ARTICLE CONTINUATION

Additionally, the results of the survey suggested that an astounding seventy percent of Black voters would cast their ballots for Harris if she were to run for president, revealing the possibility that African Americans would offer more support to Harris than Biden.

Further, there remains a greater degree of disagreement among Black voters who identify as Democrats or who lean toward the party.

The poll reveals a consensus among respondents (49%) that the party ought to put forward Biden as its candidate for another term. The remaining half of voters have indicated that they would want the Democrats to select a different candidate for president in 2024.

Even among Black voters, there’s a wide range of viewpoints about the question of whether Biden should be the nominee. Those under the age of 50 and those who lean Democratic are more likely to seek a different candidate than those over the age of 50 who want Biden to run for a second term. This is especially true of Black Democrats.

Fifty-seven percent of Black Democrats and Democrats-at-heart aged 50 and over want Biden as the nominee, however only 42% of all Democrats and Democrats-at-heart want the party to choose someone else. Meanwhile, the Republican Party has struggled to win Black voters, and the poll shows that this pattern hasn’t changed.

The anger and obstruction that Republicans have shown toward Barack Obama throughout the years, in addition to their resistance to a voting rights law in Congress, make gaining the Black vote an uphill battle for the GOP. By identifying themselves with Christian nationalists and organizations with roots to white supremacy, some Republicans have made it

YOU’RE INVITED impossible to gain the support of Black voters.

The track record that Biden has on racial issues has also been debated in the Black community. His efforts to pass a comprehensive voting rights package and reduce gun violence have been unsuccessful, but he has honored campaign vows to select a Black woman as his vice president and appoint one to the Supreme Court.

Additionally, Biden has fulfilled his promise to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court. Biden also must overcome the problems caused by some of his supporters privately and publicly bashing Harris, an issue that has alienated some Black voters. Four years after announcing his campaign for the 2020 election that finally resulted in the defeat of the criminally indicted and twice-impeached Donald Trump, Biden again seeks to beat back a run by the MAGA leader.

Reportedly, Biden’s most prominent supporters have been invited to a financial summit in Washington, D.C, in the days running up to his planned announcement, which has kicked off a wild race to stock the president’s war chest. The meeting, which was planned for Friday April 28, is viewed as an important first step in a campaign that is going to try its best to fly under the radar for at least one year. After that, Biden expects to start the process of hiring a team that will be able to function independently of the White House.

The team will include a campaign manager, communication assistants, state campaign directors, pollsters, finance managers, volunteers, and others. According to reports, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, a top White House adviser and the granddaughter of the late American labor leader Cesar Chavez, is in the running to oversee the re-election campaign. Chavez counted as a prominent figure in the labor movement in the United States.

Gipson Also Pushes Two Tax Bills

Last week, at a rally at the State Capitol, Gipson also discussed AB 1498, legislation he authored that would establish an Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) minimum of $300. According to the California Budget and Policy Center, 78% of people who qualify for EITC are people of color.

Gipson also expressed his support for another EITC-related legislation, AB 1128, at the rally. AB 1128 would “remove the requirement that a qualifying child has to be younger than 6 years of age as of the last day of the taxable year.”

Democrats Shoot Down GOP-Backed Fentanyl Bills

Democrats on the Assembly Public Safety Committee last week voted down several bills aimed at addressing California’s Fentanyl crisis. The measures would have strengthened penalties for Fentanyl dealers who possess large quantities of the drug — or kill or injure people they sell the drug to.

Bonta pointed to the major criminal justice reform efforts the state is undertaking, as well a $61 billion investment in harm reduction programs, including distribution of test trips and drug overdose medication.

Biden Highlights Importance of the Black Press at White House Correspondents’ Dinner

At the 2023 White House Corres-pondent’s Dinner, President Joe Biden spoke about the importance of the Black press and the tragic death of Emmett Till, an event that helped galvanize the civil rights movement in the 1950s.

Biden told the roomful of journalists that during Black History Month this year he hosted the screening of the film “Till.”

On Aug. 28, 1955, while visiting family in Money, Mississippi, Emmett Till, a 14-yearold African American teen from Chicago, was lynched for allegedly flirting with a White woman a few days earlier.

