Florida Courier - March 25, 2016

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PRESORTED STANDARD MAIL U.S. POSTAGE PAID DAYTONA BEACH, FL PERMIT #189

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CELEBRATING OUR 10TH YEAR STATEWIDE!

Rain didn’t dampen party at Jazz in the Gardens See Page B1 www.flcourier.com

MARCH 25 – MARCH 31, 2016

VOLUME 24 NO. 13

DIPLOMACY AND DEATH

President Obama is criticized for ‘playing tourist’ during his historic trip to Cuba despite the latest ISIS terror attack, this time at an airport and subway stop in Europe. COMPILED FROM WIRE REPORTS

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – Explosions that tore through the departures area at Brussels’ international airport and a subway station in the heart of the Belgian capital Tuesday one hour apart left 31 people dead and 300 injured. The Belgian Health Ministry said that 150 people were still hospitalized and 61 were in intensive care.

Most of the injured, representing 40 nationalities and including three European Commission staff members, suffered burns that in some cases were accompanied by “injuries like lesions related to a powerful blast,� the ministry said. Islamic State extremists claimed responsibility for the attacks, which officials believe were carried out by suicide bombers less than a week after the arrest in

Governor signs ‘rape kit’ testing bill

Collected but untested Demand for the bill followed revelations that thousands of rape kits had been collected but not tested statewide. In early January, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement reported that the state had more than 13,000 untested rape kits. Until Wednesday, Florida had not required lawenforcement agencies to submit rape kits for testing. The proposal requires local law enforcement agencies to submit the rape kits within 30 days of the beginning of their investigations, or after being notified by victims or victims’ representatives that they wish the evidence to be tested. Also, the new state budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1 includes $10.7 million to help eliminate the backlog of untested rape kits. Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials told lawmakers that fiscal constraints had led to the backlog.

SNAPSHOTS FLORIDA | A3

Siplin seeking another Senate seat

Prosecutors and media reports named two brothers and a Belgian with links to Paris as the search continued for a fourth attacker. Ibrahim El Bakraoui, 29, was one of two suicide bombers who died at OLIVIER DOULIERY/ABACA PRESS/TNS Brussels Airport. Khalid El President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro shook hands before deliver-

‘Disrespected’ disease

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HEALTH | B3

How stress, trauma endangers children

ALSO INSIDE

When he had a painful sickle cell crisis two years later, his only choice was to go to a hospital emergency department, where, he says, he waited three hours for pain medication. Burgess’ experience is not unusual among many adults with sickle cell anemia, which affects up to 100,000 people in the United States, most of them AfricanAmericans. For many years, most people with sickle cell died in childhood or adolescence, and the condition remained in the province of pediatrics. During the past two decades, advances in routine care have allowed many people to live into middle age and beyond.

Medical costs matter

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BY ERIN N. MARCUS KAISER HEALTH NEWS / TNS

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Sickle cell patients survive despite challenges

MIAMI-DADE COUNTY – When Janoi Burgess was a child, he thought doctor appointments were fun. He was born with sickle cell anemia, an inherited blood disorder. But when he turned 21, the South Florida resident could no longer go to his pediatric specialist. Instead, he “bounced around� to various adult primary care doctors, none of whom seemed well-versed in the details of his condition.

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Glover is honorary chair of world conference

ing remarks to the people of Cuba in Havana on Tuesday.

FLORIDA COURIER / 10TH STATEWIDE ANNIVERSARY

4HE CURATOR OF &LORIDA S HISTORIC #APITOL FOR MER STATE HOUSE CLERK *OHN 0HELPS READ LEGISLA TORS A HISTORY OF THE SLAVE CODES IN &LORIDA AND LISTED STATISTICS SHOWING THE IMPORTANCE AND BRUTALITY OF THE SLAVERY IN THE STATE 0HELPS SAID THAT ACCORDING TO AN 3ENATE

NATION | A6

See OBAMA, Page A2

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TALLAHASSEE – Gov. Rick Scott on Wednesday signed nine bills, including a high-profile measure requiring local law-enforcement agencies to submit “rape kits� to be tested and another allowing the creation of a needle-exchange program in MiamiDade County. Scott praised SB 636, which would establish time limits for sexual-assault evidence – known as rape kits – to be submitted to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for testing. He said in a statement the move would “provide thousands of women with a renewed sense of safety and closure as they heal from the horrific crime of rape.�

Killers identified

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BY MARGIE MENZEL THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

Brussels of a key suspect in the Paris terrorist attacks.

Eight years ago, the Florida Courier covered the then-Third Annual Jazz in the Gardens music festival headlined by guitarist George Benson, as well as a shooting incident on the campus of Florida A&M University.

Compared with other genetic diseases, a disproportionate number of patients with sickle cell rely on Medicaid, the federalstate health insurance program for low-income people, but finding specialists who accept Medicaid’s lower reimbursements can be difficult. There also is an inadequate number of physicians with expertise in the condition. Few adult hematologists – blood disease specialists – focus on sickle cell, which is less lucrative than conditions such as leukemia. In addition, sickle cell day hospitals – dedicated infusion centers where patients can get intravenous treatment for acute pain episodes – have been shown to reduce hospitalizations and reduce the length of crises. Yet fewer than a dozen such centers exist nationally.

Daily pain Pain is a hallmark of sickle cell See DISEASE, Page A2

COMMENTARY: DR. SINCLAIR GREY: BLACK CHURCHES MUST STOP BEING PIMPED BY POLITICIANS | A4 COMMENTARY: URSULA WOLFE-ROCCA: SCHOOLS MUST TEACH ABOUT WAR ON BLACK MOVEMENTS | A5

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FOCUS

MARCH 25 – MARCH 31, 2016

Hanging out with the wrong crowd Some people that read The Gantt Report think I am a Florida guy. When I used to coordinate a lot of statewide political campaigns, haters – particularly those in larger cities in the Sunshine State – would tell my clients, “Lucius ain’t nothing. He’s just a country boy from little old Tallahassee. He can’t do nothing in Miami or Tampa.” My clients would respond and say, “We didn’t hire Lucius to work in Miami. We hired him to work statewide!”

Atlanta-born I was born, raised and did my early schooling in Atlanta, Ga. My youngest years were spent in one of Atlanta’s most notorious housing projects, Carver Homes. By the time I reached 10 years old, my parents divorced and I

LUCIUS GANTT THE GANTT REPORT

moved with my mom to a somewhat tough neighborhood called “the Fourth Ward.” It included pockets called “Buttermilk Bottom” and “Bucket of Blood!” Once I left town, I came back frequently to see Mom, family members and old friends. I stopped the frequent visits after my mother’s passing. Nowadays when I go home, some people turn up their noses at me and say to others, “That ain’t nobody. That’s Thelma’s baby boy. That’s Lucius’ son. That’s Sheila Gantt’s brother, a N-word from the projects!”

But there are others that say, “Look at how he walks. See how he dresses. Listen to how he talks. He is not the same.”

Yes and no I am the same person, but I am not the same! I graduated from college, attended multiple graduate schools and earned credits for degrees in journalism, philosophy and even a master’s degree in science. But my friends remained my friends. I love them still, but I took my own path to where I am today. I didn’t go with the ghetto flow. I didn’t follow the project crowd. I only went with the flows that went in the right direction. I only followed the crowd that went forward, that went toward progress. The crowd that went the best way!

Not alike Birds of a feather flock together, but all birds are not alike. I didn’t want to be a yard bird, a chicken that spent his whole life in the yard pecking up bird seeds off the ground. I didn’t want to be

a buzzard that couldn’t kill anything and starved when nothing would die. I wanted to soar like an eagle. I wanted to get a better view of the world from up high. I wanted to be strong. I wanted to fly, so to speak. Too many African-Americans are happy just to follow the crowd! If weak, regressive, scared and incompetent Negro leaders suggest that Black people follow them, too many of our people just do what they say. They follow the wrong crowd! If your crowd hits and beats their spouses and children, you might think that’s what you should do. If your crew joins the gang, sells dope and shoots up the neighborhood, that’s what you think you should do. If your sorority sisters sleep around with their sorors’ husbands and boyfriends, you might consider doing that, too.

You’ll be judged I say you should do the right thing whether the crowd does it or not! Stay away from the

DISEASE

OBAMA from A1

Bakraoui, 27, died in the attack at the Maelbeek subway station, where an explosion tore through the second car of a train that was headed away from the neighborhood housing EU institutions. The third man, reported by state broadcaster RTBF to be Najim Laachraoui, was already sought as a suspected bomb maker in November’s terrorist attacks in Paris. A fourth suspect is on the run after having dropped off at the airport a bag containing “the most significant” explosive charge that had been prepared for the attacks, Van Leeuw said. But the bomb only went off later, once a bomb squad was on the scene.

Havana, Cuba Thousands of miles away from Belgium, President Obama ended his historic trip to Cuba with a confident challenge to its communist leaders Tuesday, pressing them to keep pace with the changes he set in motion for a new era in the relationship between the neighboring nations. Eager to tip the balance toward popular rule on his three-day visit here, Obama urged President Raul Castro to set aside fears and put the future of his country “en las manos del pueblo Cubano” – in the hands of the Cuban people. Addressing Castro by name and looking briefly into the theater balcony where Castro sat, Obama said he need not fear “the different voices of the Cuban people and their capacity to speak and assemble and vote for their leaders.” He also said this year’s U.S. presidential race was a symbol of how democracy can transform society. “You had two Cuban-Americans in the Republican Par-

Buy Gantt’s latest book, “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing” on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere. Contact Lucius at www.allworldconsultants.net. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

Dr. Niraj Sharma, who directs the Harvard Brigham and Women’s/ Children’s Hospital Boston MedPeds Residency. Instead, he said, all pediatricians should start to discuss the transition, including educating their patients with chronic conditions about their illness, at age 12.

from A1

disease, which is caused by abnormal hemoglobin, the protein that allows red blood cells to carry oxygen to the body’s tissues. Under certain conditions, these affected red blood cells lose their characteristic disk shape and morph into rigid crescents, clogging up small blood vessels and disrupting the flow of blood. Nearly a third of adults with sickle cell disease experience pain almost every day, and opiates are an important part of managing the condition. Often, physicians and nurses are skeptical of adult sickle cell patients’ motives in asking for pain medication, even though narcotic addiction is no more common in people with sickle cell disease than in the general population. “There is no disease bigger than sickle cell in terms of bias and disrespect,” said Dr. Mary Catherine Beach, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins. “Many clinicians dislike taking care of people with sickle cell disease because of issues around pain management. When you add in race, it’s a perfect storm.” Silent strokes, which do not cause any obvious sign of injury, also complicate the transition to adult care for some pa-

crooked crowd, the corrupt crowd, the cowardly crowd or the clown crowd! On Judgment Day, when it’s your time to be judged, you’ll be judged based on what you did and not on what the crowd did! If you have to follow a crowd, follow the good crowd. Follow the righteous crowd, follow the smart crowd, follow the brave crowd and follow the respectful crowd. Follow the crowd that will stand up and speak out! Follow the crowd that will fight for what is right! A crowd can come in handy sometimes but only if that crowd is honest, responsible and loyal. If you have a choice of being in a bad crowd or being by yourself, choose to stand alone! The wrong crowd will lead you down the wrong path!

