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President Biden's State of the Union Address Centers On NUL's Agenda To Defend Democracy, Demand Diversity, Defeat Poverty By Marc H. Morial 

To Be Equal March 18, 2024

                               President Biden's delivery of the State of the Union Address. PHOTO: Paulette Shipman-Singleton/Trice Edney News Wire

                               Vice President Kamala Harris backs up Biden with applause as House Speaker Johnson remains seated as he often did alongside his Republican colleagues. PHOTO: Paulette Shipman-Singleton/Trice Edney News Wire

NEWS ANALYSIS(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “When you get to my age, certain things become clearer than ever before. I know the American story. Again and again, I’ve seen the contest between competing forces in the battle for the soul of our nation. Between those who want to pull America back to the past and those who want to move America into the future. My lifetime has taught me to embrace freedom and democracy. A future based on core values that have defined America. Honesty, decency, dignity, equality. To respect everyone. To give everyone a fair shot. To give hate no safe harbor.” – President Joe Biden, 2024 State of the Union Address

President Biden’s third State of the Union Address on  March 7 met with overwhelmingly positive reviews for both its powerful content and his energetic delivery.

Falling as it did just days after the release of the National Urban League’s 2024 State of Black America® report – which included a special section, Evaluation for Progress: Report on the Biden Harris Administration – it’s worth noting the contrast between this address and the 1976 address by President Gerald Ford that inspired the original State of Black America report.

Both President Ford’s address and Sen. Edmund Muskie’s opposition conspicuously failed to mention the challenges facing Black Americans at the time. In contrast, President Biden not only wove racial equity throughout his speech, but he also delivered it on the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, a transformational moment in the Civil Rights Movement. Encouragingly, the speech explicitly addressed all three “Ds” in the National Urban League’s agenda: Defend Democracy, Demand Diversity, Defeat Poverty.

“I ask all of you, without regard to party, to join together and defend democracy,” President Biden said. “Respect free and fair elections. Restore trust in our institutions. And make clear — political violence has absolutely no place, no place in America.”

Highlighting the anniversary of Bloody Sunday and pointing out the marchers in the chamber, he said, “Hundreds of foot soldiers for justice marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named after the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, to claim their fundamental right to vote,” he said. “They were beaten. They were bloodied and left for dead … Five months later, the Voting Rights Act passed and was signed into law. But 59 years later, there are forces taking us back in time: voter suppression, election subversion, unlimited dark money, extreme gerrymandering."

He called on Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Right Act, two bills that are at the heart of the National Urban League’s advocacy. In calling for an end to book bans and the erasure of America’s history of racial violence and discrimination, President Biden called diversity a “core value of America.”  In addition to assembling the most diverse Cabinet, senior leadership, and federal judiciary in history – including the first woman and person of color to serve as Vice President and the first Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court – President Biden on his first day in office disbanded the Trump Administration’s 1776 Commission, which has sought to erase America’s history of racial injustice., and revoked Trump’s damaging executive order restricting diversity and inclusion training. Several times during the speech, President Biden referenced the American Rescue Plan, which lifted more people out of poverty than any piece of legislation in the past 50 years, spurring the greatest single-year reduction in child poverty on record, and driving child poverty to a record low. “The child tax credit I passed [as part of the American Rescue Plan] cut taxes for millions of working families and cut child poverty in half. Restore that child tax credit. No child should go hungry in this country.” The National Urban League is proud to have worked with the Biden Administration to help defend democracy, demand diversity, and defeat poverty, and we are committed to continue holding President Biden and all elected officials accountable to the imperatives of racial equity and economic opportunity.

Haiti At The Bottom Of The Abyss, Soon to Be Led By Outlaws by Joseph Guyler C. Delva

 
 
 
 

Judge Sentences Former Paramedic to Prison for the Death of Elijah McCain

March 5, 2024

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Elijah McCain

Paramedic Peter Cichuniec

Paramedic Peter Cichuniec is sentenced to five years in the death of Elijah McCain.

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from BlackMansStreet.Today

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - A judge sentenced a former Colorado paramedic to five years in prison for contributing to the 2019 death of Elijah McCain.

Peter Cichuniec, 51, a former lieutenant in Aurora Fire and Rescue was convicted Friday of criminally negligent homicide and second degree assault for the unlawful administer of drugs that eventually killed McCain.

