Tuesday, October 29, 2013

THE CASH STUFF FOR 10-31-13

NNPA STORIES -

http://nnpa.org/many-poor-blacks-in-the-south-will-remain-uninsured-by-freddie-allen/

http://nnpa.org/health-insurance-website-stumbles-on-launch-by-freddie-allen/


                                                W-ed-ELECTION DAY TUESDAY

            With all that’s been going on in the state and nation, it’s hard to believe that it’s been a year since the presidential and gubernatorial elections, and that we’re a year away from the crucial Congressional midterm and state legislative contests.
            Crucial if we want to take our government back from the Tea Party.
            What all of the above means is that we’re in an off-year election next Tuesday, and while it may not be as loud or as high-profile as the other contests, in many way off-year local elections are more important because we are choosing people who will serve in our city and county governments, and whose decisions will have a direct impact on of our lives.
            The Wilmington Journal has reviewed most of the candidates running for local office in our area, and we’ve chosen three who we feel deserve not only your attention, but your vote come Tuesday, Nov. 5th.
            Polls open at 6:30 a.m., and close at 7:30 p.m. in both New Hanover and Brunswick counties.
            Here are our recommendations:

                                            Earl Sheridan for Wilmington City Council
            Now serving his second term in office, Councilman Earl Sheridan has been a strong advocate for economic growth in the impoverished areas of the Port City, not to mention affordable housing and fighting gang violence. Sheridan, currently a professor of political science at UNC-Wilmington, former served as the president of the New Hanover County NAACP. He is the council representative on the Cape Fear regional Community Development Corp. Board.
            The Journal thoroughly recommends that Councilman Earl Sheridan be elected to serve a third term on the Wilmington City Council.

                                                Eulis A. Willis for Mayor of Navassa
            He has been the mayor of the Brunswick County town of Navassa for the past eleven years, and each and every year he’s been in office, he’s fought hard to deliver reliable city services to the population there. Improving the quality of life from the citizens of Navassa has been the singular goal of Mayor Willis since he took office, and he continues to fight for much needed economic empowerment. That’s why Mayor Willis has joined forces with the mayors of neighboring Sandy Creek, Northwest, Leland and Belville to collaborate on joint projects to attract more business, and ultimately, more families to North Brunswick County.
            The Journal says Navassa Mayor Eulis Willis has the drive, commitment and experience to continue to lead his community toward better days. We recommend his re-election to office.

                                    Charles Warren for Mayor of Oak Island
            Former Brunswick County Commissioner Charles Warren is vying to unseat incumbent Betty Wallace as mayor of Oak Island. He says his one-term on the commission board has given him a unique perspective on the issues currently affecting the small community, and ways to protect the taxpayers’ dollars. Warren is a former Republican now turned Democrat, and is known for being a straight talker, speaking his mind and being a strong advocate for his constituents.
            The good citizens of Oak Island need a strong fighter who knows the issues, and will make sure that they get the best services possible, as well as a wise steward of their tax dollars.
            Vote for Charles Warren for Oak Island mayor on Tuesday, Nov. 5th.
                                                            -30-


NEW REPORT BLASTS NC’S
SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE
By Cash Michaels
Editor

            A new report cites poor education policies for contributing to North Carolina’s growing school-to-prison pipeline problem, a problem which disproportionately impacts poor students of color, and threatens the state’s economic future.
Black students are at the top of this troubling list.
            Because of  “poorly funded schools, punitive disciplinary practices and inadequate education placements for suspended North Carolina students that push some out of classrooms  and into courtrooms for minor misconduct…,” the study, titled, ‘From Push Out to Lock Up: North Carolina’s Accelerated School-to-Prison Pipeline,”  by Action for Children North Carolina, a statewide research and advocacy group, says that those at-risk students are “…four times as likely to drop out of high school as their peers, and eight times as likely to end up in jail or prison.”
            The more this cycle persists, the ACNC report continues, the more likely the expansion of an underclass of people who will lack the required skill-set to compete for jobs in the national and global economies.
            "Skilled workers are the basis of economic growth and North Carolina's prosperity is inextricably linked to our education system," said Deborah Bryan, president and CEO of Action for Children North Carolina. "When students slip out of the educational mainstream and into juvenile or adult courts we all pay the consequences through lost opportunity, productivity and wages--costs that are entirely avoidable."
            The good news is that the rate of high school dropouts and overall suspensions in North Carolina has gone down in recent years. But for black students, the numbers are still troubling.
            According to the ACNC report, “During the 2011-2012 school year, North Carolina public schools handed out more than 258,000 short-term suspensions, approximately three-fifths of which (146,639) were applied to black students who comprise  just one-quarter (26 percent) of the student population. Previous analysis of statewide school discipline data shows black students are more likely to receive short- or long-term suspensions for first-time infractions than their peers often for minor, discretionary offenses like disruptive behavior or dress code violations.”
            The report continued, “Disparities in school discipline are linked to gaps between and within groups throughout the education system. Black boys who receive 5.22 short-term suspensions for every 10 students enrolled graduate at a rate 9 percent lower than other boys and 15 percent lower than black girls.”
            And unlike the rest of the nation, North Carolina treats juveniles 15-years-of-age and up as adults in the criminal justice system.
            “As a result…,” the ACNC report says, “… students in North Carolina encounter a shorter, more accelerated pipeline than their peers across the country.”
             So how can North Carolina’s unique school-to-prison pipeline be dismantled?
             The report recommends:

           -    Raise the age of juvenile court jurisdiction from 16 to
                18 for youth who commit misdemeanor offenses;
           -    Implement evidence-based reforms to ensure
                equitable treatment for all North Carolina students;
           -    Improve data collection and reporting requirements to
                better inform and empower school administrators,
                parents and policymakers; and
         -    Establish a legislative task force on school discipline
               practices.

         Bryan says North Carolina has the “infrastructure and know-how” to effectively solve the school-to-prison pipeline problem, and can also draw on the experiences and programs of other states with similar problems.
          "Across the country, school districts and law enforcement are taking leadership on the school-to-prison pipeline by establishing diversion programs that empower schools to better manage minor student misbehavior without referrals to juvenile courts," said Bryan.  "We have sound evidence that a systemic approach to student discipline which establishes clear behavioral expectations and reinforces appropriate social behavior pays dividends through reduced disciplinary issues, improved student achievement and higher school completion rates."
            From Push Out to Lock Up: North Carolina's Accelerated School-to-Prison Pipeline is available online at www.ncchild.org.
                                                            -30-
            



PROTESTS ACROSS THE SOUTH
TO DROP MORAL MONDAY CHARGES
Special to The Carolinian

            On Friday, November 1, 2013, the Southern Workers Assembly will picket in several Southern cities including Raleigh, N.C., Charlotte, N.C., Goldsboro, N.C., San Antonio, T.X. and Columbia, S.C. to demand that the conviction and all charges be dropped against Saladin Muhammad and all other Moral Monday arrestees. Saladin Muhammad is a North Carolina labor leader who was arrested on May 13, 2013 with 48 others in Raleigh while participating in the North Carolina Moral Monday’s, Forward Together Movement.
Muhammad was one of more than 940 protestors arrested during the weekly civil disobedience actions at the North Carolina General Assembly, organized since the spring this year.
Friday's Raleigh protest will be in front of the Old Wake County Courthouse, 316 Fayetteville Street at 12 noon.
On October 4, 2013, Mr. Muhammad was the first case tried in the Wake District Court, where he was found guilty of “trespassing,
disorderly conduct, and violating the rules of the General Assembly” for peacefully protesting with hundreds of others inside the state legislative building.
Labor activists, such as Mr. Muhammad, were among the first Moral Monday protestors and arrestees at the North Carolina General Assembly. Since Muhammad’s conviction, two white Moral Monday protesters have been found “not guilty” by the same judge that convicted him of the same offenses.
Many labor and community leaders believe that the disparity of the court rulings points to racially motivated inconsistencies in the treatment of protestors by the chief of the General Assembly police in using his discretion to decide that a Black labor activist was disorderly and prone to violence as compared to others also arrested.
Muhammad and the labor delegation placed emphasis on the attacks against labor and worker’s rights as part of the broad issues raised by the Moral Monday protests that have been mobilizing thousands to speak out in protest. These anti-worker legislative attacks have created a repressive climate at the workplace where workers are experiencing an increase in management’s abuse of power on the job.
Last week an online petition was launched that has collected thousands of signatures. 
Demonstrations are organized by the Southern Workers Assembly. For more information contact us at 919-637-6949  or visit http://southernworker.org 
                                                -30-


STATE NEWS BRIEFS 10-31-13

SEN. GRAHAM HOLDS UP WATT NOMINATION
            [WASH. DC] A conservative senator from South Carolina is refusing to allow Pres. Obama’s nomination Rep. Mel Watt of Charlotte to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency to go forward to confirmation until the survivors of the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya testify before Congress. Sen. Lindsay Graham has accused the Obama Administration and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of a cover-up of the attack that claimed four American lives, including that of US Ambassador Chris Stevens. The president nominated Rep. Watt for the post last May, but it has been held up since then.