Various barriers One obstacle to smooth transfers has traditionally been physician reimbursement, said Dr. Patience White, co-director of GotTransition.org, a federally funded center that aims to improve the transition process. Another barrier for adults has been primary care providers’ lack of familiarity with routine management of the condition. Nonspecialists often aren’t comfortable administering hydroxyurea, a medication that has been shown to reduce painful crises and save lives in patients with sickle cell. LIAM CROTTY/KAISER HEALTH NEWS/TNS

Janoi Burgess studies in his room at his Miami-Dade County home. tients. They occur in more than 1 in 5 people with sickle cell by the late teen years. These strokes can lead to problems with understanding and decision-making, preventing effective navigation of a confusing adult health system. One strategy to improve care is

for children with sickle cell to see a family medicine or a med-peds physician, who can provide care for them from birth through their adult years. Med-peds physicians complete both a pediatrics residency and an internal medicine res-

idency, and most take separate exams to become board-certified in both fields. But there is a shortage of primary care physicians generally, and fewer than 400 doctors graduate from med-peds residencies every year, according to

ty, running against the legacy of a Black man who is president, while arguing that they’re the best person to beat the Democratic nominee, who will either be a woman or a democratic socialist,” he said to laughter from the audience. “Who would have believed that back in 1959?” Castro sat through most of the speech stone-faced, listening to it through a translator. But he broke into applause when Obama mentioned ending the half-century economic embargo.

Later, Obama donned khakis and went to a baseball game, then continued his trip to Argentina following the attacks, saying that to cancel his appearances or cut his trip short would represent a concession to terrorists.

involving an Afghan prisoner who’d been released from the detention center during the administration of President George W. Bush. Ninety-one prisoners remain at Guantanamo; 532 detainees were transferred to other countries during the Bush administration and 156 by the Obama administration.

Belgium mentioned During his speech, the president pledged support to Belgium. “This is yet another reminder that the world must unite,” he said. “We must be together, regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism.” The president conferred privately with his national security staff and other world leaders about the international response, but marched on with his day of public diplomacy. The U.S. responded to the blasts in Brussels by raising its terror alert and deploying additional U.S. state and regional security at airports and rail and transit stations across the country. The Department of Homeland Security announced heightened security after the Brussels attacks even as it said there was no credible intelligence suggesting similar attacks were planned against the U.S.

Kept his schedule Obama followed his speech by meeting with some of the most well-known members of Cuba’s small, beleaguered dissident community, including several who were arrested just ahead of his arrival in Cuba. He praised their courage, group members said, but also acknowledged that not all favored his policy of detente.

Critics disagree Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, slammed Obama for not cutting his trip short after the attack in Brussels, as did Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, another GOP presidential hopeful. “I hope he will say he’s leaving Cuba and heading back to the White House,” Kasich said early Tuesday. Rep. Matt Salmon, an Arizona Republican, criticized the president for “yucking it up with FARC terrorists at a baseball game yesterday when Europe is under siege by terrorists,” a reference to the presence of Colombian guerrillas who are in Cuba negotiating an end to their 50-year-old conflict with the Colombian government.

Fight over ‘Gitmo’ In a related matter, Republican lawmakers said Wednesday that Tuesday’s deadly terror attacks in Belgium showed the folly of Obama’s bid to shutter the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Pentagon’s point man on the military prison acknowledged at a hearing that in at least one previous instance, freed detainees had killed Americans. “What I can tell you is unfortunately there have been Americans that have died because of (released) Gitmo detainees,” Paul Lewis, chief envoy on Guantanamo for the Defense Department, said in response to a question from Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, RCalif. An unidentified Obama administration official later told The Associated Press that Lewis was referring to an incident

Criticizing strategy Republicans also escalated their criticism of Obama’s strategy to combat the Islamic State terrorist group in the wake of bombings in Brussels. Obama has in turn bristled at suggestions that his strategy is insufficient, declaring on Wednesday that the militant group’s destruction is his top priority and calling Republican proposals folly, including an earlier suggestion by GOP presidential candidate Cruz that the U.S. carpetbomb areas held by Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Presidential candidate Donald Trump said this week that he would return to the use of harsh interrogation techniques considered torture by the United Nations, including water boarding; and in an interview with Bloomberg Politics he said he wouldn’t rule out using nuclear weapons against Islamic State.

‘Not smart’ “When I hear someone say we should carpet-bomb Iraq and Syria, not only is that inhumane, not only is that contrary to our values, but that would likely be an extra mechanism for ISIL to recruit more people willing to die and explode bombs in an airport or a metro station,” Obama said. “That’s not a smart strategy.” Obama reserved particular derision for Cruz’s proposal on Tuesday that police “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods” in the U.S. He said that Muslim communities in the U.S. are not a threat because they are largely integrated into American society.

Became a nurse Burgess, now 28, finally found an adult specialist who stabilized his sickle cell, enabling him to complete a college nursing degree. “There are a few nurses who made an impact on my life, and I’d like to add to that,” he said. “I have a need to help, and I feel like I can do it.”

“They do not feel ghettoized, they do not feel isolated. Their children are our children’s friends, going to the same schools. They are our colleagues in our workplaces, they are our men and women in uniform fighting for our freedom,” Obama said. “Any approach that would single them out and target them for discrimination is not only wrong and un-American, but it would also be counterproductive.”

On to Argentina On Wednesday, Obama arrived overnight for a two-day visit to Argentina following the election last year of Mauricio Macri as its new president, replacing a succession of Argentine leaders antagonistic toward the U.S. The two presidents signed several bilateral agreements concerning education, security, technology and initiatives to attract investments to Argentina. They also promised to cooperate in the fight against drug trafficking, which is on the increase in Argentina. Macri, a right-of-center businessman who once headed a popular soccer club, took office in December promising to rejuvenate an economy suffering from high inflation, low growth and declining trade, all inherited from his populist predecessor Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

Alexandra Mayer-Hohdahl of dpa; Angela Greiling Keane and Margaret Talev of Bloomberg News; Jessica Camille Aguirre, Alexandra Mayer-Hohdahl, Mimi Whitefield, Lesley Clark and Jim Wyss of the Miami Herald; Christi Parsons, Kate Linthicum and Michael A. Memoli of the Tribune Washington Bureau; Andres D’Alessandro and Chris Kraul of the Los Angeles Times and James Rosen of the McClatchy Washington Bureau (TNS) all contributed to this report.

MARCH 25 – MARCH 31, 2016

FLORIDA

A3 rise to a level that makes them as compelling as that movie was.”

‘No agenda’ Cowperthwaite, 45, began working on “Blackfish” in 2010 after the death of Dawn Brancheau, a SeaWorld trainer who was dragged underwater by an orca. Cowperthwaite was disturbed by the news and began exploring the idea of making a movie about what it was like to work as a killer-whale trainer. “I didn’t necessarily think there was anything wrong with what SeaWorld was doing with their whales,” recalled Cowperthwaite, who lives in Culver City. “I had no agenda. And nobody sees documentaries, anyway. They don’t garner huge audiences. I couldn’t have imagined that the film would be like lighter fluid.” Immediately after “Blackfish” was released, backlash against the theme park began on social media. The public boycotted a number of musical acts set to perform at SeaWorld, and celebrities, including Cher, Ellen Page and Harry Styles, urged their fans to stop visiting the parks.

Attendance drop GEORGE SKENE/ORLANDO SENTINEL/TNS

Killer whales are shows during a performance in September 2014. Other aquariums in North America had begun scaling back marine mammal programs - including shows and breeding - amid controversy over keeping these animals captive.

‘Blackfish’ creator didn’t expect SeaWorld’s latest move Company says it will stop breeding killer whales BY AMY KAUFMAN LOS ANGELES TIMES TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

It should have been fun — sitting in the Splash Zone at SeaWorld’s Shamu stadium with her two sons, watching killer whales perform impressive tricks. Instead, Gabriela Cowperthwaite felt a pit in her stomach. Seeing whales up-close in captivity made her uneasy. So she began looking into the theme park, working on a documentary called “Blackfish” — a 2013 film that would ultimately shift the way the public viewed the multibillion-dollar corporation too. Just three years after the release of “Blackfish,” SeaWorld CEO Jo-

el Manby announced (March 17) in an op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times that the company would stop breeding orcas this year. That means that the 29 killer whales currently owned by the theme park will be the last to swim in SeaWorld tanks. The remaining orcas will live out the remainder of their lives at the company’s three SeaWorldbranded parks in Orlando, San Antonio and San Diego but will not perform in theatrical shows by 2019. “We are proud of contributing to the evolving understanding of one of the world’s largest marine mammals,” Manby wrote. “Now we need to respond to the attitudinal change that we helped to create.”

Rare result Though Manby made no reference to “Blackfish” in his oped, the film was largely responsi-

Florida justices to hear open-carry case The Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments June 8 in a challenge to a state law that bars people from openly carrying firearms. Justices issued an order Monday scheduling the arguments in the challenge filed by Dale Norman, who was arrested in 2012 in Fort Pierce while openly carrying a gun in a holster. After a jury found Norman guilty of a misdemeanor charge, the 4th District Court of Appeal upheld the state law, ruling it does not violate constitutional rights to bear arms. Norman then appealed to the Supreme Court, which said in October that it would take up the case. During the legislative session that ended this month, lawmakers considered proposals that would have allowed people with concealed-weapons licenses to openly carry guns. But the measures did not pass.

ble for that “attitudinal change.” The documentary was released in theaters in July 2013 and went on to gross $2.1 million — a respectable sum for a documentary. But the film really began to make waves after it aired in October of that year on CNN, where the movie has since been broadcast more than 30 times and been seen by nearly 30 million viewers, according to the cable network. “It’s exceedingly rare to see this kind of result,” said Amy Entelis, the co-founder of CNN Films, which acquired “Blackfish” at Sundance in January 2013. “There are a lot of good stories out there, but they don’t always see the final chapter that Gabriela is seeing at this point. We’ve had other documentaries about Steve Jobs and Glen Campbell attract many viewers during their premieres, but ‘Blackfish’ endures even after multiple viewings. It’s had a deeper impact and

DOC, Wexford battling over prison health contract A prison health-care company is asking a judge to allow it to pursue a challenge to the Florida Department of Corrections’ (DOC) decision in January to award a contract to another firm to provide health services at the majority of the state’s prisons.

Florida Black Legislators Partner with State Lottery for Scholarships

has been seen by far more people.”

Impact of films There have been just a handful of documentaries released over the last few decades that have led to tangible change, including 2004’s “Super Size Me,” in which filmmaker Morgan Spurlock suffered serious health complications after eating only McDonald’s for 30 days. Six weeks after the film came out, the fast-food chain stopped offering super-size portions. There’s also Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s “Paradise Lost” trilogy, which ultimately led to the release of three Texan men who had been wrongly imprisoned for murder for nearly two decades. “It seems to make a difference when a film is very specifically calling out a company or government official by name,” said Thom Powers, who serves as the documentary programmer at the Toronto International Film Festival. “But ‘Blackfish’ also has an enormous amount of filmmaking craft at stake. I watch 300 or 400 films a year on very worthy topics, but many of them don’t

Wexford Health Sources, Inc., filed a document last week in the state Division of Administrative Hearings arguing that it should be able to continue a formal protest against the department’s award of a $268 million contract to Centurion of Florida, LLC. The department signed the contract with Centurion in January, after another firm, Corizon Health, decided to end its contract to provide services to about three-fourths of the state’s inmates. Wexford, which serves inmates in other parts of the state, filed a protest against the department’s decision to award the contract to Centurion. But the department filed a motion March 2 arguing, in part,

Dems jump into Miami, Tampa House races THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

With Rep. Ed Narain, D-Tampa, and Rep. Daphne Campbell, D-Miami, running for the Senate this year, two more Democrats have opened campaign accounts to run for their House seats. Tampa Democrat Dianne Hart opened an account on March 18 to try to replace Narain in Hillsborough The Florida Conference of Black State Legislators Foundation (FCBSL) hosted its annual Educational Scholarship Golf Tournament fundraiser on Sunday, March 6th at the Hilaman Golf Club in Tallahassee. Founded in 1983, the FCBSL is a 501(c)3 Not-for-Profit Statewide Organization located in the Capitol City of Tallahassee. One of the organizations many goals is to champion education that affect the less fortunate constituents throughout Florida. The FCBSL has partnered with the Florida Lottery, a State Department established in 1986 to enhance funding sources for public education. Similarly, both entities share the mission of enhancing opportunities for students from low to average income families, providing funding resources for student’s financial aid to pursue opportunities in higher education at state universities and community colleges. With more than a $1 billion in revenue in each of the past 13 fiscal years, this effort has benefited Florida students and schools statewide, representing approximately six percent of the state’s total education budget. Representative Ed Narain - Chairman of the FL Legislative Back Caucus (FLBC) stated, “We are excited about the partnership between the FCBSL-Foundation and the Lottery. As we all strive to close the educational gap and assure Florida has a first class public education system, we only see greater accomplishments ahead.” For information on additional activities and statewide events hosted by the FCBSL, please visit our website, www.FCBSL.org.

