Florida Courier - May 13, 2016

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MAY 13 – MAY 19, 2016

VOLUME 24 NO. 20

FIVE QUESTIONS The state’s top health care professional, Dr. Celeste Philip, speaks about the Zika virus, how the state tracks HIV/AIDS, and children’s medical care in Florida.

BY MARGIE MENZEL THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

TALLAHASSEE – Celeste Philip has been Florida’s interim surgeon general and secretary of the Department of Health since March, after the Legislature adjourned without confirming her predecessor, Dr. John Armstrong.

The hard-fought battle over Armstrong’s confirmation touched on a wide range of issues in which lawmakers questioned

cused in her new the department’s performance, role on respondincluding a sharp drop in paing to lawmaktient visits to county health deers’ concerns and partments and the state’s highto an outbreak est-in-the-nation rate of new of the Zika virus, HIV infections. Another controwhich the federal versy centered on changes in Centers for Disthe Children’s Medical Services ease Control and program, which provides care Dr. Celeste Prevention has to kids with chronic and serious Philip linked to severe conditions. birth defects.

Philip – who had been depuPhilip has been at the DepartJEFFREY ARGUEDAS/EFE VIA ZUMA PRESS ty secretary for health and depment of Health for eight years.

A mosquito from the genus Aedes can carry the Zika virus, which is uty state health officer for Children’s Medical Services – has foSee QUESTIONS, Page A2 now considered to be a major health threat to Florida.

Leaders inducted into Civil Rights Hall of Fame

FLORIDA COURIER / 10TH STATEWIDE ANNIVERSARY

Lake Okeechobee and maltreatment of Haitian immigrants

THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

Two civil rights leaders and Florida’s first Black Cabinet member since Reconstruction were inducted Wednesday into the Florida Civil Rights Hall of Earl Fame.

Johnson The late civil rights leaders Earl Johnson, Rutledge Pearson and Jesse McCrary, an attorney who was appointed secretary of state in 1978 by then-Gov. Reubin Askew, were honored during a cerRutledge emony at the CapPearson itol.

As a student at Florida A&M University, McCrary organized sit-ins against racial discrimination in Tallahassee.

Johnson, an attorney, was the first African-AmeriJesse can member of the McCrary Jacksonville Bar Association and represented many civil rights activists, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Pearson, a teacher, was the former president of the Florida State Conference of the NAACP. His son, Rutledge Pearson Jr. accepted the award for his father and said everyone has a role in continuing the progress of ensuring civil rights.

“People are just people,” he said.

“Ignorance has no color, and we all need to believe that if we all work together regardless of race, regardless of political affiliation, this world would be a better place.”

The Florida Civil Rights Hall of Fame was created in 2010 and now includes 15 members.

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The war in Iraq remains unpopular among Blacks, which is reflected by the decline in American-Americans entering the military

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PHOTO COURTESY OF SOUTH FLORIDA WATER MANAGEMENT DISTRICT

For more than 70 years, the earthen Herbert Hoover Dike around Lake Okeechobee has been South Florida’s only protection against catastrophic lake flooding. Engineers say that without drastic action, it’s only a matter of time before the dike fails.

FROM STAFF REPORTS

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OSBORNE

The fear is clearly expressed in black and white; in both fiction, such as Zora Neal Hurston’s classic novel, and in the South Florida Water Management District’s nonfictional technical evaluation of Lake Okeechobee’s Herbert Hoover Dike.

The bottom line: all of us who live in the vicinity of Lake Okeechobee, including Florida residents as far south as Miami, are living on bor-

rowed time. Why? Because Hoover Dike was never built as a permanent ‘wall’ holding Lake Okeechobee within its borders.

Engineers say it is not a dam, built with the level of structural integrity as is Nevada’s Hoover Dam, which holds back the Colorado River.

The distinction between a dam and a levee is crucial. Hoover Dike is a close cousin of New Orleans’ levees; the results of a hurricane could be identical.

Latest report is sobering Early this year, the South Florida Water Management District authorized an independent technical review of the stability and safety of the Herbert Hoover Dike. An expert review panel was made up primarily of engineers with expertise in construction and in the study of the movement of fluids, including water.

The panel concluded that the obvious and hidden deterioration of

The Florida Courier begins a series of articles focusing on Florida’s Haitian community and the disparate treatment of Haitian immigrants.

WAURINGE

COMPILED FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

Since the March 20, 2003 invasion of Iraq, nearly 250 Black men and women in the U.S. military have died in the war, according to U.S. Department of Defense figures released in March.

The number of Black deaths account for roughly 10 percent of the total. A majority of the war deaths, 74 percent, have been among Whites.

As the number of war deaths climbs, the number of Blacks entering the military continues to decline, according to a recent study by David R. Segal and Mady Wechsler Segal.

“The decline in AfricanAmerican military enlistments during the first five years of the 21st century has been striking.

Their enlistments have declined from 20 percent in 2000 to about 15 percent today – the level African-Americans were enlisting in the military in the first year of the volunteer force and a low for the all-volunteer era. This trend has been particularly true for the Army, where African-American enlistments have dropped from 23.5 percent in 2000 to 14 percent, exactly the proportion of the American population that is Black,” the report stated.

“It is now three years since the beginning of the war in Iraq. In this period, our men and women have fought bravely and valiantly, and these soldiers and their families have made tremendous sacrifices,” U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-FL) of Miami told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

Meek said a variety of factors are Please see SALUTE, Page A2

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Cloudy to partly cloudy most of the week throughout the state with chance of some T-storms in Southeast Florida.

Temperatures will range in upper 80’s to low 90’s

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In this 1995 photo, Haitian refugees are ‘detained’ at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the same prison camp that now holds some of the world’s worst terrorists, according to the U.S. government.

BY TONEY ATKINS FLORIDA COURIER

While lawmakers in Washington, DC, are making much ado about the illegal immigration situation at the United States-Mexico border, the disparity in policy involving immigrants from Haiti is virtually being ignored.

That's the view of a reliable source who is active in economic development in Little Haiti in South Florida. He asked to remain anonymous because he said he prefers to be low-key in his work in the community.

Little Haiti is an unincorporated neighborhood in Miami. To a large extent, Haitian culture survives there. It is one of the poorest areas in Miami.

“Why are Mexicans getting all the attention and no one mentions Haiti?” he asked. “What is it about Haiti that Americans are so afraid of?”

He said he firmly believes that illegal Mexican immigrants are taking Black people's jobs -- work that he says most White Americans won't do, especially jobs which support service industries.

“It's a squeeze-play on our community. What are you (the lawmakers) doing to the people?” he said.

The source noted that the U.S. discourages Haitians from coming to this country, and he doesn't know or even remotely understand why. In the telephone interview, he pointed to the “rich heritage” that Haitians and AfricanAmericans have given to America, even before the Revolutionary War.

‘Wet foot-dry foot’ unfair A major disparity in U.S. immigration laws can be found in the “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy, he

ALSO INSIDE

said. “If caught before reaching shore, you're sent back or put into a ‘Krome home’,” he said.

‘Krome’ refers to Krome Detention Center, the notorious prison facility in the far reaches of southwest Miami-Dade County where thousands of illegal immigrants are held, sometimes for years, while their individual cases are resolved.

Most Cubans who have come to the U.S. and set foot on dry land are usually allowed to stay in the country, but that is not always the case with Haitians immigrants, he said. Illegals crossing from Mexico don't have to be concerned about that issue because there is no water to cross, although they likely will be arrested and sent back if they are caught.

“When a Haitian takes a boat through shark-infested waters to get to America, don't you think they want to succeed?” he asked, challenging the stereotyped argument that most of the immigrants come here with a criminal desires in mind.

The disparity is “not what America is made of,” he said.

“The policy should be the same for everyone.”

The source added, “Illegals have a passion for work (and) they're willing to work overtime,” even though the pay scale is low. He asserted that “Haitians in the U.S. provide oxygen for Haiti (by) sending $1 billion back to Haiti” in economic aid to their families.

“If we can give Haiti equal treatment, we can use that treatment for a positive relationship,” he said. “However, Haitians get treated differently than anyone else.”

He said that members of the Black Congressional Caucus “need to take Haitian immigration as an issue.”

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Haitians vs. Cubans, Mexicans: There is a difference VILORIA

Parks pack wild rides this summer

Haitian population, influence underestimated?

Immigration measures moving forward

Haitians make up the second largest voting bloc in the Miami area, he said, noting that half the Haitians in the state -- about 200,000 -- live between Port St. Lucie and the southern part of Florida. He said at least 100,000 Haitians live and work in the Orlando-Central Florida area.

Politicians should take note of this population, especially with the 2006 election season starting to kick into gear. The source said he is urging Haitians and all Americans of African descent to be heavily involved in the election process and to ask tough questions -- particularly about the immigration issue -- to anyone seeking political power.

“We want action, not promises,” he said.

The U.S. government recently issued regulations to implement the Victims Trafficking and Violence Prevention Act of 2000, which allowed up to 5,000 victims of illegal immigrant trafficking a year to remain in the United States if they could persuade immigration authorities they would face “extreme hardship involving unusual and severe harm” if returned to their native countries after cooperating with U.S. authorities to prosecute their smugglers.

After three years, victims can apply to remain in the U.S. permanently and apply to have their spouses and children join them in the United States, according to those reg-

ulations. Applicants under 21 may ask to have their parents join them.

The U.S. Department of Justice had estimated that 50,000 women and children are trafficked into the U.S. annually for use in “slaverylike situations such as forced prostitution.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the Senate cleared the way Wednesday for final passage of a bill that calls for tougher border security as well as a chance at citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants, according to the Associated Press.

The vote to limit debate on the measure was 73-25, 13 more than the 60 needed.

The outcome was not a surprise, and even some of the bill's opponents said they were satisfied they had been given ample opportunity during the past weeks to try to give the bill a more conservative cast.

Final passage would set the stage for a difficult negotiation with the House, which passed legislation last year that exposes all illegal immigrants to criminal felony charges.

2006 TOM JOYNER FANTASTIC VOYAGE: READY TO SET SAIL

Off to ‘sea’ the wizard, on a cruise ship from Miami

Big Green money Marijuana industry holds trade show

BY DARA KAM THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

KISSIMMEE –There wasn’t a tiedyed shirt to be found this week at a gathering in Central Florida where the buzz was all about the business of pot.

More than 3,000 people from across the nation and seven other countries swapped information about grow lights, soil nutrients and safes to stash money and products at the marijuana industry’s premiere trade show. And the choice of Florida for the event was no accident.

“We’re here in Florida, because at all of our national events that we’ve hosted, we’ve had very strong attendance out of Florida. We are confident that when, and it’s not going to be an if, when Florida legalizes marijuana on a medical or a recreational level, the Florida market is going to be absolutely huge,” said Marijuana Business Daily CEO Cassandra Farrington, whose publication organized the three-day convention at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center.

On the ballot For the second time in two years, Floridians in November will have a chance to legalize medical marijuana for a variety of debilitating illnesses. A similar measure narrowly failed in 2014 to capture the 60 percent support required to pass constitutional amendments. “(Florida) is going to be a bellwether state, not only in the Southeast, but across the country, for marijuana legalization,” Farrington said. “As such, the business opportunities here are accordingly very, very large.”

While Florida’s emerging market – projected to be home to the secondlargest population of marijuana consumers, if the measure passes – was a draw for some of the convention attendees, for others the event was just an opportunity to network and scope out the latest equipment and merchandise in what some experts estimate is a $4 billion-a-year industry.

Different product

REACH MEDIA

The Tom Joyner Morning Show crew including, from left, Miss Dupree, Tom Joyner, J. Anthony Brown, and Sybil Wilkes, join thousands of their closest friends for the 2006 Tom Joyner Fantastic Voyage, leaving Saturday from Miami on Royal Caribbean’s Navigator of the Seas. You can read day-by-day reviews of the cruise in future issues of the Florida Courier.

For cruise reviews and pictures from the 2005 cruise, go to www.flcourier.com.

SPORTS | LADY RATTLERS OUT OF NCAA REGIONAL SOFTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP | B6 EDITORIALS | HURRICANES AND POLITICAL CROSS-DRESSING IN BIG EASY | A5

Ten years ago, the Florida Courier warned about lack of maintenance that increases the possibility of Lake Okeechobee flooding, and examined the disparate legal treatment that Haitian immigrants to America still endure.

And while the parties and after-parties were reminiscent of any other convention or trade show, the hosts, vendors and attendees were all mindful that the product that is the focus of this week’s event is different. While Florida is one of 24 states that have legalized some sort of marijuana, cannabis is still outlawed under federal law.

