THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 2015
PAGE 3A
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Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little was inaugurated five years ago this weekend as KU's 17th chancellor. Our youngest chancellor was Franklin Murphy (age 35) and our longest-tenured chancellor was Ernest Lindley (1920-1939).
New Ferguson City Council members are optimistic
JHM SALTER Associated Press
FERGUSON, Mo. — A surge of voters helped alter the racial makeup of the Ferguson City Council, and observers said Wednesday the change creates a new energy in a community trying to find its way after months of turmoil following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown.
More than 29 percent of Ferguson voters — double the percentage from the April 2014 election — went to the polls Tuesday and elected three new City Council members, including two African Americans. That means half of the six-member council will now be African American. The lone black incumbent councilman was not up for reelection. The mayor is white.
The percentage of elected blacks still falls short of the St. Louis suburb's racial makeup — two-thirds of Ferguson's 21,000 residents are black. Still, to residents and observers, it's a new start.
"I think [voters] understood very clearly that the eyes of the world were watching, and the vote was really the only way to bring substantive change," said community activist John Gaskin, a member of the national NAACP Board of Directors.
It was the first municipal election in Ferguson since Brown, an unarmed, black 18-year-old, was killed by a white police officer, Darren Wilson, last August. The shooting led to sometimes violent protests and spawned a national "Black Lives Matter" movement calling for changes
in how police deal with minorities.
A St. Louis County grand jury and the U.S. Justice Department declined to prosecute Wilson, who resigned in November. But the Justice Department last month released a scathing report citing racial bias and profiling in the Ferguson Police Department and a profit-driven municipal court system that frequently targets black residents.
Several city officials resigned following the review, including the city manager, police chief and municipal judge. The municipal court clerk was fired for racist emails.
The new city council will sign off on the replacements. It will work with the Justice Department to ensure that problems are corrected.
New council members say
they're up for the task.
"Our community — we've been through a lot," said Wesley Bell, a 40-year-old black man elected in the 3rd Ward, which includes the Canfield Green apartment complex, where Brown was killed. "This community came together in record numbers to make sure our voices were heard. When you have a community engaged, the sky is the limit."
Turnout was aided by a strong push from volunteers, both local and national. Labor unions, activist groups and Working Family Party, a leading voice of the left that helped elect New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio last year, went door to door and worked phone banks urging people to vote.
"When we talked to voters
about the opportunity we have to end a broken and racially biased justice system, people felt like there was really something worth going out to vote for," activist Reginald Rounds said.
Saint Louis University political science professor Ken Warren said the turnout was particularly impressive because he had previously sensed a defeatist attitude among many black residents in Ferguson.
"They thought, 'We can't win. It's a good old boy system,' Warren said. "Now, they have organized with the help of outsiders, and they ended up electing two blacks to the City Council."
Warren believes the change could fuel renewed political activism among blacks who live in Ferguson.
"I think it bodes well for the
future," he said.
Newly elected .2nd Ward Councilman Brian Fletcher, 55, who is white, agreed.
"The fact that we have a council that has three African-Americans - it's just wonderful, a new beginning for the city," said Fletcher, a former two-term mayor in Ferguson.
Ella Jones, a 60-year-old black woman, defeated three other candidates - one black and two white - in the 1st Ward.
Resident Hudson Ward encouraged the new council to seize its opportunity.
"All the protest and all the looting and everything, let that be a wake-up call." Ward said. "Change, to me, is giving our kids the opportunity to grow up in a peaceful community where everyone gets along."
Oklahoma OKs ban on second-trimester abortion method
SEAN MURPHY Associated Press
Associated Press
OKLAHOMA CITY Oklahoma would ban a common second-trimester abortion procedure that critics describe as dismembering a fetus under a measure that lawmakers overwhelmly approved Wednesday, a day after Kansas became the first state to prohibit the same procedure.
The Senate voted 37-4 for the bill, which now goes to Republican Gov. Mary Fallin. She has not said whether she will sign it, but she has
previously signed other anti-abortion measures.
Under the bill, doctors cannot use forceps, clamps, scissors or similar instruments on a live fetus to remove it from the womb in pieces. Such instruments are used in certain dilation and evacuation procedures performed in the second trimester. Of the roughly 5,000 abortions performed in Oklahoma in 2013, about 5 percent were performed using this procedure, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Health.
“It's gruesome,” said Sen. Josh Brecheen, who carried
the bill in the Senate and graphically described the practice to his colleagues.
Critics of the bill, including Planned Parenthood, have accused its supporters of using inflammatory and non-medical terminology "to insert politics into personal medical decisions." Abortion rights supporters said the procedure is often the safest for women seeking to terminate pregnancies during the second trimester.
"While women should not have to justify their personal medical decisions, the reality is that nine in 10 abortions in the U.S. occur in the first 12
weeks of pregnancy," Angie Remington, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, said in a statement. "Abortion in the second trimester of pregnancy is less common, but in all cases, a woman and her doctor need every medical option available."
The bill would ban the procedure except when necessary to save a woman's life or prevent a serious health risk to the mother.
Kansas Republican Gov. Sam Brownback signed a similar measure into law in Kansas on Wednesday, and abortion rights groups
in that state said they are considering a lawsuit. Abortion rights supporters say the law could be vulnerable to a lawsuit because it bans some abortions before a fetus can survive outside the womb.
Missouri and South Carolina also are considering a similar measure.
Oklahoma has been sued at least six times since 2010 over various restrictions on abortion and contraception, including two lawsuits that are pending that challenge bills approved by the GOP-controlled legislature last year.
One lawsuit targets restrictions on abortion-inducing drugs, while a second challenges a requirement that abortion providers have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. Both laws have been put on hold by the state Supreme Court while the cases are being considered. Oklahoma lawmakers earlier this week passed a bill that would make it the fourth state in the country to require women to wait at least 72 hours after receiving information about abortions before the procedure can be performed.
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