Siplin seeking another Senate seat Former Democratic lawmaker Gary Siplin is looking to return to Tallahassee in November. Siplin has opened a campaign account to run this year in Senate District 11 in Orange County, according to the state Division of Elections website. Siplin was elected to a House seat in 2000 and moved to the Senate in 2002.

In 2014, attendance at the company’s 11 parks dropped 4.2 percent. In 2015, lawmakers in Sacramento and the U.S. House of Representatives proposed legislation that would keep whales out of captivity. The California Coastal Commission also proposed a ban on orca breeding at the park’s San Diego location. And just last week, SeaWorld announced that Tilikum — the killer whale responsible for Brancheau’s death — was in declining health. Tilikum was largely the subject of “Blackfish,” as the film explored how living in captivity may have driven the whale to erratic, dangerous behavior. All the while, Cowperthwaite remained a spokesperson for the cause. This fall while making her debut feature, “Leavey” — about an Iraq war hero who is bonded to her bomb-sniffing dog — she answered interview requests about SeaWorld from the set in Spain. “It was constant, the amount of information I had to learn every day to continue to speak on this issue and inspire people,” Cowperthwaite said. “But it gets inside you. You can move on, but the idea becomes a part of your DNA. “And still, I never imagined SeaWorld would stop breeding orcas. That is such a huge shift, them realizing that the grand experiment didn’t work. It’s a defining moment.”

that the “contract with Centurion was authorized by statute,” and that Administrative Law Judge R. Bruce McKibben should “relinquish jurisdiction” in Wexford’s protest, a move that effectively would end it. Wexford, however, fired back by arguing that it has grounds to protest the contract award and that the case ultimately should move forward. “The subject of this proceeding is whether the DOC acted properly and legally when it entered into a no-bid contract for the provision of health services in certain regions of the state prison system for inmates in the custody of the DOC,’’ the Wexford document said.

County’s House District 61, according to the state Division of Elections website. Also running for the seat is Democrat Sean Shaw, a former state insurance consumer advocate. Meanwhile, in South Florida, Miami Democrat Sean Roy Hardemon opened an Shaw account as a first step toward trying to succeed Campbell in MiamiDade County’s House District 108. Hardemon joined five other Democrats – Taj Collie-Echoles, Fayola Delica, Moise Duge, Francesca Menes and Marie Erlande Steril – in seeking the seat.

He was forced out of office by term limits in 2012 and unsuccessfully ran against Sen. Geraldine Thompson, D-Orlando, in 2014. Thompson is planning to run for a congressional seat this year. Gary Also in the Senate DisSiplin trict 11 race are Apopka Democrats Chuck O’Neal and Robert Sindler.

EDITORIAL

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MARCH 25 – MARCH 31, 2016

Democrats and the Supreme Court scam One of the most potent mantras of every Democratic propagandist or fearful party member goes something like this: “I don’t really like Clinton/Gore/Kerry/ Obama/Clinton either, but what about the Supreme Court of the United States? Don’t risk letting Republicans choose the federal judiciary.” It is true that the lifetime appointments of federal judges are among the most enduring contributions or punishments that a president can bestow on the country. But as with other issues, the Democratic Party conveniently uses the Supreme Court as a club to beat their own supporters into submission while simultaneously doing the opposite of what those people want.

Wasted opportunity The sudden death of rightwing Justice Antonin Scalia is the latest example of Democratic bait-and-switch. Scalia was one of the most conservative justices in history. He and four other justices said that the will of Florida voters didn’t count and thus gave the presidency to the loser, George W. Bush. Scalia’s death during a Democratic presidency was an opportunity for a victory. But Republican obstruction is once again giving Obama cover to be the conservative he has always been. True to form, Senate Republicans announced they won’t consider anyone for nomination in Obama’s last year in office. If Obama paid the Republicans money, they couldn’t have helped him out more. He can now choose a conservative and get brainwashed Democrats to help him by appealing to their sense of outrage.

MARGARET KIMBERLEY BLACK AGENDA REPORT

There will never be another Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court, even when Democratic presidents are making the choices. Marshall famously described his legal philosophy with the phrase, “You do what you think is right and let the law catch up.” The absence of his ilk is yet another indication that American politics have moved ever rightward in the last fifty years. Troubling record His would-be nominee, federal appeals court Judge Merrick Garland, has a very troubling judicial record. Like 41 percent of Obama judicial nominees, he is a former prosecutor.

Coalition holds conference on self-determination and elections Self-determination. It’s a term that was once at the center of the Black political discussion. How should Black folks organize themselves to gain the power to shape their own destinies, and in the process, build a better world and break the power of our enemies? Black people in the United States made great strides when we engaged in mass mobilization under independent Black leadership with the focus on self-determination. WE set the terms of discussion, and put forward principled demands that were designed – always – to result in the accumulation of more power in the hands of our people.

GLEN FORD BLACK AGENDA REPORT

Sometimes that involved elections, but more often not. Elections only occur every two or four years, while the struggle for power and self-determination is constant.

Serious discussion The Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Repa-

Black churches: Stop being pimped by politicians Have you ever noticed during election time you’ll find candidates flocking to African-American churches? Okay, let me be more specific – Democratic candidates seeking support from African-American clergy and congregations. Why do they make themselves known during election time, but fail to be seen and engaged in the community well before then? I cannot speak about all candidates. But I’m confident in saying that not enough of these candidates show up years before election time to introduce themselves.

What I did I’m very familiar with this firsthand as the senior pastor of a church in Maryland. During one particular election, there were several candidates running for of-

DR. SINCLAIR GREY III GUEST COLUMNIST

fice. I was contacted by campaign managers to have their candidate come speak to members of my church. After hearing their pitch, I told every office that their candidate can come visit the church, but they will not be allowed to pitch their campaign on Sunday morning during service. I asked their campaign managers why they didn’t come to our community in the past. All I got was silly excuses. My response was, “If you didn’t believe our community was worth your time before elec-

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: ISIS ATTACKS BELGIUM

Prosecutors are among the worst criminals in American society. When they aren’t making a name for themselves by wringing false confessions, they threaten harsh sentences and get the innocent to plead guilty. They work hand-in-hand with police to put Black people behind bars. Prosecutors have the upper hand in getting indictments and convictions. The lack of convictions for killer cops is an indication that they place their thumb on the scale of justice and never in the interests of Black people.

Pro-prosecution As a federal jurist, Garland lived up to all the worst fears of prosecutorial judgment. He ruled against criminal defendants more often than not. In fourteen different cases in which he dissented from other judges, Garland sided with law enforcement ten times. Garland saw prisoners locked away in Guantanamo in the same vein. In 2003, he was part of a three-judge panel who ruled that prisoners had no rights to challenge their imprisonment in federal court. The Obamaphiles have their usual excuses memorized in defending the Garland nomination. “The Republicans give Obama no choice. Garland can be used as a campaign issue to help Democratic candidates. He isn’t so bad. He’ll move to the left after he is on the Supreme Court bench.” Etc., etc.

CBC ‘irked’ The Black “misleaders” go through their own version of pretense. According to press reports, members of the Congressional Black Caucus were “irked” that

MILT PRIGGEE, WWW.MILTPRIGGEE.COM

their opinions weren’t sought out for the appointment. Obama has little regard for the House of Representatives in general and even less for the CBC in particular. They back him up without question or protest and say little on those rare occasions when they might be unhappy with his administration. Their phony temper tantrum just doesn’t count. There will never be another Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court, even when Democratic presidents are making the choices. Marshall famously described his legal philosophy with the phrase, “You do what you think is right and let the law catch up.” The absence of his ilk is yet another indication that American politics have moved ever rightward in the last fifty years. Justices are chosen because they are safe, because they have never acted on behalf of the oppressed as Marshall did. Like Garland, every Supreme Court justice serving now attended either Yale or Harvard law school. Not even other highly ranked schools are given any consideration.

rations is putting Black people’s self-determination back in the discussion this election season, with a “National Conference on the 2016 Election and the Struggle for Self-Determination.” The conference takes place on Saturday, April 9, at St. Mary’s Church in Harlem, New York City. The Black Is Back Coalition will explore the possibilities and the dangers that the current electoral scene presents for the future of Black people and the world. This is a conference about power: the power to kick the killer cops out of our neighborhoods and establish Black community control of the police. The power to keep our people from being dispersed from the cities at the whim of rich corporations. The power to control our schools and the content and quality of our children’s educations. The power that comes from economic security. The power to say

“YES” to our friends and “NO” to our enemies.

tion time, you’re not going to pimp the church for your election campaign.” While that may have sounded harsh, it was my intent to let the candidates know that you cannot use, misuse, and abuse the African-American church and its members. It sickens me when I hear how many (not all) churches allowing political candidates to come into their midst to list why people should vote for them, without ever questioning in detail what these candidates have done and will do for the African-American community.

It sickens me when I hear how many (not all) churches allowing political candidates to come into their midst to list why people should vote for them, without ever questioning in detail what these candidates have done and will do for the African-American community.

Need a plan There needs to be a detailed plan, not a general “vote for me because my opponent has done this or isn’t doing that.” We need to ask the question of the candidate(s) “What are you going to do?” Here are some suggestions to African-American churches. • Don’t use Sunday morning

‘Movement’ politics The Black Is Back Coalition was founded in October 2009, when a broad range of Black organizations decided to work together based on the principle of Black self-determination and the struggle against imperialism. President Obama had just begun his first term in office. The new Coalition understood that the election of a Black corporate Democrat to the highest office in the land was not a step towards Black self-determination. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Obama’s election meant that lots of Black folks would celebrate as their own incomes and wealth went further down the drain, and that many would cheering while a Black commander-in-chief slaughtered people of color all

worship services to promote a candidate. • Ask Democratic as well as Republican candidates to attend a

Charles W. Cherry II, Esq., Publisher

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A bad choice Garland is a terrible choice who makes a mockery of progressives’ desperate ties to the Democratic Party. He is the embodiment of the discredited doctrine of “Lesser Evilism” which does nothing but allow otherwise intelligent people to suddenly act against their own interests, and defend people and policies they otherwise would not. Hopefully, the Republicans will continue to deny Garland his seat on the court. If progressives keep operating from a prone position, Scalia’s replacement will be a conservative – just less so than he was. The Supreme Court is just another scam perpetrated by Democrats on their hapless followers. It is one more reason to work for the end of the Democratic Party once and for all.

