FAMU Students Pledge Against Hazing
By Terrika Mitchell

FAMU SGA President Breyon Love (left) and Vice President Troy Harris (right).

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Capital Outlook

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - More than 3,400 Florida AM students have signed an anti-hazing form in an effort to take a stand against hazing.

The signing was a result of the Nov. 19 death of FAMU Drum Major Robert Champion, who the Orange County Sheriff’s Office believes died as a result of hazing.

The student anti-hazing form is a contractual agreement between organizations, students and other members of the university stating what the punishment for participating in any form of hazing will be on every level. The consequences of participating range from suspension or expulsion from the school to suspension from the Office of Student Activities for organizations, according to Student Government Association Surgeon General Tom Diamond II.

“With the help of SGA, in conjunction with the Office of Student Activities, it was mandatory that every organization on campus and student club come to the anti-hazing forum if they want to participate any longer at Florida A&M University,” Diamond said. “At our anti-hazing forum, we had a little over 4,000 students attend and say to the world and the media that ‘we are actively making progress to rid out hazing on any level here at the university.’”

Administrators, faculty and student leaders stressed the intolerance policy on what FAMU President James H. Ammons referred to as a pattern of destructive behavior from our students at the university.

The pledge was a charge initiated by Student Government Association President Breyon Love.

“Right now, it is up to us to recommit ourselves as Rattlers on the highest of seven hills to end hazing and become an example for a positive change across America,” Love told the audience.

Copies of the pledge are available on the SGA website at www.famu.edu\sga.

“Students can turn the forms in at the Office of Student Activities or SGA (Chambers),” he said. “As long as we get it in to some university official, (SGA) will take care of it from there.”

The forum and signings took place Dec. 5. On Dec. 7, Florida A&M University President James H. Ammons had the opportunity to briefly present to Board of Trustee (BOT) members; an opportunity he took to shed light on the anti-hazing effort involving all FAMU students.

“There is a culture of silence, a bell of secrecy,” he opened. “We have to strategically use this information to move forward and put our students in positions where they make the right choices at the right time. We have to be in control and take away the opportunity for this kind of thing to happen.”

The students’ stand against hazing practices does not only align with the administration’s efforts, but with the efforts of Champion’s family as well.

Champion’s parents are planning to initiate an anti-hazing hotline.

“This continues to be a sad time for the entire FAMU community, but each day, I see that Robert Champion’s death was not in vain,” said Dr. Julian E. White, newly-reinstated director of bands. “A dialogue of healing has begun, and I’m encouraged to see students, faculty, alumni, administrators and trustees taking steps to get rid of hazing. Robert’s parents are starting a hazing hot line. I ask people to continue praying for the Champions and for the Rattler Nation.”

Jobs Report: African-Americans Lose While Others Gain
By Julianne Malveaux

News Analysis

Jobs line.

Thousands lined up to apply for positions at the Congressional Black Caucus' "Jobs for the People Initiative" last summer.  

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The unemployment rate is falling for the third month in a row and in December about 200,000 private sector jobs were created. The monthly unemployment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that unemployment has declined by six tenths of a percentage point since August. Already, some economists are saying we can expect another decline next month.  

I am surprised, however, at the very tepid language that the Employment Situation report uses to describe the increase in African-American unemployment. A rise of .3 percent among African-Americans, the second rise in as many months, is described as having “changed little”. It has changed enough so that while some are celebrating gains, African-Americans are losing. Indeed, the African American unemployment rate increased from 15.5 to 15.8 percent.

Black women, it turns out, are losing more than most. While the unemployment rate for adult African-American women, at 13.9 percent, is still lower than the male rate of 15.7 percent, African American men gained jobs this year, while African-American women lost them. Why? Nearly one in four (23 percent) African-American women works for government, and federal, state, and local governments are releasing workers, not hiring them. And while some governments will attempt to get the economy moving by creating construction and redevelopment opportunities for men, teachers, nurses and social workers, mostly women, are walking on eggshells in fear of job losses. Even when we know that smaller classroom size gives a better yield in terms of educational results, school districts are being forced to shoehorn another student or two into already-crowded classrooms because of cost issues.

The data that comes from the Employment Situation report is, probably much lower than the reality of African- American unemployment. When we include those marginally attached to the labor force (stopped looking, etc.), as well as those part time workers that want full time work, the unemployment rate for the total population is not 8.5 percent, but 15.2 percent. And the estimate of the African-American unemployment rate would be not 15.8 percent, but a whopping 28.3 percent. More facts – though the number of officially unemployed people is dropping, it is still high enough with 13.1 million actively looking for word and not finding it. And the average person has been out of work for 40.8 weeks, six weeks longer than a year ago. The headlines blaze optimism, the reality is different.

