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We spend the week scouring the internets for essential information and meaningful content to keep you informed, inspired and mildly entertained.
With the Democratic National Convention taking place this coming week, and the historic selection of Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s running mate, The Dossier is taking a look back at Black people who moved the Democratic Party—and the nation—forward.
📰 Toplines
USA TODAY: Unemployment claims slip below 1M for first time since March but job losses remain high as Congress wrangles over more aid
NYT: Postal Crisis Ripples Across Nation as Election Looms
Chicago Sun-Times: ‘A keg of dynamite’: Police shooting in Englewood leads to looting, gunfire downtown
AJC: After historic victory, Fani Willis plans transformation of Fulton DA’s office
Seattle Times: Seattle police Chief Carmen Best says she will retire amid protests, City Council cuts
WSJ: Lebanon’s Government Resigns After Protests, Deadly Beirut Explosion
FT: Mauritius ecological disaster worsens as wrecked ship breaks up
Billboard: Three Men Arrested in Scheme to Intimidate R. Kelly’s Alleged Victims
ESPN: Big Ten, Pac-12 postpone fall college football: What you need to know
🗳 Joe Biden picks Kamala Harris
In a remarkable career of historic firsts, Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) has made history yet again. On August 11, former Vice President Joe Biden announced Senator Harris as his pick for Vice President of the United States. Senator Harris is the first Black woman and the first Indian-American to join a major party ticket for the presidency. Here’s your essential reading:
NYT: How Biden Chose Harris: A Search That Forged New Stars, Friends and Rivalries
Washington Post: Harris’s wooing of Black activists paved a path to the ticket
POLITICO: 55 Things You Need to Know About Kamala Harris
Vox: Kamala Harris’s controversial record on criminal justice, explained
Axios: Harris boosting Biden ticket with key voters
🦠 COVID-19
The U.S. reports more than 5.4 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 170,000 deaths, accounting for 25% of the 21.6m cases worldwide and 22% of the 774,000 deaths globally.
AP: Worldwide virus cases top 20 million, doubling in six weeks
CNN: New CDC guidance says Covid-19 rates in children are 'steadily increasing'
STAT: The Trump administration haphazardly gave away millions of Covid-19 masks — to schools, broadcasters, and large corporations
✊🏿 Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer registered to vote in Mississippi, and nearly lost her life.
Because the Mississippi Democratic Party did not allow Black people to join, she co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and demanded to be seated at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Hamer’s testimony before the DNC Credentials Committee was so powerful that President Lyndon Baines Johnson preempted it with an impromptu press conference at the White House.
And it wasn't too long before three white men came to my cell. One of these men was a State Highway Patrolman and he asked me where I was from. I told him Ruleville and he said, "We are going to check this."
They left my cell and it wasn't too long before they came back. He said, "You are from Ruleville all right," and he used a curse word. And he said, "We are going to make you wish you was dead."
🏛 Barbara Jordan
Congresswoman Barbara Jordan (D-TX) rose to national prominence after her incisive speech on the impeachment of President Richard Nixon in 1974. In 1976, she was the first Black woman to deliver a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. Barbara Jordan’s words are as relevant today as they were 44 years ago:
We are a people in a quandary about the present. We are a people in search of our future. We are a people in search of a national community. We are a people trying not only to solve the problems of the present, unemployment, inflation, but we are attempting on a larger scale to fulfill the promise of America. We are attempting to fulfill our national purpose, to create and sustain a society in which all of us are equal.
🌈 Jesse Jackson Sr.
In 1984, the Democratic presidential primary had long been a winner-take-all contest: the candidate who won the most votes in any particular state won all of the delegates from that state. When Jesse ran for president that year, he won 20% of total votes cast nationwide, but earned only a 12% share of convention delegates.
Jackson leveraged his strong showing among Black voters to push the Democratic National Committee to adopt the proportional presidential primary system we know today. In so doing, he paved the way for Barack Obama to ascend to the presidency. (Under winner-take-all rules, Hillary Clinton would have secured the nomination in 2008).
America is not like a blanket -- one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt: many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled make up the American quilt.
Even in our fractured state, all of us count and fit somewhere. We have proven that we can survive without each other. But we have not proven that we can win and make progress without each other. We must come together.
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