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[Premium Times] The senatorial seat became vacant following the death of the former occupant, Bayo Oshinowo, earlier this year.
\t On Friday, internet and international calls were cut off across the West African nation in anticipation of the election results, according to locals and international observers in the capital, Conakry.
\t This was the third time that Conde matched-up against Diallo. Before the election, observers raised concerns that an electoral dispute could reignite ethnic tensions between Guinea's largest ethnic groups.
Addressing voting rights issues has been a core responsibility for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights since the Commission was founded in 1957. The Commission has broad authority over voting rights. It has general jurisdiction to examine allegations regarding the right of U.S. citizens to vote and to have their votes counted. These allegations may include, but are not limited to, allegations of discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin.
Pursuant to its authority, and fulfilling its obligations, members of the Commission staff conducted a preliminary investigation and discovered widespread allegations of voter disenfranchisement in Florida in the 2000 presidential election. The Commissioners voted unanimously to conduct an extensive public investigation into these allegations of voting irregularities. Toward that end, the Commission held three days of hearings in Miami and Tallahassee and, using its subpoena powers, collected more than 30 hours of testimony from more than 100 witnesses—all taken under oath—and reviewed more than 118,000 pages of pertinent documents.
The Commission carefully selected its subpoenaed witnesses to ensure that it heard testimony on the wide range of issues that had come to light during its preliminary investigation. The Commission also acted to ensure that it heard a broad spectrum of views. It subpoenaed a cross section of witnesses, including Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, members of Governor Bush’s Select Task Force on Election Procedures, Standards and Technology, and Florida’s attorney general. The Commission staff’s research also led it to subpoena the state official responsible for oversight of motor voter registration, the general counsel for Florida’s Elections Commission, the director of the Division of Elections (part of the secretary of state’s office), the director of Florida’s Highway Patrol, and numerous local elections officials, county supervisors, poll workers, and local
The Civil Rights Movement in the United States was a long, primarily nonviolent series of events to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans. The movement has had a lasting impact on United States society, in its tactics, the increased social and legal acceptance of civil rights, and in its exposure of the prevalence and cost of racism.
The Civil Rights Movement refers to the political actions and reform movements between 1954 and 1968 to end legal racial segregation in the United States, especially in the US South.
This article focuses on an earlier phase of the movement. Two United States Supreme Court decisions—Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), which upheld separate but equal racial segregation as constitutional doctrine, and Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) which overturned Plessy—serve as milestones. This was an era of new beginnings, in which some movements, such as Marcus Garveys Universal Negro Improvement Association, were very successful but left little lasting legacy, while others, such as the NAACPs painstaking legal assault on state-sponsored segregation, achieved modest results in its early years but made steady progress on voter rights and gradually built to a key victory in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
After the Civil War, the US expanded the legal rights of African Americans. Congress passed, and enough states ratified, an amendment ending slavery in 1865—the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution. This amendment only outlawed slavery; it provided neither citizenship nor equal rights. In 1868, the 14th Amendment was ratified by the states, granting African Americans citizenship. All persons born in the US were extended equal protection under the laws of the Constitution. The 15th Amendment (ratified in 1870) stated that race could not be used as a condition to deprive men of the ability to vote. During Reconstruction (1865–1877), Northern troops occupied the South. Together with the Freedmens Bureau, they tried to
Global tensions simmered over the race for a coronavirus vaccine Thursday, as the United States and China traded jabs, and France slammed pharmaceuticals giant Sanofi for suggesting the US would get any eventual vaccine first.
Scientists are working at breakneck speed to develop a vaccine for Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, which has killed more than 300,000 people worldwide and pummelled economies.
The race for a vaccine has exposed a raw nerve in relations between the United States and China, where the virus was first detected late last year in the central city of Wuhan.
On Capitol Hill, an ousted US health official told Congress that the Trump government had no strategy in place to find and distribute a vaccine to millions of Americans, warning of the \"darkest winter\" ahead.
Sanofi chief executive Paul Hudson said the US had a risk-sharing model that allowed for manufacturing to start before a vaccine had been finally approved -- while Europe did not.
Although the televised murder of George Floyd momentarily diverted media attention from COVID-19, the plague-like virus continues to spread.
The United States, always quick to tout its status as number one in everything, has the dubious distinction of leading the world in cases and deaths.
Not only have the protest crowds been bigger and more diverse than following other recent incidents of police violence, we’re already seeing state and local governments adopting police reform measures, like banning chokeholds, which should have been enacted years ago.
The race for the cure
Governments around the world are racing to find a cure for the coronavirus.
