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VOLUME 26 NO. 11

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MARCH 16 – MARCH 22, 2018

FOLLOWING MASSA’S ORDERS A handful of Black Democratic members of Congress condemn Minister Louis Farrakhan, ironically at the request of the Republican Jewish Coalition. BY RICHARD B. MUHAMMAD AND CHARLENE MUHAMMAD THE FINAL CALL

COURTESY OF THE FINAL CALL

Minister Louis Farrakhan issued his yearly address at the Nation of Islam’s annual Saviours’ Day commemoration in Chicago in late February.

Unified and organized

David Hogg, 17, one of several students at the school who has gained national prominence for advocating gun control, livestreamed the walkout on his YouTube channel. “We have to stand up now and take action,” Hogg said. He interviewed several of his classmates. “This is about the need for change,” another student told Hogg. “Yes, the prayers from politicians are nice, but we need real change.” Organized by the youth branch of the Women’s March called Empower, the National School Walkout is urging Congress to take meaningful action on gun violence and pass federal legislation that would ban assault weapons and require universal background checks for gun sales.

State to state Students from New York to Seattle marched on school athletic tracks or staged sit-ins along busy streets. In Massachusetts and Ohio, stuSee STUDENTS, Page A2

ALSO INSIDE

Dr. Boyce Watkins spoke candidly about the Black congressional cave-ins: “It’s a lack of power. It’s fear! A lack of discipline, a lack of self-respect, which leads to no respect.” “What’s interesting to me is that they will condemn the words of Minister Farrakhan and say we condemn hate speech of any See FARRAKHAN, Page A2

‘A scientist who happens to be disabled’

BY JENNY JARVIE AND KURTIS LEE LOS ANGELES TIMES / TNS

‘Stand up now’

‘No respect’

DR. STEPHEN WILLIAM HAWKING, 1942-2018

Walkouts for gun restrictions go national

PARKLAND – Students across the country – from middle school to college — walked out of class Wednesday, calling on state and federal legislators to enact stricter gun laws one month after the mass shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Seventeen students and staff members were killed at the school in Parkland on Feb. 14. On Wednesday, students at hundreds of schools across the nation left class at 10 a.m. local time for 17 minutes – one minute for each victim. At Marjory Stoneman Douglas, two walkouts took place. Citing safety concerns, student government officials and administrators urged students not to leave campus, but to walk to the football field with teachers. Some students balked at the idea of a chaperoned walkout, saying they wanted to get off campus and spread their message to the broader public. As students made their way to the football field, past a sculpture of the school Eagle mascot, they walked hand-in-hand or with their arms around each other. Only a few carried placards. There were no chants. Helicopters buzzed overhead.

CHICAGO – The Jewish stranglehold on Black political leaders was manifested when some Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) members caved in to demands by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) that they denounce Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan. Analysts and activists called the denunciations signs of the weakness of Black politicians amid Jewish efforts to isolate Farrakhan. They predicted the efforts would fail.

A flood of half-truths followed Farrakhan’s late February address closing the Nation’s Saviours’ Day convention in Chicago. The RJC called on Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Barbara Lee (DCalif.), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Danny Davis (D-Ill.), Andre Carson (D-Ind.); Gregory Meeks (DN.Y.) and Al Green (D-Texas) to resign. The congressmen should step down for meeting with or dialoguing with Farrakhan, the RJC said. By March 8, Davis had joined Lee and Meeks in disavowing Farrakhan.

Stephen Hawking, the British physicist who used a wheelchair because of Lou Gehrig’s disease, but whose mind soared to the boundaries of the universe and beyond, died Wednesday in England at age 76. Hawking reshaped basic ideas about the universe by carrying out complex mathematical calculations in his head and speaking only with a computer-controlled speech synthesizer.

Gun safety may be on November ballot

would require at least a three-day waiting period after a gun purchase to carry out a “comprehensive background check.” It would ban “bump stocks,” devices added to weapons to greatly increase their firing capacity.

Major bills that died in session

BY LLOYD DUNKELBERGER THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

Assault weapons ban

WORLD | A6

TALLAHASSEE – The debate over gun control is ready to move to a new forum, as the Florida Constitution Revision Commission next week begins the process of deciding what issues to place on the November ballot. Facing a May 10 deadline, the commission will start meeting Monday in Tallahassee as it considers three dozen proposed constitutional changes that have emerged from committee hearings. The commission, which meets every 20 years and has the unique power to place issues directly on the general election ballot, has scheduled seven floor sessions to wade through the proposals, ending on March 27. Commissioner Roberto Martinez of Miami, a former federal prosecutor, has filed an amendment that would also require anyone purchasing a firearm to be 21 years old. It

Commissioner Chris Smith of Fort Lauderdale has another proposed amendment that would ban assault-style weapons. Commissioner Hank Coxe of Jacksonville has filed an amendment that would raise the age of buying a firearm to 21 and would impose a 10-day waiting period. It also would ban bump stocks. The attempts to place the gun-control measures into the state Constitution follow the passage of a new school-safety law, signed by Gov. Rick Scott last week, that raises the age from 18 to 21 and imposes a threeday waiting period for the purchase of rifles and other long guns. The National Rifle Association has filed a lawsuit challenging the age requirement. Proposals placed on the ballot will need support from at least 60 percent of the voters to be enacted.

SNAPSHOTS FLORIDA | A3

Haiti hires PR firm to soften image HEALTH | B3

BUSINESS | B6

How Florida law forces help for opioid abusers

Toy industry wasn’t ready for ‘Panther’

COMMENTARY: BRUCE A. DIXON: SUCCESSES, FAILURES OF WEST VIRGINIA TEACHERS’ STRIKE | A4 GUEST COMMENTARY: PATRICK D. ANDERSON: A BLACK RADICAL DEFENSE OF SECOND AMENDMENT | A5

FOCUS

MARCH 16 – MARCH 22, 2018

We’ve got to rise up to come up How long will you feed and take care of a closet Klansman’s children while the Grand Wizard attends a lunchtime cross burning? How long will you dig ditches in the hot sun day after day? And how long will you sling dope and sell your cat night after night on ghetto and barrio street corners? We’ve been three-fifths of a man and second-class citizens of the world for much too long.

Now is the time! Now is the time to rise up! I don’t mean to suggest you should rise up and rebel. I believe that people of color in your house, on your street, in your neighborhood, city, county, state or country should rise up, stand up, speak up and come up! To me, it’s simple what we need

LUCIUS GANTT THE GANTT REPORT

to do. Most people that read The Gantt Report live in a capitalist country. In America, if it ain’t about the money in the suites or in the streets, you’re pretty much talking, but not saying anything! We need to teach our youth and our elders how to better manage money. Middle-aged people of color love to spend. They think they’ll always have a job or a business or a hustle. But they won’t! You don’t have to have a car that you can’t afford. You don’t have to live in the biggest (empty) house in the neighborhood. You don’t

have to wear red bottom shoes or buy Air Jordans every time a new sneaker hits the stores.

Be smart Save your money and buy something that can be used for collateral like land, or gold. Seniors can teach you to avoid some of the social and subsequently financial pitfalls that can keep you trapped in the traps like living in a poor neighborhood, attending a poor school, getting a poor job and career and still not be able build an economic base that can take you to the earthly “Land of Plenty.” We have to generate money to finance businesses that can hire our people, fund our schools, our social programs, our places of worship and our community development programs that can make community outreach more relevant to the people of color that live in communities.

We need money! We also need politics, because

money and politics are parallel. Wherever you find money, you’ll find politicians trying to tax it, regulate it, divide it, spend it and, in many cases, try to steal it! We must stop basing our votes on skin color or party affiliation and begin to base our votes on which candidates will stand up, speak out and represent people of color on each and every issue that comes before their political body! In any political setting, the Jews jump up when legislation is discussed that impact Jews. Cubans jump up when talks are about Cuba and how to get “The Mob” to take over the island again. Every race, creed and color fights for the rights of their people, but us. The people that represent us are hard to contact, hard to meet with and very hard to talk to. The Democratic Party meet and talk to your elected officials any time they want to. You can only meet your elected official at election time – usually at

your church!

Is it important? Elections are important only if the issues in your community are important to you. If you can’t put down the liquor bottle, set aside the crack pipe or put the needle away somewhere, your vote and your political power goes down the drain, disappears in the toilet water and turns your community into a social cesspool! So, rise up so you can come up! Get your minds and bodies right! Put on your big man and big girl drawers on! Step up your revenue generation and your political understanding and activity!

Buy Gantt’s latest book, “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing,” on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere. “Like” The Gantt Report page on Facebook. Contact Lucius at www.allworldconsultants. net.

STUDENTS from A1 dents headed to their statehouses to lobby for new gun regulations. In Washington, D.C., hundreds of students gathered outside the White House, holding signs and marching quietly. “No more silence, end gun violence,” read one sign. Another said, “History has its eyes on you.” In Maryland, students at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute poured out the back doors of the school and onto the football field. Many of them lay down on the football field. Hundreds of Baltimore students left school to march to City Hall. In Illinois, high school students from Barrington to Plainfield to Naperville to Chicago worked with peers and school administrators and prepared signs and speeches in preparation for the mobile protest.

‘Teachable moments’ With walkouts planned across the country – at elementary schools, high schools and universities – organizers published a “tool kit” online that offered students tips on how to organize, get support from parents and guardians and share information on social media. Earlier this week, Robert W. Runcie, superintendent of Broward County schools in Florida, notified parents he had instructed staff not to interfere with peaceful student-led protests. “Such occasions are teachable moments, during which students can demonstrate their First Amendment right to be heard,” Runcie wrote in a letter to parents. “In the event students walk out or gather, school principals and assigned staff will remain with students in a designated walkout area, so that supervision

FARRAKHAN from A1 kind, so you’re going out of your way to attack another Black person on behalf of White people … but in your quest to allegedly condemn hate speech of any kind, you never once condemn the Jewish community for running these record labels where every other rapper is calling Black people the ‘N-word,’ and every other rapper is promoting Black genocide, which has been more insidious, more effective, longer lasting than the genocide imposed on the Jews during the reign of Adolf Hitler,” argued Dr. Watkins. “What the Jewish community is going to have to confront is the fact that you have been our Hitler. You have mass-promoted, through media, the extermination of Black people through Black-on-Black crime, the complete disrespect of Black women and Black families in your music, and not once have you ever condemned that as hate speech,” Dr. Watkins said. “So, you condemn us. Well, we condemn you.”

No questions asked Charles Steele, SCLC national president, recounted how Farrakhan gave money to keep SCLC doors open when the group

MIKE STOCKER/SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL/TNS

On Wednesday, students from West Glades Middle School, next to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, joined a nationwide walkout in honor of the 17 victims killed at the school on Valentine’s Day in Parkland. is in place.” Over the last month, students across Florida and the nation have staged spontaneous walkouts, with some leading to disciplinary action.

Some suspended Two weeks after the Parkland shooting, dozens of students at Ingleside Middle School in the Phoenix area were given one-day suspensions after they walked off campus. In Needville, Texas, 20 miles southwest of Houston, Superintendent Curtis Rhodes warned students that anyone who left class would be suspended for three days, even if they had permission from their parents. “Life is all about choices and every choice has a consequence whether it be positive or negative,” Rhodes wrote in a letter to parents posted on social media. “We will discipline no matter if it is one, fifty, or five hundred stu-

was broke. Farrakhan didn’t ask questions and wrote a check to support work in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, Dr. Steele said. Philadelphia activist Pam Africa said the Jewish influence on Black life shows Blacks have gotten nowhere in the Black-Jewish relationship. Blacks have been relegated to kiss-ups and suckups to what is wrong as indicated by the lawmakers’ denunciation of Farrakhan, she said. “They’re the Judas that Jesus Christ dealt with,” she said.

Political motives? With discontent over President Trump and controversies that could turn off female voters, pressure on Democrats, activists like Tamika Mallory and the “Farrakhan controversy” are designed to weaken Democrats, anti-Trump activists and lessen possible GOP losses in 2018 midterm elections, said some analysts. Donald Trump, Jr. attacked Farrakhan via Twitter. Ari Fleischer, a RJC board member and former spokesman for President George W. Bush, joined the anti-Farrakhan Twitter attacks supported by Sean Hannity, his other Fox News colleagues and Alan Dershowitz. Jewish billionaire Sheldon G. Adelson, RJC board chairman, gave multimillion-dollar donations to the Trump campaign and inauguration.

dents involved.” On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union issued advice for students who walk out, saying schools can’t legally punish them more harshly because of the political nature of their message. In Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Texas, some lawyers said they would provide free legal help to students who are punished. Back in Parkland, school officials at Stoneman Douglas urged students not to leave campus.

‘Soft targets’ “We’re just trying to protect the students,” said Jaclyn Corin, 17, the high school’s junior class president. “We’re telling everyone not to leave campus, but we can’t stop them.” Hogg said he worried students would be “a group of soft targets” if they left campus. But some students, like 17-year-old junior Susana Mat-

ta Valdivieso, felt compelled to take the protest beyond school grounds. When the first bell rang Wednesday, Valdivieso was not sitting in Spanish class as usual. Instead, she was hauling a stack of handwritten placards across a community park. Dozens of her classmates joined her at nearby Pine Trails Park. Valdivieso offered a message to politicians watching the student walkouts, not just in Parkland, but around the country as well. “We won’t give up, we’re a whole bunch of high schoolers,” many of whom “will all be eligible to vote,” Valdivieso said. “And we will vote every single one of you out until our country is in good hands,” she said to cheers.

Some success The Parkland students’ protests in recent weeks have seen some results. Last week, Gov. Rick Scott, in a

The Executive Council of the Nation of Islam March 9 expressed via an open letter “deep disappointment” in CBC members who bowed to Jewish pressure. Lee, Davis and Meeks joined Ellison, who had been the lone CBC member to publicly denounce Farrakhan.

‘No credibility’ Rep. Carson told an Indianapolis TV station: “That organization (the RJC) doesn’t have any credibility with me. I know they have a political agenda. The Congressional Black Caucus is asking that organization to condemn (Israeli Prime Minister) Benjamin Netanyahu and the (Israeli) government for discriminating against Africans who are migrating, who are fleeing dictatorships, who are fleeing oppression. There’s a great deal of bigotry and racism happening right now they fail to condemn.” Farrakhan called his Jewish detractors to a public debate. Similarly in a 2010 open letter, Farrakhan urged Black leaders to review the book, “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Part 2” which documented how Jews gained control of the Black economy and benefitted from their paternal relationship with Blacks. “I am asking you to stand down and let them come out to me to defend their record and history of their relationship with us that we compiled from that

Keith Ellison

Gregory Meeks

Barbara Lee

Danny Davis

which was written by their own scholars, historians, and Rabbis,” he wrote.

ADL joins in The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) attacked Farrakhan with Jewish, right-wing and mainstream media joining the assault. Activist Tamika Mallory was denounced for attending Farrakhan’s speech in Chicago. In an op-ed published on newsone.com, the Women’s March co-chair said, “I am the same woman who helped to build an

rebuke of the National Rifle Association, signed into law a measure that, among other things, raises the minimum age to purchase a firearm in the state from 18 to 21 and bans the sale or possession of “bump stocks,” which allow semiautomatic rifles to mimic machine guns.

More to come The walkouts Wednesday are among several protests planned for coming weeks. The March for Our Lives rally for school safety is expected to draw hundreds of thousands to the nation’s capital on March 24, its organizers say. And another round of school walkouts is planned for April 20, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado.

Special correspondent Jarvie reported from Parkland and Times staff writer Lee from Los Angeles.

intersectional movement that fights for the rights of all people and stands against hatred and discrimination of all forms. I am the same person today that I was before Saviours’ Day.” On Twitter, Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL chief executive officer, falsely charged Farrakhan with scapegoating Jews and attacked Ms. Mallory.

‘A super-slave’ “If you’re Black and you’re a powerful person, elected, corporate, whatever, if you are doing the bidding of White people, you are a super-slave, that you have power and you’re exercising that power against your own people,” said Professor Raymond Winbush of Morgan State University in Baltimore. It’s a tragedy that Blacks have elected leaders whose constituents strongly support Farrakhan but politicians don’t because of influential lobbying groups, he said. Dr. Tony Monteiro, former Temple University professor, said Min. Farrakhan attracts Black and poor people “as a voice of Black America and its struggle against the forces of right-wing authoritarianism and racism, as well as a consistent voice against Israeli oppression of the Palestinians.”

Final Call staff contributed to this report.

MARCH 16 – MARCH 22, 2018

FLORIDA

A3 al products after the storm. The proposal also includes a property-tax break for homeowners displaced by Irma and a break for nursing homes that purchase electric generators.

Lease tax lowered The House agreed to a Senate proposal to reduce a commercial lease tax from 5.8 percent to 5.7 percent. The House had earlier proposed dropping the tax rate to 5.5 percent. The House voted 93-12 – with all of the opposition coming from Democrats – to approve the package. That came after the Senate voted 33-3 for the bill, with opposition from Minority Leader Oscar Braynon, D-Miami Gardens, Sen. Perry Thurston, D-Fort Lauderdale, and Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, D-Miami. Rodriguez said much of the package is crafted to allow Republicans to campaign on reducing taxes, while the Legislature failed to address issues that have more impact on Floridians, such as climate change and the influx of citizens from Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria.

June tax holiday

MIKE STOCKER/SUN-SENTINEL/TNS

A home in Duck Key sustains significant damage from Hurricane Irma on Sept. 13. A proposal that passed the Legislature will include a property-tax break for homeowners displaced by Irma.

Back-to-school shoppers, farmers getting tax breaks BY JIM TURNER NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

TALLAHASSEE – A tax package that provides relief for farmers and property owners impacted by Hurricane Irma, while offering sales-tax breaks at the start of the school year and hurricane season, was approved by

the House and Senate in a rare Sunday conclusion to the legislative session. Gov. Rick Scott’s office didn’t indicate Sunday if he would sign the package, which totals about $170 million, saying he will read the bill when it arrives on his desk. Less robust than what law-

makers had initially proposed, the package (HB 7087) contains a number of proposals offered by Scott before the session started in January. Lawmakers said they had to reallocate money in response to the mass shooting last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County.

A pile of dead legislative bills Session ends with death of bunch of high-profile measures BY JIM TURNER NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

TALLAHASSEE – Banning “sanctuary” cities, revamping gambling laws, approving new sexual-harassment rules and even creating a license plate to commemorate the University of Central Florida’s undefeated football season were among numerous issues that died when the 2018 legislative session ended Sunday. Senate Appropriations Chairman Rob Bradley, RFleming Island, was quick to praise the new budget for including $100.8 million to revive the Florida Forever land-preservation program

after a decade of neglect. But his effort (SB 370) to put into law an annual $100 million amount for Florida Forever, along with a separate bill to hike funding for the state’s natural springs and to restore the St. Johns River, are measures he will have to pursue again next year.

Bills that died “The House version of the legislation put off spending on Florida Forever until later years, and that was not acceptable,” Bradley said after the Senate concluded most of its business the night of March 9. “I wanted to do it now.” Overall, 2018 was not a stellar year for passing bills, with the House and Senate agreeing on 195 bills, four resolutions and one resolution-like “memorial.” Here are some of the

higher-profile issues that died when the session ended.

Fracking The effort (SB 462 and HB 237) to ban the controversial oil- and natural-gas drilling process known as “fracking” gained support from some Senate Republicans, along with Democrats. But the House never took up the issue in committees.

Gambling Lawmakers made a late attempt to reach agreement on a gambling deal amid concerns about a proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would give voters – not the Legislature – control of future gambling decisions. But legislative leaders abandoned the effort

Hurricane relief Senate Finance and Tax Appropriations Chairwoman Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, touted efforts to provide “targeted tax relief that promotes ongoing recovery from the recent hurricanes that devastated our agriculture community.” The package offers tax breaks on agricultural fencing materials purchased for repairs after Hurricane Irma. Also, it includes tax breaks for citrus packing houses that had their businesses interrupted by Hurricane Irma or by the deadly disease citrus greening and for fuel used to transport agricultur-

on March 9, as negotiators grappled with issues such as a gambling agreement with the Seminole Tribe of Florida and allowing slot machines in counties where voters have approved referendums.

Guns at church A proposal (SB 1048) that would have allowed people with concealedweapons licenses to carry guns at churches and other religious institutions that share property with schools appeared headed toward passage this year. The measure got through the Senate Judiciary Committee – where a number of gun bills have failed in recent years – and had reached the Senate floor. But then came the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County. The church-related bill remained pending in the Senate throughout the rest of the session and did not get a vote.

Insurance Barton Malow Company is currently seeking bids from qualified Subcontractors and Suppliers for the Poinciana Medical Center Addition/Renovation Project. Orlando, Florida and surrounding area businesses are invited to attend a Preconstruction Meet & Greet to learn more about opportunities associated with the upcoming project. The project consists of ED and Lab Additions and Renovations on the ground floor of existing acute care medical center. Approximately 6,171 gsf of addition and 5,856 gsf of renovation to be constructed is about 3 phases.

What: Preconstruction Meet & Greet When: Thursday, March 29, 2018 @ 9:00 a.m. Where: Poinciana Medical Center, (Magnolia Room, 4th Floor), 325 Cypress Pkwy, Kissimmee, FL 34759

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Barton Malow Company and HCA/Poinciana Medical Center are strongly committed to the development and implementation of initiatives which promote the inclusion of all local construction related businesses with an emphasis on minority and women-owned enterprise firms. Please join us at the preconstruction Meet & Greet to explore more opportunities. For information regarding the bid packages for this project, please contact: Brenton Reppy, Project Manager at 727-743-5977 or via email at Brenton.reppy@bartonmalow.com To RSVP for the upcoming Meet & Greet, please contact: Rhea Kinnard at (615) 941-8396 or via email kinn0167@aol.com

Neither of the big issues – to revamp laws dealing with a controversial practice known as “assignment of benefits” and to eliminate the “no-fault” auto insurance system – passed. The House approved a bill (HB 19) to repeal the no-fault system, which requires motorists to carry personal-injury protection, or PIP, coverage. But the Senate proposal (SB 150), which included a requirement for motorists to carry $5,000 in what is known as medical payments coverage, or MedPay, couldn’t get through committees. The insurance industry and business groups pushed for changes in assignment of benefits, an issue that involves policyholders signing over benefits to contractors, who then pursue payment from insurers. But the issue stalled early in the session in the Senate.

Red light cameras Among the first issues (HB 6001) out of the House

As they have in past years, lawmakers approved tax “holidays” that will allow Floridians to prepare for the school year and hurricane season without paying sales taxes. The back-to-school tax “holiday,” lifting sales taxes on clothes costing $60 or less and school supplies costing $15 or less, will occur over three days in early August. Starting June 1, there will be a seven-day tax “holiday” on hurricane-related gear, such as tarpaulins, batteries, weather-band radios and portable generators. The package also includes a 9 percent reduction on civil penalties for non-criminal traffic infractions – such as speeding within 30 mph over the posted limit – if motorists attend driverimprovement school. Scott had sought an 18 percent reduction, while asking for a 10-day back-to-school “holiday” and three week-long disaster preparedness tax “holidays.”

this year was the annual effort to eliminate a law, known as the Mark Wandall Traffic Safety Act of 2010, that allows local governments to use red-light cameras. But as happened in past years, the idea once again failed to get the green light in the Senate.

‘Sanctuary’ cities A priority of House Speaker Richard Corcoran, the House passed a measure (HB 9) aimed at requiring local governments to comply with federal immigration laws – an issue that has become known as preventing “sanctuary cities.” But the Senate version of the controversial measure (SB 308) stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee because of opposition from Democrats and two Republicans, Sen. Rene Garcia of Hialeah and Sen. Anitere Flores of Miami.

Sexual harassment One of the hot topics as the session began – with once-powerful Sen. Jack Latvala resigning after a damaging investigation – the House and Senate were unable to agree on how to prevent and punish people who engage in sexual harassment. The House approved a bill (HB 7007) that attached anti-sexual harassment language to other ethics issues. But the Senate didn’t go along with tying the issues together.

