The New York Amsterdam News Issue #12, March 23-30, 2023

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN:

STREET CO-NAMINGS & MURALS ADVOCATE PEACE

CUNY students rally, want ‘New Deal for CUNY’ enacted

(See story on page 10)

‘Just Pay’ campaign demands fair wages for essential city & state workers (See story on page 10)

(See story on page 30)

Puerto Rico marks 150 years since end of African slavery

(Contributed photo from HSC)

Then-Councilmember and current Rep. Ritchie Torres (center) with Leandra Feliz after announcing street co-naming in her son’s honor (David Greene photo)

(Karen Juanita Carrillo photo)

(Karen Juanita Carrillo photo)

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INDIA IN SPOTLIGHT OVER COUGH MEDICINES FATAL TO AFRICAN CHILDREN

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(GIN)—An epidemic of kidney disease among children in Africa has been linked to deadly toxins in cough medicine imported from India.

Doctors say they are seeing dozens of children under the age of 5 with kidney failure—a condition they used to see only once or twice a year—and mothers are demanding justice.

Global health officials have connected the recent deaths of more than 70 children from the Gambia to cough medicine made in India. But before the item could be yanked from the shelves, time had to be spent on testing or screening for bottles wrongly labeled “World Health Organization.”

Four medicines manufactured by Maiden Pharmaceuticals in Kundli-Haryana have been identified

as containing toxins by the World Health Organization (WHO), which issued a global alert. But the company got a clean bill of health from India’s drugs controller general, who said the samples tested were not contaminated with the dangerous compounds.

Regulatory documents reviewed by Reuters showed that Maiden’s manufacturing practices had fallen short at least three times. In one, the company was blacklisted for five years for selling substandard and “spurious” (adulterated) medicine. In another, two drugs manufactured by Maiden were found not to meet quality standards. A third incident involved quality violations in drugs sold in Vietnam.

Gambian pediatrician Vivian Muoneke, a graduate of the University of Nigeria, was sure she was seeing an epidemic of child poisoning due to acute kidney injury. It was determined that the cough syrups were contaminated with ethylene glycol (ET) and diethylene glycol (DEG).

“For us, it was psychological torture,” said Muoneke. “If tests for toxins had been done in late July or early August, a sales ban could have saved dozens of children.”

DEG is used in car brake fluid and radiators. Cats and dogs attract-

ed by its sweetness often die after licking it off the ground, said Leo Schep, a New Zealand toxicologist who published a peer-reviewed paper about DEG poisoning.

“It is like putting cyanide in a bottle of paracetamol (acetaminophen in the U.S.),” Schep said.

Pharmaceutical experts have complained for years about lax oversight of drugs made in India, whose industry supplies nearly half of all generic medicines used in Africa.

The Gambian case appears to be the first documented example of DEG poisoning from imported, rather than domestically produced, medicines, experts from Gambia and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The tragedy shows the difficulties faced by a poorly resourced country in identifying and removing harmful products, the experts said.

Gambia is one of Africa’s smallest and poorest countries. It has no pharma industry, no means of testing imported drugs, and just over two dozen pharmacists registered for 2.5 million people.

The syrup, manufactured by Maiden Pharmaceuticals, should be held accountable for exporting contaminated medicine, said a Gambian medical committee.

Indian officials have rejected their findings, calling WHO “presumptuous” in blaming the syrups for the deaths of some 300 children.

“The issue is not about proof of causation,” said WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris. The toxins found in the syrups “should never be ingested by human beings. This is of the highest priority for us, to see no more child deaths from something that is so preventable.”

There are growing calls for the resignation of Health Minister Dr. Ahmadou Lamin Samateh, along with prosecution of the importers of the drugs into the country.

“...we need justice, because the victims were innocent children,” said Mariam Kuyateh, mother of infant Musa.

The same products are for sale in Cambodia, the Philippines, East Timor, and Senegal.

U.S. MILLIONS OFFERED TO ETHIOPIA TO HELP COUNTRY HEAL FROM WAR (GIN)—The United States has promised Ethiopia $331 million in humanitarian aid to help heal the war-torn Horn of Africa country.

The funds were announced during a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Ethiopia last week. “The funding will

Puerto Rico marks 150 years since end of African slavery

By KAREN JUANITA CARRILLO Amsterdam News Staff

Arts & Entertainment Page 15

» Astro Page 18

» Food Page 22

» Jazz Page 24

Caribbean Update .........................Page 14

Classified Page 32

Editorial/Opinion Pages 12,13

Education Page 26

Go with the Flo Page 8

Health Page 28

In the Classroom Page 25

Nightlife Page 9

Religion & Spirituality Page 30

Sports Page 40 Union Matters Page 10

SUBSCRIPTIONS INFORMATION

This month marks the 150th anniversary of the abolition of African slavery in Puerto Rico. On March 22, 1873, Spain’s parliament passed a law that ended slavery in Puerto Rico. That law ostensibly freed nearly 30,000 enslaved Africans on the island. But it was a freedom that was conditional: Those “free” Afro Puerto Ricans were obligated to continue working for their enslavers for at least three years as a way of compensating the enslavers for their future loss of labor.

The island’s former enslavers were paid for their loss of “property”—most received financial payments and some, if they were the owners of more than 3 Black people, received land grants as reparations.

Néstor Murray-Irizarry, founder and executive director of the Casa Paoli of the Centro de Investigaciones Folklóricas de Puerto Rico (Center for Folkloric Research of Puerto Rico) in the city of Ponce, told the AmNews that because of the reality of how African slavery ended in Puerto Rico, it’s important not to solely observe the 150th anniversary of Eman-

cipation Day/Day of the abolition of slavery.

Emancipation Day is a public holiday in Puerto Rico. It’s traditionally celebrated across the island with festivities that include dancing to plena and bomba music, singing, and eating traditional Afro Puerto Rican cuisine. Casa Paoli has, since last year, brought together a group of artists, musicians, and researchers to reflect upon the significance of Emancipation Day and what the 1873 abolition of slavery really led to.

The Casa Paoli Commemorative Commission put together events and lectures about the 1873 abolition of slavery, many of which can still be viewed on the organization’s website (https://en.casapaolipr.com/sesquicentenario-abolicion).

“We’re commemorating the anniversary— but we’re not just celebrating the date. What we’re doing is reflecting, analyzing, and dialoguing about what happened in 1873,” Murray-Irizarry said. “We have invited specialists who study slavery and its effects.”

Murray-Irizarry said his organization’s commemoration of March 22, 1873, will last for more than one day. Casa Paoli plans on holding

on page 29

Ponce, Puerto Rico’s Parque de la Abolición (Abolition Park) is known as the first park in the Caribbean to have had residents raise funds to commemorate the abolition of African slavery (Karen Juanita Carrillo photo)

Mariam Kuyateh and her son, Musa. (GIN)

DOHMH commissioner promises mental health plan data

By ARIAMA C. LONG

Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan and Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health (OCMH) director Eva Wong discussed “The Care, Community, Action: A Mental Health Plan for NYC” at a media roundtable last week. The plan has been heavily criticized as inhumane since it was first introduced last year, but Vasan reports promising results.

The end of the COVID public health emergency by the federal government is set for May, and the city has the “lowest rates of transmission” of the virus variants since 2021, said Vasan.

Vasan said he’s proud of the work to date because it’s meeting the current moment. “Coming out of the worst public health crisis in a century [and] facing up to the second health crisis, one thing I know is that the closer we are to trauma and the collective trauma that we face during COVID, the farther away we are from

knowing what its impacts will truly be long-term,” Vasan said.

The plan centers on moving populations with the most need—meaning children and youth, homeless individuals, people at risk of addiction and overdose, and people with serious mental illnesses—off the streets and into clinical settings.

Young people are demonstrating rates of unprecedented mental health needs and alarming rates of suicidal thoughts, in particular among Black girls and LGBTQ youth, said Vasan. To help stem that wave, the city is gearing up to launch a huge telehealth initiative aimed at youth who need mental health services.

There’s also an emphasis on subway safety and community engagement to change the tide for everyday New Yorkers who live on the street.

Vasan said the process of taking someone in for care is an “extraordinarily difficult circumstance” and an equally difficult decision for clinicians and teams on the ground. However, teams are following Mayor Eric Adams’s lead on not walking past people in need of care.

“This has to be about breaking the cycle

at some point,” said Vasan.

Vasan said that the city is collecting data about these individuals and does track where they are taken when removed from the streets or subways. They also track whether these admittances are voluntary.

“I know the focus was on the involuntary component of this, but we’re getting to the result we intended, which is that voluntarily, our outreach is leading to more people choosing not to be [on the streets], not to live outside of a warm, safe place to stay,” said Vasan.

Wong said that she has observed how the mental health teams carry out directives and interact with people to ensure that care is taken.

“We want to make sure we have enough data for it to be meaningful and in the coming months, we will,” said Wong.

Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.

$35 insulin caps just the tip of the needle for Black diabetes care

By TANDY LAU Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member

Everything else seems to cost $35 in New York City, so why not insulin? The Biden administration kicked off the year by capping monthly insulin costs for Medicare-enrolled seniors to $35 through the Inflation Reduction Act. Drugmaker

Eli Lilly also limited insulin prices to $35 earlier this month to comply, and extended the cap to non-Medicare users. Its two primary competitors, Sanofi and Novo Nordisk, recently followed suit and also slashed prices.

The medication is needed to control

Metro Briefs

SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University celebrates successful Match Day

On March 17, SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University celebrated another successful Match Day as 188 medical students found out where they will be completing residency assignments alongside thousands of their U.S global counterparts.

Every March, medical students celebrate the hard work and dedication that allowed them to take the next steps in their medical career.

At noon, medical students nationwide opened their envelopes simultaneously, revealing their residency matches. Of SUNY Downstate graduates, 75% will stay local and remain in New York State.

Students opened their Letters of Notification from the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) as cheers, hugs, and screams followed. After the big reveal, an on-campus ceremony took place for medical students to be accompanied by professors, mentors, family, friends, and classmates to celebrate this milestone and the next step in their medical journeys.

blood-sugar levels.

The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Dr. Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable, who directs the agency’s National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, told the Amsterdam News it’s about time insulin prices come down. He said the drug is almost a century old, and the price should reflect that.

“There’s really no excuse why an old drug that’s essential and relatively easy to make should be priced so high,” said Pérez-Stable. “Outrage came [with] different formulations of insulin, new formulations of insulin, and a way of packaging it, and suddenly the price went to $900 a month. This is a $35 a month cap. It costs maybe $35 to make a year’s supply of your basic insulin.”

Last November, the Annals of Internal Medicine found 23% of Black Americans surveyed who were living with diabetes rationed insulin, typically due to high copays and lack of insurance. And of course, because of the general high cost of the medication.

African American Diabetes Association chair Barbara King called the news a “step in the right direction” and said it makes the medication significantly more accessible to communities of color. But she maintained there are myriad other concerns that Black Americans living with diabetes face that can’t be capped at $35.

“Invest into Black communities—invest in

See INSULIN on page 27

Banking on change: City Council makes election payouts

By ARIAMA C. LONG

Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member

This month, the NYC Campaign Finance Board (CFB) approved public matching funds for 2023 City Council candidates. In predominantly Black and brown districts, candidates got some pretty big payouts.

Public matching funds are a voluntary campaign finance program that matches small contributions from residents to help more candidates get on the ballot. Overall, CFB said they dispensed a total of $1,051,696 to 15 candidates.

Two candidates gearing up for an interesting showdown are incumbent Councilmem-

ber Charles Barron and community activist Christopher Banks in East New York’s District 42 in Brooklyn. This isn’t the first time Banks has tried to unseat a Barron in a political race: He ran against both Barron and his wife, former Assemblymember Inez Barron in 2012 and 2014, and lost out to their yearslong stronghold on the districts.

“Usually, even as an incumbent, I run against the Democratic Party machine,” said Barron. “And my opponents raise more money than me. I still support campaign financing because that’s the only way we’ll bring equity to elections.”

Barron believes that most incumbents have “too much power” in their districts, and admittedly, recognizes the irony in the

current situation since he is an incumbent many times over. Still, he firmly supports the public matching funds program as a vehicle for more up-and-coming “insurgents” to get in office and shake things up. He characterizes himself as an “independent Black radical candidate.”

Barron said his focus is solely on getting his message and his track record across to constituents. His opponents are irrelevant to him. “There’s nobody in the race that comes near matching my leadership abilities and accomplishments,” said Barron.

Barron has received $61,940 in public funds and $21,422 in private funds, which does leave him trailing slightly behind

Top match institutions included Northwell Health, Montefiore, Mount Sinai, NYU, New York Presbyterian, Stony Brook, Strong Memorial (University of Rochester Medical Center), George Washington University, Brown University, Children’s National Medical Center, Stanford University, One Brooklyn Health, and the University of California San Francisco.

City University of New York students protest against proposed tuition hike

On March 19, students held a rally and marched in Brooklyn to protest a proposed tuition hike proposed by Gov. Kathy Hochul for the City University of New York (CUNY).

CUNY is the nation’s largest urban university, with 243,000 students pursuing their college degrees.

Demonstrators assembled outside the steps of Brooklyn Borough Hall to demand that the final state budget increase funding for CUNY and reject Hochul’s proposed 3% tuition hikes for in-state State University of New York (SUNY) and CUNY students.

Due to the governor’s 3% hike, students would have to pay an additional $144 to $424 for tuition the following year. Some students said the raise in tuition would mean they would have to drop out.

“Being a student, [I] have to focus on studying,” said Monique Murray, a student at Lehman College. “I am a social work intern, so I have to work on my internship and classes…A 3% increase would mean a financial challenge for me. Can I finish school?”

The New York State Senate and the Assembly both passed budget resolutions over the past week that rejected tuition hikes proposed by the governor. There are 12 days remaining until the legislature must make a final decision about the state budget. The protesters said that they are going to take their demonstration up to Albany.

Compiled by Morgan Alston

Trump indicted? Not yet!

By HERB BOYD Special to

the AmNews

Weeks ago the world was waiting to see which government agency would be the first to indict Trump—the DOJ, NY’s Attorney General, or DA Alvin Bragg? At the moment— and the indictment could come today as the grand jury reconvenes—Manhattan’s DA has the lead with the Stormy Daniels’ hush money charge.

Such an indictment, which would be the first time a former president would face criminal charges, would not preclude a few of the other possible indictments, par-

ticularly on his provocation of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Trump, himself, has stated that his arrest is imminent, mainly for the purpose of arousing his base to protest such an outcome.

While the NYPD is fully on alert with barricades placed in front of the courthouse and other locations, Trump remains sequestered in his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, from which he has promised to surrender if indicted. Despite earlier reports that it was scheduled, the grand jury did not meet on Wednesday, March 22.

According to several reports, there has been little indication that forces are gath-

ering to protest if the indictment comes, although it could be quickly amassed once the announcement is made.

An indictment is not a conviction and would not stop Trump from seeking the 2024 GOP nomination. In fact, such an action could backfire and give fresh incentive for his loyal followers. No rules exist for keeping an individual facing criminal charges from seeking the presidency; even convicted felons have sought the Oval Office.

Videos show tense standoff before fatal NJ police shooting

By MIKE CATALINI Associated Press

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — A five-hour-long standoff between police in Paterson, New Jersey, and a well-known anti-violence worker in the city that ended with officers fatally shooting him in his brother’s apartment began with sobbing pleas from the man’s mother to end the ordeal.

Details released this week by the New Jersey attorney general’s office, including hours of body-camera footage from seven officers and seven 911 recordings, provide the most comprehensive account yet of the March 3 standoff that ended with the death of Najee Seabrooks.

Seabrooks, 31, was a crisis intervention worker and mentor with the nonprofit Paterson Healing Collective. He died soon after police shot him when he emerged with a knife from the apartment bath-

Jersey Proud: Princeton University advances to Sweet 16

New Jersey is leaving its mark as the Princeton University basketball team is packing their bags for the Sweet 16. From being considered underdogs seeded 15th to dominating the No. 7 seed Missouri, the school shocked the world with their strong efforts as they advanced to the round of 16 for the first time in 56 years.

room where he was holed up, according to the attorney general’s office.

“I’m your mother—why you doing this?” Seabrooks’s mother called out in one video. “Najee, stop, because I am your mother. Open the door. Open the door, Najee.” Seabrooks’s response is inaudible in the video.

Seabrooks was long accustomed to helping others in the mid-sized city 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest of New York. His co-workers have been shattered by his death and have said authorities prevented them from using their mental-health expertise to de-escalate the situation.

It’s also led to the state attorney general’s office investigating the shooting, as required under state law, as well as a public outcry for a Justice Department investigation into the city’s police department.

Seabrooks called 911 just before 8 a.m., telling the dispatcher that he needed

immediate help because someone was making death threats against him and he needed an escort to his car. He called dispatchers a half-dozen more times, with the responders telling him that police were already dispatched.

The videos show officers arriving, introducing themselves, and offering to get him water. He asks to speak with a sergeant, who soon arrives and asks him to come out of the bathroom. “What’s going on, my love,” the sergeant says when she arrives.

It is hard to hear Seabrooks in some of the video, but the sergeant asks, “How do you want to go about hurting yourself?”

“I got a gun on me,” he says.

“You got a gun and two knives?” the sergeant asks.

Tension increased at that point.

Over the next roughly four hours, more

Even after being indicted, it’s not a done deal for conviction, and Trump’s lawyers are already geared up to defend that possibility. See SHOOTING on page 27

Alphonso David settles racial bias lawsuit against HRC

By KAREN JUANITA CARRILLO Amsterdam News Staff

Alphonso David, the civil rights attorney who once led the LGBTQ+-focused civil rights group, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), has come to a settlement with his former employer.

David, the organization’s first Black president, was fired from HRC on Sept. 6, 2021, after reports surfaced that he had helped advise then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo about how to defend himself against charges that he had sexually assaulted several women.

The HRC got rid of David, claiming that his efforts on behalf of Cuomo hurt their image. But David countered that claim and brought a lawsuit against the organization, claiming his firing was only the culmination of a long chain of racist actions HRC made toward him. David filed a racial discrimination lawsuit, claiming the HRC had terminated his contract unjustifiably and that they had paid him less than the white man who had served as HRC’s president

before him and therefore violated the New York Equal Pay Act.

Before being named head of the HRC, David served as in-house lawyer for Cuomo from 2015 to 2019. When New York Attorney General Letitia James published a review into the sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo, her report noted David’s counseling of the then-governor.

David had been leading the HRC since 2019 and the organization initially issued a statement declaring “full confidence” in its leader. But soon after, several staff members claimed that his guidance was detrimental to HRC’s image. “In a tense all-staff meeting…,” the HuffPost reported, “employees at the Human Rights Campaign laid into Alphonso David for nearly an hour and a half––and asked him to resign several times...Staffers on the call were given the option to submit questions anonymously, which allowed people to be blunt. Not a single person defended him.”

The hostility David appeared to face from staffers was cited to support his claim of

an antagonistic culture toward him, other people of color, and transgender people who worked at the organization.

David contended in his lawsuit that his white predecessor, Chad Griffin, led the HRC at a time when the organization was becoming known as a “white man’s club,” where anti-Black rhetoric and discriminatory actions were common.

