Florida Courier - July 08, 2016

A show of unity on LGBT rights Page A6

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

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CELEBRATING OUR 10TH YEAR STATEWIDE!

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JULY 8 – JULY 14, 2016

VOLUME 24 NO. 28

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PRESORTED STANDARD MAIL

HILLARY SKATES

On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton listened to President Obama as he spoke in Charlotte, N.C. It was Obama’s first campaign appearance with Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

Here’s why the FBI concluded Hillary Clinton’s email practices did not rise to the level of criminal charges.

Editor’s note: Read the full text of FBI Direc- ed U.S. official to “knowingly and willfully” disclose or transmit secret information to tor James B. Comey’s statement on Page A5. an “unauthorized person.” A second law makes it a crime to “remove” secret docCOMPILED FROM WIRE REPORTS uments kept by the government or to alWASHINGTON – FBI Director James B. low them to be stolen through “gross negComey delivered a stinging public rebuke ligence.”

But Comey’s public judgment about her of Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, saying that even though the former secretary of state lax handling of government secrets will surely resound from now until November. should not face criminal charges for using a private email account, she and her aides had been “extremely careless” in handling ‘Extremely careless’ “Although we did not find clear evidence highly classified information.

Comey’s long-anticipated recommen- that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues indation to the Justice Department removed tended to violate laws governing the hanthe most serious threat that had hung over dling of classified information, there is eviClinton’s presidential campaign – the pos- dence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classibility of a criminal indictment.

Federal law makes it a crime for a trustSee CLINTON, Page A2

FLORIDA COURIER / 10TH STATEWIDE ANNIVERSARY

Trouble at Bethune-Cookman PRESORTED STANDARD MAIL

TALLAHASSEE – The 2016 Florida Legislature appears to have been the richest in recent history.

The makeup of the 160 members of the 2016 Legislature, considered a “part-time” lawmaking body where people earn about $30,000 a year, featured at least 55 millionaires – three more than in the prior session, according to newly filed financial-disclosure reports.

In 2011, there were 46 millionaires working in the Senate and House, according to disclosure reports required to be filed annually.

Public policy ‘slant’ University of Central Florida political-science professor Aubrey Jewett said there is a “middle- to upper-class slant to Florida public policy” as legislators typically have been wealthier than average constituents. But Jewett, who has co-authored a book on Florida politics, admitted being surprised by the growing number of millionaire lawmakers.

“Clearly, being wealthier gives a candidate a better opportunity to get elected as it allows a person to begin to bankroll their campaign and to have the time to spend on campaigning,” Jewett said. “You don’t see a lot of blue-collar workers running, as their work schedules tie them down.”

The average net worth of House members who filed by a Friday deadline topped $1.61 million – the reports typically reflect net worths as of the end of 2015 – and the average was $4.54 million for filers in the Senate.

Ben Wilcox, of the Tallahassee-based watchdog group Integrity Florida, said being a legislator takes a “tremendous comSee MILLIONAIRES, Page A2

SNAPSHOTS

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

Black takes over nation’s top Marine division

BOOKS | B1

The inauguration of Jacksonville’s first Black mayor B1

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JULY 8 - JULY 14, 2011

VOLUME 19 NO. 27

CRISIS AT B-CU FC INvESTIgATES

CRISIS AT B-CU PART 2

The Florida Courier investigates the turmoil at Florida’s largest private HBCU. This week – The fight between Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed and an organization representing university professors spans 10 years and two HBCUs.

COMPILED BY THE FLORIDA COURIER STAFF

D

r. Trudie Kibbe Reed is one of a handful of people who have ever served as the president of two Historically Black Colleges or Universities (HBCUs) in America.

In her presidential welcome on the website, Reed summarizes her own accomplishments at BethuneCookman University (B-CU).

“In the four years since I became president of this great institution, we have achieved University (sic) status and enjoyed record-breaking enrollment. Our stewardship covenant ensures that B-CU stands on strong financial footing, with balanced budgets, strong financial ratings and an

endowment that has nearly doubled since 2004,” the page reads.

But Reed’s official bio on B-CU’s website, www.cookman.com, pays scant attention to her first HBCU presidency. It only says this: “While serving as the first female president of Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, she broke all fundraising records, raising more than $40 million dollars (sic) in three years.”

Another similarity If there’s at least one other constant – other than fundraising – in Reed’s career of academic and organizational leadership at Philander See CRISIS, Page A2

THE FIRST LADY / OUT AND ABOUT

‘Take me out to the ball game’

FLORIDA COURIER FILES

Scott OKs SunRail Train will eventually run from DeLand to Kissimmee

BY BRANDON LARRABEE THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

The Central Florida commuter line called SunRail will go forward, state officials announced last week, ending months of deliberation by Gov. Rick Scott that tested the dividing line between his small-government brand of conservatism and the GOP’s pro-business orientation.

If it was, as some critics contended, an attempt to shore up his shaky political standing, it backfired; the governor quickly came under fire from all sides for allowing the project to go forward.

Transportation Secretary Ananth Prasad held a July 1 morning press conference to announce Scott’s decision. Prasad said assurances from local governments and private officials persuaded the state to go along with the 61-mile system, which is expected to cost almost $1.3 billion to build and operate from 2014 to 2030.

Tea Partiers vs. business

HARRY E. WALKER/MCT

First Lady Michelle Obama posed for a photo with children of members of the military prior to the start of the Chicago Cubs vs. Washington Nationals major league baseball game at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, July 5.

SNAPSHOTS

NATION | A3

Arne Duncan warns of ‘educational train wreck’ FLORIDA | A6

Anthony case compared to Simpson trial

B-CU names acting head basketball coach

The decision highlighted the tensions Scott faces as he attempts to please both the business community, which supported the project and often strongly backs Republicans, and the activist Tea Party movement, which largely opposed the plan. The latter helped power Scott through the GOP primary and general election last year.

In remarks to a newspaper editors’ convention in Tampa, Scott made it clear he wasn’t a big fan of the project and wasn’t totally convinced it would be successful. But the governor said he hoped the project would work, See RAIL, Page A2

Courier wins two first-place state newspaper awards FROM STAFF REPORTS

FLORIDA | A3

Assessment, advice from Orlando mayor

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BY JIM TURNER THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

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Millionaires add up in Legislature

The Florida Courier staff picked up two first-place awards last week from the Florida Press Association (FPA) and won a second-place award in June from one of the country’s leading journalism organizations.

The Courier won a total of three awards in the FPA’s annual Better Weekly Newspaper Contest. The Courier competed in categories for weekly newspapers in Florida with circulations of more than 15,000.

The FPA awards were presented at a conference held at The Vinoy Hotel in St. Petersburg. The Courier’s awards from the FPA include: • First place, Community Service, Publisher Charles W. Cherry II, Senior Editor Jenise Griffin Morgan and Starla Vaughns

Cherin, staff writer.

The community service award was for a “Restoring Justice” series last year informing Florida residents about federal Race to the Top funds that were to be available in the state. Stories and information published gave residents insight on what they could do to urge local school officials to use the funds to improve the education of at-risk students.

• First place for in-depth reporting, Publisher Charles W. Cherry II. Cherry won for a May 2010 story titled “Cruel and Unusual Punishment’’ about the 77 young Black men in Florida who are serving life sentences for non-homicides.

• Third place for Front Page Makeup. Angela Van Emmerik, a veteran presentation editor and page designer, designs the Courier’s newspaper pages.

HEALTH | B3

No ‘pocket change’ to fight Zika

ALSO INSIDE

DOJ to investigate Baton Rouge killing

BY JAWEED KALEEM AND MOLLY HENNESSY-FISKE LOS ANGELES TIMES / TNS

BATON ROUGE, LA. – The fatal police shooting of an African-American man hawking CDs in front of a convenience store has once again reignited the nation’s long-running debate over race, police and the use of force.

The shooting by two White police officers – as 37-year-old Alton Sterling was apparently pinned to the ground – quickly sent angry protesters into the streets of the Louisiana capital and prompted the U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday to take the lead in the investigation to determine what happened.

“Like you, there is a lot that we do not understand, and at this point, like you, I am demanding answers,” Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie Jr. said at a news conference a day after Tuesday’s shooting, promising a “transparent and independent investigation” and calling for protesters to remain peaceful.

Phone video Sterling’s violent death played out on a cellphone video shot by a bystander and quickly reverberated across the country, evoking images of earlier deaths at the hands of police killings that sparked protests in Ferguson, Mo., Staten Island, N.Y., and Cleveland – cities that have become geographic waypoints in an evolving national drama over the policing of African-American communities.

Activists compared the shooting to the death of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man who was suspected of illegally selling cigarettes and died in the summer of 2014 after a police officer put him in a chokehold.

Hundreds of angry but nonviolent demonstrators converged on the scene of the shooting on Tuesday night. Protests continued at City Hall on Wednesday.

Gun found

The FPA recognition is the latest in a number of state and national awards and recognition that the Courier, Florida’s largest Black-owned newspaper, has won for its work since its statewide launch in 2006.

The Florida Press Association includes all of the Florida’s daily newspapers and most of the state’s weekly newspapers in its membership.

National competition Cherry, Morgan and Cherin also won second place in the Society of Professional Journalists 61st annual Green Eyeshade Awards in the Public Affairs print/nondaily category for the “Restoring Justice” series.

The Green Eyeshade Awards, which recognizes the excellence in 11 Southern states, were presented June 24 in Atlanta.

ALSO COMMENTARY: LUCIUS GANTT: ‘ALWAYS SCARED’ MEANS ‘ALWAYS EXPLOITED’ | A2 INSIDE COMMENTARY: CHERYL PEARSON-MCNEIL: LADIES, IT’S NOT JUST YOU – WE’RE ALL STRESSED | A4

Terry McMillan: For 50 and up: It’s not too late

Another ‘death by cop’

Five years ago, the Florida Courier wrote a nine-part investigative series about the troubled tenure of Bethune-Cookman University President Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed, detailing a plethora of lawsuits that had been filed against the university. Reed stepped down from the presidency less than a year after the series was published.

Two officers were reportedly responding to an anonymous 911 tip that Sterling had made a threat with a gun in front of the convenience store where the incident occurred; the cellphone video taken by the bystander suggested that officers found a weapon in Sterling’s pocket, though there was no sign that he had touched it.

The incident began on a hot, muggy morning in a poor neighborhood of Baton Rouge on Tuesday as Sterling was selling his stock of CDs in front of the Triple S Food Mart, something he had done on and off for seven years, especially since moving into a nearby halfway house.

In the video shot by a local group that monitors police, the two White officers who responded to the scene shout at Sterling to get on the ground See DEATH, Page A2

COMMENTARY: CHARLES W. CHERRY II: RANDOM THOUGHTS OF A FREE BLACK MIND | A4 COMMENTARY: JAMES COMEY: CLINTON EXTREMELY CARELESS WITH CLASSIFIED INFORMATION | A5

FOCUS

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JULY 8 – JULY 14, 2016

Beware of the ‘crack candidates’ Crack cocaine (crack) is a freebase form of cocaine that can be smoked. It offers a short but intense high to smokers. The Manual of Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment calls it the most “addictive” (effective) form of cocaine.

A “crack candidate” is someone that is addicted to running for office!

Every election year, political insanity necessitates that certain people, especially losers, will seek to become elected to public office.

Crazy candidates If you run for political office for two, three or five elections in a row and lose every time, not only are you an undesirable candidate – you are also politically crazy!

Yes, every eligible citizen has the right to campaign for a po-

uals prefer to support only two kinds of candidates: candidates they can control and candidates they cannot defeat!

Well, crazy people and crazy candidates cannot easily be controlled. How can you tell if a candidate for office is crazy? Easy.

No clue

LUCIUS GANTT THE GANTT REPORT

litical position. And every voter has the right to reject them, deny them, and laugh at them!

These “crack candidates” love to go into their kitchens and cook up what they think is a dope campaign. They gather their girlfriends and homies and measure the political landscape. They tell each other how great they are and how much the voters love them. They imagine how much political “mannitol” they will need to cut up their political opponents!

Control is very, very important in politics. Businesses, labor interests, associations and individ-

They have no clue about how to influence voters, how to generate votes, how to manage a campaign, how to do political research, how to conduct a political poll, how to design and produce campaign signs and literature, how to set up political phone banks and telemarketing, how to recruit political volunteers and how to utilize those volunteers, how to design, produce and purchase media in both Black and White media companies and media markets, and they don’t know how to raise money, or how to get free political media and other assistance!

