Caught in the Middle: Nigeria’s Je ws | Debates vs. Trump Mega-Rallies

The tapping noise from Ima Nwachukwu’s footsteps breaks the solemn silence as the 49-year-old rabbi walks among worshippers draped in white robes, prayer shawls and yarmulkes at a synagogue in Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s third-largest city. “Remember you are not the only one persecuted. Jews all over the world are,” she tells them. She bows before the Star of David — ringed by a ribbon of blue light — at the end of a long sermon in which politics, persecution and purification all mingle.

It’s a sermon rooted in a sharpening battle for survival that Nigeria’s small but fast-growing Jewish community faces. Africa’s most populous nation has seen its Jewish population double over the past five years to an estimated 10,000 people. But now, the community finds itself increasingly caught in a violent battle between Nigerian authorities and a revived secessionist movement for the creation of Biafra, which briefly existed as a separate nation in the 1960s.

The Twitterverse was quiet. After two days of Democratic debates, President Donald Trump had abstained from blasting his rivals, other than one tweet briefly stating that the people on stage would not, in fact, make America great. It was muted, a rare moment where the president was willing to play the part of an incumbent and act like his opponents were beneath the attention of the Oval Office.

That didn’t last, of course. It turned out he was just saving his best ammunition for his own fireworks show. At a rally in Ohio on Thursday night, the reality TV show host submitted his most ambitious bit of counter-programming in the 2020 race to topple him.

This morning, more than 19,000 people awoke in state prisons across Mississippi, home to the nation’s third-highest incarceration rate. More than half of the inmates are Black, even though African Americans represent just 30 percent of the state’s population. This is the world where Jody Owens grew up, and the one he wants to change.

Owens, 37, a candidate for district attorney of Hinds County in the Aug. 6 Democratic primary, knows his platform does not fit the norm of a Mississippi DA. As he seeks to lead criminal prosecutions in the county that includes the state capital of Jackson, Owens wants to utilize drug courts and restorative justice programs to send fewer people to prison. He won’t charge low-level marijuana cases, and he will only seek cash bail for defendants when he deems that not doing so would impact public safety or risk a no-show at trial.