Florida Courier - July 29, 2016 by Central Florida Communicators Group, LLC

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

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CELEBRATING OUR 10TH YEAR STATEWIDE!

Mothers of the Movement give their testimony at DNC See Page B1 www.flcourier.com

JULY 29 – AUGUST 4, 2016

VOLUME 24 NO. 31

SEEN AND HEARD

First Lady Michelle Obama clapped toward delegates during the Democratic National Convention on Monday in Philadelphia, Pa.

As Democrats start the 2016 presidential campaign in earnest, Black women play key roles in the convention and in making the case for Hillary Clinton. BY PENNY DICKERSON SPECIAL TO THE FLORIDA COURIER

PHILADELPHIA, PA. – ‘The City of Brotherly Love” welcomed delegates and a host of high-profile political leaders and celebrities for the 2016 Democratic National Convention that convened July 25-28 in the Pennsylvania Convention Center and Wells Fargo Arena. The muted news is that Black women have been in the leadership trenches to organize the assembly.

Hacked and leaked Democratic officials and cybersecurity company CrowdStrike Inc. said last month that hackers tied to the Russian government gained access to servers at the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Three days before the start of the party’s national convention, about 20,000 emails and other internal documents from the DNC were posted online by WikiLeaks. Some of them showed the party favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. Consequently, South Flor-

See WOMEN, Page A2

FLORIDA COURIER / 10TH STATEWIDE ANNIVERSARY

HIV/AIDS and equal justice U.S. POSTAGE PAID DAYTONA BEACH, FL PERMIT #189

Continuing its award-winning ways in 10 years as a statewide newspaper, the Florida Courier has racked up three awards from the Florida Press Association’s annual Better Weekly Newspaper Contest. Publisher Charles W. Cherry II won in the Serious Column (Sally Latham Memorial Award) category for his “Random Thoughts of a Free Black Mind, v. 263” column evaluating Sandra Bland’s “death by cop.” Senior Editor Jenise Morgan won Charles W. in the Education Cherry II Reporting category for her multiple articles profiling B e t h u n e - C o o kman University President Dr. Edison Jackson. Photojournalist Duane Fernandez Sr. won in the Photo Series in Jenise One Issue for picMorgan tures shot for his first-person story entitled, “Capturing harmony and hate in South Carolina.” The FPA awards will be presented on Sept. 16 during the News Industry Summit of Duane Fernandez Sr. the Florida Press Association, the Florida Society of News Editors, and the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association at the Ritz-Carlton in Sarasota. The Florida Press Association includes all of the Florida’s daily newspapers and many of the state’s weekly newspapers in its membership. The Florida Courier competed in categories for newspapers with circulations of 15,000 or more. The recognition is the latest in a number of state and national awards and recognition that the Florida Courier, Florida’s largest Black-owned newspaper, has won from the Florida Press Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Poynter Center, and the National Association of Black Journalists for its work since its statewide launch in 2006.

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FROM STAFF REPORTS

ALSO INSIDE

CLEM MURRAY/ PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER/ TNS

Florida Courier wins more awards for writing, photos

ida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Shultz was unceremoniously dumped from her DNC chairmanship. Political analyst Donna Brazile is now interim chair of the party. Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, is permanent chair of the convention. The Reverend Leah Daughtry has twice served as the convention CEO. Black women served as leaders, activists, delegates, mothers for social justice, and volunteers to assist the Democratic Party and Hill-

Nigerian mom, daughter among AIDS conference speakers B1

BY FLORIDA COURIER STAFF

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JULY 27 - AUGUST 2, 2012

VOLUME 20 NO. 30

STILL A BLACK DISEASE During this week’s International AIDS Conference, activists and researchers said Black journalists are critical to getting the word out within Black America that HIV/AIDS is no longer a death sentence. COMPILED FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

As Washington hosts the 19th International AIDS Conference this week, residents in the nation’s capital continue to battle epidemic levels of HIV/ AIDS – as does much of Black America – despite the stunning progress made in treating the illness. According to a report released by the District’s Department of Health, the prevalence rate – or the proportion of cases within a given population – of HIV among adults and chil-

dren living in D.C. is 3.2 percent. The World Health Organization states that a 1 percent prevalence rate in the general population meets the criteria for an HIV/AIDS epidemic.

End in sight? President Obama lifted the 22-yearold order that banned people living with HIV/AIDS from traveling to the United States, paving the way for the conference to return to the United States for the first time in 22 years. See DISEASE, Page A2

Sherman Hemsley dies at 74

RAY CHAVEZ/OAKLAND TRIBUNE/MCT

Hundreds of people form a red ribbon with umbrellas as part of the ‘Keep the Promise on HIV/AIDS’ rally on the National Mall near the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., on July 22.

NATIONAL BAR ASSOCIATION 2012 CONVENTION

Equal Justice award for Martin attorney

TV’s ‘first angry Black man’ was Black American favorite COMPILED FROM WIRE AND STAFF REPORTS

Sherman Alexander Hemsley, who is rooted in the minds of Black American television viewers as Archie Bunker’s bombastic Black neighbor, George Jefferson, in “All in the Family” and “The Jeffersons,” and as Deacon Frye in “Amen,” died Tuesday of natural causes. He was 74. The actor, who had a home in El Paso, Texas, was found dead by the El Paso Sheriff’s Department.

See HEMSLEY, Page A2

SNAPSHOTS FLORIDA | A3

Obama or Romney? Polls show most folks have already made up their minds NATION | A6

State revises grades at 213 schools OBITUARY | B2

Soul food queen Sylvia Woods dies at 86 FINEST | B3

Meet Joyner cruisers

Pam Keith, a former naval officer, is on a mission to become the first Black woman in Florida to become a U.S. senator. However, she believes her campaign is being derailed because of “blatant racism and sexism.’’ In a statement on Tuesday, she blasted an Orlando TV station for not including her in an Aug. 12 Democratic primary debate. Keith, who has never run for public office, is vying for a seat currently occupied by Senator Marco Rubio, the former Republican presidential contender who announced last month he will run again for the seat he was elected to in 2010. Her primary opponents are U.S. Reps. Alan Grayson and Patrick Murphy, who have been embroiled in a messy battle. Other Democratic contenders are former assistant U.S. attorney Reginald Luster of Jacksonville and real estate developer Roque “Rocky’’ De La Fuente of Orlando. The winner of the Aug. 30 primary will face the Republican contender on Nov. 8.

‘Offense and disgrace’

Widely watched actor Hemsley “moved on up” from working at the post office to acting on New York Broadway stages to prime-time celebrity in 1973 when producer Norman Lear cast him in “All in the Family,” the comedy that starred Carroll O’Connor as the bigoted patriarch of a White working-class Queens, N.Y. household. As George Jefferson, Bunker’s Black and proud neighbor, Hemsley was a thorn in Bunker’s side. Hemsley appeared on the hit show from 1973 to 1975, when he left to star in the Lear spin-off “The Jeffersons” with Isabel Sanford, who played his wife, Louise – nicknamed “Weezy” – the on-

Black candidate for Senate blasts TV station for not including her in debate

KEA TAYLOR/IMAGINE PHOTOGRAPHY

National Bar Association President Daryl Parks presents his Tallahassee-based law partner Benjamin Crump with the Equal Justice Award at the Black lawyers’ association’s convention this month in Las Vegas. Joining them on stage are Trayvon Martin’s family – Tracy Martin, left, Sybrina Fulton and Jahvaris Fulton. See more on the convention in next week’s Courier.

According to WFTV Channel 9, the ABC station Grayson and Murphy agreed to sit down and answer key questions on the issues that impact Central Florida. In a statement to the Florida Courier on Tuesday, Keith stated, “The idea of a news outlet reaching “agreement” with two candidates to exclude one of their opponents from a debate is, in an of itself, obscene. Media outlets must never allow themselves to become extensions of political campaigns or to be used to advance political objectives. It cheapens the media’s role in

Florida Courier wins more awards for writing, design FROM STAFF REPORTS

The Florida Courier continued its six-yearlong winning streak and has racked up more awards from the Florida Press Association (FPA) and the Society of Professional Journalists (SBJ). The Florida Courier took first place from the SBJ, one of the country’s leading journalism organizations, for a series about Africa, and won two awards this month in FPA’s annual Better Weekly Newspaper Contest. The Florida Courier’s sister paper, the Daytona Times, also won a first-place award. Charles W. Cherry II, publisher of the newspapers, won first place in the SBJ’s annual Green Eyeshade Awards for his “Back to Africa’’ series published last year in the Florida Courier. He won in the non-dailies category for Travel Writing.

Andreas Butler

Charles W. Cherry II

James Harper

Sports, faith awards The Florida Courier’s awards from the FPA included first place for Sports Page or Section in the Open Circulation Division by sports writer Andreas Butler and Angela van Emmerik, presentation editor and page designer. The Florida Courier also took second place in the Feature Story: Non-Profile category for

the Back to Africa series by Cherry. James Harper, who writes for the Daytona Times and Florida Courier, took first place in the Faith and Family Reporting category for a story that appeared in the Daytona Times titled “The Doors of the Church are Closed.’’ The story focused on the events that led to the foreclosure of a predominantly Black church in Daytona Beach. The FPA awards were presented during the Southeastern Press Convention held July 5-7 in Destin. The recognition is the latest in a number of state and national awards and recognition that the Florida Courier, Florida’s largest Black-owned newspaper, has won from the Florida Press Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Poynter Center, and the National Association of Black Journalists for its work since its statewide See AWARDS, Page A2

CoMMeNTARY: CHARleS W. CHeRRY II: RANDoM THouGHTS oF A FRee BlACK MIND | A4

ALSO INSIDE CoMMeNTARY: PHIll WIlSoN: BlACK PeoPle PReTeND IT WAS SoMeoNe elSe’S PRoBleM | A4

See CANDIDATE, Page A2

SNAPSHOTS FLORIDA | A3

Wasserman Schultz now has tough battle at home NATION | A6

CULTURE | B3

Mayor struggling Who are the to unite Baton New Black Rouge Panthers?

Four years ago, the Florida Courier reported on the annual International AIDS Conference hosted in Washington, D.C., as well as an award the National Bar Association presented to Tallahassee-based attorney Benjamin Crump, who represents Trayvon Martin’s family.

COMMENTARY: CHARLES W. CHERRY II: RANDOM THOUGHTS OF A FREE BLACK MIND | A4 COMMENTARY: PAUL STREET: MICAH XAVIER JOHNSON AND GAVIN LONG – 17 REASONS | A5

FOCUS

JULY 29 – AUGUST 4, 2016

Cops not criminally responsible for Freddie Gray’s death BY KEVIN RECTOR AND JUSTIN FENTON THE BALTIMORE SUN /TNS

BALTIMORE – Prosecutors dropped all remaining charges against three Baltimore police officers accused in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray in a downtown courtroom on Wednesday morning, concluding one of the most high-profile criminal cases in Baltimore history. The startling move was an apparent acknowledgement of the unlikelihood of a conviction following the acquittals of three other officers on similar and more serious charges by Circuit Judge Barry G. Williams, who was expected to preside over the remaining trials as well. It also means the office of Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby will secure no convictions in the case after more than a year of dogged fighting, against increasingly heavy odds, to hold someone criminally accountable in Gray’s death.

