Friday, January 8, 2021

FEMA HQ less than 10 Blocks from Capitol Hill. BUSINESS AS USUAL. January 7, 2021 Individual and Community Preparedness Newsletter

 

Individual and community preparedness newsletter, skyline

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apply for the Pan African Organizing Online Class Scholarship. January 8, 2021

 

Apply for the Pan African Organizing Online Class Scholarship


We have just concluded the second cohort of our BRAND NEW revolutionary class: Pan African Organizing Online. We'll soon begin a new cohort, a 5-6 week long course instructed by Dr. Tyrene Wright. Scholarships to join the course are available for I  Black People Ambassadors and Members

 

 

 

This Special Class is exclusive for Members and Ambassadors of

I️BLACKPEOPLE

 

To be considered for the class, you are required to:

1. Apply for the scholarship

2. Confirm your attendance for our Saturday Zoom Call

3. Join our Saturday Zoom call

 

Pan Africanism is a social and political philosophy and movement that has had a lasting impact on the liberation of African people globally. Register to join our Pan African Organizing Online Class to learn from experienced activists on how you can leverage today's technology to mobilize and organize communities online.

i am because WE are ✊🏿


iloveblackpeople.com

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Dr. Tyrene Wright


Thursday, January 7, 2021

Apply for the Youth Preparedness Council Starting on January 18

 

Do you know a teen who has a passion for preparedness? 

FEMA will soon begin accepting applications for its 2021 Youth Preparedness Council (YPC) from youth in grades 8-11

Since 2012, FEMA has brought youth from across the Nation together. Each year, teens apply to the YPC for an opportunity to join FEMA in encouraging emergency preparedness. Teens serve on the YPC for two years.

As part of the YPC, members can build leadership skills and represent their schools and communities

They also share their perspectives, feedback, and opinions with FEMA. The YPC gives youth the chance to meet peers from across the country and work on projects, such as preparedness fairs for their communities.

A virtual summit in July gives members a chance to meet each other and hear from FEMA experts.


Read more... 



Systems Failure: Capital Protection. 2013, 2020, to 2021

All are to blame.

From the Federal Level (DoD, Department of Justice) to local Fusion Centers, and Emergency Management Agencies.

How many law enforcement agencies are within the District of Columbia?  27 or more.

There are roughly 27 law enforcement agencies with overlapping jurisdiction in WashingtonD.C. To the casual observer, opportunities for confusion and miscommunication, especially during events like the Navy Yard shooting, probably seem infinite.
 
 
https://dccouncil.us/dc-council-statement-on-the-department-of-defenses-denial-of-dcs-national-guard-deployment-request/ 

DC Council Statement on the Department of Defense’s Denial of DC’s National Guard Deployment Request

JANUARY 06, 2021

 
https://www.dhs.gov/fusion-centers

Fusion Centers

Fusion Centers are state-owned and operated centers that serve as focal points in states and major urban areas for the receipt, analysis, gathering and sharing of threat-related information between State, Local, Tribal and Territorial (SLTT), federal and private sector partners.

 

The National Network of Fusion Centers (National Network) brings critical context and value to Homeland Security and Law Enforcement that no other federal or local organization can replicate. Fusion Centers accomplish this through sharing information, providing partners with a unique perspective on threats to their state or locality and being the primary conduit between frontline personnel, state and local leadership and the rest of the Homeland Security Enterprise.

 

The National Network of Fusion Centers is the hub of much of the two-way intelligence and information flow between the federal government and our State, Local, Tribal and Territorial (SLTT) and private sector partners. The fusion centers represent a shared commitment between the federal government and the state and local governments who own and operate them. Individually, each is a vital resource for integrating information from national and local sources to prevent and respond to all threats and hazards. The enhanced collaboration between the federal government, SLTT and private sector partners represents the new standard through which we view homeland security.

