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Birmingham’s Perspective on Religious Divides

THE BIRMINGHAM TIMES — Blacks and whites from around the metro area gathered for a conversation on race and religion at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on Monday during the “Bridging Religious Divides: A Local Perspective from Birmingham” event held by the Aspen Institute Inclusive America Project and the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham (CFGB).

Published

7 years ago

June 26, 2019

Oakland Post

By Ameera Steward

Blacks and whites from around the metro area gathered for a conversation on race and religion at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on Monday during the “Bridging Religious Divides: A Local Perspective from Birmingham” event held by the Aspen Institute Inclusive America Project and the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham (CFGB).

The program director for the Aspen Institute, Zeenat Rahman, moderated a conversation with Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, of Union Theological Seminary and Washington National Cathedral and Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in a panel-like format. Rahman asked why each was in Birmingham.

Pesner said he was there for all of the Jews who marched 50-plus years ago with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“We, Jews, did not start marching 50 years ago in Selma [during the Civil Rights Movement], we started marching 5,000 years ago when we came out of Egypt and we will march for 5,000 more years if that’s what it takes to bring on justice,” he said.

Douglas told a story about how she and her 26-year-old watched Netflix’s “When They See Us” together from different states engaging in conversation through text. Each of his texts was distressing as he expressed his own stress about what’s going on, she said.

“When They See Us” is a series based on events of the 1989 Central Park jogger case in New York City that explores the lives of the five male suspects who were wrongly accused and prosecuted on charges related to the rape and assault of a white woman. The males were known as the Central Park 5.

“I’m here because I want to make sure that…the world is better for my son, his children, that he doesn’t become a Central Park 5, that we don’t have more four little girls who were bombed. I do this work for our children and so that they inherit it from us.”

Rahman then asked Douglas and Pesner how they worked to create what Dr. King called the beloved community of justice, healing and reconciliation.

Douglas said she is from the Christian-faith tradition “in which we believe in a Savior that was crucified and I always say to those in my faith community and my tribe, that ought to matter and that ought to make a difference.”

She added that Jesus wasn’t crucified because He prayed too much, He was crucified because He witnessed for something and witnessed against something in His life, in His ministry and all that He stood for. “He witnessed a place where He describes the first will be last and the last will be first. You won’t be able to see the difference,” she said, “all will be treated as the scared children of God that they are regardless, everyone will be treated equally. That’s the just future.”

Pesner said the Jewish community tells itself every year “’we were slaves in Egypt, we were freed and therefore we are to love the stranger,’ it’s…the most often repeated commandment in The Torah . . . God says you should love the stranger, identify with the most oppressed…because you, yourselves were the most oppressed . . . we’ve come obviously a long way since the civil rights era, 1.3 black men in America go to jail while one in 17 white men go to jail – that’s mass incarceration… and I ask my Jewish family, where are we? Are we actually showing up in the way that we [are] commanded 36 different times in the Torah?”

Those in attendance included Mayor Randall Woodfin, Rev. Arthur Price Jr. pastor of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, and Rev. Dr. Christopher M. Hamlin pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church.

Woodfin said it should not be a surprise that “this very important conversation about bridging racial and faith divides is occurring right here, a spot, a church revered as ground zero for social change in this country.”

“Without question our city, Birmingham, we’re miles and miles ahead from where we were thanks to the previous generation of fearless activists, but there are still more roads to travel, more barriers to break down and that’s the spirit of this evening’s event,” said Woodfin. “And I know we’ll get there because of the people in this room, because of the people in this community, because of the people in this city.”

He added that we have a lot of work ahead of us “but I believe we are in the right place to make it happen.”

The Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to foster leadership based on enduring values and to provide a nonpartisan venue for dealing with critical issues.

The Community Foundation leverages gifts and bequests from many people to drive positive change, bring people together to address community issues, build on opportunities and achieve measurable results, and work in partnership with others to improve the life of the local region.

This article originally appeared in The Birmingham Times

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Poll Shows Support for Policies That Help Families Afford Child Care

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

Published

1 week ago

March 2, 2026

Oakland Post

By First Five Years Fund

New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

The national survey was conducted by UpOne Insight on behalf of the First Five Years Fund from January 13–18, 2026.