Texting while driving With the backing of Corcoran, a proposal (HB 33 and SB 90) to allow lawenforcement officers to pull over people for texting while driving cruised through the House and had advanced through the Senate. But Bradley let the proposal die in the Senate Appropriations Committee. The bill faced concerns about issues such as minority drivers facing increased racial profiling if texting while driving became a “primary” traffic offense.

Bradley was unswayed by arguments that the bill would require law-enforcement officers to record the race and ethnicity of each person pulled over for texting while driving.

Trains, ‘Bo’s Bridge’ Derailed for the second year, Treasure Coast lawmakers failed to pick up needed support from outside their region to impose state rules (SB 572 and HB 525) about passenger trains, particularly All Aboard Florida’s Brightline service, which is expected to eventually run from Miami to Orlando. Also, lawmakers didn’t approve a proposal to acquire the financially troubled Garcon Point Bridge – known in Tallahassee as “Bo’s Bridge – near Pensacola. The bridge, named after former House Speaker Bo Johnson who championed the project, has been in default for years. Toll revenue fell well short of what was projected in the original $95 million bond agreement. Debt on the bridge has ballooned to $135 million.

UCF defeated The annual push to create a slew of new specialty license plates combined during the session with euphoria following the University of Central Florida’s perfect football season. In the end, lawmakers punted on a license plate to commemorate UCF’s season and most other specialty tags, including an attempt by Auburn University alumni to create a license plate for the Alabama school.

Vacation rentals Lawmakers again waded into the controversial issue of preventing local regulation of vacation rental properties. But despite backing from industry and business groups, bills (SB 1400 and HB 773) never were heard on the Senate or House floors.

EDITORIAL

MARCH 16 – MARCH 22, 2018

Lessons, successes, failures of the West Virginia teachers’ strike The nine-day West Virginia school strike was a long time coming and contains a number of useful (if not new) lessons. Lesson No. 1 – Successful strikes are possible wherever an overwhelming majority of the workforce is committed to it, whether or not those workers are in a “right to work” state, and whether or not the strike is endorsed by their union (if they have a union at all). Neither of West Virginia’s two teachers’ unions endorsed the strike, and the leaders of both unions initially and repeatedly attempted to “settle” it for far less than the striking workers demanded. Lesson No. 2 – Illegal strikes can succeed. Although a teacher walkout was explicitly prohibited by state law, Governor Jim Justice dared not seek an injunction ordering teachers and others back to work because they enjoyed far too much public support. The largely successful New York City transit worker strike of December 2005 was illegal too, but workers achieved most of their objectives, despite the fact that the union leadership was forced by the authorities to resign and spend a few days in jail. Lesson No. 3 – ‘All for one and one for all’ solidarity is key to successful strikes. Back in 1990 when teachers struck, school bus drivers were taking children right through their picket lines into the schools. This time the teachers went out along with the janitors, the bus drivers, the food service workers, all demanding a 5 percent across-the-board pay increase for all state workers, along with a fix on ballooning health care premiums, out-of-pocket costs and an end to invasive and humiliating requirements for continued health insurance. When state legislators offered raises to the teachers, alone they were emphatically hooted down. Lesson No. 4 – What happens in a workplace isn’t confined to that workplace. A worker is a whole person – a renter or mortgage debtor, a student loan debtor, a member of this or that church, or other formation. People carry their home concerns in-

BRUCE A. DIXON BLACK AGENDA REPORT

The fight is far from over in West Virginia, and teachers in Kentucky, Ohio and Oklahoma are considering the possibility of statewide job actions. In Oklahoma City, the school board and superintendent are on record backing teachers if they decide to strike for more pay and better funding for schools there. to the workplace, and their workplace concerns home. They don’t stop being parents or residents of communities poisoned and pillaged by greedy extractive industries when they go to work. Part of the popularity of the teachers’ cause was their demand that the urgently-needed health insurance fix come from a tax on the energy companies which have ravaged the state’s land and people the last dozen decades. Lesson No. 5 – In a wildcat strike, union officials may want to prematurely settle. The West Vir-

Conference featured best, brightest in Black women leaders All too often, our “history” month turns into a tribute to the past. And while the past is an important place to lift up it is, indeed, a tributary, a stream that flows into the larger stream of an unbounded future. The future must always be greater than the present, or there has been no progress. I spend much of Women’s History Month thinking of those who have come before me. I stand on their shoulders.

Partial roll call I claim Women’s History Month for Black Women and love to call our roll of luminaries that for me includes Dr. Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, the first Black woman to get a Ph.D. in economics; and Dr. Phyllis Ann Wallace, the first Black woman to get a Ph.D. in economics from Yale, and the first to attain tenure at MIT. There are more. But I also want to speculate about the future role of luminaries and reflect on that fact that many Black women have made it possible for us to bask in a new generation of leadership. The past has laid a foundation, but the future is far more important than

JULIANNE MALVEAUX TRICE EDNEY NEWS WIRE

These young women aren’t playing! They are calling out their elders, but also calling out the rules. They aren’t trying to toe a line; they are trying to make a difference. the past. Thus, Leah Daughtry (who managed the 2016 Democratic National Convention); Minyon Moore (who had a key role in the Clinton campaign); and Yolanda Caraway (an amazing political

ginia strike was organized from the bottom-up, not by union leaders. Beginning the second day of the strike, union leaders and the governor’s office were already announcing its conclusion – the first time based upon a mere handshake with the governor. Teachers at the state capital and impromptu meetings in malls and other locations around the state rejected these premature deals. The final back-to-work agreement was distributed to workers, according to the World Socialist Website, via robocall before the governor had signed any legislation.

Wins and losses What the teachers got was a 5 percent pay increase for all state workers, from cops to secretaries to janitors (assuming these are not outsourced as they are in most places nowadays), and a guarantee that the state will deduct union dues from paychecks, along with the understanding that unions are free to use these funds for political purposes. They didn’t come close to achieving a tax on energy companies to fix the health insurance mess. They settled for representation on a so-called “task force” which is supposed to look into fixes for the state’s public employee health plan and report back in October – theoretically in time for teachers and their allies to punish uncooperative parties at the polls. Some teachers called it “a sellout.” But with two nearly interchangeable parties of capital in power, the outlook is far from rosy. Both houses of West Virginia’s legislature are dominated by Republicans, and most politicians of both parties are deep in the pockets of global corporations that shear off, grind up and sift entire mountaintops for the remaining coal; that poison the state’s water extracting shale and natural gas; and which dump their toxic leavings pretty much wherever they please.

Playing both sides Governor Jim Justice is a billionaire scofflaw – the richest man in operative who has worked for Rev. Jesse Jackson, President Bill Clinton, and candidate Hillary Clinton), put a footprint in the sand for future leadership with their Power Rising Conference in Atlanta last month.

Thousands attended They gathered more than a thousand Black women from around the country to develop a “Black Women’s Agenda,” deliberately mixing up the seasoned with the sassy, established leaders with those who are eager to make their mark. Symone Sanders, the CNN commentator who made her mark supporting Bernie Sanders and who does not back down from a fight around principles and issues, led a panel of young women who spoke of the challenges in their work. Amanda Brown Lierman, a new mom and the political director of the Democratic National Committee, was among those on another panel about life in politics. Others on that panel included LaDavia Drane, who led Black outreach for Hillary Clinton and is now chief of staff for Congresswoman Yvette Clark (D-N.Y.) and Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley, who is now running for Congress. These young women aren’t playing! They are calling out their elders, but also calling out the rules. They aren’t trying to toe a line; they are trying to make a difference.

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: STUDENT PROTESTS

PAT BAGLEY, THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, UT

the state –with holdings in resorts, energy companies and more. He switched to the Democratic Party to win the governorship in 2015 and rejoined the Republican Party in 2017 to get on the Donald Trump train. Both West Virginia teachers’ unions endorsed Justice in his run for governor. A 2016 NPR investigation identified $15 million in delinquent taxes and fines owed by the governor’s mining companies in six states, including $6.8 million in Kentucky and $4.7 million in West Virginia. By contrast, in many states, nonpayment of state taxes or delinquent student loans will get your drivers’ license and/or professional license suspended. The governor says the first year’s pay increase can be paid for with money the state already has, though it may be “prudent” to cut Medicaid. Republican legislative leaders however, declare that any pay increase must come from cutting money the state provides to local governments and Medicaid, which pays for the medical care of many poor children in West Virginia schools. Sick children, the poor and disabled do not possess the weapon of the strike. So there’s that. If some teachers feel both victorious and a bit sold out at the same time, it’s easy to understand. Anecdotal evidence indicates that union membership may be rising in West Virginia. Many who did not see the need for a union before this, or those who imagined they couldn’t afford to pay union dues, are reconsidering. Though union leadership seemed more intent on ending the strike quickly than achieving its goals,

union members in local schools figured prominently in the strike and the efforts leading up to it.

She won’t wait

future of Black Women’s History. We all know that because she is a leader, she will attract negative energy and still, she rises, walking through life with her shoulders back, head held high, an unapologetic lover of her people. The Akan (Ghanaian) word “sankofa” translates as “go back and get it.” It is associated with the proverb “Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi,” which means “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.” The Adinkra symbol for sankofa is either that of a bird with its head turned backward carrying a precious egg in its mouth, or a stylized heart shape. The precious egg is the history of our leadership, the women like Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune and Dr. Dorothy Height and Sadie Alexander and Phyllis Wallace. Even while looking backward, though, the sankofa bird is moving forward, just like Tamika Mallory, LaDavia Drane, Amanda Brown Lierman, and so many others. In the paraphrased words of the poet Mari Evans, “Look on them and be renewed.”

Ayanna Pressley, as an example, is challenging an incumbent Democrat in a congressional primary. Tired of being told to “wait her turn,” she has decided that now is her time. Even though she has always garnered support from Emily’s List, the fact that she is challenging a pro-choice Democratic man in Boston has not won her support from the political establishment. Yet the 42-year-old sister says she will not be constrained by tradition. The Power Rising Conference represented an example of that unfettered and passionate energy. One of the most promising young leaders is Tamika Mallory, one of the four co-leaders of the Women’s March. Tamika is a protégé of the Rev. Al Sharpton. (Her parents were among the founders of the National Action Network, and she served as its executive director for several years.) Because of her amazing work, Mallory earned a Phoenix Award from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation in 2017. With appropriate humility, she accepted her award “for the people.” The most important thing that one gets from Tamika Mallory is that she loves humanity, loves Black people, and especially Black women.

They are the future She, like the others mentioned, is a leader for our future. She is the

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No surprise Last month, during oral arguments of the Janus case before the Supreme Court, labor lawyers declared that union recognition, in a way, is the price for labor peace. When employers declare war upon organized workers, they should not be surprised when workers do the same to them, with or without the sanction of their unions. The fight is far from over in West Virginia, and teachers in Kentucky, Ohio and Oklahoma are considering the possibility of statewide job actions. In Oklahoma City, the school board and superintendent are on record backing teachers if they decide to strike for more pay and better funding for schools there. This is an election year. There is little doubt that Democrats will attempt to harness and divert as much of this energy into the safe channels of their billionaire-funded party as they did in Wisconsin back in 2011. Starving and de-funding public education and breaking teacher unions have been the bipartisan project of both parties for a long time now. There are sharp struggles ahead.

Bruce Dixon is managing editor of BlackAgendaReport.com. Contact him at bruce.dixon@ blackagendareport.com.

Julianne Malveaux is a Washington, D.C.-based economist and writer. Her latest book, “Are We Better Off? Race, Obama and Public Policy,” is available at www.juliannemalveaux.com.

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MARCH 16 – MARCH 22, 2018

A Black radical defense of the Second Amendment Since Donald Trump took office, Black citizens have been increasingly arming themselves, a practice rooted in the long Black radical tradition of armed self-defense and articulated in Robert F. Williams’s book, “Negroes With Guns.” In a recent interview with Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept, historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz argued that the Second Amendment “needs to be abolished.” In her new book, “Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment,” Dunbar-Ortiz convincingly argues that the “gun culture” of the United States is rooted in the nation’s history as an expansionist, capitalist, settler colonial, White supremacist empire.

Defending their plunder Given that White colonizers in the 18th and 19th centuries were living on stolen land and living off stolen labor, these colonizers had to defend their plunder from the indigenous and enslaved populations who were resisting their dispossession and exploitation. Seen in this context, Dunbar-Ortiz concludes, the Second Amendment was evidently designed to substantiate the right and the duty of White male citizens to arm themselves against the colonized.

Second Amendment repeal? Dunbar-Ortiz also argues that the Second Amendment needs to be abolished because it creates a veneer of legitimacy for Amerika’s militaristic culture, which is itself part of the violent, racist legacy of European settler colonialism in North America. Because White men own a disproportionate number of guns and commit a disproportionate amount of mass shootings, often against the racialized victims of Amerika’s continued colonial project, she favors stripping them of the legal protections and constitutional justifications that validate these mass shootings. I agree that we should construct strategies to end mass shootings and White racial domestic terrorism, but by framing the discussion in this way, Dunbar-Ortiz relegates the history of Black armed self-defense to “the dustbin of history.” By ignoring this aspect of the Black Radical Tradition, she concedes to the National Rifle Association what it wants: a monopoly on public discourse about firearms.

For self-defense While the NRA’s emphasis on gun ownership for self-defense goes back only to 1977, the tradition of Black armed self-defense goes back to at least to Williams’s 1962 book. As a Vietnam veteran and president of the Monroe, N.C. chapter of the NAACP, Williams organized a gun club to help the Black citizens of Monroe defend themselves during a surge of racist violence in the late-1950s. Before they had guns, the KKK and the police would routine-

PATRICK D. ANDERSON GUEST COMMENTARY

But rather than disarming oppressed communities on the way to disarming rightwing “gun nuts,” we should work to disarm what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” – our own government. ly harass, bully, and attack Black people, often just for fun. In one instance, the police witnessed Whites shooting at Black people eating lunch in a park and did nothing. After arming themselves, Williams noticed a change in police behavior: instead of letting the White racists commit violence with impunity, the police began de-escalating and even stopping White violence against Blacks.

Why did violence stop? Williams says it is because “racists consider themselves superior beings and are not willing to exchange their superior lives for our inferior ones. “When because of our self-defense there is a danger that the blood of Whites may be spilled,” he adds, “the local authorities in the South suddenly enforce law and order when previously they had been complacent toward lawless, racist violence.” Because they were not willing to risk armed Black resistance – because they were not willing to have White blood on their hands – the police were forced to intervene and stop the Klan and other racist White vigilantes from attacking Black citizens.

Guns ended violence Contrary to Dunbar-Ortiz, Williams found that racist gun violence ends when Black people exercise their Second Amendment rights. “It is remarkable how easily and quickly state and local police control and disperse lawless mobs when the Negro is ready to defend himself with arms,” Williams explains. “The lawful authorities of Monroe and North Carolina acted to enforce order only after, and as a direct result of, our be-

Trump, Kim agree to reality-TV hookup President Trump’s agreement to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has everyone in Washington expressing shock and consternation. To be fair, Washington was still reeling from his declared intent to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum – the adverse consequences for the U.S. economy, national security, and international trade be damned. Also, Trump’s advisers were still trying to spin him out of legal jeopardy for paying off porn star Stormy Daniels to stay silent about their adulterous affair.

Where’s the contempt? But instead of shock and consternation, everyone should have been expressing contempt and outrage. Arguably, Trump is using a summit meeting with Kim as a wag-the-dog distraction from all of the political storm clouds gathering over his presidency. In fact, nothing has defined his presidency quite like Trump agreeing in one meeting to what the person speaking to him says

ANTHONY L. HALL, ESQ. FLORIDA COURIER COLUMNIST

– even when doing so contradicts what he agreed to in a meeting the day before. He displayed this in glaring fashion just six weeks ago, when he had everyone in Washington either bemoaning or ridiculing the way he flip-flopped on his agreement to sign whatever bipartisan deal senators delivered to provide legal status for illegal immigrants, a.k.a. Dreamers, whose parents brought them into the United States as young children.

‘Selective amnesia’ The real story is not Trump’s manic, unpredictable, and irresponsible behavior. It’s the Snapchat-like way everyone in Washington continually reacts with

EDITORIAL

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: ARMING TEACHERS

ing armed. Previously they had connived with the Ku Klux Klan in the racist violence against our people. Self-defense prevented bloodshed and forced the law to establish order.” When right-wing vigilantes arm themselves, they do so to protect White space, White families, and White power from the perceived threat of people of color. But when Black people arm themselves in organized self-defense, they do so in response to a very real threat of White supremacist violence. When right-wing vigilantes arm themselves, it leads to lawless violence. But when Black people arm DAVID FITZSIMMONS, THE ARIZONA STAR, TUCSON, AZ themselves in organized self-defense, Williams insists, it prevents lawless violence. every time his Afro-American vic- doing so. And while one of the matim does, he will have greater re- jor threats to Black life in AmeriMLK was armed spect for Afro-American life.” ka – namely, White supremacist The recent trend in Black gun vigilantism – might be mitigated Williams’s “Negroes With Guns” was a popular text that ownership has not emerged with- or eliminated by the abolition of inspired the self-defense phi- out debate. For example, Court- the Second Amendment, the othlosophies of Malcolm X and the ney Cable, a Black female gun er major threat to Black life – the Black Panther Party for Self-De- owner from Michigan, expressed police, the domestic branch of the fense. But even Dr. Martin Luther concerns: “Even though I’m a gun military – would remain intact. Dunbar-Ortiz is correct that King Jr. believed in some forms of holder and I’m licensed to carry, being stopped by the police still the NRA’s defense of the Second armed self-defense. “Civil-rights activists, even worries me. It’s gotten to the point Amendment is rooted in a histhose committed to nonviolent where I kind of don’t want to car- tory of violent settler colonialresistance, had long appreciat- ry because it makes me more un- ism and racialized slavery, but ed the value of guns for self-pro- easy to drive while having my gun she is wrong to suggest that this is the only history of the Second tection,” explains Adam Winkler, in my vehicle.” These concerns are unques- Amendment. The Black Radiprofessor at UCLA School of Law. “Martin Luther King Jr. applied tionably warranted, given that cal Tradition also has a history of for a permit to carry a concealed this very thing happened to Phi- Second Amendment thought and firearm in 1956, after his house lando Castile in 2016, and the offi- action, which has manifested itwas bombed. His application was cer who killed him did so with im- self in the writings of Ida B. Wells and in the accomplishments of denied, but from then on, armed punity. the Black Panthers. supporters guarded his home. While one might make a conOne adviser, Glenn Smiley, de- Changing perceptions scribed the King home as ‘an arStephen Yorkman, organizer of vincing argument for abolishing senal.’” the Robert F. Williams Gun Club the Second Amendment in a time While some might argue that in Prince George’s County, Mary- when mass shootings and racist Williams’s observations from the land, argues that “We need to cre- violence were on the decline or 1960s are now outdated, Black ate a different, better perception non-existent, the fact is that such citizens disagree. More are pur- of Black people with guns so that violence is making its return in chasing firearms and starting gun in an open-carry state the im- the age of Trump. Black citizens clubs Trump’s election. age of a Black person with a gun know this, and that is why they Echoing Williams’s philoso- doesn’t so alarm a police officer. are arming themselves in greater phy of self-defense, Kevin Jones, And we need to make it so it’s no numbers. If Williams’s account of director of the National African- longer a sin in the Black commu- Black armed self-defense in MonAmerican Gun Association in nity to be a gun owner, but that it’s roe is any indication, it may be an effective strategy. Cleveland, Ohio, said, “People more accepted.” feel like they don’t have a voice Thus, the Black radical tradiin the government and that the tion of armed self-defense is both The real problem government is changed to a point historically important and curRather than abolishing the Secwhere it doesn’t care about pro- rently relevant. From Robert F. ond Amendment, we should retecting them. It cares about some- Williams to Yorkman’s Robert F. main focused on the root of the thing else completely. So when Williams Gun Club, from Ida B. problem: militaristic capitalism you have that, you’re going to Wells to the Black Women’s De- and settler colonial racism. have people losing confidence in fense League, Black communities Dunbar-Ortiz rightly argues police protection and losing con- have debated the advantages and that contemporary vigilante gun fidence in their political structure disadvantaged of self-defense violence is merely one part of a and everything surrounding that.” philosophies. larger culture of colonial militaThey have distinguished be- rism that pervades U.S. history tween vigilante White suprema- and culture, and this makes her Black women involved The emergence of contempo- cist violence and officially-sanc- Second Amendment abolitionrary Black women’s gun clubs in- tioned state repression. They have ism all the more confusing. clude Trigger Happy Firearms In- differentiated individual firearm But rather than disarming opstruction in Georgia and the Black ownership from structured self- pressed communities on the way Women’s Defense League in Tex- defense organizations. to disarming right-wing “gun And when they have deter- nuts,” we should work to disarm as. Black women’s involvement mined it to be in their best in- what Dr. Martin Luther King, in the Black radical tradition of terest, Black communities have Jr. called “the greatest purveyor of armed self-defense, however, is armed themselves – individually violence in the world today” – our and collectively. nothing new. own government. In 1892, the radical Black jourPatrick D. Anderson is a nalist and anti-lynching crusader Doesn’t consider impact Ida B. Wells argued that “A WinUnfortunately, Dunbar-Ortiz’s Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy chester rifle should have a place Second Amendment abolition- at Texas A&M University. His of honor in every Black home, ism fails to consider the effect it research focuses on the anticoand it should be used for that pro- would have on these Black self- lonial tradition of Black radical thought. Contact him at antection which the law refuses to defense initiatives. give. When the White man who Black citizens who feel safer derspa@tamu.ed. His comis always the aggressor knows he carrying a gun or joining a gun mentary appeared on BlackAgruns as great risk of biting the dust club would be prohibited from endaReport.com.

shock and consternation to that behavior, then immediately forgets it. Indeed, only selective amnesia explains why anyone in Washington believing this meeting will amount to anything more than a photo op, which is probably all Trump wants – like an Instagram THOT hoping her latest post will attract millions of “likes.” Even more predictable than Trump flip-flopping on major issues at the drop of a hat is North Korean leaders making promises they never keep. Kim will never give up his nuclear weapons. Nothing indicates how useless any agreement to do so would be quite like North Korea’s falling out with South Korea over their unified Olympic flag. Reports are that North Korea refused to honor its agreement with South Korea to march in the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Paralympics under the same unified flag they marched under for the regular Olympics just weeks ago.

Trump more than a photo op showing him meeting with Kim, ostensibly to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. Trump would pat himself on the back just for being the first U.S. president to meet any North Korean leader and the first world leader to meet Kim. Incidentally, one of the reasons Barack Obama never met with Kim is that Republicans accused him of treasonous naiveté for even expressing a willingness to do so – if Kim met his preconditions. The hypocrisy of Republicans praising things they once denounced has become a hallmark of Trump’s presidency. Exhibit A: praising Trump’s impulsive and doomed framework to get North Korea to give up nuclear weapons after denouncing Obama’s comprehensive and shrewd framework to get Iran to not develop them in the first place. Kim would like nothing more than to show his people that he, not Trump, is the most powerful man in the world. And he clearly believes the optics of him Just flatter him Unfortunately, like Putin of summoning Trump to a summit Russia, Xi of China, and practi- meeting would do the trick – no cally every other world leader, matter where it takes place. Kim knows he only has to flatter Trump to get him to fold like a Trump can be checked cheap suit. But Kim is in for a rude awakAnd nothing would flatter ening if he thinks just stroking

Trump’s ego will induce the United States to lift sanctions. Trump is not the dictator he pretends to be, as Putin now realizes. America’s system of checks and balances (in this case Congress and the press) will constrain Trump’s well-documented impulse to betray his country for a historic photo op, idle flattery, or the proverbial 30 pieces of silver. For example, but for Congress, he would have lifted sanctions on Russia long ago, despite clear and convincing evidence that Russia was (and is) still meddling to undermine democratic institutions in the United States and throughout Europe. Therefore, no matter what Trump says, Kim will have to ape Muammar Gaddafi (i.e., give up his nukes) before North Korea gets any relief. The Catch-22 is that if Kim does, he’s bound to end up like Gaddafi – dead. That’s why this proposed summit meeting will turn out to be much ado about nothing.

