Escape from New Orleans: As waters rose, a white suburb across the Mississippi closed a key bridge to fleeing residents

Story by Yahoo News: http://news.yahoo.com/escape-from-new-orleans--as-waters-rose--a-white-suburb-across-the-mississippi-closed-a-key-bridge-to-fleeing-residents-215830472.html

The Scarlet Letter “R”: The Unveiling of Katrina’s Oldest Survivor, Racism

Story by Think504
Written by Tammy Marchand

August 29, 2015 of this year marks the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s lethal brush with New Orleans. Although Katrina did not hit New Orleans head-on, the whip of her tail as she swept past the city’s southeastern perimeter caused a surge of wind and waves that only a head-on category 3 could deliver. Amongst the survivors of the storm is New Orleans’ oldest resident, Racism. The torrential storm winds blew the tattered skirt of New Orleans over her head, revealing her ugly birthmark, the Scarlet Letter “R”, the emblem of Racism. It would be impossible to compile and render a true and thorough picture of racism in New Orleans or the state of Louisiana in one article. This article barely scratches the surface, but will help us to begin to identify the core of the very components of racism that preserves it. At the core of racism is a 3-tiered cast system imported from Haiti in the early 1800's with the arrival of the French, their Afro-Creole relatives, and their African slaves fleeing from the Haitian Revolution. It is an unspoken, unchallenged, very protected, and tabooed discussion that incites anger, embarrassment, and denial by many Louisiana lovers. The credentials of the 2nd tier have morphed and changed over the years, but their role in racism remains true to its origins.

In a nutshell, New Orleans has been recolonized by new comers, pre-Katrina employables, and the pre-Katrina “haves” who see Katrina as the opportunity to implement a “fresh start” on a “clean sheet”. Today, thousands of pre-Katrina residents, mostly African-Americans in the 3rd tier of the Haitian cast system, cannot afford to return to their hometown. Pre-Katrina renters are outpriced by post-Katrina colonists who came bearing the wealth and resources needed to resuscitate the city. A “fresh start" means employing a socially engineered recovery plan that makes it nearly impossible for many lower-income families to return. The unskilled and those who are not college bound often fall between the cracks into the world of drugs and crime housed in the foyer way to modern slavery (Louisiana prison system). The lack of and inaccessibility to opportunities underpin crime and is necessary to the survival of the prison labor system. When there are no opportunities, some create opportunities within the existing industries while the severely under-skilled and disenfranchised resort to underground economies. According to a study conducted by the Data Center Research, the number of minority businesses in New Orleans was on a rise before and after Katrina, but minority-owned businesses were still substantially underrepresented both before and after the storm.

On many levels, a visit to the New Orleans French Quarter can be likened to time travel. The French Quarter is the face and footprint of the original city. The antiquity of the French Quarter goes further and deeper than just old buildings with historical placards. One would imagine that for Confederate enthusiasts, it would conjure up the notions of antebellum days. Some folks like MAJ Tracy Riley (retired), owner of the Rouge House and the only black female business owner in The French Quarter, have recently learned that the antiquated mindset and hierarchical systems of the 1700s and antebellum days are still intact. Progress for African-Americans in the French Quarter comes with a glass ceiling that was installed at the arrival of the city’s first slaves in 1719, reinforced with Code Noir in 1724, and embellished with the hierarchical system that was imported from Haiti by French, Creole, and African refugees of the Haitian Revolution. For some New Orleanians, doing business in the French Quarter is a privilege and not a right that is bestowed by local kangaroo courts reigning above the laws of the land. The latest casualty of the French Quarter’s kangaroo court is retired, disabled veteran MAJ Tracy Moore-Riley. You be the Judge...

A honorably discharged US Army/Army Reserve veteran of 24 years, MAJ Riley (retired) returned to the home of her Alma Mata, Dillard University, to open a much needed venue for independent artists to have access to the many resources of the entertainment industry that independent artists otherwise would not have. A wife of 18 years to fellow Service member, MAJ Dale Riley, and a mother of 2 artistic children, MAJ Tracy Riley (retired) decided to follow her dream of opening the next "Motown of the South" in the "Hollywood of the South", New Orleans. How would she pay for it? MAJ Riley did her homework, like any eager entrepreneur entering the business arena. According to Mark Waller of NOLA.com, New Orleans attracted 9.28 million visitors in 2013... the second-highest tourist count on record. An estimate of what all the visitors spent, however, showed an all-time high of $6.47 billion." By locating her business, The Rouge House, near the heart of the tourism destination of the country, MAJ Riley was assured that her dream business would thrive relying mostly on the sale of great food and alcohol. Using the profit from food and alcohol sales, MAJ Riley would reinvest into the state-of-the art equipment and services required to train and polish some of the brightest unknown artists in Louisiana, the home of Jazz Music. "I believe we are literally stepping over the next Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, or Aretha Franklin out her in the streets of New Orleans. I want to hear and enjoy their works and I plan to present these artists to the world," says MAJ Riley with the determination of a warrior in her eyes.

In June of 2013, MAJ Riley used personal savings and investments from close friends and family to successfully secure prime property in the French Quarter to launch a supper club with the intent to build a recording studio and an internet radio station as soon as enough revenue was generated. Unbeknownst to MAJ Riley, she was one of less than five black owned businesses in The French Quarter and the only black female supper club owner. Ignoring local whispers that black business owners are not allowed and are not welcome in The French Quarter, MAJ Riley went about her business to obtain the necessary permits and licenses to begin her dream of creating opportunities for a disenfranchised population of New Orleans who lacked the platform and outlet to monetize their musical talents. The Rouge House is to be a house for most every unsung local performer to develop, showcase, and promote their music in a refined social setting. MAJ Riley had no idea that the Rouge House had become the ping-pong ball in the middle of a game between the landlord of 300 Decatur and some French Quarter residents and businesses. Previous businesses at the same address seemingly were operated as "night club like". Most of these "night club like" businesses appeared to be owned and operated by the landlord but were deemed unsavory by the French Quarter community (i.e. the French Quarter Business Management District (FQMD/a state agency), the Vieux Carre Property Owners Residents and Associates (VCPORA), the French Quarter Business Association (FQBA), and some residents). The previous businesses' clientele were mostly Black and Brown locals. Apparently, the French Quarter community drew a direct correlation between the color of French Quarter patrons and crime. Despite MAJ Tracy Riley's professional demeanor and exemplary military and corporate career, she and the Rouge House were racially profiled and categorized with previous establishments of the same address.

The Rouge House received a temporary license to operate from July 4 through July 7, 2013. During the time, MAJ Riley was unaware of local suspicions that the Rouge House was a front for the previous establishment, Voila. The Rouge House was operated under a temporary license as a supper club during the Essence Festival to serve food and provide entertainment for Essence Festival crowds. The Rouge House began limited operations while waiting for the final permit needed, a Louisiana state liquor permit, to fully operate the Rouge House. By Riley's own admittance, "... during the first permit application period, alcohol was served based on information provided by a paid business consultant; we did not knowingly or intentionally break the law. I am a rules person. We are here to follow the rules." The patrons of the previous business at 300 Decatur Street resembled the Rouge House’s clients in color only. Voila attracted what some French Quarter community members would call unsavory clientele who, in their opinion, increased safety issues in the area. The sight of African-American hues at the same address was enough to alarm some businesses and residents into thinking that Voila had reopened. The City of New Orleans and other Vieux Carre organizations successfully shut down Voila earlier in 2013.

On July 29, 2013, MAJ Riley invited French Quarter residents and businesses to a meet-and-greet at the Rouge House. At the gathering, MAJ Riley explained her intentions of using the first floor and second floor as a supper club with the upper floors being used as a recording studio and internet radio station for local artists. In spite of Maj Riley’s open-house presentation, French Quarter businesses and residents seemed overcome by cognitive dissonance and felt reassured that the Rouge House was just the reincarnation Voila, the night club that previously occupied 300 Decatur. In an email to French Quarter community, Robert Watters, then chairman of state agency FQMD, stated that the use of the Rouge House "...is a deceptive way to describe the conduct of a nightclub at 300 Decatur" (i.e. activities of unsavory clientele). This kangaroo court verdict was second by Carol Allen, then president of VCPORA, in an email reply to Robert Watters and the French Quarter community. Following the meet-and-greet, the Rouge House became the target of 24 hour surveillance and surprise inspections from the Louisiana Alcohol and Tobacco Control office. On one occasion, Rouge House security approached a man and woman; the man was taking photos of the building. Because of the constant surveillance of the Rouge House, Rouge House security asked if he could be of any assistance but was instead accosted with a racial epitaph: “Go away, n-gger! We don’t want you here!” The woman of that same couple later appeared at the September 4th public hearing of French Quarter residents and businesses opposing the opening of the Rouge House.

Once MAJ Riley obtained the more difficult liquor license, the City of New Orleans liquor license, she hand-carried her state liquor permit application to the office of the Louisiana Alcohol and Tobacco Control (ATC) on August 20, 2013. Since she was an active duty, transitioning warrior of the Ft Polk, Louisiana Warrior Transition Unit, MAJ Riley was dressed in her duty uniform, the Army Combat Uniform (ACU). When she arrived at the ATC help desk, she was informed that her application had been red-flagged before she had the opportunity to apply. According to Louisiana Revised Statue Chapter 26 paragraph 87 A(3), opposition to an application is not submissible until after the liquor license application is actually submitted. The opposition was filed on August 19, one day before MAJ Riley attempted to submit her state liquor license application. The ATC office apparently placed the horse before the buggy by initiating an application file nestling red-flags and road blocks before the application was actually submitted. The ATC help desk clerk informed her that she could not accept the application due to the preemptive hold and was unable to provide information on the opposition. Puzzled by these improvised policies, MAJ Riley left the ATC offices but was summoned back on the same day to drop off her application. Without any explanation or guidance in addressing the mysterious hold, MAJ Riley’s only alternative was to closely monitor the status of her state liquor application.

Time was ticking and the Rouge House was losing revenue as each day passed without a liquor license. After several unsuccessful phone inquiries to the ATC and no return phone calls regarding the mysterious hold, MAJ Riley drove back to the ATC office on August 28 to see if she could get some answers. On active duty and in her duty uniform, MAJ Riley was accompanied by her daughter and a Rouge House employee to the ATC office. The ATC commissioner's secretary, Emily Cassidy, initially told MAJ Riley that she was unable to let her review the opposition because the person who had her application was on vacation. Refusing to believe that any state agency followed such outdated practices where her livelihood and income could be held hostage while the reviewer of her file was on a vacation, MAJ Riley insisted on getting a copy of the opposition immediately. As interpreted from a written testimony by Emily Cassidy, the legal counsel on duty was unsure about the procedure so attempted to stall the release by offering an email version. But when MAJ Riley refused to be put off any longer, the legal counsel located the attorney in possession of the file. MAJ Riley finally received a hard copy of the 70 page document containing the opposition and affidavits against the Rouge House. As she sat in the ATC office reading the 70 page opposition document from front to back, she realized that the opposition did not uphold to Louisiana Revised Statute Title 26 guidelines on opposing a liquor license. In MAJ Riley’s summation, this was truly an economic lynching harnessed with unsubstantiated accusations. Her only recourse was to file a written complaint to the governor's office against the ATC for undue process. While phoning in a second complaint to the governor’s office, MAJ Riley received a call from ATC agent Jeff Barthelemy requesting to meet with MAJ Riley to discuss her questions about the Rouge House permit application.

When MAJ Riley returned to the ATC office to meet with Jeff Barthelemy, she was under the impression that they would be discussing her application and the opposition. Instead, Agent Barthelemy proceeded to admonish MAJ Riley for her conduct and posture at the ATC office. In a reprimanding manner, he wanted to be sure that MAJ Riley clearly understood that a liquor license from the ATC was "a privilege and not a right", and strongly advised her on her posture and place when engaging with ATC employees. As if speaking in a coded language, he repeatedly asked MAJ Riley if she understood what he was saying. At no time during the meeting did Agent Barthelemy address any of MAJ Riley's questions about the opposition filed against the Rouge House. Agent Barthelemy admitted that he would not be answering any questions about the Rouge House liquor permit application nor address MAJ Riley's concerns. The meeting appeared more of an attempt to retaliate against MAJ Riley's complaints to the governor's office about the unprofessional conduct and dismissive responses that she received from the ATC office,

At the public hearing on September 4, 2013, neighbors and business owners vocally reiterated concerns that the Rouge House was just another night club like Voila and not a supper club. Although the Rouge House was closed for regular business (but open for a few private parties) while waiting for a state liquor license, residents and businesses held the Rouge House responsible for disturbances beyond any business' capacity such as the noise generated by traffic and regular French Quarter activities as well as crowds that gathered on the sidewalks and streets from nearby businesses. Some went on an unrelated tangent complaining about MAJ Riley wearing her U.S. Army uniform while conducting business at City Hall. Overstepping the scope of the hearing, photographs predating the Rouge House were supplied as opposition against the Rouge House. One resident rambled on and on about Voila, the previous business establishment at 300 Decatur, punishing the Rouge House for activities that anteceded the Rouge House’s occupation of 300 Decatur.

September 11, 2013, MAJ Riley attended a closed hearing with the Louisiana Alcohol and Tobacco Control commissioner, Troy Hebert and 5 to 6 ATC agents. Strangely enough, the meeting was held at the State Police Headquarters instead of the ATC offices. MAJ Riley did not anticipate a hearing with ATC personnel who appeared to be armed. She alleged that Commissioner Hebert’s verbally abusive comments, the location of the meeting, and the presence of possibly armed ATC employees were intimidating and made her fear for her life.

In the days to come and unbeknownst to MAJ Riley, Jeremy Deblieux, then president of the French Quarter Business Association (FQBA), wrote to Troy Hebert (ATC) in opposition of a Louisiana state liquor permit for MAJ Riley's business. On September 16 and within only three hours of receipt of the FQBA request and without formal charges to substantiate the allegations, Commissioner Troy Hebert had MAJ Riley served with a letter officially denying her application for a state liquor permit. On December 5, 2013, Troy Hebert denied MAJ Riley's business a state liquor permit a second time. The reasons listed appear to be identical to the first denial letter; handling alcohol without a permit and administrative reasons relating to lack of fingerprints and other minor errors. The average business undergoes 2 to 3 inspections within a 2 year span. With a strained budget and limited resources, it was astounding that Commissioner Hebert expended vastly limited resources on one business. Over the course of 8 months, over 21 surprise inspections were conducted at the Rouge House. In each case, the Rouge House was within compliance. In apparent retaliation to MAJ Riley's complaint to the governor's office, Troy Hebert wrote a letter to MAJ Riley's Army Commander, MG Peter Lennon, alleging that MAJ Riley was "consistently [using] her uniform and position as a tool to persuade state officials to issue her an alcohol beverage permit...". Without as much as a proper investigation, MG Lennon turned the matter over to BG William Hickman, Commander of Ft Polk Army Base. BG Hickman also failed to properly investigate the matter but authorized Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) article 15 proceedings against MAJ Riley, an otherwise decorated and stellar performing officer of over 24 years. Troy Hebert's letter was tethered with supporting testimonials from ATC employees who encountered MAJ Riley. To read some of the testimonials and the accusations is to know that MAJ Riley was guilty of not abiding to Jim Crow Etiquette.

The opening of the Rouge House proved to be a short course in Jim Crow Etiquette for MAJ Tracy Riley. The sight of her in Army Combat Uniform was not welcomed by some of the country's most patriotic citizens from the French Quarter to the Louisiana ATC office in Baton Rouge. Much like the attitudes of many Southern Whites and the KKK after WWII, some French Quarter business owners, residents, and ATC employees expressed disdain at the sight of MAJ Tracy Riley dressed in a U.S. Army uniform while conducting business with the same tone and manners as any "privileged" person in a similar circumstance. Standing at five feet, nine inches tall cloaked in a tempered couverture chocolate brown skin, a regal posture, and a majestic air of confidence, MAJ Tracy Riley learned that some French Quarter businesses and residents were concerned that her business would attract more of her kind to the French Quarter, thus posing a threat to the safety of the area. MAJ Riley says that she even overhead one ATC employee laughingly comment that she (MAJ Riley) was "going all Army on me." In testimonies written by ATC staff and compiled by Commissioner Troy Hebert, an ATC employee complained about MAJ Riley's posture and how MAJ Riley made her feel inferior and that she behaved as if she (MAJ Riley) were her superior. Another written testimony said that MAJ Riley spoke "sassily" which is typically a term used when an adult or someone of authority refers to a child or someone lesser. MAJ Tracy Riley unknowingly broke the holy grail of Jim Crow Etiquette by daring to unknowingly assume the natural posture and stance of a “privileged” taxpaying citizen. MAJ Riley felt that she was being scorned for making the assumption that she was on equal footing with “privileged” taxpayers visiting the ATC office.