Last Published Date: September 19, 2019

 

 
 
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-09-25/how-a-city-with-two-dozen-law-enforcement-agencies-handles-a-huge-crisis#:~:text=There%20are%20roughly%2027%20law,Yard%20shooting%2C%20probably%20seem%20infinite

How a City With Two Dozen Law Enforcement Agencies Handles a Huge Crisis

The Navy Yard attack was an example of D.C.'s complex jurisdictional landscape.

By   Mike Riggs    September 25, 2013, 11:55 AM EDT

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


Tuesday, January 5, 2021

1860. Is history repeating itself when President Lincoln was elected

Shall the GOP majority 'secede' from the Union?
Tuesday and Wednesday, January 5-6, 2021 will show, will change come, or business as usual since Reconstruction ended.

Monday, January 4, 2021

RACE or EQUITY? "A COVID-19 relief fund was only for Black residents. Then came the lawsuits. - The Morning Call"

Getting it twisted

Getting caught in the heart of the division within communities.  Communities of Race, or Communities built on Equity.

BEMA International

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https://www.mcall.com/coronavirus/sns-nyt-oregon-cares-fund-lawsuit-20210104-issdhwf6jffwrag7jxchklcxka-story.html?outputType=amp 

CORONAVIRUS
A COVID-19 relief fund was only for Black residents. Then came the lawsuits.
 
By JOHN ELIGON
THE NEW YORK TIMES |    JAN 04, 2021 AT 1:07 PM
 
Black civic leaders in Oregon heard the alarm bells early in the pandemic.
 
Data and anecdotes around the country suggested that the coronavirus was disproportionately killing Black people. Locally, Black business owners had begun fretting about their livelihoods, as stay-at-home orders and various other measures were put into place. Many did not have valuable houses they could tap for capital, and requests for government assistance had gone nowhere.
 
After convening several virtual meetings, the civic leaders proposed a bold and novel solution that state lawmakers approved in July. The state would earmark $62 million of its $1.4 billion in federal COVID-19 relief money to provide grants to Black residents, business owners and community organizations enduring pandemic-related hardships.
 
“It was finally being honest: This is who needs this support right now,” said Lew Frederick, a state senator who is Black.
 
But now millions of dollars in grants are on hold after one Mexican American and two white business owners sued the state, arguing that the fund for Black residents discriminated against them.
 
The dispute in Oregon is the latest legal skirmish in the nation’s decades long battle over affirmative action, and comes in a year in which the pandemic has starkly exposed the socioeconomic and health disparities that African Americans face. It has unfolded, too, against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter movement, with institutions across America — from corporations to city councils — acknowledging systemic racism, and activists demanding that meaningful steps be taken to undo racial inequities.


Nkenge Harmon Johnson, the president and chief executive of the Urban League of Portland, in Portland, Ore., Dec. 28, 2020. The State of Oregon earmarked $62 million to explicitly benefit Black individuals and business owners. Now some of the money is in limbo after lawsuits alleging discrimination. (Tojo Andrianarivo/The New York Times)
 
Politicians, social scientists and jurists have long clashed over how far the government and institutions should go to repair the harm caused by racial discrimination — and the extent to which past racism should influence today’s decisions. In creating the Oregon Cares Fund, lawmakers took the rare step of explicitly naming a single racial group as the beneficiary, arguing that Black residents have been subjected to unique discrimination that put them at a disadvantage during the pandemic.
 
Over the decades, various remedies to address discrimination have been met with legal challenges. Supreme Court rulings have established that race-based policies are constitutional only if they achieve a compelling governmental interest and are narrowly tailored to do so. The court has most notably allowed race to be used as a factor in college admissions to achieve student diversity. But the court in recent decades has also sided against one of the original rationales for affirmative action policies — to undo past discrimination and its lingering effect.
 
“You have to show that there’s this really close nexus between why you’re using race and the outcome you’re seeking,” said Melissa Murray, a professor of law at New York University. “And I think here it’s going to be a real question as to whether funding just Black businesses through this Cares fund is actually the only way that you could address the problems that Black Oregonians have experienced during this particular period.”
 
In Oregon, the stakes are dire. Nearly $50 million worth of grants have been awarded, but a court has frozen $8.8 million, the remaining amount minus administrative costs, until the litigation is resolved, a process that could take years.
 