Margaret Kimberley’s column appears weekly in BlackAgendaReport.com. Contact her at Margaret.Kimberley@ BlackAgendaReport.com. over the world. And we were right. But something else happened in the second half of Barack Obama’s tenure in office: the beginnings of a mass movement. And so, we arrive at the current election season with both corporate parties in a state of flux and, most importantly, an incipient Black movement that is anxious to transform the political landscape through struggle outside the ballot box. Which is why the Black Is Back Coalition is holding a National Conference on the 2016 Election and the Struggle for Self-Determination, Saturday, April 9, at St. Mary’s Church, at 521 West 126th Street, in Harlem, New York. To make arrangements, go to the Black Is Back Coalition web site. Because Black Power matters.

Glen Ford is executive editor of BlackAgendaReport.com. Email him at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com. midweek meeting to voice their platform in front of church leaders and members. • Ask each candidate what they have done for the community. Examples should be provided. • Show no favoritism to a political party – deal with the issues. • Don’t be afraid to speak on issues. Preach prophetically, not for financial profitability. After election time, I implore you to hold these individuals accountable for their actions every step of the way. No longer must we allow political candidates to pimp the African-American churches for votes. It’s not right. It’s not Godly. And it must stop. We have to power to make a difference.

Dr. Sinclair Grey III is a speaker, writer, author, life coach and radio/television talk show host. Contact him at www.sinclairgrey.org, drgrey@ sinclairgrey.org or on Twitter @ drsinclairgrey.

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MARCH 25 – MARCH 31, 2016

Schools must teach about the FBI’s war on Black movements This month marks the 45th anniversary of a dramatic moment in U.S. history. On March 8, 1971 – while Muhammad Ali was fighting Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden, and as millions sat glued to their TVs watching the bout unfold – a group of peace activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Penn., and stole every document they could find. Keith Forsyth, one of the people who broke in, explained on “Democracy Now!”: “I was spending as much time as I could with organizing against the war, but I had become very frustrated with legal protest. The war was escalating and not deescalating. And I think what really pushed me over the edge was, shortly after the invasion of Cambodia, there were four students killed at Kent State and two more killed at Jackson State. And that really pushed me over the edge, that it was time to do more than just protest.” Delivered to the press, these documents revealed an FBI conspiracy – known as COINTELPRO – to disrupt and destroy a wide range of protest groups, including the Black freedom movement. The break-in, and the government treachery it revealed, is a chapter of our not-so-distant past that all high school students – and all the rest of us – should learn. Yet it is one that history textbooks continue to ignore.

Class discussion

URSULA WOLFEROCCA GUEST COMMENTARY

COINTELPRO. Though COINTELPRO offers teachers a trove of opportunities to illustrate key concepts, including the rule of law, civil liberties, social protest, and due process, it is completely absent from my school’s government book, “Magruder’s American Government” (Pearson).

‘New issue’ For U.S. history teachers investigating Black activism of the 1950s and 1960s, one district textbook is “American Odyssey” (McGraw Hill). In a section titled “The Movement Appraised,” the book sums up the end of the civil rights movement: “Without strong leadership in the years following King’s death, the civil rights movement floundered. Middle-class Americans, both African American and white, tired of the violence and the struggle. The war in Vietnam and crime in the streets at home became the new issue at the forefront of the nation’s consciousness.” Here we find a slew of problematic assertions about the era, plus a notable absence. Nowhere does “American Odyssey” indicate that, in addition to King’s death and Vietnam, the civil rights movement also had to contend with a declaration of war made against it by its own government. “American Odyssey” is not alone in its omission. “American Journey” (Pearson), another textbook used in my school, similarly makes no mention of the program. The only textbook in my district to mention COINTELPRO is “America: A Concise History” (St. Martin’s), a college-level, Advanced Placement history text. Limited to a single sentence, its summary and analysis is wholly incomplete: “In the late 1960s SDS and other antiwar groups fell victim to police harassment, and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and CIA agents infiltrated and disrupted radical organizations.”

In recent years, current events discussions in my high school history and government classes have been dominated by names that have piled up with sickening frequency: Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland. In looking at the Black Lives Matter movement as a response to these injustices, my class came across a 2015 Oregonian newspaper article, “Black Lives Matter: Oregon Justice Department Searched Social Media Hashtags.” The article detailed the department’s digital surveillance of people solely on the basis of their use of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag. My students debated whether tying #BlackLivesMatter to potential threats to police (the premise of the surveillance program) was FBI whitewash justifiable. Most thought it was Why do textbook writers and not. publishers leave out this crucial episode in U.S. history? Perhaps Happened before they take their cues from the FBI But what the Oregonian did itself. According to the FBI webnot note in the article, and what site: my students had no way of know“The FBI began COINTELing, was the history of this story – PRO – short for Counterintellithe ugly, often illegal, treatment of gence Program – in 1956 to disBlack activists by the U.S. justice rupt the activities of the Commusystem during the COINTELPRO nist Party of the United States. In era. the 1960s, it was expanded to inMy students had little way of clude a number of other domestic knowing about this story behind groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, the story because mainstream the Socialist Workers Party, and textbooks almost entirely ignore the Black Panther Party. All COIN-

Do Black organizations really have our backs? While Black people are bogged down in shallow and meaningless political discourse, our vaunted Black organizations continue to be MIA – except for their time in front of the cameras with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. They say they cannot endorse candidates, but we all know that’s a sham. In an article written by Freddie Allen of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, Marc Morial said the nine Black organizations that met with the candidates wanted to “provide to every candidate who is running for president of the United States, be they Republican or Democrat, the opportunity to hear from us on issues of civil rights, social justice, and economic justice in America, today.” Any real demands made on our behalf?

Black concerns ‘leaving’ Al Sharpton said, “For the first time in American history, we will watch a Black family leave the White House and we do not want to see the concerns of Blacks leave with them.” So that’s where our concerns have been hibernating for the past seven years? And all this time I thought Sharpton and President Obama were taking care of them. And, I suppose to give comfort to Clinton and Sanders, Morial

JAMES CLINGMAN GEORGE CURRY MEDIA

said the nine historic civil rights organizations represent tens of millions of Americans and that all of their organizations were “multicultural and multi-ethnic.” Multicultural and multi-ethnic? That’s strange. I thought they were Black or at least “colored.”

Corrupt NAACP Speaking of colored, let’s look at one of these “Black” multicultural and multi-ethnic “Nonstop Aiding and Abetting in Corrupt Practices” organizations: the NAACP. You may know it as the group whose answer to the Ferguson, Mo., issue was to walk 130 miles to the Missouri governor’s office, followed up by a 1,000-mile stroll from Selma to the steps of the U.S. Capitol in search of justice. Guess they didn’t find it when they got there. This is the group that practices outright hypocrisy by railing against voter suppression and voter ID laws, while accepting and even promoting those corrupt practices within their own ranks.

EDITORIAL

A5

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: OBAMA IN CUBA

TELPRO operations were ended in 1971. Although limited in scope (about two-tenths of 1 percent of the FBI’s workload over a 15-year period), COINTELPRO was later rightfully criticized by Congress and the American people for abridging First Amendment rights and for other reasons.” Apparently, mainstream textbooks have accepted – hook, line, and sinker – the FBI’s whitewash of COINTELPRO as “limited in scope” and applying to only a few organizations.

All-out war But COINTELPRO was neither “limited in scope” nor applied only to the organizations listed in the FBI’s description. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover describes the goal of one arm of COINTELPRO – against the Black liberation movement – in a now-declassified 1967 document: “The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hatetype organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder.” The plan to “neutralize” Black activists included legal harassment, intimidation, wiretapping, infiltration, smear campaigns, and blackmail, and resulted in countless prison sentences and, in the case of Black Panther Fred Hampton and others, murder. This scope of operations can hardly be described as “limited.”

Targeted antiwar movement Moreover, these tactics were employed not just against every national civil rights organization, but also against the antiwar movement (particularly on college campuses), Students for a Democratic Society, the American Indian Movement, the Puerto Rican Young Lords, and others.

Maintaining ‘social order’ One way to appreciate the wide net cast by COINTELPRO is to look at the final report of the Church Committee. In the early 1970s, following a number of allegations in the press about over- reaching government intelligence operations, a Senate committee chaired by Democrat Frank Church of Idaho began an investigation of U.S. intelligence agencies. Their 1976 report states: “The unexpressed major premise of much of COINTELPRO is that the Bureau [FBI] has a role in maintaining the existing social order, and that its efforts should be aimed toward combating those who threaten that order.” In other words, anyone who challenged the status quo of racMore specifically, this is the group that has wreaked havoc in Ohio by conducting four elections for state president – two of which were legitimately won by Jocelyn Travis over Sybil McNabb – and two of which were do-overs by the national office via Gill Ford to keep their chosen candidate, McNabb, in office. In the first corrupt election over which the national presided, children were allowed to vote for McNabb. Yes, children! In the second corrupt election which took place on March 12 again under national supervision, the same corrupt practice used in Cincinnati was used by Gill Ford in Columbus. He suspended Travis three days prior to the election, just as he did the Cincinnati president – whom he suspended the day before the election – in an obvious effort to have his chosen candidate run unopposed.

Finally standing up The NAACP’s “Nonstop Aiding and Abetting in Corrupt Practices” is shameful, especially in light of holding themselves up as the national champion for fairness in the voting process. Even more shameful is the fact that only a relative few members, among those who have actually seen these shenanigans take place, are willing to stand up against the NAACP’s corruption. The good news is that a group of members throughout Ohio have followed the lead of the Crittenden County (Arkansas) and Cincinnati branches by seeking and winning a temporary restraining order against the NAACP’s con-

RAYMA SUPRANI, CAGLECARTOONS.COM

ism, militarism, and capitalism in American society was fair game for surveillance and harassment. Rather than “limited,” the FBI’s scope potentially included all social and political activists – an alarming and outrageous revelation in a country purportedly governed by the protections of speech and assembly in the First Amendment.

Now we know Luckily, we do not need to rely on corporate textbook publishers and the FBI for our resources and curriculum. Thanks to the Media burglars, and their suitcases full of stolen documents, we now have access to memos from this FBI program of destruction. In my curriculum, I have pulled together documents from the FBI’s website and from the book “The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States,” edited by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall. These documents reveal the FBI’s attempts to infiltrate and disrupt the Black Panthers, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Congress of Racial Equality, and others. They reveal an attempt to blackmail Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. using illegally acquired recordings of purported marital infidelities, and a suggestion that he commit suicide. They reveal campaigns of misinformation, where FBI agents planted lies in newspaper and magazine coverage of activists. I also use the fabulous episode “A Nation of Law?” from the documentary “Eyes on the Prize,” which details COINTELPRO’s 1969 murder of Fred Hampton in Chicago. Hampton – a leader of Chicago’s Black Panther Party – was a young and inspiring advocate of Black liberation attempting to build a “rainbow coalition” of groups across racial lines. After months

As for nine Black organizations suggesting they are the repository of Black power, here’s a question. If they have power, why after nearly eight years of a Black president are we, as cited in Morial’s “State of Black America” report, worse off now and in “crisis”?

of official harassment, he was shot and killed during an FBI-sponsored police raid on his home as he slept in his bed. He was 21 years old. Together, these resources provide students an opportunity to understand the governmentsponsored war against Black activists. And though the COINTELPRO documents have long been public, it is a story that history textbooks continue to ignore, leaving students to swallow the false assertion of books like “American Odyssey” that the movement simply “floundered” after King’s death.

BLM movement is important Textbook publishers’ disregard for the history of COINTELPRO is one more example of the crucial importance of the Black Lives Matter movement, a movement that lays bare the systemic dangers faced by Black people in America while simultaneously affirming and celebrating Black life. What I attempt in my classroom is a Black Lives Matter treatment of COINTELPRO, where we reveal the injustice of the program while affirming and celebrating the promise of the activists it sought to silence. Just as Black Lives Matter activists use video footage to convince a wider public of what African-Americans have long known about police brutality, teachers can use our classrooms to shine a light on history that has long been available – but systematically ignored – by our textbooks. We need a curriculum that emphatically communicates that “Black history matters.”