Mistrial, acquittals Officer William Porter’s trial ended with a hung jury and a mistrial in December, before Williams acquitted Officers Edward Nero and Caesar Goodson and Lt. Brian Rice at bench trials in May, June, and July, respectively. In a hearing Wednesday meant to start the trial of Officer Garrett Miller, Chief Deputy State’s Attorney Michael Schatzow told Williams that the state was dropping all charges against Miller, Porter and Sgt. Alicia White. Porter had been scheduled to be retried in September, and White had been scheduled to be tried in October. “All of our clients are thrilled with what happened today, and we’ll be making a comment later to address the details of what happened,” said Catherine Fly-

nn, Miller’s attorney, outside the courthouse.

Sanctions still possible The officers still face possible administrative discipline. Internal investigations, with the help of outside police agencies, are underway. Gray, 25, suffered severe spinal cord injuries in the back of the van in April 2015 Freddie and died a week Gray after his arrest. His death sparked widespread, peaceful protests against police brutality, and his funeral was followed by rioting, looting and arson. At a news conference in West Baltimore, near where Gray was arrested, Mosby defended her decision to bring the charges against the officers, and said that “as a mother,” the decision to drop them was “agonizing.” But, given Williams’ acquittal of Nero, Goodson and Rice and the likelihood that the remaining officers would also choose bench trials before him, Mosby said she had to acknowledge the “dismal likelihood” that her office would be able to secure a conviction.

‘Same result’ “After much thought and prayer it has become clear that without being able to work with an independent investigatory agency from the very start, without having a say in the election of whether cases proceed in front of a judge or jury, without communal oversight of police in this community, without substantive reforms to the current criminal justice system, we could try this case 100 times and cases just like it and we would still end up with the same result,” she said.

WOMEN from A1

ary Clinton in putting on its best face.

Kicks it off Baltimore Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake gaveled in the convention on Monday, also taking over from Wasserman Schultz. Rawlings-Blake has served as the secretary of the national Democratic Party since 2013. Rawlings-Blake introduced herself to the crowd as “mayor of the great city of Baltimore” and called it an “honor and a pleasure” to kick off the convention. After calling the convention to order, she started walking off stage – only to realize she hadn’t actually struck the podium with a gavel. She hurried back and did so to applause.

Kathleen Gordon sent. Those words do not reflect the spirit of this party. “If I am allowed to be your interim chair, my door is open. I’m leaving CNN and ABC (TV) to go back to who I really am. I am an organizer,” said Brazile. “We gonna win this damn thing, so roll up your sleeves. You know what to do.”

Brazile addresses CBC

Actress and activist

Brazile spoke to a Monday morning Congressional Black Caucus meeting. “…I sincerely apologize for those of you who took offense or were offended, for those of you who feel betrayed and were betrayed for those ridiculous, insensitive, inappropriate emails that should have never been

Sheryl Lee Ralph is best known for her talent as an actress and singer, as well as for her advocacy for causes like fighting HIV/ AIDS. “Am I disappointed about the email scandal? Absolutely. How many times do your parents have to tell you, ‘If you don’t want anybody to see it, don’t put it in an

CANDIDATE

up more than half of the Democratic electorate, and women are more than 50% of the vote. To treat those voters, who may have a particular interest in a Pam woman candidate Keith or candidates of color, as inconsequential is beyond belief.’’

from A1

informing the public.’’ Keith continued, “But in this case, the collusion is even more distasteful because of the blatant racism and sexism involved therein. Not only have they colluded to keep me out of this debate, but to keep all candidates of color out of the debate. As disrespectful as that is to the candidates themselves, it is an utter debasement of voters of color.’’ The candidate further stated that “WFTV wants to ensure that all voters, but especially women, African American and Hispanic voters, remain ignorant of any candidates other than the two wealthy white men they seek to promote. It is an offense and disgrace. People of color make

Grayson/Murphy drama WFTV has stated that Grayson and Murphy were invited to the debate because they were the only two candidates with at least 15 percent in statewide polls. The station said Tuesday that the other candidates now will be invited to do three-minute segment “to communicate their stance on the issues to the people of Central Florida.”

BARBARA HADDOCK TAYLOR/BALTIMORE SUN/TNS

Baltimore City sheriff’s deputies stand outside one of the Lexington Street doors at the courthouse on the scene of the Caesar Goodson trial verdict of acquittal on June 23. She said there is an “inherent bias” whenever “police police themselves.” She said the charges she brought were not an indictment of the entire Baltimore Police Department, but she also broadly condemned the actions and testimony of some officers involved in Gray’s arrest or in the department’s investigation of the incident – alleging “consistent bias” at “every stage.” She said she is not “anti-police,” but “anti-police brutality.” She also noted the “countless sacrifices” of her prosecutors in the case, including Schatzow and Deputy State’s Attorney Janice Bledsoe, and said her office will continue to “fight for a fair and equitable justice system for all.” Shortly after Mosby’s news conference, the officers, their defense attorneys and leaders of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3, the union that represents the officers and paid for their defense, held their own.

‘Nightmare’ for cops Attorney Ivan Bates, who represents White and spoke on behalf of all of the officers and their

email and don’t put it on the Internet,’” said Ralph. “Well, now we know. Your mama’s right. “Voter turnout has got to be better than it’s been in the past four years,” Ralph said. “Every time we come out and talk to people, we’re told there are 500,000 people in different states not voting. They’re just not in the system. Do you know that if we could all of those people engaged, everything about this entire election would change?” Ralph added a direct challenge for youth: “If you’re going to use your youth, tweet about it, Snapchat about it. We need you to come in full force with all of your millennium magic. We need your help in turning this around.”

Florida delegate on party unification Kathleen Gordon has more than fifty years of political experience, including serving on the Orange County (Orlando) School Board. “We need to listen to the other side, the (Bernie) Sanders side,” said Gordon. “There are two teams here: the Bernie team and the Hillary team. In Denver (2008) there was a Hillary team and a Barack team, so I’ve been there. “When Hillary spoke with us she said ‘I am going to vote for Barack Obama’ and then we spoke with the Barack team. We

Grayson and Murphy have made national headlines over their campaign drama. A U.S. House Committee on Ethics has found there is “substantial reason to believe” Grayson violated House rules and federal law in connection with his offshore hedge fund and other actions in office. Grayson accused Murphy of colluding with the House ethics panel and Murphy has “disqualified himself from being a public servant.’’ And this week, Grayson’s exwife accused him of domestic violence, showing the media documents that allege she repeatedly went to the police with accusations of abuse. Murphy has caught flak for citing that he has been a certified public accountant for years. A Politico report last month notes that his CPA licensure records show he has worked as a practic-

attorneys, described the last year as a “nightmare” for the officers. He reiterated the defense argument in all of the cases that the officers were justified in their actions. The officers did not speak. Lt. Gene Ryan, the FOP president, said “justice has been done.” He also described Mosby’s comments at her news conference as “outrageous and uncalled for and simply untrue.” In clearing Nero, Goodson and Rice, Williams had repeatedly said that prosecutors presented little or no evidence to support their broader theory in the case – that the officers acted unreasonably, and willfully disregarded their training and general orders, when they decided not to secure Gray in a seat belt, and that the decision directly led to his death. All of the officers had pleaded not guilty. Their attorneys have said they acted reasonably and professionally, and that Gray’s death was the result of a tragic accident.

No comment Judges generally do not comment on court cases, and Wil-

decided that we needed to come together before the convention was over,” shared Gordon.

First lady speaks Michelle Obama made the case for Hillary Clinton on Monday night by drawing on the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s own struggles eight years ago – and delivering what appeared to double as a message to those in the party reluctant to accept Clinton’s candidacy. When Clinton didn’t win the nomination in 2008, “She didn’t get angry, or disillusioned. Hillary did not pack up and go home,” Obama told the crowd filling the Wells Fargo Center, where supporters of Bernie Sanders were a vocal presence Monday. “Because as a true public servant, Hillary knows this is so much bigger than her own desires and disappointments.” Michelle Obama’s initiatives as first lady – including targeting childhood obesity – have spurred criticism from some conservatives, but have had less of a political profile. On Monday, Obama didn’t focus on her work, but described her husband’s tenure as marked by his “decency and his grace.” She recalled how their lives changed with the presidency, including their realization of how the experience would shape their

ing CPA for less than a year. Murphy also has touted himself as a small businessman who owned an environmental services company when, in fact, it’s owned by his father.

Veteran, attorney, mentor Keith said she decided to run for Senate after watching Rubio’s GOP response to the 2013 State of the Union address. She thought to herself, “I could do a better job.’’ Keith, the daughter of Kenton Keith, a Navy officer and U.S. diplomat, has traveled around the world. Born in Turkey she has lived in Morocco and Syria. She moved to the United States with her mother and lived in California and Kentucky. After graduating from Boston College Law School, she joined

liams declined through a court spokeswoman to comment on the officers’ cases Wednesday afternoon. The decision Wednesday to drop all charges came during what was expected to be a contentious hearing surrounding the prosecution’s ability to proceed with Miller’s trial without using anything he said on the witness stand in Nero’s trial against him. Miller had been charged with second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and two counts of misconduct in office related to Gray’s arrest. He was compelled to testify at Nero’s trial under a limited form of immunity designed to protect his constitutional right against self-incrimination while freeing him to speak about the events that transpired on the morning of Gray’s arrest. Before Miller’s trial could proceed, prosecutors were required to show that they had not gleaned any evidence or strategic advantage in Miller’s trial from his immunized testimony. Having dropped the charges, prosecutors avoided taking the stand.

children. That is what the election is about, she said: Choosing “who will have the power to shape our children for the next four to eight years of their lives.”

Black mothers for social justice A consortium of Black women called “Mothers of the Movement” took the stage Tuesday night. They each lost a child to gun violence. All stood tall and strong in black, adorned with red florals. Two were from Florida: Lucy McBath, whose 17-year-old son Jordan Davis was shot to death in 2012 during a dispute about loud music in the parking lot of a Jacksonville convenience store; and Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, who was walking through a gated community in Sanford in 2012 when he was pursued and killed by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. “I am an unwilling participant in this movement. I would not have signed up for this. None of us would have. But I am here today for my son, Trayvon Martin, who is in heaven, and for my other son, Jahvaris, who is still here on earth,” said Fulton. “I didn’t want this spotlight. But I will do everything I can to focus some of that light on a path out of this darkness.”

the Navy, serving as a judge advocate in Norfolk, Va., then Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf. In 1999, she joined Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, a Washington, D.C. law firm. She also worked in other law firms around the country. In 2011, she accepted a job as in-house counsel for NextEra Energy, the parent company for FPL. She resides in Palm Beach County, where she is a member of Leadership Palm Beach County; on the board of directors of Faith, Hope, Love, Charity, Inc., a non-profit that serves homeless and at-risk veterans; and a volunteer mentor at the Boys and Girls Club of Riviera Beach. Keith also is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. For details on her campaign positions, visit pamkeithforsenate2016.com.

JULY 29 – AUGUST 4, 2016

NATION

State health officials continue probe of Zika cases

national stage. “When you go into the heart of her congressional district and really all over South Florida people know Debbie and she is loved,” said Christian Ulvert, a Democratic campaign consultant who isn’t working for Wasserman Schultz but supports her. “I don’t see a world where Debbie’s longtime constituents don’t stand with her again. When you go into Broward everybody is talking about Debbie, Debbie, Debbie.”

THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

Health officials are investigating two South Florida Zika cases that might not be linked to travel to other countries. Meanwhile, the Florida Department of Health said the state has 19 new travel-related cases. The department announced early last week that it was investigating cases in Miami-Dade and Broward counties that could involve infections not linked to travel. The mosquito-borne virus, which emerged last year in South America, is particularly dangerous to pregnant women and can cause severe birth defects. While cases were linked to people who had traveled to other countries, state and federal officials have feared that the virus would start to be spread by mosquitoes in Florida and other parts the United States.

No debate thus far The last time Wasserman Schultz faced a primary challenge was in 2004, when she first ran for the congressional seat after serving in the state Senate. Since then, she’s easily swatted away Republican challengers with little effort. In past elections, Democrats in the district have had no option but to vote for her. Facing a primary this year, she’s stepped up her local appearances. She recently held a news conference to bash Canova, and a free barbecue at the Old Davie Schoolhouse. So far, she has ignored Canova’s request for a debate. “She’s been dodging debates for the past three months now,” Canova told Fox News on Monday, “and she can’t say, she is too busy, I think.” Wasserman Schultz raised about $3.1 million through June while Canova raised about $2.3 million. His campaign said Monday he has now raised more than $2.5 million.

Door-to-door outreach In a news release on July 22, the Department of Health said a medical epidemiologist with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had arrived in Florida to help with the investigation into the Miami-Dade and Broward cases. “To date, approximately 200 people have been interviewed and tested as part of the department’s investigations and we await additional lab results,” the release said. It added that the department is “conducting door-to-door outreach with mosquito control in the areas surrounding the residences, workplaces and frequently visited locations of both suspect cases. Residents and visitors are urged to participate in requests for blood and urine samples by the department in the areas of investigation. These results will help the department determine the number of people affected.” The 19 travel-related cases announced on July 22 brought to 306 the number of cases not involving pregnant women. The state also has monitored 47 pregnant women, with 15 having met an early definition for Zika cases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists have released a new definition of Zika cases, the Department of Health said in the release.

Biden’s support

KIM GIBSON/FLORIDA COURIER

U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz speaks at Florida International University on July 23 during an event where Hillary Clinton presented Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as her running mate.

Wasserman Schultz must now fight on home turf Congresswoman facing tough primary battle in South Florida district BY AMY SHERMAN AND PATRICIA MAZZEI MIAMI HERALD/TNS

PHILADELPHIA – After quitting her national Democratic Party leadership role amid furor over thousands of leaked emails, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz now faces the political battle of her lifetime back home in South Florida. Wasserman Schultz resigned as Democratic National Committee chairwoman Sunday, strengthening the hand of her primary opponent, Tim Cano-

va — who saw a huge fundraising boost and national media attention following her decision. Tim While the Canova Weston congresswoman spent Monday morning getting heckled by protesters in Philadelphia at her first public appearance since her resignation, Canova was in the district giving interviews to local TV stations, Univision and The Daily Beast — and meeting with constituents. “I have not left the district in eight months,” Canova told the Miami Herald on Sunday. “That’s not going to change between now and Aug. 30. I don’t think there’s going to

be a great need for me to go up to Philly and chase the spotlight. We’re making friends on the ground every day.”

Opponent tracked On Friday, 22, the website Wikileaks published more than 19,000 DNC emails, some of them showing the party favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. It also showed that DNC staffers who were not working on Wasserman Schultz’s campaign were closely monitoring media coverage and campaign appearances of Canova, a first-time candidate and Nova Southeastern University professor. Canova’s campaign is “seriously considering” filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, campaign manager Richard Bell said. The emails show that the DNC tracked Canova’s news play and speaking engagements, including what is referred to as an “Alaska Counter Event” in the emails. Canova, as well as Sanders’ wife, Jane, were scheduled to speak via Skype to Alaska Democrats on the same evening that Wasserman Schultz was going to speak to an Alaska Democratic event. “This is all the FB post has so we need the state party to do some digging,” DNC communications director Luis Miranda wrote in one email.

More than 2 million ballots sent for primary More than 2 million ballots have been sent to voters for the Aug. 30 primaries, according to the state Division of Elections website.

Sanders endorsed Canova Even before Wasserman Schultz’s tenure as chair came to its disastrous end, Canova drew national attention for his prolific fundraising, clever campaign tactics and endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders. Canova launched his campaign in January and has cultivated a broad following by echoing many of Sanders’ themes, such as a call for campaign finance reform. He bashed Wasserman Schultz for taking money from big banks, siding with the payday lending industry and opposing a 2014 Florida constitutional amendment legalizing medical marijuana. The dire Wasserman Schultz headlines has helped even more money pour in: nearly $100,000 since she resigned, Canova’s campaign said. But the same question about Canova persists after Wasserman Schultz’s DNC resignation as it did before it: Can he parlay national attention into district votes on Election Day?

Vice President Joe Biden will host a fundraiser for the congresswoman at the Cruz Building in Coconut Grove Aug. 5, said Fort Lauderdale lawyer Mike Moskowitz. A previous Biden fundraiser had been canceled due to the Orlando shooting. There had been rumors for months long before the WikiLeaks that Wasserman Schultz would step aside as chair this year before Election Day. Those rumors subsided somewhat after President Barack Obama said he had her back while visiting Florida. “This might have been a possibility before, but after the leaks it baked it into cake,” said Mitch Ceasar, a Florida superdelegate who serves on the executive board of the Democratic National Committee and chaired the Broward Democrats for about 20 years.

They’re with her

No public polls have been released gauging opinion in the Miami-Dade/Broward district. Canova’s campaign said it hasn’t conducted internal polls. Wasserman Schultz’s campaign has ignored questions about polling. Voting by mail begins this month in the Aug. 30 primary. Longtime Democrats who have supported Wasserman Schultz said primary voters will make up their mind based on the “Debbie” they have seen and heard in their own backyard — not the one on the

Democratic activists from Wasserman Schultz’s district passionately defended her in Philadelphia on Monday, telling every reporter who would listen that she has been a dependable workhorse. They cited her long roots working in the district including on behalf of the gay community. Activist Elaine Geller of Hollywood, Fla., recalled Wasserman Schultz helped her family sign up for Obamacare when Geller’s daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. “She’s just warm and loving,” Geller said, conceding that those personality traits might not be as obvious on the national stage. “I don’t think that maybe you can really translate that, how warm someone is.” Canova, she added, also lives in Hollywood. “I have never seen Tim. As a community activist, I’ve never met the man,” she said. “It’s one thing to stand up and give a speech. It’s another to really know the community – and he doesn’t.”

Most of the ballots have gone to overseas and military voters, with the first big wave of “vote-by-mail” ballots were sent out Tuesday from county supervisors of elections offices to in-state voters. As of the morning of July 22, 926,411 ballots had been sent to Republicans and 777,738 had gone to Democrats. Another

310,566 were sent to people without party affiliation, while 47,836 have gone to members of minor parties. The counties with the highest number of ballots already out are Pinellas with 247,653; Miami-Dade, 218,428; Hillsborough, 154,228; Broward, 146,495; Lee, 139,472; and Orange, 123,788.

Primary next month

EDITORIAL

JULY 29 – AUGUST 4, 2016

Random thoughts of a free Black mind, v. 281 The myth named Bernie Sanders – Former Democratic presidential candidate Sanders, whose stump speech always included talk of a “political revolution” in America, ain’t no revolutionary. From a 1963 speech known as “Message to the Grassroots” by Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik el Shabazz) …(M)any of our people are using this word “revolution” loosely, without taking careful consideration [of ] what this word actually means, and what its historic characteristics are. When you study the historic nature of revolutions, the motive of a revolution, the objective of a revolution, and the result of a revolution, and the methods used in a revolution, you may change words. Look at the American Revolution in 1776. That revolution was for what? For land. Why did they want land? Independence. How was it carried out? Bloodshed. The French Revolution… The land-less against the landlord. What was it for? Land. How did they get it? Bloodshed. Was no love lost; was no compromise; was no negotiation. …(Y)ou don’t know what a revolution is. ’Cause when you find out what it is, you’ll get back in the alley; you’ll get out of the way. The Russian Revolution – what was it based on? Land. The landless against the landlord. How did they bring it about? Bloodshed. You haven’t got a revolution that doesn’t involve bloodshed. And you’re afraid to bleed. …A revolution is bloody. Revolution is hostile. Revolution knows no compromise. Revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way. So I cite these various revolutions, brothers and sisters, to show you – you don’t have a peaceful revolution. You don’t have a turn-the-other-cheek revolution. There’s no such thing as a nonviolent revolution. This week at the Democratic National Convention, we discovered that Sanders – who started a political ‘revolution’ that raised money online at an unprecedented pace, energized young people with calls to decrease education costs and solve income inequality, and briefly threatened the Democratic Party establishment’s well-laid plans to anoint Hillary Clinton as its

QUICK TAKES FROM #2: STRAIGHT, NO CHASER

CHARLES W. CHERRY II, ESQ. PUBLISHER

standard-bearer – is figuratively “afraid to bleed,” although many of his supporters are not. That conclusion became clear as Bernie soaked up the politically calculated adulation of the Democratic establishment while many of his supporters booed even him and walked out during convention proceedings.

Leading sheep ‘home’ Bernie thus fulfilled the May 2015 prophesy of Black Agenda Report’s Bruce A. Dixon that he, Sanders, was really a “sheepdog,” following a recent tradition in the Democratic Party. Here’s what Dixon wrote then: “The ‘sheepdog’ is a presidential candidate running ostensibly to the left of the establishment Democrat to whom the billionaires will award the nomination. Sheepdogs are herders, and the sheepdog candidate is charged with herding activists and voters back into the Democratic fold who might otherwise drift leftward and outside of the Democratic Party, either staying home or trying to build something outside the two-party box. “(In) 1984 and ’88, the sheepdog candidate was Jesse Jackson. In ’92, it was California governor Jerry Brown. In 2000 and 2004, the designated sheepdog was Al Sharpton, and in 2008 it was Dennis Kucinich. This year it’s Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. The function of the sheepdog candidate is to give left activists and voters a reason, however illusory, to believe there’s a place of influence for them inside the Democratic Party, if and only if the eventual Democratic nominee can win in November.” “Berniacs,” I know how you feel. I was painfully “sheepdogged” years ago when Jesse Jackson ran twice.

'Run, Jesse, Run!' Like many Black youth and

HIV/AIDS – Another missed opportunity In South Africa on my first night to cover the 26th International AIDS Conference, I had dinner with Phill Wilson, president and CEO of the Black AIDS Institute, and three other members of our delegation. Phill mentioned the unusual circumstances under which we had met in 2003. At the time, I was serving the first of two tours as editor-inchief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service and had written a column expressing my deeply-conflicted feelings about same-sex marriage. Predictably, the response to my column was quick and furious.

Met with me Rather than join the chorus of bashers, however, Phill Wilson telephoned me, requested a meeting, and flew from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. to my office in the Howard University School of Communications. Phill expressed his view, which differed from mine, and I elaborated on my quandary of not feeling gays and lesbians should be discriminated against because of their sexual orientation but ex-

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plaining that my opposition to same-sex marriage was rooted in my religious upbringing. I emphasized that there are millions of people like me who are not the least bit interested in gay-bashing, but are genuinely conflicted over this issue. When the meeting was over, Phill had enlightened me how AIDS was ravishing our community. I was struck by the acrossthe-board disparities, including among teenagers and straight women, and was embarrassed that I was unaware of the depth of the crisis in our community.

