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CASH IN THE APPLE FOR
12-31-15
By Cash Michaels
GOODBYE,
2015 – In some ways, I truly wish 2015 was just one great big commode that we
could just push the lever, and watch all of the bad stuff get flushed down
where it belongs. But unfortunately, a lot of the stuff that made us just darn
disgusted in 2015 is going to follow us into 2016. Which means we have to
display the patience of Job in how we live our lives going forward, because a
lot of crazy stuff is going to test us, over and over and over again.
Look at the
kind of stories we’ve had to report about this year. Internationally, the
growing war with ISIS; the Paris terrorist attack, the nuclear agreement with
Iran. Nationally, domestic terrorism in San Bernardino and Charleston; police
shootings of civilians and shootings of police officers; the evolution of the Black Lives Matters movement, and obviously
the presidential elections and the historic visit by the Pope (which was a good
thing).
Here in
North Carolina, the disrespectful way Republican lawmakers treated Gov. Pat McCrory; new leadership at the
state Democratic and Republican parties, growing scandal in the McCrory
administration, 42 murders in Durham; and of course, the 2016 gubernatorial and
legislative elections gearing up.
Of course
there’s so much more that happened on all fronts, but bottomline is like it or
not, we can all only go forward, and look back only to learn from the lessons
of the past. Lord knows that if 2015 proves to only be the setup, then 2016
will be the big punch. In a way I hope not. Our nation is divided seemingly
beyond repair. Citizens are distrustful of leadership. Racism seems to have
proudly taken its place on the throne of being as American as apple pie.
Religious bigotry is at an all time high. Our children are not pleased with the
world that we built for them, and have little to no optimism about their future.
And let’s
not forget that deceptive, weak-minded, non-principled and just plain sick
people still walk this earth causing havoc in everyone’s life.
These are
just some of the many, many things that we have to devote ourselves to turning
around if there is to be a promising future for all of us. Obviously, none of
this is possible without a strong and committed belief in GOD, for without Him,
there can be no hope of anything good.
So that is
our challenge in the coming new year, to turn this nation around before it is
too late for ourselves and our children.
Because if
we don’t, or we can’t, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
GOODBYE,
MEADOWLARK – He was one of the talented graduates of the old Williston Senior High School in
Wilmington, and grew up to be one of the most beloved entertainers in the
world. Meadowlark Lemon of the Harlem
Globetrotters, the “clown prince of basketball,” died earlier this week at
age 83.
Lemon was
enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame after his fabled career with the Globetrotters.
He had a light and playfulness about him that made everyone laugh – young and
old – the world over. Whether folks knew how to speak English or not, they
understand Meadowlark’s boundless humor, and incredible skill with the
basketball as he performed impossible tricks with ease, including his deadeye
hook shot that never missed.
The great Wilt Chamberlain, who once played with
the Globetrotters, said that Meadowlark was the greatest basketball player he’d
ever seen. Without a doubt, in the history of the game, his name will always
put a smile on the faces of folks who hear it. Goodbye, Meadowlark, and thank
you for the good times.
“THE FORCE
AWAKENS” THE BOX OFFICE – The last time I wrote anything about the new J.J. Abrams film, “Star Wars: The Force
Awakens” it was just before it opened to tremendous reviews and box office.
Without a doubt it is one of the best films of 2015 (yes, I took the family to
see it two days after it opened), and certainly sets the stage for the sequel,
which actually goes before cameras in just a few weeks in January.
“The Force
Awakens” has already made the history books, earning over $1 billion worldwide
in just twelve days, outpacing “Jurassic World” which pulled that trick in more timer back in the spring. The second in the three-part trilogy will debut in May
2017, so hang on. Hopefully the folks at Disney won’t screw it up after such a
great start.