Anthony L. Hall is a native of The Bahamas with an international law practice in Washington, D.C. Read his columns and daily weblog at www. theipinionsjournal.com.

TOJ A6

NATION & WORLD

MARCH 16 – MARCH 22, 2018

2016 pitch She also pitched using Mercury’s public relations services in February 2016 to then-Haiti presidential candidate Jovenel Moise, touting the firm’s vast knowledge of Haiti. Mercury and Klevorick say she is not involved on the current account, which was filed with the Justice Department last month. Mercury officials also say the current contract is new and independent of the one Klevorick pitched to the campaign. That contract went to another firm, according to Mercury. Klevorick’s pitch from two years ago also is similar to today’s contract. The February 2016 proposal promised such benefits as securing profiles of Moise in publications and outlets, interviews with newspapers and other media outlets, including TV appearances. It also promised placement of op-eds similar to the one that appeared in The Washington Post after the Oxfam scandal. And at least one member of the current Mercury Haiti team was also on the original February 2016 pitch. The Clinton connection, however, is not the only curiosity in the contract. LUZ SOSA/XINHUA/SIPA USA/TNS

Jovenel Moise, center, is shown on Dec. 2, 2015, as he leaves the Provisional Electoral Council in Port Au Prince, Haiti.

Haiti hires PR firm to soften image Move raises questions about use of funds and company’s link to Clintons BY FRANCO ORDONEX MCCLATCHY WASHINGTON BUREAU/ TNS

WASHINGTON – The government of Haiti, so cash-strapped that its teachers are going unpaid, has retained a high-powered, top-dollar international PR firm with ties to a former member of Hillary Clinton’s staff to boost the country’s image in Washington. The hiring of Mercury Public Affairs has raised uncomfortable questions on the island about the use of limited resources amid a reported budget deficit and customs strike that has paralyzed the country in recent weeks. During the popular Saturday political talk show Ranmase in Port-au-Prince, Haitian political analyst Auguste D’Meza ripped into the government for spending taxpayer dollars to “ameliorate its image in Washington” instead of creating jobs.

‘Doesn’t add up’ “PR for what?” Sabine Guerrier, who handled international relations for opposition presidential candidate Jean-Charles Moise, told McClatchy. “Instead, of spending money

on public relations in the U.S., why not spend the money so teachers can get paid. Why are you not spending the money on roads, schools, infrastructure? “There are so many problems with Haiti right now. This is your priority? It just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t add up.”

No details The government of Haiti wouldn’t answer questions about the contract. Mercury Public Affairs would not provide contract details, or say whether the $10,000 figure for project fees listed in the contract is a monthly retainer. Mercury also would not speak on the record. Granted anonymity, an official at the firm said President Jovenel Moise’s government wants to demonstrate to Washington and potential international investors that Haiti’s story is more than the poverty and disaster that dominate news coverage of the Caribbean nation.

Column in Post Moise, whose government declared this month that all transactions must now be done in Haiti’s national currency, the gourde, and not U.S. dollars, as has been customary, is also looking to boost tourism, the country’s private sector and attract foreign investment. Mercury has been making the rounds across Washington, talk-

ing with reporters and sending out public statements to highlight tourism improvements and investment opportunities in Haiti. It also helped President Moise land an opinion piece in The Washington Post in response to a scandal involving the Britishbased international charity Oxfam after reports of sexual misconduct by its regional director in Haiti.

Irritated by image The image of Haiti as a hopelessly impoverished country stuck in a cycle of political crisis, natural disasters and scandal, has long been an irritant to Haitian leaders, citizens and ex-patriots in the United States. Moise has also taken hits over a corruption inquiry into his political allies, including his chief of staff, who are accused of embezzling $2 billion Haiti received from its participation in Venezuela’s discount oil program. That image is proving politically costly in Washington, where President Donald Trump, according to The New York Times, remarked that 15,000 arriving Haitian immigrants “all have AIDS.”

Why now? Haiti was among the countries being discussed when, according to multiple reports, Trump disparaged groups of immigrants from “shithole” countries. The Haitian government’s will-

ingness to reject the U.S. administration’s overtures to the region to turn up pressure on Venezuela’s leaders also has hurt its reputation in Washington. Some in Haiti want to know why hire a public relations firm now when it didn’t use one last year when the Trump administration was threatening to end Temporary Protected Status. His administration announced in November that nearly 60,000 Haitians living and working in Miami and across the U.S. would lose their protected status.

Clinton connection And many are raising questions about why Haiti would hire a firm with any connection to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton, as secretary of State, and former President Bill Clinton, as U.N. special envoy to Haiti, who headed the country’s post-quake reconstruction, have not always been well received by Haitians and its U.S. diaspora. Caitlin Klevorick is a managing director in Mercury’s New York office. Klevorick was a senior adviser to Clinton who served as a point person for the State Department following the 2010 Haitian earthquake. Working closely with Clinton’s chief of staff Cheryl Mills, who oversaw the Haiti portfolio for Clinton, Klevorick conceived and led a Haiti texting campaign that raised $36 million for relief efforts.

‘Promised a lot’ The client listed is not Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, but Haiti’s ambassador to France. “The Clinton name in Haiti is certainly not put on any pedestal because the overall sense is that the Clintons promised a lot and really didn’t achieve that much,” said Robert Maguire, who gave new ambassadors a crash course on Haiti as an informal adviser to the State Department. “Klevorick was caught up in accusations that the Clintons were running a pay-to-play operation while reviewing incoming offers of assistance being funneled to the State Department by the Clinton Foundation, according to emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Republican National Committee. “Need you to flag when people are friends of WJC,” Klevorick wrote, referring to former President Clinton. “Most I can probably ID but not all.” (The Clintons have repeatedly denied all accusations of improper actions related to their work in Haiti.)

Campaign comments Trump tapped the bad feelings associated with the Clintons for his advantage during a campaign stop in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood in 2016, criticizing Hillary Clinton for being “responsible for doing things a lot of the Haitian people are not happy with.” “Taxpayer dollars intended for Haiti and the earthquake victims went to a lot of the Clinton cronies,” Trump said of Hillary Clinton during the event.

Confederate statue park space rededicated to honor Tubman BY KEVIN RECTOR BALTIMORE SUN/TNS

BALTIMORE – More than 200 residents and elected leaders gathered in a tree-lined corner of a Baltimore park on March 10 to rededicate the space, which had long venerated two Confederate generals, to the famed abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman. “We stand on the shoulders of this great woman,” said Ernestine Jones-Williams, 71, a Baltimore County resident and a Tubman family descendant who spoke on behalf of the family. “We are overwhelmed. Overwhelmed. Thank you, and God bless you.” The ceremony in Wyman Park Dell, on the 105th anniversary of Tubman’s death, took place feet from the now-empty pedestal of a large, bronze double-equestrian statue of Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and officially renamed the space Harriet Tubman Grove.

Offensive reminders The statue had stood in the park since 1948, but was removed in August amid a national debate and protests over Confederate symbolism and monuments, and how they are viewed by those who see them as of-

fensive reminders of the country’s racial history and those who proudly consider them a part of their Southern heritage. The public reckoning over the placement and meaning of such statues in public spaces, and the often negative roles the people honored by these monuments played in history, began in large part in 2015, after White supremacist Dylann Roof shot nine African-Americans to death in a church in Charleston, S.C.

Removed overnight It grew in August after a violent White supremacist rally to protest the planned removal of a statue of Lee in Charlottesville, Va., led to the death of a counter protester. Mayor Catherine Pugh’s administration removed four Baltimore monuments with ties to the Confederacy — the Lee-Jackson monument, a monument to Chief Justice Roger B. Taney at Mount Vernon Place, the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Mount Royal Avenue and the Confederate Women’s Monument on West University Parkway — days after the Charlottesville rally in an unannounced, overnight operation, citing “safety and security” concerns.

ALGERINA PERNA/BALTIMORE SUN/TNS

Ernestine Jones Williams, a sixth generation niece to Harriet Tubman, stands next to Tubman’s portrait on March 10. A portion of Wyman Park Dell in Baltimore, Md. was renamed “Harriet Tubman Grove,” honoring Maryland native Harriet Tubman, an American hero and celebrated “conductor” on the Underground Railroad.

IFE/FAITH Words of wisdom from female pioneers See page B4

MARCH 16 – MARCH 22, 2018

SHARING BLACK LIFE, STATEWIDE

Black actresses addressing Hollywood pay See page B5

SOUTH FLORIDA / TREASURE COAST AREA

WWW.FLCOURIER.COM

SECTION

Sweet success

for young entrepreneurs Orlando teens creating quite a buzz with honey business BY RYAN GILLESPIE ORLANDO SENTINEL/TNS

RLANDO – At the first Parramore Farmer’s Market, Christopher Thornton, 17, couldn’t believe how many customers were buying jars of honey sold under a business he helped create. By day’s end, Black Bee Honey, run by teenagers at the city’s Parramore Kidz Zone, had sold out of all four varieties of its sweet stuff and banked more than $2,000. “(At first) I didn’t think honey would sell,” said Thornton, a junior at Oak Ridge High School. But the more he thought about it, he realized it would sell because “there’s no Publix, there’s no Wal-Mart, there’s no fresh food” in the neighborhood.

Hot product In the first seven weeks of the Parramore market outside Orlando City Stadium, $13 jars of Black Bee Honey have proven to be the best-selling product. After their first windfall, the team of about 20 has averaged about $1,000 in sales each week and routinely sell out. The money is used to cover expenses, pay the teens minimum wage and support the Parramore Kidz Zone, a program run by the city to help youths in the low-income neighborhood.

Daquan Evans grabs a jar of honey as high schoolers from the Parramore Kidz Zone work production day at the Black Bee Honey business, at the Callahan Neighborhood Center on Feb. 28. 1

‘Natural and healthy’ Growing up in Parramore, Orlando’s highest poverty neighborhood, the children knew the need for healthy natural foods. Now as teens, they’re working to provide a nutritious replacement for sugars and artificial sweeteners in the community that has been labeled a “food desert.” “Right now in our community, all that sells is fast food,” said Jordan Jones, a junior at Jones High School. “We wanted to sell food that’s natural and healthy.” And they’re quick to rattle off the health benefits of each variety: Palmetto blend helps prevent prostate cancer, gallberry kills off bacteria, orange blossom reduces risk of chronic illness and wildflower wards off allergies.

Daquan Evans, right, fills a shipping carton as Torris Blain, left, Erika Bearden, Jordan Jones and others work at their Black Bee Honey business. 2

Business-minded When Reginald Burroughs, the program’s director of youth employment, came up with the idea for the college-bound teens to start the business, many of the youths were excited to test their skills. They now hold three business meetings a week and also work with budgeting, sales and marketing. Khristian Burke, 16, said the group settled on the Black Bee name because it “directly reflects how we feel as African-American men and women in this social and political environment.”

Christopher Thornton, with the Parramore Kidz Zone, transfers some honey. 3

Developing skills On a recent Wednesday, more than a dozen teens See SUCCESS, Page B2

EVENTS

MARCH 16 – MARCH 22, 2018

STOJ

FLORIDA COMMUNITY CALENDAR Jacksonville: The Legends of Soul concert is March 24 at the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts including Rose Royce, Lenny Williams, Glenn Jones, Shirley Murdock and Deniece Williams. Miami: Urgent Inc. will present the “Bronze Bra Award” to eight recipients at this year’s “This Woman’s Work Event” on March 23 at 2 p.m., Cambridge Innovation Center. Free. www.urgentinc.org. Ponte Vedra: Booker T. Jones perform March 25 at the Pont Vedra Concert Hall. Showtime: 8 p.m.

