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South African Mining Massacre Denounced Worldwide

August 26, 2012

South Africa Mining Massacre Denounced Worldwide
Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from GIN

south african women

Women praying at the mines.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Disturbing images of gun-toting police firing point blank at striking miners shocked South Africans and others around the world. Thirty four workers fell dead in the melee - the worst case of post-apartheid state-sponsored violence since 1994.

The Marikana massacre, named after the UK-based Lonmin platinum mining complex, was denounced by labor leaders including U.S. labor chief Richard Trumka, among others.

Trumka, a former mineworker and now AFL-CIO president, said: “Once again, mineworkers who produce so much wealth under often dangerous daily working conditions have paid the highest price—their lives— in a completely avoidable industrial conflict. We call on the South African government to take immediate action to address the brutality.”

Tony Maher, head of Australia’s miners’ union added: “Lonmin sowed the seeds of industrial relations by bypassing established collective bargaining processes and now threatening to sack 3,000 striking workers.”

Lonmin’s past safety record at Marikana was deplorable, Mr Maher said, with six fatalities occurring in the first seven months of 2011 alone.

Ironically, among Lonmin's non-voting executive directors is the former secretary of the Africa National Congress, now billionaire, Cyril Ramaphosa. As strike talks broke down and violence loomed, ANC leader Jacob Zuma, Ramaphosa and others were out of town.

An effort to browbeat the workers back to their jobs was called off when only a quarter of the work force showed up on Monday.

Flags were lowered to half mast and an official day for nationwide memorial services was held last Thursday.

Meanwhile, former ANC youth leader Julius Malema, at a miners rally, denounced Pres. Zuma for his late arrival to the incident. President Jacob Zuma has presided over the "massacre of the people of South Africa,” Malema charged. “How can he call on people to mourn those he has killed? He must step down." 

Obama’s Race Still Has Bearing on Media Coverage By Nadra Kareem Nittle

Obama’s Race Still Has Bearing on Media Coverage
By Nadra Kareem Nittle

Obamareflective

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Maynard Institute

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Long before a little-known Illinois politician ran for president, the mainstream media focused on his race. When he flourished as a presidential candidate four years ago, everyone in America knew that Barack Obama was Black.

Have his blackness and extensive coverage of that fact boosted his political career or made it more difficult for him to win re-election? Perhaps surprisingly, some of the nation’s best political minds are divided on this question.

Obama’s race dominated media coverage about him before he became president. In 2004, he made headlines for becoming only the third African-American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction. In the 2008 presidential campaign, news stories questioned whether he could connect with African-American voters because he was born to a white Kansan mother and a Black Kenyan father, neither connected to Blacks in America.

When Obama became the first Black president, mainstream media portrayed his historic accomplishment as a symbol of a post-racial, colorblind America. That framing is contrary to the experience of millions of African-Americans and other people of color beset by conscious and unconscious bias daily in this country.

As Obama’s first term nears its end, the impact of his race in mainstream media coverage remains unclear.

At times, his blackness may have been an advantage in news reports about him, say political experts consulted by the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. In other cases, however, his race has been a distinct disadvantage, marginalizing him in ways that his presidential campaign rivals, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a member of a religious minority, haven’t been.

“During the presidential campaign, he was probably treated better than other candidates in the mainstream press because of the historical nature of his candidacy,” says Michael R. Wenger, senior research fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington. “After his election, I think the media tried very hard to make the case that we’re in a post-racial society.”

Wenger, author of the soon to be released book, My Black Family, My White Privilege: A White Man’s Journey Through the Nation’s Racial Minefield, says that notion is misleading because institutional racism didn’t disappear when Obama became president. He also takes issue with the media covering extravagant claims by conservative Republicans about Obama.

Wenger says no president’s religious beliefs have been questioned to the extent that Obama’s have, in the sense that because Obama has Black Kenyan heritage, people have accused him of lying about being a mainline Protestant like the majority of Americans. While the mainstream media may not have started rumors about Obama’s religious background, they helped to spread them, he says.