His lawsuit cited a 2015 HRC internal survey that was written about in Buzzfeed News: “Leadership culture is experienced as homogenous—gay, white, male...Exclusion was broad-based and hit all identity groups within HRC. A judgmental working environment, particularly concerning women and feminine-identified individuals, was highlighted in survey responses.”

In the aftermath of that self-critical survey, HRC has made efforts to change its internal culture. According to a February 2022 HRC companywide email, copies of which were obtained by the Amsterdam News, the organization now has “required trainings on implicit bias and mitigation for all hiring

See HRC on page 27

First, the Tigers beat the number 2 school, Arizona, on Thursday. The team then maintained their momentum as they took a major win against the Missouri Tigers at 78–63. Princeton now lives to see another day in this year’s March Madness and will play again this Friday, against Creighton University.

Even though the Princeton University campus is quiet due to students being off for spring break, the excitement can still be felt through social media—the Ivy League champion Tigers men’s basketball team has been trending online as they continue to make Jersey proud.

Man shot and killed by Paterson police inside apartment complex

In Paterson, New Jersey, on Friday, police shot and killed Najee Seabrooks, a violence intervention activist who was known to help high-risk people, inside an apartment building shortly after officers were called to investigate the scene.

The fatal shooting occurred in a building on Mill Street. Police said they responded to calls of an emotionally disturbed person. When they arrived at the apartment, a man barricaded himself inside the building. After evaluating and entering the scene, police say they encountered a man with a knife. However, members of the community believe the shooting could have been prevented.

“The police were here for hours trying to calm him down and bring him out of the apartment, but he decided to turn the apartment on fire,” said Councilmember Luiz Velez.

The two officers fired their weapons at Seabrooks, striking and killing him. Paterson Healing Collective called Seabrook’s death an “injustice,” adding that the situation should never have escalated to deadly force.

The state attorney general is now investigating the situation. New Jersey Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. offered his condolences and told NBC New York that he collaborates closely with the violence intervention group.

“I know the family, too. Very sad, the organization that was represented. I just got them money last month to try and help them help people on the street …,” said Pascrell. “The officers were working in good faith, but somebody died, so we have to look at it to see what we can learn.”

Compiled by Morgan Alston

Official Black Wall Street app offers access to Black-owned businesses, products, services

By ARIAMA C. LONG Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member

Entrepreneur Mandy Bowman, founder and CEO of the Official Black Wall Street app, a digital platform that lets shoppers discover local Black-owned businesses as well as an array of Black-owned products and services, relaunched the successful app and platform on Juneteenth last year. She had more than 6,000 Black-owned businesses in her database and 13,000 Black entrepreneurs signed up spanning 10 countries.

“I think it’s super-important to support the local Black economy, because when you’re supporting Black-owned businesses it doesn’t feel like it’s going into a black hole,” said Bowman. “You know that you are helping to create generational wealth and more businesses that can compete on a larger scale.”

Bowman, a Brooklyn native, had a paternal grandmother who ran a daycare center in Bed-Stuy. She said that it was fun growing up around so many family members and friends. “The first word

that pops into my mind is ‘community,’” said Bowman about her childhood. “It was during that time where your neighbors looked after you.”

Bowman attended LaGuardia High School and was a vocal major. She went on to study entrepreneurship and global business management at Babson College in Boston. After college, she started digging heavily into Black history, discovering the story behind the tragic Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. Tulsa, Oklahoma, was home to an affluent Black neighborhood known then as “Black Wall Street.”

Over the course of two days, violent white mobs burned more than 1,400 homes and businesses to the ground, left 10,000 people homeless, and murdered approximately 300 Black people.

“The story of Tulsa reminded me of my hometown—just being able to see all these Black-owned businesses on every corner,” she said. “During that time, I noticed that there were a lot of Black-owned businesses shutting down, especially with the arrival of gentrification. The Targets, the Starbucks. It usually doesn’t bode well for the mom-and-pop shops.”

WITH PRIZES

Bowman set out to empower her community in Brooklyn through economics and ownership in 2015, and created the app in 2017. She said she never intended to create the app; she simply saw a need for support in her community. Since then, Bowman has been at the forefront of the #BuyBlack movement, helping Black businesses around the world gain exposure and resources.

In 2021, Bowman solidified a $10 million partnership with a global law firm to provide Black entrepreneurs on the app with free legal services to protect their intellectual property. Her company also provides career services, webinars, rebranding resources, and grants for owners.

Bowman said one of the biggest challenges is finding funding for both herself and others.

Bowman was honored for her work with a citation from thenBrooklyn Borough President and now Mayor Eric Adams. She was named one of Entrepreneur magazine’s 100 Powerful Women in Business, became a Forbes magazine Next 1,000 Honoree, and received PayPal’s prestigious Emerging Leader Award.

Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1

Mandy Bowman (Contributed photos)

Official Black Wall Street App

Pressure to close Rikers Island by 2027 renews as replacement jail’s delay casts doubt

By TANDY LAU Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member

A 2,317-day contract in New York City is a long time for anyone not named Bobby Bonilla. And too long for a city aiming to close Rikers Island by August 2027.

The six-plus year contract recently awarded for the construction of a new Brooklyn borough-based jail runs well into 2029 and long past the city’s legally mandated deadline. The facility would be one of four sites erected to hold remaining detainees after Rikers closes.

The new borough-based jail will replace an existing “decrepit” detention center in downtown Brooklyn. It will house 886 beds for male detainees. The memo delineating the six-plus year contract was first reported by the NY Daily News.

Elected officials and decarceration advocates fear the contract signals intentions to postpone the deadly jail complex’s scheduled shutdown, so demonstrators—including Speaker of the City Council Adrienne Adams, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, and City Comptroller Brad Lander—rallied by city hall this past Thursday, March 16, demanding Rikers’ closure by 2027.

“The inconsistent statements from

[Mayor Eric Adams’s] administration over the past few days have unacceptably created questions where there should be no questions,” said Speaker Adams. “Rikers must close by 2027 and we cannot allow

it to continue undermining public safety issues across our city. This council will exercise its full authority and work with all stakeholders to help ensure the administration structures contracts to advance clo-

sure on time, fulfilling its obligation.”

“There should be no excuses to stall [the] plan and we should be clear, [Mayor Eric Adams’s] administration already said from the jump they’re not even sure they agree with the plan, so [it] seems a little coincidental to find a reason to stall,” said Williams. “If you know how dangerous [Rikers Island] is for everyone there, you should do everything possible to shut it down sooner than later. The only way to do that is if we move forward quickly with the boroughbased jails.”

“This is not only about future deadlines and whether they can or can’t be achieved or who developed this plan,” said Lander. “This is about fidelity to the belief that we can do what’s necessary to not have people at Rikers who don’t need to be there.”

Speaker Adams’s rally appearance followed her recent State of the City address, where she committed to closing Rikers by 2027. Before bookmakers assign a betting line for an Adams vs. Adams showdown, Mayoral Office press secretary Fabien Levy said the two former Bayside High School classmates align on the same team. He did not directly address the speculation about Rikers’

Mayor signs bills pushing criminal justice programs for youth

By ARIAMA C. LONG

Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member

Mayor Eric Adams signed five pieces of legislation last week that include one to create a juvenile justice board and two that will support and accountability for criminal justice programs and Crisis Management System (CMS) providers that receive city funding.

“Our crisis management system and our violence interrupters are doing the sacred work on the ground,” said Adams at a March 14 press conference. “Day in and day out, they are working with our communities and they are continuing to contribute to making them safe. We want to ensure that they are performing at their full capacity. We want to see how we can duplicate their efforts throughout the city and help improve their work, and these two bills help us do that.”

Councilmember Nantasha Williams sponsored Intro. 439, which requires the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ) to evaluate criminal justice organizations that are city-funded. Councilmember Kamillah Hanks sponsored Intro. 756, which will provide training and support to CMS groups. Councilmember Althea Stevens sponsored Intro. 436, a bill that will create a 20-member juvenile justice advisory board.

On Staten Island, there’s only one major

CMS team operating, called True 2 Life.

Hanks said that they do “incredible” work in the district every day, and investing in their capacity will ensure they have the tools they need to reduce gun violence and promote conflict resolution.

“The work of Malcolm Penn and Iron Mike is transforming the lives of young people every day. I just want to take this moment out to acknowledge them and my

team and everyone that’s behind me—my colleagues who are just having incredible bills today,” said Hanks at the presser.

This was Hanks’s first bill to pass in 2023. Years back, before running for city council, she founded her own not-forprofit. She said she can understand and appreciate the challenges in running a community organization.

“The New York City criminal justice

system has implemented numerous programs to enhance public safety, including alternatives to incarceration, reentry or diversion programs, pretrial supervised release services, and crisis management groups,” said Williams in a statement.

“While these programs offer a more comprehensive approach to justice, there is no transparency due to the lack of publicly available data. To make our city safer, we need to understand which programs are working and which ones are not.”

Stevens spoke about the importance of giving young people a voice and choice. For justice-involved youth, she said, this is of the utmost importance since they are already engaged with a system that takes away their autonomy.

“Although I am so proud to be passing this bill, this is just the first step, and I look forward to working with this advisory board to develop new preventative and diversion strategies,” Stevens said. “We must get to a place where we are investing in our young people on the front end, so we don’t need to invest in them on the back end.”

Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting: https://bit.ly/amnews1

Speaker Adrienne Adams and other New York City leaders demand Rikers Island’s closure by 2027. (Tandy Lau photo)

Mayor Eric Adams signs five pieces of legislation at City Hall, Tuesday, March 14, 2023. (Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office photo)

OF HIGH DRUG PRICES?

THERE IS A CURE. TELL OUR LAWMAKERS TO LOWER Rx PRICES.

Do you feel sick when you see the price of prescription drugs? Americans pay more than three times what people in other countries pay for the same medicine. New Yorkers shouldn’t have to choose between buying groceries and buying the medicines we need. Patients shouldn’t have to ration their prescriptions or put retirement plans on hold. Unfair drug pricing is a life and death issue.

We have the power to push our lawmakers to crack down on shady deals that delay bringing affordable drug prices to market and hold drug companies accountable by shining a light on prescription drug price gouging.

Tell your lawmakers to pass a state budget that includes Rx price reforms. Act now.

Go With The Flo

FLO ANTHONY

According to Variety, on March 20, the Los Angeles premiere for “John Wick: Chapter 4” was a night to celebrate the movie, but also a sad time, as Keanu Reeves and director Chad Stahelski paid tribute to the late Lance Reddick, who starred in all four “John Wick” movies as Charon, before suddenly passing away at 60 years old on March 17. When people arrived at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, everyone received a blue ribbon to wear in honor of Reddick. Blue was reportedly the actor’s favorite color. Reeves addressed everyone on the red carpet, telling them, “Lance is a people person, a special artist, a gentleman of grace and dignity. It’s just really something special, every time he stepped on set, to watch the passion he had for his work. It’s really easy to work with him.”.........

On March 19, the cast and creative team from the new Disney Channel series “Saturdays” celebrated the premiere event at the Walt Disney Studio Lot in Los Angeles. The series premieres on March 24 on Disney Channel with two episodes weekly. The series stars Danielle Jalade, Dario Johns, Golden Brooks, Omar Gooding, and others. Created by Norman Vance Jr., “Saturdays” is a coming-of-age comedy that revolves around 14-yearold Paris Johnson and her best friends, Simone and Ari, who hone their roller skating skills at Saturdays, a local skating rink in Chicago....

Tongues are wagging that Tamron Hall hosted a private dinner for the cast of Starz’s “Power Book II: Ghost” recently at the Public Hotel in New York City. Cast members, who attended the soiree which premiered March 17, included Method Man, Michael Rainey Jr, and Larenz Tate. Other notable attendees included Sherri Shepherd Show Executive producer Jawn Murray and Strategic Heights Media publicity guru Simone Smalls........ Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) presents the world premiere of Tres Aguas & Colors of Colombia –new works commissioned by global jazz composers Cuban pianist Elio Villafranca (Tres Aguas) and Colombian harpist Edmar Castaneda (Colors of Colombia) and brought to life by The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and special guest Paquito d’Rivera at Rose Theater on April 14-15 at 8 p.m. ET. There will be a free pre-concert lecture at 7 p.m. for each performance.....

Sistas celebrate sistas

By AMADI AJAMU Special to the AmNews

To celebrate Women’s History Month, Square Circles and Sista’s Place will host an intimate conversation with the women of the community, acknowledging their resilience despite the hostile environments they often have to navigate. The discussion will be held on Saturday, Mar. 25, 2023 from 1 to 5 p.m. at Sistas’ Place (456 Nostrand Avenue, corner of Jefferson Avenue, Brooklyn).

Speakers include Viola Plummer of the Harriet Tubman Fannie Lou Hamer Collec-

tive; Assemblywoman Stefani Zinerman, District 56 representative, New York State Assembly; Colette Pean, East New York Restoration; Brenda Brunson Bey, African fashion designer, who will lead a discussion about culture as a weapon; Enid Knight, Chronic Care Management, speaking about healthcare and nutrition; and Nayaba Arinde, editor of the Amsterdam News and producer of the Black to Basics podcast, who will introduce and moderate the panel.

Lunch will be catered by the BUKA NYC Authentic Nigerian restaurant.

The panel will raise issues that affect every-

day lives, from healthcare and mental wellbeing to families and work life; and housing, education, and activism, looking for some solutions and some support systems. Organizers said the women will talk about the “beautiful power that creates the aura, which pushes us through issues and circumstances with such tremendous fortitude.”

The community is invited to spend a fun and productive afternoon exploring common issues that everyone encounters, but may not usually make time to analyze. For more information, contact Sistas Place at 718-398-1766.

Manhattan Neighborhood Network opens new facility

Last week, Mayor Eric Adams joined a coterie of dignitaries for the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new MNN (C) stateof-the-art production and education facilities in Midtown West/Hudson Yards.

“We must lift up all of our public access

channels because you’re going to tell the truth the way it is,” Adams said. “You’re not going to be using creative journalism to try to find a way to distort the views and opinions and the realities that we are facing. The power of where we go lies in

public media.”

Participants agreed that the mayor’s comments were important and that an “antidote to toxic social media and corporate media distortion is public access and public media.”

MNN (C) opens new facilities (left to right): Councilmember Shaun Abreu, 7th District (Upper West Side, Morningside Heights); Brinda Ganguly, executive vice president, NYC Economic Development Corporation; Chaplain Ingrid Lewis-Martin, chief advisor, NYC Mayor Eric Adams; Councilmember Erik Bottcher, 3rd District (Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen); Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine; Damian Benders, board chair, Manhattan Neighborhood Network; NYC Mayor Eric Adams; MNN President & CEO Dan Coughlin (Rowena Husbands photo)

Amadi Ajamu, Fela Barcliff, Viola Plummer, and Camille Yarborough (Nayaba Arinde photos)

Viola Plummer and Lateefah Walker

In Harlem New York

International Women's Day was celebrated by the Association of Senegalese in America with awards given to outstanding women and organizations in the com-

munity. The event was hosted by Harlem Sen. Cordell Cleare, and speakers included Senegal Consul General El Hadji Amadou Ndao.

Nightlife

Written by David Goodson

Thank you Mr. Reed, Heart like Willis

In 2023 the world celebrates the anniversary of a NYC subculture that changed perceptions, provided opportunities, and ultimately morphed into a billion dollar a year enterprise. Here at the crib, some real, REAL New Yorkers celebrate and commiserate another historic milestone in the annals of the city’s history. The coronation of the New York Knicks as NBA Champions in the 1972-1973 was to be the start of a Dynastic run. Although it failed in that regard, that chip defined and standardized what the epitome of New York basketball looked like. Under the guidance of Head Coach Red Holzman, the concept of highly intellectualized team-orientated play reigned, replete with personal sacrifice; coupled with that workman demeanor and hardcore interior and exterior aggression that follows New Yorkers throughout the world, the New York Knicks’ overall makeup was inherent and reflective of the town. There was room, however, to display that highlight reel entertainment commonly seen in today’s game with the Rolls Royce backcourt tandem of Earl “The Pearl” Monroe and Walt “Clyde” Frazier. Finally, there’s that intangible factor no one can pinpoint, but it’s definitely needed to reach the pinnacle: leadership. Who’s willing to do whatever it takes to take the team over the top? We had that, y'all, in our Captain Willis Reed. His presence alone exuded, without saying a word: If you’re better than me at ball, then you gotta prove it. But we will not be outthought, out-worked, or out-fought. We want the smoke—no excuses.

That lionheart was crystallized into legend on May 8, 1970. Game seven, for all the marbles, at Madison Square Garden. A severe injury in game five kept him out of game six, which the Knicks lost and, more importantly, gave the opposing Los Angeles Lakers the confidence that the Championship is foregone. Nahh! With the mind over matter, all-hands-on deck mentality came a limping Willis, donned in his warmups, serving notice that he was there. In retrospect, with the way the crowd reacted, that limp may have been a diddy bop, displaying the utmost confidence in victory.

Teammate Walt Frazier, perhaps the best player on the team, told the Athletic in 2021, “I’ll never forget [Jerry] West, Chamberlain, [Elgin] Baylor, three of the greatest players of all time, they stopped doing what they were doing and just started staring at Willis. I said to myself, ‘Man, we’ve got these guys.’ That gave me so much confidence. They were so concerned Willis was going to play.”

Scoring the first two baskets of the game, his only scoring contribution in 27 minutes of action, provided all the

octane necessary as Frazier dominated the game scoring 36 points and handing out 19 assists led New York its first NBA title. Frazier owned the night, but history documents it as "The Willis Reed Game."

“Heart like Willis Reed, top thief and scorer in the league” wasn’t just another namecheck. It’s from the man, Allen Iverson, who’s been acknowledged for having the biggest heart in his or any era of the NBA and he rapped this in a commercial for his signature sneaker, the Reebok Answer 6, while he was in his prime, two decades after it occurred.

Willis Reed might not be the name that jumps out as the greatest player or even greatest Knick of all time, but he was an extremely accomplished professional for a kid hailing from the HBCU Grambling State, boasting laurels of NBA's Rookie of the Year in 1965, a seven-time All-Star, a five-time All-NBA selection, and a spot on the NBA's 50th and 75th anniversary teams. He was also the first to flex Most Valuable Player Awards for the All-Star Game, regular season, and NBA Finals. He did his thing, but again, Walt Frazier put it in proper perspective.

“The three guys considered to be the greatest Knicks of all time: myself, Willis, and Patrick Ewing,” Frazier told the Athletic. “If Willis Reed did not have the injuries that he had, it would not be, ‘Who’s the greatest Knick of all time?’ I’m wearing two championship rings now. I would be wearing more if Willis Reed could have remained healthy. There would be no doubt about who’s the greatest Knick of all time. The way that this man played the game, the respect that he had, the leadership, we’ve never had another leader like Willis Reed. I always say he’s the greatest Knick of all time, because I learned from Willis Reed.”

It was announced on Tuesday by the National Basketball Retired Players Association, that Willis Reed had physically left us. The Knicks tweeted a photograph picturing Reed from behind walking onto the floor as his teammates were warming up for the 1970 finale, one of the most memorable moments in NBA and Madison Square Garden history.