Add to this a recent report that says that the wealth gap between Congress and their constituents is growing. In 1984, the average member of Congress had wealth of $280,000, excluding home equity. In the twenty years since 1984, Congressional wealth grew by two and a half times, to $725,000. Again, this doesn’t include home equity. In contrast, the median wealth of an American family actually dropped slightly to around $20,500, again, not including home equity. It is very likely that when home equity is added, the gap is even larger.

This wealth gap perhaps explains why Congressional representatives are more interested in tax cuts than in creating jobs. It explains, perhaps, why Republicans so resisted President Obama’s plan to extend the Social Security tax cut and also to extend unemployment rate insurance. Congress is operating in their own self-interest, they aren’t thinking about their jobless and economically challenged constituents.

 If these members of Congress got calls from bill collectors, lived with less money than month, had to deny their children a new pair of shoes or an after-school trip because of dollars, or actually had to visit a grocery store on a budget, they might have not so hesitated before they eventually capitulated to President Obama’s determination. Still the growing wealth gap perhaps explains why so few are alarmed at some of the unemployment rate data.

To be sure, it is exciting to see unemployment rates drop, even slightly. It suggests that some of the Obama policies are working. But someone has to explain why these policies aren’t working for African-Americans, especially for African American women. If this trend continues, the Obama Administration will have to consider targeting some relief to those who aren’t benefitting from the unemployment downturn. Some analysts, myself included, have been advocating programs targeted toward the inner city, toward service employment, toward unemployed youth, for quite some time. The unemployment rate gap, the fact that there are clear winners, and also clear losers in the current changes, make targeted employment programs far more imperative.

Julianne Malveaux is an economist and president of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, NC.

NAACP Blasts Gingrich Over Food Stamps Remark
Former Speaker Says His Target is Liberal Policies

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro American Newspapers

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - NAACP President Benjamin Jealous assailed GOP presidential hopeful and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for what he labeled “inaccurate, divisive” comments about Blacks and food stamps. Gingrich, in remarks delivered in New Hampshire where he is trying to jumpstart his presidential campaign, said, “If the N.A.A.C.P. invites me, I’ll go to their convention, talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.”

The statement came during a campaign stop in his drive to win the New Hampshire primary. He told reporters if he were the Republican nominee, he would run against President Obama in part by visiting minority communities to pitch his supply-side recipe for job creation.

“It is a shame that the former Speaker feels that these types of inaccurate, divisive statements are in any way helpful to our country,” said Jealous. “The majority of people using food stamps are not African-American, and most people using food stamps have a job.”

“We invited Speaker Gingrich to attend our annual convention several times when he was Speaker of the House, but he declined to join us,” Jealous continued. “If he is invited again, I hope that he would come, with the intention to unite rather than divide.”

The Gingrich remarks about food stamps “is problematic on several fronts, most importantly because he gets his facts wrong," Jealous said. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture date, more Whites than Blacks receive food-stamp assistance. Whites accounted for 34.4 percent of food-stamp recipients in 2009, compared to Blacks who accounted for 21.4 percent of recipients, according to an October 2010 USDA report.

Gingrich rebutted critics of his remarks Jan. 6, saying that his campaign is targeting the Obama administration and liberal policies. "If you talk openly and honestly about the failure of liberal institutions and the way that they hurt the poor, there becomes a sudden frenzy of a herd of people running over screaming racism, racism."

 

January 8, 2012

Special Report

Haiti: Seven Places Where the Earthquake Money Did and Did Not Go

By Bill Quigley and Amber Ramanauskas 

Despite billions of dollars in relief and recovery aid donated to help Haitian earthquake victims, tent camps for the homeless, similar to this one, are still a common site nearly two years later. 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Haiti, a close neighbor of the US with over nine million people, was devastated by earthquake on January 12, 2010. Hundreds of thousands were killed and many more wounded. 

The UN estimated international donors gave Haiti over $1.6 billion in relief aid since the earthquake (about $155 per Haitian) and over $2 billion in recovery aid (about $173 per Haitian) over the last two years.

Yet Haiti looks like the earthquake happened two months ago, not two years. Over half a million people remain homeless in hundreds of informal camps, most of the tons of debris from destroyed buildings still lay where it fell, and cholera, a preventable disease, was introduced into the country and is now an epidemic killing thousands and sickening hundreds of thousands more.  

It turns out that almost none of the money that the general public thought was going to Haiti actually went directly to Haiti. The international community chose to bypass the Haitian people, Haitian non-governmental organizations and the government of Haiti. Funds were instead diverted to other governments, international NGOs, and private companies.   

Despite this near total lack of control of the money by Haitians, if history is an indication, it is quite likely that the failures will ultimately be blamed on the Haitians themselves in a “blame the victim” reaction.   

Haitians ask the same question as many around the world: “Where did the money go?” Here are seven places where the earthquake money did and did not go:

(1)   The largest single recipient of US earthquake money was the U.S. government.  The same holds true for donations by other countries.

Right after the earthquake, the US allocated $379 million in aid and sent in 5,000 troops.  The Associated Press discovered that of the $379 million in initial U.S. money promised for Haiti, most was not really money going directly, or in some cases even indirectly, to Haiti.  They documented in January 2010 that 33 cents of each of these U.S. dollars for Haiti was actually given directly back to the U.S. to reimburse ourselves for sending in our military. Forty two cents of each dollar went to private and public non-governmental organizations like Save the Children, the UN World Food Program and the Pan American Health Organization.  Hardly any went directly to Haitians or their government.

The overall $1.6 billion allocated for relief by the U.S. was spent much the same way according to an August 2010 report by the U.S. Congressional Research Office: $655 million was reimbursed to the Department of Defense; $220 million to Department of Health and Human Services to provide grants to individual US states to cover services for Haitian evacuees; $350 million to USAID disaster assistance; $150 million to the US Department of Agriculture for emergency food assistance; $15 million to the Department of Homeland Security for immigration fees, and so on.

International assistance followed the same pattern.  The UN Special Envoy for Haiti reported that of the $2.4 billion in humanitarian funding, 34 percent was provided back to the donor’s own civil and military entities for disaster response, 28 percent was given to UN agencies and non-governmental agencies (NGOs) for specific UN projects, 26 percent was given to private contractors and other NGOs, 6 percent was provided as in-kind services to recipients, 5 percent to the international and national Red Cross societies, 1 percent was provided to the government of Haiti, four tenths of one percent of the funds went to Haitian NGOs. 

(2)  Only 1 percent of the money went to the Haitian government. 

Less than a penny of each dollar of U.S. aid went to the government of Haiti, according to the Associated Press. The same is true with other international donors. The Haitian government was completely bypassed in the relief effort by the U.S. and the international community.   

(3)  Extremely little went to Haitian companies or Haitian non-governmental organizations. 

The Center for Economic and Policy Research, the absolute best source for accurate information on this issue, analyzed all the 1,490 contracts awarded by the U.S. government after the January 2010 earthquake until April 2011 and found only 23 contracts went to Haitian companies. Overall, the U.S. had awarded $194 million to contractors, $4.8 million to the 23 Haitian companies, about 2.5 percent of the total. On the other hand, contractors from the Washington DC area received $76 million or 39.4 percent of the total. As noted above, the UN documented that only four tenths of 1 percent of international aid went to Haitian NGOs.

In fact Haitians had a hard time even getting into international aid meetings. Refugees International reported that locals were having a hard time even getting access to the international aid operational meetings inside the UN compound.  “Haitian groups are either unaware of the meetings, do not have proper photo-ID passes for entry, or do not have the staff capacity to spend long hours at the compound.”  Others reported that most of these international aid coordination meetings were not even being translated into Creole, the language of the majority of the people of Haiti.

(4)  A large percentage of the money went to international aid agencies, and big well- connected non-governmental organizations (NGOs). 

The American Red Cross received over $486 million in donations for Haiti.  It says two-thirds of the money has been contracted to relief and recovery efforts though specific details are difficult to come by. The CEO of American Red Cross has a salary of over $500,000 per year.

Look at the $8.6 million joint contract between the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) with the private company CHF for debris removal in Port au Prince.  CHF is a politically well-connected international development company with annual budget of over $200 million whose CEO was paid $451,813 in 2009.  

CHF’s connection to Republicans and Democrats is illustrated by its board secretary, Lauri Fitz-Pegado, a partner with the Livingston Group LLC. The Livingston Group is headed by the former Republican Speaker-designate for the 106^th Congress, Bob Livingston, doing lobbying and government relations. Ms. Fitz-Pegado, who apparently works the other side of the aisle, was appointed by President Clinton to serve in the Department of Commerce and served as a member of the foreign policy expert advisor team on the Obama for President Campaign.  CHF “works in Haiti out of two spacious mansions in Port au Prince and maintains a fleet of brand new vehicles” according to Rolling Stone.

Rolling Stone, in an excellent article by Janet Reitman, reported on another earthquake contract, a $1.5 million contract to the NY based consulting firm Dalberg Global Development Advisors. The article found Dalberg’s team “had never lived overseas, didn’t have any disaster experience or background in urban planning… never carried out any program activities on the ground…” and only one of them spoke French.  USAID reviewed their work and found that “it became clear that these people may not have even gotten out of their SUVs.”

Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton announced a fundraising venture for Haiti on January 16, 2010.  As of October 2011, the fund had received $54 million in donations. It has partnered with several Haitian and international organizations. Though most of its work appears to be admirable, it has donated $2 million to the construction of a Haitian $29 million for-profit luxury hotel. 

“The NGOs still have something to respond to about their accountability, because there is a lot of cash out there,” according to Nigel Fisher, the UN’s chief humanitarian officer in Haiti.  “What about the $1.5 to $2 billion that the Red Cross and NGOs got from ordinary people, and matched by governments? What’s happened to that?  And that’s where it’s very difficult to trace those funds.”

(5)  Some money went to for profit companies whose business is disasters. 

Less than a month after the quake hit, the US Ambassador Kenneth Merten sent a cable titled, “THE GOLD RUSH IS ON”, as part of his situation report to Washington.  In this February 1, 2010 document, made public by The Nation, Haiti Liberte and Wikileaks, Ambassador Merten reported the President of Haiti met with former General Wesley Clark for a sales presentation for a Miami-based company that builds foam core houses.

Capitalizing on the disaster, Lewis Lucke, a high ranking USAID relief coordinator, met twice in his USAID capacity with the Haitian Prime Minister immediately after the quake. He then quit the agency and was hired for $30,000 a month by a Florida corporation Ashbritt (known already for its big no bid Katrina grants) and a prosperous Haitian partner to lobby for disaster contracts.  Locke said “it became clear to us that if it was handled correctly, the earthquake represented as much an opportunity as it did a calamity…”  Ashbritt and its Haitian partner were soon granted a $10 million no bid contract. Lucke said he was instrumental in securing another $10 million contract from the World Bank and another smaller one from CHF International before their relationship ended.

(6)  A fair amount of the pledged money has never been actually put up. 

The international community decided it was not going to allow the Haiti government to direct the relief and recovery funds and insisted that two institutions be set up to approve plans and spending for the reconstruction funds going to Haiti.  The first was the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) and the second is the Haiti Reconstruction Fund (HRF).  

In March 2010, UN countries pledged $5.3 billion over two years and a total of $9.9 billion over three years in a conference March 2010.  The money was to be deposited with the World Bank and distributed by the IHRC.  The IHRC was co-chaired by Bill Clinton and the Haitian Prime Minister.  By July 2010, Bill Clinton reported only 10 percent of the pledges had been given to the IHRC.

(7)  A lot of the money which was put up has not yet been spent. 

Nearly two years after the quake, less than 1 percent of the $412 million in U.S. funds specifically allocated for infrastructure reconstruction activities in Haiti had been spent by USAID and the US State Department and only 12 percent has even been obligated according to a November 2011 report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The performance of the two international commissions, the IHRC and the HRF has also been poor. The Miami Herald noted that as of July 2011, the $3.2 billion in projects approved by the IHRC only five had been completed for a total of $84 million.  The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), which was severely criticized by Haitians and others from its beginning, has been effectively suspended since its mandate ended at the end of October 2011. The Haiti Reconstruction Fund was set up to work in tandem with the IHRC, so while its partner is suspended, it is not clear how it can move forward.

What to do:

The effort so far has not been based a respectful partnership between Haitians and the international community. The actions of the donor countries and the NGOs and international agencies have not been transparent so that Haitians or others can track the money and see how it has been spent.  Without transparency and a respectful partnership, the Haitian people cannot hold anyone accountable for what has happened in their country. That has to change.

The UN Special Envoy to Haiti suggests the generous instincts of people around the world must be channeled by international actors and institutions in a way that assists in the creation of a “robust public sector and a healthy private sector.”  Instead of giving the money to intermediaries, funds should be directed as much as possible to Haitian public and private institutions. A “Haiti First” policy could strengthen public systems, promote accountability, and create jobs and build skills among the Haitian people. 

Respect, transparency and accountability are the building blocks for human rights.  Haitians deserve to know where the money has gone, what the plans are for the money still left, and to be partners in the decision-making for what is to come. 

After all, these are the people who will be solving the problems when the post-earthquake relief money is gone.

Bill Quigley teaches at Loyola University New Orleans. He is the associate legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and volunteers with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.  Amber Ramanauskas is a lawyer and human rights researcher.  A more detailed version of this article with full sources is available.  Bill can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..  Amber can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..