Key findings include:

• Parents need help: 80% of voters say the ability of working parents to find and afford child care is either in a state of crisis or a major problem.

• This is an affordability issue: 82% believe federal child care funding will help lower costs for working families — including 69% of Republicans, 84% of Independents, and 94% of Democrats.

• And there continues to be strong support (62%) for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a federal program that makes it possible for hundreds of thousands of families to afford safe, quality care for their children while parents work or go to school, including a majority of Republicans, 63% of Independents and 72% of Democrats.

• Support for funding child care programs remains strong: 75% believe child care funding should be increased or kept at current levels — including 75% of Republicans, 85% of Independents, and 97% of Democrats.

• 74% say funding for child care is an important and good use of tax dollars, including a majority of Republicans, three-quarters of Independents, and nine in ten Democrats.

FFYF Executive Director Sarah Rittling said, “Voters across the country are sending a clear message: federal child care and early learning programs work. These investments help parents stay in the workforce, strengthen families, and support healthy child development. They have also long had strong bipartisan support in Congress. At a time when affordability is top of mind for families, continued federal funding is essential to ensure child care remains accessible and within reach.”

First Five Years Fund works to protect, prioritize, and build bipartisan support for quality child care and early learning programs at the federal level. Reliable, affordable, and high-quality early learning and child care can be transformative, not only enhancing a child’s prospects for a brighter future but also bolstering working parents and fostering economic stability nationwide.

We work with Congress and the Administration to identify federal solutions that work for families with young children, as well as states and communities. We work with policymakers to identify ways to increase access to affordable, high-quality child care and early learning programs for children. And we collaborate with advocacy groups to help align best practices with the best possible policies. http://www.ffyf.org

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Oakland Post: Week of February 25 – March 3, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of – February 25 – March 3, 2026

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1 week ago

March 1, 2026

Oakland Post

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Trump’s MAGA Allies are Creating Executive Order Plan to Steal the 2026 Midterms

NNPA NEWSWIRE — The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

Published

1 week ago

February 27, 2026

Oakland Post

By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Correspondent

A group of MAGA pro-Trump activists, who say they are working in coordination with the White House, are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that would claim without evidence that China interfered with the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential to President Joe Biden by over 7 million votes. Since Trump lost to Biden in 2020, he has repeatedly claimed that the election was “stolen” without evidence. The report of a group of “Trump allies” preparing an executive order to give Trump power over elections was first reported by The Washington Post.

The lies around the right-wing campaign that pushed falsehoods that the 2020 election was stolen was trafficked through right-wing media, particularly Fox News. Fox News was then sued for defamation for the claims by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox lost the case and had to settle for the largest defamation amount on record of $787.5 million in April 2023.

The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

The story in The Washington Post arrives as Trump increasingly signals that he may take actions that would alter the result of the 2026 midterms. The Republicans are widely expected to lose as their approval ratings plummet as a result of a failing economy under Trump. Over 50 members of Congress have announced they will retire this year and not return in 2027.

The Trump Department of Justice, which now has a large image of Trump on the side of it, “sued five new states Thursday [Feb. 26, 2026] demanding access to their unredacted voter rolls — escalating a campaign that has been rejected by multiple federal courts and faces resistance from Republican-led states as well,” according to Democracy Docket, a group that works to protect voting rights.

Trump claimed back in late 2020, the last year of his first term, that he had the authority to issue an executive order related to mail-in voting for the 2020 elections — which he would then lose. But the Constitution states that control of elections lies with the states. As the GOP works to place hurdles in front of voting, Democrats worked to make voting easier.

In March 2021, President Biden signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to expand voting access as part of the Biden Administration’s effort “to promote and defend the right to vote for all Americans who are legally entitled to participate in elections.”

Trump’s focus is clearly on altering the November 2026 midterm elections. Trump’s polling numbers and the elections and special elections that have taken place around the U.S. over the last year clearly indicate that Republicans are about to be hit by a blue wave of Democratic victories.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent investigative journalist and the founder of Black Virginia News. She is a political analyst who appears on #RolandMartinUnfiltered and hosts the show LAUREN LIVE on YouTube @LaurenVictoriaBurke. She can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke