News Bites From Across South Carolina And The Nation

*FCC Commissioner Starks Leading Charge Against Digital Redlining While Ensuring Access to Black and Brown Communities*

The digital divide and digital redlining, zone casting, and overall access to the internet for Black and brown communities top the agenda of Federal Communications Commissioner Geoffrey Starks.

With three Democrats and two Republicans, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent government agency overseen by Congress.

The commission’s chief responsibility begins with implementing and enforcing the nation’s laws and regulations surrounding communications.

The body regulates interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable.

Starks, whose coming up on five years at the FCC, said he believes that communications technology has the potential to be one of the most potent forces on Earth for promoting equality and opportunity.

“To unlock that potential, however, all Americans must have access,” Starks said during an appearance on the National Newspaper Publishers Association’s live morning news broadcast, Let It Be Known.

*Biden Issuing Full Pardons For Federal Marijuana Possession Convictions*

President Joe Biden has issued a pardon to all prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession, fulfilling a campaign promise of getting rid of possession convictions and loosening the drug’s federal classification.

“Sending people to prison for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives and incarcerated people for conduct that many states no longer prohibit,” Biden said in a statement.

“Criminal records for marijuana possession have also imposed needless barriers to employment, housing, and educational opportunities,” the president continued.

“And while white and Black and Brown people use marijuana at similar rates, Black and Brown people have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted at disproportionate rates.”

Biden vowed to encourage governors to take similar steps to pardon state simple marijuana possession charges.

According to a Pew Research survey, wide majorities of Black adults support legalizing marijuana at least for medical use (85%).

The survey found that most favor reforms to the criminal justice system, such as releasing people from prison who are being held only for marijuana-related charges and expunging marijuana-related offenses from the criminal records of individuals convicted of such crimes (74% each).

According to FBI data, Black adults are disproportionately likely to be arrested for marijuana-related offenses.

Researchers at Pew noted that, although non-Hispanic, single-race Black and White Americans used marijuana at roughly comparable rates in 2020, Black people accounted for 39% of all marijuana possession arrests in the U.S. despite being only 12% of the U.S. population.

*Vernice Miller-Travis, A Crusader Who Continues The Struggle To Weed Out Environmental Racism*

Vernice Miller-Travis has consistently recognized racism, including how race has played a significant role in environmental policy.

She’s the vice chair of Clean Water Action’s board of directors, executive vice president for environmental and social justice at Metropolitan Group, and co-founder of We Act for Environmental Justice.

Miller-Travis said it’s her job to analyze data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s list of national priorities.

In that way, she’s able to keep abreast of hazardous waste sites in the United States, including the ones that pose an immediate health and environmental threat.

“You get to see the pattern,” Miller-Travis told National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr.

“The pattern around the racial composition of who lives in a particular place in proximity to a hazardous waste site is not random,” she said during a riveting conversation inside NNPA’s state-of-the-art television studios in Washington.

The full discussion will air on Chavis’ PBS-TV Show, The Chavis Chronicles.

And when there’s any pushback, Miller-Travis stands at the ready.

“When they ask whether they’re being accused of being racist, I tell them that what I’m saying is that your policies you utilize have an unequal impact that people of color are always adversely affected, not white people.”

Born in 1959 at New York’s Harlem Hospital, where both her parents worked, Miller-Travis said she spent a lot of time at the famed health center.

She attended Barnard College before earning a political science degree from Columbia University’s School of General Studies.

“I started as a researcher working for the civil rights division of a small Protestant Church known as United Church of Christ – the remnants of the church established by the pilgrims,” Miller-Travis said.

As she spoke with Chavis, Miller-Travis shared stories about the 40th anniversary the Warren County, North Carolina, protest that officially birthed the movement.

“One of the people leading that struggle was a minister in the United Church of Christ, and he called up to the headquarters in New York City and said, look, we need help. Nobody has talked to us, and the state has not reached out. There have been no briefings, no hearings, no nothing,” Miller-Travis recalled.

“And so, the national church did all they could to help and bring attention to it, but they thought, this is kind of curious.”