HAPPY NEW YEAR, 2016 – We hope that
you and your family have a safe, joyous and prosperous new year. Lord knows the
one thing it won’t be is boring, especially with the presidential elections
going strong. Hopefully our nation will make the proper electoral choices,
putting what’s best for all Americans first.
But just in
case we pick up that that might not indeed be the case, please be ready get all
of your properly registered friends and relatives and vote strong. We have got
to turn this nation around from the perilous direction that it is going.
''Make It Happen'' on Power 750 WAUG-AM, or online at www.waug-network.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).
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.
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NEW BOOK EXPOSES
CORRUPTION
IN THE WILMINGTON TEN
CASE
By Cash Michaels
Editor
A new book
on arguably North Carolina’s most notorious case of criminal frame-up sheds
further light not only on why state prosecutors worked so hard to falsely
convict the Wilmington Ten, but how a black nationalist-inspired worldwide
social justice movement emerged to demand their freedom.
It was
three years ago, on Dec. 31st, 2012, when then NC Gov. Beverly
Perdue, against the opposition of many in the state’s judiciary, ended over 40
years of injustice by issuing pardons of innocence for the ten civil rights activists
known the world over as the Wilmington Ten.
The Black
Press effort, led by The Wilmington
Journal through the National Newspaper Publishers Association, joining in
coalition with the NC NAACP and veteran defense attorneys Irving Joyner, James
Ferguson, and Duke University Prof. Timothy Tyson, exposed evidence that state
prosecutors racially gerrymandered the majority-white jury forty years earlier
to assure that the Ten would be falsely convicted of crimes they did not
commit.
The 2014 awardwinning
documentary, “Pardons of Innocence: The Wilmington Ten,” chronicled some of the
racially-charged, behind-the-scenes legal and political maneuvering in the
1970s that sent the nine black males and one white female to prison, and used
them a pawns in the struggle against the Black Power movement.
And now the
new book, researched and written Dr. Kenneth Robert Janken, professor of
African American and Diaspora Studies at UNC at Chapel Hill, and director of
the UNC Center for the Study of the American South, titled The Wilmington Ten: Violence, Injustice and the rise of Black Politics
in the 1970s (published by UNC Press), further examines why the Wilmington
Ten case, when viewed in contemporary terms, reveals the historic tension between
the African American struggle for equal rights versus the white power
structure’s pushback to maintain control and domination.
“By issuing
pardons of innocence to the Wilmington Ten was an admission not just that their
convictions were flawed, because they had been already overturned [by the US
Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Dec. 1980], but it was also an admission
that the system was corrupt, and that prosecutors worked in unethical ways with
the judges, they tried to get juries that were racially biased, they were
willing to put into evidence testimony that was both false and perjured,” Prof.
Janken, who started his research for the book in 2005, said in an interview.
“The case of the Wilmington Ten
amounts to one of the most egregious instances of injustice and political
repression from the post-World War II black freedom struggle,” Dr. Janken wrote
in the book’s introduction. “…[T]he efforts to free the Wilmington Ten helped
define an important moment in African American politics, in which an increasing
variegated movement coordinated its efforts under the leadership of a vital
radical Left.”
The book
examines how North Carolina prosecutors worked hard to frame the Ten solely for
the purpose of getting at civil rights activist Rev. Benjamin Chavis, known
then as a fiery militant black activist authorities feared was growing in
prominence during the early 1970’s shortly after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s
death.
Rev. Chavis
came to Wilmington the first week of February 1971 to work with black students
who had boycotted New Hanover County public high schools because of racist
treatment. He and nine others were falsely blamed for violence that crippled
the Port City that week, resulting in two deaths.
Dr. Janken also
focuses in his book on the extraordinary national and international movement
that emerged to free the Wilmington Ten after their convictions, fueled by
black nationalist groups, ultimately giving needed voice to various other social
justice causes.
Janken
agrees that Gov. Jim Hunt’s decision not to pardon the Wilmington Ten in 1978
after witnesses recanted their testimony was clearly political because he was
afraid of losing white votes in future elections. Instead, he shortened their
sentences, which only disappointed Hunt’s black base of supporters.
