Special to the NNPA from the Global Information Network

(GIN) – A video that went viral of South African police tying a man to the back of a pick-up and letting him drag along the ground, shocked nationals in both South Africa and Mozambique where the man, who later died of his injuries, was from.

Mido Macia was a taxi driver who reportedly parked his cab on the wrong side of the road. After a brief scuffle with officers he was roped up and tied to the police vehicle, despite calls from area residents that he be freed. Police claimed they put the “resisting suspect” into the police van and took him to the police station. The Congress of South African Trade Unions alleged that Macia died when other men attacked him in the cell.

“Prison is not enough to punish those who murdered my husband”, said his widow, Biuda Mazive. “Those who committed this crime will come out of prison, but my husband will never come back”.

“We are asking for help from the Mozambican government to ensure that justice is done,” said his father, Jossefa Macie, interviewed by Radio Mozambique. “We don’t accept what happened to our son.”

Mido’s sister, Hortencia Macie, said he was the oldest son of their parents and, in addition to his own three year old daughter, he had taken responsibility for the orphan children of a deceased brother.

Macie had been living in South Africa since the age of ten. His father had been a migrant worker on the South African gold mines. After his parents returned to Mozambique, he would regularly send food back to them. That lifeline has been abruptly cut off, and relatives in South Africa now wonder who will support Macie’s parents.

Two officers and six constables have been charged with the murder of the 27 year old Macia. A scheduled hearing on the charge was postponed until Friday. “We want to hold an identity parade (line-up), so no pictures must be taken in order to prevent the prejudice of the case,” said prosecutor December Mthimunye.

Residents of Daveyton, where the incident took place, rallied at the courthouse to denounce the rising number of police brutality cases in the area.

By George E. Curry
NNPA Editor-in-Chief

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – In the oral arguments last week before the Supreme Court to determine whether a key section of the Voting Rights Act should be upheld, Justice Antonin Scalia referred to the provision as “perpetuation of racial entitlement.”

It was the kind of comment that could easily spark a demonstration in front of the court. But when Scalia made his comment about the pre-clearance provision of the 1965 law last Wednesday, there were already protesters in front of the U.S. Supreme Court marching in support of the Voting Rights Act.

The Voting Rights Act was originally passed in 1965. When Section 5 was scheduled to expire, it was extended by Congress in 1970, 1975, 1982 and for another 25 years in 2006. It was approved the last time with broad bipartisan support. It passed the House by a 390-33 margin and the Senate 98-0.

Under Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination must receive pre-clearance from the Justice Department or a federal court before they are allowed to make any changes in their voting procedures.

Inside the court, Scalia addressed the various extensions of the Voting Rights Act since its passage.

“…The initial enactment of this legislation in a – - a time when the need for it was so much more abundantly clear – - in the Senate, there – - it was double-digits against it. And that was only a 5-year term. Then, it is reenacted five years later, again for a 5-year term. Double-digits against it in the Senate. Then it was reenacted for seven years, Single digits against it. Then enacted for 25 years, eight Senate votes against it. And this last enactment, not a single vote in the Senate against it. And the House is pretty much the same.

Scalia then said, “Now, I don’t think that’s attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It’s been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political process.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor did not let Scalia’s entitlement comment go unchallenged.

She pressed Bert W. Rein, the lawyer representing Shelby County, Ala., four times on the issue. She asked, “Do you think that the right to vote is a racial entitlement in Section 5?” Rein finally answered, “…May I say Congress was reacting in 1964 to a problem of race discrimination which it thought was prevalent in certain jurisdictions. So to that extent, as the intervenor said, yes, it was intended to protect those who had been discriminated against.”

Stephen G. Breyer said the case should be looked up through a historical context.

“So in 1965, well, we have history,” he said. “We have 200 years or perhaps of slavery. We have 80 years or so of legal segregation. We have had 41 years of this statue. And this statue has helped a lot. So, therefore Congress in 2005 looks back and says don’t change horses in the middle of the stream, because we still have a ways to go.”

If Section 5 is upheld on this conservative-leaning court, it would probably be on the vote of Anthony M. Kennedy. The right-leaning justice hinted that the Voting Rights Act may have run its course.

After Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr. praised the effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act, Kennedy said, “Well, the Marshall Plan was very god, too, the Morale Act, the Northwest Ordinance, but times change.”

Sotomayor said Shelby County has not changed enough.

“Assuming I accept your premise, and there’s some question about that, that some portions of the South have changed, your country pretty much hasn’t.” she said. “In the period we’re talking about, it has many more discriminating – - 240 discriminatory voting laws that were blocked by Section 5 objections.”

Shelby County went to court after the Justice Department rejected a redistricting plan that evidently played a role in the defeat of Ernest Montgomery, the only Black member of the 5-member city council in Calera, Ala., a bedroom community of 12,000 people near Birmingham.

