UPW SEPTEMBER 13 - 19, 2018
Augusta’s political “Iron Man”
The return of A.K. Hasan
URBAN PRO WEEKLY
Former Augusta city councilman and school board prez reemerges as Bd. of Ed. candidate in November. VOL. 7 NO.17
THE ARTS IN THE HEART OF AUGUSTA FESTIVAL celebrates the city and the region’s cultural diversity. Above: Festival celebrants promote their Jamaican heritage during the “Parade of Nations” held at the Augusta Common on Sept. 14. Photo by Vincent Hobbs
COMMENTARY
The capitalist manifesto: Let poor people die
UrbanProWeekly - SEPTEMBER 2018
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BEC PLEX @ MUSIC FEST SAT. OCT 6 12 noon - 7 pm BEC PLEX MUSIC SHOWCASE
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FRI. OCT 19 8 pm - 12 pm LIVE CONCERT & KARAOKE CONTEST Enjoy 60’s & 70’s Oldies featuring MOD SQUAD Five Buck Friday $5 Adv. $7 at the door
SAT. OCT 20 8 pm - 1 am REGGAE FEVER • Live Onstage LADY D • RAS SHALIMAR • DJ SPUDD Roots Rock Reggae for dancers and lovers $10 at the door
FRI. OCT 26 5 pm - 9 pm REFLECTIONS AFTER DARK ART AFFAIR Art Show - Jazz Music - Light Refreshments Tickets $10 • Cash Wine & Beer Bar
SAT. OCT 27 8 pm - 12 mid BOOTS, BREWS and BBQ Live band playing the best variety of music $40 VIP - $25 General • Western Wear Drink & Drown Been & Wine Bar 8p - 9p • Door Prizes FOR ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE AT: EVENTBRITE.COM • BEC PLEX OFFICES OR BY CALLING 803-599-7968 BEC PLEX is located at 5955 Jefferson-Davis Hwy North Augusta, SC (Aiken-Augusta Hwy next to Antique Mall) - Formerly the old K-Mart Visit us online at www.thebecplex.com
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A.K. Hasan candidacy harkens back to “Golden Age” in Augusta politics AUGUSTA A.K. Hasan knows something about the political process. He has served in some capacity as an elected official in Richmond County in the decade of the 80s, 90s, and the first decade of the new millennium. Now in this second decade, he’s decided to get back in the game. If there’s a political “iron man” in Augusta — it’s A.K. The 61-year-old Richmond County School Board candidate is lacing up his campaigning boots once again in his bid for a seat at the table where decisions are made on how best to spend close to $450 million in public funds each year. A.K. Hasan (the brother of AugustaRichmond County Commissioner Ben Hasan) will face Jack Padgett in the District 6 School Board race in November. Those who have been following local politics for the past three decades will remember the emergence of A.K. Hasan into local politics just a few short years after his stint with the U.S. Marines. Things started happening in 1981 when A.K. was elected to the Richmond County Board of Education. Before long, he was elected president of that body and, as such, became the youngest person ever to hold that position. A.K. was also the first African American to hold that positon. He served on that board until 1986. Through the years, A.K. Hasan has carved out a reputation for himself as a disrupter but always armed with a set of plans ready to implement. And he almost never followed the pack. As an African-American candidate
in the “Golden Age” of black politics — when politics in Augusta was anything but “cool”, A.K. carved out a following that owed little, if anything, A.K. Hasan has is to the political on the Nov. ballot p o w e r b r o k e r s for the District that dictated 6 school board what-was-what in position. the black community back in the day. Powerful political personalities, typified by such individuals as former state senate majority leader Charles W. Walker and former Augusta mayor Ed McIntyre, held sway over everything that happened in the black community during the 1980s through the late 1990s and beyond. In 1984, Mr. Hasan campaigned unsuccessfully for the Georgia state senate. In 1986, he lost a bid for the Augusta City Council, but in 1989, he won that seat and served until 1990. He gave up that seat the same year to run for Congress as a Democrat. He lost that race, and then lost again in 1992. In 1993, A.K. Hasan ran for mayor against Charles DeVaney. In that race, Hasan received little or no support from the city’s black power brokers. Ed McIntyre had also been a candidate in that race but was forced out due to his prior incarceration. In 2005, Hasan rejoined the school board briefly to fill the unexpired term of the Johnny Hatney of District 9 who had resigned to run for another post. However, he was defeated by Venus Cain in the balloting for the full term.