The book,
like the documentary, traces the roots of black student unrest in Wilmington in
the late 1960’s – early 1970’s to the forced closing of all-black Williston
Senior High School in 1968, followed by the turmoil when Williston’s 900
students were forced to integrate hostile all-white New Hanover High School and
Hoggard High School.
The roots
of the historic racism that governed Wilmington’s segregated society harkened
back to the infamous race riots of November 1898 there, when frustrated whites,
angry over growing black economic and social power in the aftermath of
Reconstruction, violently took over Wilmington city government from black
leadership, ushering in the era of Jim Crow in the South.
“…[D]ozens
and perhaps hundreds of African Americans were slaughtered,” Dr. Janken writes.
“The violence gutted the material basis of black advancement. White elites
illegally appropriated black-owned property and forced hundreds of blacks into
exile….[and] [w]ith the coup d’etat and the subsequent disenfranchisement of
African Americans, blacks’ political institutions were disorganized…,” Janken
added.
Prof.
Janken agrees that many of the events and issues addressed in the story of the
Wilmington Ten, are mirrored today – police brutality, racial injustice,
domestic terrorism, corruption in the criminal justice system, and a Black
Lives Matters movement today demanding equal rights.
The Wilmington Ten: Violence, Injustice and
the rise of Black Politics in the 1970s (published by UNC Press) is in
bookstores, and available online, beginning Monday, January 4th.
-30-
TAMIR RICE
2015 ENDS WITH MORE
POLICE INJUSTICE
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
The week
began with the city of Chicago in mourning after police there “accidentally”
shot and killed 55 year-old Bettie Jones Dec. 27th, an unarmed downstairs
neighbor who had just opened the door to let officers responding to a domestic
disturbance call. Chicago police also killed college student Quintonio LeGrier
at the same address, who was said to have had a mental illness. LeGrier’s
father called police for assistance when his son became angry and began hitting
the door with a baseball bat. Ms. Jones was a devout churchwoman, neighbors and
relatives said. They couldn’t understand why Chicago police couldn’t use tasers
to subdue young LeGrier, instead of deadly force.
Embattled Chicago Mayor Rahm
Emmanuel rushed home from a 16-day vacation, amid growing cries for his
resignation, and a federal investigation into a string of prior police killings
in his city.
On Monday in Cleveland, Ohio, after
more than a year, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty announced that a
grand jury did not indict two Cleveland police officers for the November 2014
fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who had only a pellet gun on him in a
park when the officers immediately shot the child within two seconds of pulling
up on the scene. It became clear that McGinty never sought to indict the
officers, but rather cajole the grand jury not to hold them responsible,
claiming that the officers feared for their lives.
Tamir Rice family and their
attorneys blasted McGinty, charging that it was never his intention to hold the
police officers accountable, and instead blamed the young boy for “looking
older and bigger than his age.”
Back in Chicago on Tuesday, Chicago
Police Officer Jerry Van Dyke pled not guilty to six counts of murder after
being seen on an October 2014 police video allegedly shooting 17-year-old
Laquan McDonald 16 times, most of the shots hitting the young black teen as he
laid helpless in the middle of the street, surrounded by other police officers
who never fired a shot.
Thousands of demonstrators marched,
rallied and blocked traffic in downtown Chicago leading up to the Christmas
holidays to protest the yearlong delay of the release of the McDonald video,
demanding Mayor Emmanuel’s resignation in the aftermath of the firing of the
police superintendent there. McDonald’s
family had already been paid a $5 million settlement by the Chicago City
Council long before the video’s release.