Tragic numbers I wrote a column in 2014 that pointed out: •The rate of new HIV infections for Black men (103.6) was the highest of any group, more than twice that of Latino men (45.5), the second highest group;  •The estimated rate of new HIV infections for African-American

young Black professionals at the time, we were as rabid for Jesse as Bernie’s fans are today. Jackson did unexpectedly well during the 1984 and 1988 primaries by trying to establish a “Rainbow Coalition” of Blacks, Latinos, poor and working-class Whites, homosexuals, and progressives – the same coalition that was to elect Barack Obama some 30 years later. Jesse ran on the same issues that Bernie did: An American jobs program to rebuild aging infrastructure; free community college education; universal health care; eliminating the “War on Drugs” which even then was disproportionately locking up Black people. Jesse ran hard and won primaries in multiple states, as Bernie did. But the Democratic establishment fix was in. Jesse complained, to no avail. Dems refused to place any of his demands in the party platform. He threatened to walk out of the Democratic convention and take Black America with him if he didn’t get what he wanted.

No ‘time to go’ In that pre-Internet era, I remember watching expectantly when Jesse spoke at the convention for the signal that it was “time to go.” But Jesse did what sheepdogs do: he got back in line. Both of Jesse’s 1984 and 1988 prime-time convention speeches included the usual “most important election in our lifetime” references. He went out on the campaign trail for the disastrous Democratic campaigns of Walter Mondale in 1984 and Michael Dukakis in 1988. Mondale – with the support of 90 percent of Black voters – got his head handed to him and lost 49 of 50 states to Ronald Reagan in 1984. Dukakis – with the support of 90 percent of Black voters – got his head handed to him and lost 42 of 50 states to George H.W. Bush in 1988. And Black Americans – who went down with the sinking Democratic ship of that era – were personae non gratae for three presidential terms and had nothing to show for their fierce loyalty to a Democratic Party that couldn’t even turn out their own White voters.

women (38.1/100,000 population) was 20 times that of White women and almost five times that of Hispanic/Latino women; and •Of HIV diagnoses among 13 to 19 year olds, almost 70 percent are to Black teens, even though they constitute approximately 16 percent of the adolescent population in the U.S. Because of that visit, I developed a heightened interest in covering the disease, an interest – and friendship with Phill – that has only grown stronger in subsequent years. More than anyone, Phill Wilson has been the Paul Revere of Black America when it comes to sounding the alarm about the devastation HIV/AIDS has visited upon African-Americans. He is a tireless champion determined to curb the impact of this disease and does unmatched work as president and CEO of the Black AIDS Institute, the only national HIV/AIDS think tank focused exclusively on Black people. As Phill will tell you, I have repeatedly pressed him to expand his efforts to recruit more straight Black men and women to engage in the fight against HIV/AIDS. I understand the disproportionate toll the disease has taken on gay and bi-sexual Black men, but thanks to him, I also realize how many other groups are affected.

Black ‘straights’ missing According to the Centers for

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: DEMOCRATIC ‘PARTY ANIMALS’

NATE BEELER, THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Stranglehold remains Had Jesse Jackson walked away from the Democrats when he didn’t get what he wanted, Reagan and Bush would still have been elected. The Democratic Party’s stranglehold on Black America would have been broken, and they wouldn’t be taking the Black vote for granted today. Black people would have more confidence and trust in Black leadership. Instead, Jesse got high-level Dem contacts that he turned in financial resources for his own family and for his organizations. He got the ability to stay politically relevant. He got proximity to power when the political pendulum swung back to the Dems with Bill Clinton’s two terms. That’s just what Bernie will get. What will his supporters get? NOTHING.

Wasted opportunity Fast-forward to this week. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the weakest major party presidential nominees in recent American political history. Sanders, the only non-party affiliated member of the U.S. Senate, owes the Democratic Party nothing, because they didn’t get him elected to the Senate. He only ran as a Democrat because that’s where the TV cameras were. Thus, Sanders was in a great historical position to destroy the two-party status quo by kissing the Dems goodbye, then using his robust online fundraising operation and the pent-up energy of his supporters to run for pres-

Disease Control (CDC), 87 percent of Black women become infected through heterosexual sex and only a small percentage through injection drug use. Yet, I saw few outreach efforts at the international AIDS convention aimed at heterosexual males or females. On the other hand, there were sessions titled, “Working with Communities of Faith to Reduce TB and HIV Stigma” and “Turning the Tide: Outreach and Social Support for Trans Sex Workers.” This was another missed opportunity. And in our predicament, we can’t afford to miss any opportunities to make inroads into curbing this disease. The CDC figures tell why: •In 2014, 44 percent (19,540) of estimated new HIV diagnoses in the United States were among African-Americans, who represent 12 percent of the U.S. population;

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According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 87 percent of Black women become infected through heterosexual sex and only a small percentage through injection drug use. Yet, I saw few outreach efforts at the international AIDS convention aimed at heterosexual males or females.

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.

ident of the leftist Green Party – which is on the ballot in all 50 states – and establish a true progressive alternative to the Democratic Party for the first time in modern history. Had he run, Sanders would be hailed years from now (whether Trump won or not) as the man who began the demise of a twoparty system that devolved into legislative stalemate and corporate-owned “binary choices” presented to the American people by mainstream media. Instead, Bernie was so afraid of being “Ralph Nader,” who ran as a third-party candidate in 2000 and is unfairly blamed for taking votes from Democrat Al Gore in a close race against George W. Bush. So Bernie will get what the Dems decide to give him as the sheepdog that he is. The fact that he didn’t walk from the Dems – as Jesse didn’t 30 years ago – tells me that Bernie is a typical politician: a ‘revolutionary’ in his own mind. So Berniacs, dry your tears. We’ve seen it all before.

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•Among African-Americans diagnosed with HIV in 2014, an estimated 73 percent (14,305) were men and 26 percent (5,128) were women; and •Among African-Americans diagnosed with HIV in 2014, an estimated 57 percent (11,201) were gay or bisexual men. There are many straight people who would add their voice to the fight against HIV/AIDS. But it may take a Phill Wilson to sit down with them and say, as Phill told me, we may never agree on certain social issues, but it is not necessary to be in agreement on every issue in order to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Black America.

George E. Curry is president and CEO of George Curry Media, LLC.

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JULY 29 – AUGUST 4, 2016

EDITORIAL

Micah Xavier Johnson and Gavin Long – 17 reasons Judging by the coverage and commentary on corporate media telesecreens, good Americans are supposed to be surprised and horrified that eight police officers were ambushed and murdered by skilled Black riflemen in Dallas and Baton Rouge over the past month. But what’s so surprising about the racial revenge shootings? Here are 17 basic and in some cases obvious reasons for their occurrence: 1. The nation is awash with mass-murderous military-style assault weapons of the kinds used by the Black military veterans Micah Xavier Johnson (an Army veteran of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and a trained sniper) in Dallas and Gavin Long (a 29-year-old former Marine who served imperial time in Iraq) in Baton Rouge. There are somewhere between 5 and 8 million assault rifles in homes in the “armed madhouse” (writer Greg Palast’s apt description) that is the United States. 2. The nation is full of military veterans who have been badly traumatized and mentally as well as physically damaged by deployments in Washington’s miserable, criminal, and racist wars in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. 3. These veterans are trained in the craft of killing, including the killing of armed soldiers and gendarmes. Many veterans have the skills (as well as access to the deadly tools) to employ lethal force against police. 4. Many of those veterans are Black people. According to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2014, 11.4 percent of the nation’s 19.3 million military veterans were Black. 5. Along with the rampant

PAUL STREET BLACK AGENDA REPORT

alienation and atomization caused by its overly commercialized and amoral culture of predatory and neoliberal capitalism, the United States has weak and underfunded mental health programs. 6. The nation’s mental and other health care services for military veterans are notoriously and maddeningly inadequate and underfunded. 7. From its military actions abroad to the images on its movie screens, television shows, and video games at home, the contemporary United States – heir to the “Gunfighter Nation” of the 19th century – regularly promotes and glorifies murderous violence. It routinely portrays such violence as a legitimate and reasonable solution to complex social problems. 8. U.S. military veterans struggle with a host of steep barriers to economic and social stability, including (but not limited to) mental and other health difficulties. 9. Black veterans deal with the added extreme barriers and burdens of contemporary, manysided institutional racism and racialized classism. These sharp obstacles to racial equality and Black advancement and security remain endemic across the nation’s labor markets, workplaces, housing markets, credit system, transportation system, schools, social services, and – most graphically of all – criminal justice system.

Gavin Long’s last words The murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castille were not unique. On average, one Black person is killed by police every day. But cameras were rolling and the sight of police” lynchlaw” twice in 48 hours was too much for millions of people to bear. Revenge was not just contemplated, but carried out. Micah Johnson and Gavin Long were named as suspects in shootings of police in Dallas and Baton Rouge. Both paid with their lives. If guilty, they were motivated to act on their anger and they changed everything about the movement to end police lynch law.

Both veterans Johnson and Long were both Black men who served in the military. Johnson was deployed in Afghanistan and Long in Iraq. Aside from the police version of their conversation with Johnson, we know nothing about his thinking. But Long often expressed himself on social media. What he said is worthy of attention. In an eight-minute long video downloaded the day of the Baton Rouge shootings, Long explained his beliefs about confronting violence, building revolutionary

MARGARET KIMBERLEY BLACK AGENDA REPORT

struggle and getting justice. He said what many Black people think about but do not act upon. Long asked questions that never make it into the realm of accepted discourse precisely because the truth is so inconvenient. Long made a specific reference to the celebration of American independence: “When an African fights back, it’s wrong. But every time a European fights back against his oppressor, he’s right.” The fight for so-called independence by the White settler population was a struggle for the right to wage aggressive war against the indigenous population and enslaved Africans. George Washington and the rest of the “founding fathers” wanted to be certain that Britain would not hinder their project for annihilation and subjugation. That history makes it impossible for Black people’s freedom to be discussed at all, much less be celebrated.

Does the US military incubate abusive cops and disconnected shooters? Media spokespeople and politicians in both parties are working overtime to paint imaginary connections between the broad movement supported by millions of Americans to strip police of their traditional immunity and impunity for violent acts committed against civilians on the one hand, and the deranged, disconnected shooters of police in Texas and Louisiana. The real links they studiously ignore are that the Dallas and Baton Rouge shooters were both veterans of the unjust and murderous U.S. military occupations of Afghanistan and/or Iraq, as are many of the police who commit violent acts against their fellow Americans after they return home.

BRUCE A. DIXON BLACK AGENDA REPORT

High percentage While the percentage of cops with military backgrounds is unclear due to the existence of special laws protecting police personnel, disciplinary and other records from prosecutorial and public scrutiny, the percentage of military veterans among police around the country is probably higher than any other line of work excepting civilian employees of the Pentagon, intelligence services and their contractors.

10. Black military veterans are likely to live in the nation’s still highly segregated Black communities and see up close the many forms of egregious abuse Black people still routinely face in the United States today, including endemic persistent hiring bias, housing discrimination, underfunded and segregated schools, discriminatory lending, underinvestment, inadequate transportation services, and the rampant over-arrest, incarceration, felony-marking, and police murder of Black men. 11. That egregious, highly visible mistreatment and discrimination defies the nation’s regularly proclaimed fealty to the noble ideals of equality, democracy, liberty, and equality of opportunity. 12. Those are ideals that U.S. military enlistees are told they are upholding by “serving” in the nation’s armed forces – ideals many of those enlistees see regularly mocked and violated by the conduct of the U.S. military abroad and by the classist and racism realities of the “homeland” society they are sworn to “serve.” 13. The regular, almost routine murder of their sons, brothers, fathers, boyfriends, and husbands by mostly White and commonly racist police officers engaged in keeping the nation racially separate and unequal, both socioeconomically and geographically, is galling and maddening. 14. The nation’s television, computer, and cell phones screens are now and have awash with almost normalized images of mostly young Black men being senselessly beaten and murdered by (mostly) White police officers.