UPW Urban Pro Weekly Hephzibah, GA 30815
Georgia Governor’s Race 2018
Jimmy Carter campaigns with Stacey Abrams in his hometown By Greg Bluestein, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution SUMTER COUNTY Hospitals are disappearing from rural Georgia and that problem is becoming one of the biggest issues in the governor’s race. Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, campaigned Tuesday with Democrat Stacey Abrams in Plains as she unveiled her rural health care platform. The former president appeared with Abrams in his hometown of Plains to discuss what the campaign calls “the importance of supporting rural medical facilities and rural health care professionals across Georgia.” Abrams faces Republican Brian Kemp in the November race for governor and has made expanding Medicaid and shoring up the struggling network of rural hospitals a central part of her campaign. “But more than provide access to physical health care, Medicaid expansion creates 56,000 jobs in the state of Georgia, 60 percent of which are outside metro Atlanta,” she said. Kemp opposes expanding Medicaid but has left the door open to applying for waivers that he said would help stabilize insurance premiums.
Jimmy Carter (L) and Stacey Abrams join forces. “I have a broad plan that I put out over a year ago to strengthen rural Georgia,” Kemp said. “When you have populations declining in rural Georgia, it’s hard to support a hospital. It’s hard to support your kids that are coming out of the school systems there when good employment and the ability to stay in their local communities.” Carter disagrees and believes Abrams’ plan is the way to get health care back to rural Georgia. “Stacey’s absolutely sure that she can put forward her full proposal on Medicaid into effect when she gets elected,” he said.
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Contributors VINCENT HOBBS Photography & New Media
2018
By Frederick Benjamin Sr. UPW Staff Writer
UrbanProWeekly • SEPTEMBER
THE CITY NEWS
UrbanProWeekly - SEPTEMBER 2018
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CULTUREVIEW
ARTS IN THE HEART OF AUGUSTA BY VINCENT HOBBS
ARTS IN THE HEART OF AUGUSTA participants, representing different nations, celebrate with a “Unity Dance” during the opening festivities. (Sept. 14, 2018 - Augusta, GA) Photo by Vincent Hobbs
BROOK PRUITT of the Rainbows Tie Dye Factory during the Arts in the Heart festival. (Sept. 14, 2018 - Augusta, GA) Photo by Vincent Hobbs
STREET MAGICIAN RALPH SUMMER of LunaTrix Arts displays his knife-juggling skills. (Sept. 14, 2018 - Augusta, GA) Photo by Vincent Hobbs
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BY VINCENT HOBBS
THE LANEY MARCHING BAND performs at halftime during a football game against Westside. The Wildcats defeated the Patriots by a score of 28-6, in a home conference game held at the Wildcats stadium. (Sept. 7, 2018 Augusta, GA) Photo by Vincent Hobbs/Sports Journal
2018
SportsJOURNAL
UrbanProWeekly • SEPTEMBER
HEPHZIBAH’S QUINTUSSA JONES passes the ball during a game against Burke County held at Glenn Hills gym. The Lady Bears defeated the Lady Rebels 2-0. (Sept. 11, 2018 - Augusta, GA) Photo by Vincent Hobbs/Sports Journal
LANEY vs WESTSIDE The Wildcats defeated the Westside Patriots by a score of 28-6, in a home conference game held at the Wildcats stadium. (Sept. 7, 2018 Augusta, GA) Photo by Vincent Hobbs/ Sports Journal
UrbanProWeekly - SEPTEMBER 2018
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COMMENTARY
The capitalist manifesto: Let the poor die
The root of the problem is the condemnation of anything ‘social’ as un-American, which has helped modern-day capitalists to justify their belief in individual gain by any means by Paul Buchheit The original Capitalist Manifesto was a 1958 book by economist Louis O. Kelso and philosopher Mortimer J. Adler. In their view of a properly conducted democratic capitalist society, a sort of modern-day Homestead Act was envisioned, in which all Americans would participate in the “capitalist revolution” of growing stock portfolios. This would be possible because of great technologies (energy in the 1950s, AI now) that would allow all of us, in Aristotelian and Jeffersonian property-owning ways, to become ‘free’ to pursue the arts & sciences and to enjoy more leisure time. Just one problem. Apparently, in 1958, economists and philosophers were not able to foresee the unlimited greed of the relatively few people with the power to manipulate the strings of the capitalist state. They thought the newly productive post-war capitalists were being cheated by workers who depended on socialist strategies to even the score. But the opposite has happened. Average Americans have been cheated out of the gains from technological productivity. Just in the past ten years in our world of big business, over $30 trillion — nearly a third of our nation’s TOTAL current wealth — has gone to the richest 10% of
Americans. Yet market-happy illusionists like the Wall Street Journal keep spouting nonsense about a healthy economy built on today’s capitalism. The root of the problem is the condemnation of anything ‘social’ as un-American, which has helped modern-day capitalists to justify their belief in individual gain by any means. Wealthy conservatives know that social responsibility might take away some of their riches by providing opportunities and jobs and a decent standard of living for all Americans. Politicians and Plutocrats Stand By as People are Poisoned What is the capitalist incentive to clean the water in Flint, Michigan? Little money is to be made, so little effort is made to save lives. People are DYING because there’s no market for profit-making. From a global perspective, the dangers of poisoning and death from pollution are magnified many times over. There were 1.5 billion people in 1900, there are 7.6 billion now, and 11 billion are anticipated by the year 2100. Scientists predict dangerous increases in respiratory and infectious diseases, malaria, meningitis, typhus, and cholera. And global food shortages. Instead
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of working in a cooperative manner to encourage self-sufficient small farms around the globe, industrial behemoths like Monsanto and DuPont are positioning themselves for a chemical assault on our food supplies. Millions are without Health Care— for Many Americans that Means Death Over 30 million Americans are without health insurance in our business-driven, capitalist society. The American Journal of Public Health flatly states, “Numerous investigators have found an association between uninsurance and death...Our estimate for annual deaths attributable to uninsurance among working-age Americans is more than 140% larger than [the Institute of Medicine’s 2002 study].” Bankruptcies are Surging, and so are Suicides The percentage of elderly Americans filing for bankruptcy is three times what it was in 1991. Individualism over social consciousness is much to blame. A study by the Social Science Research Network found that the shift from employer and government pensions to individuals has increased risk while exacerbating stress. Meanwhile, much of the stress for work-
ing people comes from the 40-year stagnationin wages. “Deaths of despair” from drugs and alcohol and suicide are on the rise. For those who make up the poorest 60% of America, premature deaths are up 20 percent since the turn of the century, and the economic suicide rate has risen dramatically. Yet business-minded conservatives are trying to make it harder for these most vulnerable of Americans to survive. Medicaid work requirements and drug testing are two of the proposed or implemented hardships reserved just for poor people.
The True Meaning of Socialism In the worst moments of the hurricanes that keep hitting American cities, members of government and business and military and especially the public abandon thoughts of personal gain and dedicate themselves to the needs of fellow human beings. People around the nation pitch in, through their labors and donations. It takes a tragedy to reveal the true meaning of socialism. It’s not government control, but rather people controlling their own lives through empathy and cooperation. No one seems to care about the skin color or religion or politics of those in need.
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The Richmond County School System will accept bids and request for proposals until 3:00 p.m., Wednesday, October 10, 2018, for the following: 1. Band Instruments RFQ #18-824 2. Handheld Calculators RFQ # 18-825 Bid specifications may be obtained by contacting Cecilia Perkins in the Business Office at perkice@boe.richmond.k12.ga.us or 706-826-1298, on our web site at www.rcboe.org/bids, or at Richmond County School System, Central Office 864 Broad Street, 4th Floor, Augusta, GA 30901. The Richmond County School System reserves the right to reject any and all bids and to waive technicalities and informalities. COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION OF RICHMOND COUNTY By: Dr. Angela D. Pringle, Secretary
D.E. Abrams, Counselor at Law handling Richmond County Board of Education
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COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION OF RICHMOND COUNTY
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