REP. BENNIE THOMPSON STATEMENT CONDEMNING ATTACK ON PAUL PELOSI AND URGING INCREASED PROTECTION OF OFFICIALS

Today, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, released the below statement condemning the recent attack on Paul Pelosi.

“The attack on Paul Pelosi, Speaker Pelosi’s husband, is abhorrent, and my prayers are with him, the Speaker, and their family. Every elected official, regardless of political party, should be outraged and publicly condemn what happened today in no uncertain terms.

“Unfortunately, the attack against Paul Pelosi appears to be a symptom of a much larger problem within our democracy. In recent years, we have seen a rise in domestic terrorism fueled in part by violent, racist, antisemitic, anti-democratic rhetoric. From Charlottesville to January 6, armed attackers sought to impose their views on their fellow citizens not with their vote, but with their fist. Members of Congress and other Federal, State, and local officials have received death threats. So-called vigilantes have been intimidating voters at ballot drop-boxes and harassing local election officials. America is better than this.

“I call on my colleagues in Congress and elected officials across the nation to put country over party and reject the conspiracy theories that are proving so divisive, despite any perceived political advantage. As Chairman of both the Committee on Homeland Security and the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, I urge Federal agencies and law enforcement to redouble their efforts to protect officials, our elections, and our democracy in the days ahead.”

President Biden nominates HBCU grad/dean Dr. Derrick Scott to National Board for Education Sciences

President Biden announced his intent to appoint the following individuals to serve on the National Board for Education Sciences. Among those nominated was Dr. Derrick Scott. Scott is a Virginia State University graduate and current Dean of the College of Natural and Health Sciences at Virginia State University.

Originally from Varnville, South Carolina, Dr. Derrick Scott received his B.S. in Biology at Virginia State University, his M.S. in Molecular Biology from Virginia Tech, and his Ph.D. in Integrative Biology with a focus in Bioinformatics from the University of South Carolina. He is currently the Dean of the College of Natural and Health Sciences at Virginia State University where his goals are to help lead the University to High Research Activity status and create more opportunities for minorities and women to enter science careers. His research involves bringing down the costs of expensive medicines by using informatics to identify target genes in Chinese hamster ovary cell lines that will make the lines more stable. He recently helped to establish the Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory at Delaware State University that helped the university and surrounding communities stay safe via COVID-19 PCR testing. His hobbies include spending quality time with his wife and four children.

"Till" goes into wide release on October 28, 2022

The movie "Till" will expand to approximately 2.058 locations on Friday October 28, 2022.

"Till" is a 2022 American biographical drama film directed by Chinonye Chukwu, written by Michael Reilly, Keith Beauchamp, and Chukwu, and produced by Beauchamp, Reilly, and Whoopi Goldberg. It is based on the true story of Mamie Till, an educator and activist, who pursued justice after the lynching of her 14-year-old son, Emmett, in 1955. The film stars Danielle Deadwyler, Jalyn Hall, Frankie Faison, Haley Bennett, and Goldberg.

WATCH THE TILL TRAILER

North Carolina NAACP branch to hold Souls to the Polls march

WILMINGTON, N.C - The New Hanover County Branch of the NAACP will hold the Souls to the Polls march on Sunday, October 30 at noon, per the NAACP.

The march will begin at St. Stephen AME Church and end at the Cape Fear Community College early voting location. The NAACP aims to highlight that this is the only Sunday in this election cycle during which polls are open in New Hanover County.

Transportation will be offered to and from the polls for anyone who needs it. The NAACP writes on social media that they will share lunch from On Thyme with people participating in the march.

American Psychiatric Association Removes Award Honoring the Slave-Owning “Father of American Psychiatry”

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) no longer lists a Benjamin Rush Award among the awards it confers on member psychiatrists. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) had repeatedly called on the organization to disavow Dr. Benjamin Rush, the slave-owning “father of American psychiatry” who is responsible for instigating the “scientific racism” at the very root of the structural racism in psychiatry that the APA now admits.

In 2021, more than 175 years after its founding, the APA issued a public apology for psychiatry's “role in perpetrating structural racism.” However, the APA website continued to list the Benjamin Rush Award among the awards the organization presented and only more recently removed it.

The psychiatrist in whose honor this APA award was bestowed bought a child slave, William Grubber, in the early- to mid-1770s, scholars believe, at roughly the same time Rush published a 1773 critique of slavery. While he promoted the abolition of slavery in his writings, Rush kept his own slave for some two decades, apparently unconcerned with his hypocrisy.

Rush finally released Grubber from slavery in 1794, only after receiving, in his words, “a just compensation for my having paid for him the full price of a slave for life.” In other words, Rush made sure he got his money’s worth from his slave before setting him free.

However, Rush’s transgressions go far beyond the human rights abuse of enslaving another human being.

In 1792, Rush declared that Blacks suffered from a disease he called “negritude” that he theorized was caused by a variant of leprosy. “Observations intended to favour a supposition that the Black Color (as it is called) of the Negroes is derived from the Leprosy,” he wrote.
The cure was scrubbing the skin with corrosive acid to turn it white. He also believed Blacks should not intermarry with other races because this supposed disease could infect their children.

With this view of “black leprosy,” Rush set the precedent for all the “scientific racism” that followed, up to present day, as psychiatrists and psychologists claimed to find biological justification for segregation and other discriminatory practices against Black Americans.

Rush set yet another racist precedent by considering that African Americans were able to easily endure surgical operations and pain, labeling this "pathological insensibility." More than 200 years later, physicians are still more likely to underestimate the pain of Black patients relative to nonblack patients and are less likely to prescribe African Americans appropriate pain medication.

Rush’s human rights abuses also included treating his patients with darkness, solitary confinement, and a special technique of forcing the patient to stand erect for two to three days at a time, poking them with sharp pointed nails to keep them from sleeping – a technique borrowed from a British procedure for taming horses. “Terror acts powerfully upon the body, through the medium of the mind, and should be employed in the cure of madness,” he wrote. He also invented the “tranquilizer” chair, into which the patient was strapped hand and foot, along with a device to hold the head immobile.

The legacy of the “father of American psychiatry” is forever debased by his documented human rights abuses and his role in creating the “scientific racism” that has been used for generations by psychiatrists, psychologists, and the mental health practitioners trained by them – racism which has permeated American society and which the APA now admits is still “ingrained in the structure of psychiatric practice and continue[s] to harm BIPOC psychological well-being even today.” With the removal of the Benjamin Rush Award, the APA has very belatedly recognized Rush’s racist legacy.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) was co-founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and the late psychiatrist and humanitarian Thomas Szasz, M.D., recognized by many academics as modern psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, to eradicate abuses and restore human rights and dignity to the field of mental health. CCHR has been instrumental in obtaining 228 laws against psychiatric abuses and violations of human rights worldwide.

The CCHR National Affairs Office in Washington, DC, has advocated for mental health rights and protections at the state and federal level. The CCHR traveling exhibit, which has toured 441 major cities worldwide and educated over 800,000 people on the history to the present day of abusive and racist psychiatric practices, has been displayed at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, DC, and at other locations.