Not a plea Long did not make a plaintive plea for justice. He told us what we know in our hearts, but usually don’t want to acknowledge in our state of hopefulness. “A bully doesn’t care about your rights.” White supremacy is our collective bully. The politicians and the 1 percent they work for are bullies. Like “made” men in the Mafia, they don’t care about law or morality. They crush Black peoples’ lives and take what they want. Their treatment of those who do speak up shows the truth of Long’s words. The exaltation of the concept of human rights in this country is a ruse used to keep people passive and in a state of confused magical thinking. All the while they expect us to be silent about their criminality. Long continued in a discussion of revolutionary struggle: “One hundred percent of revolutions, of victims fighting their oppressors, from victims fighting their bullies, 100% have been successful through fighting back through bloodshed. Zero have been successful just protesting.”

No demands

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: GUNS IN AMERICA

KAP, LA VANGUARDIA, SPAIN

15. U.S. prosecutors and courts continue to deny Black Americans anything remotely close to real justice through “due process of law” after police are caught torturing, maiming, and killing Black men. 16. The rugged American ethos of self-defense (hardly unique to America) has long held that men don’t simply stand by while people in their community are harassed, murdered, and maimed by bullies and oppressors from outside. They fight back. They defend themselves and their communities by any and all means deemed necessary, including retaliatory force. 17. Individual terror attacks on gendarmes are a weapon of the weak. They are a symptom of powerlessness. They reflect the absence of strong and influential movements for social justice. With all due respect for its accomplishments in bringing the problem of racist police shootings to the national fore, Black Lives Matter is nothing like a

match for the great Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1950s and 1960s. Meanwhile independent Black political power has disappeared into the folds of the neoliberal, imperialist, and objectively Whitesupremacist Democratic Party thanks in no small part to the insipid opportunism and craven conservatism of the Black bourgeois mis-leadership class. The most surprising thing is that there haven’t been more Micah Xavier Johnsons and Gavin Longs. The most startling fact is that the number of police killed in the U.S. by Black American snipers isn’t higher.

Long said. BLM specializes in talk of “healing” and “safe spaces,” but is uninterested in providing a road map for action. The denunciations directed at them by White racists don’t mean much. Black people can do very little and still be the object of hate and derision. Hostility towards the useless Black Lives Matter organization is proof. After all, bullies don’t care about rights or slogans and won’t rectify injustice until they feel the need to do so. “Knowing your rights doesn’t mean nothing especially in this world ran [sic] by devils. Devils run this.” Talk of devils in our system should not be a relic of long past polemics. Our system is diabolical as it snatches up lives into the prison system or increases poverty through capitalism or kills wantonly around the world. America is the evil empire and thinks nothing about trampling on humanity on a regular basis. “That’s what the revolution is. Once it gets to the point where people stand on their rights. It’s not knowing your rights. Knowing your rights is nothing to a bully; it’s nothing to a demon; it’s nothing to a devil. You got to stand on your rights.”

carried out orders on behalf of the empire, they were honored and thanked for their service. They acted in Dallas and Baton Rouge as they were trained to by our government. The same devilish system that encourages murder by anyone wearing a uniform should not determine how we assess Johnson and Long. As always happens in moments of struggle, their acts may prove damaging to the people they wanted to avenge. One of the policemen killed in Baton Rouge was a Black man. That sad irony must be part of the Black community discussion and should have nothing to do with political platitudes or corporate media pronouncements.

Paul Street is the author of numerous books, including “Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: A Living Black Chicago History” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

No justice Johnson and Long had no reason to believe that Sterling and Castile would get justice. Eric Garner didn’t. Freddie Gray didn’t. The rest of us may hope that the system will do what it should and punish devilish behavior. Perhaps we are the crazy ones. Micah Johnson and Gavin Long were certainly outliers. But perhaps they understood reality better than the rest of us do.

The failure of the Black Lives Matter organization proves that apolitical protest with no expression of demands amounts to very little. They have coined a phrase that is on everyone’s lips but they have no program, no plan for teaching Black people to fight back, to stand on their rights as

Reclaim the terminology There was a time when talk of devils and revolution was common and it should be reclaimed in the 21st century. It is a mistake to reject Micah Johnson and Gavin Long. When they wore military uniforms and

Margaret Kimberley’s column appears weekly in BlackAgendaReport.com. Contact her at Margaret.Kimberley@ Black AgendaReport.com. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

The U.S. military is widely known to aggressively discourage soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines from admitting to or seeking help for psychological disorders and injuries. The world our military members live in is a brutal and twisted place where two out of five women are sexually assaulted. It’s a world where reporting (not committing) such an assault is a careerender, where seeking help for psychological problems can impair your security clearance and job prospects years later in civilian life because military medical and psychological records – unlike those of civilians – are not confidential. Indications are that the Baton Rouge and Dallas shooters both had problems which are likely results of their military experience. By the same token, it’s not implausible to imagine that many violent and abusive former military members were in need of psychological help even before they became law enforcement officers.

Facts hidden

Bloody work

For too long Americans have hidden from the facts and the consequences of America’s brutal overseas wars, even while making motion picture heroes of White snipers like Chris Kyle who famously claimed to have been paid to shoot 30 so-called “looters” in New Orleans during the Katrina disaster. In Chicago, the famous police torturer John Burge first learned his trade in the Vietnam War’s Phoenix program. A generation later, Burge’s successors in the Chicago Police Department were directly linked to the mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo. Rank and file U.S. torturers at Abu Gharaib were Pennsylvania prison guards in civilian life. While malicious authoritarians from Hillary Clinton and Wolf Blitzer to Bill O’Reilly and Rudi Giuliani want to sell us their fantasies connecting the Black Lives Matter movement and shootings of police, they ignore the alltoo-real blowback on American streets from our nation’s permanent war footing.

It’s not fantasy but fact that U.S. special ops troops are currently active in dozens of countries across Africa and Asia, and in Ukraine on the borders of Russia, doing bloody brutal and unspeakable things the American people don’t endorse and didn’t vote for. Their crimes go unacknowledged and unpunished and their psychological injuries untreated. Our military, stationed at the frontiers of U.S. empire in more than 100 countries around the world are incubating the next waves of brutal and abusive police – along with their disconnected and deranged shooters – all practicing what they never should have been taught, bringing home to us another cost of global empire.

Bruce Dixon is managing editor of BlackAgendaReport.com. Contact him at bruce.dixon@ blackagendareport.com. Click on this story at www.flcourier. com to write your own response.

TOJ A6

NATION

JULY 29 – AUGUST 4, 2016 “Where is Mayor Kip Holden?” asked local ABC affiliate WBRZ, which sent a reporter to track him down after Sterling’s death. The story suggested the mayor had made only a single brief appearance to comment on Sterling’s death despite rallies that had devolved into skirmishes between protesters and police. The mayor was also a no-show at Sterling’s July 15 funeral. At the start of a new week, Holden walked from television tent to television tent in front of the Baton Rouge Police Department the following Monday, raising expectations he would confront his critics and discuss the violence and death that had been heaved upon the city.

Retail politician

MARK BOSTER/LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

Baton Rouge Mayor Kip Holden gazes out his office window onto the Mississippi River area of his community on July 19.

Struggling to unite a fractured Baton Rouge The mayor and the city face huge divides and problems after the police shooting of Alton Sterling and the murder of three officers. BY NIGEL DUARA LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

BATON ROUGE, La. – From a distance, his tie looks to be a seamless monochrome. Up close, it reveals itself as a speckled pattern of ocher dots on a cream background.

That has always been Kip Holden’s talent – to make the crowded, messy integration of disparate elements look, from a distance, united. But as mayor of Baton Rouge, Holden’s ability to hold together a city he has cajoled, flirted with and chided for a decade as its leader is being tested. A Black man named Alton Sterling is dead, killed by police here. Three police officers – one Black, two White – are dead as well, gunned down while on routine patrol. The gunman also was fatally shot by police. The coalition of Black Democrats and White Republicans that powered Holden to his first election

in 2004 and had long stood by him splintered quickly after Sterling was shot. Meanwhile, the rich, White enclave of south Baton Rouge has launched a campaign to split off from the poor, majorityBlack north, into a new city called St. George.

Preacher of unity Holden has fought the separation in every way possible, even annexing the land under the stores at the Mall of Louisiana to keep their massive sales taxes in the city of Baton Rouge if the secession is successful. The break would prove devastating to the remaining city of Baton Rouge, according to a Louisiana

State University economics study. It would also be a major blow to the legacy of a mayor who has preached unity. He has long tread a cautious line between supporting the right of people to demand better treatment from their government while refusing to endorse the protests. But few areas of Baton Rouge are neutral anymore.

Low profile So Holden finds himself largely sequestered in his home and office, taking calls, speaking to victims’ families, taking the occasional midmorning nap and mostly staying out of the spotlight.

In a decade in office, he retains most qualities from his initial run for mayor. He is still given to delivering rambling allegories. He is more hunched, his belly a little rounder, his hair a bit thinner, but he maintains the ephemeral, giddy nature of a retail politician, seemingly shaking every hand at once and grinning widely while eyes dart from person to person. “Look at this man. Isn’t that one of the greatest smiles you’ve ever seen?” said then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco at Holden’s January 2005 inauguration. “To me, that smile just exudes optimism.” Eight months later, Holden would be forced to rely on that optimism when all else failed, including the city’s traffic system, and again when evacuees were driven north from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina.

‘Not there for us’ But the killing of Alton Sterling has challenged Holden in ways for which he was not prepared. Protests have pressured him to choose a side. And, so far, he has chosen silence. “He’s just not there for us,” LaQuake Brown said. “When Sterling was shot, where was he? Police get shot and he’s giving them

(condolences). Where is it for that poor boy?” Holden’s reign has been focused on improving the infrastructure and livability of Baton Rouge, but few would call him an ardent administrator. Instead, he turns to people around him who help lead the city — a criticism his opponents have used against him.

Accomplishments Voters didn’t seem to care. Holden won re-election in 2008 with 71 percent of the vote. Under his administration, Baton Rouge’s languishing downtown riverfront has flourished. He built a new sewer system, supported improvements to the library system and rebuilt roads. He could also be thinskinned and crushingly sensitive, said Lanny Keller, a Baton Rouge Advocate political columnist. With a quick wit and acid tongue, Holden presents a formidable opponent in public settings. “I may not have graduated magna cum laude; I graduated, thank you, lordy. But look who’s the mayor,” he said at a contentious 2008 debate.

Sights on Congress Now, he’s preparing a run for Congress. He hasn’t raised very much money, just as he failed to raise much during a failed campaign for lieutenant governor in 2015. The larger stage has rejected him so far, but at noon on Monday at WBRZ’s studios in his hometown, Holden was in his element. “They don’t know where I am all the time,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “I’m in meetings, sometimes with the victim’s family, sometimes with law enforcement. I’m not going to go broadcast that every time someone wants to know where I am or where I’m going.” “History will regard him as a great mayor,” Keller suggested. “He’s more successful than he is popular. There just hasn’t been enough time and space to see that.”

