Can Ferguson's black leaders gain power next April?

In April, three of Ferguson’s six city council seats are up for grabs and African-Americans have a chance to end decades of white domination. Two-thirds of the town’s 21,000 population is black. But the mayor, more than 90 percent of the police, and all but one of the council members are white -- an imbalance that has stoked racial tensions in Ferguson long before Brown’s shooting in August.

Based on last Tuesday's turnout, winning council seats might difficult: there was little sign of an uptick in interest in local politics. Forty-two percent of registered voters in Ferguson took part in the highest profile race -- the election for St Louis County executive, which was a drop of 10 percentage points from the last such vote in 2010.

That frustrates Patricia Bynes, a local African-American official in the Democratic Party.

"Every time there’s an election we have to show up. I don’t care if we are voting what color the trash cans are, we need to show up," she said.

Putting up good candidates of its own will be crucial for the African-American community, added David Kimball, a political scientist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Read more: Can Ferguson's black leaders gain power next April?

Why is Debbie Wasserman Schultz getting a pass on democratic thrashing in 2014 mid-terms

By now we all know that the democrats took a major ass kicking in the 2014 mid-terms. Many have blamed President Obama for this and maybe rightfully so. Many talking heads have said that this election was a referendum on President Obama's policies. As the President of the US, he is the head of the party so some blame goes to him the same way he would have gotten credit if the democrats had held onto the US Senate.

Many democratic candidates have been blamed for running bad campaigns or single issue campaigns. Some kept rambling about women's reproductive rights, another about income inequality, and another about Obamacare. But they didn't seem to focus on the many ongoing issues affecting voters in their states. Now even though all politics is local on a national level the democrats running for Senate, and the House of Representatives seemed to have no one coherent message. The republicans had one, and it was simple, Obama is bad. Yeah, they ran against something instead of for something but it was a simple message that was uniform across the states and worked.

The infuriating part is that the democrats had great things to talk about. Unemployment continues to drop, gas prices continue to drop, and the stock market is booming and the democrats mentioned none of that in a nationwide narrative. There was no one message that resonated across the country as the republicans had.

Democratic candidates in some states ran away from the president's policies, even attacked him on some issues and asked him not to come to their states. This resulted in losses for everyone that tried that strategy of distancing themselves from the president. No one seemed to get the idea that he could ENERGIZE and MOBILIZE the democratic base.

I'm wondering when DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz will get the blame for this? As the chair it was her job to get the message and a strategy out there like her counterpart at the RNC, Reince Priebus did. It was her job to get candidates to but into a comprehensive strategy. In my opinion, she did not, and that led to a huge failure on election night. She deserves a large part of the blame, and I'm wondering why she hasn't stepped down as chair or why President Obama hasn't asked her to step down?

Quite simply she did not get the job done and does not deserve another bite at the apple. I hope we as democrats don't intend to let her led the charge again in 2016 because, in 2014, she led us to republican control of both the House and Senate.

I'm just saying.

George L. Cook III AfricanAmericanReports.com

President nominates Loretta Lynch as attorney general

President Barack Obama on Saturday said he is nominating U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch as the next U.S. attorney general, describing her as a "tough, fair and independent" lawyer. Watch that nomination below:

Should NAACP have acknowledged historic victories by Tim Scott & Mia Love.

First in the interest of full disclosure let me state that I am a member of the NAACP and a democrat.

The NAACP released a statement following the 2014 mid-term elections in which the organization focused on voter suppression which is a legitimate issue. But what some have focused on (RNC, Fox News, etc.) is the fact that historic victories by both African Americans Tim Scott and Mia Love are not mentioned. Tim Scott became the first African-American elected to the US Senate from the south since reconstruction, and Mia Love became the first black republican female elected to the House of Representatives. I don't agree with the politics of either Scott or Love, but in my opinion if the NAACP represents all people of color then their accomplishments in the 2014 mid-terms should be acknowledged. What do you think? George L.Cook III AfricanAmericanReports.com.

Read the NAACP's statement below:

This election was not about who won but rather the citizens who lost the right to participate. This first election post the Shelby v. Holder decision resulted in problems in every single state previously protected by the Voting Rights Act. For 49 years, these states were singled out because they had a history of discriminating against American voters. The Election Protection Hotline we manned with other concerned organizations fielded over 18,000 calls yesterday, many in those same states previously protected by the VRA. As we move forward—it is imperative that our newly elected Congress work with the NAACP and our partners to pass Voting Rights Act Amendment legislation that assures that all Americans have the franchise—our very democracy depends on it.

16-year-old Plainfield NJ student Myani Floyd missing

[SOURCE] A teen from Orange who goes to high school in Plainfield was reported missing Wednesday, Plainfield police confirmed.

Floyd, nicknamed Nini, was reported missing by her mother and was last seen in Orange (NJ) on Tuesday.

Floyd was wearing a brown leather jacket, black boots and gray sweatpants when she was last seen and frequents the area of Cedarbrook Park, Emerson School and South Avenue in Plainfield, according to the report.

The report said Floyd is 5'5'' tall, 210 pounds, with light brown skin, brown hair and brown eyes.

Anyone with information about Floyd should contact Plainfield police at 908-753-3360.