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OP-ED: The Significance of the Civil Rights Movement

Published

12 years ago

January 4, 2014

By Rev. Willie A. Douglas, Civil Rights & Social Justice Advocate

The Civil Rights Movement was never intended to be a Black-only movement. It was burned from GOD’S heart, in calling a group of individuals led by Mary White Ovington, founder of the NAACP, to be a revival of humanitarian love, in fight of the evils targeting African Americans.

Most of the leadership within several groups and organizations, through various units, has for the most part lost its grounding in the humanitarian love through faith.

Although the Movement lost its way, there’s still hope in the future of leadership through various groups and organizations refocusing on prevalent issues of concerns impacting the less fortunate, poor, and deprived communities. The fight for those who don’t have a voice needs to be revived. There are many issues that require addressing.

The amount of crime, especially among the youth, has been to a point that demands for all community and city leaders to get on the same agenda to stop the violence. Sad to say, the problems of the youth, as in years past, continue to begin at home where many children grow up in one-parent family units. This problem is overflowing into the school system.

There exists a jail-to-school pipeline, in my opinion, violations of federal school desegregation orders, along with a high juvenile crime rate. We need men to step up and be real and true leaders for our youth.

The Biblical verse of Job 14:7-9 declares that “there is hope for a tree, if it be cut down that it will sprout again.”

The Civil Rights Movement forgot that they were a spiritually-led movement, but shifted and became a Black movement. The racial bitterness in the Black community overwhelmed the spirit of reconciliation.

At this time, the tree was cut down. Today, some of the groups are little more than glorified ambulance chasers, trying to stir up something instead of solving something. They’re trying to get on the evening news instead of the tablets of God’s Heaven.

Today’s political parties are dividing righteousness and justice, with the Democrats pursuing social justice and some Republicans holding the line for life and marriage. You cannot have justice without

righteousness.

If you stand on righteousness, then you can reach justice. Only justice based in righteousness is honoring to God, and healthy and beneficial to the creation of people. Righteousness has a vertical dimension, and justice has a horizontal dimension, and it forms the cross of Christ Jesus.

There is hope for the cut-down tree. I see the same spirit from the

early Civil Rights Movement in the transition of the younger generation of youth and young adults. You are on the verge of witnessing something resurrected today and in the future to come – revival, righteousness, and reconciliation in the higher authority of God, Christ Jesus.

When Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said he had “been to the mountaintop,” the civil rights leader was prophesying that, like Moses, he himself would not see God’s promise of reconciliation.

I hope that the leadership of civil rights groups and organizations will return to its original spirit of reconciliation. God is rising up a multicolored Joseph generation.

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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

Published

1 week ago

March 1, 2026

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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

2 weeks 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