Crime experts counter Trump’s fear talk BY JAMES ROSEN TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON – As Richard Rosenfeld listened to Donald Trump accept the Republican presidential nomination on July 21, a couple of recent crime trends the candidate cited were immediately familiar. Trump told convention delegates and millions of Americans watching on TV that homicides in the nation’s 50 largest cities are up 17 percent and that assaults on police have increased. Rosenfeld, a University of Missouri criminology professor who briefed 120 congressional aides and executive branch employees this month on Capitol Hill, recognized those statistics because they came from a paper he’d written last month for the U.S. Justice Department, whose findings had been widely cited in news reports. “He didn’t misquote my report,” Rosenfeld said on July 22. “In those two instances, he was correct.”

‘Way off base’ That doesn’t mean Rosenfeld agrees with Trump’s overall speech and the dark vision it painted of a fearful nation. The general claim that the nation is beset by violence is “way off base,” said Rosenfeld, one of the nation’s foremost experts on crime statistics. “Even with the homicide increase in large cities last year, the country is still experiencing violent-crime rates that are far lower than they were 20 years ago.” On July 22, President Barack Obama made a

similar point in countering Trump. “When it comes to crime, the violent crime rate in America has been lower during my presidency than anytime in the last three, four decades,” Obama said. “And although it’s true that we’ve seen an uptick in murders and violent crime this year, the fact of the matter is that the murder rate today … is far lower than it was when Ronald Reagan was president, and lower than when I took office.”

Emotional response Yet while experts denounced Trump’s portrayal of a country beset by violence and fear as exaggerated, Rosenfeld and others acknowledged that many people respond emotionally to high-profile police shootings, Islamic jihadist attacks or killings by police of unarmed men — especially when they receive a lot of attention not just on television, but also in social media. “You can turn on cable TV and get scared any minute of the day or night,” said Barry Glassner, a sociologist at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. “And now you have all these social media sites, and they all have a certain kind of authority — not the kind that any scholar or serious journalist would respect, but the authority of immediacy and directness.”

Caught on video Statistics show decreased crime rates over the last quarter century: 1.17 million violent crimes in 2014, down from 1.93 million in 1992, according

BRIAN VAN DER BRUG/LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump accepts the party’s nomination on the last day of the Republican National Convention on July 21 at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. to the FBI. But those dry numbers hardly are as compelling as the 10-minute video that Philando Castile’s girlfriend shot as he lay dying in their car after being shot by a police officer during a minor traffic stop in Minnesota. Live-streamed on Facebook, it went viral, with more than 1.8 million YouTube views as of July 22. A military veteran’s ambush of five police officers in Dallas July 7 also was captured on video, streamed online and commented about by millions of Twitter users.

Violent summer Other recent horrific acts have had wide exposure, like the killing of 49 people

at an Orlando nightclub last month — the shooter reportedly checked Facebook to see whether it was trending — and the repeated shooting by police of a Black man July 5 in Baton Rouge, La., and the July 17 killing of three police officers in that city. Videos have shown a dozen or so violent encounters between police and mainly AfricanAmerican men that began with the killing of Michael Brown on Aug. 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo. “The streaming video really gets people’s attention and scares them,” said James Lynch, presidentelect of the American Society of Criminology and a criminal justice professor at the University of Mary-

land. “Statistics are kind of bloodless because they’re designed to be systematic and factual. There’s not a lot of sensation in statistics.”

Less fearful Statistics show a very different story from the one told by Trump, and by three speakers earlier in the Republican convention, who told of their family members having been murdered by immigrants who were in the country illegally. The number of violent crimes –– including homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault ––rose virtually every year from 1960 through 1993. Since then, the number has fallen just as steadily, although Rosenfeld notes an appar-

ent increase in the past year or so. Rosenfeld, however, said opinion polls consistently found that Americans were less fearful than they were during a 1990s crime wave that led Clinton and a Republican-controlled Congress to put 100,000 more police officers on the street and pass “three strikes” laws toughening criminal sentences. “When Americans are asked by pollsters to rank the top problems in the country, crime in the streets ranks quite low, especially compared with the early 1990s, when it was viewed as one of the top problems,” he said. “If you go back 20 years ago, fear of crime was much greater then than it is now.”

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Marc Lamont Hill analyzes heated cases in‘Nobody’ See page B2

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SHARING BLACK LIFE, STATEWIDE

The Game’s goal: Stopping the Violence See page B5

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Geneva Reed-Vead, the mother of 28-year-old Sandra Bland, speaks as the Mothers of the Movement make an appearance during the second day of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.

MOTHERS MOVEMENT

OF THE

Women whose children died at the hands of police or because of gun violence give their testimonies and tell why they’re with Hillary Clinton. in a Texas jail in 2015. “What a blessing tonight to be standing here so that Sandy can still speak through her momma,” ReedVeal said, choking back tears. “We have an opportunity, and we’ve got to seize it, to elect a president who will help lead us on the path to restoration and change.”

Campaigning for months

PHOTOS BY MARCUS YAM/LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

Delegates get emotional listening to the personal stories of the Mothers of the Movement during the second day of the Democratic National Convention. BY THOMAS FITZGERALD PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

A delegate watches intently as the Mothers of the Movement give their presentation at the convention.

hen the lights came up revealing nine African-American women standing in a circle, as if in prayer, delegates and guests at the Democratic National Convention broke into a chant: “Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Matter!” Then the crowd quieted to listen to the Mothers of the Movement, women whose children died at the hands of police or in bursts of gun violence. They were there to testify for presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. “She knows that when a young Black life is cut short, it’s not just a personal loss, it’s … a loss that diminishes all of us,” said Geneva Reed-Veal, whose daughter, Sandra Bland, was found hanged by a twisted plastic garbage bag

It was perhaps the most prominent platform yet for the movement that has spurred demonstrations across the country in the last four years over the deaths of young Black Americans, and put pressure on the political system to deal with policing, gun violence and racial disparities in the justice system. The mothers have been campaigning on Clinton’s behalf for months. They started with intimate gatherings in small rural churches in South Carolina and traveled the country, helping to energize a crucial constituency for Clinton. “This isn’t about being politically correct,” Sybrina Fulton said at the convention. “This is about saving our children.” Her son, Trayvon Martin, 17, was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch member, George Zimmerman, in Sanford in 2012. The emotionally powerful convention moment came in a month of mounting tension that has seen two Black men killed in officer-involved shootings, near St. Paul, Minn., and in Baton Rouge, La., and eight police officers assassinated. And marchers in the streets of Philadelphia have demanded justice for young men of color killed by police officers.

Some criticism Hillary Clinton has been criticized by Black Lives Matter activists for her support of the 1994 crime bill signed by her husband, President Bill Clinton, that imposed mandatory prison sentences and is blamed for a high rate of incarceration of young Black men. “Our fight is not with the Mothers of the Movement. They have every right to speak – they need that platform to speak,” said Asa Khalif of the Philly Coalition for REAL Justice. He said he wished the convention had emphasized deaths as the result of police brutality, instead of including other cases of simple gun violence.

‘Build a future’ Last week, the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police lodge slammed the DNC for failing to give the families of recently slain officers speaking time at the convention. “It is sad that to win an election, Mrs. Clinton must pander to the interests of people who do not know all the facts, while the men and women they seek to destroy are outside protecting the political institutions of this country,” union president John McNesby said in a statement. The goal is “to build a future” in which police officers and minority communities cooperate, said Lucy McBath, whose son Jordan Davis was fatally shot while he sat in a car in a parking lot with other Black teens – by a White man who complained their music was too loud. “The majority of police officers are good people doing a good job,” McBath said.

Aubrey Whelan contributed to this article.

“This isn’t about being politically correct. This is about saving our children.” Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin

FLORIDA COMMUNITY CALENDAR St. Petersburg: Dreamers of Tomorrow will present a Christian comedy “Laughter without Profanity’’ starring Shirley Murdock on July 31 at The Palladium. Others include Darrien “Hair-larious” Perkins, Leatric Lamar and Tony Tone. Fort Lauderdale: K. Michelle takes the stage Aug. 2 at Revolution Live. Other performers will be PJ and Ro James. St. Petersburg: An Aretha Franklin Tribute is July 30 at The Palladium. The 8 p.m. show will feature award-winning songstress. Cece Teneal. Orlando: Dru Hll and Lyfe Jennings are scheduled Aug. 27 at the House of Blues Orlando. Jacksonville: A-Train Live: The Experience with Rodney Perry makes a stop at the Ritz Theatre & Museum on Aug. 19. Miami: Drake’s Summer Sixteen Tour, which features Future, makes an Aug. 30 stop at the AmericanAirlines Arena. Orlando: The stars of Lifetime’s “Bring It!’’ will perform July 27 at Hard Rock Orlando, July 28 at

CALENDAR the Straz Center in Tampa, July 29 at Florida Theatre Jacksonville, July 30 at Broward Center for the Performing Arts, and July 31 at the James L. Knight Center in Miami. Miami Beach: Leon Bridges will perform Sept. 13 at the Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theater. Jacksonville: Aaron Bing performs Aug. 14 at the Times Union Center for the Performing Arts.

JULY 29 – AUGUST 4, 2016

LIL KIM

The Bad Boy Family Reunion is coming to AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami on Sept. 10 and Tampa’s Amalie Arena on Sept. 11. Performers will include Puff Daddy, Faith Evans, Lil Kim, Mase, 112, Total, Carl Thomas, The Lox and French Montana.

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

ISRAEL HOUGHTON

Tickets are on sale for the Festival of Praise on Nov. 30 at the Pompano Beach Amphitheater. Performers include Fred Hammond, Pastor Hezekiah Walker, Israel Houghton, Karen Clark Sheard, Regina Belle and Casey J.

Miami Beach: Jill Scott takes the stage on Aug. 30 at the Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theater.

JEFFREY OSBORNE

Fort Lauderdale: The Keb’ Mo’ Band will perform Sept. 22 at the Parker Playhouse.

Gerald Albright and Jeffrey Osborne will perform Oct. 22 at The Peabody in Daytona Beach.

Jacksonville: Shirley Murdock is scheduled at the Salem Centre ion July 30. Hollywood: Seal performs Aug. 18 at Hard Rock Live. The show starts at 8 p.m. Miami: Kanye West’s The Saint Pablo Tour stops at AmericanAirlines Arena on Sept. 16.

‘Nobody’ puts focus on aggressive policing, flawed courts, mass incarceration BY DR. GLENN ALTSCHULER SPECIAL TO THE FLORIDA COURIER

On Feb. 26, 2012, George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, reported to a 911 dispatcher that a “real suspicious” youth in a hoodie was walking around slowly, “looking at all the houses. He’s got a hand in his waistband and he’s a Black male…. These assholes, they always get away.” The dispatcher told Zimmerman not to follow “the suspect,” but Zimmerman continued to tail him. Within minutes, 17 yearold Trayvon Martin, who had left his father’s apartment in Sanford to buy some Skittles for his younger brother and a can of Arizona iced Tea for himself, during halftime of the NBA All Star Game, was dead. Zimmerman claimed that Martin, who was unarmed, was banging his head on the sidewalk during a scuffle, and to save himself, he took out his semi-automatic pistol, and shot the teenager.

From Sanford to Ferguson Zimmerman was questioned by the police and then released. After six weeks of mass media coverage and mass protests, he was arrested. Following a trial in which the defense argued that Martin “had the opportunity to go home and didn’t” and was

BOOK REVIEW Review of “Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond’’ by Marc Lamont Hill. Atria Books. 320 pages. $26. the aggressor, not the victim, Zimmerman was acquitted on all counts. According to Marc Lamont Hill, a professor of American Studies at Morehouse College and a political commentator on CNN, the Marc Lamont experiences of TrayHill von Martin, Michael Brown (in Ferguson, Missouri), Eric Garner (in New York City), Freddie Gray (in Baltimore, Maryland), Sandra Bland (in Waller County, Texas) and many other African-American citizens is evidence of “a system engineered to target, exploit and oppress” poor, black and brown people. Taking his title from a Ferguson resident who noted that the police left Michael Brown’s body on the ground “like he ain’t belong to nobody,” Hill presents a scathing indictment of excessively aggressive policing, flawed courts, mass incarceration, hollowed out and jobless inner cities, and the priva-

tization of public resources. By highlighting the humanity of “nobodies,” he hopes to stimulate principled and progressive reform.

Persuasive case As he hammers home his thesis – that the tragedies across the length and breadth of the United States are “signposts of a much deeper and more intractable set of problems,” of a dual set of twenty-first century realities: “for the powerful, justice is a right; for the powerless justice is an illusion” – Hill at times dismisses the importance of “the facts” in each of the cases he analyzes. The forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony demonstrating that Michael Brown was not shot in the back and the likelihood that “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” might have been “a fiction in the most narrow and literal terms,” he claims, must not obscure the larger truth that “a life was taken with disturbingly casual ease,” that Brown would almost certainly be alive if he were White. Critics will also surely challenge Hill’s characterization of Sandra Bland as “courageous.” That said, Hill does make a powerful and persuasive case that the deck is stacked against America’s “nobodies.” Prison, he demonstrates, is every bit as much a likely destination for young, poor Black men as graduate school

is for affluent Whites in Chevy Chase, Maryland and Scarsdale, New York.

Closing the gap Hill casts doubt on whether stop and frisk and “broken windows” police practices, harsh drug laws, or mass incarceration are responsible for the steep decrease in violent crime. He insists that the powers that be in the United States would not have tolerat-

ed heighted levels of lead in the water supply had it been found in Santa Monica, California or Evanston, Illinois, instead of Flint, Michigan. And he challenges us to join a new generation of activists prepared to organize, agitate and act (against the backdrop of state sanctioned violence, economic injustice, social misery, and appeals to fragmentation and fear) on the eminently reasonable

proposition that our “nobodies” will not have a fair shot at becoming “somebodies” until we reduce the unconscionably high – and growing – gap between America’s “have-gots” and our “have-nots.”

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.

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CULTURE

GARY W. GREEN/ORLANDO SENTINEL/TNS

The New Black Panther Party protests on March 24, 2012, in front of the Retreat at Twin Lakes, where Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Sanford on Feb. 26, 2012.

Who are the New Black Panthers? 1960s activists say new group doesn’t embody their ideals BY ERICA ERVANS LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights calls their organization a hate group, and founders of the Black Panthers call them impostors. They call themselves a “Black nationalist organization,” dedicated to the establishment of an “independently governed Black nation.” The New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense has been around since 1989 but recently caught the world’s attention when investigators discovered that Micah Johnson, who killed five police officers and wounded nine more in Dallas “liked” the party on Facebook and associated with a spinoff group called the New Black Panther Nation for roughly six months in Houston. The leader of the Houston group, Quanell X, said in an interview on KTRH radio’s “The Matt Patrick Show” that Johnson helped work security detail for several events nearly three years ago but was asked to “excuse” himself from the group after he started pushing leadership to acquire more arms and ammunition. “I honestly believed that the brother had post-traumatic stress disorder,” Quanell X said. “We knew the brother was a ticking time bomb.”

Called racist group According to Quanell X, Johnson never talked about killing cops or said anything that would warrant reporting him to the police. He said he did encourage Johnson to see a therapist, however. Hashim Nzinga, the chairman of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, which is headquartered in Atlanta and claims 38 chapters worldwide, also condemned the Dallas killings. But despite the party’s efforts to distance themselves from Johnson, some individuals have said the movement’s ideology influenced the shooter. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a watchdog organization that monitors hate groups, has tracked the party since 2000 and says the New Black Panthers are a “virulently racist and anti-Semitic organization whose leaders have encouraged violence against whites, Jews and law enforcement officers.” “If you are in a prominent position and pushing out propaganda, eventually that will translate to criminal hate violence,” said Mark Potok, senior fellow at the center. “The Dallas shooter is the best example.”

No assault charges According to the center, the group has never been charged

SACRAMENTO BEE/TNS

Members of the Black Panthers are shown during the group’s protest at the California Assembly in May 1967 in Sacramento, California. with killing or assaulting anyone, although it faced charges of voter intimidation in 2008 when Philadelphia chapter leader King Samir Shabazz, along with member Jerry Jackson, started making threatening remarks at a polling station. The Department of Justice later narrowed the charges to Shabazz and dismissed the charges against the New Black Panther Party. A court issued an injunction prohibiting Shabazz from bringing a weapon near an open polling place in a Philadelphia precinct through 2012. Although the group has not been found responsible for any violent attacks, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, past New Black Panther party leaders have advocated the killing of Jews and white people. “You want freedom? You going to have to kill some crackers! You gonna have to kill some of their babies!” Shabazz, was filmed shouting in front of a crowd in 2008.

Advocates self-defense According to media accounts, at a 2002 protest in Washington, D.C., another leader, Malik Zulu Shabazz, yelled, “Kill every … Zionist in Israel!” Asked about such comments,

current party Chairman Nzinga told the Los Angeles Times, “I still say that all the time now. You’ve gotta kill them before they kill you.” However, Nzinga, a father of six, emphasized that the group advocates killing only in self-defense. “In America, you’ve got a constitutional right to protect your property,” he said. “If someone brings harm to us, we’re gonna kill them.” The New Black Panthers patch that members wear reads, “freedom or death,” and its 10-point platform based on original Black Panther Party goals says that members will protect themselves from racist police and military “by any means necessary.’” The document, posted on the party’s website, also calls, among other things, for a new black nation, government reparations for slavery and the release of all black prisoners.

Original party reacts In addition, Nzinga said in the interview that homosexuality is evil, that Jews control the media and are responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks and that Blacks are God’s “chosen people,” Jesus himself being Black. Members of the original Black Panther Party, a revolutionary

civil rights group founded in California in 1966, firmly deny any connection to the newer organization. The Dr. Huey Newton Foundation, named for the Black Panthers’ founder, released a letter several years ago denouncing the group’s exploitation of the party’s name and history. “There is no new Black Panther Party,” the letter declares.

1967 protest The now-disbanded Black Panthers were known to advocate violence to get what they wanted and also were criticized by many for their aggressive language and public stance. In 1967, they stormed the California Capitol fully armed to protest a gun bill. Newton was convicted of stabbing a man with a steak knife in 1964 and fatally shooting a police officer in 1967, the latter conviction later being overturned. And in 1969, the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, called them “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” But the Black Panthers also preached “undying love for the people,” started a free breakfast program for children and advocated on behalf of other minorities. “We were never what you called xenophobic Black nation-

alists,” another founding member, Bobby Seale, told CNN in a 2010 interview about the New Black Panthers. “We crossed all racial lines and ethnic lines, and we said all power to all of the people.”

‘No comparison’ The Black Panther Party was dissolved in the early 1980s after in-fighting and FBI interference led to a decline in popular support. Elaine Brown, a former Black Panthers chairman, said she is not concerned about the new group tarnishing the reputation of the old. “I don’t think anyone will think this is our legacy,” Brown said in an interview. “There is no comparison besides that they took our name.” But according to Nzinga, dozens of past Black Panthers do support the new movement and regularly attend and speak at rallies. “Some of these old guys who don’t support us, it’s because they are really elite now. They get big money to speak to White colleges, and they have left the revolution behind,” Nzinga said.

PERSONAL FINANCE

JULY 29 – AUGUST 4, 2016

STOJ

PHOTO COURTESY OF GETTY IMAGES

Face your financial fears FROM FAMILY FEATURES

Retirement is supposed to be a reward for decades of hard work, but if you haven’t planned well, the milestone may be a dark cloud on your horizon. In fact, new data shows that nearly 50 percent of Amer icans are most afraid of outliving their income or the inability to maintain their current lifestyle, and nearly 20 percent are wor ried about having enough money to cover health care expenses. The research, released by the Indexed Annu ity Leadership Council (IALC), also found that despite these very real fears, Americans are fail ing to take action to ad dress them. For example, a quarter of Baby Boom ers, the age group closest to retirement, have less than $5,000 saved for re tirement and nearly one in five Americans have no idea how much they’ve saved. The findings indicate that Americans are afraid of the unknown when it comes to managing their money and retirement. While you can budget for leisure and travel, health care expenses and life ex pectancy are unpredict able. “Americans are living longer than ever, so it’s no surprise that the No. 1 re tirement fear is that they’ll run out of money in their final years,” said Jim Pool man, executive director of the IALC. “Thankfully, there are strategies and products out there that can help you create sufficient retirement income to last throughout your lifetime, which can help with this crippling fear.” To take control of the

uncertainty and cre ate peace of mind when it comes to retirement, here are some simple steps you can follow:

Make a budget Those who plan for re tirement are estimated to save three times more than those who don’t. Take into account that your expenses may in crease during retirement, specifically for items such as health care and travel. Also, be sure to revisit your budget pe riodically to make adjust ments for new circum stances that affect how much you need to sup port the retirement life style you desire.

Balance is key Investing in a 401(k) is a great way to start a retirement portfolio, but putting all your eggs in one basket is a common mistake. One method to provide bal ance to your retirement portfolio is to add some more conservative, lowrisk products, such as Fixed Indexed Annui ties (FIAs), which pro tect your principal re gardless of market ups and downs. According to the survey, FIAs are an attractive choice for con sumers, with 45 percent of Americans surveyed interested in this type of retirement prod uct.

Plan to adjust A savings strategy that makes sense today might not fit your needs in five, 10 or 20 years. Factors like market volatility, changes in your career or personal life, can impact the amount you’re able

UNDERSTANDING FIXED INDEXED ANNUITIES In today’s economy, experts recommend ensuring you have a diversified retirement plan and balanced financial portfolio that includes conservative, lowrisk products that are less impacted by stock market volatility. According to the Indexed Annuity Leadership Council’s research, 45 percent of Americans are inter ested in retirement products, such as Fixed Indexed Annuities, that offer steady lifetime income and protect your principal even if the stock market goes down.

to save and how much you anticipate needing when you reach retirement age.

Monitor the balance While it’s not as criti cal to track the ups and downs of your portfolio in your younger years, the closer you are to retire ment, the more important it becomes to be aware of your account values. Your level of risk should reflect your age and your retire ment goals. Generally, the

younger you are, the great er risk you may be able to tolerate because market cycles generally rebound losses over time. When the window of time before retirement is tighter, you may not be able to recover from a dip as easily.

Small changes count Even seemingly little ad justments can have a no ticeable impact on your finances over time. For ex ample, packing your own

lunch and giving up an evening out with friends once weekly or monthly will allow you to direct that money to a retirement ac count instead. Also, be sure to pay your credit card bills on time to avoid fees that not only affect your credit rating but de plete funds that could be directed to retirement sav ings.

Make it automatic Set up scheduled trans fers so you don’t forget or

aren’t tempted to spend the money you planned to save. Treat your retirement account as a debt you owe and be sure to pay your self every month. If neces sary, meet with a finan cial advisor who can help you determine a strategy to pay down debt without sacrificing your retirement planning. Find more tips and tools to guide your retirement planning at FIAinsights. org.