Crack candidates will never be able to defeat an opponent that has a well-organized campaign, a candidate that understands

DEATH

No gun Abdullah Muflahi, the owner of the convenience store, said Sterling did not have a gun in his hand when the police approached him, but said he saw officers take one out of Sterling’s pocket after the shooting. Muflahi released his own video of the altercation, which doesn’t appear to show

CLINTON from A1

sified information,” Comey told reporters at FBI headquarters.

Even so, he said, “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”

Comey said he and other top bureau officials determined that that the case lacked the aggravating factors that have led prosecutors to press charges in the past.

He noted that those previously charged in such instances intentionally or willfully mishandled classified information, or did so in such vast quantities that they must have known what they were doing. Others had been disloyal to the United States, he said, or tried to obstruct justice.

“We do not see those things here,” he said.

It is highly unlikely that the Justice Department will overrule the director’s recommendation. Last week, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said she would accept the decision of Comey and career prosecutors who have been working on the case.

‘Not a crime’ “It’s just not a crime under current law to do nothing more than share sensitive information over unsecured networks,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas. “Maybe it should be, but that’s something for Congress to decide going forward.”

Comey made clear, Vladeck said, that “however much we might want federal law to make her carelessness a crime, nothing she did falls within the

Never see them Most people never see a crack addict, because they are like vampires that hang out on street corners late at night, then disappear right before sunrise. And you never see a crack candidate until election time.

The Black crack candidates want to represent Black people and Black districts. But they don’t live in the Black neighborhoods, don’t shop in the Black neighborhoods, don’t hire Black political professionals, don’t advertise in Black-owned media outlets, and will never fight hard for political and governmental issues of im-

No response Muflahi heard Sterling ask, “What did I do wrong?” He said police did not respond.

“They were throwing him on top of the car, tasered him,” Muflahi said. “Then they tackled him on another vehicle.

They got on top of him, one of the officers screamed ‘Gun!’ Then there were six shots.”

That’s when Muflahi said he saw one of the officers reach into Sterling’s pocket to extract a dark-colored handgun.

Sterling died from multiple gunshot wounds to his chest and back, according to East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner William Clark. His death was ruled a homicide.

from A1

and quickly tackle him. After he is pinned down, someone is heard yelling: “He’s got a gun!

Gun!” and, in a matter of seconds, gunshots are heard.

In a second video taken from another angle, Sterling’s chest can be seen bleeding before an officer removes an unidentifiable object from his pocket.

While the national debate over police shootings has prompted cities across the country to require officers to wear body cameras – including those in Baton Rouge – in this case the cameras being worn by both officers became dislodged in the scuffle, though they apparently continued to operate, police said.

science and technology of modern-day campaigns, a candidate that understands “political timing” and knows when to canvass neighborhoods, send direct mail, start and stop advertising runs, who knows how to handle absentee ballots requests and issues, who knows when to make phone calls, and understands that community people support candidates that support their community!

COURTESY OF FACEBOOK

Alton Sterling, shot dead at the age of 37, was the father of five children.

Sterling holding a gun.

Muflahi said he had known Sterling since opening the store seven years ago. He called him “Big Boy,” allowed him to sell his CDs in the parking lot and joked with him when they passed. Sterling recently had begun carrying a handgun, he said.

Louisiana is an open-carry state, where a person who

letter of the relevant federal criminal statutes.”

The laws protecting classified information go back to World War I and the need to protect military secrets from enemy agents.

In recent decades, however, these laws have been used at times to prosecute officials who gave classified information to people who are not entrusted to have it.

The best-known recent case involved Army general and former CIA Director David H. Petraeus, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for disclosing highly secret information – including the identities of covert agents – by giving it to his girlfriend who was writing his biography. He was also accused of lying to the FBI during the investigation.

Sandy Berger, a former national security adviser under President Bill Clinton, also pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for leaving the National Archives with classified documents hidden in his socks.

John M. Deutch, another former CIA director, narrowly avoided a misdemeanor charge for having taken hundreds of top secret files home on his laptop computer. He was pardoned by Clinton before charges were filed.

But none of those cases fit the peculiar situation whereby the secretary of state chose to bypass the department’s nonclassified email system and instead relied on a personal server to handle her regular communications with her staff.

‘Should have known’ Clinton also used the department’s secure email system for transmitting classified information, but

is at least 17 can legally have a gun on his or her body without a permit. But family members said Sterling would have been prohibited from carrying a gun because he was on probation.

Muflahi said when he emerged from the store to film police approaching, he did not see the officers ask Sterling about the gun before tackling him.

the FBI found that some of the regular communications with her staff on the personal server involved facts and details that she should have known were classified. In a few cases, the emails bore markings to indicate they contained classified information.

In the end, Comey, a deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush, said Clinton’s careless conduct fell short of a crime because there was no evidence of “clearly intentional and willful mishandling” of classified information and no sign of “disloyalty” or an effort to “obstruct justice.”

But prosecutors said they were unaware of any convictions based on gross negligence alone.

No surprise The FBI’s recommendation did not come as a surprise to lawyers who closely follow issues involving classified information.

Stewart Baker, a top national security lawyer in the Bush administration, called Comey’s statement “pretty damning for Secretary Clinton, even if the facts don’t make for an impressive criminal case. He suggests that she should have been, or arguably could still be, subjected to ‘security or administrative sanctions.’

“What he doesn’t say, but what we can infer, is that she ran those incredible risks with national security information because she was more worried about the GOP reading her mail than of Russian or Chinese spies reading it. That’s appalling,” he said.

Beyond carelessness Clinton and her team clearly skirted the most ba-

Local decision Although the federal government is leading the investigation, the decision of whether to file state murder charges will likely rest with a local prosecutor – and possibly with a local grand jury.

East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore III said in a statement that he would wait until all investigations were complete before making a decision on whether to proceed with a criminal case.

sic rules for the handling of classified information, and their actions went well beyond carelessness to an open flouting of known practices, security experts inside and outside the administration said Tuesday.

Experts were especially disdainful of the FBI’s finding that highly classified information turned up in emails that Clinton sent and received on her unsecured server. That alone was in violation of the Foreign Affairs Manual, a comprehensive set of State Department policies, that, among other restrictions, require that a different computer system be used when dealing with classified documents and that a physical distance, or “air gap,” separate it from other computers.

“If she didn’t want to carry two systems, she could have had a staffer or one of the agents assigned to her protective detail hand her the (other) system,” said Scott Stewart, vice president of tactical analysis for Stratfor, an Austin, Texasbased global security consultancy. Stewart is a former Diplomatic Security Service special agent for the State Department.

Failing to maintain that dual system “is just unconscionable, especially if we are putting codeword material on an unclassified system,” Stewart said, referring to the practice of compartmentalizing classified cables or documents with code words that ensure access only on a “need-to-know” basis.

“That’s not carelessness. That was intentional,” Stewart said.

Possibly hacked Comey said that Clinton also used her personal email extensively “in the territory of sophisticated

portance to Black voters!

If White folks could do Black hair, you wouldn’t even see a Black crack candidate in the barber shop or beauty salon!

Don’t waste your time If you live in a city or a political district where there is high crime, senseless murders, police brutality, political kickbacks and government corruption, bad schools, bad roads, poor housing, inadequate health care and little or no community progress, don’t waste your time casting a ballot for any crack candidate!

Support political candidates that will win, and when they get in office, they will not be afraid to support you!

Stop smoking the political crack pipe! “Crack killed Applejack!”

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.

MILLIONAIRES from A1

mitment of time” and the growing trend of millionaires “may indicate that only those with a lot of money can afford to run and serve in a part-time legislature.”

Wilcox said the growing wealth divide between lawmakers and people they represent isn’t likely to change any time soon.

‘Ruling elite’ “We are creating a ruling elite that breathes rarified air,” Wilcox said. “It would take having some difficult conversations about raising legislative pay and reducing the costs of campaigning in order to give average citizens more of an opportunity to offer themselves for public service.”

For this past session, topping the Senate was the $25.04 million by term-limited Sen. Don Gaetz, a Niceville Republican who co-founded VITAS Healthcare Corp.

At the lower end of the Senate is Miami Democrat Dwight Bullard, a teacher who had a net worth of $10,287.

The wealthiest House member remains Miami Republican Michael Bileca, the cofounder of Towncare Dental Partnership, at $18.4 million net worth.

Unlike in the Senate where everyone is in the black, eight House members are in the red, with Republican Danny Burgess, an attorney from San Antonio, the deepest underwater at $253,100 – due primarily to $274,290 in student loans.

adversaries,” a practice he said made it “possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account.”

He did not name the countries, but the U.S. government has warned repeatedly in recent years about the dangers of cyber intrusions throughout the world.

Last year, President Obama stopped staying at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan for the annual United Nations General Assembly session because the property had been sold to an insurance company in China, a nation that would qualify as a “sophisticated adversary.”

Other punishment possible In his presentation Tuesday, Comey suggested that while he was recommending no criminal charges, other “consequences” were possible, including what he called “security or administrative sanctions.” But the experts said it was unlikely such sanctions would be used against Clinton or her aides, especially if she wins the election.

“Once you’re president, you have access to whatever you want. You can ask for whatever you want and they have to give it to you, within reason,” said one official who’s familiar with security procedures across the federal government. He spoke under the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “Bill Clinton famously joked that he was going to look for UFOs when elected.”

Clinton’s senior aides also are unlikely to face problems. Experts say the process of revoking someone’s clearance takes up to a year – well after the November vote.

In addition, the process

is overseen by the Office of Personnel Management, which falls under the executive branch. In other words, if she wins, Clinton’s White House would decide whether her former aides merit security clearances.

Lax State Department Comey also chastised the State Department for what he said was a lax security culture that fell short “in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.”

That assessment was seconded by officials who’ve worked across the federal government, saying the State Department was well known for looser security than, say, the Pentagon or the National Security Council.

One U.S. official, asked for examples of such lax practices, let out a sigh and began to list practices he observed among State Department employees: sticking passwords under keyboards, sharing passcodes to open gates on unsecured phone lines, leaving computers “just lying around, sometimes open and sometimes closed.”

Outside data security experts concurred.

“I know enough about State Department security to not have a lot of faith in it. They are behind the times,” said Herbert S. Lin, a scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

David G. Savage, Del Quentin Wilber and David Lauter of the Tribune Washington Bureau; and Hannah Allam and Tim Johnson of the McClatchy Washington Bureau (TNS) all contributed to this report.

FLORIDA

JULY 8 – JULY 14, 2016

Orlando shooting victims to receive funds by Oct. 1 Victims of the attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando will receive compensation from the OneOrlando Fund by Oct. 1, according to a press release issued by Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer on July 1.

Lawyer Ken Feinberg will administer the fund – combined with donations collected by Equality Florida – for victims of the June 12 attack on the gay nightclub in what is the worst mass shooting in the nation’s recent history.

Combined, the groups have raised more than $17 million to assist the families and victims of the attack. Forty-nine clubgoers were killed, 53 were wounded and hundreds of others were targeted by a shooter, who was later killed by police.

“Words cannot express how grateful we continue to be for the outpouring of generosity our community’s received as the people from around the globe continue to contribute funds to OneOrlando to

A3 Sons Michael Marquez, from left, Isaiah Henderson and Robert Presley grieve during the funeral of Pulse shooting victim Brenda Lee Marquez McCool at First United Methodist Church in Orlando on June 20.

Henderson, center, was in the nightclub with his mother, Brenda Lee, when she was fatally wounded.

deliver the critical help and healing the victims’ families and survivors need to aid in their recovery,” Dyer said.

Aug. 4 meetings Feinberg will work with the Orlando community to develop a protocol outlining how the funds will be distributed, according to the press release.

“OneOrlando is committed to having an open and transparent process to ensure these decisions are made with input from victims’ families and survivors and the larger community,” the press release said.

Officials will hold two town hall meetings on Aug. 4 at Orlando’s Amway Center to get feedback on the draft protocol. Payments will be distributed by Oct. 1, according to the press release, and no overhead or administrative costs will be paid for from the fund.

JOE BURBANK/ ORLANDO SENTINEL/TNS

Orlando mayor addresses questions about challenges, unity after tragedy

BY DARA KAM THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

TALLAHASSEE – Hours after a gunman killed 49 clubgoers and injured more than 50 others in his city, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer told his community – and the world – how to respond to the worst mass shooting in the nation’s history.

“We need to support each other. We need to love each other. And we will not be defined by a hateful shooter. We will be defined by how we support and love each other,” Dyer said after the attack on Pulse, a gay nightclub in downtown Orlando, on June 12.