These cases, just this week, in addition
to a grand jury in Texas last week refusing to indict any officers for the
death of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old black female motorist found dead in her
jail cell after she was arrested for a minor traffic violation, have set the
stage for a tension-filled 2016 between law enforcement and the communities of
color which they serve. Thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement, young people
across the nation have taken to the streets to peacefully, but forcefully, hold
police departments accountable for their seemingly unbridled use of excessive
force against African-Americans.
In Minnesota, demonstrators blocked
an airport terminal after causing chaos at the Mall of America right before
Christmas, all to protest the police shooting death of Jamar Clark. Authorities
have refused to release the video of the deadly encounter.
Observers contrast these recent
incidents with what did not happen just last Saturday night at a Louisville,
Kentucky Mall St. Matthew, where 2,000 white teenagers reportedly engaged fights,
disruptive behavior, harassment of customers and store employees and
confrontations with police officers to the point where reinforcements from
neighboring towns had to be called, and the mall closed an hour early.
And yet, there were no arrests, and
not one officer fired a shot, even though there were reports of gunshots heard
prior to the police arriving.
When asked why there were no
arrests for what many who were there called “a riot,” a police spokesperson
said, “Our focus was on restoring order and dispersing the crowd.”
-30-
THE 2016 BIG TAX:
WHAT CAN DONE
By Cash Michaels
Editor
Editor’s
note – In part one of this two-part series, it was revealed that because of
tremendous development over the past decade in Raleigh’s downtown areas, the
property values of many of the properties in the South Park, College Park and
other Southeast Raleigh communities are expected to jump at least 27 percent.
The low-income retired and fixed income residents living on lots that will jump
from $25,000-$30,000 in value, to upwards of $70,000-$80,000, according to the
Wake County Revenue Department, and their annual property taxes will jump
accordingly.
Some may be
forced to sell their homes, and search for housing in poorer neighborhoods.
The problem
will rear it’s ugly head once the Wake County Commissioners officially set the
new property tax rates by June 30th, 2016.
So the
question is, what can be done to help those residents prepare for the big
property tax bill they never dreamed would come their way?
On Dec. 10th,
Wake Commission Chairman James West and Commissioner Jessica Holmes called a
meeting of civic, church, business and elected leaders to not only unveil the
data, but discuss strategies on how to build a coalition of community
institutions to help SE residents cope with the coming challenge.
Former
Raleigh District C City Councilman Brad Thompson, who initially sounded the
alarm about the problem, was also there.
“This is an
issue that has concerned me over a period of time,” Thompson told the gathering
in the commissioners’ conference room at the Wake Justice Bldg.
“I think
the issue of unintended gentrification is how I would classify it. The
closer you live to downtown, the more pressure you’re under to convert.”
By
“convert,” Thompson means sell your property, which is already happening as
various companies have already come it, buying up cheap properties, demolishing
the old structures and building new ones on the lots, and “flipping” or
reselling them for upwards of $100,000 to even $200,000 beyond their original
value.
That means
upper-middle class residents who can afford those prices move in, replacing the
original residents who are forced to move out and can’t afford to come back.
One
solution, though a weak one many agree, to help senior residents handle that
high property tax bill is the
little-known statewide program The
Carolinian reported about in November. The Elderly or Disabled Exclusion
program allows persons 65 or older,
and/or totally or permanently disabled, and have a total household income not
exceeding $29,000 annually, and own property which is the primary permanent
residence that does not exceed one acre, to have the first $25,000 or 50
percent (whichever is greater) of assessed property tax value waived.
Those
qualified must submit an application by Dec. 31st, 2016.
Because
$29,000 annually is considered a poverty income, Commissioner Holmes suggested
lobbying the state Legislature to raise it to at least $35,000 so that more
people could qualify.
Making sure
that residents are also made aware of other government or private remedies is
also, meeting participants agree.
Another
strategy was to have area churches where many of the elderly residents attend
to conduct free information sessions to help guide them on what steps to take
to cope with the property taxes. Getting the word out about these sessions via
the Black Press and community radio stations was seen as two effective ways
alert residents.