CHAKA KHAN & RICKEY SMILEY

Chaka Khan will be one of the legendary performers at this weekend’s Jazz in the Gardens in Miami Gardens. Others include Anita Baker and Smokey Robinson. Radio personality and comedian Rickey Smiley will be the host. Lineup: jazzinthegardens.com

Miami: The Miami Film Festival continues through March 18 featuring narratives, documentaries and short films of all genres from 50 countries. Details: miamifilmfestival.com Jacksonville: The Legends of Hip Hop Festival is March 24 at the Veterans Memorial Arena. Lineup includes Juvenile, Too Short, Scarface, Trina, Uncle Luke. Miami: The Miami Downtown Jazz Festival is April 26-28. Performers include Arturo Sandoval, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Kurt Elling, Lizz Wright and Regina Carter. miamidowntownjazzfestival.org. Orlando: Catch actor and comedian Marlon Wayans on April 4 at the CFE Arena. Showtime: 8 p.m. Miami: Katt Williams’ tour stops at the James L. Knight Center April 6 and 7. He will be at the Amway Center in Orlando on April 13 and Tampa’s USF Sun Dome on April 14. Jacksonville: A-Train Live The Experience: Mark Gregory is April 20 at the Ritz Theatre & Museum.

DR. NATHANIEL GLOVER

The “Leaving a Legacy’’ retirement gala for Dr. Nathaniel Glover, Edward Waters College’s president, is April 27 at the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverside. Details: Visit www.ewc.edu.

Miami: The Mays High School All Classes Reunion is June 14-17. Classmates can sign up to attend by calling 305-238-2604.

Annual Key West ‘The Devil’s Music’ remembrance delves into Christians’ of slave trade reaction to rock ‘n’ roll victims set for March 25 BY DR. GLENN C. ALTSCHULER SPECIAL TO THE FLORIDA COURIER

The annual Key West observance of the International Day of Remembrance of the victims of slavery and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade takes place at 5:30 p.m. March 25 at the African Cemetery, 1094 Atlantic Blvd. at Higgs Memorial Beach. It’s located just west of the White Street pier and adjacent to the historic West Martello Tower brick fort. Beginning as always with a Native American opening blessing, the outdoor remembrance ceremony will consist of inspiration from traditional and contemporary multicultural prayers and rituals. They will be followed by a historical presentation, interactive “Village Talk,” light refreshments.

Direct connections Key West, by being the southernmost city in the continental U.S., and, therefore, geographically closest to the predominant historic “slave” trading routes, has multiple direct connections to this chapter of human history. The most direct is the Key West African Cemetery where 295 Africans, mostly children and youth, were buried in 1860, part of a total of 1,432 captives who were rescued by the U.S. Navy from three captured American slave ships bound for Cuba which were brought into Key West. The surviving Africans would be detained for 12 weeks, attracting national attention before being “returned” to the American colony of Liberia (rather than their original homelands).

“Gospel and rock ‘n’ roll were cut from the same cloth,” Tav Falco, leader of the psychedelic group Panther Burns, once observed, “even though one is considered to be the devil’s music, and the other sanctified music. It was played by the same people, and appealed to the same audience.” As he railed against rock ‘n’ roll as “the pulse and tempo of hell” in 1959, Pentecostal youth pastor David Wilkerson made much the same point. With the shaking, the prostration, and “even the speaking in vile tongues,” Wilkerson declared, rock concerts resembled perverted Pentecostal services.

In sermons, services In “The Devil’s Music,’’ Randall Stephens, a professor of history and American Studies at Northumbria University, reminds us that for decades Christian leaders denounced rock ‘n’ roll as a demonic cultural force, ignoring the influence of evangelical churches on so many of rock’s iconic performers. And yet, Stephens demonstrates, since the 1970s many pulpit-pounding evangelists

BOOK REVIEW Review of “The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ‘n’ Roll’’ by Randall J. Stephens. Harvard University Press. 333 pages. $29.95 have featured rock ‘n’ roll in crusades, sermons and Sunday services. The hostility of evangelical, fundamentalist, and for that matter, many mainline Christians to rock ‘n’ roll (because of its association with hedonism, disobedience to authority, sexual promiscuity, drugs and racial integration) is wellknown. To be sure, Stephens adds many heretofore unfamiliar examples. That said, his narrative (which, alas, often

is repetitious) does not challenge or change the conventional wisdom on this topic.

Pentecostal influence Moreover, “The Devil’s Music’’ may exaggerate the influence of Pentecostal churches on the origins of rock ‘n’ roll. Nor does Stephens address attitudes toward rock ‘n’ roll of African-American Christians. When Stephens turns to the advent of Christian rock, “The Devil’s Music’’ becomes much more informative and illuminating. The experiment began in the late ’60s, he reminds us, amidst concerns about rampant secularism, declining church attendance, a dominant youth culture, and generational conflict. Christian publications began to use Pop Art to attract readers. Billy Graham let his hair grow out longer. Younger evangelicals (especially Pentecostals) began to suggest that God was not all “that far from the enjoyment of rock.”

‘Fourth Great Awakening’ By the 1970s, Stephens indicates, Christian rock had emerged as a distinct, sustained musical genre. Featuring a “soft Jesus” (in concerts, on Broadway, and in films) in a casual, free form, “mood and emotion-oriented age,” God Rock fed and was fed by what has been called “The Fourth Great Awakening” in America. At first, Stephens reveals, many fundamentalists were appalled. Jerry Falwell, Bob Jones, Tim LaHaye and other prominent ministers agreed with Jimmy Swaggart that

“You cannot proclaim the message of the anointed with the MUSIC OF THE DEVIL!” By the 1990s, however, accompanying “a larger shift of fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism” and the enduring popularity of Christian rock, most of them had come around. Since then, Stephens reports, it has become “entirely normal to set the message of sin and salvation, defeat and triumph to the music of the moment.”

‘A niche genre’ In the 21st century, Stephens points out, rockers (inspired, perhaps, by Bono) have moved in and out of Christian circles. In a country in which 59 percent of Protestant teenagers consider themselves born again or evangelical, it may seem strange, wrote one observer, “that Christian rock even exists as a niche genre; if rock better reflected American demographics, then secular rock would be the niche.” Although for “the uninitiated,” Stephen writes, Christian rock remains “unhip, substandard, bogus, a pale imitation of the original,” the old debates about long hair, idolatry, and the devil’s music “seem a distant memory.” As long as evangelicals seek to relate to the larger society, they will, he concludes, “find new and innovative ways to worship, entertain themselves, and evangelize.”

Dr. Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He wrote this review for the Florida Courier.

Archeological finds In addition, Key West is home to the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum, whose archaeologists and researchers have helped to organize the annual remembrance but have also brought to light a number of important and enlightening stories: The 1700 wreck of the English slave ship Henrietta Marie in the Florida Keys, from which artifacts as iron shackles have been retrieved and displayed. The saga of the 1827 wreck of the Spanish slave ship Guerrero off Key Largo and its survivors. The 1860 wreck of the Peter Mowell in the Bahamas, where descendants of survivors still maintain a community known as “Congo Town.” The observance is free and open to the public and welcomes spiritual leaders of all positive faiths and traditions, drummers and musicians, performance artists, and all who have knowledge to share. For more information, call 305-904-7620, 305-304-1136, or 305-834-2143.

SUCCESS from B1 donned gloves and hair nets as they transferred the thick honey from five-gallon buckets to jars at the J.B. Callahan Neighborhood Center near the soccer stadium. The honey is harvested by Dadant & Sons in High Springs. The city couldn’t give a jarby-jar breakdown of costs, but spokeswoman Jessica Garcia said the goal of the program is to break even. City Commissioner Regina Hill, who represents the neighborhood, said the kids are learning to work as a team

and have developed skills she hopes will lead to successful careers. “They’re actually running a business,” said Hill, who favors the palmetto flavor, which she puts in her tea and her grandson’s oatmeal.

A head start Kidz Zone has been credited with reducing teen pregnancies and child abuse in the neighborhood, and over the past three years, every graduating senior in the program has gone to college. Thornton, who also plays football for Oak Ridge, hopes to attend college to study computer engineering and one day start his own business.

By participating in Black Bee Honey, he’s learning the playbook to get a head start. “I feel like this is helping me build my business skills,” Thornton said. “Once I get better at it, I can start my own business … when I get older I’ll actually know what I’m doing.”

Ready for growth And there are signs that their burgeoning business could grow. With Orlando City’s Major League Soccer season getting underway, city officials are hopeful it will boost attendance at the market and bring new customers to the neighborhood. “My hope is that it might be

the next Girl Scout Cookies,” Hill said.

Sweet dreams The young entrepreneurs want to see their honey on grocery store shelves and perhaps one day in a store of their own. “I know the more work I put in, the more money I make. I don’t have guaranteed pay, so if I’m sitting at home talking about it … I’m promoting my business,” Thornton said. “I know how we started from the bottom … we founded this business. All of us, as a team.” The Parramore Farmer’s Market is open Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the east side of Orlando City Stadium.

STOJ

MARCH 16 – MARCH 22, 2018

HEALTH

Florida leads way in forcing opioid abusers to get help BY CHRISTINE VESTAL STATELINE.ORG/TNS

TAMPA – In an opioid epidemic that is killing more than a hundred Americans every day, many families of overdose victims feel helpless when it comes to convincing their loved ones to seek treatment. Police and other first responders — who often rescue the same people again and again — are similarly frustrated about their lack of authority to detain users long enough for their heads to clear so they can consider treatment. But in Tampa, police, health care professionals and families have a powerful legal tool not available in many other places: the 1993 Marchman Act. Families and health care professionals can use the state law to “marchman,” or involuntarily commit people into substance abuse treatment when they are deemed a danger to themselves or others.

Help in Hillsborough Although the statute applies to all jurisdictions in the state, court records show that it has been employed in Tampa and surrounding Hillsborough County far more than anywhere else. Hillsborough County accounts for less than 7 percent of the state’s population and more than 40 percent of its Marchman commitments. Police use the Marchman Act to pick up people without a court order and take them to a designated stabilization and assessment center. Addiction professionals use the law when a patient fails to show up for treatment. And parents and friends use it when they fear a loved one’s life is at risk.

Success in Tampa Across the country, state lawmakers are grappling with how to give first responders and medical professionals the same kind of legal leeway — without violating drug users’ civil liberties. “It’s been one of the most hotly debated opioid issues of the past year,” said Sherry Green, a consultant and former legal analyst with the National Alliance for Model State Drug Laws. Tampa’s success with the Marchman Act could be a model. More than 400 people in Tampa and surrounding Hillsborough County were involuntarily committed into addiction assessment and treatment last year, according to circuit court records. More than two-thirds completed their court-ordered programs. That’s a success rate that substantially exceeds the 50 percent threshold most researchers use

in determining whether an addiction treatment is effective, said David Gastfriend, senior research scientist at the Public Health Management Corporation in Philadelphia.

Impacting millions Nearly 12 million Americans have an addiction to opioid painkillers and heroin, according to the most recent survey from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Only 1 in 5 are receiving treatment. A shortage of treatment capacity is part of the problem, addiction experts say, but denial and refusal to seek treatment is the primary reason. The vast majority of Americans with a drug addiction do not receive treatment because they say they do not need it. Research also shows that people who are coerced into treatment either through criminal courts or employer or family intervention are just as successful at beating their addictions as those who voluntarily enter treatment. That’s why governors and lawmakers want to find legal methods to push people into treatment in the vulnerable moments after they’ve been rescued from an overdose and are in contact with police and medical professionals who can help.

Emergency medical personnel load an overdose victim into an ambulance in Huntington, West Virginia. Nationwide, an increasing number of people who are rescued from a drug overdose refuse to be transported to a hospital. shortage of treatment slots would make it difficult to find a facility capable of emergency care. “One of the frustrations is that people who voluntarily seek treatment often can’t access care when they need it,” said Dr. Sarah Wakeman, who heads addiction services at Massachusetts General Hospital. “I wouldn’t suggest that involuntary treatment is the way to go.”

Rarely turned away

Oldest in Florida At least 33 states have laws that technically allow loved ones and others to involuntarily commit people who put their lives at risk by using drugs, according to the National Alliance for Model State Drug Laws. But since they can only be implemented with a judge’s approval, typically during business hours, commitment laws have been largely ineffective at preventing people who are rescued from an overdose from walking away, using drugs again and overdosing. Florida has the oldest law authorizing emergency detention for drug and alcohol users without court involvement. Colorado and Minnesota have similar emergency commitment statutes, and a handful of other states have emergency provisions on the books that are seldom used, according to Green. “There’s a great deal of frustration among first responders who revive or resuscitate individuals and then watch them get up and walk away,” said Kentucky state Rep. Kimberly Moser, a Republican.