Dyer, 57, was elected as mayor of his hometown in 2003. Prior to that, the softspoken Democrat – a lawyer, who also has a degree in civil engineering – spent a decade in the state Senate, where he served for three years as minority leader.

Biggest challenge The News Service of Florida has five questions for Orlando Mayor John “Buddy” Dyer: Q: As mayor, what’s been your biggest challenge in the aftermath of the mass shooting?

DYER: Every day is a challenge. It’s been a continuum from the active shooter event, to the clearing of the crime scene, to the identifying of the victims, to the notifying the families, and now we’re in the families’ and victims’ assistance (phase). So it’s been a continuum of issues. But my priority has been communication, and making sure that the public is well-informed on everything that we’re doing.

(Your office launched a website where you’re posting all of the public records related to the event. Why did you do that?)

We’re kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. The FBI, who are used to not releasing anything, are leaning on us on that side, and then the press is leaning from the other side.

It’s actually to our benefit to have everything released so that people aren’t speculating on what happened that night, because we know that the OPD (Orlando Police Department) did an unbelievable job and saved dozens, if not hundreds, of lives that night.

Some people are filling in the blanks with stuff that’s not true, so getting more information out is good for us. Now, taking all the time to respond to all of those

JOE BURBANK/ORLANDO SENTINEL/TNS

Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer delivers remarks during a press conference at Camping World Stadium on June 17 in Orlando. The mayor was joined by various charity and community agency workers and executives to update the public on assistance being offered to those affected by the Pulse massacre. public-records requests is somewhat taxing.

Message to mayors Q: You addressed the U.S. Conference of Mayors on June 26, giving advice about how to prepare for situations like the attack on the Pulse nightclub.

What did you tell your colleagues?

DYER: The first thing I told them was that this type of tragedy could happen in any of our cities, and that we all need to be prepared for that possibility. It is better to be prepared for that possibility than to simply believe that it couldn’t happen in your city.

I wanted to emphasize that. That’s something that the Red Cross had asked me to do, specifically. I wanted to do that, and then I gave them a little bit of a timeline and a perspective on what I saw, going through it, and then some lessons learned or perspectives that I had.

The perspectives, number one, had to do with communication, and being concise in giving out the facts and making sure that the public knows that you have it under control, and that the community is safe.

I also emphasized that, out of the box, the public needs to see them. They need to see their mayor, and not an FBI agent that they’ve never seen in their life. That was one thing.

Two, is creating the relationships that you can’t create on the fly in a crisis. The everyday job of a mayor is

reaching out into various communities. Everybody’s in my cell phone now – I do have the advantage of having done this for 14 years, plus 10 in the Senate.

I talked about having various police officers and first responders paired in technology, and especially training, and emphasized the fact that one of the things we did, we took some heat in purchasing the BearCat (armored vehicle) that we used to breach the building.

When we bought it, there was a little bit of a backlash a couple of years ago, just the buying of military-style equipment for police. But the bad guys are as heavily armed as professional armies, so we have to be as well. I talked to them about financial readiness, in terms of contingency funds.

One thing I told them they’d never think of, we happened to have a nonprofit that we maintain ...

When the faucet turned on, people were wanting to give us money, we had a place to accept it, and not a lot of cities do, and would have probably been fumbling around trying to figure out how to actually take contributions.

The last thing I emphasized was the importance of having good people in your organization that will go above and beyond when called upon. Because we have so many city employees, not just first responders, but especially the people doing victims’ assis-

tance that were traveling so far out of their lanes that they probably couldn’t see the center line of the road.

Emotional toll Q: I’ve been watching you very closely since your first television appearance just hours after the Pulse attack. I can’t imagine the toll it’s taken on you and your staff. How has this affected you personally, and what are you doing to cope right now?

DYER: I am looking straight ahead with blinders on, and taking on the things that are in front of us. We made a policy, day one, that if there was a decision that did not have to be made immediately, we would not make that decision and we would defer. So we are dealing with things that have to be dealt with immediately. I’ll give you an example of that.

Everybody’s already clamoring about the memorial. We know we’re going to do some type of permanent memorial, but we do not have to stress about that right now while we’re still trying to help families and victims.

On a more personal level, we’ve had some counseling. I did some counseling with OPD – they call it debriefing, but it was counseling – and OFD (Orlando Fire Department). I listened to what they were doing, and I brought it in for my own staff, who were just as traumatized, because they had been servicing victims

and talking to people who had been shot, or whose family members had been shot.

We had 1,100 people at the victims’ assistance center, over 300 families.

I almost immediately, on Wednesday – I work out at 6 a.m – I went back to working out. I went back to eating regularly. I went back to drinking all the water I should be drinking, and trying my best to get into bed by 10 o’clock or so, and getting enough rest. But I will concede, by the end of the day, if I’m not physically spent, I’m definitely emotionally spent.

Love, compassion, unity Q: If there’s one thing people could learn from this tragedy, what would you want it to be?

DYER: An event like this can rip a community apart.

Or it can bring people together and unify them. In our case, I am so proud of our residents, how they’ve pulled together and have not let the hate-filled act of a deranged killer define us.

We’ve been defined by our response, and that’s with love, with compassion, with unity.

What I’ve seen is a lot of people open their hearts that were maybe not as accepting towards people that live different lifestyles or disagreed with them.

There is more of an openness. And one of the ministers said, and I’ve taken this to heart, that Orlando

has been anointed to show the world how to combat hatred and evil and how to promote equality and embrace diversity.

I think our citizens have been charged with that, and we’re going to have to show the world on a continuous basis, and not just over these two weeks, how to do that. We’re going to be one of the cities that continue to embrace diversity the most, anywhere there is.

I’m going to mention one other thing. This is the weirdest sort of thing. Everybody knows Orlando for our theme parks. And the world has seen the rest of Orlando in the last couple of weeks.

(You have been focused on a message of love and compassion. What do you think you can do to ensure that a message like that takes hold, given how divided our country is?)

I would hope that the significance of the Pulse event, Pulse tragedy, is exactly that. That 10 years from now, people say that was a catalyst to change our country to be more loving, compassionate and unified. That that was the point in our history when that occurred. Because our country has come together, right, behind us, with us.

There were 250 mayors at the conference. Every one of them came up to me to show them a picture of their vigil, their city hall lit up in rainbow colors, their main bridge lit up, or whatever. Every one of them had something to show me.

Signs of support Q: There has been an outpouring of support from around the world.

The OneOrlando Fund, combined with contributions from Equality Florida, has topped $17 million. What’s the best way for people to contribute if they want to help, other than monetarily?

DYER: You know what’s really lifted us up? Seeing all the vigils and prayers.

When you see Orlando United signs at little diners in small towns in Iowa or you see the London Bridge lit up, or buildings all over the world, that’s very uplifting to us.

One of the clerks in the city clerk’s office was on a trip to Kentucky last week.

She said that even the small diners they stopped in while they were driving on the road, almost every business had something about standing with Orlando. So that’s pretty cool.

EDITORIAL

A4

JULY 8 – JULY 14, 2016

NYT Black Press story not fit to print Since 1897, the New York Times has boasted that it publishes “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” That slogan, created

by Adolph S. Ochs, the original owner, still appears on the masthead of the Times each day.

On the front page of last Sunday’s edition, the New York Times carried a story under the headline, “Pillars of Black Media, Once Vibrant, Now Fighting for Survival.” It was a flawed, shallow critique of the Black Press and.

My problem with the story was not so much what was written, but what was left out. Jesse Jackson has long declared that text without context is pretext. Now, I finally know what he means.

Always fighting The premise of the story, as the headline suggests, is that the Black Press is fighting for its survival. News flash: That’s been the case since the first Black newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, was first edited in 1827 by John B. Russwurm and Samuel Cornish – 70 years before Adolph Ochs came up with his slogan for the New York Times.

The story correctly observes that many Black media outlets have been purchased by Whiteowned companies: Black Entertainment Television, created by Robert L. Johnson and his then-wife, Sheila, was sold to Viacom in 2001 for nearly $3 billion. In 2005, Ed Lewis, Clarence O. Smith and their partners sold Essence, the premier Black women’s magazine, to Time, Inc. The story failed to mention

GEORGE E. CURRY GEORGE CURRY MEDIA

that Black-oriented digital outlets also are now in non-Black hands. For example, The Root, created by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Donald E. Graham, former publisher of the Washington Post, was sold last year to Univision Communications. The site went from being owned by Graham Holdings Company, a majority White company, to one that carries the tagline, the “Hispanic Heartbeat of America.”

Larger failure The larger failure was not addressing the importance of Black-owned and operated media. It is no accident that when Freedom’s Journal was launched, its editors declared: “We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us...”

As long as Black media outlets are owned by Blacks, it’s likely that they will be speaking for Blacks. However, once they are owned by others, there is no guarantee that they will remain as vigilant or not have their voice diluted. It’s one thing to be “Black-oriented.” It’s quite another to be “Black-owned.” In my book, it’s best to have both in order to effectively serve the bests interest of African-Americans.

If you doubt this, imagine the reaction if a Chinese-owned company purchases Univision with the pledge that it will continue to be the “Hispanic Heartbeat of America.” There would be more than a handful of doubters.

The issue is not race or ethnicity per se - it’s an issue of trust. African-Americans trust the Black Press and distrust the White-owned corporate media.

A 2012 study by Nielsen found: • Ninety-one percent of Blacks believe that Black media is more relevant to them; • Eighty-one percent believe that the products advertised in Black media are more relevant to them; *Seventy-seven percent of African-Americans said Black media has a better understanding of the needs and issues that affect them and • Seventy-three percent believe Black media keeps them in touch with their heritage.

No major support Yet, many major advertisers shun the Black Press, mistakenly thinking they can obtain the same results through general market media.

In its 2013 report titled, “Resilient, Receptive and Relevant: The African-American Consumer 2013 Report,” Nielsen projected that Black spending would rise from $1 trillion to $1.3 trillion by 2017.

“Companies mistakenly believe there are no language barriers, that a general market ‘onesize-fits-all’ strategy is an effective way to reach African-Amer-

Hillary Clinton skates – (Disclosure: I’m a former assistant state attorney.)

I listened to FBI Director James Comey make a strong case against Hillary before doing a Uturn and letting her off the hook.

His ‘no prosecution’ recommendation was a tough but reasonable decision.

My only beef? Comey said, “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” I strongly disagree. A LOT of prosecutors would have been ready to take on the best lawyers the Clintons can buy in what would be a careermaking case.

I believe Hillary was “grossly negligent,” and experts like the ones quoted on the Page A1 story would testify as such. There’s a potent argument to be made about how national security rules

parents were permitted to settle in Britain because Nigeria was a British colony, and later became part of the British Commonwealth. It actually had nothing to do with the European Union.

and Spain and Belgium and the Netherlands and other members of today’s European Union rich – but Cynthia Erivo and Trevor Noah, the South African, come to the defense of the European Union.

They like the house that slavery and genocide built, and where global capitalism now rules. They fear anything that might create disorder in the House of Europe, just as their counterparts in Black America fear anything that might disturb the tranquility of the U.S. ruling class and its institutions.

The House Negroes are truly international, always ready to put out fires in their masters’ many houses around the globe.

rant and rave, then let the voters decide.

It’s similar to what U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts did. Rather than kill “Obamacare” after millions of people were able to get health care coverage for the first time, Roberts let the Affordable Health Act live on until either Congress repeals it or it dies of its own defects.

Neither Comey nor Roberts, both Republicans, wanted to go down in history as destroying the electoral chances of America’s first female president, nor of wrecking the country’s first attempt at universal health care.

in life. Most people would take that plea rather than pony up hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend themselves against the DOJ. • POWER: Here’s what Bro. Prez said in October 2015 to “60 Minutes” about the FBI investigation: “…this is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.” In April, he said, “…Hillary Clinton…would never intentionally put America in any kind of jeopardy... and she has acknowledged – that there’s a carelessness, in terms of managing emails, that she has owned, and she recognizes.”

Bro. Prez is a lawyer. He ‘told’ Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch (also both lawyers) exactly what to do. (Later, Lynch ‘inconveniently’ bumps into Bill, then says she’ll accept whatever recommendation she gets. Keeps her hands clean that way.)

Obama knows that if anyone but Hillary wins, the destruction of the Obama legacy will begin on Inauguration Day. The desperation shows.

‘Massa, we sick?’

Like Malcolm X’s house Negroes, their first instinct when they see the master’s house on fire, is to put the fire out. If the master gets sick, they start sneezing. And, when the referendum went against Britain staying in the European Union, house Negroes of all colors on both sides of the Atlantic acted like their own

CHARLES W. CHERRY II, ESQ. PUBLISHER

seem to apply to the “little people” – but not to her.