Montgomery was elected to the council in 2004 from a district that was nearly 71 percent Black. The district was redrawn two years later, reducing the Black presence to 23 percent. Montgomery narrowly lost his 2008 re-election bid to a White challenger. But the Justice Department invalidated the election because district changes had not been pre-cleared. Shelby County went to court to overturn the decision. In meantime, Montgomery won a newly-called election.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote an opinion in 2009 that might signal how he will vote in this case.

He said at the time, “Things have changed in the South. “The evil that Section 5 is meant to address may no longer be concentrated in the jurisdictions singled out for preclearance. The statute’s coverage formula is based on data that is now more than 35 years old, and there is considerable evidence that it fails to account for current political conditions.”

Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, referred to Senate support of the Voting Rights Act.

“Well, that sounds like a good argument to me, Justice Scalia,” she said. “It was clear to 98 Senators, including every Senator from a covered state, who decided that there was a continuing need for this piece of legislation.”

By Maya Rhodan
NNPA Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – As Black History Month came to a close last week, a Civil Rights icon made history once again in the halls of the U.S. Capitol.

Last Wednesday, in ceremony hosted by President Obama and members of Congress, Rosa Parks became the first Black woman to have her full-length likeness depicted in the National Statuary Hall.

The statue of Parks, which stands at 9-feet tall, depicts the Civil Rights icon seated and clutching her purse to commemorate her refusal to move to the back of a Montgomery, Ala. bus, sparking the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 that lasted more than a year.

During his speech, President Obama told the story of Parks’ encounter with the bus driver on Dec. 1, 1955 which led to the boycott.

Parks had been kicked off the bus by the same driver twelve years prior for entering through the front door when the back was two crowded.

“He grabbed her sleeve and he pushed her off the bus. It made her mad enough, she would recall, that she avoided riding his bus for a while,” President Obama said. “And when they met again that winter evening in 1955, Rosa Parks would not be pushed.”

Later, when Parks refused to move from her seat, even after the bus driver who had kicked her off the bus 12 years before threatened, and later delivered on his promise, to have her arrested, she remained.

“Some schoolchildren are taught that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat because her feet were tired,” then Sen. Obama remarked at Rosa Parks’ funeral in 2005. “ Our nation’s schoolbooks are only getting it half right. She once said: “The only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

For 385 days, Black people across Montgomery boycotted the bus system until it was desegregated; a feat President Obama said last Wednesday led to “the entire edifice of segregation” beginning to tumble like the “ancient walls of Jericho.”

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga), who grew up in Troy, Ala., only 40 miles from Montgomery, did not meet Parks until he was a student at Fisk University.

“I was only 15 years old during the Montgomery bus boycott,” Lewis said. “But I, like everyone else I knew in Alabama, had a deep admiration and respect for Rosa Parks because of her dignity, her courage and her integrity.”

President Obama referred to Parks as a woman who “defied the odds and defied injustice.”

Although known for sparking the bus boycott, Parks’ activism extended far beyond refusing to be removed from her seat. Parks was an eternal activist who served in her local NAACP, and worked with Congressman John Conyers of Michigan from 1965-1988.

At 74, Parks opened the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, an organization that educates and trains disadvantaged youth for employment. Twelve years later President Clinton honored an 86-year-old Parks with a Congressional Gold Medal.

“Rosa Parks held no elected office. She possessed no fortune; lived her life far from the formal seats of power. And yet today, she takes her rightful place among those who’ve shaped this nation’s course,” President Obama said during the ceremony.

Parks, whose casket became the first of an African American to lie in the Capitol Rotunda when she died in 2005 at age 92, now stands among 100 of the most notable leaders in our nation’s history.

“Rosa Parks’ singular act of disobedience launched a movement. The tired feet of those who walked the dusty roads of Montgomery helped a nation see that to which it had once been blind,” President Obama said during the unveiling. “It is because of these men and women that I stand here today. It is because of them that our children grow up in a land more free and more fair; a land truer to its founding creed.”

The icon would have turned 100 on Feb. 4, joins the likenesses of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sojourner Truth in the hall of more than 180 pieces of art that celebrate men and women who are “illustrious for their historic renown.”

Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), the current chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, released a statement on the unveiling praising Parks for her “dedication to ensuring no human being is treated like a second class citizen.”

She added, “I am grateful to Mrs. Parks for her contributions to our country. As the statue of Mrs. Parks will remind every person who walks through the halls of the U.S. Capitol, the sacrifices and the fight to secure civil rights in this country are far from over.”

By Freddie Allen
NNPA Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON (NNNPA) – A few weeks after President Barack Obama won four more years in the White House, dozens of Black leaders crowded around a podium in the Congressional Room of the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C. to announce plans for a Black agenda designed to address the myriad economic, social and political disparities that afflict the Black community.

But three months, later those Black groups represented at the news conference, with several centuries of years of collective experience in organizing, mobilizing and marching, have failed to produce a finished document to present to the president and Congress.

Last December 3, leaders of the National Urban League, the National Action Network, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation convened the meeting of 60 leader civil rights, business and economic leaders and crafted the foundation of a public policy agenda that included “five urgent priorities:”

- Achieve economic parity for African-Americans

- Promote equity in educational opportunity

- Protect and defend voting rights

- Promote a healthier nation by eliminating healthcare disparities

- Achieve comprehensive reform of the criminal justice system

“We’re providing our recommendations to the president. We’re providing our recommendations to Congress,” said Melanie L. Campbell, president of the Black Women’s Roundtable and the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. Campbell also called on citizens to step up and be leaders in the conversation as well as each member of the convened group sought input from their diverse constituents.

Although, Melanie Campbell said that a working draft is floating around the White House and Congress, the lack of a final draft may reflect deeper issues.

Not only did many Americans feel the need to adjust their political lenses to view the nation’s first Black president, many civil rights groups also found themselves navigating life with President Obama unchartered territory. Challenging him publicly was often met with sharp rebuke from their peers and constituents.

In 2011, President Obama addressed the Congressional Black Caucus at their annual Foundation conference and seemed to scold Black leaders, urging them to stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying and to trade their bedroom slippers for marching shoes a speech that energized some and left other lawmakers seething.

“It was brand new, not just for organizational heads, it was brand new for the country,” said Campbell, referring to the election of the nation’s first Black president. “There were some things that were different in knowing how to deal with that, but I don’t think that there was ever a time that we didn’t work to try to push on issues that were important to our community.”

Not everyone agrees.

“It’s an easier target when you have Republicans in power so that you can easily mobilize for symbolic benefits,” said Lorenzo Morris, political science professor at Howard University, Washington, D.C. “The problem with Obama is, without an easy target, some of the weaknesses in their own organizations might have been shown.”

Easy target or not, much work remains to be done on behalf of African Americans.

“The real question is: how will Black interests groups bring issues to the table? How will they lobby him? How will they pressure him?” asked Dianne Pinderhughes, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. “Instead of expecting that as president, he would take initiative in doing everything.”

Other groups are taking a different tact.

“The communities that have gotten a lot of attention have gone to the president and asked for something. If you don’t ask you don’t get,” said Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. “Those communities have been very organized and very vocal about what their agenda is. Our agenda is all over the place when it comes to our communities across the country.”

In Washington, D.C. the Congressional Black Caucus released their own policy agenda for the 113th Congress with three major points:

-Voter Protection and Empowerment
-Poverty and the Economy
-Immigration Reform

“We chose immigration reform because that’s what’s on the table right now,” explained Fudge. “We don’t set the agenda for America. We do the best that we can to influence the direction that we’re going, but immigration is the topic of the day. If we do not engage ourselves in that discussion, then our communities will lose.”

Immigrants face some of the same problems we do as African Americans, such as racial profiling, Fudge said.

“When you talk about low wages poor working conditions those things are very much the same in immigrant communities, as they are in African American communities,” said Fudge. “How can you fight for justice for African Americans and not fight for justice for immigrants?”

Choosing immigration over other issues such as criminal justice reform or education is baffling to some observers.

But not to Kathie Stromile Golden executive director of National Conference of Black Political Scientists.

“There are Afro-Hispanic folks. So it makes sense for the CBC to take up that issue as well in terms of shaping their agenda they know the kind of environment that they are operating in and they need to have successes as well because the success is what legitimizes them and leads to them to having some impact on other issues,” she said.

Some political analysts believe that Blacks would benefit more from a narrow focus from their leaders – concentrating on jobs and voting rights, for example – because too many menu items makes it harder for the general public and the media to digest the heart of their message.

On February 21, Reverend Al Sharpton and other Black leaders met with President Obama to talk about issues affecting the Black community. According to a statement released by Sharpton, the group discussed voters’ rights, job creation, sequestration, the criminal justice system and gun violence.

“The president engaged us in a spirited conversation and seemed to be listening intently,” said Sharpton in the statement. The group did not present the Black agenda at the meeting.

Pinderhughes said, “It’s the responsibility of the Black interest group community to create a political strategy that results in legislative change. [President Obama] needs to be pressured just like any other president.”

And like any other president, said Pinderhughes, you have to give him a reason to respond.

Still, there is some reluctance to force Obama to respond.

“He is the president. He is not the president of Black folk, he is not the president of White folk,” said Stromile Golden. “If he were just promoting a Black agenda, how long do you think that would last?”