After years of protests and lawsuits, black farmers in the south will begin receiving payments this week as a result of a $1.2 billion settlement in their discrimination case against federal agriculture officials. About 18,000 farmers in total are expected to receive checks over the next few days.
This is the second round of funding for black farmers. Thousands received payments in 1999 as part of a settlement in a class-action suit over allegations of widespread discrimination by federal officials who denied loans and other assistance to black farmers because of their race.
“After all these years and all the fighting, this is what it’s all about,” says John Boyd, president of the National Black Farmers Association, which pushed Congress for the settlement. “It doesn’t take away what the government has done to us, but for those who receive the payments it will make a difference in their lives.”
About 40,000 black farmers filed claims in the $1.2 billion settlement, which ended a discrimination case against the United States Department of Agriculture. In 2010, President Obama signed the bill authorizing compensation for discrimination in farm lending by federal officials. Black farmers will receive settlement payments of $62,500, including $50,000 for the claim and $12,500 for taxes. Of the $1.2 billion, about $91 million was approved for attorney fees.
Posts published in “Politics”
As major political races heat up across the nation, one woman of color is proving that she can hold her own in a big city election. Letitia James officially beat out Daniel Squadron for the Democratic nomination in the New York City’s Public Advocate’s runoff race Tuesday night, the Associate Press reports. She gained 60 percent of votes to Squadron’s 40 percent which secured her position and helped diversify the Democratic party nominees for city office.
Because James has no Republican rival, she is expected to be the first African-American woman to hold a citywide elected post upon final ballot counts.
“We did it. We did it. We did it,” the former councilwoman from Brooklyn said publicly during a victory celebration. “All of us broke through that glass ceiling, and I am so proud of what we accomplished together. I’m proud that we made history tonight.”
The position of Public Advocate was the only race to have a runoff in New York City and cost nearly $13 million.
article by Liane Membis via clutchmagonline.com
Celebrities are taking to social media outlets to show their support for the new “Obamacare” law in a big way. Using the #Get Covered hashtag, they are trying to help educate the public on how they can begin to sign up for health care.
Many of the newly eligible citizens that will be signing up will in fact be getting health care insurance for the very first time so this is really cool to see. Singer John Legend tweeted:
“F the shutdown. The Health Insurance Marketplace is now open in every state. Don’t wait another day to #GetCovered!”
Pearl Jam tweeted:
“If you want to make sense of the whole healthcare thing, or just want to #GetCovered, check out http://www.healthcare.gov #KnowYourOptions,”
Some celebrities are taking photos of themselves with the #Get Covered hashtag and posting them like the ones below (actress Kerry Washington is pictured above).
Funny or Die created a “Scandal” spoof called Scandalous with Jennifer Hudson to get people information about the new ACA (Obamacare) program and how to sign up for it. Click here to see that video.)
According to Huffington Post, comedian John Hodgman and actress Martha Plimpton used their Twitter streams as Obamacare forums. Plimpton spent time retweeting messages from her followers saying what they like about the law, while Hodgman’s stream included young adults tweeting about health problems they had encountered.
Tweeted Hodgman:
“Young people: sign up for healthcare. Take it from me–YOU ARE NOT IMMORTAL,”
It’s great to know that some people embrace their platforms and try to do good things with them. Let us not forget celebrities are members of society too! They do care about the world they live in just the same as anyone else does. They do have a voice.
article by Skyyhook via theurbandaily.com
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A Florida woman serving 20 years in prison for firing a shot at her estranged husband during an argument will get a new trial, though she will not be able to invoke a “stand your ground” defense, an appeals court ruled Thursday.
The case of Marissa Alexander, a Jacksonville mother of three, has been used by critics of Florida’s “stand your ground” law and mandatory minimum sentences to argue that the state’s justice system is skewed against defendants who are black.
The 1st District Court of Appeal ruled that Alexander deserves a new trial because the trial judge handling her case did not properly instruct the jury regarding what is needed to prove self-defense.
The ruling, written by Judge Robert Benton, said the instructions constituted a “fundamental error” and required Alexander to prove self-defense “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But the court also made it clear in its ruling that the judge was right to block Alexander from using the state’s “stand your ground” law as a way to defend her actions. That law generally removes people’s duty to retreat in the face of possible danger and allows them to use of deadly force if they believe their lives are in danger.