Ursula Wolfe-Rocca teaches at Lake Oswego High School in Oregon. A version of this article appears in the spring 2016 Rethinking Schools magazine. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response. only in this case, but in several other branches across the country – their corrupt practices also point to a larger problem. So-called Black organizations such as the NAACP, despite their implied social contract with Black folks, can be swayed, bought, rented, or leased with nothing expected in return except a few dollars under the table, a political photo-op, or a nice hotel suite. The NAACP needs to stop abusing its members’ rights before purporting to speak on our behalf. As for nine Black organizations suggesting they are the repository of Black power, here’s a question. If they have power, why after nearly eight years of a Black president are we, as cited in Morial’s “State of Black America” report, worse off now and in “crisis”? As the heads of those organizations now intercede on our behalf by meeting with presidential candidates, what would make us believe Blacks will get anything specific from the next administration?

Jim Clingman, founder of the Greater Cincinnati African American Chamber of Commerce, is the nation’s most prolific writer on economic empowerment for Black people. He can be reached through his website, blackonomics.com. He is the author of “Black Dollars Matter: Teach Your Dollars How to Make More Sense,” which is available through his website, professionalpublishBought, paid-for inghouse.com, and Amazon Aside from the obvious hy- Kindle eBooks. Click on this pocrisy displayed by the nation- story at www.flcourier.com to al leadership of the NAACP – not write your own response. tinued interference in local elections. The results of the March 12 election are being held in abeyance by a Columbus, Ohio judge who will conduct a hearing on April 7. You can be sure that all evidence of corruption, voter suppression, and election-rigging will be brought forth at that time.

TOJ A6

NATION

MARCH 25 – MARCH 31, 2016

Supreme Court rejects challenge to Colorado’s marijuana law Justices turn away lawsuit filed by Nebraska, Oklahoma BY DAVID G. SAVAGE TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a conservative challenge to the marijuana legalization laws adopted in Colorado and elsewhere that permit adults to buy, sell or use an ounce of the drug. By a 6-2 vote, the justices turned away a lawsuit brought by Nebraska and Oklahoma, whose state attorneys complained that illegal marijuana was pouring into their states as a result of Colorado’s liberalized laws. “The state of Colorado authorizes, oversees, protects and profits from a sprawling $100-million-per-month marijuana growing, processing and retailing organization that exported thousands of pounds of marijuana to some 36 states in 2014,” they said. “If this entity

State of the Black World Conference scheduled BY FREDERICK H. LOWE TRICE EDNEY NEWS WIRE

Actor Danny Glover will serve as honorary chair-

States weigh changes to decades-old custody laws BY JEN FIFIELD STATELINE.ORG

WASHINGTON — As fathers become more vocal about what they see as inequities in custody cases — and as more research shows how important it is for fathers to be present in their children’s lives — states are considering changing their custody laws. Five states — Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts and Missouri — are looking at proposals that would require judges to presume that it’s best for children to split their time as evenly as possible between their two parents. Utah enacted a similar law last year. State laws have historically directed judges to determine custody based on what is in a child’s best interest, looking at factors such as which arrangement would disturb his or her life the least and be safest. The proposals would instead require judges to presume it’s best that both parents be awarded a substantial amount of parenting time — often at least a third of the time — and, if they don’t award substantial time to both parents, to explain why it wouldn’t be in the child’s best interest to do so. Fathers’ rights groups, such as the National Parents Organization, are pushing the proposals, arguing that they will give fathers a better chance at a fair ruling and pointing to new research that shows

were based south of our border, the federal government would prosecute it as a drug cartel.” They argued that Colorado’s law violates the federal Controlled Substances Act, which treats marijuana as a dangerous drug and forbids its sale or use. They urged the Supreme Court to take up the issue as an “original” matter and declare that Colorado’s law was preempted by the federal drug laws.

Decision praised Usually, the high court hears appeals from lower court rulings. But on rare occasions, the justices are called upon to decide disputes between states. Typically, however, these “original” suits involve disagreements over boundaries or the use of river water that flows from one state to another. The suit brought by Nebraska and Oklahoma also implicitly challenged the Obama administration for its refusal to intervene more directly in Colorado. Since California’s voters

KAI-HUEI YAU/TRI-CITY HERALD/TNS

In 2014, Assistant Manager Jahni Denver, left, helps Donnie Salah Dine of Denver and Austin Wallace of New York at Evergreen Apothecary in Denver, Colo. in 1996 authorized medical use of marijuana, 22 other states have adopted similar measures. Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska went further and allowed for the production and sale of marijuana for recreational use. Supporters of the laws praised the court’s decision. “This is good news for legalization supporters,” said Tom Angell, chairman of Marijuana Majority. “This case, if it went forward and the court ruled

man for the Pan African Institute’s State of the Black World Conference IV in November. Attendees will discuss a wide-range of topics, including healing the Black family after the war on drugs and the implications of the U.S. presidential election on Black America and the Pan African World. The five-day conference, which is scheduled Nov. 16-20 in Newark, N.J., also will focus on the struggle for democracy and development in Africa, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. A major

town hall will be devoted to exploring developments in the U.S. and the global reparations movements. Two conference speakers are Sir Hilary Beckles, author of “Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide,” and Mirelle Fanon Mendes, chairman of Frantz Fanon Foundation of France, and the daughter of Dr. Frantz Fanon.

how joint custody may be better than sole custody for children’s health.

mental psychology at Arizona State University who has been studying fathers and divorce since 2000. In a yet to be published 10-year study funded by the National Institutes of Health, he found that children who felt they mattered to their fathers were less likely to later have mental health problems such as depression or anxiety.

Family dynamics change But Ned Holstein, founder of the National Parents Organization, said none of the proposals forces judges to do anything. They would still be able to use discretion and decide what’s in the best interest of the child. There haven’t been sweeping changes to state laws on custody arrangements since 1970, when the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act set the “best interest” standard. But the dynamics of American families have changed significantly since then. The share of children under 18 living with both parents fell, from 85.2 percent in 1970 to 69.2 percent in 2015. And more fathers are living away from their children, up from 11 percent in 1960 to 27 percent in 2010, a recent Pew study found; the shift is likely due to more children being born to unmarried parents. (Pew also funds Stateline.) At the same time, the amount of time married fathers spend caring for their children has more than doubled, from 2.5 hours a week in 1965 to 7.3 hours in 2010, according to Pew findings. And that may be a good thing. Research shows that children who spend more time with their fathers are more likely to succeed academically and less likely to be delinquent or have substance abuse issues.

Mental, physical benefits They will also grow up to be healthier mentally and physically, said William Fabricius, an associate professor of develop-

Faced with this state-bystate rebellion against an unchanging federal drug law, the Justice Department issued guidance telling prosecutors to focus on “significant traffickers of illegal drugs,” not on users of medical marijuana.

Last year, the justices asked U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli to weigh in on the interstate legal battle over marijuana, and in December, he urged the court to turn away the lawsuit. Nebraska and Oklahoma have not suffered a “direct injury” from their neighbor to the West, he said, and they remain free to vigorously police marijuana in their states. In response, the Nebraska and Oklahoma state attorneys said the Justice De-

partment has “turned its back” on enforcing the federal law and is permitting it to be “dismantled by piecemeal nullification.” Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented Monday. “The plaintiff states have alleged significant harms to their sovereign interests caused by another state,” Thomas wrote. “We should let this complaint proceed further rather than denying leave without so much as a word of explanation.”

African-American families, Black communities and nations from centuries, generations and ongoing damages inflicted by enslavement, colonialism, segregation, discrimination, racial violence, repression, oppression, exploitation as a consequence of White supremacy and structural/institutional racism.

Each session is intended to explore intentionally ways to draw on cultural, spiritual, historical and institutional strengths to enhance or to devise collaborative strategies and models for Black empowerment. The conference headquarters is the Robert Treat Best Western Plus Hotel in Newark. The Institute of

the Black World 21st Century is based in Elmhurst, N.Y. The email address is Info@ibw21.org.

the wrong way, had the potential to roll back many of the gains our movement has achieved to date.”

Thomas, Alito dissent

For more information on State of the Black World Conference: http:// sobwc.ibw21.org. This story is special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com.

About the sessions The goal for each session is to address the critical need to heal and repair

Florida bill Some fathers, such as Troy Matson of Jacksonville push for shared custody, only to get worn down by the time, the cost and the acrimony of their court battles. Matson’s daughter was just a few weeks old when he and his wife started divorce proceedings. He asked to have her half the time. After contentious court hearings, the couple settled; he now sees his 4-year-old daughter 30 percent of the time. Matson, who now chairs Florida’s chapter of the National Parents Organization, helped push a Florida bill that would require judges to presume that approximately equal timesharing is best. The bill, which passed the Legislature, would also require judges, when they rule differently, to show that equal time-sharing is not the best solution. If Republican Gov. Rick Scott signs the bill, Florida would have one of the strongest shared parenting laws in the nation. “I grew up without my father,” Matson said. “When I was a kid, I told myself if I’m ever blessed with children, I would do everything I could to be as involved in their lives as possible.”

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Usher, the final act at Jazz in the Gardens, was a big hit with the ladies. CHAYLA CHERRY/ FLORIDA COURIER

JAZZ, SOUL, R&B AND RAIN Intermittent showers didn’t dampen weekend for music lovers attending Jazz in the Gardens

LISA ROGERS-CHERRY/FLORIDA COURIER

Janelle Monae thrilled the crowd with her highenergy show.

LISA ROGERS-CHERRY/FLORIDA COURIER

The crowd was ready for great music, and the rain. BY LISA ROGERS-CHERRY FLORIDA COURIER

Real music from legendary artists

crowd movers. People were up on their feet.

Not even a forecast of 50 percent chance of scattered showers could keep many music lovers away from the 11th annual Jazz in the Gardens, held March 19 and 20 in Miami Gardens. They came from as close as a few blocks away and as far as Germany, donned with ponchos, umbrellas, rain bonnets and galoshes for this hot ticket weekend. Comedian and radio personality Rickey Smiley was the hilarious show host. He kept the show moving and the audience in stitches. He quickly snapped back on hecklers from the audience. He took us down memory lane when he joked about government cheese making the best macaroni and cheese. Smiley also offered to buy a few fish sandwiches for the single ladies and to take a few women to the nail shop to get their cuticles pushed back instead of a full manicure. He said he couldn’t deal with the younger women because they were too high maintenance. The weather on Saturday was a beautiful 84 degrees with bright sunshiny skies when local artists Cristyle Renae, Ronnie VOP and April Raquel took the stage. April Raquel received extra support from her fellow Florida A&M University (FAMU) Rattlers and sorors of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Many Deltas were in town for their Florida Cluster. The local artists all were well-received by the audience who slowly filled in the seats Saturday afternoon.