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JULY 29 – AUGUST 4, 2016

FINEST & ENTERTAINMENT

Meet some of

FLORIDA’S

finest

submitted for your approval

Veteran political strategist Donna Brazile took over as interim head of the Democratic National Committee this week following the ouster of Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Brazile, also an educator and author, has been a Democratic Party operative for more than 30 years and worked on Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign. Above, she is shown giving the commencement address in May at Bethune-Cookman University. COURTESY OF BETHUNE-COOKMAN UNIVERSITY

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.

First Lady Michelle Obama wowed the crowd during the first day of the Democratic National Convention on Monday at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. It’s being called one of the best convention speeches ever. Mrs. Obama stated, “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves,” she said. “And I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent, Black young women, playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters and all our sons and daughters now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.’’ OLIVIER DOULIERY/ABACA PRESS/TNS

The Game’s goal: Make the world a better place BY LORRAINE ALI LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

LOS ANGELES – Compton rapper the Game was once a latchkey kid weaned on the unofficial rap anthem of South Los Angeles, N.W.A’s “F – tha Police.” “It was what we all knew in the ‘hood, it was in our DNA,” he said. Now 36 and a celebrity of sorts, the Game (a.k.a. Jayceon Taylor) has forged a successful career expressing such street ethos in topselling albums. So it came as a surprise last week when the heavily tattooed Taylor – an artist behind such songs as “Church for Thugs” – appeared in a Los Angeles Police Department-initiated public service announcement to stop the cycle of violence between minority communities and the police.

Met with chief It followed a march days earlier led by Taylor to LAPD headquarters where he met with Police Chief Charlie Beck. Taylor, rap elder statesman Snoop Dogg and a group of 50 men were there to open a dialogue after the killing of Black men by law enforcement across the country and the subsequent targeting of Dallas police officers in a sniper incident. “I’m not saying we’re all going to be best friends, but just how we interact with each other during a normal traffic stop, the attitudes of law enforcement, how civilians act, can change the outcome,” said Taylor from the Hollywood PSA set.

Deadly weeks Taylor is one of a handful of top-tier musicians who has taken action in the weeks after the deadly police shootings of Philando Castile in Minnesota, Alton Sterling in Louisiana and five officers killed by a sniper during an otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter march in Dallas. Three more officers were later shot and killed in Baton Rouge, La. Twitter postings aside, most music personalities have remained relatively silent during the heated debates on race rela-

tions and law enforcement that have dominated the national conversation. But since the killings in early July, a small group of popular artists are finally raising voices on the issues that have sparked major protests across the U.S.

that led to the 1992 riots. “Walking to school meant walking through several different gang ‘hoods, seeing people on corners with guns, smoking weed. There were police abusing their rights and disrespecting the badge. Seeing dead bodies in cars was just normal for me.” Now the father of four children under age 14, the rapper is concerned about the country they’ll be inheriting. How will their safety be affected by the color of their skin? He marched in Ferguson, Mo., after the shooting of Michael Brown, and among his numerous tattoos is now an image of shooting victim Trayvon Martin.

Other celebs protest Many of their messages are rooted in the Black Lives Matter movement, though, as Taylor attests, their approaches vary. Rapper Jay Z and R&B singer Miguel released songs lamenting the deaths of unarmed Black men at the hands of police. “Change does not come for the silent,” sings Miguel in “How Many.” “I’m tired of excuses for all the years’ injustices.” Drake and Beyonce – arguably the two biggest pop stars in the U.S. – have released statements onstage and online condemning the disproportionately high killings of Black civilians by police. “It’s impossible to ignore that the relationship between black and brown communities and law enforcement remains as strained as it was decades ago,” wrote Drake in a statement. “No one begins their life as a hashtag. Yet the trend of being reduced to one continues.”

Promoting trust More recently he helped organize a gang summit in South L.A. with Snoop Dogg, Chief Beck and other music artists such as Will I Am. The goal: to promote trust and avoid another national tragedy during a routine traffic stop or foot patrol. Taylor has of course caught flak for colluding with the “enemy” (be it cops or various gang factions), and some fans wonder if his new efforts to heal might soften his hard-edged music. “I can’t say the stories in my music are going to be nonviolent or I’m not going to speak on situations that render me helpless,” he said. “I’m just telling my story. But think about it, no one gets on Sylvester Stallone when he kills a jungle full of people in ‘Rambo.’ It’s entertainment, and you got to understand it for what it is. There’s going to be violence, it’s part of my story.”

Stars in PSA R&B artist Alicia Keys enlisted two dozen celebrities for the filmed PSA “23 Ways You Could Be Killed If You Are Black in America.” Beyonce, Rihanna, Common, Queen Latifah, Bono, Adam Levine, Pink and Pharrell Williams are among the music artists in the video who recite the circumstances – “Failing to signal a lane change,” or “Making eye contact” – while photos of the deceased, such as Sandra Bland and Freddie Gray, are shown. At the video’s close, viewers are urged to contact their representatives on Capitol Hill and demand action.

Slammed, kicked Taylor, formerly affiliated with a gang, has had his own run-ins with the law. It’s a past he feels makes him more qualified than most to act as a go-between in

A career risk LIONEL HAHN/ABACA PRESS/TNS

Jayceon Terrell Taylor is also known as the Game. brokering peace. “I’ve been body slammed on car hoods, been kicked in the face by police, I’ve had handcuffs so tight I felt like I couldn’t breath, I’ve been in jail,” he said. “Sometimes it was my fault, sometimes it was for no reason. When you know you’re doing something wrong, of course, there’s consequences. But there’s

also a process on how to police correctly, and that has to be followed. As an adult I understand that. As a youth, I didn’t.”

Seen death, destruction Raised in and out of foster care, Taylor grew up in 1980s and 1990s Compton during the rise of gangsta rap and the conditions

For every notable music artist like the Game who has spoken out, there are many more who have remained on the sidelines. To speak out is to risk alienating fans or sponsors. “If I never sell another rap album I’m still good with the person I am today,” Taylor said. “I will know that my children’s lives, other kids’ lives and adult lives could be spared because there’s open dialogue between police and civilians going forward. “If I can have a hand in that,” he says, “then I’m good.”

FOOD

JULY 29 – AUGUST 4, 2016

FROM FAMILY FEATURES

From burgers to barbecued chicken, many of the best grilled foods are served with creamy condiments – often packing on calories and fat. Next time you’re ready to grill, experiment with new ways to create simple but robust flavors using fewer ingredients through simple swaps. Rice vinegars offer a healthy alternative to condiments like mayonnaise or a creamy dressing when grilling. Keeping meals simple is easy with naturally gluten-free Nakano Rice Vinegar, which includes six or less simple ingredients with no artificial preservatives, flavors or ingredients, and no high-fructose corn syrup or MSG. The brand recently announced a clean-labeling initiative for all of its products, which now have easy-to-read labels with recognizable ingredients. Dawn Jackson Blatner, star of ABC’s “My Diet Is Better Than Yours,” author of “Superfood Swap” and a registered dietitian and nutrition consultant for the Chicago Cubs, has created healthy dishes to heat up the grill this season. This fall, look for organic Nakano Rice Vinegars debuting at retailers nationwide, and find more recipes at Mizkan.com. GRILLED VEGGIE AND RANCH BOWL Servings: 2 8 ounces skinless chicken breast 2 ears corn, shucked 6 asparagus spears, trimmed 1 organic bell pepper, seeded and cut into 4 large pieces 1 zucchini, cut in half lengthwise 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil sea salt, to taste pepper, to taste 4 tablespoons Cashew Ranch Dressing (recipe below) Heat grill to medium. Season chicken breast, corn, asparagus, bell pepper and zucchini with olive oil, sea salt and pepper. Grill chicken 6-7 minutes per side, internal temperature reaches 165 F. Grill corn 10-15 minutes, rotating after every pop, until corn is golden. Grill asparagus, bell pepper and zucchini 3-5 minutes per side, until tender. Separate chicken, corn, asparagus, bell pepper and zucchini evenly into two bowls. Drizzle bowls with Cashew Ranch Dressing. Note: Bowl leftovers can be refrigerated for up to four days. Nutritional information per serving: 450 calories; 21 g total fat; 4.5 g saturated fat; 870 mg sodium; 31 g carbs; 6 g fiber; 10 g sugar; 38 g protein. CASHEW RANCH DRESSING Makes: 1 cup 1 cup raw, unsalted cashews 3/4 cup almost-boiling water 3 tablespoons Nakano Rice Vinegar – Natural or Nakano Organic Rice Vinegar – Natural 1 clove garlic, minced 1/4 teaspoon dried dill 1/4teaspoon dried oregano 1 teaspoon sea salt 1 teaspoon black pepper 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh chives In food processor, puree cashews, water, rice vinegar, garlic, dill, oregano, salt and pepper 3-4 minutes, until creamy. For best results, drizzle water in gradually as food processor is running. Stir in chives. Note: Leftover dressing can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to seven days. Nutritional information per tablespoon: 50 calories; 4 g total fat; 0.5 g saturated fat; 110 mg sodium; 3 g carbs; 1 g sugar; 2 g protein.

TOJ

GRILLED MEATBALLS AND ZOODLES Servings: 4 Meatballs 1 pound organic ground turkey or grass-fed ground beef 1 cup organic kale, finely chopped 1/2 cup crushed brown rice crackers 1 egg 1/4 teaspoon red chili pepper flakes 1/4 teaspoon sea salt non-stick cooking spray Salad 4 medium zucchini 2 cups organic cherry tomatoes, chopped 1/4 cup shaved Parmesan cheese 1/4 cup Nakano Rice Vinegar – Natural or Nakano Organic Rice Vinegar – Natural 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil sea salt, to taste black pepper, to taste Heat grill to medium. In large mixing bowl, combine ground meat, kale, crackers, egg, chili pepper flakes and salt. Use hands to form mixture into 12 balls. Refrigerate 30-60 minutes to help meatballs set. Mist meatballs with non-stick cooking spray and place them on grill. Grill each side 3-4 minutes, using tongs to flip to sides that haven’t been browned yet. Meatballs should reach internal temperature of 165 F. Using vegetable spiralizer, create zucchini noodles. Toss zucchini with tomatoes, Parmesan, vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. Serve each zoodle plate with three meatballs. Nutritional information per serving: 350 calories; 20 g total fat; 6 g saturated fat; 240 mg sodium; 14 g carbs; 3 g fiber; 6 g sugar; 32 g protein. TUNA STUFFED AVOCADO Servings: 2 1 ripe avocado 1 can (5 ounces) tuna packed in water, drained 1/2 cup finely diced celery 1/2 cup grated carrot 1/4 cup finely diced red onion 2 tablespoons Nakano Rice Vinegar – Natural or Nakano Organic Rice Vinegar – Natural 1/2 tablespoon olive oil 1/2 tablespoon Dijon mustard 1/8 teaspoon sea salt 1/8 teaspoon black pepper 16 brown rice crackers Cut avocado in half, remove pit and scoop out flesh leaving thin wall of avocado. Dice avocado flesh and set shell aside for serving. In small bowl, combine tuna, celery, carrot, onion, vinegar, oil, mustard, salt and pepper. Mix well. Gently stir in diced avocado. Scoop mixture into avocado shells and serve with brown rice crackers. Nutritional information per serving: 360 calories; 19 g total fat; 3 g saturated fat; 530 mg sodium; 26 g carbs; 9 g fiber; 3 g sugar; 22 g protein.