Page 12
December 5, 2018
O PINION
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Two Years until 2020 Election – Time to Get to Work
As people of
color, we are in a
pitched battle
o scar h. b layton
Most readers will be
familiar with this sce-
nario. A white politi-
cian that you have not
heard from in two years
starts to show up at black
churches, glad-handing
the pastors, reciting for
the congregation his or her accom-
plishments that you’ve never heard
of and reminding you to vote for
him or her in the upcoming elec-
tions.
It’s a scenario that is played out in
most political districts where blacks
make up a significant portion – but
not the majority – of the electorate.
We know very little about these ab-
sentee politicians except that they
are “the lesser of two evils” – the
choice offered to those black folk
allowed to vote, since the end of the
Reconstruction.
The question is: Why are we con-
by
sistently faced with only being able
to choose between the lesser of two
evils each election cycle? Or put
another way: “Why can we not have
more options when selecting who
will represent us?
The answer is that we
do have more options.
We simply must con-
stantly stay politically
“woke” and not wait until
the last minute to pay at-
tention to who the poten-
tial candidates are. Politi-
cians interested in running
in 2020 already are lining up at the
starting gate. People aspiring to
become the next president of the
United States already have advance
people in Iowa and other key states
in preparation for the primary elec-
tions. Those eying congressional
seats, state and local offices are or-
ganizing their political teams in or-
der to hold on to those offices or to
unseat an incumbent.
2016 has shown us that if we do
not get engaged, we are in danger
of being saddled with a lying racist,
bent on erasing all of the gains peo-
ple of color have made during the
last five decades.
2018 has shown us that when
people organize, they can over-
come many of the obstacles that are
strewn in our paths to equal justice
and the freedoms promised to us by
the U. S. Constitution. 2018 also
has shown us that there are those
who would deny people of color
justice and freedom by blocking us
from our guaranteed right to vote.
The Georgia governor’s race
shone the light on how bigots and
racists will go to any lengths to tilt
the vote in their favor by removing
voters from the rolls and by making
it more difficult for voters to get to
the polls to cast their ballots. Re-
publican Brian Kemp ran for gov-
ernor of that state while refusing to
step down as its secretary of state,
the office that oversees elections
in Georgia. Over the years, Kemp
systematically removed black vot-
ers from the rolls through various
questionable means, giving himself
a clear advantage by increasing the
percentage of would-be voters who
were white.
There are those who will try to
cheat us out of our rights, including
our right to vote. There are those
who will try to steal elections in the
way that Trump did in 2016 with the
help of Russian interference. These
people can be stopped, however.
They can be stopped by you and by
me. They can be stopped by your
parents and your voting-age chil-
dren – and by your aunts and uncles
and cousins and friends.
The way we stop them is by
looking for people qualified to run
for office in federal, state and local
elections and helping them to win.
These people can be found among
your parents and your voting age
children – and your aunts and uncles
and cousins and friends. They must
be identified and then encouraged to
run for office. And when they run,
we must support them. We must
support them with our time, our
labor and with our money. There
may not be many of us that can give
much of any of these things, but we
can each give something.
If we make more of an effort,
we can get more elected officials of
the type we want and deserve. The
proof is in the pudding. 2018 saw
a record number of women of color
elected, and it is expected that these
women will work to steer America
back on the correct course to ful-
filling the promises of our Consti-
tution.
According to the Eagleton Insti-
tute of Politics at Rutgers Universi-
ty, women of color now will occupy
38 seats in Congress, 9 statewide
elective offices, 456 state legislative
seats and 10 mayors’ offices in some
of the nation’s 100 largest cities.
We, as people of color, are in a
pitched battle for our rightful place
in this nation. And it is a battle that
we will not win if we do not enlist as
many people as possible in the fight.
If we do not identify, enlist and sup-
port candidates who champion our
best interests, then we deserve the
callous and unjust treatment that we
receive from elected officials who
do not respect us.
The clock is running and so are
the same tired old politicians. It is
time we bring some serious champi-
ons into the fight.
Oscar H. Blayton is a former
Marine Corps combat pilot and hu-
man rights activist who practices
law in Virginia.
Preventing Nations from Muzzling the Media
The voices of its
citizens are key
nationalists, signaled the challenges
ahead.
Although none of the speakers
mentioned the U.S. president by
name, their bête noire was con-
spicuous by his absence. This
highly-restricted event occurred
within the Paris Peace Forum
— a three-day tribute to multi-
lateralism that President Donald
J. Trump bowed out of — in a
session hosted by Reporters
Without Borders, a Paris-based global
non-governmental organization also
known by its French name, Reporters
Sans Frontiers.
“It is a common good for humanity
that there be honesty in information
and liberty of the press and of opin-
ion,” the French president told the
select audience that included heads of
state, diplomats and Nobel laureates. I
was there representing the Society of
Professional Journalists.
