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Harris emerges as top abortion voice, warns of more fallout
  • Will Weissert

WASHINGTON — During Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearings, then-California Sen. Kamala Harris asked the judge if he thought women’s privacy rights extended to choosing to have an abortion. Kavanaugh declined to answer.

With Justice Kavanaugh now part of the court majority that voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and the senator now the vice president, Harris is warning that the court’s decision could trigger some of the same far-reaching privacy limitations she warned of during those hearings.

Taking to the issue with a passion linked both to her personal and professional background, Harris has spent recent weeks sounding the alarm that upending Roe could create precedent for new restrictions on everything from contraception and in vitro fertilization to gay marriage and the right to vote.

Justice Clarence Thomas seemed to validate such concerns, writing in a concurring opinion to the larger ruling on Roe that the high court “should reconsider” past decisions on access to contraception and same-sex marriage.

Harris has been a leading Biden administration voice on abortion rights since early May, when a leaked draft opinion previewed Roe v. Wade’s nullification. She was flying to Illinois for a maternal health event when the final decision was announced last week, and read it while still in the air — quickly shifting the focus of her planned remarks to the ruling.

The decision “calls into question other rights that we thought were settled, such as the right to use birth control, the right to same sex marriage, the right to interracial message,” Harris told her audience Friday at a suburban YMCA, adding that it would spark a “health care crisis.”

Becoming a leading voice on abortion access could be a better fit for Harris after President Joe Biden tasked her with overseeing other thorny issues that haven’t gone well: immigration and expanding voting rights. Sweeping legislation on both issues has stalled in Congress, prompting some advocates to say the vice president and the White House should’ve done more.

Harris symbolically presiding over the Senate didn’t stop Republicans from blocking efforts to codify Roe v. Wade into federal law before the court’s ruling overturning it. But Democrats are hoping anger around the issue will energize their base for the November midterm elections, when the party faces steep headwinds.

Getting straight to the politics of the matter after the ruling was announced, Harris said, “You have the power to elect leaders who will defend and protect your rights. With your vote, you can act. And you have the final word.”

After a Texas law effectively banned abortion in the state in the fall, Harris met providers and patients, which her office believes is the first time abortion providers have visited the White House. She stressed then that gender discrimination persists, saying that “women’s full participation in our nation” was still only a goal, not a reality.

After the draft Supreme Court opinion leaked, the vice president convened a virtual discussion with doctors and nurses providing abortion care in states with strict restrictions and met with Democratic attorneys general from states supportive of reproductive rights.

Biden has also forcefully defended abortion rights and warned that other rights are now at risk. But as a observant Catholic, he hasn’t always had a strong record on the issue.

Harris, the first female vice president and California’s former top prosecutor, brings unique personal perspective and legal expertise to the issue.

“Seeing women fight on behalf of other women is just very true to the core of who she is,” said Jacqueline Ayers, senior vice president of policy, organizing, and campaigns at Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

She added that Harris has framed the issue to underscore “the disparity that it creates on Black and brown communities, and for people who are living with low income.”

Ayers said the high court’s action has allowed the vice president to highlight how she’s used her office to listen to women and advocate for improving their health care — perhaps even in ways Biden can’t.

“It’s not necessarily a wedge, it’s just a continuation of someone who has really staked their career around the issues that are key and drivers for them,” Ayers said of differences between Harris and Biden.

Rev. John Dorhauer, the general minister and president of the United Church of Christ, attended a recent virtual meeting on abortion rights that Harris hosted, and suggested she’s been less afraid than some top Democrats to advocate forcefully on the issue.

“To hear that from one of the highest offices in the land is incredibly encouraging,” Dorhauer said.

But some abortion opponents argue that Harris has hurt her cause by equating abortion access with other, more routine medical care.

“She has become emblematic of the abortion absolutism on the other side,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, which advocates for women who oppose abortion in politics.