Two factors I think there were two key factors in Comey’s decision. First: millions of Americans voted for Hillary in the Democratic primary, and his decision could have made “the will of the people” meaningless. Best to trash her as careless and paranoid, let Republicans and Clinton haters

Big-company blackout

It’s rigged So is the system rigged, as Donald Trump said? Yes. How? MONEY and POWER. • MONEY: If this was anyone else, the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) would have forced them to plead guilty to SOMETHING – a federal misdemeanor – and made sure they never worked for the government or had a security clearance again

Colonialism good?

By Cynthia Erivo’s logic, it was a good thing that Britain invaded, plundered, enslaved, and stole her parent’s homeland. By colonizing Nigeria, the Brits saved her from being born an African. The millions who died in the British conquest of Nigeria, and in the Middle Passage to the America’s, or on the plantations of Virginia or Jamaica, or in forced labor to the British in Nigeria, or who die today in the oil-soaked wasteland of the Niger River Delta – all of this past and present suffering and human degradation is balanced out by the fact that a daughter of Nigeria gets to star in a Broadway show.

This super-exploitation of Africa made Britain and France

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.

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.

Kroger, Merck, State Farm Insurance, Hewlett-Packard, Morgan Stanley, Sears Roebuck, Target, Merrill Lynch, Kmart, Freddie Mac, Costco, Safeway, Pfizer, J.C. Penney, MetLife, Dell Computer, Goldman Sachs, UPS, Prudential Financial, Wells Fargo, Sprint, New York Life, Microsoft, Walt Disney, Aetna, Walgreen, Bank One, BellSouth, Honeywell, UnitedHealth Group, Viacom, American Express, Wachovia Corp., CVS, Lowe’s, BristolMyers Squibb and Coca-Cola.

Cheryl Pearson-McNeil, a senior vice president for Nielsen, said it best: “Until we do a better job as consumers in the choices we make and invest in companies that invest in us, we are not going to have any changes.”

Now, that’s fit to print.

worlds were coming to end.

On Comedy Central’s “Daily Show,” host Trevor Noah interviewed Cynthia Erivo, who plays Celie in the Broadway production of “The Color Purple.” Noah lampooned those Brits that voted to leave the EU as a bunch of Donald Trumps with Cockney accents. He said nothing about the EU’s pro-corporate, probanker austerity policies – maybe because there’s nothing funny about those policies, or maybe because he works for a rich corporation.

Noah drew Ms. Erivo into the Brexit discussion. She was born in London to parents who emigrated from Nigeria. She explained her opposition to Brexit, saying, “If my mom didn’t get to the UK, I probably wouldn’t be here right now, on that stage on Broadway.”

Cynthia Erivo is grateful that her West African parents were allowed into Britain, so that she could be born in London and pursue a successful career. Her

BLACK AGENDA REPORT

QUICK TAKES FROM #2: STRAIGHT, NO CHASER

icans,” the Nielsen study said.

“Just the opposite is true.”

Nielsen said advertisers allot only 3 percent of their $2.2 billion yearly budget to media aimed at Black audiences. Yet they have the nerve to question the viability of the Black Press, while ignoring their own culpability.

A Federal Communications Commission report, quoting one congressperson, said: “Ad agencies and their clients are refusing to advertise in media owned by Blacks and other minorities. This means that in many cases, Black media are being bypassed for advertising placement, even though they possess higher numbers in groups being targeted by the ad agency.”

George E. Curry is president and CEO of George Curry Media, LLC. He is the former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine and the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service. Contact him via georgecurry.com.

GLEN FORD

Random thoughts of a free Black mind, v. 279

BOB ENGLEHART, CAGLECARTOONS.COM

According to the 2013 Nielsen study, Fortune 100 companies not ranking in the top 20 advertisers with Black media included: General Electric, Citigroup, IBM, Philip Morris, AIG, Home Depot, Bank of America, Fannie Mae, J.P. Morgan Chase,

International house Negroes defend European Union We can be sure that the British exit from the European Union represents a profound crisis for the global capitalist order. We know this because the Lords of Capital and their political minions and media all over the world are in panic over “Brexit.”

The capitalist order is built on five centuries of European plunder, enslavement, and extermination of the rest of humanity.

Blood oozes from every edifice of the European Union – and yet, the victims, and the descendants of the victims of this horrific and ongoing capitalist carnage, often behave as if they have some kind of stake in keeping the old order intact.

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: DONALD TRUMP

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

Jenise Morgan, Senior Editor Angela van Emmerik, Creative Director Chicago Jones, Eugene Leach, Louis Muhammad, Lisa Rogers-Cherry, Circulation Penny Dickerson, Staff Writer Duane Fernandez Sr., Kim Gibson, Photojournalists

MEMBER

Florida Press Association

National Newspaper Publishers Association

Society of Professional Journalists

National Newspaper Association

Associated Press

Glen Ford is executive editor of BlackAgendaReport.com.

E-mail him at Glen.Ford@ BlackAgendaReport.com.

Second factor No one has ever been convicted of breaking the “gross negligence” secrecy law. Comey didn’t want to take on Hillary and try to convince a jury that she should be the first person ever convicted – especially since the FBI can’t prove that “hostile actors” (hackers) were able to access her e-mail.

Still, let’s assume Hillary was prosecuted. Her defense lawyers would also trash her as technologically inept, overly concerned about her privacy, careless, sloppy, stupid. “But that’s no violation of federal law!” they would yell.

And if the case was tried in the Washington, D.C., area in front of a jury of mostly Black Democrats – with Bro. Prez as a witness on her behalf – it’s lights out for the DOJ. For prosecutors, “no reasonable chance of successful prosecution” is always a back door to decline a case. “Nothing to see here! NEXT!” That’s how the DOJ will close the Clintons’ latest legal file.

Hit me up at ccherry2@ gmail.com.

Central Florida Communicators Group, LLC, P.O. Box 48857 Tampa, FL 33646, publishes the Florida Courier on Fridays. Phone: 877-352-4455, toll-free. For all sales inquiries, call 877-352-4455; e-mail sales@flcourier.com.

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The Florida Courier reserves the right to edit any submission, and crop any photograph, for style and clarity. Materials will not be returned.

JULY 8 – JULY 14, 2016

‘No reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case’ Editor’s note: Here is the statement of FBI Director James B. Comey, Jr., on the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email system. The FBI recommended that she not be criminally prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice.

I’m here to give you an update on the FBI’s investigation of Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email system during her time as Secretary of State.

After a tremendous amount of work over the last year, the FBI is completing its investigation and referring the case to the Department of Justice for a prosecutive decision.

What I would like to do today is tell you three things: what we did; what we found; and what we are recommending to the Department of Justice.

‘Intense public interest’ This will be an unusual statement in at least a couple ways. First, I am going to include more detail about our process than I ordinarily would, because I think the American people deserve those details in a case of intense public interest. Second, I have not coordinated or reviewed this statement in any way with the Department of Justice or any other part of the government. They do not know what I am about to say.

I want to start by thanking the FBI employees who did remarkable work in this case. Once you have a better sense of how much we have done, you will understand why I am so grateful and proud of their efforts.

So, first, what we have done: The investigation began as a referral from the Intelligence Community Inspector General in connection with Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail server during her time as Secretary of State. The referral focused on whether classified information was transmitted on that personal system.

Additional inquiry Our investigation looked at whether there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system, in violation of a federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way, or a second statute making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems or storage facilities.

Consistent with our counterintelligence responsibilities, we have also investigated to determine whether there is evidence of computer intrusion in connection with the personal e-mail server by any foreign power, or other hostile actors.

I have so far used the singular term, “e-mail server,” in describing the referral that began our investigation. It turns out to have been more complicated than that. Secretary Clinton used several different servers and administrators of those servers during her four years at the State Department, and used numerous mobile devices to view and send e-mail on that personal domain.

Hours of effort As new servers and equipment were employed, older servers were taken out of service, stored, and decommissioned in various ways. Piecing all of that back together – to gain as full an understanding as possible of the ways in which personal e-mail was used for government work –

JAMES B. COMEY, JR. DIRECTOR, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

I know there will be intense public debate in the wake of this recommendation, as there was throughout this investigation.

What I can assure the American people is that this investigation was done competently, honestly, and independently. No outside influence of any kind was brought to bear. has been a painstaking undertaking, requiring thousands of hours of effort.

For example, when one of Secretary Clinton’s original personal servers was decommissioned in 2013, the e-mail software was removed. Doing that didn’t remove the e-mail content, but it was like removing the frame from a huge finished jigsaw puzzle and dumping the pieces on the floor.

The effect was that millions of e-mail fragments end up unsorted in the server’s unused – or “slack” – space. We searched through all of it to see what was there, and what parts of the puzzle could be put back together.

FBI investigators have also read all of the approximately 30,000 e-mails provided by Secretary Clinton to the State Department in December 2014. Where an e-mail was assessed as possibly containing classified information, the FBI referred the e-mail to any U.S. government agency that was a likely “owner” of information in the e-mail, so that agency could make a determination as to whether the e- mail contained classified information at the time it was sent or received, or whether there was reason to classify the e-mail now, even if its content was not classified at the time it was sent (that is the process sometimes referred to as “up-classifying”).

Marked as such

classified at the time the emails were sent.

The FBI also discovered several thousand workrelated e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014. We found those additional e-mails in a variety of ways. Some had been deleted over the years and we found traces of them on devices that supported or were connected to the private e-mail domain. Others we found by reviewing the archived government e- mail accounts of people who had been government employees at the same time as Secretary Clinton, including high-ranking officials at other agencies, people with whom a Secretary of State might naturally correspond.

This helped us recover work-related e-mails that were not among the 30,000 produced to State. Still others we recovered from the laborious review of the millions of e-mail fragments dumped into the slack space of the server decommissioned in 2013.

With respect to the thousands of e-mails we found that were not among those produced to State, agencies have concluded that three of those were classified at the time they were sent or received, one at the Secret level and two at the Confidential level. There were no additional Top Secret emails found. Finally, none of those we found have since been “up-classified.”

No attempt to conceal I should add here that we found no evidence that any of the additional workrelated e-mails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them. Our assessment is that, like many e-mail users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted e-mails or e-mails were purged from the system when devices were changed. Because she was not using a government account – or even a commercial account like Gmail – there was no archiving at all of her e-mails, so it is not surprising that we discovered e-mails that were not on Secretary Clinton’s system in 2014, when she produced the 30,000 e-mails to the State Department.

It could also be that some of the additional work-related e-mails we recovered were among those deleted as “personal” by Secretary Clinton’s lawyers when they reviewed and sorted her e-mails for production in 2014.

The lawyers doing the sorting for Secretary Clinton in 2014 did not individually read the content of all of her e-mails, as we did for those available to us; instead, they relied on header information and used search terms to try to find all work-related e-mails among the reportedly more than 60,000 total e-mails remaining on Secretary Clinton’s personal system in 2014. It is highly likely their search terms missed some work-related e-mails, and that we later found them, for example, in the mailboxes of other officials or in the slack space of a server.

It is also likely that there are other work-related emails that they did not produce to State and that we did not find elsewhere, and that are now gone because they deleted all e-mails they did not return to State, and the lawyers cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.

From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 emails in 52 e-mail chain have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of clasNo intentional sification. Separate from those, about 2,000 addi- misconduct tional e-mails were “upWe have conducted inclassified” to make them terviews and done techniConfidential; the informa- cal examination to attempt tion in those had not been to understand how that

EDITORIAL

A5

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: HILLARY CLINTON’S E-MAIL SCANDAL

ADAM ZYGLIS, THE BUFFALO NEWS

sorting was done by her attorneys. Although we do not have complete visibility because we are not able to fully reconstruct the electronic record of that sorting, we believe our investigation has been sufficient to give us reasonable confidence there was no intentional misconduct in connection with that sorting effort.

And, of course, in addition to our technical work, we interviewed many people, from those involved in setting up and maintaining the various iterations of Secretary Clinton’s personal server, to staff members with whom she corresponded on e-mail, to those involved in the e-mail production to State, and finally, Secretary Clinton herself.

Last, we have done extensive work to understand what indications there might be of compromise by hostile actors in connection with the personal e-mail operation.

Our findings That’s what we have done. Now let me tell you what we found: Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.

For example, seven email chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters.

Should have known There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.

In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding the later “up-classified” emails).

None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government – or even with a commercial service like Gmail.

