News

By Poppy Noor

Written by Reverend Jesse Jackson

Barack Obama will step down as President of the United States on January 20, when Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45th President to enter the White House. Here, veteran civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson, looks back at Obama’s legacy

THE FINAL days of the Barack Obama presidency are upon us.

His popularity is rising with the economy, and with the increasingly stark contrasts to his successor. It is worth being clear about the legacy that he leaves behind.

Human rights campaigns group Black Mental Health UK (BMH UK) has launched it's Top 30 list for 2016, spotlighting those who have supported our work over the past year in addressing the injustice in the way the Mental Health Act is used against black people of African descent and the discrimination that they face from these services.

The idea that English football had shed its nasty racist football image was blown apart when back in Feb 2015 four Chelsea football fans were seen pushing a Black man - Souleymane Sylla - off a Paris Metro carriage, chanting: “We’re racist, we’re racist, and that’s the way we like it.”

Souleymane Sylla, who was on his way home from work, was traumatised by the incident in which English guests in his country could so blatantly abuse him and threaten him with extreme violence.

The Professor of Nursing and leading campaigner for the Mary Seacole Statue Elizabeth Anionwu has been awarded a Damehood in the Queen’s New Years Honours list. Professor Anionwu is part of a record number of Honours award to Black and minority ethnic individuals in 2017.

Other awards include:

What wonderful news to start the New Year of 2017.

We got the news that Caroline Wambui Chege, who took part in OBV’s Parliamentary mentoring scheme in 2008/9 will run for Senator in Kajiado, Kenya where she was raised as child.

As a young woman she came to the UK and studied at the University of Liverpool, where she did a degree in Business and Health. In 2008 she was selected from strong competition to win a place on the coveted OBV MP Shadowing scheme.

What a year we’ve had, sounds like an understatement of the year I’m not even quite sure where to start?

Maybe I should start with yesterday and attending the funeral  of the Honorary Alderwoman Gee Bernard. Known to many simply as ‘Mama Gee’.

The Croydon Chapel simply wasn’t big enough to house the hundreds who sought to pay tribute to the borough’s first Black councillor and life-long warrior for social and racial justice.

In what must be an unprecedented political intervention the heir to the throne, Prince Charles, made an impassioned plea on this morning’s ‘Thought for the day’, on Radio 4’s today programme, arguing the political populism of our time is becoming reminiscent to the 1930’s - that witnessed the birth of fascism and of course the Holocaust.

I came across this YouTube video #NotTheEndofTheRoad via a friend of mine who strongly suggested I watch it. I’m glad I did.

It was commissioned by The Criminal Case Review Commission, and made by First Class Legacy whose vision is to bring impactful information to a young generation about the things they should know and care about.