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October 18, 2012

  • The NorthStar’s Week in Black History

    The NorthStar’s Week in Black History October 19 through October 25 October 19 1949 ----- Peter Tosh, given name Winston Hubert McIntosh, reggae singer-songwriter, musician and founding member of The Wailers, was born in Grange Hill, Jamaica.  As both a member of a band and as a solo performer, he brought international attention to reggae music.  A political activist as well as a performer, Tosh was dubbed "the Malcolm X of reggae music." Tosh was raised by an aunt and learned to play guitar at an early age, imitating perfectly guitarists he saw perform.

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  • Activists Attend Ceremony in France Naming Street for Mumia Abu-Jamal

    Activists Attend Ceremony in France Naming Street for Mumia Abu-Jamal by Linn Washington, Jr. Bobigny, France – Native American activist Bill “Jimbo” Simmons was among the 100-plus people attending a Saturday ceremony naming a street honoring imprisoned African-American activist/journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal in this city located six miles from the center of Paris.

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  • Black Detroit Homeowners Sue Morgan Stanley Over Mortgages

    Black Detroit Homeowners Sue Morgan Stanley Over Mortgages by Frederick H. Lowe Five African-American homeowners on Monday sued the investment banking firm Morgan Stanley, charging that the company encouraged one of the nation’s worst subprime lenders to issue mortgages to borrowers who were certain to default because of the loans’ high debt-to-income ratio.

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  • Highest Court Clears the Way for Early Voting for All in Ohio

    Highest Court Clears the Way for Early Voting for All in Ohio The United States Supreme Court on Tuesday boosted early voting in Ohio ahead of the Nov.

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  • Federal Judges Clear S.C. Photo-ID Law But Not for 2012

    Federal Judges Clear S.C. Photo-ID Law But Not for 2012 A three-judge federal panel has approved South Carolina’s new voter-ID law, but not for the 2012 presidential election.

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  • Andrew F. Brimmer Dies

    Andrew F. Brimmer Dies He was the first African American on the Federal Reserve Board Andrew F. Brimmer, the first African American to serve on the Federal Reserve Board, has died. Dr.

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  • National Baptist Voter Push Criticized as Mediocre

    National Baptist Voter Push Criticized as Mediocre by Maynard Eaton and Carrie L. Williams ATLANTA (TriceEdneyWire.com) --- Despite the fervent tones and solemn faces of the nation’s highest-ranking black Baptist leaders as they preached the importance of voting on Election Day, Nov.

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  • Health Care is a Civil Right

    Health Care is a Civil Right by Julianne Malveaux (TriceEdneyWire.com) --- Our Constitution offers us “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," but we can’t pursue anything if we are unhealthy.

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  • Bain Sends Illinois Jobs to China

    Bain Sends Illinois Jobs to China by Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. (TriceEdneyWire.com) --- Dot Turner has worked at what is now Sensata Technologies in downstate Freeport, Ill., for 43 years. The company does sophisticated work creating sensors for automobiles.

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  • Statue of Civil-Rights Icon Fannie Lou Hamer Unveiled

    Statue of Civil-Rights Icon Fannie Lou Hamer Unveiled Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro American Newspaper (TriceEdneyWire.com) --- She is remembered across the world as the woman who was “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” On Oct.

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  • Pullman Porter Blues Premiers in Seattle

    Pullman Porter Blues Premiers in Seattle by Susan M. Miller Seattle Repertory Theatre opened its 50th season September 27 with the world premiere of Pullman Porter Blues, a new musical by Seattle playwright Cheryl L. West.

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  • Nas’ Atlanta Pad Sold at Auction for $348,500

    Nas SunTrust Bank, the mortgage holder on rapper Nas’s home, has foreclosed on the living space and sold it at auction.

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  • Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith to Host Fundraiser for President Obama

    Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith to Host Fundraiser for President Obama Actor Will Smith and his wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith, will co-host later this month a fundraiser for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. The planned Oct.

