Jackson’s Africa amendment adds $250 million
WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) - As various budget amendments snaked their way through the complicated legislative process, Congress agreed by voice-vote to include an additional $250 million for Africa in the $82 billion Supplemental Wartime Appropriations Act (HR 1268). The amendment, which was sponsored by Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), included $150 million for food aid to the Sudan and increased...
Pentagon workers challenge new personnel system
Steady Drop in Black Army Recruits (Washington Post, 03-09-2005) WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) - Even as the Pentagon watches Black recruitment into the uniform services decline, morale among civilian employees has been strained by a controversial new personnel system. A coalition of 10 Department of Defense unions even filed suit in federal court in late February to stop the new “National Security...
Police brutality: Alive and well in America
(FinalCall.com) - Juanita Young is legally blind and suffers from asthma. But that did not stop the New York Police Department from arresting her in June 2003, charging her with trespassing, holding her for 35 hours and refusing her medical attention. According to Ms. Young, she was asleep in her bed when officers from the 40th Precinct in the Bronx...
Racial profiling a crime in New Jersey
TRENTON (FinalCall.com)–New Jersey Governor James McGreevey (D) signed a bill March 14 that made racial profiling by public officials, including police officers, a crime. The new law creates the crime of "official deprivation" of civil rights, making it illegal for law enforcement officers to use race, color, religion, ethnicity, gender and age as a means to discriminate against individuals. The...
Identity theft, the silent crime
(FinalCall.com) - Last year, over seven million people were victims of the silent crime of identity theft. The information explosion, easy credit and the inability of consumers to control who has access to their sensitive financial information has created an open season for identity thieves. Today, identity theft is the fastest growing crime in America. “In the African American...
Residents reach boiling point over racial attacks
CHARLENEM LOS ANGELES (FinalCall.com) - From the coastal city of Long Beach to the rolling hills of Valencia, Blacks within the county are being attacked by skinhead members of a White supremist gang and a Latino gang. On March 9, hundreds of mourners joined the family of the latest attack victim, Demetrius “Bear” Williams, at his memorial service at Grant AME...
Tulsa riot victims petition Supreme Court
Landmark suit seeks reparations for deadly 1921 Okla. riot (FCN, 03-13-2003) WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) - They survived one of the ugliest and bloodiest incidents of racial violence in America's bloody history of racial subjugation–the anti-Black race riot that burned Tulsa, Okla.'s prosperous Greenwood neighborhood to the ground in 1921. Hundreds of Blacks were killed, and 22 square blocks including 1,256...
Poor People Protest predatory lending practices by Wells Fargo
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) WASHINGTON - The racially discriminatory, predatory lending practices of Wells Fargo, along with President George Bush's Social Security Privatization plan, were targets of hundreds of ACORN members protesting in Washington March 7. Demonstrators from Florida to Massachusetts, to Ohio, to as far away as Chicago descended on Washington, bringing with them ACORN's...
D.C. AIDS providers protest de-funding
FCN Editorial - Black women v. AIDS (12-19-2004)Genocide of Blacks continues in America (FCN, 12-22-2003)HIV/AIDS continues to challenge Black America (FCN, 12-14-2003) WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) - Debra Holmes* has enough to worry about. She found out recently that she is HIV-positive. How she contracted it is the number one question, and she doesn't have an answer. What she doesn't need...
ADL targets Russell Simmons
(FinalCall.com) - Music mogul Russell Simmons has refused to bow to pressure from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to denounce Minister Farrakhan as being anti-Semitic as part of Mr. Simmons' involvement with the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding's new campaign to raise awareness of anti-Semitism. The program involves actors and musicians to film public service announcements identifying with the Jewish people...