‘Detention order’ Under a bill Moser proposed last month along with four oth-

PHOTOS BY CHRISTINE VESTAL/THE PEW CHARITABLE TRUSTS/TNS

Gracepoint central receiving center in Tampa is a secure facility where police can take people in crisis because of a mental health condition or drugs and alcohol. er Republican House members, first responders would have the authority to sign a 72-hour noncriminal “detention order,” requiring an overdose victim to be transported to a hospital or treatment facility to be held until an addiction assessment is completed and a treatment plan developed. Moser’s bill would complement, but not amend, an existing civil commitment law in Kentucky. Casey’s Law has been used successfully by hundreds of families for more than a decade to coerce loved ones with dangerous drug addictions into treatment. That law requires a court proceeding, which can take days or weeks.

Similar bill In Massachusetts, a similar emergency commitment bill, which Republican Gov. Charlie Baker first proposed in 2015, would allow medical professionals and first responders to detain patients who have been revived from a drug overdose and trans-

port them to a specialized addiction facility for emergency assessment and treatment. Baker’s proposal would amend the state’s existing court-involved civil commitment law (known as Section 35), and give designated receiving facilities up to 72 hours to engage patients in treatment. Opposed by major medical groups as well as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Massachusetts bill is part of the governor’s comprehensive plan to stem the state’s raging opioid epidemic.

Shortage of slots Last year, Indiana enacted a law calling for limited use of emergency commitment in three counties for people who are revived from a drug overdose. The program, still in the development phase, requires counties to keep records on how many patients are committed, what type of treatment they receive, and how many are completing treatment. Critics in Indiana, Kentucky and Massachusetts argue that a

Florida has long had a disproportionate share of the nation’s rehabilitation centers and residential addiction treatment facilities, but as the opioid epidemic worsens, the state’s treatment capacity has been stretched thin. Still, the state has designated a handful of treatment facilities to accept Marchman Act patients in Hillsborough County. Professionals at those places say they rarely have to turn away a patient because of a lack of capacity. “We may not be able to give them the level of service they need, particularly if they need a bed,” said Mary Lynn Ulrey, CEO of DACCO, a community-based treatment service provider here in Tampa. “But we immediately engage them in an appropriate level of service and move them into a more intensive level of service within a few days.”

The first stop Tampa is one of only four places in Florida with a locked central receiving facility where police can take adults and children with mental illness and addiction and have them evaluated for treatment. Elsewhere in Florida and in much of the country, hospital emergency departments, crisis centers and addiction treatment centers serve as the first stop for police who rescue opioid users from an overdose. Many of those places are unlocked and ill-equipped to perform an emergency addiction assessment on an unwilling drug user.

Standing several hours a day could help you lose weight

heart disease, he says. But individuals cite barriers, such as time, motivation or access to facilities.

ple studies) to evaluate the difference. The researchers analyzed 46 studies with 1,184 participants. Participants, on average, were 33 years old; 60 percent were men; and the average weight was 143.3 pounds. “Overall, our study shows that, when you put all the available scientific evidence together, standing accounts for more calories burned than sitting,” says Farzane Saeidifard, M.D., first author and cardiology fellow at Mayo Clinic.

Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, known as NEAT, a concept developed by James Levine, M.D., Ph.D. and Michael Jensen, M.D. — both Mayo Clinic endocrinologists and obesity researchers — focuses on the daily calories a person burns while doing normal daily activities, not exercising. “Standing is one of components of NEAT, and the results of our study support this theory,” Dr. Lopez-Jimenez says. “The idea is to work into our daily routines some lower-impact activities that can improve our longterm health.” Of note, the researchers found that calories burned between standing and sitting is about twice as high in men as in women. This likely reflects the effect of greater muscle mass in men on the amount of calories burned, because calories burned is proportional to the muscle mass activated while standing, researchers found.

MAYO CLINIC NEWS NETWORK/TNS

ROCHESTER, Minn. – Standing instead of sitting for six hours a day could help people lose weight over the long term, according to a Mayo Clinic study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. In recent years, sedentary behavior, such as sitting, has been blamed for contributing to the obesity epidemic, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, says Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, M.D., senior author and chair of preventive cardiology at Mayo Clinic. Population-based studies report that, in the U.S., adults sit more than seven hours a day. The range across European countries is 3.2 to 6.8 hours of daily sitting time.

More calories burned The study examined whether standing burns more calories than sitting in adults in the first systematic review and meta-analysis (combining data from multi-

By the numbers The researchers found that standing burned 0.15 calories (kcals) per minute more than sitting. By substituting standing for sitting for six hours a day, a 143.3-pound adult would expend an extra 54 calories (kcals) in six hours. Assuming no increase in food intake, that would equate to 5.5 pounds in one year and 22 pounds over four years. “Standing for long periods of

NEAT concept

DREAMSTIME/TNS

The study shows that standing burned 0.15 calories (kcals) per minute more than sitting. time for many adults may seem unmanageable, especially those who have desk jobs, but, for the person who sits for 12 hours a day, cutting sitting time to half would give great benefits,” Dr. LopezJimenez says.

More research The authors acknowledge that

more research is needed to show if replacing standing with sitting is effective and whether there are long-term health implications of standing for long periods. In recent years, moderate to vigorous physical activities in daily life have been encouraged in efforts to maintain and lose weight, and reduce the risk of

WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH

MARCH 16 – MARCH 22, 2018

STOJ

By Alex Kline/McClatchy-Tribune

As March is now upon us, we celebrate Women’s History Month and commemorate the amazing ladies who took women from having no legal existence to being political leaders. The field is as vast as it is diverse, with martyrs, astronauts, poets and first ladies filling the outspoken — and at times shocking — role as revolutionaries. The memorable women said some incredible things and paved a solid road to equality, all while proving they were so much more than their necessary and important roles as wives, mothers and caregivers. The changes wrought by these women are best expressed through their own words. Read on for a brief history lesson on the important women of our past and for some inspiration to continue their work.

“The air is the only place free from prejudices.” — Bessie Coleman (top), Aviator ●●●

“If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.” — Abigail Adams, first lady ●●●

“As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold the person down, so it means you cannot soar as you thought otherwise.” — Marian Anderson, singer ●●●

“Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.” — Ella Fitzgerald, jazz singer ●●●

“We rely upon the poets, the philosophers and the playwrights to articulate what most of us can only feel, in joy or sorrow. They illuminate the thoughts for which we only grope; they give us the strength and balm we cannot find in ourselves.” — Helen Hayes, actress ●●●

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” — Julia Ward Howe, social reformer and author ●●●

“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.” — Zora Neale Hurston, anthropologist and author ●●●

“If they want to hang me, let them. And on the scaffold I will shout ‘Freedom for the working class!’” — Mary Harris Jones, labor organizer ●●●

“I have no power of submitting tamely to injustice inflicted either on me or on the slave. I will oppose it with all the moral powers with which I am endowed. I am no advocate of passivity.” — Lucretia Mott, feminist and abolitionist ●●●

“Loosen your girdle and let ’er fly!” — “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias (above), athlete “Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.” — Susan B. Anthony, suffragist ●●●

“Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.” — Rachel Carson, marine biologist and author ●●●

“I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.” — Amelia Earhart, aviator ●●●

“Energy rightly applied can accomplish anything.” — Nellie Bly, investigative journalist

“I can truthfully say I know of no other recreation that will do so much toward keeping a woman in good health and perfect figure than a few hours spent occasionally at trap shooting.” — Annie Oakley, markswoman ●●●

“I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.” — Harriet Tubman, slave, liberator of slaves and spy ●●●

“Sometimes questions are more important than answers.” — Nancy Willard, poet and writer ●●●

“The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.” — Roseanne Barr, actress

SOURCES: BIOGRAPHY.COM, WWW.GREAT-INSPIRATIONAL-QUOTES.COM; HTTP://WWW.LOC.GOV/TEACHERS/ CLASSROOMMATERIALS/PRESENTATIONSANDACTIVITIES/PRESENTATIONS/WOMENS-WORDS/ALTERNATIVE.HTML

“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” — Dolly Parton, singer ●●●

“When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.” — Peace Pilgrim, teacher, spiritual leader and peace prophet ●●●

“Never let a problem to be solved become more important than the person to be loved.” — Barbara Johnson, best-selling writer ●●●

“I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.” — Eleanor Roosevelt, first lady ●●●

“I am not afraid… I was born to do this.” — Joan of Arc, Catholic saint and martyr

“Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got.” — Janis Joplin (above), singer

●●●

“Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” — Harriet Beecher Stowe, American abolitionist and author ●●●

“The soul should always stand ajar. Ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.” — Emily Dickinson, American poet ●●●

“Though I am grateful for the blessings of wealth, it hasn’t changed who I am. My feet are still on the ground. I’m just wearing better shoes.” — Oprah Winfrey, talk show host and producer ●●●

“We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.” — Anne Frank, Holocaust victim ●●●

“I am prepared to sacrifice every socalled privilege I possess in order to have a few rights.” — Inez Milholland, suffragist ●●●

“I was born to swing, that’s all.” — Lil Hardin Armstrong, bandleader ●●●

“We are coming down from our pedestal and up from the laundry room.” — Bella Abzug, lawyer and congresswoman ●●●

“I do not know the word ‘quit.’ Either I never did, or I have abolished it.” — Susan Butcher, Iditarod winner ●●●

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” — Eleanor Roosevelt, first lady ●●●

“Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination.” — Mae Jemison, astronaut ●●●

“In politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.” — Margaret Thatcher, British politician ●●●

“Life is too large to hang out a sign: ‘For Men Only.’ ” — Barbara Jordan (left), politician ILLUSTRATIONS BY MICHAEL HOGUE/ DALLAS MORNING NEWS/TNS

STOJ

Lisa Bonet: Something ‘sinister’ about Cosby during filming of show BY NICOLE BITETTE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS/TNS

MARCH 16 – MARCH 22, 2018

FINEST & ENTERTAINMENT

Meet some of

FLORIDA’S

finest

Think you’re one of Florida’s Finest? E-mail your high-resolution (200 dpi) digital photo in casual wear or bathing suit taken in front of a plain background with few distractions, to news@flcourier.com with a short biography of yourself and your contact information. (No nude/glamour/ fashion photography, please!) In order to be considered, you must be at least 18 years of age. Acceptance of the photographs submitted is in the sole and absolute discretion of Florida Courier editors. We reserve the right to retain your photograph even if it is not published. If you are selected, you will be contacted by e-mail and further instructions will be given.

Thousands of Caribbean culture lovers converge on South Florida every year before and during the Columbus Day weekend to attend the annual Miami Broward Carnival, a series of concerts, pageants, parades, and competitions. On Carnival Day, “mas” (masquerade) bands of thousands of revelers dance and march behind 18-wheel tractor-trailer trucks with booming sound systems from morning until nightfall while competing for honors. Here are some of the “Finest” we’ve seen over the years. Click on www.flcourier to see hundreds of pictures from previous Carnivals. Go to www. miamibrowardcarnival. com for more information on Carnival events in South Florida.

Lisa Bonet hates to tell you she “told you so” about Bill Cosby. The actress, who portrayed Denise Huxtable on “The Cosby Show,” reflected on what it was like being around Bill Cosby on the series in an interview with Net-A-Porter now that the comedian and actor has been accused by more than 50 women of unwanted touching and drug-induced rape. Bonet, now 50, said the revelations about Cosby’s behavior haven’t altered her memory about the show — because it was “exactly” as she remembered it. “There was no knowledge on my part about his specific actions, but … There was just energy. And that type of sinister, shadow energy cannot be concealed,” she told the magazine.

Sensed ‘darkness’ When pressed further about whether or not she sensed “darkness,” Bonet confirmed that feeling. “Always,” she said, further clarifying: “If I had anything more to reveal, then it would have happened a long time ago. That’s my nature. The truth will set you free.” Bonet played Denise on the series from 1984 to 1991 and also starred in “A Different World.” She was reportedly booted from the series in 1991 after Cosby was upset by an explicit sex scene in the 1987 film “Angel Heart” alongside Mickey Rourke. Later, Bonet abruptly ended her run on “A Different World” upon learning she was pregnant. “I don’t need to say, ‘I told you so,’” she told Porter Edit about Cosby. “I just leave all that to karma and justice and what will be.” She is one of the few stars from the show that have not publicly defended Cosby. He has denied all allegations and is facing a retrial later this year on charges that he drugged and assaulted a woman at his Philadelphia home in 2004.