The laidback crowd really started to groove when the multitalented solo jazz instrumentalist Jerome Najee Rasheed, best known simply as Najee, took the stage. Jazz pianist and composer Alex Bugnon was another favorite of the older crowd. When Regina Belle began to sing, “Baby Come to Me,” many women in the audience gladly joined in. The Average White Band was far from average in the Gardens. Their song “A Love of Your Own” was most certainly a crowd-pleaser. The music lovers reminisced and sang along with all of their songs. Valerie Wooten of Miramar remarked, “Both nights were fantastic. I really came to Jazz in the Gardens to see the Average White Band. They are my favorite. This was my first time seeing them. They were worth every dime.” Many attendees were excited about how many live bands were performing this year. “Having a live band is so much better than just having a deejay playing tracks in the background,” one excited attendee remarked. Nobody could forget soulful singer Michael McDonald. Formerly with Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, the singer wowed the women by singing “I Keep Forgetting,” “What a Fool Believes,” and “Minute by Minute.” Nobody was cooler than Kool & the Gang when they performed “Hollywood Swinging.’’ You could hear guys yelling, “Hey, Hey, Hey!” all across Miami Gardens. “Ladies Night’’ and “Cherish’’ also were

Charlie Wilson takes ’em to church The final performer for Saturday night was Mr. Charlie, “Last Name” Wilson. The singer didn’t disappoint although most folks wanted a little more R.E.S.P.E.C.T. from “Queen of Soul’’ Aretha Franklin, who cited the lack of band personnel for her absence. Some were surprised that she couldn’t get a band together with all of her pull. Wilson was a true performer. He kept the crowd excited until two o’clock in the morning. With “Goodnight Kisses,’’ “Charlie, Last Name Wilson,’’ “You Send Me,” “You Are.’’ He then had a 10-minute praise break and took us to church when he started singing the gospel song, “I Need Thee.’’ Uncle Charlie unashamedly testified about the goodness of God. He stated that he is a prostate cancer survivor and has been clean and sober for 21 years. He apologized to those who were offended, but shared he was “too blessed’’ not to pause and give thanks and encouraged members of the audience to join in the praise party if God had ever done anything for them. After giving praise, he went right back to the party in the Gardens that many folk came to see.

Day 2: From ‘Blessed’ to ‘Whip Appeal’ Overcast skies loomed on Day 2, See JAZZ, Page B2

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JAZZ IN THE GARDENS

MARCH 25 – MARCH 31, 2016

STOJ

CHAYLA CHERRY/FLORIDA COURIER

An enthusiastic crowd reacts during a performance at Jazz in the Gardens on Sunday, March 20, at Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens.

JAZZ

from Page 1

LISA ROGERS CHERRY/FLORIDA COURIER

Charlie Wilson replaced Aretha Franklin as the last performance on Saturday, March 19. He wowed the crowd with his performance and testimony.

and we were certain that the weather forecasters had predicted accurately when they said it would rain Sunday evening. But that didn’t stop the raincoat, poncho-wearing party people from making their way to Sun Life Stadium for the second day of Jazz in the Gardens. The eclectic contemporary sounds of La Vie opened the show on Sunday. The crowd was buzzing mainly about the multiple Grammy, Dove, and Stellaraward winner Fred Hammond. He took the crowd to church and they enjoyed every minute of it. We all realized that “No Weapon” that was formed against Fred could prosper after he shared his touching testimony about how his mother had unsuccessfully attempted to have him aborted. That’s why Fred said that he doesn’t have time to play church and that God had a plan for his broken situation. You could hear attendees shouting “Amen” and “Hallelujah” all over the parking grounds at Sun Life Stadium. That moment really gave new meaning to the song “Blessed” and quickly got everyone up and clapping and singing along. Brian Culbertson, the popular contemporary jazz/R&B/funk musician, instrumentalist, and producer was a repeat performer. The crowd swayed and danced to his smooth jazz sounds. Janelle Monae, one of the youngest performers in the lineup, dazzled the crowd with all of her hot moves and her jazzy black-and-white outfits. She captured everyone’s attention although not too many of the 40-something attendees knew the words of her songs. She surprised everyone when she ran up the middle aisle in the pouring rain, directly out into the crowd.

Worth the wait: Babyface, Usher

PHOTOS BY KIM GIBSON / FLORIDA COURIER

Above: Jazz musician Najee was one of the legendary performers at the music festival. Left: Jazz in the Gardens host Rickey Smiley kept the crowd in stitches.

By the time R&B musician, singer-songwriter and record producer Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds got up to perform, the rain was falling steadily. That didn’t stop him or the attendees from enjoying a fantastic performance. Seventh-time Jazz in the Gardens attendee Theresa Loving said, “Babyface still has it going on at almost 57 years old. I was really surprised that the event wasn’t as crowded this year, given the vast array of talent. I am so glad that I came.” The crowd was up and dancing as Babyface started off his set with “For the Cool in You,” then sang “Every Time I Close My Eyes,” “Secrets,” “Whip

Appeal,” “Tenderoni,” “Can We Talk,” “We Belong Together” and the “End of the Road.” The performer had to pause a few times to catch his breath. However, he was definitely a favorite of the women, even in the rain. The final performer of the evening, R&B musician, singersongwriter and record-producer Usher, was definitely worth the wait in the drizzling rain. Usher had the women spellbound as he sang “Confessions,” “Let Me Ride” and “My Boo.” He teased the women as he took off his shirt and performed “Good Kisser.” Even Usher had a live band, which really pleased the audience. Last year’s headline performer, R. Kelly, used a deejay. Tiffany Robinson of Liberty City didn’t miss a beat while sitting on the second row of the VIP section. She shared, “This year’s lineup had me flashing back to the old and jamming to the new. Usher was the highlight for me. Kudos to Mayor Oliver Gilbert and his wonderful team on a job well done. I will definitely return next year.”

Conch still a food favorite In addition to the music, the attendees enjoyed a great variety of food and a larger section of vendors. Anthony, a vendor from Raleigh, N.C. was selling jackets and caps from the Negro Baseball League. He said, “Jazz in the Gardens is one of my favorite festivals. This is my fifth year attending.” There were all kinds of items for sell. Beautiful jewelry, African attire, dresses, shoes, unique art, crafts, and paintings galore. Black natural hair care products were a big ticket item this year. There were at least five booths that focused on hair care. The women were happy to accept the free hair care samples. Cynthia Bailey’s sunglasses also were popular in the vendor section this year. The lines were not quite as long this year. However, the tasty conch salad stuffed pineapples, fried fish, the large ears of corn, and the colorful drinks were the biggest sellers this year. Everywhere you turned, someone was enjoying one of these items. The conch was fresh and absolutely delicious. For a brief moment, while chowing down it seemed as if I was in Nassau. Overall, once again Jazz in the Gardens was a fun-filled experience. On Saturday, the crowd seemed slightly smaller than last year and the food lines were a little shorter, but the audience was most certainly satisfied. In spite of a few delays, the rain did not stop the show.

STOJ

MARCH 25 – MARCH 31, 2016

HEALTH

How toxic stress and trauma can endanger children St. Louis girl’s closest friends have endured many struggles, both before she was fatally shot and in the months since. BY NANCY CAMBRIA ST. LOUS POST-DISPATCH TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

ST. LOUIS — The white casket is low enough for most of Jamyla Bolden’s elementary school classmates to gaze directly into the face of their friend, her eyes closed, her lashes long. A childish angel adorns the interior satin lid just above the fine profile of Jamyla’s face and gazes down wide-eyed on the children. A message beneath it reads, “You shall fly with new wings.” The children have come to the wake at Wade Funeral Home on an August evening to say goodbye to Jamyla, a fellow fourth-grader at Koch Elementary School who had been shot through a window as she completed her homework on her mother’s bed. They stand in the cement block chapel next to parents and grandparents at the casket, most too shy and uncomfortable to speak. The narrow slivers of stained-glass windows barely draw in outside light. The children seek solace deep in their parents’ arms. Some of the boys put their hands in their pockets to resist the urge to reach out. Destiny Sonnier, 9, stands behind a relative in the second pew. She cannot look at her friend’s body. Destiny had spent the summer with Jamyla. They had formed a dance crew, making up complex routines, the more difficult to master, the better. “I would tell her all of my secrets and everything,” Destiny said. Akeelah Kelly, 8, had played outside with Jamyla on Ellison Drive hours before she was killed. Now, she approaches the casket, quietly and steadfast — like a grown-up little lady, her mother said. But when she returns home, she cries. Jamyla had lived in a highly segregated, low-income Ferguson neighborhood filled with young children and endless stress.

The physical toll Gun violence is just one part of the burden for many of Jamyla’s friends and classmates. Poverty overwhelms their parents with debt, housing and transportation problems, and they struggle to keep the power on. Their family histories include sexual abuse, domestic violence, incarceration and foster care. Two of Jamyla’s closest friends — Akeelah and Destiny — have endured many of those struggles, both before Jamyla’s death and in the months since. It has long been known that growing up in impoverished and dangerous neighborhoods dims life prospects. But now a commanding body of medical research presents a disturbing, biological picture of why. It suggests that the stress itself — if left unchecked — is physically toxic to child development and health. Brain imaging, biochemical tests, genetic testing and psychiatric trials show toxic stress ravages growing children — inviting maladies such as asthma, obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, kidney disease and stroke in adulthood. When children don’t get a break from the stress — when adults can’t or don’t know how to shield

their children from it — their developing bodies go on a stress hormone production binge that can alter typical gene expression within their DNA. In some cases, parts of their brains are smaller and their chromosomes shorten. Those biological and developmental changes trigger lifelong health consequences that can ultimately shorten lives.

PHOTOS BY LAURIE SKRIVAN/ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH/TNS

Grandmother Mardie Sonnier leads her granddaughter Destiny Sonnier, 9, (right) and grandson Anthony Murry, 6, (center) along with neighbor Akeelah Kelly, 8, (left) in prayer before they walk to the bus stop on Oct. 14, 2015. “We started praying this year. It’s something I felt we needed to do,” said Mardie. “It’s just the fact her dad and her friend were both shot,” she said. havioral and mental health. Simply put, children who have suffered sustained violence and trauma can have miswired brains primed for fear and at the ready for “fight or flight.” That challenges their ability to learn and function socially.

Poverty’s impact Some pediatricians who treat children in mostly poor neighborhoods describe a toxic stress epidemic. “I see all these beautiful babies, and I think of all the statistics, and I can calculate which of these babies is going to have problems because their home environment is so stressed that they are never going to get the right support they need to turn on those genes to get a happy involvement in life,” said Kenneth Haller, an associate professor of pediatrics at St. Louis University School of Medicine and a fellow with the American Academy of Pediatrics. The toxic stress Haller describes isn’t limited to children of poverty. Middle-class and affluent children are not immune from the traumas of domestic violence, drug overdoses and natural disasters such as floods, to name a few.

Fear and grief Jamyla was killed in August while doing homework, when a man now in police custody shot into a bedroom window. Police do not believe she was the intended target. Jamyla was bleeding to death in the arms of a veteran police officer, a man who would later sob at her wake. Jamyla’s death on Ellison Drive happened shortly after the oneyear anniversary of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in the same neighborhood. Everyone had hoped things would finally calm down. During the Brown protests, West Florissant Avenue, the street right behind Ellison, filled with protesters, police lines and looted and damaged stores. At night, children heard the chop of hovering police and media helicopters. Tear gas lingered like fog some mornings. Destiny Sonnier’s fear and grief were palpable then and remain so. They linger in her own house just 300 yards down the street from Jamyla’s and in the night air that often pops with gunfire. Two years earlier, while she was living with her grandmother and dad, he disappeared. He was found shot dead and dumped in a lot in Kinloch, his legs bound by zip ties.

Destiny’s prayer Destiny is now being raised by her grandmother with an aunt and a cousin in the same tidy house. Her mother sometimes takes her on weekends but is busy raising Destiny’s half siblings. Destiny longs to leave the house and violence on Ellison Drive, but she knows that is unlikely. She often gets angry. “My grandma says if we move, it’s just going to be like this on the other streets,” she said. Her grandmother, Mardie Sonnier, would like to adopt Destiny, but she is certain she could never raise $1,700 in needed adoption fees. After her son was killed, Mardie Sonnier, 67, suffered a heart attack that makes it hard to breathe. She mostly depends on oxygen tanks that keep her in her small bedroom most of the day. Destiny helps the house function. Her maturity is reflected in her chores. She makes sure her grandmother takes her medicine. She reads stories to her grandmother in bed.