Jeremy Cooper, the paramedic working with Cichuniec, is scheduled to be sentenced in April.

Supporters of Cichuniec packed the courtroom to tell Judge Judge Marck Douglas Warner that Cichuniec was a caring person.

Speaking to supporters, Cichuniec said that he wished McCain was alive and that he wished that he had done things differently. He was dressed in a striped prison uniform.


Shenee McClain, Elijah McCain's mother, said the paramedics murdered her son. She raised one of her hands in a closed fist in the air as she left the court.

McClain's mother told the court that everyone who was involved in the death of her son on that night back in August of 2019 didn't show any remorse.

"Our communities cannot know peace until we see the justice departments hold their enforcers accountable," she said. "My son will never be a dad, an uncle, or a grandfather. Randy Roedema stole my son's life. All the belated apologies in the world cannot remove my son's blood from Randy's hands."

A judge sentenced Roedema to 14 months in the Adams County Jail and four years probation.

Elijah McCain, a 23-year-old massage therapist, was walking from a convenience store after buying a soft drink and something to eat, when someone called police and telling cops he looked "sketchy" because he wore a mask to cover his face.

He wore a ski mask, which his mother said he wore because he was anemic and often cold. He was not suspected of committing a crime. “He wasn’t fighting,” his mother insists. “He was handcuffed and on the ground for fifteen minutes. He was begging for his life. The only moving he’s doing is vomiting, trying to breathe," she said.

Paramedics injected McCain with 500 milligrams of ketamine. It was too much for McClain, who was 5' 7" tall and weighed 140 pounds. He died later in a local hospital.

Interim Chief of Police Vanessa Wilson fired Randy Roedema, a lieutenant of the Aurora police department and three others officers for mocking McClain's speaking pattern. A judge sentenced Roedema to 14 months in the county jail.

The City of Aurora paid McCain's family $15 million dollars for the murder of their son.

Calls for Investigations Into Shocking Mortgage Discrimination Claims in Class Action Lawsuit by Charlene Crowell

March 11, 2024

Practice Fair Housing City of San Diego Image

Fair Housing Word Cloud Tompkins County NY 1

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - A mortgage discrimination case that began with two plaintiffs last December was consolidated in late February with seven others to form a class action lawsuit alleging that Navy Federal Credit Union – the nation’s largest with 13.4 million members and $170.8 billion in assets – “systematically and intentionally discriminates against minority borrowers across the United States.”

The lawsuit alleges that Navy Federal, which serves current and former military members from all service sectors, denied loans for 52 percent of Black borrowers and 44 percent of Latino borrowers, while denying only 23 percent of white applicants for home mortgage purchase or refinance loans and Home Equity Lines of Credit.

Affidavits of affected borrowers told stories of the financial and emotional distressed caused by qualified loan applicants having to find alternative – and often more costly – financing after being denied by their member-owned credit union.

The lawsuit, led by nationally-known attorney Ben Crump and his co-lead counsel Adam Levitt, of DiCello Levitt and Hassan Zavareei, of Tycko & Zavareei, said the lender’s own data show that Navy Federal approved loans for a higher percentage of white borrowers annually earning less than $62,000 a year than for Black loan applicants earning $140,000 or more.  

And when Navy Federal did approve a loan to a Black or Latino applicant, they often were offered worst interest rates and loan terms than those offered to white borrowers with similar financial profiles. These activities are illegal under federal laws, including the Fair Housing Act and Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA).

“The outright discrimination that occurs when Banking While Black continues to reveal itself in the lending practices of many of America’s largest financial institutions,” said Crump. “It is shameful that Navy Federal, an organization that prides itself in helping the families of men and women who served their country, does not give their Black and Latino customers the same opportunities as white customers.”

“We hope this legal action will stop racial lending discrimination in its tracks and require Navy Federal to right their wrongs,” said Adam Levitt. “Home ownership is recognized as the cornerstone of the American Dream. We will not sit by while that dream is denied to hard-working and deserving Americans based on discriminatory practices and algorithms.” 

Navy Federal said in a December 2023 statement that its  more than $3.5 billion in mortgages to Black borrowers in 2022 shows its “longstanding commitment to expanding credit and economic opportunity to Black borrowers.”  

But the number of people calling to hold Navy Federal accountable is growing, and now includes civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton, 10 U.S. Senators, over 20 Members of Congress, consumer advocates and others. 