The bottom and the top of MAJ Riley’s trail to opening the Rouge House is guarded by gatekeepers who are facing current unrelated racial discrimination lawsuits. For MAJ Tracy Riley, their trends of racial discrimination serve as probable cause. Three African-American ATC employees have filed racial discrimination lawsuits against Commissioner Hebert. According to J. Arthur Smith III, a Baton Rouge attorney specializing in employment law, it was Hebert's intention to get rid of supervisory African-American employees. These accusations are supported by tape recordings showing that this was his intent. According to some ATC employees, they are required to stand up and cheerfully greet Hebert when he enters a room with, "Good Morning!" Robert Watters, the then chairman of the FQMD and owner of Rick’s Cabaret in Louisiana and Texas, is facing multiple racial discrimination lawsuits. The grueling details of these racial discrimination lawsuits are hair-raising to say the least. And there is no end in sight when Governor Jindal employs blatant benign neglect. J. Arthur Smith II goes further to say, “… the governor was kept abreast of every EEOC action detailing the activities, but he never acted. That’s an implicit endorsement of this kind of racism.”

Metaphorically speaking, the writing was on the walls, read aloud to her, and signed with the Scarlet Letter “R”. MAJ Riley can only conclude that this is racially motivated. Her business was racially profiled by a French Quarter kangaroo court, subjected to uncensored retaliation from the ATC office, and she is still wrestling in court for justice.

MAJ Tracy Riley, like Sandra Bland, is guilty of breaking Jim Crow laws. She is guilty of trying to open a viable business in the French Quarter while being Black, guilty of unknowingly intimidating “special populations” by wearing her U.S. Army uniform on active duty while Black, guilty of breaking Jim Crow Etiquette, and sentenced to an economic lynching.
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Tammy Marchand is a native New Orleanian and advocate of human rights and justice.

After Shooting, Alleged Gunman Details Grievances in ‘Suicide Notes’

Story by ABC's Good Morning America
Written by Pierre Thomas, Jack Cloherty, Jack Date, and Mike Levine

A man claiming to be Bryce Williams called ABC News over the last few weeks, saying he wanted to pitch a story and wanted to fax information. He never told ABC News what the story was.

This morning, a fax was in the machine (time stamped 8:26 a.m.) almost two hours after the shooting. A little after 10 a.m., he called again, and introduced himself as Bryce, but also said his legal name was Vester Lee Flanagan, and that he shot two people this morning. While on the phone, he said authorities are “after me,” and “all over the place.” He hung up. ABC News contacted the authorities immediately and provided them with the fax.

In the 23-page document faxed to ABC News, the writer says “MY NAME IS BRYCE WILLIAMS” and his legal name is Vester Lee Flanagan II. He writes what triggered today’s carnage was his reaction to the racism of the Charleston church shooting http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/charleston-church-shooting.htm:

“Why did I do it? I put down a deposit for a gun on 6/19/15. The Church shooting in Charleston happened on 6/17/15…”

Sources say Flanagan's firearm was legally purchased from a Virginia gun store.

“What sent me over the top was the church shooting. And my hollow point bullets have the victims’ initials on them."

It is unclear whose initials he is referring to. He continues, “As for Dylann Roof? You (deleted)! You want a race war (deleted)? BRING IT THEN YOU WHITE …(deleted)!!!” He said Jehovah spoke to him, telling him to act.

Later in the manifesto, the writer quotes the Virginia Tech mass killer, Seung Hui Cho, calls him “his boy,” and expresses admiration for the Columbine High School killers. “Also, I was influenced by Seung–Hui Cho. That’s my boy right there. He got NEARLY double the amount that Eric Harris and Dylann Klebold got…just sayin.'"

Sources familiar with the investigation tell ABC News that in his attack, Flanagan used a Glock 19 -- a firearm similar to one that Cho used in his mass attack.

In Flanagan's often rambling letter to authorities, family and friends, he writes of a long list of grievances. In one part of the document, Flanagan calls it a “Suicide Note for Friends and Family."

He says he has been attacked by black men and white females
He talks about how he was attacked for being a gay, black man
He says has suffered racial discrimination, sexual harassment and bullying at work

A source with direct knowledge of his complaints against the station said a pair of tweets sent today and attributed to him accurately reflect previous complaints he lodged against the two people he killed today. These are the two Tweets: “Alison made racist comments,” and, “Adam went to hr on me after working with me one time!!!”

Nowhere in the document does he make specific threats against anyone from WDBJ.

In his manifesto, he says he encountered "nasty racist things" while working at WDBJ-7 in Roanoke, and that drove him to sue the station. "I marched down to the courthouse and sued WDBJ7 by myself and they settled! HA!"

He continues: "I can remember one day in particular... leaving the courthouse... feeling overwhelmed... confused... even some fear. But by golly I knew I HAD to fight. ... They truly f----d with my life and caused an awful chain of events." He says he even killed his cats in a forest "because of them."

Flanagan says that, "Hell yeah, I made mistakes," noting that he "should not have been so curt" with photographers in Roanoke. "[B]ut you know why I was? The damn news director was a micromanaging tyrant!!"

And, he writes, "the photogs were out to get me at WDBJ7... one went to HR after only working with me one time... the chief photog told his troops to [record video of] me if they saw be doing something wrong."

Flanagan then suggests that, after leaving WDBJ-7, he was offered a job at a station in Pennsylvania, but WDBJ-7 persuaded the Pennsylvania station to rescind the offer.

"I got to the point, this time around, where I wasn't even looking for a job. I don't need to deal with workplace bullies anymore. THAT is what lawmakers need to focus on," he adds.

“Yes, it will sound like I am angry," he writes in his manifesto. "I am. And I have every right to be. But when I leave this Earth, the only emotion I want to feel is peace....”

“The church shooting was the tipping point…but my anger has been building steadily...I’ve been a human powder keg for a while…just waiting to go BOOM!!!!”

He chronicles the "tough times" he's faced, including some "financial crashes." He says he used to work as a male model but, "I am proud of it" because he "made thousands."

"[I] tried to pull myself up by the bootstraps," but, "The damage was already done and when someone gets to this point, there is nothing that can be said or done to change their sadness to happiness. It does not work that way. Meds? Nah. It's too much."

"And then, after the unthinkable happened in Charleston, THAT WAS IT!!!"

"Yeah I'm all f----- up in the head," he concedes.

WDBJ Roanoke, Virginia reporter Alison Parker and Cameraman Adam Ward shot dead during TV remote news report. Shooter commits suicide

Story Link by Yahoo News: http://news.yahoo.com/cbs-journalists-shot-killed-live-broadcast-130723506.html#

CBS This Morning Video Link: http://news.yahoo.com/video/gunman-kills-two-virginia-journalists-141507146.html

10th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

This Saturday, August 29th, marks the 10th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The State hardest hit by the storm was Louisiana.

Katrina's Hurricane caused 53 different levee breaches in greater New Orleans, submerging eighty percent of the city. A June 2007 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers indicated that two-thirds of the flooding were caused by the multiple failures of the city's floodwalls.

The storm surge also devastated the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama, making Katrina the most destructive and costliest Natural Disaster in the history of the United States, and the deadliest hurricane since the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane.

The total damage from Katrina is estimated at $108 billion (2005 U.S. dollars).

The confirmed death toll is 1,836, with one fatality in Kentucky, two each in Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio, 14 in Florida, 238 in Mississippi, and 1,577 in Louisiana. 135 people remain categorized as missing in Louisiana, and many of the deaths are indirect. The exact causes of some of the fatalities have yet to be determined.

DEATHS BY STATE

Alabama 2
Florida 14
Georgia 2
Kentucky 1
Louisiana 1,577
Mississippi 238
Ohio 2
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Total 1,836
Missing 135

Stocks Fall Most in 4 Years as China Dread Sinks Global Markets

Story by Bloomberg
Written by Joseph Ciolli and Oliver Renick

Turbulence in financial markets gathered momentum amid intensifying concern over slowing global growth, pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average into a correction and giving other stock gauges their worse losses since 2011.

More than $3.3 trillion has been erased from the value of global equities after China’s decision to devalue its currency spurred a wave of selling across emerging markets. The worries over slower economic growth come as a strong dollar and plunge in oil prices take a toll on corporate earnings at the same time the Federal Reserve is contemplating the first boost to interest rates since 2006.

“For much of this year, the glass was considered half full and now people the last 48 hours are thinking it’s looking more empty,” George Hashbarger, who oversees $224 million as chief executive officer and portfolio manager at Knoxville, Tennessee-based Quintium Advisors LLC, said by phone. “This is more like October than it is buy-the-dip.”

Volatility surged as Standard & Poor’s 500 Index capped the worst week in three years while Europe entered a correction and stocks from Hong Kong to Indonesia tumbled into bear markets. Junk bond yields rose to the highest since October 2012 and U.S. Treasuries had the largest weekly gain in five months. Oil sank below $40 a barrel for the first time since 2009 and was set for its longest losing streak since 1986.

The S&P 500 dropped 3.2 percent, the most since November 2011, to below 2,000. The index is down more than 7 percent from a record after sinking below a trading range that has supported it for most of the year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 500 points, as is down 10 percent from its record high in May.
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Read More: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-20/asian-futures-fall-amid-u-s-stock-selloff-as-oil-mired-in-slump

Donnie Simpson returns! Score one for old-school D.C.

After a five-year absence, legendary Washington radio personality Donnie Simpson returns to the airwaves. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post)

Story by Washington Post
Written by Lonnae O'Neal

The most eagerly anticipated hour in Washington radio memory (if not history) began Monday to Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On,” then morphed into the theme from “Welcome Back, Kotter.”

Well the names have all changed since you hung around

But those dreams have remained and they’re turned around

Who’d have thought they’d lead ya (Who’d have thought they’d lead ya)

Back here where we need ya (Back here where we need ya) . . .

Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back
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[Donnie Simpson returns to D.C. radio after a five-year absence: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/donnie-simpson-will-return-to-dc-radio-after-5-year-absence/2015/08/03/d46b53c8-39fb-11e5-8e98-115a3cf7d7ae_story.html]
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Finally came the voice of Donnie Simpson: “Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way. I’m back!” said Simpson, 61, sounding like an old friend. For weeks, Simpson’s return on Radio One’s Majic 102.3 FM after a five-year retirement has had D.C. buzzing. Not official Washington, mind you, or new-transplant Washington (read: young, white). But old-school D.C.

Can you dig it, CC?

Don’t worry if you don’t get the reference. Donnie will catch you up.

Simpson — loved, especially by the ladies, who took ardent notice of his green-eyed soul — had been a constant companion and cultural translator for 33 years as a radio and television host.

“I think he’s going to bring old-school and class back to radio,” gushed Marsha Thomas, a Maryland Public Television producer stopping by the “Donnie’s back” tent outside the radio station’s studio in Silver Spring, Md. “No one is more DMV than Donnie Simpson.”

He also hopes to be back on TV, hosting a show on Radio One’s cable channel, TV One.

Simpson began working on-air as a teenager in Detroit and moved to Washington at 23 to become a night DJ on WKYS-FM (93.9). He hosted BET’s “Video Soul” for 14 years beginning in 1983, and the drive-time morning show on WPGC-FM (95.5) for 17 years. To his fans, his abrupt 2010 departure — he left rather than switch his style to cater to a younger audience — was part of a wholesale change they were on the wrong side of: the corporatization of radio, the homogenization of playlists, the gentrification of neighborhoods.

They saw it as part of the demographic shift from Washington as Chocolate City to a place where what came before often seemed of little value to the new people moving in. (You get Donnie points if you read that as val-ya; double Donnies if now you can’t get Lionel Richie’s voice out of your head.)

His return, then, is a backlash — or perhaps an antidote — to the rushed, the sensational, the loud, the profane, the not-from-around-here radio jocks. It’s a triumph for the cool, the smooth, the back in the day, from around the way, and do you remember the time?

“Once I put on the headphones, it’s like riding a bike,” Simpson said in the studio, surrounded by nearly two dozen radio station staffers, family and friends. His show airs weekdays from 3 to 7 p.m.

Simpson is a voice for Everyman, although some big names called in during Monday’s show, which he co-hosted with singer and reality-show star Traci Braxton: Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, sportscaster James Brown. “I’m just calling you out of respect and love,” said former boxing champ Sugar Ray Leonard, who grew up in the District and Prince George’s County. “You’re back where you’re supposed to be.”

“You’re a voice with some weight, man,” said Terry Lewis, half of the super-producer duo Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.

Simpson’s wife, Pam, his high school sweetheart, urged him to get back on air because everywhere they went people told him how much they loved and missed him. Simpson says that feeling goes both ways. He tells the story of being with a famous celebrity who was standoffish with his fans. “The thing you don’t understand is the blessings you block,” he told the celeb. “People say the most wonderful, the most encouraging things to you, and you block all that when you don’t want to talk.”

He said he wished he had been on the air when the Godfather of Go-Go, Chuck Brown, and mayor-for-life Marion Barry died. He wanted to share that with listeners. But black radio especially carries the promise of hard times to come, and Simpson says that when those hard times hit, “we’ll make that turn. That’s always been my show — we talk about what’s going on.”

At the end of Simpson’s first show in his second act, his producer said it was time to run some commercials, but Simpson vetoed the idea. “We’ve got to go out on some music,” he said. And a few minutes later, all over the DMV, people were singing along with Donnie: “Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby. Ain’t nothing like the real thing.”
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For more by O’Neal, visit wapo.st/lonnae.

Pioneering Hip-Hop Radio Host Greg Mack to Get Biopic

Story by Inside Radio
Contributor Kirk Tanter

Greg Mack, the radio personality who played a crucial role in bringing hip-hop to the L.A. airwaves in the ‘80s on KDAY (1580), is getting the biopic treatment. Mack has optioned the rights to his forthcoming autobiography to Goddard Film Group, according to Deadline.

As assistant program director, music director, and on-air host at KDAY in 1983, Mack is credited with playing a key role in the decision to move the AM station to an all-rap format.

Hosting afternoons as Greg “Mack Attack” Mack, he recruited DJ Andre Young of World Class Wreckin’ Cru, otherwise known as Dr. Dre, to the station’s street team.

KDAY went on to help launch the careers of many of the most successful early West Coast rappers, including MC Hammer, Tone Loc and N.W.A.

Mack’s role in early rap gets a passing glance in the blockbuster film “Straight Outta Compton” where Mack was featured as the KDAY DJ in the flick.

Today Mack hosts a syndicated show heard on a number of stations in Southern California and Arizona produced by the former producer of Radioscope Ken Smith.
_______________________

Story below by Deadline
Written by Ross A. Lincoln
Title: Greg Mack, Rap Radio DJ Who Broke N.W.A, To Get Biopic

Following the success of Straight Outta Compton, in which he is portrayed in a cameo by director F. Gary Gray, hugely influential radio DJ Greg Mack has optioned the rights to his upcoming autobiography to Goddard Film Group. Goddard will produce a new film detailing Mack’s time with LA’s legendary 1580 KDAY-AM, the first radio station in the U.S. to play rap and hip-hop 24 hours a day.

Mack became Assistant Program Director/Music Director at KDAY in 1983 and was instrumental in the station’s decision to switch to an all rap/hip-hop format. It was a risky move, as at the time rap was considered — at best — a passing fad, and aside from the odd hit, it was ignored by mainstream radio and the music industry. But KDAY became a sensation almost overnight and Mack a powerful tastemaker. Hosting his own afternoon show under the name Greg “Mack Attack” Mack, he also recruited young talent to DJ on KDAY, but also to keep an eye out for new music. The most notable member of Mack’s street team? Pioneering DJ Andre Young of World Class Wreckin’ Cru, otherwise known as Dr. Dre.

KDAY would go on to help kickstart the careers of some of the most influential and successful rappers of all time, including MC Hammer, LL Cool J, Big Daddy Kane, Tone Loc, Queen Latifah and N.W.A, all of which received their first-ever radio airplay on KDAY. Later, the station would become the home of gangsta rap in Los Angeles, and KDAY’s success helped establish rap’s commercial and artistic viability in the decades that followed. The station’s influence locally was so wide that despite being shuttered in the early ’90s, the KDAY brand would be revived as an FM station in 2004. Today, it operates as a rap oldies station.

The film, currently in development, is announced at an opportune time. With the success of Straight Outta Compton, which saw tentpole-level first weekend earnings of $60M, interest in this era of rap music and the tense cultural climate from which it emerged is high.

It will be produced by Gary Goddard, Forbes Candlish, Roger Lay Jr., and Eric Carnagey of Goddard Film Group. Mack will serve as an executive producer, while his manager, Bruce Johnson, will serve as associate producer.

Mack’s autobiography will be released at year’s end.

Congressman Louis Stokes, older brother of late Mayor Carl Stokes, has died

Congressman Louis Stokes

Story by Northeast Ohio Media Group
Written by Brent Larkin

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Louis Stokes, whose iconic career in public life assures him a place as one of the most revered, respected and powerful figures in Cleveland history, died Tuesday night.

He was 90.

The older brother of former Mayor Carl B. Stokes had an aggressive form of cancer, diagnosed in late June.

A proud, personable and gracious man whose dress and manner exuded dignity, Stokes never wanted to be a politician, aspiring instead to become Cleveland's leading black lawyer.

But the reluctant officeholder who came to Congress in 1969 left it 30 years later as a towering political figure both in Washington and at home.
Mayor Frank Jackson was one of dozens to publicly mourn the death of his longtime friend.

"Congressman Louis Stokes' long career in public life was a model of how to serve with dignity, integrity and honor," Jackson said. "His service paved the way for many who would follow in both public and private careers. I know full well that, but for him, I would have never had the opportunity to become mayor."

For more than three decades, Stokes, his brother, former Council President George Forbes, and former Cleveland School Board President Arnold Pinkney dominated every aspect of black political life in the city.

Now, only Forbes survives.

"The four of us had parallel careers in public life," Forbes said. "It was not unusual for some of the things we did or said to be questioned. But not Lou Stokes. If he said it, or did it, it was like a pronouncement from Sinai. It was the gospel. It was the last word. No one disagreed with him."

Stokes' resume in the House included stints as chairman of the select committee that from 1976 to 1978 investigated the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., chairman of the House Ethics Committee, a member of the House select committee that investigated the Iran-Contra affair, and the first black to chair the Intelligence Committee and serve on the influential House Appropriations Committee.

In Cleveland, Stokes' political muscle was the 21st Congressional District Caucus, a political organization founded by his late brother that became so powerful, its ability to influence election outcomes sometimes surpassed that of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party.

When Stokes and the caucus urged Democrats in his district to vote against a sitting Democratic president in the Ohio presidential primary in 1980, they did just that, supporting Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy over President Jimmy Carter by a margin of nearly 2-1.

Stokes never lost an election. Nor did he forget where he came from.

And he never strayed from his commitment to expand political and economic opportunities for minorities.

In an interview at his home just a month before his death and days after he learned of his terminal illness, Stokes emotionally reminisced on his storybook life.

"I was a very blessed guy," he began. "I've been blessed with the opportunity to participate in history, to rise to opportunities I never envisioned ... and to provide for people opportunities that, in many cases, they would have never had.

"We have been blessed as a family with a legacy we can always be proud of. Together with Carl, we made a name that stood for something.
"What greater honor could have come to two brothers who grew up in poverty here in Cleveland?"

Simply Gladys and the Ojays touring

Gladys Knight


The Ojays

Link to the tour: http://gladysknight.com/

Universal Pictures’ NWA biopic "Straight Outta Compton" won the weekend at the box office with $60.2 million

The five actors that play the roles of gangsta rap group N.W.A. in new movie "Straight Outta of Compton".

Story by comingsoon.net

In a year where we already have five movies grossing over $300 million (with the last “Hunger Games” and the first new “Star Wars” still on the way), Universal Pictures can claim three of those, including the third-highest grossing movie of all time in Jurassic World. In fact, Universal’s movies have grossed the company over $2 billion just in North America, so obviously they would already be having a great year and summer.

This weekend they released the hip-hop biopic Straight Outta Compton, based on the rise and fall of L.A.’s premiere gangsta rap group N.W.A, which was another monster hit for the studio. Directed by F. Gary Gray and starring O’Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Neil Brown Jr. and Paul Giamatti, Straight Outta Compton scored $4.9 million in Thursday previews and $24.2 million on Friday including those previews. Its estimated $56.1 opening weekend makes it the highest-opening biopic ever, even surpassing the $51 million opening of Universal’s Eminem drama 8 Mile back in 2002.

It also scored the highest August opening for an R-rated film and with an “A” CinemaScore and a surprising 52% female audience, it’s likely to continue to do well over the rest of the summer leading into the generally slower September and October months.

UPDATE: Universal Pictures is now reporting that Straight Outta Compton brought in $60.2 million in actual box office for the weekend after Sunday did far better than originally projected. That would put it right in line with M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs as the fifth-highest opening for an August release.

Julian Bond, Charismatic Civil Rights Leader, Dies at 75

Story by NY Times
Written by Roy Reed
Photos by Associated Press

Julian Bond, a charismatic figure of the 1960s civil rights movement, a lightning rod of the anti-Vietnam War campaign and a lifelong champion of equal rights, notably as chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., died on Saturday night in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. He was 75.

The Southern Poverty Law Center announced Mr. Bond’s death on Sunday. His wife, Pamela Sue Horowitz, said the cause was complications of vascular disease.

Mr. Bond was one of the original leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee while he was a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta. He was the committee’s communications director for five years and deftly guided the national news media toward stories of violence and discrimination as the committee challenged legal segregation in the South’s public facilities.

He gradually moved from the militancy of the student group to the leadership of the establishmentarian N.A.A.C.P. Along the way, Mr. Bond was a writer, poet, television commentator, lecturer and college teacher, and persistent opponent of the stubborn remnants of white supremacy.

He also served for 20 years in the Georgia General Assembly, mostly in conspicuous isolation from white colleagues who saw him as an interloper and a rabble-rouser.

Mr. Bond’s wit, cool personality and youthful face — he was often called dashing, handsome and urbane — became familiar to millions of television viewers in the 1960s and 1970s. On the strength of his personality and quick intellect, he moved to the center of the civil rights action in Atlanta, the unofficial capital of the movement, at the height of the struggle for racial equality in the early 1960s.

Moving beyond demonstrations, Mr. Bond became a founder, with Morris Dees, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy organization in Montgomery, Ala. Mr. Bond was its president from 1971 to 1979 and remained on its board for the rest of his life.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/17/us/julian-bond-former-naacp-chairman-and-civil-rights-leader-dies-at-75.html?_r=0

President Obama's responds to a historical editorial about Voting Literacy Tests that led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act

Read NY Times Magazine Jim Rutenberg Editorial: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/magazine/voting-rights-act-dream-undone.html

For the cover story of our Aug. 2 issue, Jim Rutenberg wrote about efforts over the last 50 years to dismantle the protections in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the landmark piece of legislation that cleared barriers between black voters and the ballot.

The story surveyed a broad sweep of history and characters, from United States Chief Justice John Roberts to ordinary citizens like 94-year-old Rosanell Eaton, a plaintiff in the current North Carolina case arguing to repeal voting restrictions enacted in 2013.

The magazine received an unusual volume of responses to this article, most notably from President Barack Obama.
________________________________________________

I was inspired to read about unsung American heroes like Rosanell Eaton in Jim Rutenberg’s ‘‘A Dream Undone: Inside the 50-year campaign to roll back the Voting Rights Act.’’ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/magazine/voting-rights-act-dream-undone.html

‘‘We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union. ...’’ It’s a cruel irony that the words that set our democracy in motion were used as part of the so-called literacy test designed to deny Rosanell and so many other African-Americans the right to vote. Yet more than 70 years ago, as she defiantly delivered the Preamble to our Constitution, Rosanell also reaffirmed its fundamental truth. What makes our country great is not that we are perfect, but that with time, courage and effort, we can become more perfect. What makes America special is our capacity to change.

