Forming a more perfect union requires support, strength and unity
Those familiar words from the Constitution's Preamble – which many of us first encountered through Schoolhouse Rock! – represent America's fundamental promises. Yet in 2025, these guarantees feel increasingly distant from our lived reality. The past 30 days alone have demonstrated how quickly established protections can unravel.
As we conclude Black History Month, the evidence is sobering. Federal job cuts, euphemistically termed 'government downsizing,' are affecting all Americans; however, history has taught us a painful truth: When America catches a cold, Black communities catch the flu. Critical support systems like SNAP and Head Start face devastating cuts. Corporate America is rapidly dismantling DEI initiatives, while HBCUs now face threats to their federal funding under new 'interpretations of civil rights laws.' This systematic erosion of institutional support has created a climate of uncertainty that weighs heavily on our communities.
The parallels to our not-so-distant past are impossible to ignore. Those hard-earned gains of the Civil Rights Era – achievements we believed were secure – are being methodically undermined. As both a mental health professional and business owner, I recognize the profound psychological and financial implications these changes carry. We're watching the dismantling of support systems many considered permanent, forcing us to reconstruct networks of community assistance.
As the former president of the Miami Dade Chapter of the NAACP, I've witnessed how challenges often catalyze our greatest moments of unity. Our path forward requires strengthening bonds across the Black Diaspora – bringing together generations, uniting Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, and building meaningful coalitions with allies who understand that civil rights are human rights.
What we need now is action:
- Support and grow Black-owned businesses and financial institutions within our communities.
- Create accessible mental health resources and safe spaces for honest dialogue.
- Check in on our 'strong ones' – those community pillars who often suffer in silence.
- Put Ujima and Ujamaa into practice, leveraging our collective strength and resources.
Our community's resilience has carried us through centuries of challenges. Today's obstacles, while daunting, can become the foundation for greater unity and purpose. We have within our community both the resources and the resolve to meet this moment. The strength of our ancestors flows through us, guiding our response to these new challenges.
The Preamble speaks of forming 'a more perfect Union.' In 2025, that sacred task falls to us. Together, we must ensure that 'We the People' truly means all people – not just in principle, but in lived experience. Our power lies in our unity, our resources in our community, and our hope in our collective action. Let's move forward with purpose, determination, and the unwavering spirit that has always defined our people.
Ruban Roberts is the CEO of RER Consulting, Amplify Community Resources and the immediate past president of the Miami Dade branch of the NAACP.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of M•I•A MEDIA GROUP LLC. Any content provided by our contributors is their opinion and is not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, or entity.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
21 minutes ago
- USA Today
MLK files: What's in them and what's left out?
Historians assessing the trove of newly released documents are cautioning people against the idea that they contain any groundbreaking information. Among details included in a newly released trove of documents related to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.: assassin James Earl Ray took dance classes and had a penchant for using aliases based on James Bond novels, according to researchers. Likely not among the nearly a quarter million pages released by the National Archives and Administration on July 21 is anything that changes the narrative cemented when Ray pleaded guilty to King's murder in 1969, historians say. "By all means the government should release all the documents that they have and they should have done it 20 years ago. The issue is about what our expectations are for what's going to be found," said Michael Cohen, a University of California, Berkeley professor and author of a book on conspiracies in American politics. "The idea that there's some sort of secret document showing that J. Edgar Hoover did it is not how any of this works. Part of the challenge is getting the American public to understand it's nowhere near as exciting." National Archives officials released the over 6,000 documents in accordance with an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in January. Officials released the documents over objections from members of the King family. The files are available for the public to read online at the National Archives website. Historians say it will take weeks to fully understand what they reveal. Trump's Jan. 23, 2025 executive order also called for the release of records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. The full findings of the government investigations into the three killings have been hidden for decades, sparking wide-ranging speculation and preventing a sense of closure for many Americans. All three men were national and international icons whose