“The use, distribution or sale of any products containing THC is strictly prohibited at the event, in the exhibit hall, conference sessions or any other function space where the event is conducted,” the convention show guide warned. “Any individual who possesses, transports, or consumes any THCbased products is solely responsible See MONEY, Page A2

COMMENTARY: CHARLES W. CHERRY II: RANDOM THOUGHTS OF A FREE BLACK MIND | A4 HEALTH: MEDICATION MISTAKES COMMON FOR PATIENTS DISCHARGED FROM HOSPITAL | B3

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MAY 13 – MAY 19, 2016

The ‘n-word’ police were at it again If you waste your time reading posts and comments by idiots on the Internet, you would be aware that many people went sort of crazy when a Black comedian, Larry Wilmore, spoke at the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner.

Wilmore followed President Obama’s comedic speech with his own dialogue directed at correspondents and at Americans at large. Wilmore’s comments clearly troubled some media members of the usually drunk and festive gathering of journalists, broadcasters, media moguls and politicians.

His final words at the event went viral when he ended by calling President Obama “…Barry, my nigger!”

LUCIUS GANTT THE GANTT REPORT

Surprised, not offended Well, the n-word police officers went ballistic! The president looked surprised but to me, he didn’t look offended. And I wasn’t offended either!

Why? Because I’m smart enough to know that most Americans, of all races, have used the word before.

Some have said it in public.

Many more have said it in the comfort of their own homes, in front of their young and impressionable children, and certain-

ly in conversations with their friends that use the n-word too!

You see, sometimes the use of the n-word depends on who you are and, to a lesser extent, where you are.

So-called scholars like Randall Kennedy, a Black man, can say “nigger.” He wrote the book “NIGGER: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word.” Kennedy, a graduate of Princeton and Yale, penned the book about the origins and use of the word “nigger” and laughed all the way to the bank, as his book sold hundreds of thousands of copies and rose to become a bestseller on the New York Times list of nonfiction books.

Entertainers like director Quentin Jerome Tarantino can’t seem to make a single movie without using the n-word he likes so much. Don’t act like you haven’t seen “Django Unchained” or “Hateful Eight!”

Got money?

Black people with a bankroll

can say “nigger.” If you can make yourself money and make White people even more money, you can pretty much say what you want.

My favorite rapper, Ice Cube, can say “nigger,” even though these days he is careful who he says it to. Ice Cube rose to fame as a member of “NWA” (Niggaz With Attitudes).

I don’t have to tell you the many other highly-paid rappers, comedians, actors and entertainers that use the n-word without worry.

Even though Fox News and other White House correspondents get upset when Blacks use the word, those same correspondents should get mad at themselves.

Those Black, White and Brown media clowns say something negative or use a derogatory description about Black people every day!

If it is bad to say “nigger,” why is it good to freely talk about “jiggaboo,” “darkie,” or “Sambo?” Why

can some commentators freely use the word “voodoo” to negatively describe something such as “voodoo economics?”

Those same media experts that chastised Larry Wilmore wouldn’t go to sleep and dream about describing a cheap market selling cheap products as a “Jew Store”!

Say what you want As long as you don’t have a hateful heart or a racist mind, you can pretty much say what you want to as long as you are careful when and where you say volatile or provocative words.

What you say doesn’t bother me, and I hope what I write doesn’t bother you, my n-words!

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

Voucher opponents ask to reinstate lawsuit

BY BRANDON LARRABEE THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

tial scholarship in the 2016-17 school year

TALLAHASSEE – Lawyers for opponents of the state’s de facto school-voucher program asked an appeals court Tuesday to reinstate a lawsuit against the system, saying they had the right to bring the case under the Florida Constitution.

But a three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal, which is reviewing a lower court decision that threw out the nearly two-year-old lawsuit, seemed skeptical of arguments that challengers like the state’s largest teachers’ union had the “standing” needed for the lawsuit to go forward.

Last year, Leon County Circuit Judge George Reynolds dismissed the case, saying the tax credits were different than a decision by the Legislature to direct public money into vouchers.

‘Wrong side’

Likely to agree During Tuesday’s hearing, some of the appeals-court judges seemed inclined to go along with that reasoning.

Supporters of the scholarships point to the fact that the program helps low-income Floridians afford private educations that might be best for individual children, though lawmakers approved legislation in 2014 that would allow for a family of four earning up to $63,050 to be eligible for at least a par-

QUESTIONS from A1

Her experience includes stints as interim director for three county health departments and as interim bureau chief of the department’s Bureau of Communicable Diseases.

Q: Seven pregnant Floridians have tested positive for the Zika virus. How urgent is the situation?

PHILIP: What we’ve been most concerned about with Zika is the fact that it’s a new virus that we don’t know as much about as other arboviruses, which are viruses that are transmitted by mosquitoes. What the CDC has come out with recently that is, I think, the priority for all of us that are trying to prevent the spread is that Zika is now linked definitively with congenital malformations.

Microcephaly (a rare condition in which an infant’s head is significantly smaller than expected) is the most prominent neurological deficit that they’ve seen, but apparently there are others as well that they’re trying to understand better. So for pregnant women, for families that are planning to grow their family, it is extremely concerning.

Right now, all of our cases are travel-related, meaning someone went to another country, they were infected there, came back home. We have not seen local transmission yet.

However, we want people to be aware of how they play a role with mosquito control, period, because there are lots of concerns with mosquitoes. We’re talking about Zika now, but we had chikungunya (virus) recent-

Supporters of the system continued to push for the organizations challenging the program to abandon the suit. A group of African-American ministers said they had gathered more than 5,000 signatures on a petition asking the NAACP to drop out of the effort.

The Rev. R.B. Holmes, pastor of Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Tallahassee – which operates Bethel Christian Academy – emphasized that he was a member of the NAACP. “But my great organization is on the wrong side of history on this,” Holmes said.

Can’t win on merits Florida Education Association President Joanne McCall said the increasing pressure on the union and its allies was a sign of concern from scholarship supporters about what would happen if opponents got their day in court.

“I believe that’s what all the hoopla is about trying to have me drop the suit, #DropTheSuit and all of the ads that are going out there – it’s because they don’t believe that they can win on the merits of this case,” she said.

ly, and we had an outbreak of dengue in 2013 in Martin County and in 2008-2009 in the Keys.

There have been lots of discussions about federal funding, what it could be used for. In our state, we would be considered high priority, because when you look at the prevalence of these mosquitoes, where they’re most likely to be found – which then makes you at higher risk for having local transmission – Florida is one of the top states.

We would look at any additional funding to enhance ongoing mosquito-control efforts.

Depending on how much rain we get – because it is associated with precipitation – that might change the level of staffing that we need to go out and keep an eye on certain communities…

For those areas that are prone to flooding, for example, we might need additional people to be on the ground, assessing, treating if necessary.

Q: The Department of Health is under fire from members of Florida’s congressional delegation for taking roughly 25 percent of the state’s HIV cases off the books. Can you explain the department’s position?

PHILIP: Whenever there is a newer process introduced into a program or a system that’s been around for some time, it can be confusing. The Routine Interstate Duplicate Review, or RIDR process, is something that the department’s been working with the CDC (on) for about four or five years. There has been emphasis on making sure states have good information, good data, and why it is important to understand where a person was first diagnosed versus where they’re currently living, so we can look at resources, look at risk factors and better allocate our attention and

Marijuana is expected to be a big legal business in Florida in the near future.

RANDALL BENTON/ SACRAMENTO BEE/TNS

MONEY

‘Huge market’

for his/her compliance with local and state regulations.”

Florida legalized non-euphoric cannabis for patients with severe muscle spasms or cancer two years ago, but the products aren’t available yet. This year, lawmakers approved fullstrength cannabis for terminally ill patients.

But the November ballot’s Amendment 2, largely bankrolled by Orlando trial lawyer John Morgan, would vastly expand medical marijuana for patients with a broad array of diseases. Morgan addressed the convention Tuesday.

“Your market is huge and the demographics are so perfect for cannabis,” said Sara Batterby, president and CEO of Hifi Farms in Hillsborough, Ore., who left her Silicon Valley job as a venture capitalist to start up a grow operation.

Baby boomers and seniors who may have experimented with pot “back in the day” might be more amenable to using cannabis as a treatment for ailments as they age, backers of ballot initiatives like Amendment 2 believe.

A poll released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University showed that 80 percent of Florida’s voters support the proposed constitutional amendment, which would allow medical marijuana for patients with a wide range of conditions, such as cancer, AIDS,

our activities around where it’s needed the most.

Understanding that there was some confusion, the department has created a new page on its website to walk through that process. The information that CDC sends us – or the people that may have labs or different visits in different states – we then go through a process so that we understand where the appropriate assignment is, if you will, for diagnosis.

So this process, which is ongoing, is part of the reason why the numbers will change, because some people will be reassigned to a different state. Others may be in a different category, so that incidence – which is when a person is first diagnosed – that’s why some of those numbers may change. So we have the web site to walk people through that process.

We also want to talk about everyone who is living with HIV, and that includes people who don’t know yet that they have this virus, that they should be tested.

So the department has focused efforts on making sure we understand where we may have communities where there are higher risks for people to not know, and focus our testing there.

So in one sense, saying that we have the highest number of new cases shows that we are targeting the right people, because once people are diagnosed, they know that they’re positive, we can get them into care, get them the appropriate treatments, get their viral loads down to an undetectable level, and they can live long, productive lives. And that’s why we say “treatment is prevention,” because if we can get people diagnosed and treated, they can live long lives. And then they are not likely to transmit the virus to partners.

Q: You’re touring the county

health departments, which were also a focal point of Armstrong’s confirmation fight. Senators were concerned that visits to the county health departments had fallen by 200,000 since 2012. What did you hear from the county health departments about those reductions and potentially their connection to the HIV rate?

PHILIP: In most situations, if there were a transition with (a Federally Qualified Health Center) or a primary-care clinic, there’s been a partner who’s been interested, who has taken over those services, there’s been a transition plan in place. I have gone to these meetings saying that everything is on the table for discussion. There are some communities that want to revisit plans, and that’s exactly appropriate, that’s what we’re here to talk about, that’s why we’re having these meetings.

Going back to the HIV point, I really believe that we’re testing appropriately to get people into care, and that process is important for us to identify everyone who should be receiving medication, be aware of what they need to take care of themselves.

We don’t want more people to have HIV, but if they’ve contracted the virus, we want them to know and get into treatment.

And once we see our numbers of people with undetectable viral loads go up, then we will see a true decrease in transmission. So we’re on that pathway.

Q: Did you get any feedback from local health officials who thought more people should be visiting the county health departments?

PHILIP: What I said to all of the health officers in the meetings was, “If you identify a need, let’s use our data to tell our story.

Let’s then put together a proposal

from A1

Crohn’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis.

Wellness, cash Dixie Elixirs CEO Tripp Keber, called by some the “Gordon Gecko of the marijuana industry,” refers to his products as “a new wellness platform” superior to prescription pain pills or alcohol.

The industry creates jobs, helps sick people and puts money into state coffers, said Keber a developer from Alabama who launched his Colorado-based company six years ago and is now operating in six states.

Keber’s company will join forces with one of the six nurseries licensed to grow medical marijuana in Florida, he told The News Service of Florida this week.

“The fact of the matter is that the money is real,” Keber said.

for – if it’s people, if it’s a certain type of expertise, some things we get through contracts – let’s look at what that full picture is and then we can move forward.” So I haven’t gotten any specific requests yet, but everyone is aware of what they can do to address any of those kinds of issues.

Q: Will the department directly notify the families of the 13,000 kids who lost their eligibility for Children’s Medical Services last year that they can be rescreened?

PHILIP: We want to make sure we look at all of our options.

There are some challenges with a direct reach-out, so we’re looking at other ways that we can get there.

I think the bigger picture – when I talk to a lot of our experts who are known not just in the state but nationally, and when you talk to leading groups like the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs – we’re seeing a lot of change in health care in general, in how we finance health care.

Nothing gets done without being paid for, so how can we be strategic as a state to understand what is coming, what is being discussed, and create a system of care for children with special health-care needs that positions us to maximize resources that are coming in, because it will be a different framework for payments – to make sure that those kids are getting quality care, that we have the provider networks in place to provide all the services that they need.

So there are very large questions that we need to look at together to figure out the right model for the state and for these kids.

MAY 13 – MAY 19, 2016

FLORIDA

A3

Miami judge: State’s death penalty is unconstitutional

BY DAVID OVALLE MIAMI HERALD TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

MIAMI — A MiamiDade judge has ruled that

Florida’s death penalty is unconstitutional because jurors are not required to agree unanimously on execution — a ruling that will add to the ongoing legal debate over Florida’s capi-

tal punishment system.

Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch on Monday issued the ruling in the case of Karon Gaiter, who is awaiting trial for first-degree murder.

Hirsch wrote that Florida’s recently enacted “super majority” system — 10 of 12 juror votes are needed to impose execution as punishment for murder — goes against the long-time

sanctity of unanimous verdicts in the U.S. justice system.

“A decedent cannot be more or less dead. An expectant mother cannot be more or less pregnant,”

he wrote. “And a jury cannot be more or less unanimous. Every verdict in every criminal case in Florida requires the concurrence, not of some, not of most, but of all jurors — every single one of them.”

Power of jurors

Food costs are up, but energy costs are down.

Hirsch’s order comes with Florida’s controversial death penalty law remains very much in flux.

In January, in the case of Timothy Lee Hurst, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the state’s death sentencing system unconstitutional because it gave too little power to juries.

For decades, jurors only issued majority recommendations, with judges ultimately imposing the death penalty.

The high court, however, did not rule on the unanimity question. Except for Alabama and Florida, all other states that have the death penalty require a unanimous jury verdict to impose the death sentence.

Last week, the Florida Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Hurst case, with critics of the law arguing that all 390 Death Row inmates should get life sentences because they were sentenced under a flawed system.

‘Question of justice’ After the Hurst case was decided in January, Florida lawmakers were forced to fix the death penalty sentencing scheme. Florida’s new law requires juries to unanimously vote for every reason, known as aggravating factors, that a defendant might merit a death sentence.

Whether to actually impose the death sentence requires 10 of 12 jurors.

“All of these changes inure to the benefit of the defendant,” Assistant State Attorney Penny Brill wrote in a motion in the Gaiter case earlier this year.

“These requirements render Florida’s system constitutional under the United States Supreme Court’s precedents.”

Judge Hirsch, in his order, said the fixes don’t matter.

“Arithmetically the difference between 12 and 10 is slight,” Hirsch wrote.

“But the question before me is not a question of arithmetic. It is a question of constitutional law. It is a question of justice.”

Fullwood trial delayed; another opponent emerges THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

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A federal judge Monday agreed to push back the start of state Rep. Reggie Fullwood’s trial on wirefraud and tax charges, after the Jacksonville Democrat›s attorney pointed to «relatively voluminous» information in the case.

Federal prosecutors announced last month that Fullwood, a three-term lawmaker, had been indicted on 10 counts of wire fraud and four counts of failure to file federal income-tax returns for 2010 through 2013.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard said the case had been set on the June trial calendar but is continued to an August term.

Fullwood has filed to run for re-election in Duval County’s House District 13, and a primary – if needed – will be held Aug. 30. On Monday, a second Republican candidate, David Lee Robertson, filed paperwork to run for the seat. Another Republican, Darren Gardner, opened a campaign account last week.

EDITORIAL

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MAY 13 – MAY 19, 2016

The life and death of a classic ‘Morehouse Man’ Editor’s note: Florida Courier Publisher Charles W. Cherry II eulogized his longtime friend, Dr. Frederick Vincent Miller, during a memorial service at Church by the Glades in Coral Springs, Fla., on May 7.

Today, I will briefly tell you how Fred Miller became the classic Morehouse man described by former college President Dr. Robert Franklin as “well-read, well-traveled, well-spoken, welldressed, and wellbalanced.’

Influence No. 1: Being born in 1956 in Atlanta, Georgia, the tip of the spear of the emerging civil rights movement, Dr. Frederick and being raised there. His mother, Miller Mrs. Lydia Miller, was the church clerk of West Hunter Street Baptist Church, where Dr. Ralph David Abernathy was the pastor. His father, Mr. Earl Miller, Sr., was on the church’s deacon board. Dr. Abernathy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., were both young preachers and best friends in Atlanta who became the local leaders of a movement that started in Atlanta and became internationalized. Fred’s childhood church was at the movement’s epicenter.

Influence No. 2: Attending Morehouse College, the Mecca of Black manhood on Planet Earth.

What President Wilson didn’t tell you was that it’s been said among many in Black America that “You can tell a Morehouse Man, but you can’t tell him anything.”

Morehouse Men, as we refer to ourselves, call Harvard University “the Morehouse of the North.”

With that kind of institutional legacy, cultural self-confidence, and constructive academic and social competition that’s in the very DNA of Morehouse College, Fred Miller was born to be a Morehouse man.

Influence No. 3: Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. Morehouse’s Psi Chapter has a reputation as being the one of the best of the best of a fraternity built upon the principals of manhood, scholarship, perseverance, uplift, friendship, and fearlessness. Our motto is “Friendship is essential to the soul.” During our Morehouse years, pledging Omega with Fred was no different than Marine Corps boot camp or Navy SEAL training – except that pledging Omega was tougher.

Influence No. 4: A full year of international study. During 197677, his junior year at Morehouse, Fred won a prestigious Merrill Scholarship which paid for a year of international study in Vienna, Austria. He and Omari Young, our Morehouse classmate, stayed in a one-room apartment and lived off oranges, water chestnuts, roasted potatoes, peanuts, cheese, wheat bread, Stevie Wonder cassette tapes, Alpine tap water, and some other “stuff” that would help you forget that you were hungry, according to Omari.

Fred traveled to Germany, Ita-

me in the days before he became completely incapacitated was “Chuck, what are your goals?”

During the conversation, he mentioned he was building his chiropractic franchises as his legacy to his sons Harrison and Sterling.

I’ll go to my seat by paraphrasing the words of Morehouse College alumnus Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from his sermon entitled “Unfulfilled Dreams” delivered in Atlanta on March 3, 1968; a month before he was murdered.

Dr. King cites the eighth chapter of First Kings, which reads, “And it was in the heart of David my father to build a house for the name of the Lord God of Israel.

And the Lord said unto David my father, ‘Whereas it was in thine heart to build a house unto my name, thou didst well that it was within thine heart.’”

You won’t finish CHAYLA C. CHERRY / FLORIDA COURIER

ly and Sicily, and immersed himself in European cultural experiences. He came back a changed man aware of worldwide possibilities. So the strong, confident personality of the Dr. Frederick V. Miller you know was almost fully formed before the first day of med school.

‘An acquired taste’ Every good thing you read and hear about Fred today is absolute truth. Still, Fred was an acquired taste, and a little of him went a long way for many people.

He was always the smartest guy in the room, at least in his own mind, and had an opinion about everything. If you crossed him or disrespected him, he didn’t forgive and he didn’t forget.

His sense of humor was offbeat, and he was often the only one laughing at his own jokes.

He loved acronyms and abbreviations and to make you guess what he meant. For instance, when we were on the road, he’d text me the letters “GYAD,” which meant, “Get Your Ass Downstairs.”

He was a stickler about being called “Dr. Miller,” because he earned that designation – and because we grew up in a Southern racial culture in which White people of any age were automatically entitled to call all Black people by their first names, without permission, regardless of age or accomplishment. He gave you permission to call him Frederick, and he was never “Fred” to anyone he met after he left Morehouse.

But for his classmates and brothers who admired and respected him, he was easy to love.

He was the hardest-working, most disciplined person I knew, bar none. His loyalty to people he loved knew no bounds.

I called him on June 18, 2004 at 4 a.m., and he was at Hollywood Memorial Hospital within an hour when my son Charles III was born with conditions that caused him to spend the first six

Random thoughts of a free Black mind, v. 277 Glad to be back – A few regular readers were concerned that I haven’t written in this space lately. I’m fine! I’ll be off and on this page as life requires…

No “free” media here – Some have noticed that we have not covered much of the 2016 presidential campaign’s political “horse race” aspects: who was up and down in polls, etc. That’s by design.

In my humble opinion, one of the main reasons Donald Trump is the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee is because he got billions of dollars in what is ironically called “earned media,” primarily on cable networks: Fox,

QUICK TAKES FROM #2: STRAIGHT, NO CHASER

CHARLES W. CHERRY II, ESQ. PUBLISHER

MSNBC, CNN, etc. The networks call it “earned media” because they considered his activities, especially his live campaign rallies, to be “newsworthy,” and thus the coverage is “earned” rather than “paid,” like advertising.

I strongly disagree. I don’t con-

months of his life in a neonatal intensive care unit.

Dr. Frederick V. Miller was his first doctor. So my family is one of thousands that have personally benefited from Fred’s life work.

Alone at the top Bette Midler said, “The worst part of success is trying to find someone who is happy for you.”

After 25 years of corporate upward mobility, I think Fred felt alone at the top, with few people he could fully trust, which is one of the prices that my peer group – what I would call Black America’s biblical “Joshua generation,” – has had to pay for desegregating America.

Fred would have called us “FO-O-Fs”: “The First Black, the One Black, or One of the Few Blacks.”

Most of the Black people my age sitting in the audience here today are FOOFs. They know the burden Fred had to carry as a FOOF in top management of a billion-dollar Wall Street health care firm.

So in January 2015, I got a call from him. He told he was going to be a full-time entrepreneur and wanted some business advice as well as to just hang out.

Many opposites We were opposites in so many ways. He a doctor, me a lawyer.

He was Europe; I am Africa. He liked rigid control; I’m improvisational. As far as time was concerned, he was digital and exact; I’m analog and approximate.

He wore starched shirts and slacks to go to 7-11; I’m typical South Florida dad in a tank top, shorts, and flip-flops. He didn’t believe in gray hair. I’m Mr. Natural.

We sat down and set up mutual rules and protocols. His rules: “No African attire while on the road.

Be on time, or get left behind. In meetings, follow my lead.”

My rules: “I won’t go African,

but you gotta pay to refresh my business wardrobe. This is work, not play or charity. Pay me for the advisory services I render. We use your American Express Black Card for all of this, so make sure your bill is paid on time.”

Our first trip was to Atlanta where he bought me $3,000 worth of clothes, and we hit the road. (I told him “Fred, I feel like a kept woman. I could get used to this!”

By day, I was a strategic business consultant. By night, I was his trusted “wingman” and confidant.

I had two additional “wingman” rules that he had to abide by. No.1: “Respect my judgment.

When I say time to go, we go.” No. 2: “I do all the driving, and we don’t drink and drive.”

Let me rush on to my conclusion.

From January 2015 until his final illness, Fred and I were like MLK and Abernathy, Muhammad Ali and Drew “Bundini” Brown, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, DWade and LeBron James, or Maverick and Goose from “Top Gun.” We traveled on business in the U.S., Central America, the Caribbean, and were working on a China trip for this month.

We learned to sit at booths because we fell off of chairs and barstools from drinking and laughing too hard. I got thrown out of Coral Springs Hospital for making him laugh too much against doctor’s orders. We laughed till we cried more over the past 14 months than either one of us had in the 20 previous years combined.

Words unnecessary But at the same time, we could take refuge in each other, many times in silence and thoughtfulness about our mutual pasts and futures as we approached the age of 60 together. Those moments will sustain me in the days of grief to come as I reflect on 42 years of friendship.

The last question Fred asked

sider any campaign rally worthy of reporting on it just because it happened. I consider Trump’s “earned media” to be “free media” because he didn’t pay for it. The fact the 24-hour networks have hours to fill every day worked to Trump’s celebrity advantage, and he suckered them into giving him literally hours of daily national coverage no other candidate received.

We refuse to do the same thing.

A Trump or Clinton rally (even when Bro. Prez hits the campaign trail) isn’t necessarily worthy of news coverage. We’ll start paying real attention just before absentee ballots are distributed. Otherwise, if any candidate wants guaranteed space in the Florida Courier, buy some ads.

CREDO OF THE BLACK PRESS The Black Press believes that Americans can best lead the world away from racism and national antagonism when it accords to every person, regardless of race, color or creed, full human and legal rights. Hating no person, fearing no person. The Black Press strives to help every person in the firm belief...that all are hurt as long as anyone is held back.

Tragic end It will be dark sometimes.

Fred’s last month was dismal and it was trying. He could barely breathe. The week before he died, his higher brain function was almost completely wiped away due to lack of oxygen. His eyes were open, but they couldn’t see. That wickedly intelligent, detail-oriented, sharp personality we knew and loved was gone.

For Fred, the tribulations did come. But if you have faith in the God that Dr. King is talking about this morning, it doesn’t matter.

For you can stand up amid the storms.

I paraphrase Dr. King and I say this to you out of my experience and his wife Sharon’s experience every day at Fred’s bedside since February.

We know Fred saw the lightning flash. He heard the thunder roll. He felt sin-breakers dashing, trying to conquer his soul. But he heard the voice of Jesus, saying still to fight on.