When we begin to teach the truth about American history, indeed world history: That the civilization we enjoy today is built upon the contributions of many earlier civilizations and not just from the so-called “Enlightenment”; that ancient Greece got many of its ideas and its architecture from the earlier civilizations of ancient Africa; that cultures dating back thousands of years in China and Persia (Iran) gave us poetry and literature; that religious concepts from India, like Trimurti or Trinity, informed what became Christianity in Europe; that Arabic numerals gave birth to modern math.
Initiative to Include Radio Ads, Digital PSAs, Voter Outreach “Caravan” in 11 Key States Today, Black Voters Matter Fund (BVMF) announced a major voter outreach ...
But now that states like Texas and Arizona are seeing alarming surges in reported cases of COVID-19, businesses large and small must decide whether to keep their doors open.
On Friday, Texas and Arizona shut down bars except for takeout and scaled back restaurant dining capacity.
However, many businesses had already taken those steps on their own, saying rising case numbers and shifting advice from state and local governments did not give them the confidence to stay open.
The CDC suggests businesses should immediately remove sick employees or customers and clean the immediate area after 24 hours, but it says the 24-hour wait is only “if feasible,” and can be shorter.
The most important thing for businesses to do, she said, is mitigate risks for employees by requiring masks, frequent hand-washing and physical distancing.
Virginia, long seen as a critical state in American politics, has also been a barometer of the nation’s racial climate and is being closely watched to see what direction it takes in the way of social justice.
If she becomes governor, McClelland would be the second Black governor of VIrginia, following Doug Wilder, and the first Black woman ever voted into the job making history in the state as well as in the nation.
She spoke with BET.com about her plans to address social justice and equality, and also focus on answering the racial issues that have come out of the state over the past few years like the deadly protest incident in Charlottesville in 2017 and Black Virginia voters’ influence on electoral politics.
RELATED: Second Black Woman Enters Race For Virginia Governor
BET.com: You wouldn’t be the first Black governor of Virginia, but you would be the first Black woman governor and the first Black woman to hold the position in the country.
McClelland: There's so many aspects of public safety, but the bottom line is just making sure we have healthy thriving communities and a lot of the civil unrest, whether it was then or now, is due to an inability to come to terms with the racial inequity and 400 years of trauma and the inability to address that and heal.
By JOSH BOAK and EMILY SWANSON, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans’ outlook on the national economy has improved somewhat from its lowest points during the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, but a new poll suggests Democrats and Republicans are living in alternate economic realities amid the sharpest recession in the nation’s history.
Eighty-five percent of Democrats call economic conditions “poor,” while 65% of Republicans describe them as “good” in a new survey conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Overall, 63% of the country says the economy is in poor shape, down somewhat from the 70% who felt that way in May.
The economy cratered in March and April as people sheltered in place in hopes of stopping the pandemic, and the unemployment rate spiked to at least 14.7%.
A bipartisan group of economists proposed an additional $1 trillion to $2 trillion of aid to sustain any recovery, including targeted funds for state and local governments, subsidized loans for small businesses, more generous unemployment benefits and aid for low-wage workers.
The key to a Democratic win in November is voter turnout, which former first lady Michelle Obama knows all too well.
In an interview conducted by TV showrunner Shonda Rhimes for Harper’s Bazaar, Michelle Obama said, “Some folks don’t see the impact of their vote on their day-to-day lives—if the trains still run, the kids are still going to school, and they still have a job, what difference does one vote really make, right?
Obama also pushed people to see beyond just the president when voting, “So every single person out there needs to ask themselves, do they trust the folks in charge to make the right call?
She also gave talking points for people how to dismiss their vote, “When I’m talking to young people, I like to ask them a simple question: Would you let your grandma decide what you wear on a night out to the club?
Not many people want someone else making their decisions for them, especially when that person might not see the world the same way as they do.”
Other countries scheduled to hold elections are Egypt, Guinea, Seychelles and Tanzania.
For countries that do hold elections, there may be special voting arrangements that can allow polls to go ahead but reduce the risk of spreading the virus.
In South Korea's elections in mid-April, the electoral commission encouraged people to vote before election day at any of the 3,500 polling stations throughout the country.
This not only decongested polling stations on election day but contributed to the highest turnout in the country for nearly 30 years.
This means that countries planning to hold elections in 2020 or early-2021 need to start discussing these arrangements - across party lines and among multiple relevant agencies - as soon as possible.
Dear Editor
It is very plausible that 464,565 Guyanese cast their ballots in 2020.
The article Very plausible that 464,565 Guyanese cast their ballots in 2020 appeared first on Stabroek News.