As a senator, Harris introduced legislation to improve maternal health. During a 2019 Democratic presidential primary debate, then-candidate Harris said it was “outrageous” that abortion had been overshadowed by other issues, despite a woman’s right to the procedure being “under full-on attack” even then.

The vice president most forcefully signaled the outspoken role when she declared a day after the draft opinion leaked in May: “Those Republican leaders who are trying to weaponize the use of the law against women, well, we say, how dare they?”

She then used subsequent weeks to argue that undermining Roe v. Wade could soon wipe out other key privacy rights — the same theme she raised during Kavanaugh’s hearing.

Harris says many states moving to fully ban abortion could restrict in vitro fertilization if legislatures argue that human life begins at fertilization. They could prohibit contraception methods, including intrauterine devices and the “morning after” pill, she argued.

Law enforcement might scrutinize data collected from millions of women who use menstrual cycle tracking apps, or those doing internet searches on getting abortions in other states, the vice president said.

Also ultimately at stake, Harris maintains, is the legalization of gay marriage, noting that states with the strictest abortion laws often also have past LGBTQ prohibitions that the Supreme Court could revive. Once those rights have fallen, the argument goes, voting rights could be next. She convened a recent meeting with privacy experts to discuss the matter.

“That slippery slope is really slippery,” said one of the meeting’s participants, Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, the women and democracy fellow at the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice in New York. “We’re barreling right down it right now.”

Michele Goodwin, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, told attendees to be prepared for “the coming of a new Jane Crow,” as efforts to limit abortion begin to emulate antiquated laws that once sanctioned open discrimination against Black people.

Dannenfelser countered that Harris and others are exaggerating, saying the current Supreme Court is “the least likely to do what she’s saying. They believe in the rule of law.”

“It’s intended to scare people and to build a coalition on the other side outside of the abortion issue,” Dannenfelser said.

Harris’ office says she is indeed building a coalition, but it will be one of people who believe that Roe v. Wade’s effects far exceeded abortion, and not just for women. To help drive home that point, Harris met recently in Los Angeles with religious leaders, noting that “to support Roe v. Wade, and all it stands for, does not mean giving up your beliefs.”

News
NNPA and Transformative Justice Coalition announce national GOTV campaign targeting 10 million more Black voters
  • Stacy M. Brown

Ahead of the all-important 2022 midterm elections, reports show that more than 55 million Americans remain unregistered to vote — and about 10 million are African Americans who are eligible to vote but who are unregistered.

Whether the reason is apathy, suppression, or something else, the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) and the Transformative Justice Coalition seek to get to the bottom of why, with so much at stake, voter registration and get-out-the-vote mobilization remain notably lacking among Black Americans across the nation.

During the national convention marking the 195th anniversary celebration of the Black Press of America in New Orleans last week, leaders of both organizations announced a get-out-the-vote campaign aimed at registering and mobilizing 10 million more African Americans to vote in time for the 2022 midterms.

“The NNPA has talked about the vote, and there is no better time for us to show our power,” NNPA Chair Karen Carter Richards said during the announcement at the national convention in the Big Easy.

“Let us take the lead and not be on the tail end so we can show the present-day power of the Black Press,” said Richards, who publishes the Houston Forward Times.

“This is a great opportunity for us. We’ve got to make this happen,” attorney Barbara Arnwine, founder and president of the Transformative Justice Coalition, told a panel at the convention. She and the coalition’s board chair and fellow lawyer Daryl Jones said their organization had recorded 72 voter suppression tactics to prevent a large population from casting ballots.

Among them are strict voter laws in many Republican-led states, deceptive practices like robocalls, early voting cuts and voter intimidation.

“Black voters did our share in 2020,” Arnwine said. “Ninety-three percent of all eligible Black voters registered in Georgia. Yet, in the 2021 Georgia Senate run-off, 93% of all registered Black voters turned out. That’s why people don’t understand where the real power is.”

Along with NNPA President and CEO Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., Richards, NNPA Executive Board members Janis Ware, Fran Farrer, Cheryl Smith, and Jackie Hampton, Arnwine and Jones announced that the groups would utilize a multivehicle “votercade” to get out the vote.

They said individuals riding in new and COVID-safe tour buses would hit swing states ahead of the November elections to register and mobilize GOTV for 10 million new Black voters.

Chavis said artists from Roc Nation, the company run by hip-hop magnate and business mogul Jay-Z, would accompany the votercade in some cities.

Music superstar Stephanie Mills also pledged to “get on the bus with the Black Press and the Transformative Justice Coalition.”

Chavis said he’s convinced other celebrities will also join the national GOTV campaign.

“The first form of voter suppression is self-suppression,” Chavis said.

“This last primary election showed that some of us were keeping ourselves from voting. There are 55 million unregistered Americans eligible to vote, and 10 million are African Americans,” Chavis continued.

“What if those 10 million were registered? We wouldn’t have worried about Donald Trump or the craziness of what the U.S. Supreme Court is doing now. Elections have consequences. The overturned Roe v. Wade, the overturned gun laws — are consequences of elections.”

With more than 235 African American-owned newspapers and media companies as members, the NNPA represents the Black Press of America.

The Transformative Justice Coalition’s mission includes systematic change that achieves racial justice, gender, economic and social justice, and human rights through public education and engagement initiatives that attend equally to hearts and minds as well as the social systems and structure in which they exist.

Further, the coalition dedicates itself to informed civic engagement and equal voting rights for everyone.

They use a voting rights map of shame to inform the public of threats to America’s democracy, how to protect their voting rights, and steps to ensure the ability to cast a ballot and make sure it’s counted.

The organization also seeks the restoration of voting rights for ex-felons.

“[Anti-voting rights organizations and individuals] have trained 10,000 people to be poll disrupters to go to only Black polling sites,” Arnwine declared.

“They’re not sending them to white polling sites, and if you watched the [Jan. 6] hearings, this is a concentrated effort to disempower Black voters,” she said.

According to Davis, more than 18 million people are eligible to vote but don’t know it.

“They are the felony-disenfranchised,” Davis said. “They are confused. It’s intentionally done in various states. For example, in some states, you never lose your right to vote, and in some states, you can run for office if you’re incarcerated.”

The votercade would help educate voters and explain what’s legal, among other things. “We’re calling on all 235 NNPA members,” Chavis said. “That call and response from our brothers and sisters are vital. It’s movement time, it is time to get out the vote.

“With the Transformative Justice Coalition, the NNPA will help move our people forward to get out this vote. In 2022, we will make the critical difference in the midterm elections in terms of increasing Black voter participation throughout the country.”

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Jan. 6 panel calls surprise hearing to present new evidence
  • Mary Clare Jalonick Farnoush Amiri

WASHINGTON — The House Jan. 6 panel is calling a surprise hearing this week to present evidence it says it recently obtained, raising expectations of new bombshells in the sweeping investigation into the Capitol insurrection.

The hearing scheduled for 1 p.m. on Tuesday comes after Congress left Washington for a two-week recess. Lawmakers on the panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection said last week that there would be no more hearings until July.

The subject of the hearings is so far unclear. A spokesman for the panel declined to comment on its substance.

The committee’s investigation has been ongoing during the hearings that started three weeks ago, and the nine-member panel has continued to probe the attack by supporters of then-President Donald Trump. Among other investigative evidence, the committee recently obtained new footage of Trump and his inner circle taken both before and after Jan. 6, 2021 from British filmmaker Alex Holder.

Holder said last week that he had complied with a congressional subpoena to turn over all of the footage he shot in the final weeks of Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, including exclusive interviews with Trump, his children and then-Vice President Mike Pence while on the campaign trail. The footage includes material from before the insurrection and afterward.