Nearly three decades after Rosanell testified to her unbroken faith in this country, that faith was vindicated. The Voting Rights Act put an end to literacy tests and other forms of discrimination, helping to close the gap between our promise that all of us are created equal and our long history of denying some of us the right to vote. The impact was immediate, and profound — the percentage of African-Americans registered to vote skyrocketed in the years after the Voting Rights Act was passed.

But as Rutenberg chronicles, from the moment the ink was dry on the Voting Rights Act, there has been a concentrated effort to undermine this historic law and turn back the clock on its progress. His article puts the recent push to restrict Americans’ voting rights in its proper context. These efforts are not a sign that we have moved past the shameful history that led to the Voting Rights Act. Too often, they are rooted in that history. They remind us that progress does not come easy, but that it must be vigorously defended and built upon for ourselves and future generations.

I am where I am today only because men and women like Rosanell Eaton refused to accept anything less than a full measure of equality. Their efforts made our country a better place. It is now up to us to continue those efforts. Congress must restore the Voting Rights Act. Our state leaders and legislatures must make it easier — not harder — for more Americans to have their voices heard.

Above all, we must exercise our right as citizens to vote, for the truth is that too often we disenfranchise ourselves.

Rosanell is now 94 years old. She has not given up. She’s still marching. She’s still fighting to make real the promise of America. She still believes that We the People have the awesome power to make our union more perfect. And if we join her, we, too, can reaffirm the fundamental truth of the words Rosanell recited.

President Barack Obama,



Washington DC

150 years later, the question remains: Was the Civil War About Slavery?

What caused the Civil War? Did the North care about abolishing slavery? Did the South secede because of slavery? Or was it about something else entirely...perhaps states' rights? Did Abraham Lincoln state that slavery should exist in all of America, both North and South?

Colonel Ty Seidule, Professor of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point, settles the debate in the above video presentation.

China Roils Markets for Second Day as Yuan Tumbles With Stocks

Story by Bloomberg
Written by Stephen Kirkland and Jeremy Herron
Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-11/asian-futures-tip-another-down-day-as-yuan-move-rattles-markets

Concerns China’s economy is faltering torpedoed stocks around the world for a second day and fueled demand for the safety of gold and Treasuries.

...China’s yuan led the biggest two-day slide in Asian currencies since 2008, while speculation the financial-markets turmoil will force the Federal Reserve to delay raising interest rates sent the dollar tumbling versus the euro.

“China is a big growth driver around the world, so there’s a certain risk to global growth,” said Otto Waser, chief investment officer at R&A Research & Asset Management AG in Zurich. “If the world economy turns out to be weaker, the Fed will keep an eye on the dollar.”

Emotional Environment

China’s decision on Tuesday to devalue the yuan and shift to a more market-determined rate sparked concern that any slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy will spill over to the European and American markets.

Data Wednesday showed fixed-asset investment in China grew at the slowest pace since December 2000 in July, while the rate of expansion for retail sales and industrial production also weakened.

“In an emotional environment like this fundamentals don’t necessary play entirely into it,” Gene Peroni, a fund manager at Advisors Asset Management Inc. in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, said in a phone interview. His firm oversees $14.7 billion. “You have reactive behavior and investors scrambling trying to reorient their portfolios and play the guessing game of what the ramifications are here.”

The devaluation is designed to cushion the yuan from strengthening along with the dollar after a projected interest-rate increase in the U.S., according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Fed Liftoff

“This is about Fed liftoff most obviously and further dollar strength,” Robin Brooks, chief currency strategist at Goldman Sachs in New York, wrote in a note to clients. “It certainly makes sense for China’s policy makers to buy some flexibility ahead of Fed liftoff.”

Emerging-market currencies bore the brunt of selling in reaction. Vietnam widened the trading band on its currency Wednesday, underscoring the risk of competitive devaluations that’s dragging down exchange rates from Brazil to South Korea.

The Stoxx Europe 600 Index fell 3 percent, led by a slump in commodity producers and automakers.

Developing-nation stocks extended declines in a bear market, with the MSCI Emerging Markets Index losing 1.2 percent.

Gold rose for a fifth day, the longest stretch since May, as China’s devaluation spurred demand for haven assets. Bullion advanced 0.9 percent to $1,118.25 an ounce.

Oil rebounded from the lowest close in six years. West Texas Intermediate rose 1.5 percent to $43.73 a barrel. Crude has fallen about 30 percent since this year’s peak closing price in June amid speculation the global surplus that drove prices into a bear market will persist.

United States Prison Population since the Civil Rights Bill and Voting Rights Act were signed - overall 500% increase (Federal Prison 800%)

*Link: http://kirktanter.blogspot.com/2015/08/what-i-saw-in-watts-fifty-years-ago-and.html

*In 1965, an estimated 35,000 Blacks were in America’s state and federal jails; in 2015, the number has soared to more than 500-thousand African-Americans.

http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=107

The United States is the world's leader in incarceration with 2.2 million people currently in the nation's prisons or jails -- a 500% increase over the past thirty years. These trends have resulted in prison overcrowding and state governments being overwhelmed by the burden of funding a rapidly expanding penal system, despite increasing evidence that large-scale incarceration is not the most effective means of achieving public safety.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-needs-to-make-prison-reform-a-priority/2012/02/22/gIQAxypbeR_story.html?_r=3&ref=us

Story by Washington Post
Editorial by Sentencing Project's Kara Gotsch

Despite promising signs in President Obama’s budget proposal aimed at curbing prison population growth [“Unshackled,” Feb. 21, editorial], the federal budget still calls for new money to expand prison capacity, including contracting for 1,000 private prison beds. This approach contradicts the innovative approaches being pursued in many states. Significant changes in sentencing policy at the state level have contributed to the first decline in overall state prison populations in 40 years.

Since 1980, the federal prison population has grown almost 800 percent, and facilities are dangerously overcrowded. Funds for expanding prisons would drain money from programs that have prevented crime and reduced recidivism.

The administration and Congress need to focus on reforms that limit excessive mandatory minimum sentences for low-level offenses. This would significantly reduce the prison population while maintaining public safety and go a long way toward promoting a cost-effective and fair justice system.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-quigley/fourteen-examples-of-raci_b_658947.html

Story below in Huffington Post
Written by Bill Quigley

...Information on race is available for each step of the criminal justice system - from the use of drugs, police stops, arrests, getting out on bail, legal representation, jury selection, trial, sentencing, prison, parole and freedom. Look what these facts show.

1. The US has seen a surge in arrests and putting people in jail over the last four decades. Most of the reason is the war on drugs. Yet whites and blacks engage in drug offenses, possession and sales, at roughly comparable rates - according to a report on race and drug enforcement published by Human Rights Watch in May 2008. While African Americans comprise 13% of the US population and 14% of monthly drug users they are 37% of the people arrested for drug offenses - according to 2009 Congressional testimony by Marc Mauer of The Sentencing Project.

2. The police stop blacks and Latinos at rates that are much higher than whites. In New York City, where people of color make up about half of the population, 80% of the NYPD stops were of blacks and Latinos. When whites were stopped, only 8% were frisked. When blacks and Latinos are stopped 85% were frisked according to information provided by the NYPD. The same is true most other places as well. In a California study, the ACLU found blacks are three times more likely to be stopped than whites.

3. Since 1970, drug arrests have skyrocketed rising from 320,000 to close to 1.6 million according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice.
African Americans are arrested for drug offenses at rates 2 to 11 times higher than the rate for whites - according to a May 2009 report on disparity in drug arrests by Human Rights Watch.

4. Once arrested, blacks are more likely to remain in prison awaiting trial than whites. For example, the New York state division of criminal justice did a 1995 review of disparities in processing felony arrests and found that in some parts of New York blacks are 33% more likely to be detained awaiting felony trials than whites facing felony trials.

5. Once arrested, 80% of the people in the criminal justice system get a public defender for their lawyer. Race plays a big role here as well. Stop in any urban courtroom and look a the color of the people who are waiting for public defenders. Despite often heroic efforts by public defenders the system gives them much more work and much less money than the prosecution. The American Bar Association, not a radical bunch, reviewed the US public defender system in 2004 and concluded "All too often, defendants plead guilty, even if they are innocent, without really understanding their legal rights or what is occurring...The fundamental right to a lawyer that America assumes applies to everyone accused of criminal conduct effectively does not exist in practice for countless people across the US."