“As we mourn, we will always strive to uphold the standards he left behind— the unmatched leadership, sacrifice, and work ethic that personified him as a champion among champions,” the team said. “His is a legacy that will live forever.”

With all due respect to Grandmaster Caz, Derek Jeter, Aaron Judge, and all other esteemed legends of New York lore that bore the title, New York lost the ultimate Captain. Rest in peace, Willis Reed, and hopefully you can spark Jalen, RJ, Quick and Jules! Over and out. Holla next week. Til then, enjoy the nightlife.

Outstanding Senegalese women honored in Harlem (Bill Moore photos)

CUNY students rally, want ‘New Deal for CUNY’ enacted

By KAREN JUANITA CARRILLO Amsterdam News Staff

Four-time CUNY grad Jamell Henderson is still studying—he says he’s on the path to graduating a fifth time.

When he graduates with a PhD from CUNY’s College of Staten Island, he will become Dr. Jamell Henderson and a five-time CUNY grad. “Twenty years of being a student––and a student advocate––because this university is so important for people like myself who live in NYCHA,” Henderson told the crowd assembled in front of Brooklyn’s Borough Hall on a bitter-cold Sunday afternoon.

Henderson was one of the leaders of more than 200 CUNY students and supporters demonstrating at the “New Deal for CUNY” rally on March 19. They spoke out against Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal for a CUNY tuition hike—the first increase since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019.

Hochul is proposing a 3% annual tuition hike. CUNY protestors want the proposal shot down; instead, they’re pushing state legislators to enact New Deal for CUNY legislation, which would call for schools to set a ratio of approximately 15 students to one full-time professor; set aside funds for repairs at schools that have deteriorating infrastructure; raise the salaries of ad-

junct professors; and make CUNY tuition-free.

Henderson said CUNY students include “people who come out of foster care. People who are experiencing homelessness. Who are experiencing hunger. Who are dealing with situations, and know and understand the importance of our great degrees. [They] will go out there and make a difference for their families and their communities.”

“For more than 100 years,” CUNY Rising Alliance’s “New Deal for CUNY Concept Paper” argues, “the majority white student population at CUNY could attend without

when the student population is ma jority people of color, the state takes more than one billion dollars from the pockets of students––that is an average of more than $4,000 per student, per year. Put differently, that is groceries for the year––or a laptop and a few months’ rent. If a free CUNY was good enough for the majority white population in its first century, surely it is good enough for the majority students of color population today.”

Electeds attending the March 19 rally also voiced opposition to raising CUNY tuition.

“CUNY is the future of a thriv-

ing, of a healthy, of an inclusive New York City,” noted Comptroller Brad Lander. “Eighty percent of CUNY grads stay in New York City. CUNY grads become one-third of the teachers in our New York City Public Schools, raising up the next generation of our young people. CUNY graduates become one-half of the nurses in New York City, keeping the city healthy, and boy, if we have any chance at a future for an inclusive city––a city where 80% is from working class and low-income families, where 80% of them are students of color, where 45% are first-generation college students— the only way we will build that thriving, that healthy, that inclusive New York City, is to invest in CUNY and not to divest from it.

“How on Earth could you propose a budget that cuts CUNY by 130 million dollars?”

State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani insisted that those students who plan on coming to Albany to speak out against Hochul’s proposed tuition hike need to demand more. “There will be too many of us who will be self-satisfied at defeating this tuition increase,” Mamdani said, “and we must say no, we must take the step toward a New Deal for CUNY.”

State Senator Iwen Chu, who came to the United States 18 years ago and attended Brooklyn College, told ralliers: “I got my degree.

It opened many doors for me. I’m going to tell you, this is a real story of a real American dream for all immigrants and immigrant kids. Our public higher education has to be affordable…we need to make sure we don’t see tuition hikes.”

“Don’t say that you care about public higher education and underfund public higher education,”

State Senator Andrew Gounardes said about Hochul’s proposed tuition hike.

“Don’t say you support workingclass students and then ask them to pay a tuition increase, which is a tax increase by another name. Don’t say you care about the future of the next generation if you’re not willing to plant the seeds for that generation…right now. That’s what the fight for the New Deal for CUNY is all about.”

Before the ralliers set out for their march across the Brooklyn Bridge, Salimatou Doumbouya, chair of CUNY’s University Student Senate, said, “There is one message that I want all the leaders to hear—all the elected officials, everyone at CUNY Central to hear: The students are here! They know what they deserve, and they will keep fighting for what they deserve. On their local campuses, with their faculty, with the staff and every single person, [we will] make sure that CUNY remains the greatest urban university in the world.”

‘Just Pay’ campaign demands fair wages for essential city & state workers

By ARIAMA C. LONG Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member

Several essential labor groups gathered in Albany last week to demand fair and equitable wages throughout the state. They were supported by the Human Services Council (HSC) and the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, & Asian (BPHA) Legislative Caucus.

Nonprofits and essential services—such as childcare centers, senior centers, and mental health providers—fall under the umbrella of human service workers. Data indicates that they are the “lowest-paid workers” in New York City, despite the importance of their services during the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing migrant crisis.

The workforce is also overwhelmingly made up of people of color and women.

Labor groups and elected officials are pushing for the passage of Bills S. 4675 and A.3329, which would convene an indepen-

dent body to investigate these pay disparities between government, private sector, and contracted human services workers.

“We want to ensure that Black and brown folk in New York State are being provided with wages that are acceptable to the work that they are doing,” said BPHA Caucus Chair and Assemblymember Michaelle C. Solages. “When we look at human service workers, these are predominantly people of color and predominantly women. They are doing the essential work and providing services to the people that need uplifting, and some of them are living in poverty themselves.”

Advocates are also asking for all city and state workers to have an increase and that the cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) be increased to 8.5% as outlined in their People’s Budget

“That’s great that we’ve had a starting point, but we need more. It’s not enough,” said Solages. “In NYS, you can’t live on

$30,000. That’s living in poverty.”

Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposed $221.6 billion executive budget for fiscal year 2024 has a more than $4 billion investment to support wages and bonuses for healthcare workers, and a $500 million for COLA to help raise wages for human services workers, representing a 2.5% COLA increase.

Human Services Council of New York Executive Director Michelle Jackson explained that wage increases are absolutely a systemic issue. She said that nonprofit work has been viewed as “women’s work” or “volunteer work” in the past, therefore not requiring high payouts. This perception was challenged during the pandemic when the city relied heavily on workers to carry the city and state.

“Overall, people from all walks of life require human services,” said Jackson. “I think it’s really undervalued work.”

Contracting for human services work of-

tentimes happens off-budget, but funding for these services is in the executive budget, said Jackson. The contracting lasts for several years at a time and is supposed to account for changes in the COLA during that time. The state’s wage gap is a result of the previous administration not keeping up, said Jackson.

“Governor Cuomo, in particular, did not provide the statutory increase in the budget each year, so now, providers are 12 years behind in being able to keep up with wages,” said Jackson. “Nonprofits have tried to fill that gap, but they do that at the expense of their programs.”

Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1

More than 200 CUNY students and supporters demonstrated at New Deal for CUNY rally in front of Brooklyn’s Borough Hall on March 19. (Karen Juanita Carrillo photo)

chris apr 20 tucker

Sat, Apr 8 @ 8PM

Freestyle is back! Featuring George Lamond, Rob Base, Brenda K. Starr, Noel, Freedom Williams, Seduction, Johnny O, Lisette Melendez, Rockell, Joe Zangie and Lil Suzy.

audra mcdonald

Sat, Apr 29 @ 7:30PM

The most Tony-winning actor of all time, Audra McDonald (Carousel, Ragtime) takes to the stage for this concert event.

alvin ailey american dance theater

Fri, May 12 @ 8PM • Prudential Center

Ashanti, Fabolous, Ja Rule, Lil Kim,  Ma$e, Ne-Yo, Robin Thicke, 112 and  surprise guests come together for the  Mother’s Day Good Music Festival at  Prudential Center.

May 12 & 13 @ 8PM; May 14 @ 3PM

This elegant, electrifying company celebrates its return to NJPAC with new works and the beloved Revelations

michelle buteau

May 4 @ 7PM

A night of comedy with the hilarious  Michelle Buteau (Welcome to Buteaupia,  First Wives Club, The Circle, Adulting). trevor

noah

Off the Record Tour

May 24 @ 8PM

Emmy Award-winning Daily Show host Trevor Noah is back on tour with “the greatest stand-up show of the year” (The Times).

The American Song series at NJPAC is presented, in part, through the generous support of the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, the David S. Steiner and Sylvia Steiner Charitable Trust, the Joan and Allen Bildner Family Fund, and the Smart Family Foundation/David S. Stone, Esq., Stone & Magnanini.

Why local media matters

By ELINOR TATUM Publisher and Editor in Chief

The New York Amsterdam News was founded in 1909 on a dressmaker's table in an apartment on Amsterdam Ave. in the San Juan Hill section of New York City. It was founded to tell the story of Black New Yorkers, all of us. Those who have been here for generations, those who have just been here for days; but we are here to tell the story, navigate the waters, so to speak. We are the voice, and as such we represent the community. But there is a problem.

Across the country, community journalism has been collapsing. Social media platforms are eating away many of the local advertising dollars. In other cases, our neighborhood small businesses have been hard hit by COVID and other economic forces. The cost of newsprint bias has risen and newsstands are disappearing.

The result: a massive economic and business model crisis for local news.

Thousands of papers have shut down across the country. Nationally, we’ve seen about a 57% decline in the number of reporters over two decades. The number of weekly newspapers across New York state plunged from 439 in 2004 to 249 in 2019.

This means fewer people covering the things that matter most to our communities: edu-

cation, criminal justice, health care, housing, crime, and other issues of grave concern.

Right now there is a great bill before the New York State legislature that could help save community journalism the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, introduced by Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Assembly Member Carrie Woerner, the primary sponsors of this legislation.

This bill would provide tax credits to news organizations to retain or hire local reporters, photographers, and editors at newspapers, news websites, radio stations, and local TV news programs.

It’s a smart approach as it pegs the financial help to the number of local journalists. It will enable us to continue or grow our coverage of gun violence, education, healthcare, gentrification, arts, culture—and the inspiring people who make our community vibrant.

The legislation also has firewalls to prevent government officials from using this program to reward or punish particular news outlets. It’s structured similarly to the wildly successful tax credit to help the motion picture industry in New York.

This tax credit will make a difference and may help to keep the lights on in newsrooms across this state. We are on our way, and the key to democracy is a healthy press. We hope that Gov. Hochul and the legislative leaders see it that way, too, and will support the Local Journalism Sustainability Act.

Presidential Medal of Freedom for Medgar Evers

Last Friday, Mrs. Myrlie Evers-Williams turned 90, and she has lost none of the desire and determination to rid America of racism, calling it a “nasty disease.”

Over the years, the widow of Medgar Evers has been relentless in her drive to keep his memory and legacy alive and burning.

We share her commitment and extend it in our demand that the martyred civil rights legend be honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. For the countless number of Americans afflicted with acute amnesia, a Medal for Medgar is puzzling—who was he?

He may be forgotten by many, but his horrific murder in the driveway of his home on June 12, 1963 in Jackson, Mississippi, is forever etched in his widow’s memory. She worked tirelessly to bring the assailant to justice, and in 1994, after juries twice were unable to convict Byron De La Beckwith, he was finally found

guilty and sentenced to life in prison. He died in 2001.

The medal is the highest civilian honor presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, and security of the nation, and in this context Medgar is more than deserving. Last year when Fred Gray and Diane Nash, two veterans of the civil rights movement were honored, there was wide discussion that perhaps Medgar could be next.

Readers can help us in this cause with their letters of support addressed to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Medgar Evers was a fully devoted freedom fighter, and many were reminded of his heroic deeds in helping to bring the murderers of Emmett Till to justice.

Now it’s time for a measure of justice for Medgar, knowing a medal can only symbolize what he did daily in the fight for human dignity and decency.

This is the least you can do, President Biden.

NYC Council must help small restaurants and vulnerable workers

By BERTHA LEWIS

As a longtime civil rights leader in New York City, I’m familiar with so many equity issues in our underrepresented neighborhoods. I recently learned of one issue, however, that is affecting our brothers and sisters in the restaurant industry at this very moment and that the City Council has the power to fix— quickly. The restaurant delivery service fee cap is hurting our smallest restaurants and should be fixed.

The COVID pandemic mercilessly hurt all our vulnerable communities, but small restaurants and their low-wage workers may have been hurt the most. Both owners and workers suffered when restaurants were shuttered. Conditions improved when restaurants re-opened for outdoor dining and delivery, and now the City is finally open for indoor dining—but many places have fewer tables and are still struggling.

When times were most chal-

Elinor R. Tatum: Publisher and Editor in Chief

lenging, restaurants hastily embraced delivery by partnering with services like Grubhub, DoorDash, and Uber Eats. Many were concerned that delivery giants would overcharge desperate, community-based businesses, so the City Council acted quickly to protect them.

Like many cities nationwide, the Council passed an emergency law limiting delivery charges. It was intended to help small restaurants and their workers, but now we know that the fee cap backfired and actually hurt our community restaurants and their workers.

cap is that it didn’t cap only delivery fees—it also limited the amount of marketing services and support that small restaurants can buy from delivery apps. Most of us don’t realize that delivery services do much more than deliver meals. They also help small restaurants with affordable email-marketing, website design, ordering software, and in-app promotions. These are most important to the smallest restaurants that cannot afford expensive advertising and agencies like chain restaurants, and that need the payper-order marketing options that delivery companies offer.

vents independent restaurants from reaching new customers and growing their businesses. Large restaurants don’t get hurt because they market in traditional ways through traditional agencies.

I’m sure that the Council did not intend to stop only our community-based businesses from spending their own money to grow their business, but that’s what resulted and why the law has to be fixed.

Member

Alliance for Audited Media

Kristin Fayne-Mulroy: Managing Editor

Nayaba Arinde: Editor

Cyril Josh Barker: Digital Editor

Damaso Reyes: Investigative Editor

Siobhan "Sam" Bennett: Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Advertising

Wilbert A. Tatum (1984-2009):

Chairman

of the Board, CEO and Publisher Emeritus

In many cities, the delivery fee cap was tiered to help small restaurants the most and ensure large, expensive, and chain restaurants did not benefit disproportionately as big companies always do. In contrast, New York City’s fee cap applied equally to all restaurants, so it didn’t boost small restaurants as it should have. Another problem with the fee

Let me repeat that: Unlike other forms of marketing, restaurants don’t have to pay for apps in advance or for marketing campaigns that don’t work. They only pay an app when the app brings the restaurant orders and revenue.

When small restaurants’ marketing fees exceed the so-called delivery fee cap set by the Council, the “delivery fee cap” becomes a “marketing fee cap” that pre-

During the pandemic, many lower-income workers were laid off or had their hours cut, so they started delivering for restaurants to make extra money, pay a few bills, and feed their families. But when delivery firms were prohibited from charging restaurants for services provided, they created “order fees” and “delivery fees” charged to consumers. Basic economics tell us that the new fees undoubtedly cause consumers to purchase less from the restaurants and reduce their tips. Here again, it’s the most See NYC COUNCIL on page 29

The Collapse of Silicon Valley Bank: A Cautionary Tale of Trust and Accountability in Banking

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not represent those of the New York Amsterdam News. We continue to publish a variety of viewpoints so that we may know the opinions of others that may differ from our own.

ARMSTRONG WILLIAMS

The United States has just witnessed the second-largest bank collapse in its history. The victim this time was none other than the Silicon Valley Bank, which saw approximately $42 billion drained from its coffers in a matter of mere days in a massive bank run. This shocking collapse has sent ripples throughout the financial world, leaving many to wonder what this institution is and what led to its downfall.

Silicon Valley Bank was long considered to be the financial darling of the startup and venture capital communities. With a laser-like focus on providing specialized services to these niche industries for four decades, the bank built up a loyal customer base and became the premier bank for every entrepreneur.

The bonds between the bank and its clientele were strong, forged over time through mutual trust and respect. Startups were drawn to the bank by the promise of access to a vast network of resources and connections that could help them achieve greater success. In fact, so deep was the trust placed in the bank that a staggering 89% of deposits were uninsured, because the FDIC only covers up to $250,000 per account holder, meaning that startups trusted Silicon Valley Bank so much that they risked all their money to keep large amounts of capital in accounts there. Using data taken Forbes to show how mind-boggling this number is when excluding the two now-defunct Silicon Valley and Signature Banks, the average percentage of uninsured deposits among the 13 most uninsured banks is around 49%.

Bank runs, a phenomenon familiar in most bank collapses, occur when depositors withdraw more money than the bank has on hand. This happens because banks are not required to hold 100% of their deposits in reserve. In fact, recent years have seen banks that fall under the same umbrella as Silicon

Changed by New Mexico

CHRISTINA GREER, PH.D.

Valley Bank have their percentage drop from approximately 10% reserve requirements to a whopping 0%, with the Federal Reserve Bank, instead encouraging banks to hold more reserves by providing interest on reserve funds, but not mandating it.

Meanwhile, large international banks are subject to different reserve requirements set by international regulators, and Silicon Valley Bank was not among those required to adhere to those rules.

However, this wasn’t the beginning. It was, instead, the culmination of events that led to the erosion of depositor trust. The Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate policies in recent years started this entire situation. As interest rates declined, investors sought higher-yield bonds, leaving Silicon Valley Bank with large amounts of low-yield bonds. They decided to sell $21 billion worth of these lowyield bonds for a $1.8 billion loss. The bank then publicly announced a plan to raise $2.25 billion by issuing new shares of stock, setting the stage for a bank run of epic proportions.

The fall from grace was swift and merciless as the major venture capital firms, once the bank’s loyal partners for more than four decades, turned their backs on their once trusted ally. In a heartless and greedy move, they urged companies to withdraw their funds from Silicon Valley Bank, ultimately causing the bank run that we saw and causing only the first movers to come out unharmed while everyone else was left to tend to their wounds. It is a compelling tale of the ruthlessness of business.

It is essential to recognize that the fallout from the Silicon Valley bank collapse wasn’t limited to large startups. Small-business owners, many of whom are struggling to get by while working blue collar jobs, were also affected.

These entrepreneurs had placed

their hard-earned cash in the bank, hoping to secure a brighter future for themselves and their families. Not only that, but startups in their early stages, with innovative products and services that could make our lives easier and more affordable, were not spared. In addition to small startups, well-established companies like Roku, the video streaming giant, and Circle, the world’s largest, most reputable stablecoin, also had much of their money in Silicon Valley Bank.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Company’s solution to the Silicon Valley Bank collapse is a bit of a conundrum. The FDIC has proposed to go beyond the typical $250,000 insured deposit and protect both insured and uninsured deposits. This move, according to them, would provide depositors with immediate access to a portion of their uninsured funds in what they call an “advanced dividend.” They would then provide each depositor with a “receivership certificate” that entitles them to a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the bank’s assets. If and when everyone is made whole is anyone’s guess.

It is evident that measures must be taken to prevent a similar disaster from occurring in the future.

It is crucial that banks are held accountable and encouraged to prioritize solvency to provide assurance to investors. The government’s response to this situation and the financial crisis of 2008 has revealed that no matter the size of the bank, when you place a deposit, it is no deposit at all, but instead a government-insured loan to the bank to engage in risky lending practices.