Herb Tyson, a Democratic government relations consultant in Washington, agrees.

“First of all, they [the media] don’t challenge the reports under the guise of being fair and balanced,” he says. Outrageous claims about Obama have been reported as “valid policy arguments as opposed to treating it as an absurdity,” he adds.

Mainstream news outlets should not only treat baseless gossip about the president as just that but should also cite the hypocrisy of some attacks against Obama, Tyson says. For example, he notes conservatives’ allegations that Obama wasn’t born in the United States. He says the media should have noted that some Republicans supported changing the U.S. Constitution to allow non-citizens to run for president when Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California.

Moreover, the media devoted little coverage in 2008 to the fact that McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone while some reports suggested that Obama is an Arab. Exposing such discrepancies makes it easier for the public to see how Obama’s race often spurs attacks against him.

“It doesn’t make sense for anyone to portray the president as non-American,” Tyson says. “You can disagree with a president, but never before has a president been called non-American. It’s also hard for me to buy into the questions about his Christianity because of the Jeremiah Wright scandal. Is he a Christian, or is he a Muslim? How can he be both?”

A video of the Rev. Wright, Obama’s former pastor, was circulated during the 2008 presidential race and threatened to knock Obama’s campaign off course. In a sermon at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ in April 2003, Wright used the phrase “God Damn America” three times. Conservatives suggested that the video indicated Obama wasn’t a patriot.

“The White part of him is never given credit,” Tyson says. “No one says that makes him a patriot, he’s a good American. It’s always he’s the Kenyan.”

Tyson says “Jack Kennedy was the first Catholic president, and his family came from Ireland. He was broadly more accepted than Obama.” Romney’s Mormonism hasn’t overshadowed his campaign, Tyson says, because Mormonism has been “passed off as a subset of Protestantism. . . . Romney looks presidential. He looks like a WASP.”

Pollster Ron Lester says the mainstream media has covered Obama-related controversies adequately. “When you have people like Donald Trump who are making these kinds of allegations, they’re going to be covered,” Lester says. “I don’t think the coverage was excessive. I think it was pretty fair and balanced.”

Lester says Obama has transcended race by not making it the focal point of his political campaigns. “I think he’s done an excellent job making his case and allowing the voters to evaluate him on the merits.”

Obama may not have placed his racial background front and center in his political campaigns, but the media have often highlighted it.

On the 2010 census, Obama declared himself Black, spurring widespread news attention. As recently as last month, the media reported on Obama’s maternal link to a slave ancestor. News reports about his wife, Michelle, have also explored her family’s ties to slavery. Collectively, the number of stories about Obama’s racial background far outweigh those penned Romney’s Mormon background.

When journalists aren’t reporting about Obama’s race, they’re quoting foes’ innuendoes about it, Tyson says. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who ended his presidential campaign in May, famously referred to Obama as the “food stamp president,” a label with racial overtones that was widely circulated in the media.

Wenger says conservatives have largely characterized the president as a radical. Some have accused Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. of failing to take action against the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation because two of its members, seen on video, were accused of trying to discourage some people from voting at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008.

“He is very much in the mainstream of the Democratic Party,” Wenger says of Obama. “Most would not consider him to be very left of center. Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, he’s been stamped somehow as otherwise. I think some members of the Republican Party have been unscrupulous in trying to further that.”

Nadra Kareem Nittle writes media critiques for the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. Her reports and other media critiques are available at www.mije.org/mmcsi and can be republished free of charge. For more information, please contact Elisabeth Pinio at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 510-891-9202.

 

Family Awaits Justice in Police Killing of 20-Year-Old

August 26, 2012

Family Awaits Justice in Police Killing of 20-Year-Old 

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Louisiana Weekly

wendellallen

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - More than five months after a 20-year-old man was gunned down by a member of the New Orleans Police Department while standing on a staircase in his Gentilly home on Prentiss Street, a New Orleans family is still seeking answers and justice.