With Congress having recently extended the deadline to the end of this year for states to spend their CARES Act funds or return what remains to the federal government, some worry that lengthy litigation could mean the money is lost for good.
 
Oregon’s long history of anti-Black racism has fueled much of the advocacy for the state’s fund. And while other racial groups have said they supported it, critics have argued that Black people are not the only ones who have faced discrimination in the state.
 
Some Black residents, who make up about 2% of the state’s population, said that argument was a distraction.
 
“As a state, as a country, it is unusual for us to provide adequate resources to Black people,” said Nkenge Harmon Johnson, president and chief executive of the Urban League of Portland. “For some folks, it’s shocking, it’s distasteful.”
 
But Edward Blum, a white conservative activist whose organization, Project on Fair Representation, is underwriting one of two lawsuits challenging the fund, said the opposition was about preventing racial exclusion.
 
“It is like, in the employment arena, going to apply for a job and seeing a sign on the employment office that reads, ‘No Asians need apply,’” said Blum, who has led efforts to challenge race-based admissions policies at universities, including a high-profile case against Harvard. “Your race and your ethnicity should not be used to help you or harm you in your life’s endeavors.”
 
Walter Leja, a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits, said he might be on the verge of laying off employees from Dynamic Service Fire and Security, the small electrical services company he started in Salem in 2007, if he did not receive relief money soon. An earlier loan of about $20,000 from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, he said, was just enough to cover payroll for about two months.
Leja, who is 64 and white, said he could not say whether historic discrimination put Black business owners at a disadvantage. But a particular fund, he said, was not warranted.
 
“It’s discriminatory,” he said. “It’s locking up a bunch of funds that can only be used by Black businesses when there’s a ton of other businesses out there that need access to those funds. It’s not a white or Black thing. It’s an everybody thing.”
 
That lawsuit — a class-action case led by Leja and the white owner of a logging company, Great Northern Resources, based in the city of John Day — is one of two that challenges the fund. The other, underwritten by the Center for Individual Rights, a nonprofit law firm advocating limited government, involves a Mexican American owner of the Revolucion Coffee House, in Portland, who has claimed discrimination.
 
Many of today’s economic and health disparities stem from past policies and practices that were explicitly racist, some social scientists say, arguing that measures aimed at particular races were necessary to undo the damage. But courts have set a high bar for allowing the clear use of race in legislation. To get around the legal hurdles, policymakers tend to rely on proxies for race — like ZIP codes and socioeconomic status — when designing measures they hope will benefit marginalized racial groups.
 
But Akasha Lawrence Spence, a state representative, said subtle measures were not enough for the current crisis. Specifically targeting Black Oregonians for relief was an important step in forcing people to grasp the effects of racism, she added.
 
“This fund says that we understand that for no other reason than the color of your skin, you have been restricted and prohibited from accessing the tools to economically mobilize,” she said. “For that reason, we’re not going to create any veiled language. We as the Black community are tired of that.”
 
Supporters of the fund argued that the $62 million accounted for about 4.5% of what the state received, leaving plenty for residents who are not Black. They also noted that other COVID-19-related funds were tailored in a way that allowed them to almost exclusively benefit particular racial or ethnic groups — a $10 million fund created by the state that largely benefits Latino immigrants in the country without permission and one created by Portland officials to aid a district of largely Asian-owned businesses.
Designing measures in that way to target Black residents would be difficult and fail to have a significant impact, they said.
 
Oregon’s history of racism predates its statehood. As a territory in 1844, it passed a law banning African Americans from settling there.
 
The state’s Black population ballooned in the 1940s as many Southerners migrated West for jobs in the wartime industries. Like in many other parts of the country, the new Black settlers in Oregon were restricted to certain areas. In 1990, 80% of the state’s Black population was confined to two ZIP codes in Northeast Portland, according to Stephen Green, a Portland native and former banker.
 
Banks and other investors largely avoided doing business in those communities. Residents were also displaced when parts of those neighborhoods were razed at different times to build a highway, a sports arena and a hospital.
 