The story of Till and his mother Mamie TillMobly is a “story of a family’s promise and loss” and the country’s “reckoning with hate, violence, and the abuse of power,” Biden said.

“It’s a story that was seared into our memory and our conscience — the nation’s conscience — when Mrs. Till insisted that an open casket for her murdered and maimed 14-year-old son be the means by which he was transported,” Biden said. “She said, ‘Let the people see what I’ve seen.’”

Biden also commended Black publications for their reporting on the lynching and its aftermath, Till’s funeral, and the ensuing trial that freed the perpetrators.

“The reason the world saw what she saw was because of another hero in this story: the Black press,” Biden said “That’s a fact. JET Magazine, the Chicago Defender, and other Black radio and newspapers were unflinching and brave in making sure America saw what she saw. “And I mean it.”

Two Black Women Among New Appointees to Emerge California Board

Two Black women are among four new appointees to the board of Emerge California, an Oakland-based body that describes itself as “the state’s premier organization that recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office.”

Brittni Chicuata and Alana D. Matthews are the two new Black women members of the 9-member board. The organization had a 70%win rate out of the 125 candidates it supported in last November’s general election.

The other two new board members are Stacey Owens and Marina A. Torres.

Chicuata is Director of Economic Rights at the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. Matthews, an Emerge alumna, is an Assistant District Attorney and Policy Director for the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office. She is also an Adjunct Professor at McGeorge School of Law where she founded the Racial Equity and Justice Summer Practicum program.

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“We are still on the same Greek letter that we were since December 2020,” Wachter said, referring to the Omicron variant whose name derives from the Greek alphabet.

Since March, the World Health Organization has been monitoring the Omicron subvariant XBB.1.16, aka “Arcturus.” The variant has a higher transmissibility than previous ones but doesn’t appear to be more dangerous. The new strain accounts for about 10% of COVID-19 cases worldwide. People who get it tend to have a fever and some get pink eye. Both symptoms don’t last very long.

“The last year or so really feels like new variants are a little scary and then they turn out not to be that big a deal. And so I think, if past is prologue, that’s likely to be what happens with this newest variant,” Wachter says.

Staying safe even as COVID-19 restrictions fade

Dr. William Schaffner, Professor and Chair, Department of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, says that while Covid can still be deadly, the risk of severe infection has diminished. Schaffner still wears a mask in crowded places, as does Wachter.

“Many of our population have experienced COVID. Many people have been vaccinated, and of course many people have experienced both, and so our level of protection is very high, and these Omicron variants seem to be spreading, producing milder disease,” Schaffner says.

“The therapies, the testing, the treatments that we’ve gotten used to all work about as well as they have for the last 18 months. In some ways the biggest changes are political and sociological. It’s clear that any rules and restrictions are pretty much gone,” Wachter says. Americans have largely stopped wearing masks or hung them on their car mirrors just in case they may need them.

Schaffner says we need to keep our guard up. Older and immunocompromised people, as well as the unvaccinated, are the COVID patients who end up in the hospital. Vulnerable people need to get vaccinated, boosted, and wear masks.

“It turns out that the quality of the mask and the fit is important,” says Schaffner. The N-95 mask fits securely around your nose and chin. In the early days of the pandemic they were hard to find and controversy about wearing masks created a lot of confusion. Masks are no longer mandated except in hospitals and other places where the risk of infection remains high and it remains high for certain people.

“The other early mantra – that it’s really about protecting others and not you – it’s also wrong. It is about protecting others, but it certainly protects you, too.

It’s probabilistic. It lowers the chance of getting infected,” Schaffner says.

“If we’re not masking… I would say condoms prevent babies, masks prevent infectious disease. You’ll hear a lot of arguments about wearing both of them. But that doesn’t mean they don’t work,” says Dr. Ben Neuman, Chief Virologist of the Global Health Research Complex at Texas A&M University.

Arcturus variant likely not a game changer

Neuman said the Arcturus variant is different enough from the current vaccine strains that it has the potential to evade them because “it’s about as different from Omicron as Omicron was different from Delta and so just like we saw the Omicron wave come through, there is at least the potential for that.” See COVID page 16