Separately, it is important to say something about the marking of classified information. Only a very small number of the emails containing classified information bore markings

indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked “classified” in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.

While not the focus of our investigation, we also developed evidence that the security culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified e-mail systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.

Probably not ‘hacked’ With respect to potential computer intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal email domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked.

But, given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence.

We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account.

Our conclusion So that’s what we found.

Finally, with respect to our recommendation to the Department of Justice: In our system, the prosecutors make the decisions about whether charges are appropriate based on evidence the FBI has helped collect. Although we don’t normally make public our recommendations to the prosecutors, we frequently make recommendations and engage in productive conversations with prosecutors about what resolution may be appropriate, given the evidence. In this case, given the importance of the matter, I think unusual transparency is in order.

Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have

been handled in the past.

No similar cases In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.

To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.

As a result, although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case.

‘No outside influence’ I know there will be intense public debate in the wake of this recommendation, as there was throughout this investigation. What I can assure the American people is that this investigation was done competently, honestly, and independently. No outside influence of any kind was brought to bear.

I know there were many opinions expressed by people who were not part of the investigation – including people in government – but none of that mattered to us.

Opinions are irrelevant, and they were all uninformed by insight into our investigation, because we did the investigation the right way.

Only facts matter, and the FBI found them here in an entirely apolitical and professional way. I couldn’t be prouder to be part of this organization.

James B. Comey, Jr. is the seventh and current director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

He was the United States Deputy Attorney General – the second-highestranking official in the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) – serving in President George W. Bush’s administration.

He was U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York prior to becoming Deputy Attorney General. In 2013, Comey was appointed as the director of the FBI by President Obama.

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JULY 8 – JULY 14, 2016

A show of unity on LGBT rights Gay advocates say the House sit-in is one sign of the vocal, public support for equality now coming from African-American and Latino lawmakers.

BY ANNA DOUGLAS TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON – An undercurrent of LGBT advocacy during a recent 26-hour gun control sit-in at the U.S. Capitol shows a deepening political unity among minority groups – particularly between Black lawmakers and activists for LGBT rights, according to North Carolina’s three congressional Democrats who participated.

“Gun control is an issue and yes, there was a lot of focus on that. But, if you think about it, the whole issue was brought to the center because of what happened in Orlando,” said Rep. Alma Adams, a Democrat from Greensboro who recently moved and may soon represent all of Mecklenburg County if re-elected in November. “People were specifically targeted … it was a hate crime.”

The June 12 attack at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub has been billed an act of terror due to the shooter being reportedly inspired by Islamic State propaganda. The violence also renewed political debate over proposals to require a background check for all firearm purchases and to bar suspected terrorists from buying weapons.

Act of hostility Some, including Adams, say the shooting – in which 49 people were killed – was not only a terror attack but also an intentional act of hostility toward gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. It’s a reminder, Adams said, that LGBT people are still targets of discrimination and violence, and they don’t have the same legal protections afforded to others.

For Black elected officials, especially, some advocates say it’s an area where views have shifted in recent years. Still, there are some Black leaders in North Carolina who don’t share Adams’ views on the issue and who fiercely support a state law — House Bill 2, most-well-known for its transgender bathroom provision — which LGBT

activists denounce as discriminatory.

Legal fight HB2 is a statewide law that prevents cities and counties from including sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes. The law was passed in response to a city of Charlotte ordinance aimed at including LGBT people in a local non-discrimination law.

Among other things, HB2 mandates that restrooms and locker rooms in publicly owned spaces, such as schools and government buildings, may only be used according to a person’s biological sex — men’s or women’s.

The law has spawned a legal fight and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has said it violates federal civil rights law.

‘Political pandering’?

Clarence Henderson, a High Point, N.C., resident and chairman of the state’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Commission, has accused Lynch — who is also a North Carolina native and who is also Black — of “political pandering” to African-Americans with HB2. Henderson is famous for participating in a Civil Rights Movement lunch counter sit-in in 1960 in Greensboro to protest racial segregation.

He says he views sexuality as a lifestyle choice and behavior and not an arena for civil rights. He’s pushed back on those who point out overlap between discrimination against LGBT people and the long history of abuse, segregation and discrimination against Black people.

Henderson also takes issue with the gun control sit-in, saying in an interview last month that Democrats are “misguided” in attempts to restrict gun rights.

Religious influence Historically and today, support for LGBT political issues — such as legal recognition of same-sex marriages — has been lower in the Black community than among left-leaning Whites, said David Stacy, a Human Rights Campaign lobbyist and longtime policy adviser for Democrats on LGBT topics in Washington, D.C. Much of the difference, even among otherwise like-minded Democrats, he said, is rooted in the influence of religion on Black voters and lawmakers.

Generally, recent public opinion polling shows

Democratic committee draft calls for end to mass incarceration

BY FREDERICK H. LOWE TRICE EDNEY NEWS WIRE

The Democratic Platform Drafting Committee is calling for the end of mass incarceration, which occurred under President Bill Clinton and then First Lady Hillary Clinton, when the Democratic National Convention convenes July 25-28 in Philadelphia.

“The current draft calls for ending the era of mass incarceration, shutting down private prisons, ending racial profiling, reforming the grand jury process, investing in the re-entry programs, banning the box to help give people a second chance and prioritizing treatment over incarceration for individuals suffering with addiction,” the committee announced on June 25.

1994 act Clinton’s 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, a tough-on-crime bill led to mass incarceration of Black men and significant increases in the imprisonment of Black women.

This was a major issue at the sparsely attended National Black Political Convention

JOE BURBANK/ORLANDO SENTINEL/TNS

The American and gay pride flags fly at half-mast over the GLBT Community Center of Central Florida on June 13 in Orlando. The center is located about four miles from the Pulse nightclub.

Americans have migrated toward broader acceptance of same-sex marriage, especially among young adults.

A 2016 Pew Research Center report published in May shows support has grown from about 35 percent among adults surveyed in 2001 to about 55 percent this year.

Changing views The data suggests White people have changed their views in recent years more than Black people. According to Pew research, roughly one-third of Black and White people supported same-sex marriage in 2001.

Now, support among the Black community is around 42 percent and around 57 percent among Whites.

Still, many Black leaders were early supporters for workplace protections to ensure employers can’t fire LGBT workers simply because of their sexual or gender identity, Stacy said.

Those non-discrimination employment protections haven’t been codified in federal law for LGBT workers, but authorities such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have found such practices to be illegal and some states have laws prohibiting such discrimination.

Data on equality Public polling data suggest strong support for nondiscrimination laws to protect LGBT people at work,

last month in Gary, Indiana. Attendees said they wanted to influence the Democratic Party’s platform.

Most, if not all members of the Congressional Black Caucus, voted for the legislation, but now some are saying they regretted their vote.

Other issues Drafting committee members also voted to support states that choose to decriminalize marijuana because police are arresting Blacks who possess marijuana at much higher rates than they arrest Whites.

The committee also called for increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, expanding Social Security and launching an aggressive jobs plan that would include historic investments in the nation’s infrastructure, a commitment to small businesses and a robust technology agenda.

Orlando meeting The platform draft covers a number of other issues, including universal health care and the environment.

The draft will be put before the full 187-member Platform Committee for final approval during a meeting in Orlando July 8 and 9.

This story is special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday. com.

in public accommodations and in housing, such as rental and lending decisions.

A 2015 study by the Public Religion Research Institution showed almost equal support for non-discrimination actions among religious White and Black respondents. Generally, seven out of 10 Americans support such protections for LGBT people.

Increasingly, Stacy said, LGBT advocates see more vocal, public support for equality from Black and Latino lawmakers — groups that can personally understand the damaging effects of discrimination and stigmatization.

Symbols of support The highly publicized occupation of the House floor

by Democrats to talk about gun violence also happened to be one of the most prominent shows of support so far for LGBT people in the political arena, says Roddy Flynn, executive director of the congressional LGBT Caucus.

The sit-in effort was largely organized and operated by Black Democrats, including civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis of Georgia and North Carolina’s Rep. G.K. Butterfield, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

In the days following the Orlando attack, Flynn’s group handed out rainbow lapel ribbons — a symbol often associated with LGBT activism.

Although Democrats on the whole have been more supportive of LGBT equality, he said, at least a dozen Republican members of Congress accepted and wore the rainbow ribbons.

Those Republicans included Reps. Charlie Dent, of Pennsylvania, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, of Florida, who was born in Cuba and became the first Latina woman elected to Congress in 1989.

North Carolina Reps. Adams, Butterfield and David Price all said in recent interviews they observed both symbolic and overt representations of LGBT advocacy during the gun sit-in.

Price, who is White, called it “a very positive thing” and said the Orlando shooting has been a “tipping point” for many to speak up for both changes to gun laws and more acceptance of LGBT people.

Among Black lawmakers and their constituents, Adams said, she sees less reluctance than before to stay on the sidelines of the LGBT equality fight.

“Many years ago, it was kind of taboo. … I just think that we have evolved into a new place today,” she said.

ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE FOR BLACK STUDENTS. NO EXCUSES. The classic guide from Florida Courier publisher, lawyer and broadcaster CHARLES W. CHERRY II PRAISE FOR ‘EXCELLENCE WITHOUT EXCUSE’: “This guide for African-American college-bound students is packed with practical and insightful information for achieving academic success...The primary focus here is to equip students with the savvy and networking skills to maneuver themselves through the academic maze of higher education.”

– Book review, School Library Journal • How low expectations of Black students’ achievements can get them higher grades; • Want a great grade? Prepare to cheat!

• How Black students can program their minds for success; • Setting goals – When to tell everybody, and when to keep your mouth shut; • Black English, and why Black students must be ‘bilingual.’ …AND MUCH MORE!

www.excellencewithoutexcuse.com Download immediately as an eBook or a pdf Order softcover online, from Amazon, or your local bookstore ISBN#978-1-56385-500-9 Published by International Scholastic Press, LLC Contact Charles at ccherry2@gmail.com

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for info on speeches, workshops, seminars, book signings, panel discussions.

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HEALTH FOOD || HEALTH TRAVEL | |MONEY SCIENCE | BOOKS | MOVIES | TV | AUTOS LIFE | FAITH | EVENTS | CLASSIFIEDS | ENTERTAINMENT | SPORTS | FOOD COURIER

IFE/FAITH

A Tarzan movie without ‘racist baggage’ See page B5

JULY 8 – JULY 14, 2016

SHARING BLACK LIFE, STATEWIDE

SOUTH FLORIDA / TREASURE COAST AREA

A summer cookout with a protein punch See page B6

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SECTION

WWW.FLCOURIER.COM

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their chosen profession, maybe they are divorced or have never been married. This is my way of saying you still have time to slide into home.”

Unhappy, scared

CINDI CHRISTIE/CONTRA COSTA TIMES/TNS

Author Terry McMillan is photographed in her California home in 2010. She was promoting her book, “Getting to Happy,” which continues the stories of four women who are the main characters of “Waiting to Exhale.”

AUTHOR’S LATEST MESSAGE:

It’s never too late Character in new book by Terry McMillan is in her 50s

BY JENEE OSTERHELDT KANSAS CITY STAR/TNS

I PHOTO COURTESY OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE/TNS

“I Almost Forgot About You” is the new book by Terry McMillan.

n high school, my friends and I secretly passed around her books.

In the 1990s, educated, successful Black women were not exactly common in fiction. But because Terry McMillan’s novels never ran away from sensuality and the complex dynamics of love, divorce and marriage, we weren’t supposed to be reading them.

Still, “Waiting to Exhale,” “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” and “Disappearing Acts” made their way into our

backpacks before we saw them made into movies.

We loved reading these books just as much as we loved watching “Martin” and “Living Single” because we aspired to be Black professionals. We wanted courage and exciting adventures like Stella.

We wanted strength and perseverance like Bernadine.

‘You still have time’ In her new book, “I Almost Forgot About You” (Crown), we meet Georgia Young, a 54-year-old optometrist. McMillan crafted this character to

teach us the art of reinvention, introspection and never giving up on yourself.

She’s been touring the country spreading the book’s message: The party ain’t over when your 30s end.

Speaking to her is almost like talking to your favorite auntie. And Auntie Terry is a proud 64-year-old, vibrant and fun and willing to share what she’s learned.

“There are so many women, and men, who have thrown in the towel,” McMillan tells me from her New York hotel room. “They are in their late 40s or 50s and maybe a little past that, and they have reached a plateau in their careers or love lives.

