The inspirational leader Rev. William Barber 11 is stepping down from his post as chair of the North Carolina NAACP to launch a national movement.
http://nypost.com/2017/05/11/naacp-leader-who-led-north-carolina-protest-movement-to-step-down/
His strong voice for moral strength, equal rights, dignity, courage in the face of adversity, and love is needed more than ever today.
Once again, Trump is set to pander to religious extremists, with an executive order declaring that religious liberty guarantees the right to discriminate against other people. Mike Pence signed a law with the same purposes in Indiana, when he signed a bill called the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” but he watered it down when major corporations threatened to leave the state. Now, where will they go if bigotry is legalized everywhere? Strange to see Trump as the champion of the religious right: Trump, the philanderer, Trump, the casino owner, Trump, the man who defrauded thousands of people via his “university.”
Bill Moyers’ website reports:
“Trump may sign a “religious liberty” executive order tomorrow. A draft of this order leaked to The Nation last winter, and journalist Sarah Posner called it a way for the administration to “legalize discrimination,” continuing: “The draft order seeks to create wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious or moral objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans-identity, and it seeks to curtail women’s access to contraception and abortion through the Affordable Care Act.”
“The backlash gave the administration pause, Politico reports, but a largely unchanged version of the order may be signed tomorrow to celebrate the National Day of Prayer, during which Trump is supposed to meet with religious leaders. “The new draft is being tightly held, but one influential conservative who saw the text said it hasn’t been dialed back much — if at all — since the February leak,” Timothy Alberta and Shane Goldmacher write for Politico.”
From Politico (linked above):
“President Donald Trump has invited conservative leaders to the White House on Thursday for what they expect will be the ceremonial signing of a long-awaited—and highly controversial—executive order on religious liberty, according to multiple people familiar with the situation. Religious “freedom” in this order means the right to refuse service to gay people, who will be considered second-class citizens. Strange to see Trump as the champion of social conservatives, Trump the philanderer, Trump the casino owner, Trump the man not known for his church-going.
“Two senior administration officials confirmed the plan, though one cautioned that it hasn’t yet been finalized, and noted that lawyers are currently reviewing and fine-tuning the draft language. Thursday is the National Day of Prayer, and the White House was already planning to celebrate the occasion with faith leaders.
“The signing would represent a major triumph for Vice President Mike Pence—whose push for religious-freedom legislation backfired mightily when he served as governor of Indiana—and his allies in the conservative movement.
“The original draft order, which would have established broad exemptions for people and groups to claim religious objections under virtually any circumstance, was leaked to The Nation on Feb. 1—the handiwork, many conservatives believed, of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who have sought to project themselves as friendly to the LGBT community. Liberals blasted the draft order as government-licensed discrimination, and the White House distanced itself from the leaked document in a public statement.
“Pence and a small team of conservative allies quickly began working behind the scenes to revise the language, and in recent weeks have ratcheted up the pressure on Trump to sign it. The new draft is being tightly held, but one influential conservative who saw the text said it hasn’t been dialed back much—if at all—since the February leak. “The language is very, very strong,” the source said.”
In a recent article, civil rights icon James Meredith expressed his frustration with Trump and DeVos claiming that education is “the civil rights issue of our time” and that school choice is the remedy.
He writes:
Today, President Donald Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos are attempting to improve our schools with “school choice,” vouchers, charter schools, cyber-charters, privatization, putting uncertified “temp teachers” with six weeks training into our highest-needs schools, and shackling public schools to the mass standardized machine-testing of children.
This represents a doubling-down on a quarter-century of failed bipartisan efforts at education reform, few of which have a track record of success, even when measured by the dubious metric of standardized test scores. The achievement claims of Potemkin-style “miracle schools” rarely stand up to serious scrutiny. Education is an exquisitely difficult and complex system, and there are few magic bullets, quick-fixes or shortcuts….
The main problems in American public education are poverty, decades of neglect and segregation of our high-poverty schools, and a system that is today driven not by parents and teachers but by politicians, bureaucrats, ideologues and profiteers with little if any knowledge of how children learn.