He promised never to leave Frederick, never to leave him alone. No, never alone. No, never alone. He promised never to leave Frederick alone.

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: DONALD TRUMP AND THE GOP

Contact me at ccherry2@ gmail.com.

Charles W. Cherry II, Esq., Publisher

Opinions expressed on this editorial page are those of the writers, and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of the newspaper or the publisher.

“It was as if to say, “David, you will not be able to finish the temple. But I just want to bless you, because it was within thine heart….

“Your dream will not be fulfilled. The majestic hopes that guided your days will not be carried out. You had the desire to do it; you had the intention to do it; you tried to do it; you started to do it. And I bless you for having the desire and the intention in your heart.

“In the final analysis,” Dr. King preaches, “God does not judge us by the separate incidents or the separate mistakes that we make, but by the total bent of our lives.

In the final analysis, God knows that his children are weak and they are frail. In the final analysis, what God requires is that your heart is right. Salvation isn’t reaching the destination of absolute morality, but it’s being in the process and on the right road.”

Dr. Glenn W. Cherry, Sales Manager

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Dr. Valerie Rawls-Cherry, Human Resources

Charles W. Cherry, Sr. (1928-2004), Founder Julia T. Cherry, Senior Managing Member, Central Florida Communicators Group, LLC Dr. Glenn W. Cherry, Cassandra CherryKittles, Charles W. Cherry II, Managing Members

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MAY 13 – MAY 19, 2016

EDITORIAL

A5

‘You can bend our collective future’ Editor’s note: Here are excerpts from President Obama’s commencement speech deliver to the Class of 2016 at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Some of you were up all night making sure your credits were in order. But you got here. And you’ve all worked hard to reach this day.

You’ve shuttled between challenging classes and Greek life.

You’ve led clubs, played an instrument or a sport. You volunteered, you interned. You held down one, two, maybe three jobs.

The “Howard Hustle” has strengthened your sense of purpose and ambition.

BARACK OBAMA PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Today, former Bull Michael Jordan isn’t just the greatest basketball player of all time – he owns the team. When I was graduating, the main Black hero on TV was Mr. T. Rap and hip hop were counterculture, underground. Now, Shonda Rhimes owns Thursday night, and Beyoncé runs the world.

We’re no longer only entertainers, we’re producers, studio executives. No longer small business owners – we’re CEOs, we’re mayPart of history ors, representatives, presidents of Which means you’re part of a the United States. long line of Howard graduates.

That spirit of achievement and Not perfect special responsibility has defined I am not saying gaps do not perthis campus ever since the Freedman’s Bureau established Howard sist. Obviously, they do.

But I wanted to start, Class of just four years after the Emancipation Proclamation; just two years 2016, by opening your eyes to the after the Civil War came to an end. moment that you are in. If you They created this university had to choose one moment in hiswith a vision – a vision of uplift; a tory in which you could be born, vision for an America where our and you didn’t know ahead of fates would be determined not by time who you were going to be – our race, gender, religion or creed, what nationality, what gender, but where we would be free – in what race, whether you’d be rich every sense – to pursue our indi- or poor, gay or straight, what faith you’d be born into – you wouldn’t vidual and collective dreams.

It is that spirit that’s made How- choose 100 years ago. You’d ard a centerpiece of African- choose right now. If you had to American intellectual life and a choose a time to be, in the words central part of our larger Amer- of Lorraine Hansberry, “young, ican story. This institution has gifted, and Black” in America, you been the home of many firsts: would choose right now.

I tell you all this because it’s imThe first Black Nobel Peace Prize winner. The first Black Supreme portant to note progress. Because to deny how far we’ve come would Court justice.

But its mission has been to en- do a disservice to the cause of jussure those firsts were not the last. tice, to the legions of foot soldiers; Countless scholars, profession- to not only the incredibly accomals, artists, and leaders from ev- plished individuals who have alery field received their training ready been mentioned, but your here. The generations of men and mothers and your dads, and women who walked through this grandparents and great grandparyard helped reform our govern- ents, who marched and toiled and ment, cure disease, grow a Black suffered and overcame to make middle class, advance civil rights, this day possible.

I tell you this not to lull you into shape our culture. The seeds of change – for all Americans – were complacency, but to spur you insown here. And that’s what I want to action – because there’s still so much more work to do, so many to talk about today. more miles to travel. And America needs you to gladly, happily take America is better up that work. You all have some I graduated in 1983. New York work to do. So enjoy the party, beCity, America’s largest city, where cause you’re going to be busy.

I lived at the time, had endured a decade marked by crime and deterioration and near bankrupt- Gaps remain There are folks of all races who cy. And many cities were in similar shape. Our nation had gone are still hurting – who still can’t through years of economic stag- find work that pays enough to nation, the stranglehold of foreign keep the lights on, who still can’t oil, a recession where unemploy- save for retirement. We’ve still got a big racial gap in economic ment nearly scraped 11 percent.

Since that year – since the year opportunity. The overall unemI graduated – the poverty rate is ployment rate is 5 percent, but the down. Americans with college de- Black unemployment rate is algrees, that rate is up. Crime rates most nine.

We’ve still got an achievement are down. America’s cities have undergone a renaissance. There gap when Black boys and girls are more women in the workforce. graduate high school and college They’re earning more money. at lower rates than White boys We’ve cut teen pregnancy in half. and White girls. We’ve still got a We’ve slashed the African-Ameri- gender gap when a Black woman can dropout rate by almost 60 per- working full-time still earns just 66 cent, and all of you have a com- percent of what a White man gets puter in your pocket that gives you paid.

We’ve got a justice gap when too the world at the touch of a button.

In 1983, I was part of fewer than many Black boys and girls pass 10 percent of African-Americans through a pipeline from underwho graduated with a bachelor’s funded schools to overcrowded degree. Today, you’re part of the jails. This is one area where things more than 20 percent who will. have gotten worse. When I was in And more than half of Blacks say college, about half a million peowe’re better off than our parents ple in America were behind bars. were at our age – and that our kids Today, there are about 2.2 million. will be better off, too. So America Black men are about six times likelier to be in prison right now is better. than White men.

Around the world, we’ve still Global improvements got challenges to solve that threatAnd the world is better, too. In en everybody in the 21st century – just the past 16 years, we’ve come old scourges like disease and confrom a world without marriage flict, but also new challenges, from equality to one where it’s a realterrorism and climate change. ity in nearly two dozen countries.

Around the world, more people live in democracies. We’ve lifted more than 1 billion people from extreme poverty. We’ve cut the child mortality rate worldwide by more than half.

America is better. The world is better. Race relations are better since I graduated.

No, my election did not create a post-racial society. I don’t know who was propagating that notion.

But the election itself – and the subsequent one – because the first one, folks might have made a mistake. The second one, they knew what they were getting.

In my inaugural address, I remarked that just 60 years earlier, my father might not have been served in a D.C. restaurant – at least not certain of them. There were no Black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Very few Black judges. Shoot, as Larry Wilmore pointed out last week, a lot of folks didn’t even think Blacks had the tools to be a quarterback.

Work to do The truth is that your generation is better positioned than any before you to meet those challenges, to flip the script.

My generation, like all generations, is too confined by our own experience, too invested in our own biases, too stuck in our ways to provide much of the new thinking that will be required.

But us old-heads have learned a few things that might be useful in your journey. So with the rest of my time, I’d like to offer some suggestions for how young leaders like you can fulfill your destiny and shape our collective future – bend it in the direction of justice and equality and freedom.

First of all, be confident in your heritage. Be confident in your Blackness. One of the great changes that’s occurred in our country since I was your age is the realization there’s no one way to be Black.

Take it from somebody who’s seen both sides of debate about whether I’m Black enough. There’s no straitjacket, there’s no constraints, there’s no litmus test for authenticity.

Look at Howard

Always vote And your plan better include voting – not just some of the time, but all the time. Fifty years after the Voting Rights Act, there are still too many barriers in this country to vote. There are too many people trying to erect new barriers to voting. This is the only advanced democracy on Earth that goes out of its way to make it difficult for people to vote. And there’s a reason for that.

But even if we dismantled every barrier to voting, that alone would not change the fact that America has some of the lowest voting rates in the free world. In 2014, only 36 percent of Americans turned out to vote in the midterms – the second lowest participation rate on record. Youth turnout – that would be you – was less than 20 percent. Four out of five did not vote.

In 2012, nearly two in three African-Americans turned out. And then, in 2014, only two in five turned out. You don’t think that made a difference in terms of the Congress I’ve got to deal with?

And then people are wondering, well, how come Obama hasn’t gotten this done?

One thing most folks don’t know about Howard is how diverse it is. This class comes from big cities and rural communities, and some of you crossed oceans to study here. You shatter stereotypes. Some of you come from a long line of Bison. Some of you are the first in your family to graduate from college. You all talk different, you all dress different.

And because of those who’ve come before you, you have models to follow. You can work for a company, or start your own. You can go into politics, or run an organization that holds politicians accountable. You can write a book that wins the National Book Award, or you can write the new run of “Black Panther.” Or, like one of your alumni, Ta-Nehisi Coates, you can go ahead and just do both.

You can create your own style, set your own standard of beauty, embrace your own sexuality.

Think about an icon we just lost ‘It’s math’ – Prince. He blew up categories.

What would have happened People didn’t know what Prince if you had turned out at 50, 60, was doing. And folks loved him 70 percent, all across this counfor it. try? People try to make this political thing really complicated. Just vote. It’s math. If you have more Have confidence You need to have the same con- votes than the other guy, you get fidence. Or as my daughters tell to do what you want.

And you don’t have excusme all the time, “You be you, Daddy.” Sometimes Sasha puts a vari- es. You don’t have to guess the ation on it – “You do you, Dad- number of jellybeans in a jar or dy.” And because you’re a Black bubbles on a bar of soap to regperson doing whatever it is that ister to vote. You don’t have to you’re doing, that makes it a Black risk your life to cast a ballot. Other people already did that for you. thing. Feel confident.

What’s your excuse?

Second, even as we each emWhen we don’t vote, we give brace our own beautiful, unique, away our power, disenfranchise and valid versions of our Blackourselves – right when we need to ness, remember the tie that does use the power that we have; right bind us as African-Americans – when we need your power to stop and that is our particular aware- others from taking away the vote ness of injustice and unfairness and rights of those more vulneraand struggle. That means we can- ble than you are – the elderly and not sleepwalk through life. We the poor, the formerly incarcercannot be ignorant of history. We ated trying to earn their second can’t meet the world with a sense chance. of entitlement. We can’t walk by So you got to vote all the time, a homeless man without asking not just when it’s cool, not just why a society as wealthy as ours when it’s time to elect a president, allows that state of affairs to occur. not just when you’re inspired.

We can’t just lock up a low-lev- That’s how we change our politics el dealer without asking why this – by electing people at every levboy, barely out of childhood, felt el who are representative of and he had no other options. We have accountable to us. Don’t make it cousins and uncles and broth- complicated. ers and sisters who we remember were just as smart and just as tal- Speak and listen ented as we were, but somehow Change requires more than just got ground down by structures speaking out. It requires listening that are unfair and unjust.

And that means we have to not to those with whom you disagree, only question the world as it is, and being prepared to comproand stand up for those African- mise.

When I was a state senator, I Americans who haven’t been helped pass Illinois’s first racial so lucky – because, yes, you’ve worked hard, but you’ve also been profiling law, and one of the first lucky. That’s a pet peeve of mine: laws in the nation requiring the People who have been success- videotaping of confessions in capful and don’t realize they’ve been ital cases. And we were successful because, early on, I engaged law lucky. That God may have blessed enforcement. them; it wasn’t nothing you did.

And we knew there were some So don’t have an attitude. bad apples, and that even the good cops with the best of intenExpand our help tions – including, by the way, AfBut we must expand our moral rican-American police officers – imaginations to understand and might have unconscious biases, as empathize with all people who we all do. So we engaged and we are struggling, not just Black folks listened, and we kept working unwho are struggling – the refugee, til we built consensus. We crafted the immigrant, the rural poor, the legislation that was good for the transgender person, and yes, the police – because it improved the middle-aged White guy who you trust and cooperation of the commay think has all the advantages, munity – and it was good for the but over the last several decades communities, who were less likely has seen his world upended by to be treated unfairly.

Without at least the acceptance economic and cultural and technological change, and feels pow- of the police organizations in Ilerless to stop it. You got to get in linois, I could never have gotten those bills passed. They would his head, too.

Number three: You have to go have blocked them.