“They have almost flatlined. They are bored with

Georgia Young runs her own practice in the Bay Area. But it’s not her passion. She loves interior design and rehabbing furniture. She’s twice divorced and holding a grudge. Her children are grown. She wants to sell her practice and her big house and travel. But she’s scared.

“First and foremost is admitting you are unhappy,” McMillan says. “It’s hard to do because it means you have to do something about it rather than accept it. Otherwise you are a passive contributor in your own inertia or angst.”

So Georgia not only starts making plans to rediscover herself, she puts herself in check. How have her bitterness and fear played into her unhappiness? And from there, she goes on a journey of forgiving her exes and taking accountability for some of her own choices.

Terry’s testimony “Going through a very contentious divorce, I learned forgiveness is liberating,” she reflects. “I was angry for three years. That’s a long time to be apoplectic. People get comfortable with anger. It becomes a safety net. You don’t think about forgiveness because you are so wrapped up in your anger because your heart has been bruised and stomped on.

“After a while it becomes a way of life, and it permeates all other facets of your life and the people around you. The only person you are hurting is yourself. It’s important to let go of that anger and forgive so you can live.”

Honest relationships Healthy friendships play a part in holding that mirror to your face and telling you the truth. Georgia and her friends are in constant and brash conversation to keep one another honest.

“It’s a given with Black women: We see ourselves as sisters, not just friends. We don’t B.S. each other. We are very honest. We get angry with each other. Sometimes we don’t speak for months, See BOOK, Page B2

‘Battle for Bed-Stuy’ assesses impact of War on Poverty Located in central Brooklyn, Bedford-Stuyvesant was a shell of its former self by the 1950s.

Tree-lined streets, beautiful brownstones, and an air of gentility had given way to crowded dilapidated dwellings or government constructed housing projects.

“It is general knowledge,” a 1953 study concluded, “that Bedford-Stuyvesant is an underprivileged area with a large Negro population that is on the increase” – a tinderbox where frustrations were mounting.

In the 1960s, Bed-Stuyvesant, which had been labeled “America’s largest ghetto,” became a staging ground for President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty – and its controversial community action program.

In Battle for Bed-Stuy, Michael Woodsworth, who teaches history at Bard High School Early College in Queens, New York, provides an informative account of the origins of anti-poverty policies and assesses the impact of the War on Poverty on the neighborhood.

lists of names of community organizations and leaders.

That said, the book is an illuminating case study of frequent skirmishes and pitched battles (over tactics and strategy) between middle-aged, middle-class reformers (including women like Elsie Richardson and Shirley Chisholm); younger, more radical, and predominantly male grassroots activists seeking to represent a previously disempowered constituency and refusing to work within the confines of the White power structure and the welfare state; municipal officials; and federal government bureaucrats.

Woodsworth reveals that the “wide discrepancy” between the soaring rhetoric of the War on Poverty and the “limited resources” the federal government actually allocated inspired activists to “organize, agitate, and dream big;” made it virtually impossible to change fundamental social and economic conditions (including white flight, the deindustrialization of cities and inferior schools); and split communities into rival camps scrapping for comparatively small slices of the anti-poverty pie.

Inspired but limited

Battle to overcome

On occasion, “Battle for BedStuy’’ gets lost in the weeds, supplying – and repeating – long

“Battle for Bed-Stuy’’ also explores the contradictions embedded in the philosophy of

BY DR. GLENN ALTSCHULER SPEICAL TO THE FLORIDA COURIER

An equally important paradox, Woodsworth indicates, was the fact that participatory democracy was designed from above, by presidential task forces and federal agencies: “citizen movements tamed the state, but the state tamed them back.”

Radical impulses were softened, Woodsworth writes, but community action groups also got access to resources and “political spaces” in which they could press for more power.

Sufficient progress

REVIEW “Battle for Bed-Stuy: The Long War on Poverty in New York City’’

by Michael Woodsworth. Harvard University Press. 416 pages, $35. “maximum feasible” community participation. On the one hand, ghetto dwellers, who were said to be “crippled” by the legacy of slavery, segregation, and poverty that crushed individual initiative, were deemed incompetent and pathological. On the other, “they were expected to organize themselves, overcome bureaucratic hurdles and promote self-help.

Woodsworth acknowledges that it’s “tempting to conclude” that the War on Poverty did little to alter the fate of places like Bedford-Stuyvesant. And/ or that it had been designed by President Johnson, Senator Robert Kennedy and New York City Mayor Robert Wagner “to defuse unrest, to absorb the energies of the civil rights movement,” and to co-opt African-American leaders “into the structures of the Democratic Party.

And yet, Woodsworth points out, even though some critics labeled community action “political theater” that sent “grassroots energies in fratricidal directions,” organizations in BedfordStuyvesant had made sufficient progress in urban revitalization to stimulate “a flurry of press reports” in the 1970s proclaim-

ing the neighborhood “a minor miracle.”

Divided neighborhood In the 1980s, the Reagan administration dismantled the last vestiges of federal government support for poor urban neighborhoods. By then, Woodsworth concludes, “the grand promises of The Great Society had receded into history.” The gains ghettoes had achieved “were often dwarfed by the magnitude of need.”

And these days Bed-Stuy has become a divided neighborhood. Amidst gentrification, Whites have moved there in droves, with brownstones selling for $2 million and rents as high as $4,500 a month; while rates of concentrated poverty and incarceration are among the highest in the United States.

African-American leaders are organizing again, but it is by no means clear whether or how newcomers can be welcomed while preserving the culture, history and legacy of the BedfordStuyvesant community.

Dr. Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.

He wrote this review for the Florida Courier.

CALENDAR

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FLORIDA COMMUNITY CALENDAR Plantation: Judah Worship Word Ministries, International will celebrate the pastor’s anniversary of Apostle Willett L. Mitchell on July 15 at 7:30 p.m. with Pastor/ Prophet Anthony Lott of Venus, Texas and July 17 at 8:15 a.m. with Pastor/Prophetess Erika Toney of Jacksonville. More information: Call 954-791-2999.

Jacksonville: Catch Jeezy and friends July 9 at the Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena.

Pompano Beach: The annual Black On Black Crime Solutions Panel is July 16 at Worldwide Christian Center Church. It’s presented by Courage To Believe International, a nonprofit mentoring organization. More information: www.TheCourageToBelieve.com.

Jacksonville: Aaron Bing performs Aug. 14 at the Times Union Center for the Performing Arts.

Tampa: Winners’ Worship Center, 11605 N. Nebraska Ave., is presenting a summer camp for adults through Aug. 3. The free sessions will focus on finances, legal questions, self-defense, smoking cessation, relationships, concealed weapons, health and other issues. More information: www.imawinner. org.

St. Petersburg: Beres Hammond will perform at the Mahaffey Theater on July 21, Hard Rock Live Orlando on July 22 and the Broward Center for the Performing Arts on July 23 in Fort Lauderdale.

JULY 8 – JULY 14, 2016

STOJ

DILLY CHRIS

Miami Gardens will present its first International Music Festival on July 23 at 8 p.m. It will feature Flavour, Nigel Luis, Sassy Singz and Dilly Chris.

Clearwater: Catch R&B crooner Maxwell Aug. 4 at Ruth Eckerd Hall.

Tampa: G-Eazy & Logic: The Endless Summer Tour stops at the MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre on July 17. Other performers will include Yo Gotti and YG. Miami Beach: Jill Scott takes the stage on Aug. 30 at the Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theater.

Jacksonville: Shirley Murdock is scheduled at the Salem Centre in on July 30 and the Palladium Theatre on July 31 in St. Petersburg.

Hollywood: Catch Hannibal Burress on July 22 at Hard Rock Live.

Pont Vedra Beach: The Robert Cray Band performs July 8 at the Ponte Vedra Concert Hall.

Hollywood: Seal performs Aug. 18 at Hard Rock Live. The show starts at 8 p.m.

DRAKE & FUTURE

Tickets are on sale now for Drake’s Summer Sixteen Tour. It stops on Aug. 30 at the American Airlines Arena in Miami. The concert features Drake and Future.

Jacksonville: Miles Jaye performs July 16 at the Times Union Center for the Performing Arts.

A star for gospel legend EURWEB.COM

Eleven-time Grammywinning gospel singer Shirley Caesar (left) became the 2,583rd recipient of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on June 28.

The honor came as the 77-year-old legend celebrated her 50th anniversa-

BOOK

from Page 1 but usually, almost 90 percent of the time, what made us mad was the truth.

“I’m not saying other women don’t have these types of relationships, I know they do. I just know Black women in particular consider their friends to be the people who are supportive and have your back but will also give you a lashing when your behavior was silly. Our friendships are another way of parenting.”

‘Exhale’ TV show?

Friendship was the star of my favorite McMillan creation, “Waiting to Exhale,” both the book and movie. The 2010 sequel, “Getting to Happy,” found the women in their 50s and still diving into love’s layers.

Rumors of an “Exhale” television show are circulating online.

McMillan says there is interest but nothing she can confirm.

Hollywood counts out women over 40 as if love, sexuality and adventure must dissipate with age.

But she believes these are

ry year as a solo artist. Her most recent album, “Fill This House,” was released on June 3.

Caesar “is known as a musical trailblazer who has influenced a wide range of artists across genres,” said Leron Gubler, president and CEO of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce

which oversees the Walk of Fame. “Her career has made an indelible mark on American music and the sounds of gospel.”

Caesar’s star is located in front of The Fonda Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, near fellow gospel singers BeBe and CeCe Winans.

Yolanda Adams and Kirk Franklin were on hand to help honor the gospel great.

stories that need to be told not just in books but on the big screen, too. For that reason, she said she’d trade all her other films to have “I Almost Forgot About You” made into a movie.

“Sometimes Hollywood thinks that everything that happens to you only happens when you are young,” McMillan adds. “The message is your youth is the most important part of your life. I am just sick of it.

They make it seem as if our lives are not as intriguing, sexual or fascinating, and I really resent it. Life isn’t over at 40. It’s not all downhill at 55.”

© 2015 UNIVERSAL STUDIOS

CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS FOR THEATERS AND SHOWTIMES

STOJ

JULY 8 – JULY 14, 2016

HEALTH

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World can’t find pocket change to fight Zika Governments and philanthropies have pledged just $4.1 million to date, with donations from Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Norway and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The U.S., U.K. and major powers of the European Union haven’t contributed at all.

BY JOHN TOZZI BLOOMBERG NEWS/TNS

NEW YORK — More than five months after President Barack Obama requested $1.9 billion to fight the Zika epidemic, members of Congress went home to July 4 barbecues without approving a spending bill.

While Washington’s dysfunction is predictable given the current electoral climate, less noticed has been the global inertia facing efforts to combat the mosquito-borne disease.

The World Health Organization has only $7.9 million dedicated to fight Zika, which is spreading in 60 countries and blamed for more than 1,600 serious birth defects, mostly in Brazil.

The planet has never seen a mosquito-borne virus that causes microcephaly, resulting in babies born with small heads and brain damage. In the Americas, Zika is racing through populations that have never been exposed before and thus haven’t developed any natural immunity.

No surge To put the lack of funding in perspective: The three-month Olympic torch relay that ends with the start of the games in Rio de Janeiro this summer, sponsored by the Coca-Cola Co., Nissan Motor Co., and Brazil’s Banco Bradesco SA, has a bigger budget than the WHO’s strategy to fight Zika over two years.

“Activities proposed by WHO and its partners have been underfunded to date, and without sufficient funding the response is likely not to succeed,” the WHO wrote in its Zika Strategic Response Plan.

KATIE FALKENBERG/LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

Dr. Megumi Itoh, left, an epidemic intelligence officer with the CDC, measures the head of then-5-month-old Adrielly Rufino, as she is held by her mother, Maria Girdielly, 17, earlier this year. It was part of the CDC and Brazil’s Ministry of Health case-control study investigating the association between women having the Zika virus when they are pregnant, and the effects they are seeing of microcephaly in babies.

One lesson from the Ebola epidemic in West Africa is that the world must respond swiftly to outbreaks, said Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We need the world to surge, and we can’t wait for all the politics and all the issues to get worked out,” Schuchat said in a June interview. While health authorities are responding with the money they have, no surge has materialized. “It’s a little bit stalled right now, in terms of that real response.”

Who gave The WHO, part of the United Nations, sought $25 million for the first six months of the crisis, which it declared an international public health emergency on Feb. 1.

Governments and philanthropies have pledged just $4.1 million to date, with donations from Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Norway and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The U.S., U.K. and major powers of the European Union haven’t contributed at all.

To try to make up for the shortfall, the WHO borrowed another $3.8 million from an emergency fund established after the Ebola epidemic — a fund set up because of the delay in funding and inadequate global response to that crisis.