That history robbed many African Americans of opportunities to build wealth, historians say, a legacy that continues. The racial wealth gap in Multnomah County, which includes Portland, is larger now than it was 40 years ago, with Black residents holding fewer assets than other racial groups.
 
In 2019, Black Oregonians received four of the 984 loans that the Small Business Administration issued statewide, according to The Portland Business Journal.
 
Without traditional banking relationships, Black business owners often have had to reach into their own pockets or seek other avenues to finance startup costs, civic leaders said. That left many unable to get pandemic relief loans offered by the federal government because the loans required going through lending institutions.
 
Early in the pandemic, various indicators appeared to show that Black businesses were suffering more severely than others. A Stanford University study found that the number of Black business owners nationwide dropped by 41% from February to April, compared with a 32% decrease for Latinos, 26% for Asians and 17% for white owners.
 
Lawyers defending the Oregon Cares Fund have argued that the state has a duty to ensure that the distribution of COVID-19 relief funds does not perpetuate the disparities Black residents face. That means targeting Black residents for relief because other efforts to address inequality have failed, said Janelle Bynum, a state representative who is Black.
 
“Without that intentionality, without them actually caring that the money flows through our communities, they’ll never have to do anything to change the status quo,” she said. “I’m not OK with that.”
 
But some legal scholars and a lawyer for the state Legislature said the fund could violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection guarantees.
 
Clark D. Cunningham, a law professor at Georgia State University, was dubious of the 14th Amendment claims. About a month after the amendment passed Congress in 1866, those same politicians reauthorized the Freedmen’s Bureau, an agency meant to primarily help formerly enslaved African Americans, he said.
 
“The idea that, in this case, a lumber company could use the 14th Amendment as a weapon to prevent the descendants of slaves from receiving an economic benefit in a time of disaster is utterly inconsistent with the historical context,” Cunningham said.
 
In Portland, Joy Mack said the pandemic rekindled the stress she felt when she opened the Jayah Rose Salon in 2008. She and her husband, an engineer, are both Black and solidly middle class. But after visiting more than 10 lending institutions to try to get startup funding, she received only two loans, she said. One of the lenders kept asking for more financial information, so they eventually walked away from the relationship.
 
In trying to keep her hair salon afloat amid the pandemic, Mack, 45, said she applied for a forgivable federal government loan but was turned down because she had about $5,000 in tax debt. She got a $5,000 grant from the city and a $10,000 disaster loan from the federal government. She also has had to take out lines of credit.
 
Mack eventually received a grant from the Oregon Cares Fund. Although she would not say how much she received, she said it saved her from having to close down under the weight of tens of thousands of dollars of debt.
 
“Honestly,” she said, “that is what just helped us get over that COVID hump.”
 
 
c.2021 The New York Times Company
 





The Current State of Africa. Confrontation with the Actions of Reality. January 2021.

 The Current State of Africa

1. Arabs mass-murderously stole 50% of your land, and still counting.

2. The Chinese are buying up the rest.

3. Desertification is spreading.

4. Some African leaders are not African leaders. They are instruments of the West.

5. They Africans peoples also are not african. Sub-saharan Africans are actually, truly, proud Euramericans in black skins and super-saharan Africans are Arabs in black skins. So Africa is conquered already.

6. The 1, 001 panafrican groups all working assiduously towards african unity are themselves consciousness and unconsciously, willfully and diswillfully disunited, disjointed, disconnected, disassociated, disaffected, silo-istic, islandic, each striving hard, but achieving little result on their own, going round in circles, revolutionising.

7. VonBismark, dead for 136 years still imprisons and limits the thinking of 1.3 billion Africans, even so-called panafricanists. They cannot think outside the borders that vonbismark imposed.

8. Transmogrified Euramericans and Arabs, they now freely and gleefully haemorrhage their money, time, labour, intellect etc out to their enemies. Anti-blackwallstreet.