You need allies in a democracy. through life with more than just passion for change; you need a It can be frustrating and it can be strategy. Not just awareness, but slow. But history teaches us that action. Not just hashtags, but the alternative to democracy is always worse. Go to any country votes.

Change requires more than where the give and take of democrighteous anger. It requires a pro- racy has been repealed by onegram, and it requires organizing. party rule, and I will show you a If you care about mass incar- country that does not work. ceration, how are you pressuring members of Congress to pass the Don’t fear compromise criminal justice reform bill now And democracy requires compending before them? promise, even when you are 100 If you care about better polic- percent right. If you think that the ing, do you know who your dis- only way forward is to be as untrict attorney is? Do you know compromising as possible, you who your state’s attorney general will feel good about yourself, you is? Do you know the difference? will enjoy a certain moral purity, Do you know who appoints the but you’re not going to get what police chief and who writes the you want. police training manual?

And if you don’t get what you Find out who they are, what want long enough, you will eventheir responsibilities are. Mobi- tually think the whole system is lize the community, present them rigged. And that will lead to more with a plan, work with them to cynicism, and less participation, bring about change, hold them and a downward spiral of more inaccountable if they do not deliver. justice and more anger and more

despair. That’s how we cheat ourselves of progress.

We remember Dr. King’s soaring oratory, the power of his letter from a Birmingham jail, the marches he led. But he also sat down with President Johnson in the Oval Office to try and get a Civil Rights Act and a Voting Rights Act passed. And those two seminal bills were not perfect – just like the Emancipation Proclamation was a war document as much as it was some clarion call for freedom.

Those mileposts of our progress were not perfect. They did not make up for centuries of slavery or Jim Crow or eliminate racism or provide for 40 acres and a mule. But they made things better. I always tell my staff – better is good, because you consolidate your gains and then you move on to the next fight from a stronger position.

Let them speak So don’t try to shut folks out, don’t try to shut them down, no matter how much you might disagree with them. There’s been a trend around the country of trying to get colleges to disinvite speakers with a different point of view, or disrupt a politician’s rally.

Don’t do that – no matter how ridiculous or offensive you might find the things that come out of their mouths. Because as my grandmother used to tell me, every time a fool speaks, they are just advertising their own ignorance.

Let them talk. If you don’t, you just make them a victim, and then they can avoid accountability.

Have the confidence to challenge them, the confidence in the rightness of your position. There will be times when you shouldn’t compromise your core values, your integrity, and you will have the responsibility to speak up in the face of injustice. But listen.

Engage. If the other side has a point, learn from them. If they’re wrong, rebut them.

Beat them on the battlefield of ideas. And you might as well start practicing now, because one thing I can guarantee you – you will have to deal with ignorance, hatred, racism, foolishness, trifling folks.

That may not seem fair, but life has never been completely fair.

Nobody promised you a crystal stair. And if you want to make life fair, then you’ve got to start with the world as it is.

Hitch your wagons Change isn’t something that happens every four years or eight years; change is not placing your faith in any particular politician and then just putting your feet up and saying, okay, go. Change is the effort of committed citizens who hitch their wagons to something bigger than themselves and fight for it every single day.

That’s what Thurgood Marshall understood – a man who once walked this yard and graduated from Howard Law; went home to Baltimore, started his own law practice. He and his mentor, Charles Hamilton Houston, rolled up their sleeves and they set out to overturn segregation.

They worked through the NAACP. Filed dozens of lawsuits, fought dozens of cases. And after nearly 20 years of effort, Thurgood Marshall ultimately succeeded in bringing his righteous cause before the Supreme Court, and securing the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that separate could never be equal.

Faced challenges James Baldwin once wrote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Graduates, each of us is only here because someone else faced down challenges for us. We are only who we are because someone else struggled and sacrificed for us.

A story whispered by slaves in the cotton fields, the song of marchers in Selma, the dream of a King in the shadow of Lincoln.

The prayer of immigrants who set out for a new world. The roar of women demanding the vote. The rallying cry of workers who built America. And the GIs who bled overseas for our freedom.

Now it’s your turn. And when your journey seems too hard, and when you run into a chorus of cynics who tell you that you’re being foolish to keep believing or that you can’t do something, or that you should just give up, or you should just settle – you might say to yourself a little phrase that I’ve found handy these last eight years: Yes, we can.

NATION

TOJ A6

MAY 13 – MAY 19, 2016 was acquitted. They featured her iconic Afro and often included her raising her fist.

Nelson Mandela, 1990 When he was released after 27 years in prison, a jubilant Nelson Mandela marched out of Victor Verster Prison with his thenwife, Winnie, raising a fist. An anti-apartheid champion of rights for Black Africans, he called on peace between races during his post-release Cape Town speech on Feb. 11, 1990.

“I have fought against White domination and I have fought against Black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities,” he said, quoting from his 1964 trial. “It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve.

But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Global leftist activism and politics The Industrial Workers of the World raised the fist in the early 20th century; by the 21st, it was being used by leftists of all stripes, including the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and protesters supporting union rights in Wisconsin in 2011.

Black Lives Matter

The United States Military Academy at West Point said Tuesday that the cadets in the above photo will not be punished for their controversial pose. An inquiry concluded the photograph did not violate Army or Department of Defense regulations and was only intended to demonstrate unity and pride. The 16 women are among 1,000 cadets expected to graduate on May 21.

‘Black Power’ salute: From cadets to candidates The West Point graduates are just the latest in a history of activists and others who sparked controversy after raising their fists.

BY JAWEED KALEEM LOS ANGELES TIMES TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

Social media has erupted over a photo of a group of Black cadets at West Point posed with raised fists in the manner of Black Power activists in the 1960s, bringing the elite military academy unwanted attention over its struggles with racial diversity and its strict rules against political activity.

The 16 cadets, who a West Point spokesman said in a statement are members of the class of 2016 and are under investigation for the picture, posed in traditional uniforms and with some holding sabers in what’s known as an “Old Corps” photo that harks back to the academy’s twocentury history.

Another disappointing jobless rate for Black men TRICE EDNEY NEWS WIRE

April’s unemployment rate for Black men 20 years old and older jumped to 9.5 percent from 8.7 percent in March, but the reasons for the bad news were unclear.

Black men’s labor-participation rate was 68.1 percent in April compared to 67.2 percent in March, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported.

The labor-force participation rate is the percentage of the population that’s employed or unemployed.

BLS reported that 858,000 Black men were unemployed in April compared to 768,000 in March.

A person is considered unemployed if he is scanning websites for job openings.

In a twist, each woman holds a fist in the air, a sign some have taken of political support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

That would be a problem, as the academy and military as a whole have a broad policy against members taking part in politics aside from voting.

But some have suggested that the women took inspiration not from Black revolutionaries but from pop culture — specifically, Beyonce, who used the salute during her controversial Super Bowl halftime show performance of the song “Formation.” Others have said the women were simply celebrating their upcoming graduation.

Although the raised fist may be best known in the U.S. for its association with the Black Power movement, its origins and use are much broader, from ancient Assyria to the Spanish Civil War. Over the years, the symbol has simultaneously been used by leftists, White nationalists and Black activists — all for very different purposes.

Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939

Black men continue to suffer from the nation’s highest jobless rate compared with men in other racial and ethnic groups.

The unemployment rate for White men 20 years and older was 4.0 percent, and the rate for Hispanics was 5.0 percent.

BLS reported that the Asian unemployment rate was 3.8 percent, but it was not clear if that figure applies only to men 20 and over.

The jobless rate for Blacks overall moved in the opposite direction when compared to Black men. The unemployment rate for Black people in April was 8.8 percent compared to 9.0 percent in March.

Lower for sisters Some 1.7 million African-Americans were unemployed in April compared to 1.8 million in March.

The rate for Black wom-

Stokely Carmichael, 1967 Trinidadian American civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael, later known for his support of Pan-Africanism, popularized the phrase “Black power” in the 1960s.

A Harvard graduate who led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Carmichael described Black power in a 1967 book by the same name as “a call for Black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community … to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations.”

“When you talk of Black power, you talk of building a movement that will smash everything Western civilization has created,” Carmichael said in a later speech.

1968 Olympics

During the brutal civil war in

8.8 for Blacks overall

Spain between leftists loyal to the Republican government and the wealthy and powerful Nationalists, many Republicans adopted the fisted salute. Nationalists, meanwhile, used the Roman salute, similar to that used by Italian Fascists and German Nazis.

John

Carlos

en 20 years old and older was 6.9 percent in April, down from 8.0 percent in March. Some 665,000 Black women were unemployed in April, down from 792,000 in March.

The nation’s overall unemployment rate stayed at 5.0 percent as U.S. nonfarm businesses added 160,000 jobs in April.

Disappointing report The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, called the payroll report disappointing. EPI noted that as the country reaches full employment, job growth is expected to slow down, but the nation is not close enough to full employment to view the slow down as a positive move.

In the first quarter of 2016, job growth averaged 203,000 and in the last quarter of 2015, job growth averaged 282,000.

and

Tommie

Smith, 1968 Mexico City Olympics Perhaps the best-known image of raised fists is of John Carlos and Tommie Smith, who won third and first place, respectively, in the 200-meter race at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.

After receiving their medals and turning to hear “The StarSpangled Banner,” Carlos and Smith raised black-gloved fists in the air, shocking Olympic organizers who had championed keeping the games apolitical.

They wore no shoes and black socks to represent Black poverty, while Smith had a black scarf on his neck, which he later said was a symbol for Black pride.

“If I win, I am an American, not a Black American,” Smith said at a news conference afterward.

“But if I did something bad, then they would say ‘a Negro.’ We are Black and we are proud of being Black.”

Angela Davis, 1970s During Angela Davis’ rise to fame in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a University of California, Los Angeles philosophy professor who was a member of the Communist Party, associate of the Black Panthers and radical feminist, her images sprung up in newspapers and leaflets across the country, including on the FBI’s most-wanted list.

She landed there after being charged with murder for allegedly being an accomplice in a notorious courthouse shooting. She

Raised fists have frequently appeared in the Black Lives Matter movement. But it hasn’t been activists’ only symbol. After the August 2014 death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., the “hands up, don’t shoot” pose spread across rallies and social media posts throughout the U.S. After Trayvon Martin was killed in February 2012 by George Zimmerman, the hoodie also become an icon. Martin wore hoodies frequently, including the day he died.

Beyonce at Super Bowl 2016 The megastar’s performance at the big game this year was widely hailed and criticized after her dancers, dressed in outfits reminiscent of the Blank Panthers, raised their fists alongside Beyonce during a performance of “Formation.”

The music video for the song, released a day before the game, featured images of a submerged police cruiser and the words “Stop shooting us” spraypainted on a wall. Police around the country threatened to boycott the star, who was going on tour, before backing off.

Beyonce later clarified her views in an interview with Elle. “Anyone who perceives my message as anti-police is completely mistaken. I have so much admiration and respect for officers and the families of the officers who sacrifice themselves to keeps us safe,” she said. “But let’s be clear: I am against police brutality and injustice.”

Presidential race, 2016 Sometimes a raised fist is just a raised fist. On the campaign trail, aspiring presidential nominees have frequently raised their fists as they rally cheering supporters. That includes Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, former New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

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BY ALLISON KEYES THE ROOT

them, even if the church has been taken away from them.”

“Gender is more than just being a man or a woman.

Gender is what you identify as, as a person,” says Damilola Louwole, 21, a senior at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland.

She dresses and identifies as a masculine woman, and says that people don’t understand. The Cambridge, Massachusetts native also says that during a recent visit to a Black church in Maryland, her sexuality was brought up in a negative way.

“I was asked, ‘How you gonna be a Christian and date people who look like you?’”

Louwole says, with outrage in her voice. “This was the first time I’ve ever run into anything like that at church. I was like, ‘My faith has nothing to do with my sexuality. No sin is greater than another.’”

But Louwole says that it made her uncomfortable in church, where she had never felt that way before.

She hasn’t been back.

Church, HBCUs homophobic

MANY VOICES/MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Above is a scene from the film “My God Too: Black LGBTQ Students Speak OUT,’’ which examines the relationship between Black LGBTQ students at HBCUs and the African-American church.

Anika Simpson, associate professor of philosophy and coordinator of the school’s Women and Gender Studies Program, says that Morgan State is trying to address inequality on its campus for all students and change the antagonistic messages that some LGBTQ students say they get from everyone from their professors to their pastors.

“The dominant narrative is that the church and HBCUs are homophobic and create negative environments. We want to disrupt that narrative,” Simpson says.

“If people are only hearing negative comments from pastors, teachers, the administration, faculty and staff, it drowns out the progressive voices that are in existence.

