misleading claims, including some from the president’s son Eric Trump and several others whose allegations against Biden and the Democrats failed to include essential contextual references. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow claimed that Trump inherited a “stagnant economy on the front end of recession” from the Obama administration, adding that the Trump White House rebuilt the economy in three years. “This is misleading,” CNN fact-checkers reported. “The U.S. economy was growing 1.7 percent in 2016 when Trump was elected. It continued to grow after he took office, especially after the 2017 tax cuts.” Fact-checkers noted further that the country emerged from the “Great Recession” in the third quarter of 2009 and grew continuously throughout the rest of Barack Obama’s presidency. In his remarks Tuesday night, Eric Trump contrasted his father’s accomplishments with Biden’s plans saying, “Biden has pledged to defund the police.” Again, CNN fact-checkers responded. “Biden has expressly not supported calls to defund the police,” the team reported. “In fact, Biden’s published criminal justice plan called for a $300 million investment in community policing efforts – including hiring more officers.” The younger Trump also claimed
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