B3

Starts in womb

“Lord help us make it through this day,” says Destiny Sonnier, 9, who drops to her knees after performing a cartwheel routine with her cousin Anthony Murry, 6, on Oct. 14, 2015. “We pray so we won’t get shot,” said Destiny, who has lost her father to gun violence in April 2013 along with her 9-year-old friend Jamyla’s Bolden and cousin Mansur Ball-Bey, the same week in August in 2015. And she plays with her little cousin. Sometimes their play includes spontaneous cartwheels and headstands in the yard after school. But that play has a twist. Last fall, on a warm late afternoon, she and her cousin stopped their flips, knelt on the grass facing each other, and put their hands together in prayer. They repeated it like a dance routine. “If we pray, we won’t get shot,” Destiny said.

A war zone Two days after Jamyla’s death, Akeelah Kelly attends a vigil in front of her friend’s house. She holds a balloon and cries. Photographs of her deep distress appear in the local news. Jamyla was one of the first girls to introduce herself when Akeelah moved to Ellison Drive with her mom and sister. Natasha Brown (no relation to Michael Brown) hoped suburban life would give the family a break from violence in their old St. Louis neighborhood. The house was federally subsidized and affordable. There was a neighborhood school. Instead they settled into a new world of stress. Michael Brown was shot within months of their arrival. A receptionist with Better Family Life’s neighborhood assistance center on nearby West Florissant Avenue describes the area as a war zone. The stress in residents runs deeper than the Michael Brown shooting, with many reliving past and present traumas such as family violence and homelessness. “A lot of people already have post-traumatic stress disorder from their pasts,” said Yolanda Nelson between walk-in clients seeking help with their utility bills. “That just doesn’t go away.”

Brain research Few area researchers know more about the effects of unrelenting stress on children than Washington University psychiatrist Joan Luby. For 15 years Luby has studied 90 low-income children from the St. Louis area, tracking their development through brain imaging. Her findings suggest that children living in poverty — unless

given emotional support to buffer their stress — have smaller volumes of white and gray brain matter, particularly in the critical regions of the brain known as the hippocampus and amygdala. Last year, Luby published a paper directly linking poverty to smaller brain volumes in developing children. In January, another of Luby’s studies linked poverty to poor connectivity within certain regions of children’s brains. They are two of dozens of studies finding adverse developmental effects on the brain. Luby’s research offers hope. She said children living in poverty with caregivers who are attentive to their needs are less vulnerable. Brain scans show these positive relationships and other support can actually protect the brain from abnormal development. “I think the thing that is probably most frustrating about it is that we really understand it and even know this is actually preventable,” said Luby. “So the science should be informing the public policy for prevention, but right now, it’s not.”

Miswired brains The alarms on toxic stress have been sounding for years. Decades of research affirm that as stress hormones escalate in children, they are exposed to a range of health dangers. Those include inflammation of the circulatory system, diminished heart and kidney health, higher fat production and storage in the body and suppressed immune function. Newer research suggests the damage occurs at a genetic level. One study looked at the length of telomeres on the chromosomes of 9-year-old boys under toxic stress. Telomeres are the caps that buffer the long strands of nucleotides that extend from the ends of chromosomes. Telomeres normally degrade during aging, causing the ends of the chromosomes to shorten. That shortening is considered one of the key causes of aging and disease. But the study found the 9-year-old boys living in toxic stress had telomeres on average 40 percent shorter than those of boys living without such stress. And the harm extends to be-

Perhaps the most troubling research on toxic stress is how trauma experienced by adults is transferred to children. For the classmates and friends of Jamyla, such as Destiny and Akeelah, that means their wellbeing is tied not only to their own stress, but also — perhaps more critically — to the stresses of their mothers. It starts in the womb. Research suggests a mother’s stress hormones can be passed to a developing fetus. Sometimes the effect is so profound that the fetus can’t endure it, leading to pre-term birth — with often fatal results. In the St. Louis area’s poorest zip codes, infant mortality rates rival Third World countries. Researchers also have found toxic stress may alter the expression of genes in the DNA of developing fetuses. Certain proteins may more easily latch on to a particular sequence in the DNA. Studies suggest the process turns off gene expression that helps the body lower its output of stress hormones. Essentially, babies with extremely stressed mothers can lose the ability to fully dial back the production of those stress hormones for life. The troubles continue in infancy. Research by Cynthia Rogers, a psychiatrist at the Washington University School of Medicine, has found distinct links between a mother’s depression and toxic stress, particularly among mothers in poverty. “We know with certainty that children with depressed mothers have poorer outcomes,” Rogers said.

A simple prayer With a murder trial approaching this year for two defendants, she knows she has to tell Destiny for the first time about the harsher details of her father’s death. It is only a matter of time before she reads about it in the newspaper. In the meantime, Mardie Sonnier provides an important relief for her granddaughter and others. Every school day she invites the neighborhood children inside her tiny kitchen to pray in a cramped circle before the bus comes. The ritual had included Jamyla before she was killed. Some mornings Akeelah makes her way across the street to join Destiny and others in the circle. Sometimes the prayer is simple: God, get us to the school bus safely. Despite the comfort of morning prayers, Destiny heads into winter with another worry. She knows the circle will likely shrink again. “My friend Akeelah, she is going to move,” she said. “And Jamyla, I don’t have her to play with no more. So what’s to do?” Destiny does not want to be left behind on Ellison Drive.

Nancy Cambria reported this story with the support of the Fund for Journalism on Child Well-being, the Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism and the National Health Journalism Fellowship, programs of USC Annenberg’s Center for Health Journalism.

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PERSONAL FINANCE

MARCH 25 – MARCH 31, 2016

STOJ

The wealth gap

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER/TNS

Ajamu Loving and his father, Larry Loving, are both financial advisors. Minorities overall, including Hispanics and Asian Americans, make up about 8 percent of financial-services employees.

Financial planners: More minorities needed in industry Advisers want Blacks to take more control of retirement planning BY ERIN E. ARVEDLUND PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

Among the country’s big Wall Street firms, senior-level AfricanAmericans financial advisers are rare, says Ajamu Loving. And he would know, being an adviser of color with a doctorate in financial planning. “I heard 7 percent of astronauts who traveled into space were Black,” says Loving, recalling an

event featuring African-American astronaut Leland Melvin in Tampa last year. “It struck me that was better than the number of financial planners of color.” It’s a stark reminder for a community that’s challenged by the lack of diversity and a wealth gap, but that has the same need as everyone to save for retirement. According to the Government Accountability Office, AfricanAmericans account for only 2.7 percent of senior-level staff in the financial industry. Minorities overall, including Hispanics and Asian Americans, make up about 8 percent of financial-services employees.

So how can African-Americans take control of their retirement planning? Loving and financial planner Jocelyn Wright, both of whom work for the American College of Financial Services in suburban Philadelphia, deal with this question in classrooms and in meetings with clients. “Individuals who get less professional advice, they end up not performing as well,” Loving said. “I’d like to increase the number of African-Americans in financial services, and increase the level of advice in the community.”

Parental influence Loving serves as director of academic partnerships and assistant professor of financial planning at the American College, and is creating and coordinating relationships between colleges and universities to increase financial-services education in academia. Before his appointment in the Philadelphia area, Loving was assistant professor of finance

at Texas A&M University-Commerce and worked for about six years in the Midwest for the Dutch bank ABN Amro. He also had the benefit of both parents working in finance. His father was with Waddell & Reed, an investment firm, in the 1980s and “talked about it in glowing terms as a way to help people, as an opportunity to do well by doing good. While my dad was building a clientele, my mother started her career at Northern Trust, and then worked at First National Bank of Chicago for a decade, then Harris Bank in Chicago.” Loving encourages AfricanAmericans to enter finance: “If you’re a talented young Black person, there are a lot of opportunities out there. It may not be on your radar.” He holds his 403(b) academic retirement assets in the Vanguard 2045 Target Retirement fund. “I employ a simple, low-cost diversified approach to investing. I am very low frills and boring when it comes to this.”

African-Americans may be hurting themselves and their retirement financially because of the role of family caregiver. According to a recent Prudential research survey of 1,043 AfricanAmericans age 27 to 70, more than 20 hours a week was spent on caregiving, versus 14.6 hours among the general population. Then there’s the wealth gap: The average annual income of African-Americans is about 20 percent less than their white counterparts, based on recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. More than 3 in 10 African-Americans (31 percent) cite the wealth gap as a reason not to seek out financial advice. Overall, only 14 percent of African-Americans and 26 percent of the U.S. general population currently work with financial professionals, the Prudential survey found. Wright wants to solve that problem among women of color. The Insight Center for Community Economic Development, a nonprofit in Oakland, Calif., found that single women of color are the biggest group of Americans with either zero or negative net worth. “We want to help close the gap as much as possible. The way to do that is through education,” said Wright, American College chair for women and financial services and assistant professor of women’s studies.

Advice for women In addition to her teaching role, Wright is a practicing financial planner with the Ascension Group in suburban Philly. Many of her clients are women. “Women don’t work as long, we don’t earn as much because of the pay gap. And then, of course, we work in companies that don’t offer fringe benefits providing a pension,” she says. She encourages women to maximize Social Security by deferring benefits until age 70, to tackle debt and save for retirement at the same time, and “increase the level of comfort as women with money.” Wright got an MBA, learned about investing through working in banking, and was mentored by a financial planner to take over a practice. “I tell women not to get scared and emotional about the markets. Keep your goals in mind.” Wright likes to allocate about 40 percent of her assets in actively managed mutual funds and the rest in ETFs or passive index funds, the same advice she gives her clients.

Cell tower industry tapping into talent pool of ex-offenders BY ALEXIA ELEJALDE-RUIZ CHICAGO TRIBUNE TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

CHICAGO — After four years in prison, Antonio Crum tried to start his life anew. He married, focused on fatherhood and got a degree in electrical engineering at a local trade school. Friends helped get him jobs here and there — most recently as a part-time driver for an outpatient surgical center — but his own efforts to find stable work went nowhere, he said. “People were telling me it doesn’t matter how many years ago (my crime) was; they couldn’t trust me,” said Crum, 35, who was released from the Illinois Department of Corrections in 2008 after serving time on a burglary conviction. “It almost makes you want to go back to what you used to do.” But instead of falling backward, Crum seized a chance to climb — sometimes to stomach-flipping 100-foot heights. Crum is part of the inaugural class of the Wireless Field Engineer Training Program, a collaboration between the nonprofit Safer Foundation and a local cell tower site development contractor who hopes to marry his industry’s need for skilled workers with the ex-offender population’s need for good-paying jobs. “It’s not a noble venture on my part,” said Duane Gilmore, chief operating officer at TowerMTM, the employer partner in the program. “It is just a smart business move for me to find smart, good people and put them through their paces.”

In big demand The class of eight, which graduated from the 12-week program late last month in a quiet ceremony downtown, offers a glimpse of the potential for what Gilmore calls an “upside so high

PHIL VALESQUEZ/CHICAGO TRIBUNE/TNS

MTM Technologies Managing Director Duane B. Gilmore, left, hugs graduate Antonio Crum during the first-ever graduation of the Wireless Field Engineer Training Program on Feb. 25 in Chicago. that it is scary.” As wireless technologies advance, data usage skyrockets and the 70 percent of Americans who own smart phones expect connectivity wherever they are, demand is strong for trained workers who can scramble up cell towers to upgrade and maintain equipment. Supply is weaker, Gilmore said.