The Geneva-based organization said it expects to require another $122 million for Zika through the end of next year. “We have to shuffle funds and staff from other programs to be able to support the response,” WHO spokeswoman Nyka Alexander said in an email. “This is not sustainable long term.”

Not equipped The situation shows that the one global health authority charged with battling epidemics isn’t equipped for the challenge, said Lawrence Gostin, professor of global health law at Georgetown Law. “If you look at its record in response to diseases, whether it’s yellow fever, Ebola, now Zika, you’ll find that they constantly underestimate the amount that it will cost, and then are unable to mobilize the funding for the

small amounts that they even said they need,” Gostin said.

“The WHO “doesn’t have the political clout or leadership to actually get donors and particularly countries to invest in ongoing crises.”

The world consistently underinvests in preparation for outbreaks, resulting in real economic harm, he said.

In January, a commission on global health security estimated that the world should invest $4.5 billion a year for pandemic preparedness to avert after-the-fact costs that can reach 10 times that sum.

“We don’t perceive a health crisis until it’s actually here, in which case it’s too late,” said Gostin, who sat on the commission.

More disease The World Bank made $150 million in financing available to Zika-affected countries in February. That followed the development bank’s calculation that the short-term economic costs of Zika would be about $3.5 billion, an estimate “predicated on a swift, well-coordinated international response.”

Such a response hasn’t come to pass. A separate mechanism called the UN Zika Response Multi-Partner Trust Fund was announced May 6 to provide “a rapid, flexible and accountable platform to support a coordinated response from the U.N. system and partners,” according to the organization. So far, the fund remains empty.

The gridlock in Washington and impotence in Geneva show the world is working without an insurance policy for unexpected infectious outbreaks. There’s no pot of money to pay for surveillance, testing, public education, mosquito control, vaccine research and development, and medical care.

The stalled flow of funds has real consequences.

“We’re simply just going to see more disease,” said Oscar Alleyn, senior adviser for public health programs at the National Association of County & City Health Officials. “With more disease we’re going to see a lot more children with negative birth outcomes.”

More companies turning to telemedicine kiosk Hundreds of employers in U.S. installing them in workplaces to aid sick workers.

BY PHIL GALEWITZ KAISER HEALTH NEWS/TNS

WEST PALM BEACH – On the day abdominal pain and nausea struck Jessica Christianson at the office, she discovered how far telemedicine has come.

Rushing to a large kiosk in the lobby of the Palm Beach County School District’s administrative building where she works, Christianson, 29, consulted a nurse practitioner in Miami via twoway video.

The nurse examined her remotely, using a stethoscope and other instruments connected to the computer station. Then, she recommended Christianson seek an ultrasound elsewhere to check for a possible liver problem stemming from an intestinal infection.

The cost: $15. She might have paid $50 at an urgent care center.

The ultrasound Christianson got later that day confirmed the nurse practitioner’s diagnosis.

“Without the kiosk I probably would have waited to get care and that could have made things worse,” she said.

Positive experience Endorsements like Christianson’s demonstrate how technology and positive consumer experiences are lending momentum to telemedicine’s adoption in the workplace.

Less than a decade ago, telemedicine was mainly used by hospitals and clinics for secure doctor-to-doctor consultations.

But today, telemedicine has be-

come a more common method for patients to receive routine care at home or wherever they are — often on their cell phones or personal computers.

In the past several years, a growing number of employers have provided insurance coverage for telemedicine services enabling employees to connect with a doctor by phone using both voice and video.

One limitation of such phonebased services is physicians cannot always obtain basic vital signs such as blood pressure and heart rate.

That’s where telemedicine kiosks offer an advantage. Hundreds of employers — often supported by their health insurers — now have them installed in the workplaces, according to consultants and two telemedicine companies that make kiosks, American Well and Computerized Screening, Inc.

Cutting waits, costs Employers and insurers see the kiosks as a pathway to delivering quality care, reducing lost productivity due to time spent traveling and waiting for care, and saving money by avoiding costlier visits to emergency rooms and urgent care facilities.

Jet Blue Airways is adding a kiosk later this year for its employees at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. Other big employers providing kiosks in the workplace include the city of Kansas City, Mo. Large health insurers such as Anthem and UnitedHealthcare are promoting telemedicine’s next wave by testing the kiosks at worksites where they have contracts.

Anthem has installed 34 kiosks at 20 employers in the past 18 months.

hall almost a year ago has saved the local government at least $28,000.

That’s what Kansas City hasn’t spent because employees and dependents chose the telemedicine option instead of an in-person doctor visit. The city also estimates it has gained hundreds of productive work hours — that’s the time employees saved by not leaving work to see a doctor.

In contrast, fewer than 175 of the 2,000 employees at the Palm Beach County School District headquarters have used the kiosk there in its first year, said Dianne Howard, director of risk management.

Howard remains hopeful: “This is the future of health care.”

Attendant at kiosk

PHIL GALEWITZ/KHN/TNS

A telemedicine kiosk is outfitted with touchscreens, medical screening devices and videoconferencing capabilities in the lobby of Palm Beach County School District’s administrative building in West Palm Beach. The private, 8-by-7 enclosure enables Nicklaus Children’s Hospital medical providers in Miami to see and treat adults and children in West Palm Beach.

Help for employers John Jesser, an Anthem vice president, said kiosks are a good option for employers too small or disinclined to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in creating an on-site clinic with doctors and nurses on standby.

“This technology should make it more affordable for employers of many sizes,” Jesser said.

Kiosks are typically used for the same maladies that lead people to see a doctor or seek urgent care — colds, sore throats, upper respiratory problems, earaches and pink eye. Telemedicine doctors or nurse practitioners can email prescriptions to clients’ lo-

cal pharmacies.

Employees often pay either nothing or no more than $15 per session, far less than they would pay with insurance at a doctor’s office, an urgent care clinic or an emergency room.

Low usage While kiosks are now found in more workplaces, usage is still relatively low because employees are not sure how they work, said Allan Khoury, a senior consultant with Willis Towers Watson.

Employers’ experiences are mixed.

Officials in Kansas City, Mo., estimate the kiosk placed in city

The district’s kiosk was supplied at no cost by UnitedHealthcare, as part of a test also involving two other employers in Florida.

Those kiosks connect employees to nurse practitioners at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami. The hospital employs an attendant at each kiosk location to help workers register and use some of the instruments, such as the stethoscope.

Other telemedicine kiosks, such as those made by America Well, are designed to be totally self-service for employees. They also offer users immediate access to a health care provider.

American Well has deployed about 200 kiosks and is in midst of rolling out 500 more, mostly to employers, the company said. It also places kiosks in retail outlets and hospitals.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

EDUCATION

B4

JULY 8 – JULY 14, 2016

STOJ

to Speight School in Stantonsburg, N.C., one of the few places in Wilson County where Black children could take high school classes. But like so many others of her time, she felt a powerful tug to help her husband’s family grow tobacco and cotton.

“His family didn’t want me to stop,” she said, “but I just felt guilty.”

No help from teacher

A bored retiree Mostly, life rolled on fine without a diploma. She and David Woodard later moved to Wilson, where she found work in a nursing home and then a retirement center, working her way to supervisor on the overnight shift.

ROBERT WILLETT/RALEIGH NEWS & OBSERVER/TNS

Camilla Jean Woodard, 80, of Wilson, N.C., recently completed her last year of high school and received her diploma after completing her studies at Wilson Community College in May 2016.

A high school diploma at 80 years old Retiree who dropped out at 17 to help husband’s family was determined to finish

BY JOSH SHAFFER RALEIGH NEWS & OBSERVER/TNS

WILSON, N.C. – At 80, Camilla Jean Woodard resolved to fight her way through algebra class, learn to operate a computer mouse, crack the thickest book she had ever lifted and finally bring home the prize that had es-

caped her since age 17 – a high school diploma.

She’d been waffling for years, inventing excuses to skip lessons, coming so close to quitting that at one point she hollered to her teacher, “I guess I’m just dumb!”

She wasn’t, of course. Math has changed in the last six decades.

So Woodard doubled down.

She took twice the courses, sitting in class eight hours a day.

She whipped Windows. She fought off word problems.

And in May, she set a green mortarboard on her head, pulled a silver ring on her finger and accepted the sheet of parchment

that called her a graduate – a bit late, but twice as worthy. Woodard had the distinction of being oldest in her class of eight, though her close friend Mary Frederick took a close second place.

“It was a hard road, but we made it,” said Frederick, 78. “We walked across that stage together and she said, ‘I’m going to be praising the Lord so high.’ I said, ‘Don’t you embarrass me in front of all these people and your family. You’re likely to get a tear in your eye and fall down. Wait until you cross the stage to pray.’”

Married at 17 In 1953, when Woodard dropped out after the 11th grade, only about a quarter of the adults in North Carolina finished high school compared to 84 percent today. People married younger. At that time, nearly a third of the state’s population lived on a farm.

Woodard called herself an eager student as a teen. She enjoyed biology and thought about becoming a nurse.

At 17, she even married the young man who drove the bus

ploma two years ago at 111.

Four years ago, a 106-year-old man accomplished the same in Massachusetts. Woodard enrolled carrying eight decades of wisdom, but the last time she’d stepped in a classroom, Dwight Eisenhower was president and astronauts were 15 years from walking on the moon.

They raised three children together: Travis, who became a sheriff’s deputy; Belinda, who also worked in health care; and Corey, who served in the Army at Fort Bragg.

But then, as a widow in her 70s, Woodard found herself retired idle. She thought to herself, “I don’t have anything to do but sit here, and I don’t want to sit here.” So she started taking classes at Wilson Community College, on and off for six years.

She might have aimed for a GED or another high school equivalency, which generally take less time. But she chose the tougher road for a chance at the real diploma on paper — grinding through classes, credits and all.

Not the oldest Statewide, nearly 5,000 students worked at completing adult high school over the last year, and roughly a quarter of them graduated.

On its website, Wilson County’s adult high school program warns that students must complete 25 courses to graduate: math, science, social studies, English and electives.

Classes run from 9 a.m. to noon Monday through Thursday or 5 to 9 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, and the duration depends on the student. Tuition and books are free, but a diploma costs $5.

And while 80 may seem too distant an age for a graduate, a Virginia woman earned her di-

Woodard tried to be reasonable. She recalled telling one teacher, “Listen, I’m not hard to catch on. Show me one time, and I promise I can do it.”

The teacher declined. So Woodard tried again.

“Just show me,” she said. “I’m not hard to catch on.”

After a third rejection, Woodard shouted, “Well, I guess I’m just dumb then!”

“Get out,” said the teacher, banishing Woodard from class like she’d been caught chewing gum.

Alone in the break room, crying to herself, Woodard wished privately for a way to proceed without this obstacle of an instructor.

She composed herself and got back to work, her nemesis firmly in place. But three weeks later, as if by answered prayer, the teacher announced she would be moving out of the class.

“In my mind,” Woodard said, “I said, ‘Lord, I thank you.’”

‘Brain like anybody else’ Woodard didn’t want an easy ride. She didn’t ask for adult education with kid gloves, and she didn’t get it. Another teacher told her, “Don’t come in here with your head down. You’ve got a brain like anybody else.”

And when he handed her a novel with the thickness of a telephone book, she complained, “It’ll be 2020 before I finish this book.”

Months later, Woodard can’t even recall the title of this tome.

But she slogged through it. And when she burst into class, triumphant, announcing she’d finally reached the last page, the teacher said, “No, you haven’t. Somebody told me it would be 2020 when she finished. It’s still 2016.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF FAMU

Above are members of the Washington, D.C. chapter of FAMU’s National Alumni Association.

FAMU receives $266,000 from D.C. alumni for scholarships WASHINGTON – The Florida A&M University (FAMU) Foundation has received a gift of $266,000 from the Washington, D.C. chapter of the university’s National Alumni Association (NAA). The gift is the largest donation ever received from a single alumni chapter.

The funds will be used to establish the Washington, D.C. Chapter Annie B. Pharr Endowed Scholarship at the University.

The donation is a result of an estate gift that was bequeathed to the chapter by the late Annie B. Pharr.

“We chose to establish the endowment at the FAMU Foundation so that Annie B. Pharr’s legacy could live forever while also helping the University fill in the funding gap for students,” said Chapter President Artie L. Polk.

“After meeting with President (Elmira) Mangum while she was visiting Washington, D.C. recently, the chapter decided to provide long-term resources that would help the university meet state metrics and assist in retaining and graduating students.”