STATE FAIR RIDE OPERATOR CHARGED IN VORTEX INCIDENT
            [RALEIGH] The operator of the Vortex ride at the NC State Fair is facing three felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon after investigators say he allegedly tampered with the safety mechanisms after it was repaired, thus causing the ride to malfunction last Thursday, injuring five people. Three of injured, including a 14-year-old child, were listed in critical to serious condition. The operator, Timothy Dwayne Tutterrow of Quitman, Ga., is being held in the Wake County jail under a $225,000 bond. Wake Sheriff Donnie Harrison says more arrests are forthcoming.

JESSE JACKSON JR. IN BUTNER FEDERAL PRISON
            [BUTNER] Jesse Jackson Jr., son of the famous civil rights leader and former Illinois congressman, reported to the minimum-security Butner Correctional Center this week to begin serving his two-an-a-half-year federal prison sentence for misuse of $750,000 in campaign funds for personal use. Jackson, 48, was accompanied to the facility by Congressman G. K. Butterfield [D-1-NC], who said that Jackson was in good spirits, “all things considered.” Jackson’s wife, Sandi, was sentenced to one year for filing false income tax returns. Her sentence was staggered in order for her to care for the couple’s two young children.


MCCRORY REFUSES TO CALL SPECIAL SESSION FOR MEDICAID EXPANSION
            [RALEIGH] Despite calls from the NCNAACP and state Democratic lawmakers, Republican Gov. Pat McCrory says calling the NC General Assembly back for a special session to reconsider Medicaid expansion was “out of the question.” McCrory and GOP lawmakers blocked extension of Medicaid federal health insurance to over 500,000 North Carolinians last spring, saying that the program was in fiscal disorder, and needed to be fixed first. Democrats called McCrory’s decision “short-sighted.”

                                                                        -30-


TRIANGLE NEWS BRIEFS 10-31-13


SEANNE WINTERS BARNETTE LAID TO REST; BROTHER IN CUSTODY HERE
            Seanne Winters Barnette, daughter of late Sen. John Winters Sr., was remembered last Friday during funeral services at Upper Room Church of God in Christ as a loving and thoughtful human being who was always willing to help others. Her brother, John Winters Jr., is currently being held in the Wake County jail after being brought back from Virginia, where he was found with his sister’s vehicle. Authorities say Winters told hospital personnel that he had killed his sister. Barnette’s body was found in her Knightdale apartment two weeks ago, stabbed multiple times and with an American flag draped over it. Wake authorities have not charged Winters, who had lived with his sister because he was homeless, with Barnette’s death. It was revealed during her funeral that Barnette had asked for prayers for her brother.

CARY CLAIMS LOWEST 2012 CRIME RATE IN THE NATION
            The bedroom community of the Triangle now claims that last year, it had the lowest crime rate in the nation. The town of Cary, home to over 146,000 residents, says that according to FBI crime statistics, it has 14.4 crimes per 1,000 people in 2012 for areas with populations between 100,000 and 500,000. That was a tick better than Naperville, Ill., which logged a 15.1 per 1,000-person crime rate for the same period. The claim is important, Cary officials maintain, because being known as the safest town in America is a major draw for families elsewhere who are interested in moving to the area.

RALEIGH TAKES DOWN OUTDATED GUN RESTRICTION SIGNS
            At the insistence of local gun rights advocates, Raleigh city officials are taking down city signs that ban concealed weapons in parks and city property. A state law allowing firearms in parks and school campuses went into effect in October. However, city officials say signs that generally say that visitors cannot “possess firearms or other weapons” on city property will stay in place. Gun rights activists say all the city has to do is put duct tape over the that line.
                                                            -30-