The family of Wendell Allen said early last week that it was frustrated that the officer who shot the 20-year-old unarmed man has changed his mind about pleading guilty to negligent homicide.

FOX 8 News was the first news outlet to report that the plea agreement was in jeopardy after District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro made an appearance on FOX 8’s morning news.

Officer Joshua Colclough was to receive a five-year prison sentence in exchange for his guilty plea to negligent homicide.

“I am aware that he ultimately rejected the plea offer, and he rejected it because he believes he did not even commit the crime of negligent homicide,” said Police Association of New Orleans attorney Eric Hessler.

Colclough, 28, was indicted  on one count of manslaughter. After a grand jury returned an indictment, the Orleans Parish D.A. said he would invoke a firearms sentencing provision that would mean a minimum 20-year sentence if Colclough is convicted.

Although prosecutors sought a $1 million bond, Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Keva Landrum-Johnson set bond for Colclough at $300,000 and issued a warrant for his arrest.

Colclough’s attorney, Pat Fanning, told the local daily paper that he was not pleased with the D.A.’s decision to invoke the firearms sentencing provision.

“Frankly, if they do that, that is an abuse of the statute,” Fanning said. “The statute contemplates a criminal committing an intentional criminal act and choosing to use a firearm, as opposed to a police officer who not only carries a gun in the line of duty, but is required to as a condition of his employment.”

Hessler said Colclough wants to be able to present his evidence to the court. “We fully support his decision to present his evidence and have the opportunity to go to trial… He is confident that he committed no crime,” Hessler continued.

“The family naturally is disappointed,” attorney Lon Burns, who represents the Allen family and is himself a former Orleans Parish prosecutor, told FOX 8 News. before the indictment on manslaughter.

Burns and Allen’s family members met with the district attorney after the plea deal was not accepted.

“The biggest thing… with the officer deciding not to plead guilty is that the family thought they were going to finally be able to start the process of closure, but by the officer again deciding that he didn’t want to plead guilty, it broke the heart of the family yet again,” Burns stated.

Now prosecutors must decide whether to bring formal charges against Colclough.

“Before the end of this week we will take some action with regard to this matter,” Cannizzaro told FOX 8 Wednesday morning.

FOX 8 legal analyst Joe Raspanti said Colclough is taking a big gamble.

“It’s like the little boy who’s holding your coat, you know. You go fight, you can win, but it’s you… he’s going to be the one doing the time, not them,” Raspanti said.

“Unfortunately there’s indications that the D.A. may pursue second-degree murder, which is clearly not appropriate as evidence of the fact of the offer to plea to negligent homicide,” said Hessler.

“And if he gets found guilty of manslaughter or second-degree murder, he’s going to go to jail for a lot longer than five years,” Raspanti stated.

Wendell Allen was gunned down by Officer Joshua Colclough on March 7, less than a week after another 20-year-old Black man, Justin Sipp, was fatally wounded by cops while on his way to work at 5:30 p.m. While investigators said Sipp and his older brother, Earl, who was shot in the leg were armed, NOPD Superintendent Ronal Serpas confirmed that Wendell Allen was not armed and was shirtless when he encountered Colclough.

NOPD Superintendent Ronal Serpas said before the case was turned over to prosecutors that his department did a thorough and unbiased investigation into the shooting.

“From there, really we’re a spectator like everybody else, waiting to see how the criminal justice system works its way through,” Serpas said.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu said the way in which the investigation has been handled speaks to the changing culture at the NOPD.

“If something untoward happens and there’s a question about it, there’s going to be an open and transparent process that will lead to and lead through the legal processes,” said Landrieu.

Before last week’s indictment, the Allen family’s attorney said his clients were in a holding pattern, watching and working to make the wheels of justice continue to turn. “We’ll sit back and allow the district attorney to do his job,” Burns said.

NOPD Superintendent Ronal Serpas said Thursday that Officer Colclough would be immediately placed on emergency suspension without pay until the Public Integrity Bureau reviews Colclough’s case.

“As I’ve said publicly many times, the loss of life is tragic and affects us all,” Serpas said in a statement Thursday, “Our investigators conducted a fair, thorough and transparent investigation into the death of Wendell Allen. Once we had all the facts available to us, we turned them over to the District Attorney’s Office.”

“This is why we need a complete restructuring of the NOPD,” the Rev. Raymond Brown, president and founder of National Action Now, told The Louisiana Weekly. “As things stand now, the mayor has his tentacles in everything and is trying to control anything and everything that happens in this city. He is not committed to changing New Orleans for the better; he simply wants to call the shots and control the damage done to his public image.

“We need to let the federal government know that we do not trust this mayor, city council or police chief to turn around the NOPD,” Brown continued. “It is the people who suffer the most when police break the rules and it is the people who must be the force behind reforming the police department.”

“I think it was a mistake to offer Officer Justin Colclough a five-year deal for the murder of Wendell Allen in the first place,” New Orleans businessman Ramessu Merriamen Aha told The Louisiana Weekly. “Five years for taking the life of an innocent 20-year-old with his whole life ahead of him? Oh no.

That’s beyond criminal.

“Officer Colclough needs to spend a very long time in jail paying for the life he took and the many hopes and dreams he shattered with his NOPD-issued handgun.

“How the Department of Justice could expect this police department and City Hall to turn things around in four years without major input from civilians and the federal government is beyond me.”

A court date has not been set for this case.

“Code Red” Panelists Prepare for 2012 Election by Alexis Taylor and Ashley Cox

August 26, 2012

“Code Red” Panelists Prepare for 2012 Election
By Alexis Taylor and Ashley Cox

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro American Newspapers
jamal-harrison bryant
Dr. Jamal-Harrison Bryant

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - It’s Friday evening. The air is cool and the sky is clear. A group of well-dressed men and women gather at Empowerment Temple in West Baltimore at an event designed to spur people to register and vote in the upcoming election and those that will follow.

Inside the church, a panel of distinguished guests has the audience's full attention. CNN commentator Roland Martin asked the panel--including the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, former Rep. John Conyers, BET commentator Jeff Johnson, Bishop Vashti McKenzie and several others--what they perceived to be the biggest problem among Blacks and how that problem could be resolved.

The debate moved from one point to another. Jackson got a standing ovation after he claimed that the law does not work in favor of African-Americans. “When Black kills White, its jail time, when White kills Black, its riot time and when Black kills Black, its Miller time.," Jackson said.

Another panelist member said that with the current generation, main stream hip hop is pushing death through ITunes. McKenzie said that women have to be, “sick and tired of being sick and tired” and that if women want to change the negative portrayals of them in the media, then they must stop funding it. Johnson made all the Black men in the room stand. He asked them to look around at each other and emphasized that there was significance to this symbolism. Decades ago, “Black men were in uniform,” he said, adding that Black men used to be trained to stand in the front line in their communities.

“Whether it was Black folks or White folks, it said that our lives matter and men are going to defend the lives of those in the community,” Johnson said.

The three day event, which started Aug. 16, was entitled "Code Red: It’s A State of Emergency." The goal was to inform, urge voters to get out on Election Day and also to deputize others to register voters.

"We...want to put the power back into the hands of the people,” said Dr. Jamal Bryant, founder and pastor of Empowerment Temple, before the event. "Attendees can then go back home and register the people in their communities, in their homes, and in their fraternities and sororities. It's an incredible opportunity that we've not taken advantage of. "

Bryant says the idea for the conference was sparked a few months ago when he saw an African-American pastor and legislator, Del. Emmett C. Burns (D-Baltimore County), stating in national news that he would be staying home on Election Day because of President Obama’s stance on gay marriage.

“With the church being nonpartisan, you can vote for anybody, but to not participate in the democratic process at all would be a very dangerous precedent,” said Bryant.

Burns, pastor of The Rising Sun Baptist Church in Woodlawn, Md., later told the AFRO he changed his mind and would be casting a ballot on Nov. 6 because not doing so “would be the wrong thing to do.”