We want to shine a light on the fact that not everyone feels this way.”

‘My God Too’

New campaign launched at Morgan State spotlights LGBTQ life on HBCU campuses ‘These folks feel disconnected. For many, spirituality is at the core of their being.’

National campaign Louwole is among many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students at HBCU campuses who are feeling isolated or forced to choose between their sexuality and spirituality. That’s why Many Voices, a Black church movement for LGBTQ justice, launched a nationwide video campaign on May 5 at Morgan State.

The short film “My God Too: Black LGBTQ Students Speak OUT,” capturing the experiences of non-straight students on Black campuses, was screened at the school and followed by a panel discussion.

“It’s a beautiful presentation in the voices of students themselves, sharing the experience of campus and spiritual life and how those two intersect,” the Rev. Cedric Harmon, executive director of Many Voices, said.

– Rev. Cedric Harmon,

executive director of Many Voices

‘Text of terror’ The film features interviews with both LGBTQ Morgan State University students and nonLGBTQ students who support them (known as allies).

The students discuss the impact of traditional Blackchurch teachings about gender and sexuality on campus, as well as what could happen if the African-American community chose to engage in social-justice awareness involving gender and spirituality.

Harmon says he hopes the video will show a community that is often accused of marginalizing LGBTQ people that these African-Americans need a spiritual home too.

“One of the things that really stuck out from the interviews is that faith is important to these students. They grew up in a spiritual environment,” Harmon says.

He noted that students want a place where they don’t have to separate their spiritual selves from their sexual selves.

Some Black churches have spoken out forcefully against homosexuality and have used the Bible as what Harmon calls a “text of terror.”

Taking faith away Louwole, who appears in the film, says that she wishes

Taking action Simpson says that the actions Morgan State is taking to help include asking students to provide their preferred gender pronoun on the intake form that professors use to get to know their students, and not using heteronormative language in class, such as assuming that a story would be about a woman and her boyfriend.

She says that it is similar to how schools ended up with African-American and women’s studies programs.

“The problem is not seeing the students that are sitting in front of you—and that’s also an issue at the policy level,” Simpson says. “People want to see themselves and their stories. ... If you are teaching literature, do you mention the sexuality of some of the authors being covered?”

Living his truth

COURTESY OF BET

BET Networks released a film last year titled “Holler If You Hear Me: Black and Gay in the Church. Black LGBTQ people opened up about their experiences of homophobia in the church. It was screened at the White House on Feb. 24.

more Black pastors would try to open their understanding, and a dialogue. As more African-Americans express their sexuality, she’s hoping that the Black church will really start talking about these issues.

“The African-American tradition is to be really involved in your faith. If you’re taking

somebody’s faith away, it’s taking them away from their identity,” Louwole says.

“A lot of times when you’re down and out in the African-American community, you look to God. If you go to church and say ‘I’m a female and I would like to date females’ and they turn you

away, it could add to you losing your way.”

“These folks feel disconnected. For many, spirituality is at the core of their being,” Harmon explains. “Being separated from the church, and from family and community, is a disorienting experience. …

You can’t take faith away from

For more information about the campaign, visit www.manyvoices.org.

For some students, she adds, it is about feeling safe in their dorms and safe to speak about their sexuality in class without risking some sort of backlash from their peers or faculty members.

But for John Benton-Denny, a 26-year-old Morgan State senior from New York City, it is about being able to live his truth, without being subject to bullying and discrimination.

He says that’s one of the reasons he is part of the film “My God Too.” “I feel this film is important not only for the LGBT community but for the black community,” Benton-Denny says.

“These narratives need to be heard and understood because the LGBT community is so misunderstood. ... If people understood what we went through and the dynamics of our lives, they probably wouldn’t be so quick to judge or resent us.”

Allison Keyes is an awardwinning correspondent, host and author. She can be heard on CBS Radio News and WTOP News Radio, among other outlets. Keyes, a former national desk reporter for NPR, has written extensively on race, culture, politics and the arts.

CALENDAR

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MAY 13 – MAY 19, 2016

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WMU-Cooley Law School grads sworn into Florida Bar SPECIAL TO THE FLORIDA COURIER

The Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School (WMU Law School) graduates from Florida’s Second District were sworn into the State Bar on May 2, granting them authorization to practice law before the state’s courts. The ceremony was held at Stetson Uni-

versity’s College of Law in Tampa.

WMU-Cooley graduate Maryam Saleh provided the response on behalf of the new lawyers.

In her remarks, Saleh challenged the new members to go out and become exceptional attorneys. She encouraged the new attorneys to “Never be afraid to take a public stance on systematic practices they believe are harming a certain

WMU-Cooley Law School graduates Brandon Moultrie, Sarah Harris, Maryam Saleh, Necia Mohammad and Celine Delice recently were sworn into the Florida Bar Association. Not shown are graduates Elena Krekovic and Jonathan Swinson.

group of people and also pledge to stand up for the defenselessness and oppressed and to hold each other accountable when it comes to acting on that promise.”

Additional WMU-Cooley graduates who were sworn in included Celine Delice, Sarah Harris, Elena Krekovic, Necia Mohammad, Brandon Moultrie and Jonathan Swinson.

FLORIDA COMMUNITY CALENDAR Orlando: The Jones High School Band will give a free concert on May 17 at 7 p.m. on campus at 801 South Rio Grande Ave. The band will perform in the National Memorial Day Parade in D.C. and will visit the White House. Donations: www. joneshighschoolfoundation. com/jhsband.

Tamarac: The Eta Nu Education Foundation of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity will host its annual golf tournament in memory of Felix “Chin” Evans at 8 a.m. May 21 at the Woodlands Country Club, 4600 Woodlands Blvd. More details: www.etanu.org.

St. Petersburg: A Business and Economic Empowerment Conference starts at 8 a.m.

May 21 at the Pinellas Technical College, 901 34th St. S. More information: 813-7164554 or email gabdulwasi@ yahoo.com.

Fort Lauderdale: Educator Montfort Alexis is hosting

Jacksonville: The Florida Theatre Jacksonville will host Brian McKnight on May 24.

Boca Raton: The Legends of the Old School concert takes place May 20 at the Mizner Park Amphitheater. Performers include Bel Biv Devoe, Rob Base, Lisa Lisa, Tone Loc and Kid N Play.

St. Augustine: Salt N Pepa performs May 21 at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre. The show is at 7 p.m.

KYM WHITLEY

The Ninth Annual Memorial Weekend Comedy Festival is May 29 at the James L. Knight Center in Miami featuring John Witherspoon, Earthquake and Kym Whitley.

a book signing and expo to celebrate Haiti’s culture on May 14 from 1 to 5 p.m. at the African-American Research Library and Cultural Center, 2650 Sistrunk Blvd.

The English title of his book is “From Poverty to Prosperity: Decentralization and Economic Development in Haiti.’’

Orlando: Orange County is

TRACY MORGAN

Actor and comedian Tracy Morgan is scheduled May 21 at Hard Rock Live Hollywood.

hosting its free Hurricane Expo on June 4 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Renaissance Senior Center at South Econ Community Park, 3800 South Econlockhatchee Trail. More information: 407-836-9140 or ocoem@ocfl.net.

Tampa: The Soul Crooners will perform at the Straz Center through May 15.

JILL SCOTT

Tickets are now on sale for a Jill Scott concert at The Mahaffey in St. Petersburg on Sept. 1.

Jacksonville: The African American Mental Health Initiative will host a Mental Health Walk & Village Talk on May 14 at Unity Plaza. Register at aamhimentalwalkvillagetalk2016.eventbrite.com.

Jacksonville: The Northside Church of Christ’s Ladies Inspirational Day is May 14 starting at 8 a.m. Details: Call 904-302-0772. Guest speaker: Patricia Iverson of Valdosta, Georgia.

Miami Beach: Marlon Wayans’ “Scandal-less’’ show takes to the Jackie Gleason Theater stage on May 19.

Tampa: Anthony Hamilton and Fantasia will perform June 16 at the USF Sun Dome.

Miami: Bishop Victor T. Curry’s 25th anniversary at New Birth Baptist Church Cathedral of Faith International takes place May 16-20 at 7 p.m. nightly and May 22 at 7 and 11 a.m.

More details: 305-685-3700.

Tampa: Angela Robinson of OWN’s “The Haves and the Have Nots’’ will be the guest at the May 21 “A Dining Room of Hope’’ event at the Oaks at Riverview Community Center to benefit Aaron’s House, a safe haven for loved ones of those living with bipolar disorder and/or depression. More information: 813-341-3079 or aaronkrobinsonshouse@ gmail.com.

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HEALTH

B3 common issues government inspectors identify, followed by deficient medication review, according to KHN’s analysis. Over the first half of this decade, 1,591 agencies — one in eight — had a defect inspectors considered so substantial that it warranted the agencies’ removal from the Medicare program unless the lapses were remedied.

Incorrect dispensing Oyler’s death in October 2013 shows how a fatal mistake can slip by multiple checkpoints.

The 66-year-old retired safety manager left Heartland Regional Medical Center in St. Joseph after being treated for congestive heart failure, in which the heart fails to pump effectively, causing fluid build-up in the lungs, shortness of breath and swelling in the feet.

She returned home as a hospital nurse telephoned the local Hy-Vee Pharmacy with eight new prescriptions. One was for the diuretic metolazone.

But the medications a pharmacy technician wrote down did not include metolazone. Instead it listed methotrexate, which can damage blood cell counts, organs and the lining of the mouth, stomach and intestines.

The drug is so potent that the Institute for Safe Medication Practices includes it among eight “high-alert” medications with consequences so “devastating” that they warrant special safeguards against incorrect dispensing.

Pharmacist takes blame TRAVIS YOUNG/AUSTIN WALSH STUDIO/KAISER HEALTH NEWS

Kristin Sigg’s mother, Joyce Oyler, died after receiving the wrong medication after leaving the hospital. “There were many layers and mistakes made after she left the hospital. It should have been caught about five different ways,” said Sigg, shown above.

Mistakes with medication are common for discharged patients

BY JORDAN RAU KAISER HEALTH NEWS TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

Within two weeks of Joyce Oyler’s discharge from the hospital, sores developed in her mouth and throat, and blood began seeping from her nose and bowels.

Her daughter traced the source to the medicine bottles in Oyler’s home in St. Joseph, Mo. One drug that keeps heart patients like Oyler from retaining fluids was missing. In its place was a toxic drug with a similar name but different purpose, primarily to treat cancer and severe arthritis. The label said to take it daily.

“I gathered all her medicine, and as soon as I saw that bottle, I knew she couldn’t come back from this,” said the daughter, Kristin Sigg, an oncology nurse. “There were many layers and mistakes made after she left the hospital. It should have been caught about five different ways.”

Errors at home Oyler’s death occurred at one of the most dangerous junctures in medical care: when patients leave the hospital. Bad coordination often plagues patients’ transitions to the care of home health agencies, as well as to nursing homes and other professionals

charged with helping them recuperate, studies show.

“Poor transitional care is a huge, huge issue for everybody, but especially for older people with complex needs,” said Alicia Arbaje, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. “The most risky transition is from hospital to home with the additional need for home care services, and that’s the one we know the least about.”

Medication mistakes like the one in Oyler’s case — which, according to court records, slipped past both her pharmacist and home health nurses – are in fact one of the most common complications for discharged patients.

The federal government views them as “a major patient safety and public health issue,” and a Kaiser Health News analysis of inspection records shows such errors are frequently missed by home health agencies.

Dangerous combinations Between January 2010 and July 2015, the analysis found, inspectors identified 3,016 home health agencies – nearly a quarter of all those examined by Medicare – that had inadequately reviewed or tracked medications for new patients.

In some cases, nurses failed to

realize that patients were taking potentially dangerous combinations of drugs, risking abnormal heart rhythms, bleeding, kidney damage and seizures.

The variety of providers that patients may use after a hospitalization — including pharmacies, urgent care clinics and a range of specialists — creates fertile ground for error, said Don Goldmann, chief medical and scientific officer at the nonprofit Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

“This episodic care at different places at different times is not designed to keep the overall safety of the patient in mind,” Goldmann said.

Systems disconnected One factor is the lack of organization and communication among these other parts of the medical system.

Of the $30 billion that Congress appropriated to help shift the system to electronic medical records — to ensure better coordination of care and reduce errors across the board — none went to nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities or providers working with individuals in their homes.

“In retrospect, that might have been a mistake,” said Robert Wachter, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco who studies patient safety.

“The systems are not adequately connected.”

Some failures At any point, problems can occur: At hospitals, where federal data show that fewer than half of patients say they confidently understood the instructions of how to care for themselves after discharge.