assassinations — and the theories swirling around them — became the stuff of books, movies, controversy, and the pages of history itself. More: Trump's release of assassination docs opens window into nation's most debated mysteries What's in the King files? The newly released records come from the FBI's investigation of the King assassination, records the Central Intelligence Agency deemed related to the assassination and a file from the State Department on the extradition of James Earl Ray, who pleaded guilty in 1969 to murdering King. David Barrett, a historian at Villanova University, said the files will likely contain new, interesting information. But as was the case with the JFK files released in March, the material likely isn't groundbreaking. "I'm not seeing anything that strikes me as surprising," said Barrett, author of multiple books on presidents and intelligence agencies. "Unless they want to write about the investigation, I don't know that this will have an impact on the scholarship." Noteworthy in the files, Barrett said, are details concerning how the FBI connected Ray to King, how they found him and extradited him back to the U.S. from the United Kingdom, where he had fled. "It does take weeks to go through these, so there might be some important revelatory things but I doubt it," said the political science professor. "It's not exactly what people were hoping for and not what the King family was fearing." Many of the files are also illegible due to age and digitization. Archives officials said the agency was working with other federal partners to uncover records related to the King assassination and that records will be added to the website on a rolling basis. 'Now, do the Epstein files': MLK's daughter knocks Trump over records release What's not in the King files? Not among the newly released documents are details of FBI surveillance into King that historians say could include recordings agency director J. Edgar Hoover hoped to use as blackmail against the Georgia preacher. Experts say Hoover's wiretappings of King's hotel rooms, which are believed to contain evidence of infidelity, are likely what his family fears being made public. The New York Times reported the recordings remain under seal pursuant to a court order until 2027. But UC Berkeley professor Cohen said the documents likely haven't been revealed for multiple reasons. "There's claims that these are major government secrets and so whatever they might contain might be true and that's not the case," Cohen said. "Any large-scale government investigation often includes all sorts of spurious claims, hearsay evidence, things of which there's no truth and part of the reason why they get withheld is bureaucratic inertia and also the need to check their veracity." What does the FBI have to hide? Hoover's recordings might also prove a double-edged sword for the FBI, according to Cohen: "Will these files contain things that will upset the King family? That's possible. But they'll also likely reveal just how massively the FBI violated King's civil liberties." FBI agents began monitoring King in 1955, according to researchers at Stanford University. Hoover believed King was a communist and after the Georgia preacher criticized the agency's activities in the Deep South in 1964, the original FBI director began targeting King using the agency's counterintelligence program COINTELPRO, Stanford researchers said. COINTELPRO was a controversial program that a 1975 U.S. Senate investigation slammed, saying: "Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity," the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities said in its final report. "The Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association." The agency went so far as to send King a recording secretly made from his hotel room that an agent testified was aimed at destroying King's marriage, according to a 1976 U.S. Senate investigation. King interpreted a note sent with the tape as a threat to release recording unless King committed suicide, the Senate report said. MLK assassinated in Memphis, April 4, 1968 The official story of how King died is that he was killed on the balcony outside his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. He stepped outside to speak with colleagues in the parking lot below and was shot in the face by an assassin. James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old escaped fugitive, later confessed to the crime and was sentenced to a 99-year prison term. But Ray later tried to withdraw his confession and said he was set up by a man named Raoul. He maintained until his death in 1998 that he did not kill King. The recanted confession and the FBI's shadowy operations under J. Edgar Hoover have sparked widespread conspiracy theories over who really killed the civil rights icon. King's children have said they don't believe Ray was the shooter and that they support the findings of a 1999 wrongful death lawsuit that found that King was the victim of a broad conspiracy that involved government agents. Department of Justice officials maintain that the findings of the civil lawsuit are not credible. Read the MLK files Looking to read the MLK files yourself? You can find them on the National Archives' website here. Most of the files are scans of documents, and some are blurred or have become faint or difficult to read in the decades since King's assassination. There are also photographs and sound recordings.