The education system has been hijacked by money, much of which is being squandered. We are wasting tens of billions of dollars annually on failed experiments, bloated bureaucracies, unproven and unnecessary technology products, and ineffective teacher professional development. A dystopian culture of constant, pointless, mass standardized machine-testing of children is crippling the schools and students it is supposed to help. The continuation of these trends threatens to hollow out and destroy our urban schools, and pull the rest of the system down with them.
Meredith goes on to explain what children today need, and what would constitute genuine reform in education.
The U.S. Department of Education has been a major force in protecting the civil rights of students and promoting desegregation.
But, writes Jeff Bryant, these issues do not seem to be part of Betsy DeVos’s agenda. Nor are they a high priority for Jeff Sessions at the Justice Department.
He writes:
“So far, Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has sent numerous signs she is assembling a staff and laying down a policy mindset that seems indifferent – if not outright averse – to the needs of nonwhite students.
“DeVos has taken the helm of federal education policy at a time when black and brown school children and youth critically need leaders in the federal government to address their needs.
“The number of Latino, African-American, and Asian students in public K-12 schools passed the number of non-Hispanic whites over two years ago. Nevertheless, schools have become more racially segregated than they were 40 years ago.
“The weight of research evidence shows when schools are racially and socioeconomically integrated, all students – even the white kids – benefit academically and in their social and emotional capabilities. Yet, without strong federal leadership, states and local districts generally shirk their responsibilities to enforce school integration.
“Racial segregation is not the only problem nonwhite students confront in schools. Students of color in our nation’s schools are disproportionally more apt to receive out-of-school suspensions than their white peers, which significantly raises their tendency to eventually get entangled in the criminal justice system. A recent report from the Center for Popular Democracy found that in New York City alone these punitive school discipline programs cost the city more than $746 million annually.
“How may we expect a DeVos administration to step up to address these challenges?
“As I reported shortly after her nomination, DeVos has a problematic track record on civil rights, based on her actions in Michigan to promote school choice programs that significantly worsened the state’s racial and socioeconomic segregation of schools.
“In one of her earliest moves as Secretary, DeVos announced her department’s decision to end a federal grant program created during the Obama administration to encourage more diversity in schools. Experts on poverty and race had called her handling of that program “a real test of her commitment to school integration.” She flunked it.
“More alarming is recent news of how many new hires for the education department have a history of making racially offensive comments and expressing controversial opinions on efforts to level the social and economic playing field for African-Americans and other racial minorities.”
Choice promotes segregation by race, religion, and income. The more she sticks to the only script she knows, the more segregated our society will become.
To hear her and Trump speak about education as “the civil rights issue of our time” is to drown in hypocrisy.
Each day brings more evidence that the Trump administration intends to roll back the social and political gains of the past 50 years (Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society) and perhaps even FDR’s New Deal.
Betsy DeVos hired lawyer and rightwing activist Candace Jackson as acting assistant secretary in charge of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. When DeVos finds a permanent assistant secretary, Jackson will become deputy to that person. All of this maneuvering enables Jackson to avoid Senate confirmation, where even some Republicans might be uncomfortable with her record.
Stephen Singer writes here about Jackson’s opposition to affirmative action and feminism.
Steven Singer says that Jackson’s appointment signals DeVos’s strident belief in the free market. Part of her project is to negate the regulations that protect the civil rights of students. Let the free market sort things out.
ProPublica, which just won a Pulitzer Prize for its investigative reporting, writes here that Betsy DeVos’ choice to lead the crucial Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education has a curious history for someone in that role. Jackson will run the agency on an acting basis until an Assistant Secretary is chosen. She will eventually be a Deputy Assistant Secretary, which does not require Senate confirmation. Based on her writings, ProPublica describes her as anti-feminist and anti-affirmative action. It is not clear what her definition of civil rights is, and whether they deserve protection.
As an undergraduate studying calculus at Stanford University in the mid-1990s, Candice Jackson “gravitated” toward a section of the class that provided students with extra help on challenging problems, she wrote in a student publication. Then she learned that the section was reserved for minority students.
“I am especially disappointed that the University encourages these and other discriminatory programs,” she wrote in the Stanford Review. “We need to allow each person to define his or her own achievements instead of assuming competence or incompetence based on race.”
Although her limited background in civil rights law makes it difficult to infer her positions on specific issues, Jackson’s writings during and after college suggest she’s likely to steer one of the Education Department’s most important — and controversial — branches in a different direction than her predecessors. A longtime anti-Clinton activist and an outspoken conservative-turned-libertarian, she has denounced feminism and race-based preferences. She’s also written favorably about, and helped edit a book by, an economist who decried both compulsory education and the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Jackson’s inexperience, along with speculation that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos will roll back civil rights enforcement, lead some observers to wonder whether Jackson, like several other Trump administration appointees, lacks sympathy for the traditional mission of the office she’s been chosen to lead.
Her appointment “doesn’t leave me with a feeling of confidence with where the administration might be going,” said Theodore Shaw, director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina School of Law, who led Barack Obama’s transition team for civil rights at the Department of Justice.
“I hope that she’s not going to be an adversary to the civil rights community and I hope that the administration is going to enforce civil rights laws and represent the best interests of those who are affected by civil rights issues.”
On Wednesday, DeVos formally announced Jackson’s position as deputy assistant secretary in the Office for Civil Rights, a role that does not require Senate confirmation. The 39-year-old attorney will act as assistant secretary in charge of the office until that position is filled. DeVos has not yet selected a nominee, who would have to receive Senate confirmation. As acting head, Jackson is in charge of about 550 full-time department staffers, who are responsible for investigating thousands of civil rights complaints each year.
Emma Brown of the Washington Post reports that Candice Jackson has been selected to lead the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education. Jackson, a lawyer, gained notoriety for attacking Hillary Clinton for defending a child rapist when she was a public defender many years ago. Public defenders do not choose their cases, and they are expected to defend anyone assigned to them.
Jackson worked in the Trump campaign. There is no indication that she ever practiced as a civil rights lawyer.
The Trump administration continues to stack the federal government with radical right wing extremists.
ProPublica reports that Roger Severino of the Heritage Foundation will head the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services.
In addition to opposing the rights of transgender people, Severino oppose marriage equality and public funding of Planned Parenthood.
“The Trump administration has quietly appointed a Heritage Foundation staffer who has railed against civil rights protections for transgender patients as director of the federal agency charged with protecting the civil rights of all patients.
“Though the administration did not issue a formal announcement, Roger Severino is now listed on the website of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as director of the Office for Civil Rights. His prior position was as director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation, where he focused on “religious liberty, marriage and life issues.” (The DeVos Center is named for the in-laws of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.)
“The civil rights office is in charge of enforcing patient privacy protections and ensuring that patients’ civil rights are protected, that they are free from discrimination and that they have access to services such as interpreters.
“Asked for comment, HHS forwarded a link to Severino’s title and biography. In a statement, Heritage spokeswoman Marguerite Bowling said, “Roger Severino has a distinguished record of fighting for the civil rights and freedoms of all Americans. We have no doubt that Roger in his new role at HHS will protect the civil rights of all Americans.”
“Severino’s position does not require Senate confirmation.
“Based on his prior writings, Severino will likely take the agency in a different direction than it had under the Obama administration. Last year, the agency issued rules banning discrimination against transgender patients, carrying out provisions of the Affordable Care Act. (A federal judge put those rules on hold on Dec. 31, siding with a Catholic hospital system, other religious health providers and five states that challenged them. The Trump administration has not sought to overturn the injunction.)
“When those rules were proposed, Severino and a Heritage colleague wrote a scathing critique, saying they jeopardized the religious liberty and freedom of conscience of health care providers.
“By prohibiting differential treatment on the basis of ‘gender identity’ in health services, these regulations propose to penalize medical professionals and health care organizations that, as a matter of faith, moral conviction, or professional medical judgment, believe that maleness and femaleness are biological realities to be respected and affirmed, not altered or treated as diseases,” Severino wrote with colleague Ryan Anderson.
“In a column for the conservative website Daily Signal, Severino and Anderson wrote that the HHS rule would force doctors to perform sex reassignment surgeries. “They would effectively require controversial procedures, such as ‘sex-reassignment’ surgery, that respected medical professionals argue have not been proven effective in treating serious mental health conditions.”
“Despite the column’s assertions, federal rules cannot force doctors to perform procedures for which they are not trained or competent. Moreover, professional societies support coverage for gender transition treatments….
“A coalition of progressive groups criticized Severino’s appointment.
“I could not think of a more dangerous person to head up the Office of Civil Rights at HHS,” JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president of policy and political affairs of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. “Once again, Donald Trump is declaring war against our community by appointing anti-LGBTQ people at all levels of his administration.”
“The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights also expressed its dismay. “This appointment, made without fanfare, is part of disturbing trend by the Trump administration of naming people who disagree or outright oppose the mission or role of an agency or office to leadership positions within those entities,” the group said in a statement.”
Read about this great civil rights icon here:
https://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2017/pr17_006.htm
President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Here is a question for you, dear readers:
To whom will Trump award the Presidential Medal of Freedom?
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service today kicked off this year’s Black History Month observances by dedicating the Dorothy Height Forever stamp during a ceremony at Howard University.
The 40th stamp in the Black Heritage series honors Height, a tireless activist, who dedicated her life to fighting for racial and gender equality. She became one of the most influential civil and women’s rights leaders of the 20th century.
“The Postal Service is proud to honor civil rights icon Dorothy Height, an American treasure, whose illustrious career spanned almost a century,” said Ronald Stroman, deputy postmaster general and chief government relations officer, who dedicated the stamp.
“The Dorothy Height Forever stamp will serve as a lasting tribute to her life and legacy of seeking equality and justice for all Americans, regardless of ethnicity, gender or race.”
Stroman was joined at the stamp dedication ceremony by U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA); Alexis Herman, president, Dorothy I. Height Education Foundation; Ingrid Saunders Jones, chair, National Council of Negro Women; Naima Randolph, Dorothy Height’s great niece; Wayne A.I. Frederick, president, Howard University; and Bishop Vashti McKenzie of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
The Dorothy Height stamp features artist Thomas Blackshear II’s, portrait of Height. The painting is based on a photograph shot by Lateef Mangum in 2009. Art director Derry Noyes designed the stamp.
In 1963, the Height-led National Council of Negro Women joined the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership. Height was an architect of the August 1963 March on Washington, where she shared the stage with Martin Luther King Jr. It was Height who pushed to include a voice of youth like John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and insisted on no time limits for King’s speech.
Gender equality also was important to Height, who fought for the rights of women, particularly women of color. President John F. Kennedy named her to his Commission on the Status of Women, which was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt. Height attended the 1963 White House ceremony where Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act. In 1971, she helped form the National Women’s Political Caucus.
In 1977, Height officially retired from the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), for which she worked for 40 years. In addition to numerous honorary degrees, Height received the nation’s two highest civilian honors. In 1994, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. A decade later, President George W. Bush presented her with the Congressional Gold Medal. In 2009, she was a guest of Barack Obama when he was sworn in as the nation’s 44th president.
Wendy Lecker is a civil rights attorney who writes often for Connecticut newspapers. I did not see this column when it first appeared, but think it is worth reading now. Locker was first to use the term “gateway drug” to describe charters, meaning that they are the seemingly benign but insidious first step towards privatization of public schools.
She writes:
Betsy DeVos’ nomination brings to the fore some important truths about charter schools. Charter schools are part of a larger strategy to privatize and eliminate public schools. The slogan that charters and choice are part of a “civil rights” agenda is propaganda originating from ultra-conservative white Christian activists disguising their true aims.
In reality, choice in the form of charters increases segregation and devastates community public schools in our most distressed cities. As charters have proliferated in predominately minority cities, children and parents of color bear the brunt of this destruction.
To describe the proliferation of charter schools and vouchers as “the civil rights issue of our time” is both hypocritical and cynical. To see the utter failure of charters to address the needs of children of color, one need look no further than Detroit, awash in charters that have been a diversion from the consequences of structural racism and deindustrialization. Promises aplenty, but no help for the city’s neediest families and students, whose public schools and communities have been gutted by competition with ineffective charter schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 