But for
those who simply cannot afford to pay the increased property taxes, creating a
church-based fund that could assist those in danger of losing their homes was
also suggested. Rev. Dr. Earl C. Johnson, pastor of Martin Street Baptist
Church in Southeast Raleigh, agreed that individual churches could indeed setup
such funds, but he added that determining the actual need in the community was
an important step, suggesting that some residents may indeed want to sell their
homes.
At press
time, The Carolinian has confirmed
that there will be a community meeting regarding how high property values have
risen in Southeast Raleigh at St. Augustine’s University on January 11th,
time and location on campus to be announced.
-30-
TRIANGLE NEWS BRIEFS
FOR 12-31-15
TWO SUSPECTS IN
ONE-YEAR-OLD CHILD’S DEATH HELD WITHOUT BOND
Two of the three suspects
charged in the Christmas Day shooting death of a one-year-old Chapel Hill
toddler were ordered by a judge to remain in jail without bond. Little Maleah
Williams was fatally shot in the head while playing outside her home on
Christmas Day. Orange County authorities initially arrested and charged Shaquille
Oneill Davis, 22, with attempted first-degree murder and assault with a deadly
weapon with intent to kill. Those charges are expected to be upgraded. He
remains in the Orange County jail under a $650,000 bond. The two other suspects
subsequently arrested and charged with first-degree murder – Ramone Jamarr
Alston, 22, and Pierre Je Bron Moore, 23 – were ordered by a judge this week
held in jail without bond. They are expected back in court on Jan. 21st.
Neighbors said the child was killed in the drive-by as the suspects were
allegedly targeting someone else.
VETERAN DURHAM JUDGE
CHARGED WITH DWI
A longtime
Durham judge has been charged with driving while impaired, according to
published reports. David LaBarre, who has served as both a Durham District
Court judge, and a Superior Court judge for over 20 years, was arrested and
charged with DWI on Dec. 16th. According to a police report of the
traffic stop, Judge LaBarre allegedly displayed “slurred speech,” “glassy eyes”
and was “unsteady on his feet. The State
Attorney General’s Office has been asked by the Durham District Attorney’s
Office to handle the case.
-30-
STATE NEWS BRIEFS FOR
12-31-15
HARLEM GLOBETROTTER
MEADOWLARK LEMON, 83, DIES
[WILMINGTON] The New York Times called him an
“ageless court magician.” The world over, he was more commonly known as “the
Clown Prince of Basketball” for his almost thirty years playing and performing
with the legendary harlem Globetrotters. Wilmington native Meadowlark Lemon
died Sunday at the age of 83 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Lemon was an alumnus of
historic Williston Senior High School in the Port City. He dreamed of playing
for the Globetrotters as a young boy, finally joining the team in 1954 after
leaving the Army. It wasn’t long before Lemon became a top showman, dazzling
audiences the world over with tricks and comic routines that have lived on in
the hearts of millions of fans. Lemon was inducted into the Basketball Hall of
Fame in 2003 after playing over 16,000 games.
NORTH CAROLINA
POPULATION HITS 10 MILLION
[CHARLOTTE] There can be no
doubt that North Carolina has grown steadily in population since the 1970s,
with much of that growth in both the Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham urban areas.
As a result, according to the US Census, the state’s population has now topped
10 million in the past year. The Tar Heel state remained the ninth most
populous in the nation. Experts say North Carolina’s population has in fact
doubled sine the 1970s, thanks to increased and varied job opportunities,
excellent weather and good quality of life.
TORNADO HITS TOWN ON
UNION COUNTY
[MONROE] Officials confirm that a
tornado touched down Monday near Monroe in Union County causing some structural
damage, but thankfully no reports of injuries. The twister touched down just
after 5 p.m., causing some structural damage to rooftops and downed trees. Residents
say the cleanup effort to clear roads and property is ongoing.
-30-
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