A contractor for wireless carriers, Gilmore said he has flown in trained workers he knew from Latin America to take jobs because there weren’t enough people domestically with the proper skill sets. While the unemployment rate of those with criminal records is not tracked, they face well-documented employment challeng-

es that can have dangerous and expensive consequences. By partnering with Chicago-based Safer Foundation — a nonprofit that helps people with criminal records prepare for employment — Gilmore hopes to give those with records a leg up while saving companies the time and cost of training workers themselves. He plans to offer apprenticeships to each of the graduates through his own contracts and is in talks to get fellow tower builders on board as well. “We need to find ways to not screen people out, but to include them,” said Gilmore, who is also recruiting military veterans to the program.

schoolboy,” thanks to the influence of his mom and good teachers, Jackson went to college in North Carolina with a partial scholarship to play the trumpet. When school got too expensive, Jackson left and eventually started a landscaping business, got married and had a daughter. But his life fell apart when, he said, he was betrayed by a business partner who bought equipment with a stolen credit card and ensured that he took the fall. Jackson was convicted of felony obtaining property under false pretenses and was ordered to pay $29,000 in restitution and spend five years on probation.

Middle-class wage

As his marriage fell apart, Jackson returned to Chicago to live with his mother and struggled to find a job. He applied for openings in office mailrooms and hospital maintenance but never got calls back. He went to temp agencies and got put on “some of the worst assignments” at warehouses or slaughterhouses. When Safer told him he was eligible for the tower technician program, Jackson was game to try but didn’t think it would be a career for him. The syllabus was unfamiliar and overwhelming: construction drawing, introduction to power tools, construction math, rigging, material handling, fiber optics. Five days a week, he left home before dawn to pile into a van with his classmates, traveling long distances for instruction and returning home well after dark. Jackson ended up being a top student and the class’s unofficial morale booster. “It is one thing to preach hard work and dedication,” Jackson said. “But for (my daughter) to actually see me going through it on my own, it makes things worthwhile.”

Apprentices will start at $15 an hour, move to $19 after six months and to $23 after a year. Within two to three years, the hourly wage could reach $35, which is more than $70,000 annually for full-time work. Trainees received 15 federal or industry certifications that are both portable and stackable, Gilmore said, allowing them to work a variety of jobs almost anywhere. “It’s an opportunity for our clients, many of whom are coming out of poverty, to go into a growing field, with a good middle-class wage, with further advancement opportunities,” said Victor Dickson, president and CEO of the Safer Foundation, which paid the bulk of the cost of the training program while Gilmore paid the rest. Quentin Jackson called the program “a godsend.”

Felony, setbacks Jackson, 42, avoided much of the gang trouble that snagged his friends while growing up in public housing developments on the West Side and several South Side neighborhoods. “Always a

Determined to excel

STOJ

MARCH 25 – MARCH 31, 2016

FINEST & ENTERTAINMENT

Meet some of

FLORIDA’S

finest

submitted for your approval

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.

MYCHAL WATTS/GETTY IMAGES

Ronnie Vop was one of the local performers who sang on stage on March 19 at Jazz in the Gardens.

B5

GUSTAVO CABALLERO/GETTY IMAGES

Sybrina Fulton, activist and mother of Trayvon Martin, was a guest at the 11th Annual Jazz in the Gardens at Sun Life Stadium on March 20.

NEW EDITION

Funk Fest 2016 takes place April 16 at the Central Florida Fairgrounds. Performers will include Faith Evans, New Edition, Kenny “Babyface’’ Edmonds, Jagged Edge, Uncle Luke & the 69 Boyz. More information: www. funkfesttour. com. BET

JENNIFER HOLLIDAY

MARLON WAYANS

The actor and comedian’s Scandal-less tour stops at the Tampa Theatre on May 21.

Catch the singer on April 6 at the Aventura Arts & Cultural Center. BET

Robinson smacked by fan over ‘Have and Have Nots’ character BY NY MAGEE EURWEB

Angela Robinson, star of Tyler Perry’s “The Have and Have Nots” on OWN Network, recently discussed her character to ABC Radio Networks’ Karu F. Daniels, and revealed that her performance as Veronica Harrington upset one fan so much the woman assaulted her. The drama is set in Savannah, Ga., and follows three families. Robinson’s character is a cunning attorney married to Judge David Harrington, and her convincing portrayal as the villainess makes fans want to go after Robinson in public. “There are very few characters like Veronica: truth tellers, smart, educated, a little bit craycray and also she has an ability as a woman of a certain age to still be sensual,” Robinson told Daniels. “All of that usually doesn’t come in one package in television or in film today.”

Not in the face

FLORIDA COMMUNITY CALENDAR Tampa: A Chat and Chew with community advocate and volunteer Orlando Gudes is 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. March 31 at Beer and Brownies, 2321 W. Waters Ave. More information: Call 813-394-6363. Brandon: The Hillsborough County affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness is offering a free 12week course starting at 6 p.m. April 7 for family members of persons living with mental illness. Site: New Hope United Methodist Church, 121 N. Knights Ave. More information:

support@namihillsborough.org or 813) 273-8104. Fort Lauderdale: The Dillard Center for the Arts and the Old Dillard Museum will present a tribute to poet Langston Hughes at 4 p.m. April 10 featuring the Ron McCurdy Quartet. The concert will be at Dillard High School Auditorium, 2501 NW 11 St. Details: www.olddillardmuseum.org. Orlando: Arsenio Hall and Joe Piscopo will be at Hard Rock Live Orlando on April 15. Miami: Beyonce’s Formation World Tour stops at Marlins Park on April 27 and Raymond James Stadium in Tampa on April 29.

Tampa: Catch Chicago and Earth, Wind & Fire during the Soul Tour 2.0 at the MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre on March 26.

Orlando: Chris Tucker performs March 25 at Hard Rock Live Orlando. The show is at 9 pm.

Coconut Creek: Catch the Commodores at the Seminole Coconut Creek Casino on April 3.

Tampa: The Legends of Southern Hip Hop show is April 23 at the USF Sundome. Performers include Juvenile, Too Short, Trick Daddy along with 8 Ball & MJG.

St. Petersburg: Catch actor and comedian J.B. Smoove at The Palladium on March 26. Cape Coral: Afroman has a number of performances scheduled in Florida, including Dixie Roadhouse on March 31, Port Canaveral’s Millikens Reef on April 2, Café Da Vinci on April 3 in DeLand and State Theatre in St. Petersburg on April 8.

Jacksonville: Jazz performer Najee performs April 9 at the Ritz Theatre. Orlando: A Ladies’ Tea Party takes place April 23 at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, 4851 S. ApopkaVineland Road. The event begins at 1 p.m. RSVP: www.st.lukes.org/tea or call 407-876-4991.

The Jacksonville native and Florida A&M University graduate said she didn’t involve the authorities when a lady approached her one day and smacked her in the back. “This one lady actually hit me,” she revealed. “[They] usually come and yell at me but this one lady came and slapped me. It was in the back,” she clarified about being hit. “When I said slapped me, somebody thought it was in the face. I would’ve been calling the police.” Robinson also explained the incident in a 2015 interview: “It wasn’t really violent. It was just really jarring at the time. This lady just came up to me and slapped me in the back and said, ‘You just going to have to do better.’ I was like, ‘With what?’ ‘With your child, and I said, ‘I don’t have any children.’ I think because of the huge success of reality TV people think they’re real people. It’s scripted.”

B6

MARCH 25 – MARCH 31, 2016

S

B6

FOOD

FAMILY FEATURES

Vegetable casseroles and carrot cake have been Easter menu mainstays for decades, but with the majority of millennials now hosting holiday family gatherings, retro dishes are getting a flavorful facelift with new ingredients and flavor twists. Chef Kevan Vetter of the McCormick Kitchens offers these tips to put a new spin on Easter favorites: • Liven up the Easter ham with a spicy-sweet glaze of apricot jam, pineapple juice and chipotle chili pepper. Brush on a spiral-cut ham before roasting in the oven. • Upgrade a traditional vegetable casserole by sprinkling a layer of cheddar cheese and topping with potato tots. Bake until the tots are crisp and golden brown and the casserole is bubbly. • Combine two classic Easter desserts in one; swirl carrot cake batter into a smooth and creamy cheesecake base with a hint of lemon. Bake and cut into bars. Elevate your holiday meal with these creative updates to Easter classics. For more recipes and tips, check out McCormick.com and visit McCormick Spice on Facebook and Pinterest. APRICOT PINEAPPLE CHIPOTLE GLAZED HAM Prep time: 10 minutes Cook time: 1 hour, 45 minutes Servings: 24 1 bone-in spiral-cut ham, about 10 pounds 1 cup apricot jam 1/2 cup pineapple juice 3/4 teaspoon McCormick Chipotle Chili Pepper 1/2 teaspoon McCormick Garlic Powder Preheat oven to 325°F. Place ham on its side in roasting pan. Mix apricot jam, pineapple juice, chipotle chili pepper and garlic powder in small bowl until well blended. Brush 1/2 of the jam mixture over ham, gently separating slices so mixture can reach middle of ham. Cover loosely with foil. Bake 1 hour, basting occasionally with pan drippings. Remove foil. Brush with remaining jam mixture. Bake 45 minutes longer. Serve ham with pan drippings. CHEESY BROCCOLI CAULIFLOWER TATER-TOPPED CASSEROLE Prep time: 20 minutes Cook time: 55 minutes Servings: 14 1 package (16 ounces) frozen broccoli florets, thawed 1 package (16 ounces) frozen cauliflower florets, thawed 2 tablespoons butter 1 cup chopped onion 2 tablespoons flour 1 teaspoon McCormick Perfect Pinch Italian Seasoning 1 teaspoon McCormick Garlic Salt 1/4 teaspoon McCormick Coarse Ground Black Pepper 1 1/4 cups milk 4 ounces (1/2 package) cream cheese, cubed 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese 2 cups shredded sharp Cheddar cheese 1 pound frozen fried potato tots Preheat oven to 400°F. Cut up any large broccoli or cauliflower florets into bite-size pieces. Set aside. Melt butter in large skillet on medium heat. Add onion; cook and stir about 5 minutes or until tender. Stir in flour, Italian seasoning, garlic salt and pepper. Add milk; cook and stir until thickened and bubbly. Add cream cheese and Parmesan cheese; cook and stir until cream cheese is melted. Add vegetables; toss gently to coat. Spoon into 2-quart baking dish. Sprinkle evenly with Cheddar cheese and top with potato tots. Bake 45 to 55 minutes or until heated through and potato tots are golden brown and crispy.

MARCH 25 – MARCH 31, 2016

TOJ

CARROT CAKE SWIRLED CREAM CHEESE BARS Prep time: 15 minutes Cook time: 40 minutes Servings: 24 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour, divided 2 cups sugar, divided 1 1/2 teaspoons McCormick Ground Cinnamon 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon McCormick Ground Nutmeg 1/4 teaspoon salt 2/3 cup vegetable oil 4 eggs, divided 2 teaspoons McCormick Pure Vanilla Extract 1 1/2 cups finely grated carrots 3 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese, softened 1/4 cup milk 1 teaspoon McCormick Pure Lemon Extract Preheat oven to 325°F. Mix 1 cup each of flour and sugar, cinnamon, baking soda, nutmeg and salt in large bowl. Add oil, 2 eggs, vanilla extract and carrots; mix well. Spread 1/2 of the batter into greased and floured 13x9-inch baking pan. Reserve remaining batter. Set aside. Beat cream cheese and remaining 1 cup sugar in another large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended. Add milk, remaining 2 tablespoons flour and lemon extract; beat until well blended. Add remaining 2 eggs, 1 at a time, beating on low speed after each addition just until blended. Drop spoonfuls of cream cheese mixture and reserved carrot cake batter, alternately, over carrot cake batter in pan. Cut through several times with knife for marble effect. Bake 40 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan on wire rack.

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