About Annie Pharr Pharr earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from FAMC in 1946 and received graduate training at the

McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

She worked as a nurse at Freedman Hospital in D.C. where she served in several senior management positions, including head nurse, supervisor, and director of training. She also worked at Doctors Hospital in Prince Georges County, Maryland.

“Annie B. Pharr was greatly respected for her dedication to uplifting the community and promoting the success of FAMU,” Polk said. “Because of her generosity, commitment, and service to Florida A&M University, the legacy of Annie B. Pharr will live on in the hearts of many forever.”

President’s gratitude Before Pharr’s death, she was one of four alumni of the Washington chapter to be honored with a named student scholarship from the chapter, acknowledging her immense support for scholarships and the financial stability of students pursuing higher education at the university.

Through the endowment, the chapter will begin awarding scholarships to students matriculating at FAMU, who are from the D.C., Maryland and Virginia area.

“FAMU alumni have

an unparalleled tradition of service throughout the country, and we are proud to have a scholarship program that carries the name of such a remarkable woman,” said Mangum. “We are grateful to the members of the D.C. chapter for their commitment to working with the university to ensure a successful educational experience for our students.”

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STOJ

JULY 8 – JULY 14, 2016

FINEST & ENTERTAINMENT

Meet some of

FLORIDA’S

finest

submitted for your approval

Irvin Randle, a 54-year-old grandpa from Houston, with the hashtag MrStealYourGrandma, has become an Internet sensation. His Instagram posts have racked up thousands of likes and he is trending on Twitter. On Facebook, the teacher tells how he stays so fit: He drinks plenty of water, drinks natural juices, eats lots of vegetables and healthy food, and exercises.

INSTAGRAM

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.

Brittney Reese secured her spot on Team USA during last weekend’s Olympic trials and set an Olympic trials long jump record. With a jump of 23 feet, 11 and three-quarter inches at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials, she won her seventh national outdoor title and third trip to the Olympics. She also had the ninth-farthest jump ever and second-farthest in U.S. history and broke Jackie Joyner-Kersee’s record set in 1988.

WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

‘Racist baggage’ left out of new Tarzan movie zan” also stars Australian Margot Robbie as Jane, Austrian Christoph Waltz as a corrupt Belgian captain and Benin-born Djimon Hounsou as the leader of an African tribe bent on capturing Tarzan.

The movie’s native African characters, including Hounsou’s chief and the friendly tribe who host Tarzan and Jane, are secondary to the narrative, providing a backdrop to Tarzan and Jane’s love affair and a reason to get the couple back to Africa from their home in Victorian London.

BY REBECCA KEEGAN LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

There’s a moment late in the new film “The Legend of Tarzan” when Samuel L. Jackson, playing an African-American diplomat who hopes to expose the Congolese slave trade, starts firing a 19th-century machine gun at villainous White colonialists in pith helmets.

Loosely based on a real-life historian and Civil War veteran named George Washington Williams, Jackson’s character is an archetype who never existed in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ century old Africa-set Tarzan stories – a Black hero.

“He’s the real hero of the movie,” “The Legend of Tarzan” director David Yates said of Jackson’s Williams, who enlists a reluctant Tarzan, played by Alexander Skarsgard, as a kind of PR stunt. “All that racist baggage that belonged to the earlier books or earlier B-movies, there’s no place for that. This is a modern film with modern sensibilities.”

Reinventing classics But the movie is called “The Legend of Tarzan,” not “The Legend of George Washington Williams,” and the poster shows Skarsgard, Australian actress Margot Robbie, who plays Jane, and some CG gorillas, without a Black character in sight.

In an era when a pre-existing intellectual property is the surest route to a studio green light, “The Legend of Tarzan” is the latest movie to attempt to reinvent a story born in a colonial era for more contemporary audiences.

Earlier this year, Jon Favreau remade “The Jungle Book,” based on Rudyard Kipling’s stories of a boy living among animals in the Indian jungle, to critical and box office success, and in 2012 Andrew Stanton took “John Carter,” about Burroughs’ Confederate veteran superhero on Mars, down a rockier road at the box office. But because of its core idea and the popularity of previous iterations, the “Tarzan” update may be the trickiest.

Although “John Carter” had the lens of science fiction to soften the aging source material and

‘Bit of a rogue’

JONATHAN OLLEY/WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT/TNS

Samuel L. Jackson, Margot Robbie and Alexander Skarsgard star in “The Legend of Tarzan.”

“Jungle Book” had the advantage of telling an India-set story about an Indian boy, “The Legend of Tarzan” is inescapably about race.

‘A time machine’ More than 200 films have featured the Burroughs character, a White orphan raised by apes in the African jungle, and Tarzan has swung through multiple generations of radio and television shows, stage plays and video games.

For generations of predominantly White audiences, Tarzan represented adventure and athleticism, but most adaptations were steeped in the paternalistic idea that it takes a White man to save Africa. (A rare counter-example is the “George of the Jungle” live action film and animated TV shows, which spoofed the yodeling pale guy in a loincloth).

“Tarzan is a time machine,” said Matthew Hughey, a sociologist and author of the book “The White Savior Film.” “He transports these 19th-century views into the 20th and 21st centu-

ries. He reassures audiences that down deep there is a natural order to things. In the age of the Black Lives Matter movement and Brexit, that’s a pretty powerful story and it’s retold over and over.”

Cringe-worthy original In the 1914 book “Tarzan of the Apes,” the character introduces himself to Jane by declaring, “This is the house of Tarzan, the killer of beasts and many Black men.”

In the black-and-white films anchored from 1932 to 1948 by former Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller, Black African characters were routinely depicted as background bumblers who needed Tarzan to solve their problems.

More recently in Disney’s 1999 animated “Tarzan” movie, the filmmakers dealt with their hero’s cringe-worthy history by focusing narrowly on Tarzan and the animals, somehow managing to make a movie set in Africa without showing a single Black person.

No role models Tarzan films have left a deep imprint on many who grew up watching the character, including Tony Warner, a historian who helps curate the British Film Institute’s African Odysseys program, featuring films by and about people from Africa.

“When I was 8 or 10, I was watching this Tarzan character on TV and in the background all the people looked like me. I asked my dad, ‘Is that where you come from?’” said Warner, whose father had moved to England from the Caribbean country of St. Lucia.

“As far as I was concerned, I didn’t want to be African. From what I could see on TV, there was nothing good about being Black.

There was nothing to aspire to or identify with.”

Native Africans hired The new Tarzan film attempts to redress those ills in the character of Jackson, who is Tarzan’s coconspirator, and at times even his savior.

Written by Adam Cozad and Craig Brewer, “The Legend of Tar-

In promoting the movie, Jackson has emphasized Williams’ role in history and referred to the holocaust of tens of millions of Africans under Belgian rule.

On “Good Morning America” Jackson said Williams was “a bit of a rogue” whom he hoped audiences would find intriguing: “(Moviegoers) will go out and find more out about who George Washington Williams was and find out what King Leopold actually did in the Congo, which still has a resounding effect today.”

“This is Hollywood’s window dressing for political correctness,” Hughey said. “They tried to add in this Black sidekick, but I see it as a fairly trite way to assuage white fears and anxieties. In case someone makes a critique, (they can say,) ‘Hey, we did have the Sam Jackson character.’”

Tepid interest Whether the film’s anti-colonial message works from a storytelling standpoint is yet another problem.

Some critics have suggested the update feels perfunctory, and audiences are showing tepid interest, with “Tarzan” projected to open at about $35 million domestically over the holiday weekend, a lackluster performance for a movie that cost $180 million to make.

“There are so many other interesting tales to be told that Hollywood hasn’t told,” Hughey said.

“Why recycle this one?”

Times staff writer Amy Kaufman contributed to this report.

B6

FOOD

FROM FAMILY FEATURES

If you’re looking for a fresh way to pack more nutritious protein into this summer’s family cookouts, consider cooking with a plant-based protein such as peanuts or peanut butter.

You may think of peanuts as a tasty and convenient snack food – and that they are – especially in a trail mix to refuel after some fun in the sun, but peanuts and peanut butter are actually part of the protein food group.

In fact, peanuts and peanut butter have more protein than any other nut and are rich in healthy oils, fiber, many impor­tant vitamins, minerals and phyto-nutrients. The latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans suggest eating at least two servings of peanuts a week as part of a healthy diet.

Getting your weekly servings is easy when you explore the variety of ways you can cook with peanuts and peanut butter. The unique flavor of peanuts and peanut butter adds depth and fulfillment, in addition to quality nutrients.

The whole family can enjoy these cookout-friendly dishes showcasing how simple it is to create delicious meals using peanuts in everything from sides to main dishes to desserts. Find more recipes featuring protein-rich peanuts and peanut butter at gapeanuts.com.

ASIAN PEANUT SLAW 1 can (11 ounces) mandarin oranges 1/4 cup Asian sesame dressing 2 tablespoons creamy peanut butter 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper 1/2 cup coarsely chopped dry roasted peanuts 1 bag (16 ounces) three-color deli slaw mix chow mein noodles Drain juice from mandarin oranges into mixing bowl and reserve oranges.

Add dressing, peanut butter and red pepper, and whisk until well-blended. Add peanuts, oranges and coleslaw mix, and toss until thoroughly coated. Garnish with chow mein noodles before serving.

BEEF KABOBS WITH PEANUT SAUCE 2 teaspoons curry powder 2 teaspoons dark sesame oil 1 tablespoon lime juice 1 tablespoon light brown sugar, plus 2 teaspoons 1 teaspoon chili powder, divided 1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce, divided 1 pound beef fillet, cut into 1-inch cubes 1/2 small onion, grated 1 cup coconut milk 8 tablespoons crunchy peanut butter 8 skewers assorted vegetables (optional) In bowl, mix curry powder, sesame oil, lime juice, 1 tablespoon brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon chili powder and 1 tablespoon soy sauce. Add in beef cubes and toss to evenly coat.

Cover and leave in fridge to marinate at least 30 minutes, or as long as overnight.

Soak skewers in water.

Heat broiler or grill to medium-high heat.

Before cooking beef, mix remaining chili powder, remain­ing soy sauce, 2 teaspoons brown sugar, onion, coconut milk and peanut butter in saucepan. Stir sauce frequently over medium heat until simmering. Cover and remove from heat, but keep warm.

Thread beef cubes on skewers. Add your favorite vegetables to skewers prior to cooking, if desired. Broil or grill kabobs. Set broiler pan so surface of beef is 3-4 inches from heat. Broil 7-9 minutes on high heat, turning once, for medium rare to rare. If grilling, heat grill to medium-high heat and grill about 7-10 minutes. Serve with warm peanut dipping sauce.

JULY 8 – JULY 14, 2016

TOJ

PEACH PEANUT SALSA 1 pound ripe firm peaches, pitted and cut into 1/2-inch pieces 2 medium plum tomatoes, seeded and chopped 3 ounces lightly salted dry roasted peanuts 1/3 cup chopped white onion 1/2 jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely chopped 2 tablespoons lime juice 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro 1/4 teaspoon salt In bowl, combine peaches, tomatoes, peanuts, onion, jalapeno, lime juice, cilantro and salt. Mix well and let stand at least 30 minutes before serving.

NO BAKE PEANUT BUTTER PIE 4 ounces cream cheese 1 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted 1 cup crunchy peanut butter 1/2 cup milk 8 ounces frozen whipped topping, thawed 1 prepared deep-dish graham cracker or chocolate-flavored pie crust (9 inches) whipped topping (optional) chocolate syrup (optional) chopped peanuts (optional) candy bar, chopped up (optional) In large bowl, beat together cream cheese and con­fectioners’ sugar. Mix in peanut butter and milk. Beat until smooth. Fold in whipped topping.

Spoon into pie shell; cover and freeze until firm.

If desired, pipe extra whipped topping on top of pie then drizzle with chocolate syrup and top with chopped peanuts and candy bar pieces.

PEANUT POWER • Peanuts are nutrient-dense and have the most protein of any nut.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an ounce of roasted peanuts provides about 8 grams of heart-healthy, cho­lesterol-free, plantbased protein.

• New research from Harvard shows eating peanuts daily is associated with living longer. This study showed that men and women who ate an ounce of peanuts every day reduced their risk of death from all causes by up to 20 percent.

• Research also suggests that eating peanuts and peanut butter at least twice per week could help reduce the risk of breast disease in young women.

• Peanuts and peanut butter contain bio­actives, including flavonoids, phenolic acids, phytosterols and resveratrol, which are plant substances that may offer health benefits beyond vitamins and minerals.