In nursing homes, where case management frequently comes up short. A 2013 government report found more than a third of facilities did not properly assess patients’ needs, devise a plan for their care and then follow it through.

At pharmacies, where counseling and reviewing drugs with patients are often pro forma, and better exertions do not always help. A 2012 study in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine found that half of patients had a clinically significant medication error within a month of discharge from two highly regarded academic medical centers. The study found that these errors persisted even when pharmacists took a more active role in counseling the patient and reviewing the prescription.

And at home health agencies, where failures to create and execute a care plan are the most

Oyler’s prescription included daily dosage instructions for the diuretic. Methotrexate is never supposed to be taken more than once or twice a week for patients not being treated for cancer, and almost always at a much lower dose.

“Here’s a drug that every patient, even if it’s on the refill, should get counseled on, why they’re taking methotrexate and how they’re taking it because of the mistakes of errors we’ve seen with the daily dosing rather than the weekly dosing,” said Allen Vaida, a pharmacist and executive vice president at the Institute for Safe Medication Practices.

In a court deposition taken as part of the lawsuit the family brought, Hy-Vee’s pharmacist blamed himself for not catching the error.

“For whatever reason, on that certain day, that didn’t trigger with me,” he said. Hy-Vee argued that its safeguards were as strong as at other pharmacies, although the pharmacy manager admitted in a deposition that “quite honestly, there was a breakdown in the system.”

Spelling errors The family’s attorney, Leland Dempsey, said court evidence suggested the drug mix-up was made by the pharmacy technician who transcribed the prescription orders.

“The pharmacy tech made numerous spelling errors on the drugs,” he said. “She had a dosage off on another drug.”

In February, a jury awarded Oyler’s family $2 million in damages from the pharmacy.

The judge lowered the award to $125,000 because of Missouri’s cap for non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases.

Hy-Vee declined to comment.

Study points to overuse of antibiotics MAYO CLINIC NEWS NETWORK TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

A new study shows an estimated 30 percent of outpatient oral antibiotic prescriptions are unnecessary.

Penicillin and other antibiotics have played a leading role in treating bacterial infections, preventing the spread of disease and minimizing serious complications of disease. However, overuse of the drugs has led to antibiotic resistance.

Mayo Clinic infectious diseases specialist Dr. Pritish Tosh says, “We are seeing across the country and the world worsening issues of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, meaning that we have antibiotics that are sometimes not effective against bacteria that cause infections.”

FOTOLIA/TNS

A new study shows an estimated 30 percent of outpatient oral antibiotic prescriptions are unnecessary.

Not for colds Antibiotics are used to treat bacterial infections such as pneumonia and won’t help viral illnesses such as colds, flu and most sore throats.

Recently, the American College of Physicians and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a paper that outlines best practices for use of antibiotics. It recommends that clinicians not

prescribe antibiotics for patients with a common cold.

“The area where antibiotics are misused is in the treatment of upper respiratory infections,” Dr. Tosh adds. “Often people have a viral cough or viral upper respiratory illness, or perhaps even a mild bacterial process that gets better on its own. It’s very clear you don’t need antibiotics to treat these.”

B4

MONEY

MAY 13 – MAY 19, 2016

STOJ

The consequences of a $15 minimum wage The increase is expected to further drive up the unemployment rate of Black teenagers.

BY DON LEE TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON — Exhaustive research over the past few decades suggests raising the minimum wage has little negative impact on overall employment.

Problem is, most past wage hikes have been relatively modest, and there’s no data to confidently predict what might happen following the kinds of increases now planned in California and New York.

Going to $15 an hour represents a 50 percent rise from California’s current minimum pay of $10, and a 67 percent jump for New York.

Although these would be phased in over several years and would not apply statewide in the case of New York, the sheer size of the increases has made even proponents of higher minimum wages a little worried.

More to come

JAY L. CLENDENIN/LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

It’s a grand experiment with potentially profound consequences — some good, some bad — that could extend far beyond the borders of the nation’s two largest states, with ramifications for the health and direction of the U.S. economy and society.

“The minimum wage debate hints at the very essence of who we are, how we function together and what we’ll become,” said Arthur Laffer, the well-known economist who served as an advisor to President Reagan.

Here’s what some experts are expecting.

Workers march in downtown Los Angeles on April 14 to demand a nationwide $15-an-hour minimum wage.

More unemployed youth

Wage disparity

It may increase unemployment among minority youth.

Because teenagers and young adults hold a disproportionately large share of low-wage jobs, they figure to be among the hardest hit, pushed out by older and better-educated workers who will be drawn by the higher pay offered by retail stores, food services and other businesses.

That could hurt opportunities, especially for Black teenagers, one of the most vulnerable groups in America. The unemployment rate for African-Americans ages 16 to 19, while down by almost half from 2010, still stands at 25 percent. That compares to 13.9 percent for White youth and 15.6 percent for Latino youth.

If policymakers blame high crime in cities such as Chicago on steep poverty and unemployment, Laffer asked, should they still advocate for a high minimum wage that might reduce jobs for the youth and exacerbate social problems?

Another side effect of higher minimum wages may be that teenagers will be “induced to leave school, interrupting or prematurely ending their formal education,” write researchers Dale Belman of Michigan State University and Paul Wolfson of Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business.

But they added that research findings about the impact on schooling and minority youth are not conclusive enough to be used by policymakers.

There is little doubt that the new minimum wage laws in California and New York will help reduce the increasing disparity in earnings between the highest and lowest paid workers in those states.

In California, the bottom 10 percent of wage earners made on average $9.48 an hour last year, a 20 percent increase since 2005, unadjusted for inflation. Workers in the top 10 percent of wages earned on average $53.08 an hour, a 35 percent jump from 2005, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The upshot is that the difference between the bottom and top 10 percent of wages in the state has widened over the past decade, to $43.60 an hour from $31.35. The trend is almost exactly the same for New York.

‘Fewer headaches’ With minimum wages set to rise steadily in the years to come, and during a period when infla-

How to protect your money while on vacation

BY JILL SCHENSUL THE RECORD/TNS

HACKENSACK, N.J. – Summer vacations aren’t cheap, and they often pile on additional expenses when travelers let down their guard or make uninformed spending decisions. And nowadays, travelers face an increasing risk of having financial and personal information intercepted. Stealing both your money — and your summer fun.

Here are some of the most important considerations and tactics for spending wisely on the road and keeping the unspent money safe at home.

Protect your plastic While they all may look similar, those money-related cards in your wallet are not created equal. Using them without paying attention can cost you — anywhere from bank fees to scams that can grab your card information and grab everything you’ve got in the linked bank accounts.

Online hackers, who have been swiping credit card numbers for years, have been able to move onto new hunting grounds as security evolves.

When merchants started cracking down on data fraud at the checkout counters of retail stores, criminals moved on to

non-human cashiers in places of particular interest to travelers, like fuel pumps and ATMs. Thieves get your information in various ways. Some use hidden cameras that can detect your PIN or deliver screen messages that your money can’t be dispensed, grabbing your data in the first case and the cash you requested, too, in the second.

Skimming your cash Others actually install a socalled skimmer, which reads data off the magnetic strip when you slide your card through the machine.

Skimming is especially rampant at ATM and payment kiosks located outdoors and in areas with light foot traffic. Debit-card compromises at ATMs on bank property rose 174 percent from Jan. 1 to April 9 in 2015, compared with the similar period a year earlier; at non-bank machines, the increase was a whopping 317 percent, according to FICO, the credit-rating company that is also in the ATM security monitoring business.

A third of all credit card holders reported that they have been affected by a data breach or credit card fraud. It doesn’t just happen to other people, and it’s a real disaster if it happens while you’re on vacation.

tion is forecast to stay historically low, low-wage workers “will achieve a much higher level than they ever have, and that will reverse decades in which wages have been stagnant or falling at the bottom of the distribution,” said Michael Reich, chair of UC Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.

“It’s going to provide people, not with security, but with fewer headaches,” he said. “If their car breaks down, they might have money to repair it or buy a used car, which will help them get to work, to child care and so on.”

And it should help children in the long run too, Reich said. “We know that higher income leads to better parenting, better mental health and better school outcomes.”

are candidates to follow California and New York by adopting a statewide $15-an-hour floor.

Most of the 21 states with minimum wages equal to or less than the federal rate are in the socalled Red or Republican-leaning states in the South and the Great Plains.

This distinction matters not just for politics, but in their different approaches to regulation and the economy — differences that appear to be getting sharper with such policies like “superminimum wage laws,” as analysts at the conservative Heritage Foundation call the higher-wage laws.

‘Sorted by class’

The red-state, blue-state divide could get worse.

The dramatic differences in minimum wages soon to be paid across the country could worsen the income gap between rich and poor states.

It’s a fissure that has generally narrowed over most of the past century, according to Andrew Gelman, a statistician at Columbia University and author of “Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State.”

It is generally the richer, Democratic-leaning states, including Maryland, Massachusetts, Washington and Oregon, that have pushed through higher minimum wages in recent years and

There is a similar divide when it comes to which states have embraced President Obama’s expansion of Medicaid for the poor, giving poor residents in Democratic-led states better access to health coverage than their counterparts in Republican-led states.

Richard Florida, an urban development expert at the University of Toronto, sees the $15-anhour minimum wage push as an indication of the increasing polarization in America in which there are competing visions: one driven by people in large, dense metropolitan areas with a strong information economy, and the other by folks in rural regions more dependent on resources and real estate.

“We are being ever more sorted by class, by income, by education, by occupation and by politi-

Card scams

Paper or plastic?

Another popular hunting ground for credit card rip-offs is hotels, particularly their restaurants and retail spaces such as gift shops.

They are attractive targets because security procedures are not always uniform; there may be easy access to card readers; and the cardholders make for perfect victims, often well-off executives who may be on the road a long time and unlikely to scan their credit card bills before they return home.

Pay attention to possible signs of trouble. Skimming machines are about the size of playing cards and are installed in a hurry. If the ATM looks banged up, if the keypad feels too stiff or rattles when you start a transaction, if the card doesn’t insert properly, get your money elsewhere.

Whatever cash machine you use, cover the keypad when you type in your PIN. Thieves need the card number and the PIN number for the scheme to work.

Also make sure to update contact information with your banks/credit card companies.

They’re good about detecting suspicious activity and letting you know about it; but only if they can get in touch with you.

New credit cards come with EMV chips, the latest effort to thwart the hackers. Unfortunately, they also come with the magnetic strips, making them readable to both old-generation card readers and old-school card thieves.

Debit or credit — there are advantages and disadvantages to each. But the bottom lines are easy: Credit cards are equipped with better security and minimize your losses in case of a breach.

Your liability is limited to a maximum of $50, no matter how much is charged to your stolen card.

Debit cards also limit your losses — a number that goes from $50 to $100, depending on how long it takes you to notify the card company of a problem. But the main risk is that with a debit card thieves have access to your actual funds and could commence to empty your bank accounts. Your bank won’t give you replacement money. So the rule of thumb is always use the credit cards, except …

When you absolutely need cash: Use a credit card in an ATM, and the bank will charge you for a cash advance — a fee that has inched up to an average of 4 percent or $14 per visit to the ATM. A debit card has no fee for getting money.

Speaking of fees, if you’re traveling — especially abroad — financial institutions like to make a little extra on these more intricate (i.e., currency switching) transactions. So they invoke foreign transaction fees — 2 percent or 3 percent is standard, and if you spend $4,500 on the road, that’s a lot in fees. The good news is many major U.S. credit card issuers waive the fee on certain cards. They’re usually the ones

Political divide

cal orientation,” he said.

Under the table More low-paying jobs will go underground.

“A lot more are going to get hired off the books,” especially immigrant workers, said Harry Holzer, a public policy professor at Georgetown University.

The Labor Department’s top economist in the Clinton administration’s second term, Holzer never imagined that the campaign for $15 an hour would actually succeed. He thought $15 was more of a bargaining ploy to get to $10 an hour, or maybe $12.

Now Holzer fears there will be heavy job losses, hurting most the low-skilled, less-educated workers who may have to accept cash under the table or cut deals to keep their jobs.

Informal work isn’t necessarily illegal or bad. It includes jobs such as babysitting and housecleaning that provide muchneeded side incomes or can introduce a young person to the world of work, Demetra Smith Nightingale and Stephen A. Wandner wrote in an Urban Institute paper.

Still, a rise in informal work translates into more tax avoidance and generally means fewer worker benefits and protections, like unemployment insurance.

As such, a higher minimum wage may backfire for some lowincome workers unless there also are changes that encourage workers and employers to do things by the book. aimed at travelers: Chase Sapphire Preferred; Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card; BankAmericard Travel Rewards Credit Card; Capital One Quicksilver Cash Rewards Credit Card.

In fact, Capital One and Discover don’t charge foreign transaction fees on any of their cards.

Stop paying twice Your credit cards aren’t just full of fees. They have their perks, and one real saver is rental-car insurance coverage. All four of the big card issues offer some such coverage.

MasterCard is the only network that does not provide coverage on all its cards. American Express and Visa have the best rental-car insurance policy, followed closely by Discover.

Still, roughly 20 percent of consumers always purchase supplemental insurance coverage when renting a car, according to a study from Progressive Insurance; another 20 percent do so occasionally. The primary motivation for such purchases is confusion as to whether one’s personal auto insurance extends to rental cars.

There are requirements for your card’s coverage to kick in: You need to charge the entire rental car purchase on the credit card and decline supplemental insurance/collision damage waivers offered by the rental company. Some cards don’t cover SUV rentals, and a few don’t cover rentals in some countries.

CardHub has a great collection of comparison charts about rentalcar coverage at cardhub.com.

STOJ

MAY 13 – MAY 19, 2016

FINEST & ENTERTAINMENT

Meet some of

FLORIDA’S

finest

submitted for your approval

Anthony Mackie attends a press conference for “Captain America: Civil War” at Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands on April 21. Mackie portrays Falcon in the film, which raked in $181.8 million during its opening weekend this month.

THEN CHIH WEY/XINHUA/SIPA USA/TNS

B5

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.

Rihanna has announced the Clara Lionel Foundation scholarship program, which will help students from in Barbados, Brazil, Cuba, Grenada, Guyana and Haiti attain a college education in the U.S. More information: scholarsapply.org/claralionelfdn/instructions.php ABACA PRESS/TNS

A Lorraine Hansberry play that few understand er,” Gresham said. “She would write many different things at once — essays, teleplays, novels.

She would write hard and then crank out many rewrites.”

As Gresham described it, the story of the original 1964 production of “Sign” on Broadway was a sad one.

BY CHRIS JONES CHICAGO TRIBUNE TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

CHICAGO – In March 1959, Lorraine Hansberry, a graduate of Englewood High School in Chicago, became the first African-American woman to pen a play produced on Broadway.

Less than six years later she died of pancreatic cancer, at the age of 34.

Although her ex-husband Robert Nemiroff later would organize her unfinished drafts into performance material, the most eminent Black playwright of her moment essentially left behind two completed plays.

That was all.

She had no time to forge a body of work like August Wilson, even though she was nothing like the Bard of Pittsburgh. She barely had time to break down the walls that needed crushing for her Lorraine work even to be Hansberry seen.

Famous work One of Hansberry’s plays, “A Raisin in the Sun,” is among the most famous dramas. Aside from its historical significance, its firm place in the educational curriculum and its synonymity with the African-American dream deferred, the work has stood the test of artistic time with spectacular resilience, standing up to works

by Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams or any other White male playwright of the 20th century.

Inarguably, Hansberry’s story of the Younger family’s dream to move into an unwelcoming White neighborhood is the greatest Chicago play, oozing with the restless complexities and paradoxes, the tantalizing promises and failings of the city, young Hansberry’s home, from every page.

Everyone knows “A Raisin in the Sun.” It has sparked sequels like “Clybourne Park” by Bruce Norris and “The Etiquette of Vigilance” by Robert O’Hara. It was

Not in control Hansberry knew she was terminally ill — she was thus away from the theater, even though she desperately wanted to be there.

“My father was the messenger, he was going back and forth between Lorraine and the theater,” Gresham said. “Lorraine was not fully in control — people wanted to protect her from the hard reality of what was to come. And given her health and the strain on her, that is understandable. But it is hard to know exactly what the play would’ve looked like had she lived.”

Mixed reviews

Lorraine Hansberry’s lesser-known play, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” has mostly White characters. The image shown above is from a production of the play staged during the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in March 2014. skewered as “The Last Mama on the Couch Play” in George C. Wolfe’s “The Colored Museum.” It is in constant production around the globe.

In 2014 Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the United States, sat with first lady Michelle Obama watching the most famous Black actor of his generation, Denzel Washington, star in that very play.

The event would have been unthinkable, for all kinds of reasons, in 1959, when Hansberry wrote of her terror of the reaction of the influential Tribune critic Claudia Cassidy to the preBroadway tryout at the Blackstone Theatre. Nevertheless, it happened.

Mostly White cast But this is not a column about a Chicago theater, the Goodman Theatre, doing “A Raisin in

the Sun.” Many have been there, done that. This is a story about the Goodman opening the other Hansberry play, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” the one that premiered on Broadway in October of 1964 and closed on the night of Hansberry’s death.

The reason nobody knows “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” is that it is nothing like “Raisin.” For one thing, it deals with the personal travails of the title character, who is very much part of New York’s bohemian Greenwich Village set. For another, it has an experimental, threeact structure that varies between acts. For a third, all of its characters are White — except for one, who passes for White.

“People don’t know what to do with the play,” said Anne Kauffman, who is directing it at the Goodman. “Nobody knows what to do with the African-American voice who wrote such a play. Lor-

raine’s ambitions were just totally different. I think she was trying to shock the White liberals into action. To get them to join her in facing the ills of the time. To shock people out of their inertia.”

50th anniversary The main keeper of the Hansberry flame is Joi Gresham, the daughter of Nemiroff and Jewell Handy Gresham. She grew up in Hansberry’s home in Croton-onHudson, N.Y., and runs the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust.

In a long lunchtime interview earlier this spring, Gresham noted that 2014 had been the 50th anniversary of the play and that she wanted to do a restoration of sorts of the various drafts of the text after the Oregon Shakespeare Festival had approached her about a production. The Goodman is next up.

“Lorraine was a very fast writ-

“There was a tremendous reactive force from critics wanting to see a sequel to ‘Raisin,’” Gresham said. “People were just not willing to see the play she had written.”

But a very good case could be made that the true creative soul of Hansberry lies far more in “Sign” than in “Raisin,” heretical as that may seem to some.

Less ambitious ‘Sign’ “Lorraine wrote ‘Raisin’ as an exercise,” said Gresham, “as a means to learn how to write a play, for she thought she had no idea. She had been very influenced by the play ‘Juno and the Paycock,’ which she saw as an effective device for art that carries social criticism.”

And thus she drew from her own family life for her first play.

But “Sign” (like many less successful dramatic works in their initial production) was far more ambitious. It was as if Hansberry was running from “Raisin” as fast as she could.

“What Lorraine most wanted,” Gresham said, “was to be part of a community that was fully engaged. And her intellect was as formidable as her structural ambition.”

FOOD

B6

MAY 13 – MAY 19, 2016

S

CEDAR PLANK GRILLED SALMON WITH SWEET POTATOES Serves: 4 Prep time: 10 minutes Cook time: 15 minutes Cedar planks with enough surface area for salmon 4 Alaska salmon fillets (4-6 ounces each), fresh, thawed or frozen olive oil spray 1 tablespoon fresh (or 1 teaspoon dried) dill, thyme or rosemary salt and freshly cracked pepper, to taste 4 large sweet potatoes, sliced lengthwise into wedges 1/2 tablespoon ground cumin Soak cedar planks for 1-2 hours (or overnight) submerged in water. Remove and pat dry.

Heat grill to medium heat (400 F). If frozen, rinse ice from salmon under cold water; pat dry with paper towel. Spray cedar planks and salmon with olive oil spray. Place salmon on planks; sprinkle with herb, salt and pepper. Place sweet potatoes in bowl; spray with cooking spray. Sprinkle with cumin and salt and pepper, to taste. Toss to coat.

Place cedar planks and potato wedges on grill. Cover and cook about 3-4 minutes; turn wedges over and continue cooking until potatoes are soft and cooked.

Keep warm. Cook salmon 12-15 minutes, until fish is opaque throughout.

Nutritional information per serving: 350 calories; 11 g total fat; 2 g saturated fat; 27% calories from fat; 91 mg cholesterol; 33 g protein; 33 g carbohydrate; 4 g fiber; 277 mg sodium; 36 mg calcium; 1,700 mg omega-3 fatty acids.

Cedar Plank Grilled Salmon with Sweet Potatoes FROM FAMILY FEATURES

Whether you’re a competitive sprinter chasing a new record or an everyday gym hound looking to get the most from your workout, seafood is among the best foods to support an athletic lifestyle. It not only delivers great-tasting nutrition, but also provides one-of-a-kind health benefits.

The combination of lean protein, anti-inflammatory omega-3s and muscle-building nutrients found in Alaska seafood are why it’s a staple for athletes like Ryan and Sara Hall.

“We like to incorporate Alaska seafood in

our daily diet because it’s a really high quality protein that helps to repair our muscles on a daily basis,” said Ryan Hall, a two-time Olympian and holder of the U.S. half-marathon record.

After a run, Sara Hall – a 3,000-meter steeplechase and marathon runner, U.S. national champion and World Team member – relies on seafood as a go-to for low-fat meals with protein and simple-to-digest carbs.

Sample these dishes straight from the Hall kitchen, and find more recipes and nutritional values for your favorite seafood at wildalaskaseafood.com.

PAN-SEARED COD OVER MINTED PEA PUREE Serves: 4 Prep time: 15 minutes Cook time: 10 minutes 1/2 cup water 2 pounds frozen or fresh peas, blanched 1 package (0.6-0.7 ounces) fresh mint, leaves only salt, to taste 4 Alaska cod fillets (4-6 ounces each), fresh, frozen or thawed olive oil 1 teaspoon lemon pepper seasoning Add water, peas and mint to blender or food processor; season with salt. Puree until almost smooth. Cover and keep warm.

If frozen, rinse ice glaze from cod under cold water; pat dry with paper towel. Heat heavy, nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Brush both sides of fillets with olive oil.

In heated skillet, cook cod, uncovered, about 3-4 minutes, until browned. Shake pan occasionally to keep fish from stick­

ing. Turn cod over and sprinkle with lemon pep­per sea­soning. Cover pan tightly and reduce heat to medium. Cook an additional 6-9 minutes for frozen cod or 3-4 minutes for fresh/thawed fish. Cook until fish is opaque throughout.

To serve, spoon pea puree onto 4 plates. Top each with cod fillet and serve immediately.

Nutrition information per serving: 319 calories; 5 g total fat; 1 g saturated fat; 13% calories from fat; 65 mg cholesterol; 37 g protein; 34 g carbo­hydrate; 12 g fiber; 393 mg sodium; 101 mg calcium; 28 IU vitamin D; 200 mg omega-3 fatty acids.

MISO HALIBUT WITH SOBA NOODLE STIR-FRY Serves: 4 Prep time: 15 minutes Cook time: 15 minutes 1 package (12 ounces) prepared soba noodles (or noodle of choice) 4 Alaska halibut fillets (4-6 ounces each), fresh, thawed or frozen 3 tablespoons sesame oil, divided 2 cups roughly chopped bok choy 1 1/2 cups sugar snap peas 1 cup sliced mushrooms 1/2 cup chopped green onion 1/4 cup miso 1 cup water 1/4 cup teriyaki sauce Prepare noodles according to package directions; set aside.

If frozen, rinse ice glaze from halibut under cold water; pat dry with paper towel. Heat large, nonstick skillet or wok over medium-high heat. Brush both sides of halibut with half of the sesame oil.

In heated skillet, cook fish, uncovered, about 3-4 minutes, until browned.

Shake pan occasionally to keep fish from stick­ing. Turn halibut over; reduce heat to medium and cover. Cook 5-7 minutes for frozen halibut or 2-3 minutes for fresh/thawed fish, cooking until fish is opaque throughout. Transfer fillets to plate; cover to keep warm.

Wipe out skillet/wok with paper towel.

Add remaining sesame oil. Heat to medium-high then add and stir-fry bok choy, snap peas, mush­rooms and green onions. Stir in noodles; turn off heat. Cover and keep warm.

In saucepan, blend miso, water and teriyaki sauce. Bring mixture to boil then reduce heat to a simmer and cook 1 minute. Stir sauce into warm noodlevegetable mixture. To serve, divide and portion mixture into 4 bowls or plates. Top each with halibut fillet.

Nutrition information per serving: 571 calories; 15 g total fat; 2 g saturated fat; 22% calories from fat; 56 mg cholesterol; 38 g protein; 71 g carbohydrate; 7 g fiber; 1,643 mg sodium; 77 mg calcium; 219 IU vitamin D; 350 mg omega-3 fatty acids.