On Friday, October 9, 2020, the Milwaukee Health Services, Inc., hosted a voter registration event at their Isaac Coggs Heritage Health Center, 8200 W. Silver Spring Dr. Attendees could safely register to vote for the upcoming presidential election as well as receive a free COVID-19 safety kit containing hand sanitizer, facial tissues, masks and more.... [Read More]
TALLAHASSEE – LGBTQ advocates are hailing Monday’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that gay, lesbian and transgender workers are covered by federal anti discrimination laws, but they say Florida needs to do more.
Florida is one of more than two dozen states that do not have laws banning discrimination based on gender, and Republican legislative leaders during the past several years have thwarted efforts to pass such measures.
Monday’s high-court decision offers an opportunity for Gov. Ron DeSantis, a close ally of Trump, “to send a clear message, which is that Florida is a welcoming state that won’t tolerate discrimination against anyone, including LGBTQ Floridians,” state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, an Orlando Democrat who is gay, told The News Service of Florida.
“This ruling is as strong a ruling as could be to give the governor the ammunition he needs to sign an executive order saying the state of Florida recognizes that anti-LGBTQ discrimination is sex discrimination, as declared unequivocally in this ruling, and, therefore, all state laws that prohibit sex discrimination will equally apply to prohibit anti-LGBTQ discrimination,” he added.
“The very essence of our state and country is that all people are created equal – and now, our nation’s highest court has affirmed that our LGBTQ community is equal before the law,” Fried said in a prepared statement after Monday’s Supreme ruling
The LGBTQ community and advocates rallied around Monday’s decision as an instrument to galvanize support for broader protections.
The report, Reconstruction in America, documents more than 2,000 black victims of racial terror lynchings killed between the end of the civil war in 1865 and the collapse of federal efforts to protect the lives and voting rights of black Americans in 1876.
In that brief 12-year period, known as Reconstruction, a reign of terror was unleashed by Confederate veterans and former slave owners in a brazen effort to keep black people enslaved in all but name.
The report is a prequel to EJI’s groundbreaking 2015 research that identified and recorded more than 4,400 black victims of racial terror lynchings from the post-Reconstruction period, 1877 to 1950.
The new report allows that grim tally to be further expanded with the addition of the 2,000 documented victims from the Reconstruction era itself – bringing the total number of documented cases of black people who were supposedly free yet were lynched in the most sadistic fashion to a staggering 6,500 men, women and children.
Bryan Stevenson, EJI’s executive director, told the Guardian that the new report highlights the capitulation and complicity of American institutions – from local sheriffs right up to the US supreme court in Washington – in the face of white supremacist violence.
Black Voters Have Won a Seat at the Table From voter registration, to grassroots organizing, to shaping the issue environment across the country, Black voters are flexing political muscle up and down the ballot Black voters have spoken. Across the country, from the industrial midwest to the Northeast to the deep south, Black votes were … Continued
The post Black voters have won a seat at the table appeared first on Atlanta Daily World.
Much has been made of the impact that Black voter turnout had on Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
But the contributions go far beyond just showi
2. Citizen’s Review Board (Police Review)
Mary Sheffield wants residents involved
By 1947 the question of black civil rights in the South had become a national issue when a committee President Harry S. Truman appointed to study the issue called for legislation which among other things would to protect voting rights for Southern blacks and provide federal protection against lynching. In response to the report President Truman sent a special message to Congress on the issue on February 2, 1948. That message, the first by a sitting president to address the question of black civil rights, appears below.
To the Congress of the United States:
In the State of the Union Message on January 7, 1948, I spoke of five great goals toward which we should strive in our constant effort to strengthen our democracy and improve the welfare of our people. The first of these is to secure fully our essential human rights. I am now presenting to the Congress my recommendations for legislation to carry us forward toward that goal.
This Nation was founded by men and women who sought these shores that they might enjoy greater freedom and greater opportunity than they had known before. The founders of the United States proclaimed to the world the American belief that all men are created equal, and that governments are instituted to secure the inalienable rights with which all men are endowed. In the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, they eloquently expressed the aspirations of all mankind for equality and freedom.
These ideals inspired the peoples of other lands, and their practical fulfillment made the United States the hope of the oppressed everywhere. Throughout our history men and women of all colors and creeds, of all races and religions, have come to this country to escape tyranny and discrimination. Millions strong, they have helped build this democratic Nation and have constantly reinforced our devotion to the great ideals of liberty and equality. With those who preceded them, they have helped to fashion and strengthen our American faith—a faith that can be simply stated:
