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Rep. McEachin to speak at VUU’s 40th Community Leaders Breakfast
Congressman A. Donald McEachin will be the keynote speaker at Virginia Union University’s 40th Annual Community Leaders Breakfast honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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Crab Feast & Fish Fry fundraiser Saturday for Peter Paul Development Center
The Men of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church will hold their annual benefit Crab Feast & Fish Fry 3 to 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 7, at Peter Paul Development Center, 1708 N. 22nd St. in the East End.
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Personality: Virginia ‘Ginger’ Workman Stanley
Spotlight on Virginia Press Association’s retiring executive director
For 32 years, Ginger Stanley has been an advocate for Virginia’s newspapers, so much so that her name is practically synonymous with the Virginia Press Association. That’s the organization that promotes the common interests of its member newspapers.
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Personality: William ‘Danny’ Robinson
Spotlight on board chair of Feed More
During the COVID-19 pandemic that has thrust thousands of Virginians into joblessness and unemployment assistance providing some but not total relief, the need for food aid has rarely been greater. Fortunately, this is where Feed More, led by board chairman William “Danny” Robinson has stepped in to address the community’s needs.
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Personality: Teresa Cole
Spotlight on Fonticello Park Friends board president
As a child growing up in the 1980s, Teresa Cole was a “latchkey kid” who played outside a lot.
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Thanksgiving food, fellowship at area events
Thanksgiving is a time for family, friends and fellowship. But it also can be a stressful and lonely time for others.
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Equal justice, even for Trump, by Clarence Page
Yusef Salaam, whom you may remember as one of the exonerated Central Park Five, had only one word to tweet to those who wanted to know his feelings about the indictment of Donald Trump: “Karma,” he offered. Karma? I’ve heard about it. Drawn from concepts of re- birth in Indian religions, I’ve been advised to think of kar- maasaformof cosmic justice: Good deeds and intent lead to good karma and happier re- births while bad karma may lead to times that are not so jolly. Mr. Salaam was one of five Black and Hispanic teenagers wrongfully imprisoned for the 1989 rape of a white woman in New York’s Central Park, a case that later was explored in a 2019 Netflix series “When They See Us” and a PBS documentary “The Central Park Five.” In 1989, before any of the five teens had been tried, Mr. Trump, then a major Manhat- tan real estate developer with a bottomless appetite for self- promotion, took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty to be reinstated in New York. Adding kerosene to public anger at the time, the ads were reported to have played a major role in securing a conviction. So did false confessions, it turned out, since no DNA linked them to the crime scene and their descriptions of the victim didn’t match. Mr. Salaam served nearly seven years in prison before he and the other wrongfully accused teens—Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise—were Clarence Page exonerated in 2002. Serial rapist Matias Reyes, already in prison, confessed to the assault and DNA confirmed his admission. Ah, how the mighty have fallen. The presumption of inno- cence until proved guilty seemed almost nowhere to be seen in Mr. Trump’s world when the Central Park Five case raged across the headlines and boiled over into a national media frenzy. Yet, as Mr. Salaam mentions in his tweet, Mr. Trump—for whom “apologetic” is not part of his brand—never has apologized. Still, he seeks the presumption of innocence he has denied to others. So be it. Let’s see how well his innocence claims hold up. For now, Mr. Trump’s chants of “Lock her up” in his 2016 race against Hillary Clinton come to mind. Now that it is he who faces what has been reported to be more than 30 counts related to business fraud in a sealed indictment from a Manhattan grand jury, I wonder: Can chants of “Lock HIM up” be far behind? Still, the stress test to which the former president has put our crimi- nal justice system offers a valuable opportunity to view fairness in our system with new eyes. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the ultraconservative Repub- lican from Georgia, suddenly has become a major advocate for inmates of the District of Columbia jail, now that their ranks were joined by detainees from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. Interesting, I said to myself. Since the alleged insurrectionists are mostly white and the D.C. jail’s traditional population is overwhelmingly Black, maybe now they can see how the other half lives. Unsurprisingly, they were shocked. The jail’s conditions, were so bad that 34 of them sug- gested in a letter to federal court last fall that they would rather be moved to Guantanamo Bay. Detainees, through their lawyers, raised concerns that included threats from guards, standing sewage, and skimpy food and water. A federal judge held top jail officials in contempt after they delayed prompt medi- cal care for a Capitol defendant in their custody. Things have gotten better, spurred partly by Rep. Greene and other congressional visitors. But the irony of how it took 40 or so Capitol rioters to get more attention and action than the jail’s roughly 1,400 total inmates is not lost, especially on the inmates of color. Rep. Greene, seldom known for understatement, visited the jail and likened the rioters inside to “prisoners of war,” implying that they were being punished for their politics. Actually they’re being held for a lot more than that. Don’t forget the physical assaults on Capitol Police with pepper spray, bear spray and riot shields, just for starters. Equal justice for all is a cherished ideal in the American system, a system they tried to disrupt. We must do all that we can to preserve that ideal, even for those who try to destroy it. The writer is a syndicated columnist and senior member of the Chicago Tribune edito- rial board.
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Party loyalty becomes debate issue for Dems
The two men seeking to capture the Democratic gubernatorial nomination traded political barbs over their party bona fides during a debate Tuesday night in Henrico County.
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TikTok sues to block law that could ban the platform
TikTok and its Chinese parent company are challenging a new American law that would ban the popular video-sharing app in the U.S. unless it’s sold to an approved buyer, saying it unfairly singles out the platform and is an unprecedented attack on free speech.
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Personality: Rosa A. Jiggetts
Spotlight on mission to proclaim ‘Be Kind Wednesdays’
Rosa Annie Jiggetts is always ready to help. Her idea of a perfect day is one in which she can do at least one good deed. For the past 30 years, the 65-year-old Richmond native has run the Helpline out of her Providence Park home on North Side, with the assistance of her sister, Lydia.
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First Lady Michelle Obama had 8-year impact on fashion
The morning after First Lady Michelle Obama’s big speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2012, in which she argued passionately for a second term for her husband, designer Tracy Reese’s phone was ringing. And ringing.
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History marker going up for Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground; mixed results on Confederate markers
A new state history marker to a long forgotten Black cemetery in Richmond is on the way, while two highway markers to the city’s Confederate past have been removed.
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Historically Black fraternity drops Florida for convention because of DeSantis policies
The oldest historically Black collegiate fraternity in the U.S. said it is relocating a planned convention in two years from Florida because of what it described as Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration’s “harmful, racist and insensitive” policies toward African-Americans.
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Dems must dance with young people, by Jesse L. Jackson Sr.
“Dance with the one that brung you,” goes the old saying.
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Labor Day 2023: Celebrating the union difference and building tomorrow’s public service workforce, by Lee Saunders
As we prepare to celebrate Labor Day, it’s as exciting a time as any to be a part of a union. Working people are seeing what the union difference is all about, and they want to be a part of it. Unions are overwhelmingly popular as the newest Gallup poll on attitudes toward labor unions shows.
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Is Tim Scott running for president or chaplain in chief?, by Julianne Malveaux
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott has joined the throng of Republicans seeking to unseat the former president as the frontrunner of that party. So far, Sen. Scott is polling in the single digits, but he has $22 million left from his last senatorial race that he can use for his presidential race.
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Oklahoma deputy charged with manslaughter
A white reserve sheriff’s deputy in Oklahoma was charged with manslaughter Monday in the death of a black man who he fatally shot as he lay on the ground. Tulsa County, Okla., prosecutors filed a second-degree manslaughter charge against 73-year-old Robert Bates, a reserve deputy with the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office.
