By Joe Biden

There is injustice in America. There is discrimination. There is a legacy of racism and inequality that lives still in our institutions, our laws, and in too many people’s hearts that makes it harder for Black people to succeed. These are facts in the United States of America in 2020, and we must all do more to move our nation closer to the ideals inlaid at our founding—that all women and men are created equal.

This year has also brought us too many examples of the dangers Black people can face in the course of going about their lives. With grieving hearts, we learned to say the names of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and many more. I’ve spent time with the families of George Floyd and Jacob Blake, sharing their grief and anger and seeing the incredible resilience of communities that for too long have had a knee on their neck. And I was inspired by their commitment to turn their pain into purpose.

Photo by Adam Schultz / Biden for President

Today, there are Americans all across this country, especially Black Americans, who are exhausted and hurting. Who are disappointed by a system that never seems to deliver for your communities. Who are sick and tired of a cycle where, in good times, Black communities lag behind, in bad times they get hit first and hardest, and in recovery, they take the longest to bounce back.

We’re in the midst of four simultaneous crises—a pandemic that has claimed more than 200,000 lives, a disproportionate number of whom were Black; an economic crash that has hit Black workers and Black business owners especially hard; a long overdue reckoning on racial justice; and a climate crisis that is already hurting Black and Brown communities the most.

It is our job to do everything in our power to rip out systemic racism across our society, root and branch. It will be hard work in any case. But we will not succeed without a leader who understands our history and is ready to grapple with our challenges.

Photo by Adam Schultz / Biden for President

President Trump wants to paper over the living wound of racism. He’s issued Executive Orders and established a new national commission designed to whitewash our history—and deny the daily reality of being Black in America. He actively appeals to white supremacists and fans the flames of hatred and division in our country, because he thinks it benefits him politically. He ignores the most basic job of every president: the duty to care for all of us, not just those who voted for him.

It’s the polar opposite of what I will do as president. I was proud to serve for eight years alongside President Obama. I watched up close how he filled the Oval Office with dignity and compassion for others. And, together with Senator Kamala Harris as my vice president, we will restore honor, integrity, and competence to the White House.

We will build an administration that looks like America, including nominating the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

We will work to unite the country around solutions that will push our country forward, and most importantly, I will listen to those impacted by the long-standing inequities in our system—especially Black Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans.

Photo by Adam Schultz / Biden for President

That’s how we will work together to deliver real, lasting change. Criminal justice and policing reforms, but also economic opportunity and financial stability. Building wealth for families of color and passing it down. Closing the racial wealth gap is one of the most powerful ways we can build real equity in our society, and it’s going to require a full-court press. That’s what my Lift Every Voice plan is—a comprehensive agenda to take on the range of issues that drive inequality in Black America.

We’ll tackle student debt and invest more in our HBCUs, so higher education is a pathway to wealth and opportunity instead of to debt that prevents you from owning a home or starting a small business.

My plan will empower Black-owned small businesses, with short-term relief to get you through this tough time and long-term investments to help you build back better — with access to new capital and financing and government contracts.

Critically, we’re going to tackle the racial homeownership gap head on. There is no greater vehicle for wealth creation than homeownership. That’s why my plan will restore the steps President Obama and I took toward eradicating housing discrimination, including redlining; end racial bias in how we judge which families are credit-worthy; and provide a $15,000 down payment tax credit to help millions of young Black families buy their first home.

Photo by Adam Schultz / Biden for President

We’ll fix our upside-down tax system to finally reward work, not wealth. Trump thinks billionaires deserve more tax cuts. But under my plan, I’ll make sure the super wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share, while ensuring that no one making less than $400,000 a year sees their taxes go up.

And I’m going to fight like hell to defend your family’s health care, just like I would my own. Right now, in the midst of a pandemic, Donald Trump is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Obamacare—all of it. He wants to overturn the very law that expanded coverage to an additional 3 million Black Americans. If he succeeds, more than 20 million Americans will lose their coverage, and more than 100 million people with preexisting conditions will no longer be protected against their insurance companies charging them more, or denying them coverage all together.

I’ll defend Obamacare and build on it—adding a public option that will automatically enroll 4 million more people that Republicans shut out by refusing to expand Medicaid in their states. We’re going to get to universal coverage and lower health care costs. We’re going to give working families a bigger subsidy to lower their premiums. And we’re going to take on pharmaceutical companies, bringing down the cost of your prescription drugs by 60 percent.

As my friend John Lewis used his final words to remind us: “Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America.” We cannot be tired. We cannot be hopeless. The choice in this election couldn’t be more stark, and we must vote for the future we want for every single one of our children. I’m ready to fight for you and your families, and I hope to earn your vote.

By The Florida Courier Staff

One of America’s leading Black conservative political action committee has instituted a national effort to help Black-owned businesses earn some of the billions of dollars spent during America’s political campaigns as the 2020 election year hits the home stretch.

BlakPAC, a federally-registered “Super PAC” (political action committee), is spearheading an initiative urging all candidates, political parties, political action committees, and donors to take “The Art Fletcher Pledge” to commit to spending ten percent of their funding, revenues, or both with Black-owned and businesses and financial institutions.

Art Fletcher

Billions spent

According to the Center for Responsive Politics website at opensecrets.com, which tracks campaign funding and expenditures, the 2020 presidential candidates have raised more than $2.8 billion thus far – all to be spent prior to Election Day, November 3, 2020.

That amount does not include campaign fundraising or expenditures for congressional, state, or local elections, or campaign dollars raised by fundraising committees or political parties.

“The purpose of the pledge is simple,” explained BlakPAC Chairman George Farrell.

“Any candidate, Democrat, Republican or independent, that cannot execute the ability to spend 10 percent of campaign funds with Black businesses cannot be trusted to operate honestly as an elected government official and should not earn our votes.”

George Ferrell

Farrell, a Washington, D.C. native who attended Howard University, is a real estate developer and entrepreneur. He and his wife Sandra Lopez co-founded BlakPAC with former Florida Lieutenant Governor Jennifer Carroll.

Jennifer Carroll

Carroll was the highest-ranking Black female elected official in the state’s history. She served as the second in command to former Florida Gov. Rick Scott from 2011-2013.

‘Economic flesh’

The pledge is named after Arthur Fletcher, a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor in the Nixon administration. Fletcher, a Black Republican and lifelong civil rights activist referred to himself as “the father of affirmative action enforcement” for his work with the 1969 “Philadelphia Plan.”

The plan required federal government contractors in Philadelphia’s construction trades to set goals and timetables for hiring minority workers. It gave the businesses autonomy on how to increase minority employment. However, if the goals were not reached, the contracts could be terminated by the federal government.

“The name of the game is to put some economic flesh and bones on Dr. (Martin Luther) King’s dream,” Fletcher is quoted as saying.

Fletcher went on to work with successive Republican presidents, including Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. Later in his career, he also served as chairman of the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, and as the head of the United Negro College fund.

He died in 2005.

Growing support

“The Art Fletcher Pledge should be a demand!” exclaimed Carl Marbury, a Pittsburgh, Penn.-based entrepreneur. “Extending the ideas of Art Fletcher to campaign spending should be a demand that every organization that supports the economic empowerment of minority-owned businesses should be making of candidates looking for the votes of their members.”

“In response to rioting, burning and looting, many American businesses and organizations are investing in voices that are loud and often irresponsible. BlakPAC is opening the way for investment in softer but experienced and responsible voices which present plans and projects which actually solve problems and benefit Americans,” said former Louisiana State Senator Elbert Guillory, a Black Republican. He has signed on as a pledge supporter.

“People often forget those who commit to a cause and act as a catalyst for historic change,” said Robert Whittemore, another pledge supporter.

“Art Fletcher, a Republican civil rights leader, championed affirmative action to assure minority workers’ civil rights were protected and represented to assure access to opportunity and economic equality through employment.

“Today, BlakPAC calls upon candidates and campaigns to make a pledge for affirmative political action, assuring minority activists and minority-owned businesses receive the funding needed to get the right candidates elected.”

Electing conservatives

According to its website, http://www.blakpac.gop, “BlakPAC contributes to conservative candidates who share our values and serve as positive role models. They are our best advocates for conservative ideas to be showcased in the community.” The organization has been in operation since January 2015.

BlakPAC also provides candidate training, exit polling, voter research, and social media campaign services, and has set up paid internships for Black youth who are interested in working on political campaigns.

Easy to do

“Meeting the Art Fletcher Pledge is easy if the commitment is there for affirmative political action,” Farrell said. “There are some 200 Black-owned newspapers in the United States covering every possible market with a very loyal readership. Many of these papers are weeklies and therefore have a long shelf life compared to daily newspapers.

“There are more than 100 Black-owned radio stations. There are even Black-owned television stations and Byron Allen’s Weather Channel,” he said.

“National and statewide candidates should be serious about reaching swing voters – otherwise known as Black voters – who provide the margin of victory in Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas.”

The 2018 Florida governor’s race was decided by 44,000 votes. According to Farrell, Republican Ron DeSantis owes his victory in the Florida gubernatorial election to about 100,000 African American women who unexpectedly chose him over Democrat candidate Andrew Gillum because of a school choice-oriented get out the vote effort by BlakPac.

Black Republicans sign up

New Journey PAC President Autry Pruitt and Vernon Robinson of Black Americans for the President’s Agenda PAC are both Art Fletcher Pledge signers and have spent more than $1 million on advertising targeting Black voters and on Black-owned radio stations in Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida.

Black Republican congressional candidates Carla Spalding of Florida and Casper Stockman from Colorado have signed and have agreed to meet the commitment.

For more information on the Art Fletcher Pledge and to see the latest list of Pledge signers, go to http://www.blakpac.gop.

Each year, some 150,000 children in Nigeria are born with sickle cell disease, the most common—and often life-threatening—inherited blood disorder in the world.

“I was not happy when I read that Nigeria will have the highest contribution to the global burden of sickle cell disease by 2050—if we continue at the present birth rate and the level of inactivity in newborn screening,” said hematologist Obiageli Nnodu, M.D., the lead researcher in Nigeria for the Sickle Pan African Research Consortium (SPARCo), funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health. “As a country, we can do better than that. After all, this is a disease where children die undiagnosed, and largely from preventable causes such as bacterial infections.”

Sickle cell disease affects 20 million people worldwide, including at least 100,000 in the United States, mainly African Americans, but Hispanics and Asian-Americans, too. To help address the problem on a global scale, the NHLBI has been supporting programs in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 75 percent of the sickle cell disease births worldwide occur. SPARCo, with a hub in Tanzania, and additional sites in Nigeria and Ghana, works to develop an infrastructure for sickle cell disease research, health care, education, and training to take place in Africa.

“We are showing that with effective partnerships, significant advances in health and biomedical science can be achieved,” said Tanzania-based Julie Makani, M.D., Ph.D., who leads the SPARCo consortium. SPARCo, in collaboration with the Sickle Africa Data Coordinating Center, led by Ambroise Wonkam, M.D., in South Africa, created  Sickle In Africa, which has a growing electronic registry of more than 10,000 individuals with sickle cell disease.

“The genetic diversity of Africa’s population allows scientific research that will increase our understanding of how a disease caused by a single gene can manifest in such different ways,” Makani explained.

Newborn screening, as Nnodu noted, is the first step to reduce mortality and suffering for these children, and for that, they need good tests readily available at the point of care. That’s why NHLBI supports research towards development of diagnostics, such as a new rapid result test that is relatively inexpensive, accurate, and can provide a timely diagnosis of sickle cell disease. The test does not require sophisticated laboratory equipment, electricity, refrigeration, or highly trained personnel—a critical advantage for countries with few resources.

On the treatment front, a large multinational NHLBI-funded clinical trial found that a daily hydroxyurea pill was safe and effective for young children living with sickle cell disease in sub-Saharan Africa. The NHLBI also has its sights on developing genetic therapies for the disease, as part of a newly announced NIH collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The goal of the partnership, which also addresses HIV, is to advance possible gene-based cures to clinical trials in the United States and relevant countries in sub-Saharan Africa within the next seven to 10 years.

“A person’s health should not be limited by their geographic location, whether it’s in rural America or sub-Saharan Africa,” said Gary H. Gibbons, M.D., director of the NHLBI. “Harnessing the power of science is needed to transcend borders if we want to improve health for all.”

CRA must help address systemic racial barriers and inequality, and it must benefit LMI and families of color

WASHINGTON, D.C. – This week in a board meeting, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve approved its draft Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) on the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). In May, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency finalized its CRA rule, while the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) has yet to join an agency in finalizing a CRA rule.

The CRA is a civil rights law designed to expand financial opportunity. The law requires banks to meet the credit needs of the communities in which they are chartered. The CRA was created to be a key driver in financial equity, helping to spur hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in underserved areas. Yet, the CRA requires strengthening to evolve with the changing banking landscape and to fully meet its statutory mission.