Macron cited philosopher and
political theorist Hannah Arendt, a
German Jew who fled Nazism and
became famous for her writings con-
demning all forms of totalitarianism,
quoting from her 1967 book Truth and
Politics in which she wrote, “Freedom
of opinion is a farce unless factual in-
formation is guaranteed and the facts
themselves are not in dispute.”
He went on to draw a comparison
between trends today and more prim-
itive forms of democracy last wit-
nessed 50 to 100 years ago. His point
was not lost on the audience, which
included the heads of state of Cana-
da, Costa Rica, Norway, Senegal and
Tunisia, all of whom followed up with
remarks about the imperative need to
protect freedom of expression.
In the same vein, Canadian Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau pointed to
the anxiety stirred up by globalization
as paving the way for politicians to
scapegoat the press. “Attacks on the
media are not just about getting your
preferred political candidate elected,”
he said, “they’re about increasing the
level of cynicism that citizens have
towards all authorities, towards all of
the institutions that are there to protect
us.”
This was one of several veiled digs
that Trudeau made at the expense of
Trump, who has consistently pushed
the envelope to test the limits of the
electorate’s appetite for his media
bashing. From the U.S. president’s
initial mocking of the press trailing
his campaign, he progressed to the as-
sertion that the media are the enemy
of the American people. In July, the
White House barred a CNN reporter
from covering a Rose Garden event.
In November, it pulled the credentials
of Jim Acosta, the network’s Chief
White House Correspondent.
The event took place only four
days after the revocation of Acosta’s
press pass. As one of relatively few
Americans present, I was peppered
with questions about what this meant.
I explained that the U.S. has a solid le-
gal framework, so the question would
most likely be decided in the courts.
Fortunately, the White House has
since backed down from what might
have proved a protracted legal battle.
Yet countries that lack strong dem-
ocratic institutions are increasingly
seeking political advantage by muz-
zling the media. Examples abound,
from Myanmar’s unjustified jailing of
the Reuters journalists Wa Lone and
Kyaw Soe Oo, to the appalling mur-
der of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal
Khashoggi.
Unsurprisingly, the group of 25
prominent media and communica-
tion experts of 18 different nation-
alities that were assembled to study
the problem came up with a global
response. The Nov. 11 declaration by
the commission, which was led by
Secretary-General Christophe De-
loire and Nobel peace laureate Shirin
Ebadi, proposed creating an interna-
tional body of experts to continuous-
ly research global information issues
and recommend the best practices
and norms for public communica-
tion.
While we applaud the efforts of
press freedom groups to expand free
speech around the world, there is no
effective substitute for political will.
It is up to our citizens to express their
outrage at the daily undermining of
the credibility of responsible media
outlets. When eroding the foundation
of a free press is no longer a popular
political tactic, we will be closer to
realizing the ideal of a free and open
information society.
J. Alex Tarquinio is president of the
Society of Professional Journalists.
implemented Step Therapy. Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services
recently announced the upcoming
change which will force physicians to
prescribe drugs chosen by the insur-
ance company first, only allowing a
In January, Medicare Advan- patient to move on to potentially more
tage Plan Holders will no longer be effective drugs if the first fails, giving
protected from insurance company this program the nickname “fail first”.
The Sickle Cell Anemia Founda-
tion of Oregon is a nonprofit dedicated
to serving the needs of patients living
with Sickle-Cell across the Pacif-
ic-Northwest. Our most pressing ob-
jective is to help identify those living
with the disease, then to help with all
of their healthcare needs, including fa-
cilitating regular access to appropriate
health care providers and services.
Navigating insurance when you re-
quire high-quality care is hard enough
without them also having to fight for
access to the best care. This change
prevents doctors from choosing the
best treatment and allows insurance
companies to interfere with doctor-pa-
tient relationships.
Sickle Cell Anemia patients already
face an uphill battle when it comes to
treatment. They do not deserve to have
to suffer through fail-first.
Taking away a patient’s best option
and interfering with the patient-doctor
relationship are not acceptable.
Marcia L. Taylor, Sickle Cell Ane-
mia Foundation of Oregon, Inc.
by j. a lex t arquinio
More than an ocean
separates the United
States from France. The
contradictory
world
views of their leaders
veered sharply into fo-
cus on the centennial of
the first World War. Hours after mak-
ing the now famous Armistice Day
pronouncement beneath the Arc de
Triomphe that “patriotism is the exact
opposite of nationalism,” French Pres-
ident Emmanuel Macron introduced
an event launching a global initiative
for freedom of information and de-
mocracy.
Everyone living in a free and dem-
ocratic society should be in agreement
on the importance of this issue. The
clear advantage of reliable public in-
formation, and of the liberty of speech
and of the press, should be a nonpar-
tisan issue. Yet in the high-profile
announcement, the heavy burden of
partisanship, pitting globalists against
Letter to the Editor
‘Fail First’
Fails Seniors