STATE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 12-24-20
BIDEN TAPS MICHAEL S. REGAN FOR EPA ADMINISTRATOR
[RALEIGH] President-elect Joe Biden has elected Michael S. Regan, North Carolina’s top air quality enforcer, to become head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, thus making Regan the nation’s top pollution cop. Regan will also become the first Black man in the agency’s history to head up it’s efforts. Regan, 44, must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate before he takes office.
THREE NC HBCUs GET BIG DONATIONS FROM BILLIONAIRE
[RALEIGH] Three North Carolina historically Black colleges got early Christmas presents in the form of huge donations from billionaire Mackenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Winston-Salem Sate University received $30 million from Scott, it’s largest single donation from one person ever. Elizabeth City State University saw $15 million and N.C. A&T University received $45 million.
REPORTERS COVERING BLM HEARINGS IN ALAMANCE COUNTY WIN
[GRAHAM] Three top local district court judges have ruled that up to five reporters must be allowed to cover hearings in the local courthouse, provided that they ask permission of the presiding judge, and that there is enough room. Judges had been barring reporters from covering hearings involving members of the Black Lives Matter movement.
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REV. BARBER’S POOR PEOPLE’S CAMPAIGN
PUSHES BIDEN/HARRIS ON PRIORITIES
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
On Jan 20th when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are sworn in as president and vice president of the United States respectively, the Poor’s People’s Campaign: a National Call for a Moral Revival will undoubtedly find a more receptive federal administration to it’s progressive agenda.
That’s what Rev. Dr. William Barber, co-convener of the Poor’s People’s Campaign certainly expected when they met with the domestic policy panel from the Biden/Harris Transition team last week. But the campaign also released a set of 14 policy and legislative priorities from it’s Poor People’s Jubilee Platform, and “insists” that they are prioritized during the first 50-100 days of the new administration and 117th Congress.
The 117th Congress convenes on Jan. 3rd, 2021.
That Poor People’s Campaign priority list includes:
1. Enact comprehensive, free and just COVID-19 relief that
must prioritize the needs of essential workers, people of color and low-income who have been hit the hardest in the pandemic.
2. Guaranteed quality health care for all, regardless of any preexisting conditions.
3. Raising the federal minimum wage to $15.00 per hour immediately
4. Update the poverty measure to replace the current poverty line to accurately reflect current conditions of poverty and economic insecurity.
5. Guarantee quality housing for all by expanding public and affordable housing, and rental assistance.
6. Enact a federal jobs program to build up investments, infrastructure, public institutions, climate resilience, energy efficiency and socially beneficial industries and jobs in poor and low-income communities.
7. Protect and expand voting rights and civil rights.
8. Guarantee safe, quality and equitable public education, with supports for protection against re-segregation, increasing public educational all levels, especially for poor and income communities.
9. Comprehensive and just immigration reform
10. Ensure all of the rights of indigenous peoples
11. Enact fair taxes on the wealthy, corporation and Wall Street.
12. Use the power of executive orders to meet these demands.
13. Redirect the bloated Pentagon budget towards these priorities
as matters of national security.
14. Work with the Poor People’ s Campaign to establish a permanent President Council to advocate for this bold agenda.
The Poor People’s Campaign concluded, “ The priorities above are Constitutionally consistent, morally defensible and economically sane. They come out of the lives, struggles, agency and insights of the 140 million and their moral, economic and legal allies. They embody a politics of love, justice and truth that can defeat the politics of death, heal the nation and bring us down the path towards genuine democracy. Rather than the puny politics of right or left, we must be guided by a politics of what is right or wrong.”
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AFTER 44 YEARS IN PRISON,
GOV. COOPER GRANTS RONNIE
LONG PARDON OF INNOCENCE
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
[CONCORD] In August, Ronnie Long was legally deemed a free man by a federal court which, after 44 years, vacated his first-degree rape and burglary charge.
On Dec. 17th, Gov. Roy Cooper put the icing on the cake by issuing a pardon of innocence to Ronnie Long, legally certifying that Long never raped and robbed the 54-year-old white woman he was wrongfully convicted for in Oct. 1976.
Long can now collect compensation from the state for his false conviction.
Long, who was falsely convicted when he was just 20 years-old by an all-white jury, was one of five men that Cooper - who had never issued any pardons prior during his tenure as governor - granted clemency to last week.
“We must continue to work to reform our justice system and acknowledge when people have been wrongly convicted,” Gov. Cooper said in a statement upon granting the clemencies. “ I have carefully reviewed the facts in each of these cases and, while I cannot give these men back the time they served, I am granting them Pardons of Innocence in the hope that they might be better able to move forward in their lives,” Gov. Cooper said.
The four others beyond Long had been falsely convicted for an unrelated crimes.
It was earlier this year when the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Long, 64, had been the victim of “extreme and continuous police misconduct” after 44 years behind bars.
He was released on August 31st after the State of North Carolina, after determining that the evidence proving his innocence had been hidden and his rights violated, moved to vacate the false convictions, thus immediately releasing him from prison.
There was never any physical evidence connecting Long to the crime. He was serving an 80-year sentence before his release in August.
Afterwards, Long told CBS News, “I feel as though the criminal justice system here in this state failed me.”
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