CASH IN THE APPLE
By Cash Michaels

            YELTON AND THE GOP – Well of course the NC Republican Party got rid of Buncombe County Republican precinct Chair Don Yelton after his extraordinary, and yes racist performance on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” last week. His blunt, but honest remarks about “lazy blacks” complaining about voter ID, and that the true purpose of North Carolina’s voter ID law was to hurt Democrats, were further proof of the corrupt thinking behind that law.
            Yelton, who we have been aware of some time, was just saying out loud what most Republicans already knew and supported, but were afraid to say out loud.
            Don Yelton actually did us all a favor. By being a state GOP official at the time of his racist remarks, his words could be referenced in the pending lawsuits against the state’s voter ID law.
            Gee, thanks, Don. It will be very hard for the NC GOP to now say that you just turned crazy when you turned up on national television. They thought you were perfectly fine before you opened your mouth on “The Daily Show.”
            Seriously though, watching Don Yelton and wondering what the reporter had asked, namely, “Are you aware that we can hear you?,” made it clear that we are going to have to do more than watch Tea Party folks get on TV, speak their warped minds, and we just sit there and say, “I knew it.”
            There are many who are likeminded with Yelton, and if they had their way, and the power, they would turn the social clock back before the civil rights movement.
            Way back! Don’t believe me?
            According to the website, therawstory.com, a Republican Tea Party state assemblyman, in an Oct. 28th story in the Ls Vegas Sun, said that if his constituents wanted him too, yes, he would vote to bring back slavery.
            You read it right.
            “If that’s what they wanted, I’d have to hold my nose, I’d have to bite my tongue and they’d probably have to hold a gun to my head, but yeah, if that’s what the citizens of the, if that’s what the constituency wants that elected me, that’s what they elected me for,” Assemblyman Jim Wheeler, a Republican from Gardnerville, NV, is seen telling a group of Republicans during a meeting in August. “That’s what a republic is about. You elected a person for your district to do your wants and wishes, not the wants and wishes of a special interest, not his own wants and wishes, yours.”
            Now unlike Don Yelton, who has stuck by his “lazy blacks” guns, Wheeler, apparently taken by surprise that the video got out, is now tat he wouldn’t vote to actually “legalize” slavery, and that he was only exaggerating to make a point about constituent service.
            Wheeler is also accusing liberals for trying to smear him as a ‘bigot’ by spreading the video online.
            So let’s get this straight – this clown gets before his brethren, tells them that he would vote to bring back slavery, and then gets upset when folks playback a video of him saying such an idiotic thing.
            But at least we have confirmation as to the kind of archaic thinking that comes from these Tea Party clowns when they think no one beyond their brood is listening.
            So the question is, what are we going to do about this? It was the ballot box that got them in, and it’s going to take the ballot to get them out. Are we ready, committed and organized? Have we seen enough, or do we need more convincing that the same people who were willing to shutdown our government and take our nation to the very brink of economic disaster, are indeed more than willing to hurt our community because they have a profound hatred for us, and a president for the United States who happens to look like us?
            This is why, more than ever, we need the Black Press.
            The perspective and understanding that meets the needs of our community is what this black newspaper is all about. And that’s why we try to take the time at last once a month to remind you that supporting your African-American newspaper is the best way to continue to get the kind of news and views you can trust.
            We can’t do it without you!
            Please, continue to support the Black Press.
            IMPORTANT COMMEMORATION – One of the people who worked extremely hard with us during our Wilmington Ten Pardons of Innocence Project was Sonya Bennetone of Wilmington. Recently she wrote us a note I want to pass on to you.
            Dear Cash:
On November 9, 2013 at 2pm at Central Missionary Baptist Church; 702 Red Cross Street; Wilmington, NC. The New Hanover County Chapter of the NC Black Leadership Caucus and local ministries of all religious backgrounds and race will have a statewide program "Observance of 1898, Reverse The Curse" honoring the victims and the memory of Rev. Dr. J. Allen Kirk who was the Pastor of Central Missionary Church during the 1898 Massacre. He is the author of "A Statement of Facts of the Bloody Riot In Wilmington, NC Of Interest to Every Citizen of the United States.” 
             Rev Dr. Kirk was the only pastor in Wilmington, NC during the 1898 Massacre with a written account of his experience. The original copy is at UNC Chapel Hill University. Rev. Dr. Kirk was the head of the Ministerial Alliance and gave Alex Manley, publisher of the Daily Record, money to start the black press. Rev. Kirk was a strong leader in the community and believed in the power of God. In 1898 white ministers waited outside Central Baptist Church with guns, while they thought he was conducting a funeral service.  In 2013 ministers of all races/beliefs are coming together in prayer and unity breaking the walls of racism.  We honor his memory by bringing healing to this city. Special recognition will be given to the NNPA publishers.
            So if you’re in the Port City on November 9th at 2 p.m. Central Missionary Missionary Church is the place to be.
            Make sure you tune in every Thursday afternoon at 4 p.m. for my talk radio show, ''Make It Happen'' on Power 750 WAUG-AM, or online at www.myWAUG.com. And read more about my thoughts and opinions exclusively at my blog, ‘The Cash Roc” (http://thecashroc.blogspot.com/2011/01/cash-roc-begins.html). I promise it will be interesting.
Cash in the Apple - honored as the Best Column Writing of 2006 by the National Newspaper Publishers Association. Columnist Cash Michaels was also honored by the NNPA for Best Feature Story Journalist of 2009, and was the recipient of the Raleigh-Apex NAACP’s President’s Award for Media Excellence in Sept. 2011.
Until next week, keep a smile on your face, GOD in your heart, and The Carolinian in your life. Bye, bye.
                                                                -30-

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