6. African Americans are frequently illegally excluded from criminal jury service according to a June 2010 study released by the Equal Justice Initiative. For example in Houston County, Alabama, 8 out of 10 African Americans qualified for jury service have been struck by prosecutors from serving on death penalty cases.

7. Trials are rare. Only 3 to 5 percent of criminal cases go to trial - the rest are plea bargained. Most African Americans defendants never get a trial. Most plea bargains consist of promise of a longer sentence if a person exercises their constitutional right to trial. As a result, people caught up in the system, as the American Bar Association points out, plead guilty even when innocent. Why? As one young man told me recently, "Who wouldn't rather do three years for a crime they didn't commit than risk twenty-five years for a crime they didn't do?"

8. The U.S. Sentencing Commission reported in March 2010 that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10% longer than white offenders for the same crimes. Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project reports African Americans are 21% more likely to receive mandatory minimum sentences than white defendants and 20% more like to be sentenced to prison than white drug defendants.

9. The longer the sentence, the more likely it is that non-white people will be the ones getting it. A July 2009 report by the Sentencing Project found that two-thirds of the people in the US with life sentences are non-white. In New York, it is 83%.

10. As a result, African Americans, who are 13% of the population and 14% of drug users, are not only 37% of the people arrested for drugs but 56% of the people in state prisons for drug offenses. Marc Mauer May 2009 Congressional Testimony for The Sentencing Project.

11. The US Bureau of Justice Statistics concludes that the chance of a black male born in 2001 of going to jail is 32% or 1 in three. Latino males have a 17% chance and white males have a 6% chance. Thus black boys are five times and Latino boys nearly three times as likely as white boys to go to jail.

12. So, while African American juvenile youth is but 16% of the population, they are 28% of juvenile arrests, 37% of the youth in juvenile jails and 58% of the youth sent to adult prisons. 2009 Criminal Justice Primer, The Sentencing Project.

13. Remember that the US leads the world in putting our own people into jail and prison. The New York Times reported in 2008 that the US has five percent of the world's population but a quarter of the world's prisoners, over 2.3 million people behind bars, dwarfing other nations. The US rate of incarceration is five to eight times higher than other highly developed countries and black males are the largest percentage of inmates according to ABC News.

14. Even when released from prison, race continues to dominate. A study by Professor Devah Pager of the University of Wisconsin found that 17% of white job applicants with criminal records received call backs from employers while only 5% of black job applicants with criminal records received call backs. Race is so prominent in that study that whites with criminal records actually received better treatment than blacks without criminal records!

50 years ago by Congressman John Lewis

Every year, I head back to the birthplace of a new America -- Selma, Alabama -- where a determined struggle for voting rights transformed our democracy 50 years ago.

On March 7, 1965, Hosea Williams and I led a band of silent witnesses, 600 nonviolent crusaders, intending to march 50 miles to Montgomery -- Alabama's capital -- to demonstrate the need for voting rights in America.

At the foot of the bridge, we were met by Alabama state troopers who trampled peaceful protestors with horses and shot tear gas into the crowd. I was hit on the head with a nightstick and suffered a concussion on the bridge.

I thought that was going to be my last demonstration. I thought I might die that day.

We knew the dangers that lay ahead, but we marched anyway hoping to usher in a more fair society -- a place where every American would be able to freely exercise their constitutional right to vote, and each of us would have an equal voice in the democratic process.


John Lewis and other peaceful protestors clash with state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, March 7, 1965.

We knew that standing up for our rights could be a death warrant. But we felt it would be better to die than to live with injustice.

When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, it was a great day. The Act made the ballot box immediately more accessible to millions of Americans of every race, gender, region, economic status, and national origin. It has been called the most effective legislation of the last 50 years.

But just two years ago, the Supreme Court struck a blow at the heart of the Voting Rights Act, nullifying a key provision that had curbed discriminatory voting rules and statutes from becoming law. As soon as the Court's decision was announced, states began implementing restrictive voting laws.

While some states are changing laws to increase the number of Americans who are able to participate in our democracy, by increasing early voting days and making it easier for people to cast a ballot, far too many states are passing new laws that make it harder and more difficult to vote.

Early voting and voter registration drives have been restricted. Same-day voting has been eliminated in some cases. Strict photo identification laws have been adopted, and improper purges of the voting rolls are negating access to thousands, perhaps millions, who have voted for decades.

That's why people are still marching for this cause today. Even as we speak, the NAACP is leading a 40-day, 40-night march from Selma to Washington, D.C. in support of a number of issues, including the issue of voting rights.

As citizens, it is our duty to make sure that our political process remains open to every eligible voter, and that every citizen can freely participate in the democratic process.

And when it comes time to get out and vote -- we have to do so. The right to vote is the most powerful nonviolent, transformative tool we have in a democracy, and the least we can do is take full advantage of the opportunity to make our voices heard.

Today at 2 p.m. ET, I'm joining President Obama for an important conversation on protecting voting rights -- and I hope you'll join us. Tune in here.
Despite the challenges, I am still hopeful -- but we must remain determined. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each and every one of us, each generation, must do our part to help create a more perfect union.

Keep marching on.


John Lewis
Member of Congress

Singer Akon Lights Up Africa One Solar Panel at a Time

AKON

Story by NBC News
Written by Candese Charles

Singer- songwriter Akon noticed a trend during a recent tour of Africa: a lack of electricity.

With 600 million Africans still eating and working by candlelight he decided to launch “Akon Lighting Africa” in February 2014. Aimed at bringing solar power to nearly half of the 600 million living without electricity, ALA has provided solar street lamps, micro-generators, charging stations and home kits to people in 14 countries.



The Akon Lighting Africa initiative has brightened 14 countries in just one year and plans to launch campaigns in an additional 11 countries by the end of 2016.(Photo credit: ALA)

“Africa needs to be sustainable for a long time and be a crutch for the rest of world instead of the other way around,” Akon told ThinkProgress in a phone interview. “A stable Africa helps the world.”

The Missouri-born Senegalese American is no stranger to the electricity situation in Africa. Though born in St. Louis, Akon was raised in Senegal, in West Africa, until the age of 7.

According to Ivory Coast Prime Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan, Africa holds 15 percent of the world’s population, but the continent only consumes 3 percent of the global electricity. More than 1.3 billion Africans have no access to electricity and only 5 percent living in Sub-Saharan Africa have electricity.

Electricity from solar has the potential to change that. ALA plans to continue to install solar street lamps and solar panels on homes and in the street, as well as providing educational training programs called Solar Academy. The first has blossomed in Mali’s capital of Bamako.

“We want to empower the people to develop their own opportunities,” Akon said. “[But] before you empower people you have to educate them.”

This year, Akon and co-founders Samba Bathily and Thione Niang have been to several countries in Africa, including Kenya, Guinea and Benin. Last week, the co-founders spoke and attended meetings in Congo, Nigeria and Rwanda.

Back in the states, 2,000 fans got involved in the campaign when they showed up to Centennial Olympic Park on July 19 for the Passport Experience Festival in Atlanta. Proceeds from ticket sales went toward ALA.

The Akon Lighting Africa initiative has brightened 14 countries in just one year and plans to launch campaigns in an additional 11 countries by the end of 2016. ALA plans to help light all of Africa by 2020.

50th Anniversary of the Signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act “Nonviolence 365 Voter Registration, Education and Responsibility” Drive

Story by the King Center

ATLANTA– The King Center is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act with a Nonviolence 365 voter registration, education and responsibility” drive. The drive will be held on the grounds of the King Center at 449 Auburn Avenue on Thursday, August 6 between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.

“While the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution”, said Bernice A. King, CEO of The King Center. “Fifty years after its signing we know that large groups of citizens face voter disenfranchisement through voter identification, felony voting laws and other forms of discrimination. With the 2016 presidential election just 16 months away, we feel that now is the time to engage in voter registration, education and responsibility.” Because voting is not just a right, it is a responsibility, the King Center has invited a number of nonprofit organizations to joins us for this “Nonviolence 365 voter registration, education and responsibility” drive.