American Military News
2 hours ago
- American Military News
Top Biden official exposed for spending $80 billion on DEI, delaying air traffic control upgrades: Report
A new report claims that former Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spent $80 billion on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) grants and failed to implement upgrades to the country's air traffic control systems under former President Joe Biden's administration. According to The New York Post, airline industry sources and federal spending records indicate that Buttigieg prioritized the Biden administration's DEI policies while failing to replace the Department of Transportation's outdated air traffic control systems. Sources told the outlet that Buttigieg told airline industry executives during a meeting that upgrading air traffic control systems would allow airlines to fly additional airplanes, 'and so why would that be in his interest?' The New York Post reported that federal spending records show the Department of Transportation spent over $80 billion under the Biden administration on approximately 400 DEI grants. 'He was definitely pushing an agenda,' an industry official told The New York Post. The source claimed that Buttigieg had 'little to no interest' and took 'definitely zero action' toward the modernization of the country's air traffic control systems. Instead, sources told the outlet that Buttigieg repeatedly blamed airlines for traffic delays and denied that the Department of Transportation's DEI policies led to staffing shortages. READ MORE: Video: Pentagon failure exposed by FAA after deadly DC plane crash One source told The New York Post, 'At first, [the Department of Transportation] and he were reluctant to say there was an air traffic controller shortage or that the shortage had anything to do with flight delays or flight cancellations.' In response to The New York Post's report regarding Buttigieg's leadership of the Department of Transportation, Chris Meagher, a Buttigieg spokesperson, said, 'Suggesting that Secretary Buttigieg chose not to pursue air traffic control modernization is absurd.' 'Secretary Buttigieg's focus was always on safety — not just in aviation, but also on roads and bridges, where 40,000 Americans die on our country's roads each year,' Meagher added. 'Fixing issues with air traffic control was a priority.' The Buttigieg spokesperson claimed that the Department of Transportation's DEI grants that were approved under the Biden administration were a 'separate siloed transportation mode' and did not result in delays to the 'work' of the Federal Aviation Administration. 'You can walk and chew gum at the same time,' Meagher said. 'FAA operates completely separately than other modal administrations. So what happens at FHWA doesn't have a meaningful effect on FAA or NHTSA because they operate independently. It's separate staff, separate budgets, separate programs.'
CNBC
3 hours ago
- CNBC
Judges reject Trump's pick for top New Jersey federal prosecutor, DOJ removes successor
The U.S. Justice Department accused a panel of New Jersey federal court judges of political motives for declining to permanently appoint President Donald Trump's former lawyer Alina Habba as the state's top federal prosecutor. The judges on the U.S. District Court in New Jersey named Desiree Grace, the second highest-ranking official in the U.S. attorney's office, to replace Habba on Tuesday. Hours later Attorney General Pam Bondi said Grace also had been removed. "This Department of Justice does not tolerate rogue judges — especially when they threaten the President's core Article II powers," Bondi wrote in a post on X, referring to Trump's authority under the U.S. Constitution. Federal law allows district courts to intervene if an interim U.S. attorney has not received Senate approval within 120 days. Habba has been serving as New Jersey's interim U.S. attorney since her appointment by Trump in March, but was limited by law to 120 days in office unless the court agreed to keep her in place. The U.S. Senate has not yet acted on her formal nomination to the role, submitted by Trump this month. Habba and Grace could not be immediately reached for comment. Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said in a statement on X that the U.S. District Court in New Jersey was trying to "force" Habba out of her job before her term expires at 11:59 p.m. on Friday. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York last week declined to keep Trump's U.S. attorney pick John Sarcone in place after his 120-day term neared expiration. Sarcone managed to stay in the office after the Justice Department found a workaround by naming him as "special attorney to the attorney general," according to the New York Times. The Justice Department cannot make a similar arrangement for Habba, however, because federal law prohibits the government from appointing someone to serve in an acting capacity if the individual was already nominated by the president to serve in that role. Habba's brief tenure as New Jersey's interim U.S. attorney included the filing of multiple legal actions against Democratic elected officials. Her office brought criminal charges against Democratic U.S. Representative LaMonica McIver, as she and other members of Congress and Newark's Democratic mayor, Ras Baraka, tried to visit an immigration detention center. The scene grew chaotic after immigration agents tried to arrest Baraka for trespassing, and McIver's elbows appeared to make brief contact with an immigration officer. Habba's office charged McIver with two counts of assaulting and impeding a law enforcement officer. McIver has pleaded not guilty. Habba's office did not follow Justice Department rules which require prosecutors to seek permission from the Public Integrity Section before bringing criminal charges against a member of Congress for conduct related to their official duties. Habba's office also charged Baraka, but later dropped the case, prompting a federal magistrate judge to criticize her office for its handling of the matter. Until March, Habba had never worked as a prosecutor. She represented Trump in a variety of civil litigation, including a trial in which a jury found Trump liable for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of raping her in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room. In 2023, a federal judge in Florida sanctioned Trump and Habba and ordered them to pay $1 million for filing a frivolous lawsuit which alleged that Hillary Clinton and others conspired to damage Trump's reputation in the investigation into Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