Faith Gay, one of the attorneys representing the 33-year-old Alexander, said she was grateful for the “thorough consideration” provided by the appeals court. “We are looking forward to taking the case back to trial,” Gay said.
The 1st District Court of Appeal ruled that Alexander deserves a new trial because the trial judge handling her case did not properly instruct the jury regarding what is needed to prove self-defense.
The ruling, written by Judge Robert Benton, said the instructions constituted a “fundamental error” and required Alexander to prove self-defense “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But the court also made it clear in its ruling that the judge was right to block Alexander from using the state’s “stand your ground” law as a way to defend her actions. That law generally removes people’s duty to retreat in the face of possible danger and allows them to use of deadly force if they believe their lives are in danger.
Faith Gay, one of the attorneys representing the 33-year-old Alexander, said she was grateful for the “thorough consideration” provided by the appeals court. “We are looking forward to taking the case back to trial,” Gay said.
Karamba Diaby, a Senegal-born chemist, has become Germany’s first black federal lawmaker, and a woman of Turkish origin has become the first Muslim elected to Parliament from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative party, officials said Monday.
Until now there were no black lawmakers in Parliament, despite more than 500,000 people of recent African origin believed to be living in Germany. “My election into the German Parliament is of historical importance,” said Karamba Diaby, 51, who moved to the city of Halle in 1986 after receiving a scholarship to study in communist East Germany.
Diaby, who gained German citizenship in 2001, said his priority would be to promote equal opportunities in education. “Every child born in Germany should have the chance to be successful in school regardless of their social background or the income of their parents,” he said.
RELATED POST: Senegal Native Karamba Diaby Poised to Become 1st Black Member of German Parliament
article by Yesha Callahan via clutchmagonline.com
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is expanding a major change in federal drug sentencing policy to cover pending drug cases, Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday. Last month, Holder said certain low-level, nonviolent drug offenders — those without ties to large-scale organizations, gangs or cartels — no longer will be charged with offenses that impose severe mandatory minimum sentences.
Holder said he now has broadened the new policy to cover defendants who have not yet been convicted in drug cases that could involve lengthy mandatory prison sentences. The policy also may be applied, at the discretion of prosecutors, to a defendant who has entered a guilty plea, but has not yet been sentenced. Mandatory minimum prison sentences, a legacy of the government’s war on drugs, limit the discretion of judges to impose shorter prison terms. Holder says the government should reserve the most severe prison terms for serious, high-level or violent drug traffickers.
“Some federal drug statutes that mandate inflexible sentences — regardless of the individual conduct at issue in a particular case — do not serve public safety when they’re applied indiscriminately,” Holder told a criminal justice issues forum of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said that in one case, a first-time offender arrested with less than 2 ounces of cocaine was sentenced to 10 years in prison because of mandatory sentencing guidelines. Paul has drafted legislation along with committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., that would give judges wider sentencing discretion as one way to relieve prison overcrowding and bring down the exploding costs of operating prisons.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press via thegrio.com
NEW YORK – On Tuesday, the mothers of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis will testify on Capitol Hill. The topic: “Stand Your Ground” laws. Sybrina Fulton and Lucia McBath will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights. The hearing, according to a notice on the Senate Judiciary Committee website is entitled “‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws: Civil Rights and Public Safety Implications of the Expanded Use of Deadly Force.”
Tallahassee, Florida-based state attorney William Meggs, and Harvard Law School professor and director of the Criminal Justice Institute Ronald S. Sullivan, Jr. are also expected to testify, along with a senior fellow from the Libertarian Cato Institute and John R. Lott, Jr., Ph.D., President of the Crime Prevention Research Center in Swarthmore, PA.
Fulton is the mother of Trayvon Martin, whose shooting death and the acquittal of his killer, George Zimmerman, on second degree murder and manslaughter charges touched off more than a year of controversy regarding Florida’s “stand your ground” laws and similar laws across the country. (Zimmerman didn’t use “Stand Your Ground” as his defense, but it was referenced by one of the jurors in the case in interviews after the verdict, and it altered Florida’s jury instructions in cases like Zimmerman’s.)
A foundation founded by Fulton and Trayvon Martin’s father, Tracy Martin, is working to amend “Stand Your Ground” laws in Florida and in the more than 20 other states with similar laws. George Zimmerman said he shot Martin in self-defense.
McBath’s son, Jordan Davis, was shot to death on November 23, 2012 at a Jacksonville gas station as he sat in a car with three friends. Michael Dunn is expected to use the “Stand Your Ground” self defense law in his upcoming trial for Davis’ killing. Dunn is expected to go to trial in January.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has marked the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks with a moment of silence with First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and his wife Jill Biden today. Obama, along with Mrs. Obama, walked out of the White House at 1246 GMT, the moment the first hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center tower in New York City. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks that led to a long war in Afghanistan. The President went on to speak at a Sept. 11 ceremony at the Pentagon today (see video below).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLjrMCSHzpo&w=420&h=315]
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson
Known as Senegal’s Iron Lady, Touré named her cabinet, which includes four other women, just one day of the announcement.
Ms. Touré earned much respect in Senegal in her role as justice minister. It was during her tenure that the judicial process against former Chad dictator Hissène Habré saw great progress, leading up to his arrest in Senegal earlier this year. Also under her leadership, the fight against corruption and illegally-acquired wealth was intensified, seeing millions of francs held by corrupt officials in foreign banks repatriated.
As for her plans in office? Touré says she will “speed up the pace of our public development programs and reforms to enable every person in Senegal to feel the change in their daily livelihood.”
The new Prime Minster holds a Masters in economics and a PhD in international financial management.
article by Myeisha Essex via blackamericaweb.com
“We are the advance guard of a massive moral revolution for jobs and freedom. This revolution reverberates throughout the land, touching every village where black men are segregated, oppressed and exploited,” the 74-year-old A. Philip Randolph told the estimated 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom fifty years ago on August 28, 1963.
Although today Dr. King’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech often symbolizes the March for many, it was very much a stand for black workers with longtime labor leader Randolph at the forefront. He was so committed that neither advanced age nor the death of his wife shortly before the March could keep him home.
More than twenty years before, it was Randolph who had conceived the massive demonstration. Scheduled to take place July 1, 1941, the original March was intended to protest discrimination against black employment in defense industries and federal bureaus and demand that President Franklin D. Roosevelt issue an Executive Order to end such practices.
So, on June 25, 1941, when Roosevelt, after exhausting all means, including personal appeals from his wife Eleanor to Randolph, to call off the march which anticipated 100,000 participants, issued Executive Order 8802 creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee and barring discrimination in defense industries and federal bureaus, Randolph called off the March in victory. Merging the philosophies of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois by setting economic justice as the foundation of civil rights, Randolph would not stop or even begin here.
Born Asa Philip Randolph, the second of his parents’ two sons, on April 15, 1889 in Crescent, Fla, near Jacksonville where he later grew up, service was a consistent message in his childhood. His father, the Rev. James W. Randolph, in keeping with the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) philosophy, ministered to his congregation’s social and spiritual needs. Rev. Randolph and his wife Elizabeth, who hailed from a once enslaved family who were also AME members, taught their sons racial pride and self-respect. Encouraging young Asa Randolph’s healthy thirst for knowledge, Rev. Randolph filled the family’s home.
Tall, handsome, popular and smart, Randolph sang in the choir, was a star baseball player and a great speaker. Despite graduating valedictorian from Cookman Institute (later incorporated into Bethune-Cookman in Daytona Beach, Fla.) in 1907, there was not suitable employment for him in Jacksonville. Not wishing to follow in his father’s footsteps as minister, Randolph hired himself out as a hand on a steamship and headed for New York City in 1911, shortly after he turned 22, with dreams of becoming an actor.
In New York, he worked several jobs, including elevator operator, porter and waiter, while also studying English Literature and Sociology at City College at night. Despite organizing the Shakespearean Society in Harlem and playing several roles, including Hamlet, Othello and Romeo, Randolph was clearly destined to make his mark on a different stage. With kindred spirit Chandler Owen, a Columbia University student, Randolph founded the employment agency, the Brotherhood of Labor, where the two tried to unionize black workers.