Day one of the Code Red conference focused on will focus on the lack of a common Black agenda, something Bryant says every group of Americans except African-Americans have.

"Where do we want to see the Black community in four years? What are we asking the next president to do, whether it's President Obama or Romney,” said Bryant.

“I want to see an investigation into how the prison system has become the new plantation. We need to turn that around. I'd like to see more funding for our public schools and an economic plan that pushes entrepreneurship and investment. I want our young people who are at the lowest economic stratus to still have an opportunity to compete on a global scale.

“We need to be spending the night at the polls so that our voices are heard and our agenda is met,” he said.

Attendees of Friday's session walked away prepared to register voters.

"This isn't just about the presidential election this year,” said Marvin Randolph , senior vice president of campaigns for the NAACP, in an interview. “Across this nation, mayors are being elected, sheriffs and police commissioners will be appointed...Many things in our communities are affected by the ballot box. The Black church has always been a very important part of both educating African-American people about voting and making sure people understand what's at stake.”

Civil rights organizations across the country are predicting that the wave of new voter I.D. laws could have a devastating effect on the next election. According to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, 5 million voters stand to become disenfranchised on Election Day due to laws that have changed requirements to cast a ballot and registration periods.

Seven states, are requiring voters to show a state-issued I.D. in order to vote, which poses a problem for out-of-state college students. The report also shows that 13 states have introduced legislation to end same-day registration and voting. In Alabama, Kansas, and Tennessee, proof of citizenship is now required in order to vote, meaning voters will have to show a document, like a birth certificate, before receiving a ballot.

After several standing ovations and heated debated between the panelists, the evening ended with a couple of selection from a choir and a benediction from Bryant. The forum can be viewed on the Empowerment Temple website. Bryant left the audience with something to think about as they prepared to exit his church.

“We are in a crisis," he said. "Sound the alarms!”

South Africa Labor Killings Hearken to Apartheid Era

August 20, 2012

South Africa Labor Killings Hearken to Apartheid Era

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from GIN

cyril ramaphosa-1

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Tension continues to seethe at a South African platinum mine where striking workers were shot point-blank last week in the worst case of government-sponsored violence since the apartheid era in 1994.

On Aug. 16, 34 people were killed when police opened fire on 3000 striking workers, some of them armed, after a week of violent protests. Another 10 people, including a shop steward from the National Union of Mineworkers, had by then been killed in violent protests at the mine.

The strike was started by rock-drill operators at the Marikana platinum-mining complex of UK-based Lonmin Plc, demanding pay raises from $648 to $1,500 a month (the minimum monthly wage for farmwork).

"You work so very hard for very little pay. It is almost like death," said a striking miner speaking to the press, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Thulani.

Ironically, among the company’s non-voting executive directors is the former secretary of the Africa National Congress, now billionaire, Cyril Ramaphosa. As strike talks broke down and violence loomed, ANC leader Jacob Zuma, Ramaphosa and others were out of town.

The shootings, which went viral on the internet, rocked the nation back on its heels. Pres. Zuma said the dead would be officially mourned for seven days. Nonetheless, the company ordered workers to return to their jobs by Aug. 20 or be terminated.

"Employees could be dismissed if they fail to heed the final ultimatum," warned Ian P. Farmer, Lonmin’s CEO.

But miners say they will press on with their demands, and called the order to return to work "an insult" to colleagues who were gunned down by police.

"Expecting us to go back is like an insult. Many of our friends and colleagues are dead, then they expect us to resume work. Never," said worker Zachariah Mbewu in a press interview.

Flags will be lowered to half mast and an official day for nationwide memorial services held on Thursday.

Meanwhile, former ANC youth leader Julius Malema attended a miners rally where he backed the call for higher pay and denounced Pres. Zuma for traveling to Mozambique as the crisis unfolded President Jacob Zuma has presided over the "massacre of the people of South Africa,” Malema said. “How can he call on people to mourn those he has killed? He must step down." 

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