Center for Responsible Lending Executive Vice President Nikitra Bailey released the following statement:

“Unlike the OCC’s approach in finalizing a deeply misguided rule without stakeholder support, we appreciate the Federal Reserve’s commitment to a data-driven process that solicits broad input. The Federal Reserve should ensure that updated regulations account for the harsh realities of discrimination that still plague today’s financial marketplace.

“CRA was designed to undo the injustices created by the horrific practice of redlining and to expand financial opportunity, equity, and help spur investments in underserved areas. Our nation’s most recent reckoning with racial injustice has elevated the recognition and urgency to enact significant reforms to address structural racial barriers and provide opportunity to LMI families and people of color.  CRA must be one of the major tools to provide these long overdue reforms.”

By Ray Curry, Secretary-Treasurer, UAW

America’s Postal service has been an essential institution that has connected every one of us as Americans even before we were a nation independent of Great Britain.

The most American of traditions
Benjamin Franklin was appointed our first Postmaster General in 1775.  This democratic treasure, which has proven as reliable as it has self-sufficient, was a model for how government service should work. Its rich history is America’s history of adaptability, ingenuity and grit. Franklin used the system to get mail from Congress to our armies during the Revolution.  In 1823, the service started using waterways to deliver mail, then began using railroads and in 1847 saw the first issued stamps. The famous Pony Express took up the task in 1860. By 1896, the service began delivering to some rural addresses, so people did not have to go to the town post office for their mail anymore. By 1923, all houses were required to have a mail slot. And in 1963, zip codes were introduced.

Also very American, a 1970 strike by organized labor led to an even more efficient operation and the Postal Reorganization Act that established the United States Postal Service as we know it today.

And true to its roots, the revitalized United States Postal Service (USPS) knew how to make a buck. The reorganization legislation called for the phasing out of the post office’s direct government subsidies by 1983. The post office has been operating without any taxpayer money since then. In fact, as recent as the start of this century, from 2003-2006, and despite the advent of email and stiff competition from companies like UPS and FedEx, the post office reported a 9.3 billion profit.

I would say that is a pretty decent business model.

But then HR 6407 came along in 2007. The act mandated that the post office calculate its retiree pension and healthcare costs for the next 75 years, including workers to come, and set aside enough over the next 10 years to cover them.  An article appearing in Business Insider put the impact of the requirement this way: “To put this in perspective, that’d be like you only working from age 18 to 28 and then expecting to live on that income until you were 103 years old.”

What would Ben Franklin say?

Needless to say, the bill and its contents have proven devastating.  The long and the short of it has meant that the USPS has had to contribute about $5.6 billion a year for people who had not yet retired, in addition to the amount for current retirees.

No business is forced to operate like this, and I dare to add that no business could operate like this.

Also, the new bill took away the ability for the post office to set prices. First-class mail, marketing mail, and other post office products have all been tied to the consumer price index, and therefore the post office could not increase rates for those products above the rate of inflation. All told, the post office has incurred a loss of $78 billion from 2007 through 2019 and owes $55 billion related to its future pension and health benefit obligations.  Add in lost revenue related to COVID-19 and politically charged controversies over reductions in equipment and attendant slowdowns, the USPS is now in dire straits.

Shall we really allow this most American of institutions to fail ‒ through no fault of its own?  It is unthinkable for it not to survive.  It is unthinkable to rely solely on private companies for such critical services. It is truly a dagger in the heart of our American heritage.

Of immediate consequence, consider the impact to mail recipients during this pandemic. The USPS handles 1.2 billion prescription drug deliveries each year. The service also transports millions of lab tests and essential medical supply shipments. It ensures that checks and payments arrive to keep small businesses operating. It helps seniors receive household items, social security and Medicare checks. And communications from family and friends from far away have been delivered on time, through as they say “rain, sleet and snow.”

Since the emergence of COVID-19, USPS workers have been on the front lines, delivering millions of personal protective equipment and vital supplies to hospitals. They’ve made sure shelters, food banks, and businesses have the supplies they need. In addition, they’ve made deliveries to home-bound, highly susceptible individuals.

Needed now more than ever

The notion to privatize the USPS is a truly un-American idea and could not come at a worse time. The recession we are experiencing due to the coronavirus is hitting Black Americans much harder than white Americans, with Blacks nearly three times more likely to be hospitalized for Covid-19 and their unemployment rate at 14.6% compared with 9.2% for whites.

The Postal Service provides the only service that guarantees delivery to every American, which makes it especially crucial for rural areas and small towns that are too costly for private companies like FedEx or UPS to deliver to. Privatizing the service would add to the expense of crucial deliveries ‒ at a time when we are more and more relying on deliveries to receive our daily needs.

Then think about the importance of the post office in ensuring that the people’s will in our democracy will be accurately and duly noted.  In November, the postal service will play a crucial role in allowing Americans across our land and in foreign countries to cast their vote in our upcoming Presidential election. So many of us will be turning to the USPS to deliver our ballots safely and securely.

And please also think of the USPS and those in its employ. The postal service has delivered a solid, secure, middle class lifestyle to a more than 600,000 workers and to an especially high number of Latino and African Americans.

In the case of African Americans, when Congress passed a law ‒ just after the Civil War ‒ that ended the whites only hiring practice for postal jobs, the postal service became a haven of good jobs offering secure wages, benefits, and civil service protections. Today, African Americans make up 27% of the Postal Service ‒ a rate more than double that of the national labor force. Coupled with our government’s anti-discrimination policies, the USPS has made the American Dream possible, even when racial discrimination put up walls in other areas of work.

And privatization, I would argue, is un-American for another reason. It is yet another attempt at union busting. Both the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), which represents primarily non-rural letter carriers employed by USPS as well as the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), which represents postal clerks, mail processors and sorters, building and equipment maintenance, custodial workers, truck drivers and others employed by USPS, would be in serious jeopardy.

We must secure this most American of all American institutions.

Demand that we save the USPS

Fortunately, there is a way forward.  The Delivery for America Act (H.R. 8015) can help make this happen. This legislation will deliver urgently needed funds to the postal service and reverse detrimental policy changes that are currently restricting postal workers’ ability to deliver mail and packages on time.

The Act has passed the House of Representatives. The Senate must follow suit immediately.  Across the nation, delivery of mail has slowed dramatically due to the Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s recent decisions. Eliminating overtime and cutting down on late trips has created massive mail backlogs, leading to late deliveries of critical prescription medications and threatening the integrity of the upcoming November election.

This bill would help address the backlog by remedying the impact of these policies and prohibiting “any change that would have the effect of delaying, deferring, or curtailing mail, allowing for the non-delivery of mail to a delivery route, or increasing the volume of undelivered mail.”

The Delivery for America Act appropriates the $25 billion that the USPS requested to sustain the level of service all Americans depend on.  Efforts to shrink the postal service would disproportionately affect racial and ethnic minorities, women and veterans more than others. In addition, as of 2018, more than 100,000 military veterans are employed by the USPS.

We MUST protect postal workers’ jobs.

And we MUST ensure a safe and secure election. In the coming weeks, voters across the country will prepare to exercise their civic duty to elect their government, and Congress must do everything in its power to ensure that voters will be able to do so safely.

For our citizens, for our democracy, for our livelihoods… We must support the USPS in every way we can.

Dear NCNW Family,

My heart is broken over the passing of my shero, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But as Ella Baker’s words declared and were written and set in music by Bernice Johnson Reagon:

“We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.”

And that is why we must honor our sister, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, by carrying on her relentless work for the emancipation of women, and the equality of all under the law.

Among Justice Ginsburg’s many critical judicial opinions were those involving disability rights, gender equality and affirmative action. The second woman appointed to the Supreme Court, she stood firmly against discrimination leveled against her because she was a woman and a Jew.

Her experiences as a woman and a mother, together with her superior intellect, shaped a legal philosophy firmly opposed to all forms of discrimination against marginalized people. She wrote bluntly in 1986, “to pretend that [affirmative action is unconstitutional] is to pretend that history never happened and that the present doesn’t exist.”

We all remember our sister’s fearless dissent from the 2013 Supreme Court decision to remove voting rights protections. Indeed it was that dissent that earned her the nickname “Notorious R.B. G.” When I vote in the November 3rd election, her name will be among the names of our heroes and sheroes that I will call. The sincerest tribute that can be paid to Justice Ginsburg is to vote and urge everyone we know to do the same.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed on the evening of the beginning of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, a time when wishes are extended for a joyous and peaceful new year. Join me in wishing that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s soul will rest ever so peacefully during her new year as an ancestor for justice…..and forever more.

Onward!
Johnnetta Betsch Cole

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