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee called for federal agencies to begin investigations.

“Credit unions are owned by their members and while this type of discrimination may be par for the course for a profit-driven megabank, a member-driven credit union should know better,” said Waters.“As a private institution that bears the name of an esteemed branch of the United States military, Navy Federal must explain both to Congress and their members how such practices took place, what immediate steps are being taken to correct the harm done, and who in management will be held responsible,” Waters continued. “These abuses will not be tolerated, and I urge the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, National Credit Union Administration, and other appropriate agencies to promptly investigate this matter.”  

Consumers Union, a nonprofit advocacy group, added its support. “The large racial disparity found between loan approvals for applicants with roughly the same financial profile raises serious concerns that Navy Federal may be unfairly discriminating against Black and Latino applicants,” said Jennifer Chien[, CU’s senior policy counsel for financial fairness..

In a joint letter on January 11,2024, 10 U.S. Senators led by Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown urged the CFPB Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Department HUD to investigate the issue.

“As the regulators with primary responsibility for enforcing ECOA and the Fair Housing Act, we ask that you thoroughly review Navy Federal’s mortgage lending practices and outcomes for compliance with all federal fair housing and fair lending laws and regulations. Navy Federal’s members have made countless sacrifices in their service to our country. We must do all we can to ensure illegal barriers are not placed on their path to homeownership.” 

Even more lawmaker support came on February 28 in a joint letter from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the New Democrat Coalition that called upon six federal agencies to investigate and report on their findings.

“[T]he federal financial regulators have a duty to ‘affirmatively further fair housing,’ which means they must take meaningful actions that overcome and do not further entrench patterns of segregation and systemic disinvestment, such as through redlining, based on protected classes under the law,” wrote the lawmakers.

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 Charlene Crowell is a senior fellow with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Vandals Desecrate Monuments Honoring Blacks

March 5, 2024

 

 

 

Mother Bethel Desecrated

A vandal was arrested for desecrating Mother Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia.

King Monument Desecrated

Monument honoring Dr. Martin Luther Jr. has been vandalized.

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from BlackMansStreet.Today

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The recent vandalism of a statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other Black luminaries involved in the civil rights movement, is part of of nationwide pattern of destroying monuments that honor Black leaders.

A Martin Luther King Jr. statue in Denver, Colorado's City Park was found damaged Wednesday morning after a gaping hole was cut out of the bronze plaque affixed to the statue.

The memorial is one of several Black monuments recently reported stolen or vandalized in the United States.

One of the largest targets is the Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery in Carson-Compton, California.

More than 100 bronze nameplates and a 1944 bronze plaque honoring African American veterans were stolen from the cemeteries. Police have not arrested anyone.

In February, Ricky Alderete,45, was arrested by Wichita Police for allegedly stealing Jackie Robinson's statue and planning to sell it as scrap metal.

Police took Alderete into custody, and he is being held on a $150,000 bond.

Robinson's statue was stolen from McAdams Park in Wichita, Kansas. On January 25, police received reports that the statue was cut off at the ankles. Days later, the statue was found burning in a trash can.

Alderete was charged with four counts, including felony theft and aggravated criminal damage to property, according to police.

Also in February, Laneisha Shantrice Henderson was arrested for attempting to burn down Martin Luther King Jr.’s childhood home in Atlanta.

Henderson poured gasoline over the home’s front porch and accent bushes before being stopped and detained by two off-duty New York police officers who were visiting the home as tourists. 

“That action saved an important part of American history tonight,” Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said. Henderson was arrested by police officers and charged with attempted arson.

Black churches are not immune to vandalism.

Mother Bethel Affrican Methosit Church, a Black Philadelphia church, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1974, recently had several windows broken, including three of the church’s historic stained-glass windows.

Philadephia police arrested Haneef Cooper, 39. He was charged with criminal mischief for vandalizing Mother Bethel in the Society Hill neighborhood.

Pastor Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler estimated the damage at $30,000 because of the specialized craftsmanship needed to repair the historic stained glass.
Ed Dwight created the memorial in Colorado in 2002, honoring Dr. King and smaller statues of Mahatma Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Sojourner Truth, and Frederick Douglass.

The statue stands where the annual parade begins every year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

The Denver police department’s bias-motivated crime unit is investigating.

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