8. VonBismark-ism still leads to xenocide, border disputes, national disputes, football murders etc.
 (When was the last time you heard one North American state fight another?)

9. Africans think they live in a democratic world, with their enemies as chief democratic peoples and friends of Africa. Even after Obama destroyed Libya, South Africa still invited him to talk about democracy for 90 minutes. We are a haplessly, hopelessly confused people.

10. We think 'God will do it", and so spend endless hours in prayer and none in taking responsibility.

11. Being transmogrified Euramericans and Arabs, we chase the Euramerican dream and the Arab dream, not the African dream.

The African dream is precisely that, to Africans-- a dream. A dead dream. Stillborn, even.

12. Far too divided along ethnic, tribal, political, ethnopolitical, religious, vonbismark lines.

13. Lack of vision. Can't even think 100 years into the future.

14. Africa, unlike poorer countries like Japan, Singapore etc. suffers from the rich man's syndrome--everyone wants a piece. So they actively destroy and hamper our progress.

15. And africans say we shouldn't talk about the reality of our enemies.

16. Africans think their enemies are their friends. How will they begin to defend themselves?

17. So they fight each other, instead of the real enemies, weakening themselves.

18. State assets are sometimes sold cheaply and foreign entities are taking over.

19. It is well-known that africans don't read about Africa by africans and so don't know about africa by africans. Maybe due to poverty, soap operas or too-known-ism. They skim through at best and rush to respond askew with little comprehension.

20. Lack of reading or lack of comprehension is a symptom of lack of value of knowledge, and of new knowledge, research findings, even a despising of such, leading to unwisdom; whereas our enemies are the opposite--they treasure knowledge, new knowledge, and by knowledge, they conquer.

21. Egocetricism from both misleaders and misfollowers, not realising that individual success is fragile, transient, mirage-ous. 

22. Offence when told the truth, instead of acknowledging it and solutionising.

This is the current reality of the state of Africa.

Friday, January 1, 2021

HBCU's still not getting it! Lincoln University Becomes First HBCU with Its Own Police Academy

What of job development across the board for it's student body during and upon graduation to address other issues of vulnerable communities globally?

Disasters and Emergencies?

Climate change?


Opportunities missed.


BEMA International

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

DomPrep Journal: The New Age of Police Reform Special Issue, December 2020

 

  Special Issue

December 2020

Complimentary Download
(Adobe Reader Required)

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After a hurricane impacts a community, a common practice is not just to rebuild the homes and businesses, but to build them back stronger to withstand greater winds and higher flood waters. This same concept is emerging in law enforcement. Growing social and political pressures have threatened the traditional law enforcement establishment. However, these pressures have led to agencies finding new ways to build back stronger and fortify their relationships within and between communities.

Today’s law enforcement is faced with challenges in four key areas: public consent, rule of law, restrained use of force, and independence from political influence. Adding to these challenges is the global exposure of local events through social media and news outlets. For example, a tragic death in one city can spark protests and demonstrations in other cities around the world. This widespread outcry has spurred calls for police reform across numerous jurisdictions.

Years of staffing and retention challenges were a sign of a growing problem, but sometimes it takes a crisis for true change to begin. In 2020, the compilation of law enforcement challenges and incidents, social and political unrest, and even a pandemic pushed talks of police reform to the forefront. Amid the crises, opportunities and strategies to reconnect law enforcement with the communities they serve have emerged – with accountability and transparency leading the discussion.

Combining public pressure with a new presidential administration, police reform efforts are likely to continue building momentum in the upcoming year at the local, state, and national levels. This publication of “The New Age of Police Reform” provides an overview of how law enforcement agencies are addressing modern challenges and domestic preparedness concerns, determining training needs, and rebuilding trust.

Although changing the inside culture and external perception of a long-standing institution is a difficult task, significant change is on the horizon. This special edition of the DomPrep Journal highlights a series of articles and podcasts that describe what law enforcement agencies are doing or plan to do to help rebuild community trust, ensure accountability and oversight, and promote intergovernmental cohesion.

Sincerely,
Catherine L. Feinman
Editor-in-Chief

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