It is uncertain if Holder’s footage is the subject of the hearing on Tuesday, or if Holder himself will be there. Russell Smith, a lawyer for Holder, declined to comment.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, the panel’s Democratic chairman, told reporters last week that the committee was in possession of the footage and needed more time to go through the hours of video Holder had turned over. The British filmmaker came in for a deposition Thursday that lasted two hours, Smith said last week.

Smith said then that it was Holder’s “civic duty” to come forward and that the footage had shown some inconsistencies with previous testimony during the hearings.

The panel has held five hearings so far, mostly laying out Trump’s pressure campaign on various institutions of power in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress that eventually certified Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential victory. The committee detailed the pressure from Trump and his allies on Vice President Mike Pence, on the states that were certifying Biden’s win and on the Justice Department.

The panel has used live interviews, video testimony of its private witness interviews and also footage of the attack to detail what it has learned.

Lawmakers said last week that the two July hearings would focus on domestic extremists who breached the Capitol that day and on what Trump was doing as the violence unfolded.

Local_news
Philly teacher named Mighty Writers education director
  • Chanel Hill Tribune Staff Writer

Brianna Johns never saw herself having a career in education, but all that changed once she volunteered at an early child development center in college.

“When I enrolled at Bloomsburg University, I was an undecided major,” Johns said. “I went to the volunteer office and just signed up for a bunch of different things.

“The SHARE program, which is Students Helping Adolescents Reach Excellence, was among one of the programs I signed up for,” she added. “They sent me to an early child development center and I fell in love with it. I knew right then that I wanted to spend the rest of my life working with kids.”

Johns, 27, is the new education director of Mighty Writers, a nonprofit that helps children and teens in Philadelphia, New Jersey and Kennett Square improve their writing skills.

Mighty Writers serves more than 3,500 kids a year. The organization offers daily, after-school writing academies that cover various genres of writing — everything from reporting and poetry to memoir writing. It also hosts writing classes on nights and weekends and teen scholarship programs.

Johns oversees all the organization’s sites and programming, including the writing academy and workshops. She also serves as a curriculum coach to the programming team.

“If it’s education-related, I will have my hands in it,” Johns said. “I’m currently spending a lot of my time in North and West Philly. I’m helping those sites prepare for summer camp and oversee the program directors there.

“We’re also in the midst of opening a new site in Germantown, so I’ll be spending a lot of the summer getting their site ready as well as hiring staff for that location,” she added.

Mighty Writers executive director Tim Whitaker said Johns’ background in education made her the best person for the role.

“Brianna brings both academic and city smarts to Mighty Writers,” Whitaker said in a written statement. “Brianna grew up in Germantown, went to Central and has taught both in city and suburban schools. She gets Philly and Philly kids.”

Johns became an educator in 2017. She’s taught elementary students at the Uncommon Schools in Brooklyn, New York, and at the John Barry Elementary School, Belmont Charter Network and Master Charter Schools in Philadelphia.

Prior to becoming the education director at Mighty Writers, she served as the upper school English teacher at the Agnes Irwin School in Bryn Mawr.

Johns graduated from Central High School. She has a bachelor’s degree in education from Bloomsburg University and a master’s in writing from Saint Joseph’s University. She is currently completing her doctorate in English pedagogy at Murray State University.

She also self-published two children’s books, “Nailed It” and “Reese Rescues.”

“Throughout my career, I’ve worked in different schools, worked with different curriculums and taught students with different socio-economic status and races,” Johns said.

“I do this work because I genuinely love being around young people and giving them opportunities that they deserve and should have. I’m so excited to be impacting the lives of kids all over the city and beyond through Mighty Writers.”

Johns said she wants students to leave Mighty Writers feeling empowered.

“I want them to walk away from Mighty Writers feeling they did something impactful,” Johns said.

“When they go back to school in the fall, I want them to tell their friends about the workshops and programming they participated in over the summer,” she added. “Ultimately, I want them to gain experiences and create memories that will last them a lifetime.”

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