In addition, thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the King Center will also mark the occasion with special free screenings of the movie “Freedom Riders” at 12 noon and 2 p.m. The 90 minute film tells the story of black and white college student volunteers who, together, took a bus ride into the Deep South knowing they would risk arrest and assault in the process of shining a light on the laws that made travel difficult or impossible for people of color. The King Center is honored to have been selected as one of the organizations chosen to participate in the National Endowment for the Humanities “CREATED EQUAL – the Civil Rights Struggle” Project.

For more information, please call (404) 526-8944.

What I saw in Watts Fifty Years Ago and What I see in America’s Watts Today

Commentary by Earl Ofari Hutchinson

I and a couple of friends stood transfixed with hundreds of others on the corner several blocks from my house in South L.A. watching what seemed like a horrid page out of Dante’s Inferno. But this wasn’t the classic writer’s epic poem. This was real life. Liquor stores, a laundromat, and two cleaners blazed away. There was an ear splitting din from the crowd’s shouts, curses and jeers at the police cars that sped by crammed with cops in full battle gear, shotguns flailing out of their cars. There was an almost carnival air of euphoria among the roving throngs as packs of young and not so young persons darted into the stores snatching and grabbing anything that wasn’t nailed down. Their arms bulged with liquor bottles and cigarette cartons. I was 18, and there was almost a kid’s mix of awe and fascination watching this. For a brief moment there was even the temptation to make my own dash into one of the burning stores. But that quickly passed. One of my friends kept repeating with his face contorted with anger: “Maybe now they’ll see how rotten they treat us.” By the “they” he meant “the white man.” My friend’s words were angry and bitter. The words were bitter and in that bitter moment he said what countless other blacks felt as the flames and the smoke swirled around me.

The events of those days and his words still remain burned in my memory on the fiftieth anniversary of the Watts riots this August. I still think of the streets that we were shooed down by the police and the National Guard during those hellish days. They’re impossible to forget for another reason. A half century later some of those streets look as if time has stood still. They are dotted with the same fast food restaurants, beauty shops, liquor stores, and mom-and-pop grocery stores. The main street near the block I lived on then is just as unkempt, pothole-ridden and trash littered. All the homes and stores in the area are all hermetically sealed with iron bars, security gates and burglar alarms.

In taking a hard look at what has changed in America’s Watt’s in the half century since the Watts riots fifty years ago, Marquette Frye, the twenty-year old motorist whose arrest sparked the riots, name has been replaced by these names: Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Ezell Ford, and Sandra Bland. They have one thing in common with Frye. They were young, black, and like Frye, became the national poster names for police victimization of blacks. The clock on this chronic national plague has seemingly stood still. However, this is only one benchmark of how much or how little progress has been made since the Watts riots on confronting racial ills and poverty in America.

Certainly many blacks have long since escaped from the corner in South L.A. such as the one I stood on amidst the flames and chaos a half century ago. Their flight was made possible by the avalanche of civil rights and voting rights laws, state and local bars against discrimination, and affirmative action programs that for many of them crumbled the nation's historic racial barriers. The parade of top black appointed and elected officials, including one president, the legions of black mega millionaire CEOs, athletes, entertainers, and the household names of blacks from Oprah to Bob Johnson is unarguable further proof of that.

However, there’s the other hard reality that more blacks still languish on corners like the one I stood on in August, 1965. For them there has been no escape. A comparative look at conditions in Black America in 1965 and today tells their tale.

*In 1965 black adult joblessness stood at 10.98 percent, for teens it was 29 percent; in 2015 for black adults it stands at 12.6 percent, for teens 41 percent.

*In 1965, 76 percent of black students attended segregated schools; in 2015 the figure is 74 percent. In 1965, 20 percent of blacks were in single parent households; in 2015 the figure is 70 percent.

http://yourblackworld.net/2013/03/02/the-black-family-is-worse-off-today-than-in-the-1960s-report-shows/

http://www.urban.org/urban-wire/americas-public-schools-remain-highly-segregated

*In 1965, the wealth gap between black and white was a shade under $20,000; in 2015 it has leaped to more than $27,000. The black–white gap in homeownership has nearly doubled between 1965 and 2015. Today, nearly half of black children live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty. Overall, nearly one-third of blacks live in poverty; that’s a figure nearly triple that of non-Hispanic whites.

http://www.colorlines.com/content/equity-gap-1965-2013-infographic

http://www.epi.org/publication/african-americans-concentrated-neighborhoods/

http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/impact-of-hunger/african-american-hunger/african-american-hunger-fact

http://www.cnbc.com/id/48281252

Then there‘s the issue that still remains the major flash point in racial relations in America. That’s the criminal justice system.

*In 1965, an estimated 35,000 blacks were in America’s state and federal jails; in 2015, the number has soared to more than half a million.

http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=107

The gap between the two black Americas was brutally underscored in August, 1965, when at the height of the Watts riots, Martin Luther King Jr. came to Watts. He was jeered by a few blacks when he tried to calm the situation. But King did not just deliver a message of peace and non-violence; he also deplored police abuse and the poverty in Watts. Fifty years later, he would almost certainly have the same message if he came to South L.A. or any of the other Watts’s of America.

What I saw in Watts in 1965, and what I see in the Watts’s of America fifty years later stand as stark and troubling proof of that.
________________________________________
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a frequent MSNBC contributor. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show Nationally Syndicated radio show. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KTYM 1460 AM Radio Los Angeles and KPFK-Radio and the Pacifica Network.

Donnie Simpson will return to D.C. radio after 5-year absence

Donnie Simpson, seen when he was a DJ with WPGC radio, is coming out of retirement to host a weekday program from 3 to 7 p.m. on Radio One-owned WMMJ-FM (Majic 102.3) starting Aug. 17. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

Story by Washington Post
Written by Paul Farhi

Donnie Simpson, a fixture on Washington’s airwaves for decades, will return to radio later this month after more than five years in retirement under an agreement with Silver Spring, Md.-based Radio One.

Simpson, 61, will host a weekday program from 3 to 7 p.m. on Radio One-owned WMMJ-FM (Majic 102.3) beginning Aug. 17, according to people familiar with the agreement. WMMJ has long aired an urban adult-contemporary music format.

Simpson is also in discussions with Radio One’s cable TV channel, TV One, to host a music-themed program, although details and a starting date are still in flux.

The company and Simpson will announce the multi-year deal later today.

*Simpson announced earlier today at 5pm on the WMMJ-FM (Majic 102.3) airwaves that there are both a TV and Radio multi-year deal, but provided no specifics. Simpson said: "I will be on Majic 102.3 in two weeks on August 17th, and my TV One program is in the development stages and will debut sometime in the fourth quarter of this year."

*Donnie's first words on the Majic 102.3 airwaves following an introduction as the new host on Majic 102.3, without mentioned his name in the introduction, stating: "This is Rick James Bitch". A room full of Radio One management, and the DC cluster staffers in a conference room listening via speakers 'bustin' out' in laughter.

Simpson was a staple of “urban,” or African American-oriented, radio in Washington for 33 years. The genial host was heard successively on WRC-FM (now WKYS-FM) and WPGC-FM starting in 1977.

His long run on Washington radio came to an end in January 2010 after a falling out with WPGC’s owner, CBS Radio, which had sought changes in his program’s format to boost its ratings. Simpson hasn’t been heard regularly on the radio since leaving the “Donnie Simpson Morning Show.”

Simpson became nationally known through hosting the “Video Soul” program on BET from 1983 to 1996. The program featured music videos by African American artists. TV One, which began in 2003, is a smaller rival of BET.

Radio One was founded by pioneering local businesswoman Cathy Hughes and is headed by her son, Alfred Liggins III. It owns more than 50 urban-oriented radio stations across the country.

The new Simpson-hosted program will probably sound similar to his WPGC program, with conversation, music and guest interviews. Simpson will be the solo host, but he will be joined regularly by a longtime radio sidekick, Huggy Lowdown. Another former sidekick, Chris Paul, is heard on a rival station, WTEM-AM (also known as “ESPN 980”) and the nationally syndicated “Tom Joyner Morning Show,” which airs on WMMJ in Washington.

(*contributed by Kirk Tanter)