CHARLES W. CHERRY II / FLORIDA COURIER

Black actresses open up about Hollywood pay gap BY NINA METZ CHICAGO TRIBUNE/TNS

It’s taboo to talk about how much money you make – or how little. That’s one reason inequities persist. The pay gap hits women of color the hardest, with Black actresses in Hollywood talking about it openly in recent weeks. Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer and Mo’Nique (Oscar winners each) have all spoken on record about their experience. In a more roundabout fashion, so has Tracee Ellis Ross, who picked up a Golden Globe this year for her performance on “Black-ish.”

Power of ‘Panther’ In her Oscar acceptance speech earlier this month, Frances McDormand championed the idea of an inclusion rider, wherein stars can use their leverage to ensure producers hire a larger number of actors otherwise marginalized in Hollywood. That’s great. (Even if Netflix has been the first to openly reject the idea: CEO Reed Hastings said week he would rather just talk about inclusion than contractually agree to it.) But just as important is what people are getting paid. Especially when research shows that among box office hits, movies about women outearn movies about men. And with “Black Panther” hitting the $1 billion mark, it’s obvious movies starring Black actors have the potential to make big money.

‘Deserve it too’

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Octavia Spencer, left, and Viola Davis, who starred together in “The Help,’’ attend the Academy Awards in Hollywood on Feb. 26, 2012.

Here’s Viola Davis in a recent interview with Porter magazine explaining why pay disparities are an issue: “If Caucasian women are getting 50 percent of what men are getting paid, we’re not even getting a quarter of what White women are getting paid.”

Actresses like Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman deserve everything they get, she said. “But guess what – I deserve it too. So does Octavia Spencer, Taraji P. Henson, Halle Berry. We’ve put the work in too.” Davis is at the top echelon of actors who are both famous and respected – and even she’s experiencing this.

Spencer’s confession So is Spencer, who revealed at a Sundance panel in January that when she and Jessica Chastain teamed up to star in a comedy together, she had to spell out the realities: “I told her my story and we talked numbers and she was quiet, and she had no idea that that’s what it was like for women of color.” When Chastain negotiated her contract, she stipulated that Spencer get the same deal. And it worked; Spencer got five times her previous rate. “She had been underpaid for so long,” Chastain said on Twitter. “When I discovered that, I realized that I could tie her deal to mine to bring up her quote. Men should start doing this with their female co-stars.”

Explaining it Why are Black actresses – in-demand actresses who win awards – not getting the same deals as their peers? “One thing we’ve learned from social-psychological research in the last 10 or 15 years is that when we make decisions about people – when we evaluate others – we have biases that carry a lot of history that we don’t consciously process or recognize,” according to Ohio State University’s Timothy A. Judge, who studies how and why people are successful in their careers. “So what you often see is this neurotic tendency to profess one

set of values – fairness – but when you look at their decisions, there’s this discrepancy.”

Hollywood study Four years ago, Judge published a study called “Age, Gender and Compensation: A Study of Hollywood Movie Stars” and the disparities abound. He looked at 265 Hollywood film actors who had at least one leading role in a movie between 1968 and 2008, and accounted for mitigating factors such as experience, where they appeared in the credits and their earnings history. Here’s what he found: For women, earnings increased until the age of 34 and then they dropped off, whereas men saw their earnings increase until age 51 and then remain stable thereafter.

Not enough Blacks “One thing we did not do in that study was look at pay for AfricanAmerican actors or other people of color, and that was because there were not nearly enough actors” in starring roles. “In other words, the sample size wasn’t big enough to be statistically significant. Let that sink in. There weren’t enough actors of color in starring roles to qualify for the study. And in fact, I couldn’t find anyone who has done a comprehensive research about black actresses and what they’re paid. “I would be pretty surprised,” Judge said, “if we did an analysis looking at race or ethnicity and didn’t find a similar result to our age and gender study. We have a lot of evidence that Hollywood isn’t any different than other industries. “It’s a hard truth to confront. The problem is when we” – in this case, studios and producers – “don’t believe that these biases are affecting decisions.”

BUSINESS AND FINANCE

MARCH 16 – MARCH 22, 2018

TOJ

Did toy industry strike out on ‘Panther’ merch? BY NEDRA RHONE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION/ TNS

“Black Panther’’ has been breaking records since its initial release on Feb. 15, but fans looking for licensed merchandise have been disappointed with the offerings in stores. Hasbro said they made more toys for “Black Panther” than for any other Marvel character in its first full-length movie, including “Iron Man.” Company executives told Bloomberg that they listened to kids who thought the character was “cool.” But toy industry analysts tell a different story, suggesting that toy makers may have had lower expectations of “Black Panther” than they should have.

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Consumers and toy industry insiders say Marvel Black Panther merchandise is in short supply at stores.

You can claim a credit of up to $2,100 for day care for your dependents so you and your spouse can work. Qualifying dependents include children under 13 and parents who are no longer able to care for themselves.

Earned Income Tax Credit The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a federal tax credit based on your income and the number of qualifying children living with you. Nearly 1 in 5 people who qualify fail to claim the credit, worth up to $6,318. Just because you didn’t qualify last year doesn’t mean you won’t this year; one-third of the EITC-eligible population changes each year based on marital, parental and financial status.

Saver’s Credit or Retirement Savings Contributions Credit Make sure you “pay yourself first.”

The movie has been breaking records since its initial release on Feb. 15, but fans looking for licensed merchandise have been disappointed with the offerings in stores. While some shoppers said Black Panther merchandise is in abundance at their local big box stores, others found empty store shelves or were unable to find product at all. Several industry insiders have suggested that Disney is using extra caution in deciding how to translate the movie into merchandise.

Some missteps

In January, the month before the movie was released, Black Panther merchandise was in 87 percent of stores in retail tracking service NPD’s point-of-sale panel, according to NPD’s Julie Lennett. Black Panther merchandise was already moving off store shelves pre-release faster than items from any other movies in the last year except “Star Wars” and “Transformers,” Lennett said. But a closer look at the stores carrying Black Panther merchandise revealed that only 11 toys on average were in stock — half the number of toys carried on average for Justice League, one-third of Power Rangers, and one-quarter of Spider-Man.

“They have reached out to influencers of color and wanted to get feedback on, ‘Hey, where are we going with this? Do you think this idea for having this costume or this makeup line would be appropriate to market to mass audiences?’” said Jamie Broadnax, founder of the website Black Girl Nerds and co-founder of the Universal Fan con, in an interview with Marketplace. Disney has made some missteps lately, most notably when it pulled a costume based on a character in the film “Moana” after consumer complaints of cultural appropriation. Lennett of NPD is hopeful that the toy industry will turn things around when it comes to “Black Panther’’ merchandise.

Amazon looks at dropping packages from as high as 25 feet BY ETHAN BARON MERCURY NEWS/TNS

It’s not that drones get tired, it’s just that if they’re delivering your box of cat food and low-rise socks, dropping down to put it on your patio and flying back up for the next delivery takes power that they need to conserve. Better to just hover over your home and drop the box, a new patent from Amazon proposes. And no need to cover your head: the Seattle ecommerce giant has that — and the delivery box full of your precious items — covered, at least in theory.

FAMILY FEATURES

Child and Dependent Care Credit

Empty shelves

Low in stock

How not to overpay your taxes this year With tax season in full swing, take time to consider how to get the most out of your tax return, which includes finding all the credits and deductions available to you. While many taxpayers claim common deductions, such as home mortgage interest and self-employment expenses, there are additional tax deductions that can lessen your final tax bill or increase your refund. These often-overlooked tax breaks could potentially save you hundreds – maybe even thousands – of dollars if you itemize deductions. To start, get to know the difference between tax credits and tax deductions. Tax credits reduce the amount you owe in taxes. In some circumstances, tax credits allow a refundable credit, meaning you may not only reduce the amount you owe to $0, but you can also get money back. Deductions, on the other hand, simply reduce your taxable income. Both can have a potentially significant impact on your taxes and are often worth the extra effort to include on your return. Some commonly overlooked credits include:

“Not planning for a broader assortment of Black Panther toys might have been a miss in this case,” Lennett said.

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Overlooked tax breaks could potentially save you a lot of money. Even if it is only $20 each pay cycle, make sure you are putting some money into a retirement fund. If your company offers a retirement savings plan, like a 401(k), it is usually in your best interest to participate. If your income is lower than $60,000, you can receive a credit of up to $1,000 for a contribution of up to $2,000 into an IRA or an employer-provided retirement account, such as a 401(k). The credit is in addition to any deduction or exclusion from income for the contribution. Some tax deductions that allow you to reduce your taxable income include:

Moving expenses If you moved for a job that is at least 50 miles away from your home and held this job for at least 39 weeks, you can claim your moving expenses even if you don’t itemize deductions.

Tax preparation fees Plan for tax time. Tax laws change and so do life circumstances. Using a professional to help you file your return may be a wise investment. Plus, the cost of preparing your taxes can be claimed if you itemize your deductions. In fact, one missed credit or deduction could more than cover the cost of having your taxes prepared by a tax professional.

New moms Breast pumps and lactation supplies are considered medical equipment, which means they qualify for a possible deduction.

Career corner Job hunting often means investing both time and money. However, you may be able to deduct some of the jobsearch expenses you incur. Costs such as preparing resumes, creating and

maintaining websites, business cards, agency fees and travel expenses may be eligible.

Wedding bells If you were married in a church or at a historical site during the past year, you may be able to deduct fees paid to the venue as a charitable donation.

Medical fitness While general toning and fitness workouts to improve general health are considered personal expenses, you may be able to deduct your gym membership as a medical expense. If a doctor diagnoses you with a specific medical condition, such as obesity or hypertension, or a specific physical or mental illness, and prescribes workouts or participation in a weightloss program to treat your illness, the membership dues may be tax-deductible.

Road warriors If you travel for business and aren’t reimbursed by your employer, those costs can qualify as a deduction. Every possible tax credit and deduction can help when money is tight. You might qualify for at least one overlooked credit or deduction – and maybe more than one. Consult a tax professional to discuss how you can maximize your refund and learn more at JacksonHewitt.com.

Did you know? The IRS, as well as many states, allows taxpayers to catch up on missed credits or deductions, offering a threeyear window for filing an amended tax return. You can secure unclaimed credits and deductions by filing amended tax returns to avoid losing any unclaimed funds from as far back as 2014.

With airbags Amazon on Tuesday received a patent for cushioning packages with inflatable airbags, so they can be dropped from as high as 25 feet. The drone could inflate the “airlift package protection airbag” with a gas canister or even just from the downdraft from the aircraft’s propellers, while in transit or “near a drop location, such as a backyard or patio of a residential dwelling,” the patent said. This patent, like at least two others Amazon has received, also envisions the possibility of catastrophic mid-air failure. The airbag for the package could be inflated automatically if a drone — also known as an unmannedaerial vehicle or UAV, “becomes unresponsive to controls and/or loses some or all power” if the drone “contacts an object, a building, and/or the ground.”

Cameras, sensors Should you be, say, barbecuing on your patio when your delivery drone appears, there’s no reason to fear, but if you want your package, you’ll need to get out of the way — and take your bottles of beer with you — so it can fall from the sky. The drone could use cameras and other sensors to make sure the “drop zone” is empty of people, animals and “fragile objects,” and decline to make the delivery till all is clear, according to the patent. A drone could even be constructed in such a way that it could let loose a package that would travel “partially horizontally,” to land on “an elevated balcony of a tall building.”

Conserving energy The airbag Amazon envisions would deflate slightly upon impact with the ground to cushion the landing and protect a package’s contents. Energy consumption is an important consideration for drones, which “may conserve energy if they minimize changes in altitude,” the patent says in explaining why dropping packages from the sky makes sense. Height range for the release of packages from a drone would range from five to 25 feet, “depending on the size and weight of the package.” Amazon, keenly focused on automation and cheap, efficient product delivery, has obtained dozens of drone-related patents in recent years, but it remains to be seen whether this latest one, or any of the others, will lead to technology used in drone deliveries.