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Tag: Congressional Black Caucus Foundation

  • Rev. Barber: Ignore Poor People at Your Own Risk

    At a time when communities across America are grappling with rising costs, attacks on democracy, and deep inequality, Bishop William J. Barber II is clear: America’s future depends on whether we can turn shared pain into shared power — and whether our leaders will dare to lift all of us, not just some of us.

    In this conversation with Word In Black’s deputy managing director, Joseph Williams, at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 54th Annual Legislative Conference, Rev. Barber gets straight to the point. Poor and low-wage people, he says, are the most powerful — and the most ignored — voting bloc in America.

    RELATED: Rev. Barber: America Must Decide Death Is No Longer an Option

    His warning to the Democratic Party: Ignoring the poor would be “at your own political demise.” Barber cites recent data showing that nearly 19 million people who supported Biden-Harris in 2020 didn’t turn out in the midterms — largely because they didn’t hear a clear plan to tackle poverty and low wages.

    “51% of our children, even before Trump, were in poverty,” he says. And millions of Americans are either uninsured or underinsured, so offering a bold economic vision can’t be optional.

    Some say America needs another Martin Luther King Jr. to lead us forward. But Barber, who serves as president of Repairers of the Breach, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, and architect of the Moral Monday movement, rejects that narrative.

    “Martin Luther King never said he was the leader,” he says, noting that the March on Washington happened because of broad coalition work.

    “I don’t think in any period of history it’s just a person. I think that’s a misstatement of history,” he says. Real change, he insists, comes from the ground up — from organizing in communities, states, and local movements that add up to national transformation.

    Watch the full conversation in the video above.

    Liz Courquet-Lesaulnier

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  • Maryland candidates join Congressional Black Caucus conference, work to double number of Black women in US Senate – WTOP News

    Maryland candidates join Congressional Black Caucus conference, work to double number of Black women in US Senate – WTOP News

    Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.) said she understood the significance of math when she walked into the U.S. Senate chamber last year as just the third Black woman and 12th Black person ever to serve in the chamber.

    This article was republished with permission from WTOP’s news partners at Maryland Matters. Sign up for Maryland Matters’ free email subscription today.

    Angela Rye moderates a Sept. 13 panel, “Black Women Belong…In the Senate,” at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s conference. Others, from left, are Angela Alsobrooks and Lisa Blunt Rochester, Senate candidates from Maryland and Delaware, respectively, and Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.). Photo by William J. Ford

    Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.) said she understood the significance of math when she walked into the U.S. Senate chamber last year as just the third Black woman and 12th Black person ever to serve in the chamber.

    Butler, who will step down when her term expires in January, said the number of elected Black women senators could double this fall if voters elect U.S. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D).

    “I’m so excited that we are about to move beyond the acceptance of having just one. We’re going to be bold enough to send two to the United States Senate,” Butler said Friday, the third day of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s legislative conference at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.

    “I’m excited for the doors that they are going to keep kicking open when we are no longer counting how many, but that we are welcoming women, Black women, women of color, women of all experiences and walks of life to the highest chamber in our United States government,” Butler said.

    Butler was appointed to the Senate after the death of longtime California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Only two Black women have been elected to the chamber: Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois was the first, in 1992, and Vice President Kamala Harris was elected in 2016 from California.

    If Rochester and Alsobrooks are elected this fall, then, the total number of Black women elected to serve in the Senate in its history will double from two to four. All the women are Democrats.

    In Delaware, home to President Joe Biden, Rochester is the heavy favorite to win against Republican Eric Hansen and independent Michael Katz. She has served as Delaware secretary of labor, personnel director with the state’s Office of Management and Budget, and CEO of the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League.

    “We are qualified,” Rochester said. “We don’t just step up into this and it wasn’t, ‘Poof. Now I’m here.’”

    Rochester said sometimes when she walks into a room with a male Senate colleague, people will “call him senator and me Lisa. It’s important how we present ourselves.” 

    In neighboring Maryland, Alsobrooks has a more competitive race against two-term former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican. She said her race “is center stage” in the fight to determine control of the Senate, repeating a central theme of her campaign.

    “When we elect Kamala Harris to be our president, she’s going to need to have the majority in the Senate so that she can get her agenda across,” Alsobrooks said.

    She also took aim at Hogan’s position on abortion, another campaign theme, saying the former governor “is, bless his heart, he’s shifting and changing and all kind of things.”

    Alsobrooks noted that vetoed legislation two years ago to expand abortion access in the state, and when that veto was overridden by the Democratic-controlled legislature, he withheld state funding that would have been used to train non-physicians to perform abortions. That money was released by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore on his first day in office last year.

    Hogan has pushed back on the abortion argument, saying repeatedly that while he personally opposes abortion, he would vote to codify the protections of Roe v. Wade, which was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022.

    And the Hogan campaign this week turned the control of the Senate argument on its head with a new ad that says Hogan would be a “critical swing vote” in a closely divided Senate. To drive the point home, the campaign pointed to an endorsement of Hogan by retiring Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who often broke with his party in recent years, giving him outsized influence in the Senate.

    Despite their qualifications, Rochester said women are still viewed differently than men who are elected to office.

    Alsobrooks’ career spans 27 years, including serving as the county’s first full-time prosecutor to handle domestic violence cases, the youngest and first woman elected as the county state’s attorney in 2010 and the first woman elected to be county executive eight years later.

    Butler was president of California’s biggest union of long-term care workers, Service Employees International Union 2015. She also served as an adviser when Harris launched a 2019 campaign for president.

    If elected, Rochester said she and Alsobrooks, who affectionately call each other future “sister senator,” plan to push to codify Roe v. Wade. The conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 two years ago in favor of a Mississippi ban on abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, allowing states to set their own rules for abortion.

    “I have my daughter sitting right here on the front row, and she now has less rights than we did and that ain’t right,” Rochester said. “So, we want to make sure that those who come before us and those who are here now have the right to do with their body what they want.”

    Ivy Lyons

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  • ‘Pathways to Prosperity’: National town hall highlights day two of CBC

    ‘Pathways to Prosperity’: National town hall highlights day two of CBC

    NAACP CEO Derrick Johnson brought the crowd to its feet several times with some of things he said on Thursday morning, including regarding racism, “Mediocre white people think they should be over high-performing Black people.” Photo by Donnell Suggs/The Atlanta Voice

    WASHINGTON, D.C. – The theme of the national town hall that took place on day two of the annual Congressional Black Caucus was “Pathways to Prosperity: Advancing Democracy and Black Economic Opportunity”. The presidential debate that took place earlier this week between current United States Vice President Kamala Harris and former United States President Donald Trump on Tuesday night in Philadelphia could be seen as an example of advancing democracy at the highest level. If elected, Harris, the country’s first Black and female vice president, would be this country’s first female president, and only the second ever Black Commander-in-Chief.

    The Annual Legislative Conference (ALC) in its 53rd year of existence, held the town hall with honorary co-chairs, Representative Lucy McBath (GA) and Representative Troy Carter (LA), Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Board Chair Rep. Terri Sewell (AL) hosting the event alongside other board members. The town hall was sponsored by PolicyLink, an Oakland, California-based research and action institute that is “dedicated to advancing economic and social equity,” according to its website.  

    First to speak on Thursday morning was ALC Honorary Co-Chair Nicole Austin-Hillery, who said this was a “historic time” in this country. “Don’t just sit here today and listen. Our job is to do something,” Hillery said. 

    Sewell, one of the 60 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, said this year Black Americans find themselves in a pivotal moment. “Let us use this as a charge to fight, because when we fight we win,” she said. 

    McBath, who took the stage alongside Carter, said that there are some people that will attempt to convince Black Americans that the progress Black Americans have made in America are at the expense of white Americans. She shared data from a recent Harvard University poll and added, “That’s the goal, lifting up all Americans,” McBath said. 

    Carter added that it was time to take this conversation and move it to action. “It is time to push policies that expand access to capital, create affordable job options,” he said. “We need to dismantle discrimination.”

    Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, PolicyLink President Dr. Michael McAfee, NAACP CEO Derrick Johnson, Latosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America President & CEO Alexis McGill Johnson also contributed to the conversation. 

    Moore, one of the brightest stars in Democratic politics and the first Black governor in Maryland’s history, set the stage for the day by saying, “Policy matters, but we will not make progress with policy alone. We are going to need every sector of society involved in this conversation,” said Moore. 

    During the first panel, McAfee received multiple rounds of applause from the crowd during the times that he spoke due to how poignant and powerful his points were. Among the things he said was, “We have to stop being picked on by weak spineless people.” McAfee didn’t use any specific names when he used the phrase “spineless” but the reaction from what was a large crowd got the point nonetheless. 

    Project 2025 was one of the topics that was discussed. Brown, who along with Black Voters Matter, has spent time registering voters all over the country and in particular in the South, said Black Americans need to fully understand what Project 2025 is all about.

    “We are facing the rollback of voter protections in this country,” Brown said. “It’s really important for us to recognize what is happening.” Brown mentioned the election certification laws in Georgia as an example. 

    Among the topics of discussion were Black men and trusting the election process, reproductive health, voting rights and freedoms, housing, environmental justice, and economic justice.

    “When people are coming after our communities there has to be consequences,” Brown said about the power of the Black voter block. 

    The panel closed with Lemon asking NAACP CEO Derrick Johnson how we can continue to advance Black American people in this country. Johnson started by saying, “With work, not rhetoric. Johnson said home ownership was a way to wealth in this country and with private equity firms buying up homes and property, understanding that the system is against us will be a way to fight against it. 

    “We have to chart out how to get there,” Johnson said. 

    Donnell Suggs

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