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  • Christian College Investigates D’Souza’s Alleged Affair

    Christian College Investigates D’Souza’s Alleged Affair Dinesh D’Souza, who has made a scathing documentary about President Barack Obama, is in hot water with the board of directors of King’s College, a New York City-based Christian school, where D’Souza is president. The school’s board is reportedly investigating D’Souza, who is married but earlier this month filed for divorce, for an alleged adulterous affair with another woman that came to light in September. D’Souza arrived at a Christian event on Sept.

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  • An Energized Barack Obama Changes The Race

    An Energized Barack Obama Changes The Race by Barry Cooper Who would have thought it? The two candidates for President of the United States had another debate, and it was Mitt Romney who appeared to come across as “The Angry Black Man.

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  • Trial Date Scheduled in the Murder of Trayvon Martin

    Trial Date Scheduled in the Murder of Trayvon Martin George Zimmerman is scheduled to go on trial June 10th for the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Judge Debra Nelson set the date on Tuesday morning following a brief hearing.

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  • Roland Warren to Step Down as Head of the National Fatherhood Initiative

    Roland Warren to Step Down as Head of the National Fatherhood Initiative Roland C. Warren, president of the National Fatherhood Initiative, is leaving the organization to head another nonprofit agency.

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A. Peter Bailey
A. Peter Bailey

Blacks Must Use Economic Might

by A. Peter Bailey
(TriceEdneyWire.com) --- Now that the end of the presidential campaign is nearly upon us, it is time to state once again that when it comes to promoting and protecting our individual and group interests in this country, we, as black people, have an extremely powerful -- not influential -- but powerful weapon that we don’t use effectively. That weapon is our individual and group economic resources.

We spend too much time focusing on electoral politics and not nearly enough on using wisely the nearly trillion dollars that we gross annually in this country. Somehow many of us, despite strong evidence to the contrary, believe with all our hearts and souls that the path to equal rights, equal justice and equal opportunity lies mainly in electing people to political offices.

Not so, says economist/professor James Clingman and the Rev. Earl Trent, pastor of Florida Avenue Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.

“We must wake up and then get up and be about the business of economic empowerment regardless of whom wins any election,”Clingman insists. “We must not allow the hoopla of ‘making history’ to divert our attention from the real action and that action is building, owning and controlling our own income-producing assets.”

Says Trent, “An economic agenda is the central agenda of all politics, for it determines who gets a slice of the pie, who gets the crumbs and who gets nothing. The new agenda for Black America must consciously replace the social agenda with an economic agenda whose central focus is how we can improve the state of the black economy”.

Their position is shared by Chancellor Williams, who wrote in his must-read book, The Destruction of Black Civilization, Great Issues of a Race: 4500 B.C.-2000 A.D., that “The second great understanding should be that economic activities are so fundamental in any truly upward movement, so clearly indispensable at this stage in history that it should be unnecessary to state it even. The still existing slave mentality causes millions of us to shy away from these basics of life itself, because it requires more initiative, training and work and less talk than politics….”

Mr. Williams provides concrete guidance as to what should and could be done economically. He writes on page 371 of his book under the heading, “The Division of Economic Planning and Development": "Those who are serious about promoting and protecting the interest of black people should pay close attention to the essential point all three brothers have made -- which is that there can be no political power without economic power, only varying degrees of political influence. With economic power, there is automatic political power."

While on the subject of economic achievement, it must be noted that one of the greatest, if not the greatest, black achievements occurred on Oct. 31, 1919. It was on that day that the first ship was launched by Marcus Garvey’s Black Steam Ship Corporation, as thousands of people watched on the 125th Street pier in Harlem.

According to www.blackpeopleparty.com, “White newspapers splashed the news in disbelief all over the world. Black people rejoiced... The Black Star Line was designed to show what self reliance could do. It was financed from its shareholders, all of whom were black and most of whom were UNIA [Universal Negro Improvement Association] members….” This was a classic example of what pooling our economic resources can accomplish.


A. Peter Bailey is a journalist, activist and author.

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