Armstrong Williams (@ARightSide) is manager / sole owner of Howard Stirk Holdings I & II Broadcast Television Stations and the 2016 Multicultural Media Broadcast Owner of the year. www.armstrongwilliams.co | www.howardstirkholdings.com

I recently returned from a work trip to New Mexico and I just might be forever changed. For those of you who read my column often, you already know my thoughts on the matter: I think it is imperative for folks to drive across this country at least once in their lifetime. I am fascinated by the diversity of this large nation in all senses of the word: The geographic, racial and ethnic, topical, and cultural diversity is just the beginning conversation.

While I was in New Mexico, I was fascinated by the rich history of this large, flat state. New Mexico has always had a history of incorporating indigenous, Mexican, and Spanish culture into the literal fabric and origins of the state. Although the population is only 3 percent African American, there are interesting and complicated questions about the inclusion and incorporation of all cultures in the state.

The state relies heavily on oil and gas production, but most people in New Mexico know that gravy train will not last forever. As the state seeks to diversify its major funding stream, it made me think of New York State and other states that rely on industries that may be dying out or phased out in the next decade or so. As New York moves away from its economic reliance on the prison industry and fracking, what will replace these industries and create a more equitable and safer New York?

I took some amazing photographs while I was driving through New

Mexico. I wondered what the state looked like 50 or even 100 years ago. Since I am a trustee of the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side in New York City, I often think about what cities, and New York City in particular, looked like decades ago. I sometimes forget to think about other states with smaller populations and a lot more land mass. How has climate change affected their landscape or even migratory patterns of small groups of people?

For context, New Mexico is a state of just over 2 million people. Yes, you read that correctly: The entire state has fewer people than the borough of Brooklyn. However, New Mexico is the fifth-largest state in land mass. Basically, New Mexico is almost roughly half the size of Texas. And in case you’re wondering, New York is the 27th-largest state in area.

New Mexico was vast and the clouds hung in the sky like massive cotton balls waiting to be plucked. I’m not saying I’m ready to move west, but I would encourage folks to spend a little time exploring our massive and beautiful country. I learned so much about indigenous communities, complex economic circumstances, and divergent histories that bind us all.

Christina Greer, Ph.D. is an associate professor at Fordham University; author of “Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream”; and co-host of the podcast FAQNYC and host of The Blackest Questions podcast at TheGrio.

Caribbean Update

Woman replaces woman as T&T president

to the AmNews

BY BERT WILKINSON Special

Trinidad and Tobago made history this week when it replaced one female head of state with the next in a well-organized ceremony in Port of Spain, the capital, on Monday.

Christine Carla Kangaloo took the oath of office as the oil- and gas-rich republic’s seventh ceremonial president, replacing fellow attorney and retired judge Paula Mae Weekes, who had opted not to serve a second term for personal reasons.

The country opted to upgrade its status from an independent nation to a republic 47 years ago. Kangaloo will serve as titular president for the next five years.

Opposition parties had railed against her nomination as president because she had served as a minister in the cabinet of the governing People’s National Movement (PNM) in several capacities, including legal affairs minister.

The opposition argued, therefore, that she cannot be impartial and would be biased while holding a position that demands that occupants rise above the political fray. She was also president of the Senate or upper house and has acted as president on a number of occasions.

Kangaloo pointedly referred to such political misgivings from the opposition and other sections in society by noting that “as your president, I will fight to the end to make the office work better for all of us, especially those who might not yet wish to work with me.”

The Indo-dominated United National Congress (UNC) might be

especially reluctant to have Kangaloo as head of state, because late Prime Minister Ray Robinson, who had led a National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) government in the past, was also selected by the local college of electors to be head of state even while he was an active politician. Forced to choose a government after a tie for parliamentary seats, Robinson picked the Afro-supported PNM, leading to suspicions and criticisms about racial bias.

Kangaloo said there should be no such reasons for fear and suspicion, and vowed “to fight to the end to make the office work better for all of us.”

She said that many of the 1.3 million people of the country are unsure about the exact role of the president in daily affairs. Therefore, she will embark on a program to “demystify the role. A good place to start is in the primary schools. I will make sure that the highest office in the land is not the most remote.”

In this regard, she plans to open the facilities at her official residence to the public, especially artists, academics, and musicians, to promote cultural excellence. “I truly believe T&T deserves no less,” she said, pledging relentless advocacy for openness, more public access, and less remote-

U.S. immigration weekly recap

FELICIA PERSAUD IMMIGRATION KORNER

Is the Biden administration secretly happy that a court in Florida has struck down its catch-and-release program at the southern border?

Here are the top headlines making immigration news.

1: Biden administration won’t appeal court ruling

in Florida immigration case

This is the exact headline from the Miami Herald as federal U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell, who was appointed by Donald Trumpeto, ordered immigration authorities to revamp one key policy that he says runs counter to federal law.

The lawsuit centered, in part, on what state lawyers call the Biden administration’s “non-detention” policy and a policy known as Parole Plus Alternatives to Detention, or Parole+ATD.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody had filed the lawsuit in 2021, alleging that the Biden administration violated immigration laws through catch-and-release policies that led to people being released from detention after crossing the U.S. border with Mexico.

“For the most part, the court finds in favor of Florida because, as detailed below, the evidence establishes that defendants have effectively turned the Southwest border into a meaningless line in the sand and little more than a speedbump for aliens flooding into the country,” wrote Wetherell.

He also added that the Biden immigration policies were “akin to posting a flashing ‘Come In, We’re Open’ sign on the southern border.”

The case is “ simply a disagreement on policy,” U.S. Department of Justice attorney Erin T. Ryan argued during the trial, but the administration will now appeal. This means the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will have to provide migrants full “Notices to

Appear” instead of resorting to other alternatives to detention.

2: Texas lawmakers propose making illegal immigration a felony

The madness in Texas continues. The Republican leadership in the Texas House has announced that passing a bill to make illegal immigration a felony is a top priority this spring.

The “Border Protection Unit Act,” introduced by state Republican Rep. Matt Schaefer and supported by key leaders of the majority-Republican Texas House of Representatives, would create a specialized border protection police force and make illegal immigration a state felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan said the House leadership will prioritize passing the Border Protection Unit Act.

3:

Border inflows continue to drop

Despite continued portrayal of mayhem at the border by FOX News and Republicans, new

ness of the office.

She did take a bit of a swipe at the support system for the presidency, contending that there was not much by way of written rules and history for a new person to go on. She thanked predecessor Weekes for helping her to prepare for the role and how to navigate it. Greater attention will be paid to building a proper archive and documentation, she said.

Kangaloo will now serve as president of one of the larger Caribbean Community nations alongside retired judge Sandra Mason, who, in late 2021, became president of neighboring Barbados when it became a republic. Mason previously served as governor general.

Incidentally, the Barbados prime minister is also a woman: Mia Mottley is widely regarded as the brightest political bulb in the 15-nation bloc and the one who is sent internationally to advocate on a number of regional issues, including the climate change fight.

data reported by CBS News show that unlawful crossings along the U.S. southern border in February remained at a two-year low, for the second consecutive month.

The U.S. Border Patrol recorded roughly 130,000 apprehensions of migrants who crossed the southern border illegally in February, virtually the same level as in January. Unlawful entries also plummeted by 40% from a near-record in December, according to internal federal data reported by CBS News.

of whom were not U.S. citizens. Canada has a self-sponsorship process for skilled migrants, unlike the USA.

5: Flawed U.S. immigration system forces companies to hire elsewhere

4:

U.S. loses 45,000 college grads to Canada

While the U.S. continues to fail on immigration reform, including legalization for Dreamers, a new report says the U.S. lost 45,000 college grads to Canada’s high-skill visa from 2017 to 2021. New data obtained by the Niskanen Center said approximately 45,000 Canadian high-skilled visas went to skilled workers who received their postsecondary education in the U.S., 88 percent

Difficulties in bringing immigrants into the U.S. are pushing tech companies to instead hire them to work in other countries. That, in turn, is encouraging those same companies to open branch offices in other countries and recruit there, staffing them with people who might otherwise have come to the U.S. to work, Business Insider has reported. The tech industry, in particular, relies heavily on work-based visas, such as the famed H-1B, to attract the talent it needs to fill positions in specialized, competitive fields like engineering and computer science.

The writer is publisher of NewsAmericasNow.com – The Black Immigrant Daily News.

“But she did take a bit of a swipe at the support system for the presidency, contending that there was not much by way of written rules and history for a new person to go on.”

Arts & Entertainment

“Crumbs from the Table of Joy” is delicious

By LINDA ARMSTRONG Special to the AmNews

This was the first time I have experienced “Crumbs from the Table of Joy” and it was a memorable event. It is Lynn Nottage’s first professional work and is evidence of the brilliance and depth of her storytelling ability.

I love the way that Nottage can always take a subject in Black life and bring it to life with a storyline that grabs your attention and shows the humanity of us all and the vulnerability, complexity, and different levels of the human experience, whether of a widower, two daughters who have lost their mother, or a sister who loved her late sister and has vowed to raise her two nieces, which means moving in with the family when they come to Brooklyn in 1950 from the South.

In “Crumbs from the Table of Joy,” I love how Nottage made the older daughter Er-

nestine Crump the narrator, with a lot to say and a lot of observations to share. This play helps us understand how the death of one person can so devastate the family that is left behind; how, in their depression and desperation, they can fall victim to fake preachers who promise them a blessed life.

Ernestine is a high school student who is very pained by the suffering of her father after her mother’s death. She talks about what her mother’s death signified in their life and the life of her father. She says that when they came to New York, it was difficult to fit in; that she experienced a great deal of racism and couldn’t find one friend at school.

Her younger sister Ermina is also trying to navigate the world without their mother. Their father Godfrey is very gullible, with a lot of old-fashioned ideas. That is a great contrast with their Aunt Lily, who is a communist and portrays herself

as a revolutionary. She talks of wanting to uplift Black women and the importance of the Black woman’s voice, while Godfrey is confused about different parts of his life and looks for answers in strange places.

“Crumbs from the Table of Joy” is a theatrical feast, with serious subject matter like death, racism, and interracial relationships, but also joyous moments and moments of levity.

The cast brings their A-game. Shanel Bailey is marvelous as Ernestine. You feel the intensity of her performance from her first words on the stage. She has a captivating approach to the role that will leave you enthralled.

Jason Bowen is memorable as Godfrey. You experience his sadness, confusion, and desperate need for life direction.

Malika Samuel is delightful as Ermina.

Sharina Martin is hilarious and poignant in the role of Lily. She brings the feistiness and conviction of a woman who has had

enough of not being heard and respected. She is also a woman who brings a lot of passion and tension to the role.

Natalia Payne plays Gerte, a character who is a misfit in Brooklyn, New York, and finds herself in a situation that she was not truly ready for.

It’s amazing how Nottage’s first professional work looked at a subject that again brought up the racism that Blacks faced, especially if they dared to love a white person.

This fantastic Keen Company production is playing at Theatre Row (410 W 42nd Street) and has tantalizing direction by Colette Robert.

I think anyone who has seen a Nottage play will agree that this lady is a special storyteller. Anytime that you hear that one of her plays is being mounted, you need to rush to the table to make sure you “hear” every crumb (please don’t mind the pun).

The play runs only through April 1.

For more info, visit www.keencompany.org.

Scene from “Crumbs from the Table of Joy” featuring Sharina Martin (Julieta Cervantes photos)

Scene from “Crumbs from the Table of Joy” (l-r): Malika Samuel, Shanel Bailey, Natalia Payne, and Jason Bowen

You only have til Apr. 16 to experience “Phantom” on Bway

By LINDA ARMSTRONG Special to the AmNews

There is something rewarding about seeing an actress begin in a role, hone her craft while on stage, and return much later to see that not only is she bringing her best to the role, but she is completely comfortable in it. She is letting everyone know by her confidence, singing with power and conviction, that this role now belongs entirely to her.

Add to that the fact that she will perform the role through the end of its run—a Broadway show that has been at the Majestic Theater for more than 30 years—and you have a moment that dreams are made of.

The show I’m talking about is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera,” and the young lady I am referring to is Emilie Kouatchou, the first Black actress to play the role of Christine.

Kouatchou first performed the role at some performances, but over time, was offered the position as the principal. I recall interviewing her then; she was very excited and proud to be the first Black female cast in the role as the principal. In an interview in March 2022, she said she was grateful to all the Black female sopranos who paved the way for her, like Audra McDonald, Heather Headley, and Patina Miller. Realizing she was making history, Kouatchou was thrilled and humbled.

The biggest shining moment for her comes with the song “Think of Me.” According to the actress, that’s when she felt she was having her moment in the sun and it was overwhelming.

For me, as a huge fan of the musical and now of Kouatchou, the biggest and most touching, moving moment is when she beautifully sings “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again.” This song has a special significance for me because I recently lost someone who was very dear to me. Kouatchou’s voice was so gorgeous and radiated so brightly that I was sobbing with appreciation and memories.

This musical has an extraordinary book by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgore, along with music by Webber and lyrics by Charles Hart, with the one-of-a-kind direction of the late Harold Prince. It is something you won’t soon forget. But you only have until April 16 to experience it.

Kouatchou also shares the stage with Ben Crawford, who does an amazing job in the role of the Phantom. He is a tortured soul on so many levels, but he is also a man who has a one-sided love. Crawford has a voice that will chill your soul.

Kouatchou is also joined on stage by Paul Adam Schaefer, who plays Raoul, her love interest. Kouatchou will make you glad you went.

Ben Crawford and Emilie Kouatchou in “Phantom of the Opera” (Matthew Murphy photo)

Book Review: “Truly Blessed and Highly Favored—A Memoir”

By HERB BOYD Special to the AmNews

Among the more than 30 photos in Carl McCall’s “Truly Blessed and Highly Favored” memoir is one where he poses in front of a building in Albany named in his honor. Like the building, the prose soars epically, chronicling his magnificent odyssey as it recounts nearly a century of New York’s political history. Distilled in the 20 chapters from “Roots” to “Retirement” is the story of a man whose life is emblematic of New York’s often turbulent social and economic saga. McCall, now 88, is like Zelig: seemingly present at many of the dramatic moments in the state and the city’s fortune, and misfortune.

Toward the end of the memoir McCall’s wife Joyce succinctly captures her husband’s compelling tale: “Carl’s great determination, dedication, self-discipline, and efforts have helped him realize his dream. It was a dream not about the trappings of positions, but rather about the pathways the positions would provide. I have had the privilege of being part of this journey for the past thirty-six years. I always smile when I think of our marriage. Who would have thought that Roxbury and Harlem, where I was raised—Harold Street and Convent Avenue—would be the intersection for those with the determination, the intellect, and the commitment to excel.”

Each chapter of the memoir unfolds vividly, flowing seamlessly as McCall, assisted by Paul Grondahl, moves from one career change to another, and as Joyce has said, without succumbing to the “trappings of positions.”

Born Herman Carl McCall on October 17, 1935, in Boston, Massachusetts, he was the only boy among five sisters, all of whom were raised by a mother after the father left the family when McCall was 11. Many of us who came of age as McCall did will recognize some of the details of his mother’s struggle to make ends meet. “My mother was a survivor and possessed remarkable resilience,” he wrote. “She easily could have fallen into a deep funk, but instead she mobilized and labored to support herself and her six children.”

Some of that resilience and determination rubbed off on McCall and was bolstered by the church and ministers of Roxbury. “I was surrounded by positive Black male role models who formed a kind of surrogate fatherhood…,” he said. “I experienced stages of grief, to be sure, but I never let the sorrow weigh me down or sidetrack me from focusing on my education, my emerging interest in politics, and becoming the best person I could be.”

As a student at Roxbury Memorial High School, McCall was well on his way to becoming a popular scholar-athlete when an injury in a football game intercepted that promise. Despite his body being immobilized in traction for a month, he didn’t lose any ground in his school work; in fact, when he returned to the classroom, he discovered he was ahead of the other students.

The setback to his sports dream only intensified his reading and later involvement in stu-

dent government. His winning an election as senior class president was a harbinger, whether he realized it or not.

“I could not believe my good fortune,” McCall exclaimed after learning he had been accepted to Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. “My dream was becoming a reality…I was headed to the Ivy League.”

His years at Dartmouth centered on the classroom, where he excelled in nearly all his courses. There was also a momentary venture back into sports that his once-injured leg curtailed; being president of the Student Assembly and editor of the campus newspaper; and enrollment in a fraternity and the ROTC. The latter would provide a segue to the next chapter.

There was a brief stint teaching in a Boston high school before the Army summoned him.

“I was ordered to report to Fort Benning, Georgia, in February 1959,” he said. “It was the first time I had traveled below the Mason-Dixon line.” It didn’t take him long to adjust to the customs and morés of the South, and it passed in “a flash,” he related. And picking him upon arrival back home was Cecilia, a girlfriend who would become his first wife.

Before accepting the call to the ministry and relocation to New York City, McCall had an interesting interlude involving the man who would become Louis Farrakhan, known in Roxbury then as Louis Eugene Walcott. He provides background about the leader of the Nation of Islam that is rarely discussed: his musical prowess.

“We lost touch after high school,” McCall recalled. “He traded the violin for a guitar and reinvented himself as a Calypso singer known as ‘The Charmer’ and ‘Calypso Gene.’” While the singer morphed into a national leader, McCall noted that he was drawn more to the philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. McCall experienced an unsettling moment when his father showed up at his mother’s funeral in 1961. His father was a distraction for a grieving son who wanted to devote his full attention to his mother’s passing. “It had been more than ten years since he abandoned our family,” he said. “I did not want to see him but he appeared and he put on a phony performance of grief.” He would pop again later as McCall became increasingly successful and prominent, but it did not change things between them.

Change was a constant in McCall ’s life, and as the grief subsided, he resumed his pursuit of the ministry, establishing outreach programs in Roxbury before setting his sights on New York City, including a call from the New York City Mission City Society. This would be just one of the several unexpected calls he would receive to change the course and location of his life. Each new calling, he explained, presented a fresh set of challenges and innovative improvisation, much like the improvisational skills of the jazz musicians he admired.

McCall wasn’t in Brooklyn long before he was comforted and embraced by some of the community’s leading church elders: the reverends Sandy Ray, Gardner Taylor, William

Jones, and Milton Galamison. However, he confessed, his job with the United Church of Christ was “not a good fit for me in the long term, and not what I hoped it would be.”

When he was offered a position at the Taconic Foundation in 1965, it would be the beginning of a long and impressive résumé of milestones, and each chapter of the book elaborated on the stints—collaborating with Percy Sutton, his Senate campaign, an affiliation with the Amsterdam News, the restless period in Albany, international opportunities, the quest to be lieutenant governor, his tenure as New York State comptroller, the gubernatorial venture, the many firsts of his achievements, and his extensive and productive stay at the State University of New York.

To gather the full warp and woof of McCall’s memoir cannot be accomplished in this limited space. For those interested in following a consequential life, who interacts with the powerful and relates to the underserved, this book has an abundance of these moments, as well as a few humorous ones, like his encounter with the late Leroy Knight. But I won’t spoil this one or his productive and enduring relationships with Sutton, Charlie Rangel, Lloyd Williams, and certainly his companion Joyce Brown.

It would take the capacity of the H. Carl McCall SUNY Building in Albany to accommodate the majesty of his passage among us, and it might even require additional floors.

For more info, visit www.sunypress.edu/ Books/T/Truly-Blessed-and-Highly-Favored.

HOROSCOPES BY KNOWYOURNUMB3RS

By

SUPREME GODDESS KYA

March 23, 2023—March 29, 2023

March 21, 2023, brings a new moon in Aries at 0 degrees. The Sun is also in Aries at 0 degrees. Look within at what messages are coming through for you. Zero has everything in and out of it. When the Sun or any planet is at zero degrees, you can do anything. Zero degrees amplifies any energy to rebirth or birth something; like how, in the movie “Hidden Figures,” Katherine Johnson (played by Taraji P. Henson) called it the “go no go zone.” Michael Jackson has songs titled “Thriller,” “Man in the Mirror,” “Remember the Time,” and Kanye West has songs called “Praise God ,” “Ultralight Beam,” “Jesus Walks,” and “All Falls Down.” Rihanna said “Work Work Work” and “BBHMM,” so put in that work to return to sender what rightfully belongs to humanity. Alice Walker wrote a book called “We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For;” Saturn in Pisces requires footwork, paperwork, and soul contracts. Return any false documents or contracts—it’s not negotiable.

Information flows through your ears, and the people in your immediate environment will play a role. Listen carefully to the conversation and tone to clearly inner-stand the true meaning of the dialogue. Ears, nose, throat, digestive issues, and your funny bones can trigger some form of health concerns. Wise people will assist in your journey and people from the past will revisit you for healing, an apology, or any other circumstance. In all your commitment to your journey, obligations are the ingredients to freedom of inheritance. The light flashes green on March 23rd until 8 p.m. on March 25, when the yellow light turns red.

The game “monkey in the middle” involves others throwing the ball over your head until you catch it, which puts the person either on the left or right into the middle. Once you are in position, there is no need to stay in the game since you are now on the other side. Switch over to the other side and do your due diligence to progress. Pluto will take a dip into Aquarius from March 23rd through June 10 at 0 degrees. That duration of that time is a very potent vibration for the shift taking place in your life. Be wise and take notes March 25th until 6 a.m. on March 28, as flashes of insight and more discoveries reveal themselves to you.

This weekly cycle requires planning, building, structuring, and gathering all the paperwork and blueprints and moving forward with the agenda. Ask for help and apply for the aid needed to assist you financially and participate in activities within your community. Get your thoughts together to proceed. There will be a moment of “I don’t know why I am feeling like this” to throw you off, only to inform you of upcoming insights. When you receive the feeling of questioning the process, you are on your way. From March 28th until 6 p.m. on March 30th, apply the footwork and listen more.

Private vs. public is heavy on your mind this week. Some things you do privately, and the rest publicly. A nice getaway on a beach, an island, or somewhere tropical with a view of the rainbow is glamorous and rejuvenating. Think about the path you chose over the last 12 and half years to get to where you are now as Jupiter returns in Aries. That puts you back into the mindframe of late 2010 into the year of 2011. What occurred during that period of your life? In the days leading up to March 30th, it’s time to embark on another journey and learn from your past trials and errors.

A blended kind of week where initiation, nurturing, and action are required to apply pressure on the gas for acceleration. Do you ever watch the flow of water in the river or oceans on certain days when the wind is steady, or when sunbeams on the water create glistening, sparkling effects? When you are watching the view, how does it make you feel and what thoughts come to mind? Flip the script and imagine the water is you and the water is watching you in action. From March 23rd until 8 p.m. on March 25th, something magical occurs on the inside and outside realms of life, and also within you.

Get a grip this week and a handle on your affairs. Squash the beef and the riff-raff and get to the point. Being about it is better than talking about it. What are your strategies behind the agenda you’ve been causing a scene about, and making sudden appearances to stir up the pot for conversations? That’s right, the conversations that have your name rolling off folks’ tongues because they heard it through the grapevine? Well, all that was part of getting their attention and the program continues as you wish. You may now proceed. Just a reminder you are brilliant, so get your facts straight and your folks straight as well. March 25th until March 28th, keep on pushing no matter what folks say. Remember, you gave them something to talk about.

|

Signs of completion, endings, and separations are signs of making improvements along with self-growth developments. You know some things need change, be it your dietary habits, immediate environment, profession, or relocation as the planet Mars enters Cancer from March 25th until May 20th. Take note of what is happening in your life and, of course, guard your health and home as you make the necessary changes going with the flow of the transformation. Mars will make a believer out of you and instill stronger willpower. From March 28th until March 30th, the universe allows humanity to work with energy vibrations to rise higher.

You are cooking up a big pot of something as the smells linger in the air and into the hearts of the people for a taste. Work is progress for you and the remedy to ease on down the road. The instruments of life have you dancing to your own rhythm and the rhythm of your ancestors that came before you to pass down those special ingredients of freedom—the freedom that gets you dancing, singing, clapping, stomping your feet, and praising the most-high divine creator. In the days leading up to March 30th, watch yourself, like in Beyonce’s song “Feeling Myself.”

It’s written all over your face: You are on a mission, which means there is work to be done. The fun part about this work is that you’ve already applied the footwork, the research, plus the experience to attach to the file. Now to proofread and then upload the documents into a book, audio, CD, or lecture as the assignment is complete. You are moving on up like the Jeffersons. Now watch the magic work and the universe provide what you need; the rest is on you. From March 23rd until March 25th around 8 p.m., the writing on the wall becomes alive. Speak it into existence and watch it work.

It’s time to change up the operation just a bit. Something else is making an entrance in a grand unusual style for the next phase of turn of events. There is no need to prepare, just make the change and everything else will flow. Do you notice how when you work on something, the information comes to you and the “how” is not a theme anymore? You are building another layer of the foundation to secure your positions, gigs, deals, offers, etc. From March 25th until March 28th, be sure you stand on what you say you are going to do. You can show folks better than you can tell them.

This cycle week, the pen is mightier than the sword. Something happens within the body when you write. Have you noticed that it sticks better and that you receive better results? Writing and speaking are your best friends this week. Gather all details, facts, and content, and be creative with your words. Apply some sparkle, dazzle, pop, and design, and remember the feeling is an important part of the motion. Be involved, similar to the player in the game— but also be the game. From March 28th until 6 p.m. on March 30th, it’s all fair game to apply pressure to claim what is yours, step by step and day by day.

The game is passed down from prior generations. It’s up to you to locate the paperwork, do your research, and apply the footwork. You are receiving top-notch information; the only thing is where do you begin? Follow your first hunch. Watch the leads and results and people will show up. Change and challenge your mindset to a better outcome to see how life works when you invest your time. You are a scholar when it’s time to travel down the rabbit burrows and deep dive into the sea discovering new treasure, and a new journey has begun. In the days leading up to March 30th, the turnover of a new leaf is in process.

Vinateria

In Books: “The Unfolding,” “Human Origins of Beatrice Porter,” Stacey Abrams’ “Rogue Justice”

By JORDANNAH ELIZABETH Special to the AmNews

Three new literary works from Black women reveal individualistic forms of imagination and creative realism. The uniqueness of Arielle Estoria and Soraya Palmer, and the incomparability of the brilliant political mind of Stacey Abrams, offer readers of all backgrounds and creeds new poetry and storytelling that encompasses the undeniably intriguing themes of Black womanhood, mystery, and self-discovery.

An influx of Black feminine talent has been emerging in the literary world. “The Unfolding” marks Estoria’s traditional publishing debut in the wake of her 2014 self-published collection of poetry, “Vagabonds & Zealots.” “The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts” is also the debut of Soraya Palmer, while Stacey Abrams, former Georgia state representative and author of nearly two dozen books, releases her new thriller and legal drama, “Rogue Justice.”

This exciting and diverse trio of 2023 releases has materialized during a fertile era in Black literature.

“The Unfolding: An Invitation to Come Home to Yourself” by Arielle Estoria (HarperCollins)

It is quite an accomplishment that a major publisher, Harper Collins, not only took a chance on

newcomer poet Arielle Estoria, but compared her to Walt Whitman more than once—a publisher’s note in the opening of the book espouses Estoria’s astounding promise as a career writer. “The Unfolding” is a collection of poetry, essays, and beautifully crafted usage of the English language that is authentic and seamlessly graceful.

“The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts: A Novel” by Soraya Palmer (Penguin Random House)

In Soraya Palmer’s “The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts,” the fantastical plot flowers more like a century-old fable than a standard work of fiction, made up of colorfully strange

characters, including “a Rolling Calf who haunts butchers, Mama Dglo who lives in the ocean, a vain tiger, and an outsmarted snake,” as noted by Palmer’s publisher. One cannot help but experience curiosity about this tale of two sisters who begin to live very different lives as they grow older. If you’re interested in colorful African American folklore, this book is unlikely to disappoint.

“Rogue Justice” by Stacey Abrams

Veteran author and respected literary maven Stacey Abrams was writing volumes of books before she became a powerful political figure and household name. This year, the New York Times bestselling author weaves a new thriller in “Rogue Justice,” a continuation of the heart-stopping story of Supreme Court clerk Avery Keene, who survives cracking open a complex conspiracy and the intensity of Congressional hearings arising around her. Abrams is a mistress of her craft, telling legal and political stories that she knows all too well, and writes with intelligence and vision.

Recreating the Shawarma sizzle at home

By KELLY TORRES Special to the AmNews

Nothing in NYC yells “street food” like a halal cart. The blinking lights, bright yellow and orange colors, the music, and the smoke emanating from a corner stand draw memories of me leaving the club in three-inch stilettos, body-clinging clothes, and dangling jewelry. In this retrospective of me in my 20s, it is more than likely past 2 a.m., and at the time, I

myself: All of these ingredients are so similar to what I already eat, yet they taste so different and are still so delicious.

Since then, I’ve kept going back to that long line whenever I’d see the cart during my lunch breaks, often surprised at how quickly the line moved, and yet quality food still showed up in my hands. My erstwhile hunt for epicurean delights surpassed business hours to afterbusiness hours when I would get

used. This range of flavors and varying blends of spices changes from hand to hand, kitchen to kitchen, and table to table. A sense of creativity appears to be encouraged from home to home, even in its lack of authenticity, to make the shawarma that best suits you, so long as you don’t stray too far from the tangines and mild heat.

In my rendition of a homemade chicken shawarma plate, I was inspired to recreate a Middle East-

ern Turkish version rather than the Greek version, which are similar in preparation (the meat is cooked using a vertical rotisseriestyle spit), but different in seasoning and name. The Greek version is called a gyro and is popularly seasoned with dried herbs like oregano and thyme, and often accompanied by a tzatziki sauce. For my recipe of a chicken shawarma plate, I accompanied it with turmeric basmati rice laced with whole coriander

seeds. A yogurt sauce served on the side mellows out the richness of spices used in my chicken marinade. I encourage you to make the yogurt sauce to your liking by adding more or less grated garlic and freshly squeezed lemon juice. I found that adding a couple tablespoons of store-bought Italian dressing is a shortcut to achieving a puckery taste to the sauce. To make use of any leftover chicken, warm flatbread is your friend.

Chicken Shawarma Plate

By KELLY TORRES Special to the

Ingredients for the chicken shawarma:

1 ½ lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, fat trimmed

¼ cup white vinegar

2 cups cold water

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

2 garlic cloves + ¼ tsp kosher salt, pounded in a mortar & pestle

2 tsp whole coriander, pounded in a mortar & pestle

1 tbsp ground cardamom

1 tbsp sweet paprika

2 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp freshly cracked black pepper

½ tsp ground cayenne

Juice of 1 lemon (approximately

2 ¼ tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice)

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Ingredients for the turmeric basmati rice:

2 cups basmati rice, rinsed & drained

3 ¼ cups chicken stock

½ small red onion, diced small

1 garlic clove, grated

1 tsp ground turmeric

½ tsp ground cumin

½ tsp whole coriander

1 tsp kosher salt

½ cup grape tomatoes

Ingredients for the yogurt sauce:

1 cup Greek yogurt

1–2 garlic cloves, grated, to taste

3 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice, to taste

was working in the finance industry. I spy the bright lights and smoke cloud from across the street. I hear sizzles and laughter as I desperately make my way towards the food cart with a one-track mind. I need grub. A long line of partygoers forms, and I salivate. When it’s my turn, I yell my order over the loud music and human chatter to the man in the glassless window, “Chicken platter with everything, please.” He asks if I want hot sauce and white sauce, and I reply, “Yes,” as I step aside to allow the next person to order. Entranced, I watch him begin to work.

Food carts were ubiquitous in New York in the late 90s, taking up shop on nearly every busy street corner of Midtown Manhattan. It appears the major player back in those days was the Halal Guys. Beginning in NYC and now a global major franchise, they are a true immigrant success story. I firmly believe I had my first Middle Eastern food experience at a Halal Guys cart that late summer night. The rice, the chicken, and the sauces. All common ingredients for me. The simple iceberg lettuce and tomato salad, even more so. I thought to

a chicken shawarma on pita to-go during one of my shopping sprees in Union Square. The street food in New York truly delivers when a sitdown lunch isn’t an option. It never occurred to me until recently, years after I transitioned from a career in finance to becoming a professional chef and food writer, that I could recreate that meal at home.

Aside from the occasional adventurous order (it was adventurous for me in my 20s) like falafel or even lamb, I stuck with the tried and true chicken shawarma. I thank the Middle East for pleasing my palate for all of these decades. In this millennium, I believe the term shawarma has taken on new meanings for chefs as its popularity expanded to describe the flavor profile of the cooked meats rather than its true origin of the meats being cooked while stacked on a rotating vertical spit. From my research, the marinade for shawarma consists of a variety of spices like cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, and paprika, sometimes with the addition of yogurt and pureed onion in the marinade. I’ve even come across recipes where sumac is

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground turmeric

1 tsp ground cinnamon

Instructions for the chicken shawarma:

In a bowl, add chicken thighs. Pour the white vinegar over the thighs and mix. Pour the cold water in the bowl and let sit for 15 minutes. Strain, pat the chicken thighs dry, and set aside. In a bowl, add the garlic, coriander, cardamom, sweet paprika, cumin, turmeric, cinnamon, salt, pepper, cayenne, lemon juice, and 1 tbsp of olive oil. Mix to form a paste. Add the chicken thighs and thoroughly coat each thigh with the spice paste. Cover and let sit in the refrigerator overnight.

Preheat the oven to 405 degrees Fahrenheit. Remove the chicken thighs from the refrigerator and let them reach room temperature, approximately 30 minutes.

In a saute pan, heat up the 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil on medium high heat. Sear the chicken thighs, rough side down, for 4 minutes. Flip over to the smooth side and

2 tbsp neutral oil (canola or vegetable oil)

1 tbsp unsalted butter

sear for 2 minutes. Transfer the chicken thighs to a sheet tray with a wire rack. Roast in the oven for 15 minutes or until a thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the chicken reads 165 degrees.

Instructions for the turmeric basmati rice:

In a pot, heat up the olive oil and unsalted butter on medium heat. Add the red onions and the garlic and saute until translucent and aromatic, approximately 4–5 minutes. Add the turmeric, cumin, coriander, and salt. Saute until the oil changes color, approximately 3 minutes.

Add the rice and mix thoroughly. When the rice is dry and toasty, add the chicken stock. Turn the heat up to high. Stir the rice, scraping any bits stuck on the bottom of the pan. Allow the rice to cook on high heat until the stock evaporates.

When the rice is au sec (almost dry), add the grape tomatoes and

1–2 tbsp store-bought Italian dressing

¼ tsp kosher salt

black pepper, to taste

stir thoroughly. Cover with a tight lid and adjust heat to low. Set a timer for 12 minutes. Do not lift the lid before or after the timer goes off. When the timer goes off, turn the heat off. Set the timer for 10 minutes and let the rice sit covered during that time. When the timer goes off, lift the lid, allowing any excess steam to drip back into the rice. Using a fork, fluff the rice and cover again until ready to serve.

Instructions for the yogurt sauce:

In a bowl, add all of the ingredients and mix thoroughly. Taste and adjust seasoning to your liking.

Assembly:

On a serving plate, serve the turmeric basmati rice in the center. Slice the chicken thighs horizontally and place over the rice. Drizzle yogurt over the chicken thighs. Best served with a simple salad of lettuce, tomatoes, and red onions. Enjoy!

AmNews

(Kelly Torres photo) Yields 2-4

Lance Reddick, “The Wire” and “John Wick” star, dies at 60

By MARK KENNEDY Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Lance Reddick, a character actor who specialized in intense, icy, and possibly sinister authority figures on TV and in film, including “The Wire,” “Fringe,” and the “John Wick” franchise, has died. He was 60.

Reddick died “suddenly” Friday morning, said his publicist, Mia Hansen, in a statement, attributing his death to natural causes. No further details were provided.

Wendell Pierce, Reddick’s costar on “The Wire,” paid tribute on Twitter: “A man of great strength and grace,” he wrote. “As talented a musician as he was an actor. The epitome of class.” “John Wick— Chapter Four” director Chad Stahelski and star Keanu Reeves said they were dedicating the upcoming film to Reddick and were “deeply saddened and heartbroken at the loss.”

Reddick was often put in a suit or a crisp uniform during his career, playing tall, taciturn, and elegant men of distinction. He was best known for his role as straitlaced Lt. Cedric Daniels on the hit HBO series “The Wire,” where his character was agonizingly trapped in the messy politics of the Baltimore police department.

“The Wire” creator David Simon praised Reddick on Twitter: “Consummate professional, devoted collaborator, lovely and gentle man, loyal friend. Could go on, but no, I can’t go on. This is gutting. And way, way, way too soon.” In 2009, Reddick told the Los Angeles Times, “I’m an artist at heart. I feel that I’m very good at what I do. When I went to drama school, I knew I was at least as talented as other students, but because I was a Black man and I wasn’t pretty, I knew I would have to work my butt off to be the best that I would be, and to be noticed.”

Reddick also starred on the Fox series “Fringe” as special agent Phillip Broyles and the smartly dressed Matthew Abaddon on “Lost.” He played the multiskilled Continental Hotel concierge Charon in Lionsgate’s “John Wick” movies, including the fourth in the series that releases later this month.

“The world of Wick would not be what it is without Lance Reddick and the unparalleled depth he brought to Charon’s humanity and unflappable charisma. Lance leaves behind an indelible legacy and hugely impressive body of work, but we will remember him as our lovely, joyful friend and Concierge,” Lionsgate said in a statement.

Reddick earned a SAG Award nomination in 2021 as part of the ensemble for Regina King’s film “One Night in Miami.” He played recurring roles on “Intelligence” and “American Horror Story” and was on the show “Bosch” for its seven-year run.

His upcoming projects include

20th Century’s remake of “White Men Can’t Jump” and “Shirley,” Netflix’s biopic of former Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm. He was also slated to appear in the “John Wick” spinoff “Ballerina,” as well as “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.”

The Baltimore-born-and-raised Reddick was a Yale University drama school graduate who enjoyed some success after school by landing guest or recurring roles on “CSI: Miami” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” He also appeared in several movies, including “I Dreamed of Africa,” “The Siege,” and “Great Expectations.” Reddick had a career breakthrough on season four of “Oz,” playing a doomed undercover of-

ficer sent to prison who becomes an addict.

“I was never interested in television. I always saw it as a means to an end. Like so many actors, I was only interested in doing theater and film. But ‘Oz’ changed television. It was the beginning of HBO’s reign on quality, edgy, artistic stuff. Stuff that harkens back to great cinema of the ’60s and ’70s,” he told the Associated Press in 2011.

“When the opportunity for ‘Oz’ came up, I jumped. And when I read the pilot for ‘The Wire,’ as a guy that never wanted to be on television, I realized I had to be on this show.”

He had a recurring role as Jeffrey Tetazoo, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, on the

CBS series “Intelligence.” On “American Horror Story: Coven,” he portrayed Papa Legba, the gobetween between humanity and the spirit world.

Reddick attended the prestigious Eastman School of Music, where he studied classical composition, and played piano. His first album, the jazzy “Contemplations and Remembrances,” came out in 2011. Reddick is survived by his wife, Stephanie Reddick, and children Yvonne Nicole Reddick and Christopher Reddick.

His death was first reported by celebrity website TMZ.com.

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter. com/KennedyTwits.

Late actor Lance Reddick (John Palmer/ MediaPunch /IPXphoto)

ORQUESTA, FLUSHING TOWN HALL, TRIBUTE CHUCK JACKSON, THE CONDUCTOR

The trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Dizzy Gillespie pioneered the Afro-Cuban music movement in the late 1940s, which was primarily introduced by Cuban trumpeter Mario Bauza’s big band sound based on Cuban rhythms that led to the New York City Latin dance craze for the the mambo, rumba, and cha cha. By 1962, when flutist Eddy Zervigon and his brothers Kelvin and Rudy arrived, they were just in time to extend the city’s Latin craze with the founding of Orquesta Broadway. Their pulsating Cuban dance music has kept them in the limelight of Latin music in the United States through now.

At 7p.m. on March 24, City College Center for the Arts (CCCA) will mark the 60-year history of the Cuban charanga band Orquesta Broadway at Aaron Davis Hall’s Marian Anderson Theatre (160 Convent Avenue), with a special performance featuring flutist and educator Connie Grossman and flutist Karen Joseph. Radio host and Latin music historian Nelson Radhames Rodriguez will serve as producer and emcee.

Orquesta Broadway members include music director and flutist Eddy Zervigon, drummer Ivan Zervigon, pianist Pablo Mayor, bassist Berny Minoso, congas Luis Mangual, timbales James Guevara, violinists David Remedi and Yunior Terry, and singers Hector Aponte, Jorge Maldonado, and Luis Rosa.

“Traditional Cuban style persists under the direction of El Maestro Eddy Zervigon, who for more than 60 years has been the leader of the mother of all charangas outside of the island,” said Rodriguez.

Tickets are available at citycollegecenterforthearts.org.

On March 24, tenor and baritone saxophonist and flutist Carol Sudhalter will celebrate her 80th year (her birthday was January 5) at Flushing Town Hall (13735 Northern Blvd. in Queens) with her group of “Octogenarian Women of Jazz.” The band comprises pianist Bertha Hope; drummer and vocalist Paula Hampton (the Hampton family with Slide and Lionel Hampton); and vocalist Keisha St. Joan. The quintet will perform jazz standards and their own originals with a rare guest appearance by Bill Crow, now 95, long-time bassist for Gerry Mulligan and a member of Eddie Condon’s house band before becoming a jazz columnist and author. The show starts at 8 p.m.

Among the band’s original numbers to be performed is Hope’s “Da Las Senidras,” recently published in Terri Lynne Carrington’s “Compositions by Female Composers,” dedicated to the famed bassist Walter Booker. In forging her own path, we look to singer St. Joan, who brings a variety of colorful harmonies to the group, having performed with the likes of Frank Wess, Carline Ray, and Hope.

“I have known Carol for many years and participated in her big band. She is always thinking ahead of how to keep the music alive,” said Hope, founder of the ELMOllenium project to preserve the musical legacy of her late husband, Elmo Hope. “I am happy to be able to participate in my eighth decade on the planet and be around people who have been playing and loving this music for many years.”

Sudhalter is known as the house bandleader of FTH’s monthly Louis Armstrong Jazz Jam. For 15 years, she played the Cajun Restaurant Sunday Brunch, with Jimmy the Face Butts and Al “Doc” Pittman.

During this Women’s History

Month performance, the band members will take questions from the audience.

Flushing Town Hall is at. For tickets, visit the website flushingtownhall.org or call 718-463-7700.

On March 24, singer Chuck Jackson will be honored “In a Celebration of Life” event (he transitioned on February 16). The tribute will be held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (515 Malcolm X Blvd.). The hosts will be Grammy-winning vocalist Dionne Warwick, performing arts advocate Voza Rivers, and legendary singer/ songwriter Valerie Simpson, at 7 p.m. The debonaire, suave Jackson with the rum-spiked timbre, made girls shout and squirm in their Apollo Theater seats with hits like “I Don’t Want to Cry,” “Any Day Now,” “I Keep Forgettin,’” and “All Over the World.”

Jackson was one of the first artists to successfully record material by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

In October 2015, he was inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame. His song “Any Day Now” was used in a Volkswagen commercial in 2021. He was the lead singer of the do wop group the Del-Vikings, who recorded the hit “Come Go With Me.” Come out and celebrate the life of this iconic singer, an adopted son of Harlem. This event is free to the public but reservations are required. To RSVP, email theellerbeegroup@aol.com.

In this 21st century, it is becoming more arduous to differentiate the homogenized truth of the corporate news media from reality. But what happens when the novelist, poet, and playwright Ishmael Reed brilliantly drops a bomb on this cloud of hypocrisy in his new two-act play “The Conductor”? It’s playing at Theater for the New City (155-1st Avenue) through March 26.

This play—his 11th—represents his longtime reputation as a word warrior challenging America’s inaccuracies or deliberate untruths through his coined activist phrase and book title “Writin’ is Fightin.’”

“The Conductor,” directed by Carla Blank, sheds light on the Recall of members of the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education in 2021–2022. While the press saw the Recall as the expression of Chinese American parents objecting to admission to an elite high school based on a lottery system instead of merit, excellence, or grades, it would not have been successful without the funds provided by billionaires.

The game is to advance regressive policies, dismantle affirmative action (which seems to be gaining momentum among right-wingers), and ban racial justice education by forcing conversations about racial equality and LGBTQ rights at the school board level.

Well-versed in the art of divide and conquer, “the backers of the Recall used some minority faces to front the Recall while they attempted to remain in the background.”

In Reed’s play, the character Shashi Parmar is that face.

Ordinarily, that’s an easy plot— except Reed never goes for the obvious. As the master of satire, he drops Parmar smack into a 21st-century underground railroad system, where he is the runaway needing help to escape back to his native land of India. Ironically, his conductor is none other than the play’s main character, Warren Chipp, a progressive black columnist who lost his job because he supported the lottery and it was Parmar who signed the petition for his newspaper dismissal.

All the flying fiery words take place in Chipp’s house (now a safe

house for Indians attempting to return to India by way of Canada).

The irony is that Chipp is being paid well as the conductor of this underground railroad assisting another minority to freedom.

The two protagonists are intensely engaged in dialogue filled with sharp wit, Black history, and total insight into the Recall situation, although Parmar remains intent on social structure rhetoric. Chipps says to Parmar, “The sons and daughters of immigrants don’t know white people the way Black people do. They are primary school when it comes to racism. We have a Ph.D.”

The conductor. like an Ornette Coleman solo, dances in a multiplicity of high notes and fluctuating improvs that keep audiences on the edge of their seats, wondering what’s next. It’s life in creative theater in real time. Just join Chipps on his couch, viewing the White Lightning Network (looks like FOX News?). In a world of insanity, sometimes it’s difficult to tell the sane from the insane. “The Conductor” points you in the right direction.

The tight-knit cast, like a swinging jazz ensemble, consists of Brain Simmons, who is extremely forceful as Warren Chipp; Imran Javaid, persuasive as Shashi Parmar; Laura Robards, playing a hilarious, convincing Hedda “Buttermilk” Duckbill, conservative TV host; Monisha Shiva, great as Lala Parmar (this is her third role in a Reed play); Kenya Wilson, offering various opinions as Melody Wells; and Emil Guillermo, taking on roles as the nosy neighbor and TV host Gabriel Notallde. “The Conductor” cast is compelling in one of this year’s most realistic plays, on or off Broadway.

For times and ticket information, visit the website theaterforthenewcity.net or call 212-254-1109.

Carol Sudhalter (Gus Philippas photo)

Octogenarian Women of Jazz Concert (Courtesy of Flushing Town Hall)

Irvine Garland Penn, a beacon of the Black press

By HERB BOYD Special to the AmNews

Any notion of seeking a definitive history of the early Black press should begin with the works of Irvine Garland Penn. Penn came to mind last week while profiling the remarkable life of writer/educator Josephine Washington. Penn cited her in his book The Afro-American Press and Its Editors, which he published in 1891. And this is just perhaps the most memorable book from his prodigious literary production.

Penn was born Oct. 7, 1867 in New Glasgow, Virginia and his family moved to Lynchburg when he was five. By his senior year in high school, his journalistic career was underway. He received a master’s degree from Rust College and his doctorate in journalism later from Wiley College in Texas in 1908.

Even as he acquired academic standing, Penn was writing for several publications, including the Richmond Planet, where he was a correspondent.

He was also a regular contributor to the Knoxville Negro World and the New York Age, where his coverage of African American affairs was a staple and well-received. In 1886, he was the editor of the Laborer, a small Black newspaper, before becoming a teacher in Lynchburg. Within a decade, he was promoted to principal. Three years later, he married Anna Belle Rhodes, herself a distinguished activist and writer, and a graduate of Shaw University, where she taught for several years. They had seven children.

Penn’s stories were followed with fervor by a large audience, many of whom commented about his phenomenal coverage in letters to the editor. Civil rights and the injustice faced by Black Americans were among the topics at the heart of this reportage.

It was about this time he began to assemble his stories and compose biographies that led to his notable books about journalists and editors. In 1893, his book about

Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and Wells’s husband Ferdinand Lee Barnett was published along with a pamphlet, The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition

The pamphlet was widely promoted and circulated, giving Penn additional prominence and notoriety in championing the causes of African Americans. It may have played a critical role in his being made director and organizer of the African American exhibit at the 1895 Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition, an event given further recognition as a platform for Booker T. Washington and his famous speech about race relations.

Ever active, Penn became assistant general secretary of the

ACTIVITIES

FIND OUT MORE

Among his most rewarding benefactors was James N. Gamble, son of James Gamble of Procter & Gamble.

By the mid-1910s, Penn was a major participant in the movement to unify the Methodist church, which sought to mend the split between North and South due in part to slavery. He and Robert E. Jones were the leading African American members of the Joint Commission on Unification of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Their combined wisdom was decisive during the meetings and assured the white delegates that they were not only campaigning for racial social equality, but also working for the interests of Black Methodists.

In 1924, largely because of their efforts, the ME Church combined Black and white boards of education. This development removed Penn from his position as secretary of the Board of Education for Negroes. Consequently, he was severely criticized, although he remained a member of the board.

Penn became seriously ill in the summer of 1930 in Cincinnati, a few weeks after the death of his wife. He died of heart disease on July 22, 1930. It was widely speculated that his death was related to injuries sustained from being thrown off a segregated train in South Carolina.

While we didn’t have access to The Life and Times of Irvine Garland Penn by Joanne and Grant Harrison, it’s recommended for any further discussion and information about his remarkable life and legacy.

DISCUSSION

Harrisons’ book may say more about the incident in South Carolina and the injuries that Penn sustained there.

PLACE IN CONTEXT

Born while the nation was in the midst of Reconstruction, Penn lived to experience the Great Depression.

CLASSROOM IN THE THIS WEEK

IN BLACK HISTORY

Epworth League for Colored Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1897. From this vantage point, he created the National Negro Young People Christian and Educational Congress in conjunction with his teaching at Rust College, a position that was instrumental in the development of his 1902 project and book, The College Life

Ten years later, Penn had moved to Cincinnati, where he became the co-corresponding secretary of the Freedmen’s Aid Society, an affiliation of the Methodist Episcopal Church. From this post, he played a critical role in fundraising for several educational institutions, such as his alma mater Rust, Morgan College, and Philander Smith College.

This excerpt from his book about the African American press and the significance of New York in the enterprise is instructive:

“Not only was New York the garden-spot for journalistic fruit, but Pennsylvania also occupies a place on that record. In 1843, when the interest of every man at the North had been stirred up on the slave question, the Afro-Americans of Pittsburgh, not unlike their friends in New York, desired and sought to publish letters in their behalf, but could find no means of expression. Their pleas to the white publishers of papers were not heeded. This prompted Major Martin R. Delaney to publish a weekly sheet in the early part of the year, under the title of The Mystery, which was devoted solely to the interest of his race.”

March 19, 1894: Comedic icon Jackie “Moms” Mabley was born in Brevard, N.C. She died in 1975.

March 20, 1915: Gospel and blues diva Rosetta Tharpe was born in Cotton Plant, Ark. She died in 1973.

March 24, 2002: Actress Halle Barry is first African American woman to win an Oscar in the Best Actress category.

NYC AFTER SCHOOL AND THE JOY OF EGUSI AND FUFU

By NAYABA ARINDE Amsterdam News Editor

On today’s school lunch menu is: jollof rice and chicken, or egusi and fufu, with puff puff for dessert. This is a possibility that New York restaurateur Lookman Afolayan is hoping to bring to New York City schools. To that end, the owner of Buka NYC in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy and on Manhattan’s Lower East Side has been treating after school students to the Nigerian fare for a few weeks now.

“I want to spread the Joy of egusi and fufu to the children of our city,” Afolayan, who has been setting up visits to after school programs citywide since February’s Black History Month, told the Amsterdam News. “Fufu is trending right now, and not only do I want to have our New York City schoolchildren sample it, I want to show them how to make it.”

Visits to his social media platforms show how excited the children are when he shows up with his dishes, which include the world famous jollof rice, and puff puff, a fried, doughnut-like sweet treat.

“The kids are so happy when they eat the food,” Afolayan said. “One child said, ‘Sir I don’t have a question, I just wanted to say thank you for coming.’”

At each presentation, Afolayan serves the dishes and gives a little story about them. While some children enjoy their dinner for the evening, “some of them ask for more and take the food home,” he said.

After over 10 years in his Brooklyn eatery, the Nigerian-born restaurateur recently moved to a new location, from Clinton Hill to 1111 Fulton Street in Bed-Stuy, and has recently opened his second spot at 137th 1st Avenue on the Lower East Side.

“Bringing the food to the children is my way of both bringing awareness of our delicious dishes, and also to say thank you for what their parents did in enabling us to come here and build lives. I want to share what we have and bring our food to them. It is fantastic to see how engaged the after school children are when we serve them the dishes.We want to make it a program in all the boroughs. We have been to [almost] every one now, and are just

Wilma Rudolph: A legacy of overcoming odds

By MAL’AKIY 17 ALLAH

Special to the AmNews

In commemorating Women’s Heritage Month, we reflect on the legacy of worldrenowned sprinter Wilma Glodean Rudolph. By the time she was a teenager she had overcome more challenges than many people do in an entire lifetime. Doing so forged her indomitable will, which drove her to earn honors as a world-record-holder and multi-medal Olympian, as well as an international sports icon.

Born premature and underweight (4.5lbs) June 23, 1940, in Saint Bethlehem, Tenn., to Blanche Rudolph, she was the 20th of her father’s, Ed Rudolph, 22 children from two marriages. As a child, she endured several illnesses, including pneumonia, polio, and scarlet fever. She contracted infantile paralysis at the age of 5, which weakened her left foot and leg. She wore a metal brace and orthopedic shoe until she was 8 years old.

“My doctor told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother,” she wrote in her autobiography, “Wilma: The Story of Wilma Rudolph.”

During a Sunday church service one day, Rudolph discarded her leg brace and

headed to the front, to everyone’s amazement. She had no need for them by 12 years of age, and her sister Yvonne inspired her to play basketball, helping Burt High School win a state championship. She also ran track, attending Tennessee State University’s track camp at 14, on Ed Temple’s recommendation.

In 1956, Rudolph helped the U.S 400meter relay track team win a bronze medal at the Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.

During 1959’s Pan American Games in Chicago, Ill., Rudolph won a silver medal in the 100-meter individual event, and a gold medal in the 4×100-meter relay.

She had won three AAU indoor titles

before the 1960 Olympics in Rome, Italy, where she became the first African American woman to win three Olympic gold medals (100 meters, 200 meters, and 4×100meter relay), while setting new world records.

Due to her beauty, grace, and speed, reporters nicknamed her “The Black Gazelle,” and “the fastest woman on Earth.” The first global media coverage of the Olympics caused her to become one of the most recognizable Black women worldwide. She heightened awareness about women’s track and field.

Rudolph retired from track competition in 1962 as the world record-holder in the

waiting on Staten Island,” said Afolayan. Living in the U.S. for 26 years, the father of four is an international epicurean with a resume that includes construction; he built his restaurants with his own hands. He can also be found in the kitchen prepping, cooking, plating, serving, and pouring drinks behind his bar. A new age Renaissance Man, he said, “I was just going home one night, when the idea just came to me to bring our Nigerian food to the children of the city who may not yet be familiar with it.” Afolayan said he serves between 20 to 30 children at the after school programs. So far, he said, “the response is amazing.” Nigerian food is known for its culinary kick to the tonsils, and his after school dishes are child-friendly. “I make the food myself so as to ensure that it is not spicy. There is no pepper at all,” he said with a smile. “We serve jollof rice and chicken; fufu, which is like mash potato but doughy made from yam; egusi, a stew made with melon seeds and spinach; and puff puff. Vegan and vegetarian. We serve it as if it’s a Nigerian party, where you have a choice. We give them a small taste of everything, and then they come back and request the one they

See EGUSI on page 31

100- and 200-meter individual events and the 4×100-meter relays.

She graduated from Tennessee State University in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in education, and became a teacher and track coach. That year, she visited West Africa for a month as a goodwill ambassador for the U.S State Department. Upon returning the U.S. in May, she participated in a civil rights desegregation protest in her hometown of Clarksville. She also married Robert Eldridge; they had four children but divorced after 17 years.

Rudolph was diagnosed with brain and throat cancer in mid-1994, and she deteriorated rapidly. She died on November 12, 1994, at her home in Brentwood at 54.

In 1997, June 23 became “Wilma Rudolph Day” in Tennessee.

ESPN ranked her 41st in its listing of the 20th century’s greatest athletes. The U.S. Postal Service issued a Distinguished Americans postal stamp in her honor in 2004.

“I wanted to show that there was something special inside me. Everybody is special. You just have to realize it within yourself,” Rudolph said. “Winning is great, but if someone wants to succeed at something, they need to learn how to lose. The triumph can’t be had without the struggle.”

(Public Domain photos)

(DYCD photos)

Insulin

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them to try to prevent diabetes before so you won’t don’t have to give them the insulin,” said King. “What about that? What about helping African Americans in different communities that don’t have the access? It’s sad to say, but if you don’t have the correct color skin, you do not get the correct kind of treatment. And I’ve been through it.”

She’s lived with type 1 diabetes since 2006, but only started receiving proper care two years ago. To afford insulin and other treatment, King said her ex-partner could not quit or lose his job so she wouldn’t lose her insurance and subsequent insulin, and potentially her life. As for prevention, King fears non-Black doctors are often culturally incompetent to prescribe diets properly for Black patients living with diabetes.

“We’re working with nutritionists and my goal is…[to] teach them how to cook with our foods,” she said. “[Growing up], we’ve seen fruit and stuff, but it was all fatty foods. Now that I’m older and that I have kids [and grandkids], I want to teach them how to eat healthy so they will not go through what I’m going through.”

Through her work at the African American Diabetes Association, King said folks

Banking

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Banks in finances.

Banks seems positive that this time around, there is a hunger for change. He fervently believes in the need for new leadership in the community, specifically when it comes to the oversaturation of shelters in the district. He scored $70,490 in public funds and has received $15,810 in private funds.

“There’s Barron fatigue that exists,” said Banks.

Banks confirmed that he expects an endorsement from Assemblymember Nikki Lucas and is united in their efforts to unseat Barron.

The North Shore’s District 49 on Staten Island is the only district to have elected a Black councilmember on the island. Incum-

she’s helped often struggle to comprehend how to apply insulin and can be too proud to ask for help. She has also interacted with incarcerated people living with diabetes who aren’t receiving proper care, including a young man who told her his cellmate needed to give him candy to prevent him from passing out when his blood sugar levels dropped dangerously.

In 2016, then-Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams wrote an op-ed for the Amsterdam News addressing his own journey of living with diabetes, crediting a neighbor who encouraged his healthy eating habits only to find out the neighbor had died from diabetes complications while Adams was writing the piece. The now-mayor recently boasted about the relaunch of the Groceries 2 Go program, which he hopes will help combat diabetes through makin fresh produce more accessible.

Dr. Utibe Essien, an assistant professor of medicine at UCLA who is originally from New York City, said a “one-size fits all” approach to diabetes care and prevention is not effective, especially when attempting to close the gaps in racial disparities.

“Social factors that help our patients and community members lead healthy lives can be impossible for a lot of people,” he said. “To just say ‘go home, eat healthy, come back

bent Councilmember Kamillah Hanks replaced former Councilmember Debi Rose in 2021. Hanks received $173,350 in public funds and has $112,822 in private funds so far in her bid for reelection.

Her campaign submitted a “statement of need” about the effects of City Council redistricting on the community. “Due to redistricting, we have to run again in two years, and have a short timeframe in which to engage new voters,” said Hanks’s team.

Harlem’s District 9 in Manhattan is the only remaining district in Manhattan with a Black councilmember. Candidates Assemblymember Inez Dickens and Assemblymember Al Taylor are neck and neck in terms of public fund payouts, while candidate Yusef Salaam has raised $23,975 in private funds.

Dickens received $82,901 in public funds and has $38,673 in private funds. “Qualifying for matching funds requires a candidate that has deep knowledge and connection to the

when you lose a few pounds and these diabetes numbers [will] get fixed’—that’s just not a solution for a lot of people.

“Then there’s being culturally competent [and] realizing that not everyone is going to be able to go home and eat kale salad or [go on] a ‘Mediterranean’ diet. So how can we get creative in the way that we teach patients and talk to patients about the diet and the lifestyle side of things?”

Essien said the NYC Department of Education plays a key role in preventing type 2 diabetes because many city youngsters get their nutrition from school lunches. In addition, he recommends more green space in his hometown, referencing his own experiences growing up in his childhood home in Queens. Ultimately, he’s optimistic about the $35 insulin caps, but there’s more work to be done.

“We’re really hopeful that’s going to be a step in the right direction for a lot of patients,” said Essien, “but it’s definitely not the final solution.”

Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member and writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.

community. Actions speak louder than words and in this case, in-district donations demonstrate that the proof really is in the pudding,” said Dickens’s team.

Taylor received $69,958 in public funds and has $17,345 in private funds.

“The matching funds program is such an important tool for making our elections more open and equitable by cutting down the influence of wealthy outsiders,” said Taylor. “I’m proud to say that more than 90 percent of all of my donations are small-dollar donations from everyday people and that virtually all of my donations are from inside NYC.”

Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https:// bit.ly/amnews1.

Continued from page 4

police filed into the apartment. According to the attorney general’s office, there were crisis negotiators, emergency medical personnel, and Paterson police officers.

At one point, water can be heard and seen flooding into the apartment hallway from the bathroom. A fire alarm goes off as officers realize a fire had apparently been set. Later, the bathroom door opens, and Seabrooks appears, shirtless.

Officers fired 15 nonlethal projectiles at him, according to the attorney general’s office. One officer says in a video that Seabrooks had been cutting himself.

“Just let me die,” Seabrooks is heard saying. “I’m dying slow.”

An officer responds: “No, come on. I want to help you.”

The videos and calls have been redacted, with the videos frequently obscured by whatever the officer is carrying.

Some of Seabrooks’s final moments flash in one partially obscured clip. Still in the bathroom, he asks to speak to his mother, and an officer tells him that they can bring her to him.

“Naj, come on, man. Let’s take you to your mom,” the officer says. “I’m sure she don’t want to see you like this.”

Seabrooks came out of the bathroom the next instant.

“Drop it,” the officer yelled as shots rang out. Seabrooks was taken to St. Joseph’s Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead just over five hours after the first 911 call. His death has rattled his co-workers, who were at the scene and texting with him, according to his boss at the Paterson Healing Collective, Liza Chowdhury, in a phone interview on Friday. She said Seabrooks had been texting with colleagues, asking to see them, but that police blocked the co-workers from entering the apartment.

“We help so many people and then when our team member needed help, we were declined from doing what we do,” she said.

She added: “That was clearly a mental health call. In mental health situations, it requires patience, empathy, and asking what the person needs.”

Continued from page 4

managers, mandatory DEI training for all newly hired staff,” and a “performance review process to include accountability around all of our staff, including managers, to uphold the HRC values that were developed via a staff-led process—equity & intersectionality, respect, teamwork & community, resilience, heart, boldness, responsibility, learning, and openness.“

In its own court filings to counter David’s suit, the HRC stated that it “never un-

dertook any adverse employment action against Mr. David based on his race. His termination was based solely on his own conduct, including his poor judgment, misguided actions, and involvement in the Governor Cuomo scandal, his failure to take any accountability, and the fact that his conduct was counter to HRC’s values and mission.”

Yet, on March 15, David and the HRC issued a joint statement, published on HRC’s website, that declared, “The Human Rights Campaign, Inc. and The Human Rights Campaign Foundation (collectively, ‘HRC’) and Alphonso David (‘Mr. David’) have chosen to amicably resolve Mr. David’s

lawsuit against HRC. HRC and Mr. David share the mission of advancing human rights for all LGBTQ+ people and realizing a world that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all. Mr. David and HRC agree it is in their mutual best interests, and the interests of the communities that they serve, to put this matter behind them. The terms of the settlement are confidential.”

David currently serves as president and CEO of the Global Black Economic Forum (GBEF); this past February, he was named one of 50 Notable Black Leaders by Crain’s New York Business. The HRC, for its part, has a new president: Kelley Robinson—its first Black, queer woman.

In the two weeks since Seabrooks’s death, anti-violence advocates have organized a vigil calling for a number of reforms, including creation of a civilian review board. The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice has called on the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the city’s police department, and the ACLU of New Jersey said the shooting shows the need to invest in non-law enforcement responses to mental health calls.

New Jersey began requiring the state attorney general to investigate fatal encounters involving police in 2019, including presenting evidence to a grand jury.

The attorney general’s office said in a statement that the investigation continues and no other information is being released. Messages seeking comment were left with the Paterson mayor and director of public safety.

Health

Medgar Evers College Social Work Conference normalizes mental health care

By KAREN JUANITA CARRILLO Amsterdam News Staff

Following along the lines of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) 2023 theme that “Social Work Breaks Barriers,” Medgar Evers College (MEC) held its 16th annual Social Work Conference on Thursday, March 16. The event was put together by college committee members under the leadership of Dr. Waleek Boone, director of the Transition Academy at Medgar Evers, and facilitated by Jenea Roberts, LMSW, MDCP-Office of Family Team Conference, NYC Administration for Children’s Services.

This was the second year in a row the college was able to hold the conference in person, after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Boone, an alumni of the Medgar Evers social work program, had studied under Dr. Eda Harris-Hastick who initiated the school’s social

work bachelor’s degree program.

“Being a mentee of hers,” he said, “I picked up the baton and wanted to keep it going because I know how very important it is to not only the students here, but the community, to keep them informed about some of the social issues that are impacting our community.”

Boone said he and his committee members thought about which barriers they wanted their future social workers to understand, be empowered by, and be able to break. The stigma in Black and brown communities about not wanting to seek mental health services was a major topic, and the conference featured panels that dealt with matters of mental health, including “Normalizing Mental Health by Releasing Stigma and Shame” and “Eradicating Disparities Within the Mental Health System.”

“Mental health has been im -

pacting our community for so long and there’s a lot of disparities that go on within Black and brown communities, whether it be a long waitlist, [or] not having the proper insurance,” Boone said. “The list goes on.”

Dr. Edward Hernandez, chair of the MEC Department of Social Work, agreed: “There are several barriers that we’re dealing with. One is access to services and [another] is culturally competent services. We need to have people providing adequate services to people of color because this isn’t getting properly addressed within the service system.”

According to Hernandez, social worker barriers when dealing with mental health include understanding––“Social workers try to understand and put their values aside and accept people for who they are,” he said. “That’s one aspect, especially at Medgar Evers College, which is a predominately

COVID-19 and NYC: 3 years later

By MAL’AKIY 17 ALLAH Special to the AmNews

This month marks the three-year anniversary of the first documented COVID-19 case in New York City. On March 9, 2020, thenMayor Bill de Blasio announced that there were 16 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the city, and the World Health Organization declared the virus as a global crisis that March 11. NYC’s infection rate quickly became five times higher than the rest of the country and a third of overall confirmed cases in this country, causing it to be recognized as an epicenter.

While it’s been reported that the virus originated in Wuhan, Hubei, China, during 2019, a recent Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) study revealed the strain that surfaced in NYC originated from Europe and other U.S. areas.

“We sequenced genomes from COVID-19 cases identified up to March 18,” said Harm

van Bakel, PhD, assistant professor of genetics and genomic sciences at ISMMS. “These cases were drawn from 21 New York City neighborhoods across four boroughs (Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn), as well as two towns in neighboring Westchester County.”

According to the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), a total of 3,248,946 cases were reported locally since the beginning of the pandemic, and at least one resident in 186 contracted COVID19, with a total of 44,998 reported deaths over the course of the past three years.

The first confirmed COVID-19 case in New York City was on March 1, 2020, although later research revealed that it could have been circulating here since at least that January. By that March 29, more than 30,000 local cases had been confirmed.

In early March 2020, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency in New York State after 89 cases had been confirmed

Black institution—what we’re doing is turning out social workers who understand the needs of our multicultural community.

“The other issue, besides culture, is language barriers: trying to have adequate services for people whose non-dominant language is English.”

After breaking down those outside barriers, facing any internal qualms about seeking help for mental health issues is another major hurdle. The MEC conference urged participants to foster the idea that it’s all right to seek services, even if doing so is not normal in a family’s culture.

Boone said too often, people hear things like, “‘Look at this crazy person seeing a social worker’ or ‘whatever happens in the household, stays in the household’ or ‘man up and don’t cry,’ or ‘you’re not supposed to feel anything.’ We wanted to break that stigma,” he said. “This is why we brought very informed and knowledgeable pan-

in the state. On March 16, local schools were closed, and on March 20, an executive order forced businesses to close, causing hundreds of thousands to collect unemployment. The MTA operated sparingly and multitudes of New Yorkers were unable to get to work.

With hundreds dying daily locally, on March 22, a statewide stay-at-home order (also known as the “New York State on PAUSE” executive order) went into effect, mandating all non-essential businesses be closed, and that people be quarantined at home.

The state mandated face masks and social distancing for those who had to go out in public, and fines dished out to those who disobeyed this order. By the end of the month, New York City had accumulated more confirmed coronavirus cases than China or the UK. Bodies of the deceased began piling up in hospitals and overflowed the city morgue. Space was being cleared at Jacob Javitts Center, local arenas, parks, and other spa-

elists to discuss those issues.”

Estimates are that MEC’s 16th annual Social Work Conference had 90 people attend virtually and 160 who came to the campus and joined the event in person.

“I thought this was our best conference ever,” Hernandez told the AmNews.

MEC’s social work students tend to go right into graduate-level programs to get their master of social work degree, Hernandez noted. “Our students are all over once they graduate: They’re at not-for-profits; we have a graduate who’s the executive director of an agency, another graduate who is a dean of students; a lot of them are supervisors, so they’re going out there and working their way up in organizations where they can make a difference firsthand.

“Part of it is making the system work. But the other part of it is being inside the system.”

cious locations as temporary holding sites. Soon de Blasio imposed a city-wide curfew and lockdown over the next few months in hopes of slowing the virus’ spread. Crimes, particularly gun violence, escalated dramatically ever since then, and due to the mass loss of tax revenue and wages, some financial analysts have predicted a steep drop not seen since the Depression era of the 1930s.

According to recent data from the Johns Hopkins University website, the coronavirus has resulted in a worldwide 676,609,955 total cases; 6,881,955 deaths; and 13, 338, 933,198 vaccine doses administered. In NYC, there have been 6,794,738 confirmed cases and 77,157 deaths.

With a number of variants being circulated since the pandemic began, some have upgraded the virus to “COVID-20, COVID-21, COVID-22, and COVID-23.” Although many people have returned to work or their studies, the city has yet to fully recover to the way it was in 2019 B.C.—Before COVID.

Kimberly Moore, director of Care Café at Yeshiva University’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work, introduces Dr. Waleek Boone, director of Medgar Evers Transition Academy, during 16th annual Medgar Evers Social Work conference (Courtesy photo)

Dr. Tyson Boudreaux addresses MEC Social Work conference participants

provide life-saving support to those displaced and affected by conflict, drought, and food insecurity in Ethiopia,” Blinken said.

But the aid may not be enough to patch up the frayed relations between the two nations. A tweet posted by African Stream put it succinctly: “Uncle Sam in the guise of Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Ethiopia to heal ties after the US earlier accused Addis Ababa of war crimes in the Tigray conflict and cut trade ties.

“So what’s with the sudden change of tune? Could it have anything to do with the fact that archgeopolitical rival China has been busy signing trade and develop-

Puerto Rico

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ment deals with Ethiopia and helping the country upgrade its infrastructure? Looks like someone’s worried they’re losing clout on the continent…”

When Blinken arrived in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, he was the latest in a parade of Biden administration officials courting the continent amid rising competition for influence with Russia and China, noted the New York Times

Just a year ago, the two countries were at odds and ends after the U.S. expelled Ethiopia from a regional trade group, citing “gross violations of internationally recognized human rights” by the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Such denunciations were not repeated during the meeting Wednesday, however, which focused on “progress in the agree-

events throughout the year, until at least March 22, 2024.

The organization is doing this all while trying to rebuild. It is housed in the 19th-century birthplace of the tenor Antonio Paoli (1871–1946). Their building, which was restored in 1987, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009, but damages to the structure due to recent earthquakes in southern Puerto Rico have left it in a dire state.

NYC Council

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vulnerable restaurants—and the delivery workers—that lose.

So often, our government works for the wealthy instead of the needy and our laws exacerbate inequality. That makes it doubly painful when government really tries to help vulnerable communities and instead unintentionally helps corporateowned steakhouses and chain restaurants,

ment to cease hostilities.”

This time, Blinken’s goal was to reset America’s relationship with Ethiopia, a nation of 120 million, headquarters of the African Union, and—until recently—a pillar of American security policy in the region. But the war badly strained that relationship.

Under the new terms of friendship, Blinken said that Abiy, along with Tigrayan leaders with whom he also met, “should be commended” for bringing a halt to the violence, although he cautioned that more work was needed to carry out the agreement.

He also suggested that the U.S. bore some historical responsibility for Ethiopia’s civil strife by remaining silent when abuses were carried out.

“For our part, the U.S. acknowl-

Casa Paoli has had to hold events virtually, but occasionally has still been able to conduct workshops on the building’s front terrace, such as teaching children about Puerto Rican instruments like the marímbula––a large percussive box with metal strips––and its origins in Africa. “People use the marímbula very often in this region— in musical groups, they use this quite frequently,” Murray-Irizarry said. “There are some people who say that the marímbula was developed in Puerto Rico and from here, it traveled to Cuba, Santo Domingo, Jamaica, and other places that use these

some of which are the wealthiest restaurants in the country.

Local restaurants looking to grow their businesses should be able to pay for marketing services offered by third-party delivery services or anyone they choose. The Council needs to restore small restaurants’ choices by amending the fee cap law today, and thereby help restore some equity for small restaurants and their workers.

edges (the) human rights violations and repression committed during the past few decades, actions which sowed the seeds of future conflict,” he said in an apparent reference to a period when Ethiopia was a major American counterterrorism partner and its government was run by a Tigrayan-dominated coalition. “We and others were insufficiently vocal about these abuses in the past.”

In a photo op before a private meeting, Ethiopia’s foreign minister, Demeke Mekonnen, noted that the two nations “have longstanding relations, and it is time to revitalize them and move forward.”

Former U.S. diplomat to Africa

Elizabeth Shackelford said, “Mr. Blinken should be skeptical toward Mr. Abiy, whose heroic image as a 2019 Nobel Prize winner has been

types of African-based instruments.”

Teaching about Black history in southern Puerto Rico and its impact on today’s culture is what makes holidays like Emancipation Day important, Murray-Irizzary said. “For some people, it’s not a big deal, but for others of us, this is a very big deal, this day. There are many events around Emancipation Day, particularly in Ponce where we have Abolition Park.

“Abolition Park was a site constructed to commemorate the abolition of slavery in

eclipsed by a ruinous civil war for which he bears much responsibility and during which his forces and allied troops from the neighboring country of Eritrea were accused of massacres, sexual assault, and ethnic cleansing in Tigray.

“My hope is that the war has changed our approach to the Ethiopian government and made us buy Abiy’s lines less readily.”

Puerto Rico. In the 19th century, the people of Ponce made it a point to designate a plot of land very near to the historic heart of the city, and there they created a park with lots of trees and a stage, and people would come there to hear orchestras play music. People were able to use the park for birthdays and weddings: this was a well-known park in Ponce because it was practically in the middle of the city. And it featured a statue—a monument—that they made, dedicated to the abolition of slavery.”

#WOMENSHISTORYMONTH WE’RE RAISING $5,000 TO SUPPORT ARIAMA C. LONG OUR REPORT FOR AMERICA CORPS MEMBER.

Bertha Lewis is the founder and president of The Black Institute (TBI).

Religion & Spirituality

Gone but not forgotten: Street co-namings and murals advocate peace

By JASON GONZALEZ

New York has a long tradition of naming its streets after war heroes, explorers, authors, and even slave owners. But out of tragedy, a new tradition of celebration is emerging: co-naming streets after the victims of gun violence.

Street co-namings can be a celebration of life and increasingly are serving as a way to memorialize victims of violence in New York City. This phenomenon has grown more prominent in recent years—but does it aid in remembrance of the victim’s life and can it aid in reducing violence?

“The first time I [saw] it on GPS, I got goosebumps,” said Tanya Downer, who lost her brother Brandon Hendricks-Ellison to gun violence, of a street named in his memory. “Wow—everyone that drives past here and is following a GPS will hear my brother’s name.”

The intersection of 156th St. and Park Ave., near the Andrew Jackson Houses NYCHA complex in Melrose where Hendricks-Ellison lived, was co-named Brandon Hendricks-Ellison Boulevard two years ago.

Hendricks-Ellison, a talented basketball player at James Monroe High School, was murdered in June 2020, fatally shot in the neck by a stray bullet while attending a friend’s birthday barbecue on Davidson Avenue in Morris Heights, just a few days after graduating from high school and one week shy of his 18th birthday.

Downer, Hendricks-Ellison’s older sibling, said that any street co-naming can serve as a deterrent to violence, in hopes of minimizing harm in communities affected by it.

“It also serves as a resource for others in the future who may be curious about a street that has its name changed—to revisit what that person accomplished while alive,” she said.

Jaclyn Schildkraut, executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium and associate professor of criminal justice at the State University of New York at Oswego, confirmed that there isn’t any data suggesting that memorializing the deceased through a street co-naming has an impact on crime rates or helps people to remember those fallen.

“In terms of whether naming streets for victims is an appropriate memorialization, this comes back to the community,” Schildkraut said. “Each community and the individuals within it have different conceptualizations as to what is ‘appropriate,’ so it is not really for those of us, outside of the community, to suggest whether it is right or wrong.”

Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson said that street co-naming ceremonies give people a chance to remember an individu-

al who made a major contribution to their neighborhood.

“When we honor someone taken from us by gun violence, it not only serves as a reminder of the life they led, but is also a reminder of the work that still needs to be done to end the proliferation of guns in our city,” Gibson told the Amsterdam News. For other grieving families and community members, honoring those who have been taken from them requires more than a street co-naming or a wall mural. In some instances, these tributes can reopen old wounds, conjuring bad memories and making the location of the co-naming very important.

“We didn’t want to do that [co-name a street at the scene of the crime], because that’s a place that brings us a lot of pain,” said Mary Hernandez, the aunt of Angellyh Yambo, a teenager who was killed by gunfire last year. Hernandez and other mem-

bers of the Yambo family passed on the idea of having the streets of E. 156th St. and St. Anne’s Ave. in Mott Haven, where she was killed, co-named after her.

“We haven’t visited that area ever since [Angellyh was killed]. And we don’t want to go back,” she said.

Hernandez filed a petition requesting to have Bailey Place in Kingsbridge co-named after her niece on the anniversary of when she was killed.

“She spent 99% of her time [there],” Hernandez said. “It was where she grew up and where she was happy at. It’s where the building where both of her grandparents live, and [where] her mother and her father grew up.”

Hernandez started a foundation in Yambo’s name, which she hopes will bring positive change to the Bronx. She also said that a wall mural will be created, close to University Prep Charter High School, where Yambo went to school.

“We are going to make sure that her legacy lives on, not only through the renaming of the street and in the mural, but through the works of our foundation,” Hernandez said.

Since long before street co-naming grew in popularity, murals honoring the slain

have been painted throughout the city. Some of the iconic works seen throughout the city were created by Groundswell NYC

The group creates community murals that address the problems an area is facing, including memorial walls that pay tribute to people whose lives have been affected not just by violence, but by other events as well.

“It is a form of grieving, but it is also a way of celebrating the life of the person represented,” said Groundswell NYC artist José Ortiz. “It’s important to note that while some of the individuals represented in the mural may have been victims of violence, they are often not. The person may have died abruptly from natural causes, or any number of other ways.

Ortiz said murals are made with the help of community members and are a representation of the opinions, thoughts, and issues of those affected by it.”

He cited the mural “Not One More Death” in Gowanus, Brooklyn, as a perfect example of this in action. “Our students from Groundswell’s Summer Leadership Institute facilitated the creation of a largescale mural and street sign campaign to regain control of neighborhood streets, after a series of traffic-linked deaths occurred in Downtown Brooklyn,” he said. “‘Not One More Death’ memorializes the lives of three children taken away by vehicles along Third Avenue.”

For some community members, wall murals serve as a form of community advocacy as well.

The intersection of 183rd St. and Bathgate Ave. in the Belmont section of the Bronx was co-named Lesandro Junior Guzman-Feliz Way in memory of Lesandro “Junior” Guzman-Feliz, a 15-year-old who was brutally murdered in plain sight by suspected gang members in June 2018, in what turned out to be a case of mistaken identity.

For his mother, Leandra Feliz, the honor was bittersweet.

“This is something that will live on forever, just like how Junior lived and how he lives inside my heart,” Feliz said. Her son is also depicted in several murals throughout the area where the killing took place.

His mother believes that the goal of the street co-naming and the murals to be one and the same. In the end, she wants to see a safer Bronx.

“That’s the idea—that’s what I am hoping for,” Feliz said about the possibility that this act of remembrance might prevent violence from happening again in the future.

“That’s why it’s so important to keep Junior’s memory alive, for people to know what happened to him, whenever they look up and see his name on that street sign.”

Then-Councilmember and current Rep. Ritchie Torres (center) with Leandra Feliz after announcing street co-naming in her son’s honor

Mural in Bathgate section of the Bronx dedicated to murder victim Lesandro “Junior” Guzman-Feliz, who was brutally killed by gang members in a case of mistaken identity (David Greene photos)

Rikers

Continued from page 6

delayed closure pertaining to the protest.

“Just like the speaker, Mayor Adams believes that New Yorkers who are incarcerated deserve to be treated with care and humanity,” said Levy by email. “We believe that instead of talking about what happened before the mayor and speaker were elected, the more constructive approach would be to join forces and urge the state to provide mental health funding to keep more New Yorkers from ever going to Rikers. That would be a major step forward and shut the pipeline feeding more and more New Yorkers suffering from severe mental illness into our jails.”

Mayor Adams inherited the obligation to close Rikers from his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, who was the architect of the initial roadmap for the scheduled closure alongside Speaker Adams’s predecessor, Corey Johnson. The City Council voted to pass laws to shut down and clear all 10 jails in the Rikers complex by a mandated deadline, with borough-based jails taking their place.

But behind such efforts were decarceration advocates, whom Lander recalled marching with back in 2016. Many of the same folks found themselves once again in the shadow of elected officials, quite literally, at Thursday’s rally. Members of the

Egusi

Continued from page 26

like. I want our Black and brown children in the city to get to know our food.” Hyped by the experience, he added, “I am working with the city, and I want the joy of egusi and fufu to be a permanent program. I also would like to introduce it to senior citizen centers. When we share our cultural experiences, we get a better understanding of who we are.”

Receiving citations twice from then-Borough President Eric Adams, the Brooklynbased entrepreneur says he does what he does for the love of the city. While his service is free to the after-school programs, Afolayan says it does cost himself about $500 a visit. “I like the fact that these young people are being introduced to this new healthy and nutritious food. They enjoy it, and I just want to spread the joy of fufu and egusi.”

The NYC Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) Commissioner Keith Howard praised the initiative in a statement sent to the Amsterdam News.

“DYCD Is proud to partner with Chef Lookman Afolayan Mashood and his team at Buka New York to bring this outstanding cultural experience to young people—some who may be future culinary stars—at Cornerstone programs in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Opportunities such as this are pivotal in helping our youth expand their interests, thrive in cultural

Campaign to Close Rikers stood behind the speakers and directed their words to Mayor Adams, reappropriating his trademark slogan to their own chant: “Get stuff done…get Rikers closed.”

Rally speakers included representatives of several organizations involved in the campaign, including the Freedom Agenda, Fortune Society, and Exodus Transitional Community. Many were formerly held in Rikers themselves, including Freedom Agenda co-director Darren Mack, who MC’d the demonstration.

“Rikers should have been closed decades ago, and this administration should be exercising leadership to find every way possible to do it faster,” said Mack. “Instead, they’re introducing delays and threatening the legally mandated closure deadline. The mayor says he wants to ‘get stuff done’? Then get those ‘upstream’ investments made, get people the support and treatment they need, get people to court, get the jail population down, get the replacement borough-based facilities built, and get Rikers closed. How many more lives is this mayor willing to see lost or forever damaged in that hellhole?”

According to the Fortune Society’s Andre Ward, “The closure of Rikers Island must not be delayed as thousands of people remain exposed to trauma resulting from inhumane conditions directly resulting from unstaffed posts and decades of neglect and indifference. The work to ensure that the borough-

based jails are open prior to the August 2027 closure of Rikers cannot be interrupted. In addition, as a city, we must continue to increase our investments in communitybased resources and services that have been proven to prevent incarceration and re-incarceration, and that also empower human beings so they can live a life of contribution.”

To be clear, delaying the Brooklyn-based jail doesn’t necessarily mean delaying Rikers’ scheduled closure. But such anxieties join a growing number of clues indicating the city isn’t fully confident about or invested in a 2027 closure.

The de Blasio administration’s original timeline to close the jails by 2026 has already been pushed back a year. Department of Corrections (DOC) Commissioner Louis Molina has projected that Rikers’ population will balloon up to 7,000 detainees, and the borough-based jails can only hold 3,300 or fewer people citywide between all four facilities.

Mayor Adams kicked off the year by telling the City a small task force was developing a “Plan B” contingency, although he maintained he would follow the legal commitments to shut down Rikers.

A spokesperson for the Freedom Agenda said there’s additional fear among advocates of Rikers remaining in operation after some of the borough-based jails open, expanding the city’s incarceration levels— the exact opposite intention of building smaller, local facilities.

Brooklyn made up roughly 21% of the borough composition of Rikers’ 2021 population, according to the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. That’s only second to Manhattan.

Last year, 19 people died in or shortly after DOC custody; almost entirely nonwhite New Yorkers, according to the New York Times’ Rikers 2022 death tracker. For 2023, 65-year-old Marvin Pines was the first reported and so far the only person to die in Rikers this year, he was pronounced dead last month. His lawyer told the Amsterdam News his client required intensive medical attention and that he fought in court to place Pines in the complex’s North Infirmary Command, where he died.

The borough-based jails would provide 380 total secure hospital beds for detainees like Pines with serious physical health issues.

A follow-up rally will occur today, Thursday, March 23, in front of the Tweed Courthouse to protest a proposed budget slashing social services and boosting DOC funding, which advocates argue is counterproductive to closing Rikers by 2027.

Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member and writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1

awareness, and keep them engaged.”

The DYCD told the paper that Chef Afolayan Mashood reached out to them to donate his experience, expertise, and time to an afterschool program.

Thereafter, he met with young people at two DYCD-funded Cornerstone programs: Marcus Garvey in Brooklyn operated by the Research Foundation of the City University of New York, and Drew Hamilton run by the Children’s Village.

DCYD added, “The purpose was to introduce young people to the Nigerian culture by way of its cuisine. He prepared a tasting of fufu, pounded yam, and jollof rice.

“He also brought additional ingredients to teach the young people how to prepare some of the most popular dishes of Nigeria.”

DYCD declared that they are “looking to continue this partnership and other cultural immersion initiatives.”

For more information, contact 347-7630619, Bukanewyork.com, or Buka.newyork@ gmail.com.

(DYCD photo)

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U.S. BANK TRUST NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, NOT IN ITS INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY

Plaintiff designates NEW YORK as BUT SOLELY AS OWNER TRUSTEE FOR RCF 2 ACQUISITION TRUST, the place of trial situ s of the real property

Plaintiff, SUPPLEMENTAL SUMMONS vs

Mortgaged Premises:

AYRIN WIDJAJA A/K/A AYRIN POOR, if living, and if she/he be dead, any and all persons 50 PINE STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10005 un known to plaintiff, claiming, or wh o may claim to have an interest in, or general or specific Block: 41, Lot: 1015 lien upon the real property de scribed in this action; such unknown persons being he rein gener ally described and intended to be included in the following designation, namely: the wife, widow, husband, widower, heirs at law, next of kin, descendants, executor s, admin istrators, de visees, legatees, creditors, trustees, committees, lienors, and assignees of such deceased, an y and all persons deriving interest in or lien up on, or title to said r eal property by, through or under them, or either of them, and their resp ective wives, widows, husbands, widowers, heirs at law, next of kin, descendants, executors, ad ministrators , devisees, legat ees, creditors, trustees, committees, lienors an d assigns, all of whom and whose na mes, except as stated, are unknown to plaintiff; BOARD OF MANAGERS OF 50 PINE STREET CONDOMINIUM; NEW YORK CITY PARKING VIOLATIONS BUREAU; NEW YORK CITY ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL BOARD; NEW YORK CITY TRANSIT ADJUDICATION BUREAU, THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; ADAM REDICH; MELISSA SILVERWOOD, "JOHN DOE #3" thro ugh "JOHN DOE #12," the last ten names being fictitious and unknown to plaintiff, the persons or parties intended be ing the tenants, occupants, pe rsons or corporations, if an y, having or claiming an interest in or lien upon the premises, described in the complaint, De fendants.

To the above named De fendants

YOU ARE HEREBY SUMMONED to answer the Complaint in the above entitled action and to serve a copy of your Answer on the plaintiff?s attorney within twenty (20) days of the service of this Summons, exclusive of the day of service, or within th irty (30) days after service of the same is complete wher e service is made in any manner other th an by personal delivery within the State. The United States of America, if designated as a defendant in this action, ma y answer or appear with in sixty (60) days of serv ice. Your failure to a ppear or to answer will result in a judgment against you by default fo r the relief demande d in the Complaint In the event that a deficienc y balance remain s from the sale proceeds, a judgment ma y be entered against you.

NOTICE OF NATUR E OF ACTION AND RELIEF SOUGHT

TH E OBJECT of the above caption action is to forecl ose a Mortgage to se cure the sum of $1,000,000.00 and interest, recorded on March 28, 2006, in

CR FN 20060 001 71967, of the Public R ecords of NEW YORK County, New York., covering premises known as 50 PINE STREET, NEW YORK, N Y 10005.

The relief sought in the within action is a final judgment directing th e sale of the premises described above to sat isfy the debt secured by the Mortgage described above.

NEW YORK County is designated as the place of trial because the real property aff ected by this action is located in said county.

NOTICE

YOU ARE IN DANGER OF LOSING YOUR HOME

If you do not respond to this summons and complaint by servi ng a copy of the answer on the attorney for the mortgage company who filed this foreclosure proceeding against you a nd filing the answer with the court, a default judgment may be entered and you can lose your home

Spea k to an attorney or go to the court where your case is pending for further information on how to answer the summons and protect your property. Sending a payment to the mortgage company will not stop the forecl osure action.

YOU MUST RESPOND BY SERVING A COPY OF THE ANSWER ON THE ATTORNEY FOR THE PLAINTIFF (MORTGAGE COMPANY) AND FILING THE AN SWER WITH THE COURT

Da ted: Februar y 17, 2023

No tice of Qualification of MAROON PEAK MANAGEMENT LLC Appl for Auth filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 02/10/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 06/01/22. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon wh om process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail pr ocess to c/o Corporation Service Co (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr of LLC : CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmingt on, DE 19808. Cert of Form. filed with DE Secy of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity

IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF TUSCALOOSA COUNTY, ALABAMA CASE NO DR2022- 900699.00 IN RE: THE MARRIAGE OF GLENDA F. ARRINGTON,PETITIONER WIFE AND ROWANTA D. ARRINGTON, RESPONDENT/HUSBAND. NOTICE OF PETITION FOR DIVORCE Rowanta D. Arrington, whose whereabouts are un known, must answer Glenda F. Ar rington Complaint for Divorce by thirty (30) days of the last notice of publication, or thereafter, a judgment by default may be rendered against him in Case No DR2022-90069 9.00.

ROBERTSON, ANSCHUTZ, SCHNEID, CRANE & PARTNERS, PLLC Attorney for Plaintiff Matthew Rothstein, Esq. 900 Me rchants Concourse, Suite 310 Westbury, NY 11590 516-280-7675

No tice of Qualification of ELYSIAN COMMUNICATIONS LLC Appl for Auth filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 02/14/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in New Jersey (NJ) on 10/03/12. Prin c. office of LLC: 255 W. 94th St., Apt. 11-U, NY, NY 10025. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon wh om process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Kristina B. DiPalo at the princ. office of the LLC Ce rt of Form. filed with State Treasurer, Dept of the Treasury, PO Box 002, Trenton , NJ 0862 5-0002 Purpose: Any lawful activity

Notice is hereby give n that a license, serial #13591 82 for beer & wine has been applied for by the undersigned to sell beer & wine at retail in a kiosk under the ABC Law at Grand Central Madison-Kiosk for on-premises consumption; Fratoni LLC

No tice is he reby give n that a license, serial #13591 91 for beer & wine has been applied for by the undersigned to sell beer & wine at retail in a kiosk under the ABC Law at Grand Central Madison-Kiosk for on-premises consumption; Fratoni LLC

No tice of Formation of WALNUT HILL HOUSING DEVELOPER, LLC Ar ts of Org. filed with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 02/27/23. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC : 30 Hudson Yards, 72nd Fl., NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail pr ocess to Corporation Service Co ., 80 State St., Alban y, NY 12207. Purpose: Any lawful activity

SUPREME COURT - COUNTY OF NEW YORK

SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK

INDEX NO 850377/2015 COUNTY OF NEW YORK

BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON TRUST COMPANY,

Plaintiff designates NEW YORK as N.A. AS TRUSTEE FOR MORTGAGE ASSETS the place of tr ial situs of the real pr operty MANAGEMENT SERIES I TRUST,

Plaintiff,

SUPPLEMENTAL SUMMONS vs Mortgaged Premises: 340 WEST 57TH STREET, UNIT 9-E PUBLIC ADMINISTRATOR OF NEW YORK AS DISTRIBUTEE NEW YORK, NY 10019 OF THE ESTATE OF MARIAN S. O'HA RA; UNKNOWN HEIRS AND DISTIRBUTEES OF THE ESTATE OF MARIAN S. O'HA RA, Block: 1047 , Lot: 1096 an y and all persons unknown to plaintiff, claiming, or who may claim to have an interest in, or general or specific lien upon the real property de scr ibed in this action; such unknown per sons be ing herein gen erally descr ibed and intended to be included in the following designation, namely: the wife, widow, husband, widower, he irs at law, next of kin, descendants, executors, administrators, devisees, legat ees, creditors, trustees, committees, lienors, and a ssignees of such deceased, any and all persons der iving interest in or lien upon, or title to sa id real pro perty by, through or under them, or either of them, and their respective wives, wi dows, husbands, widowers, heirs at law, next of kin, descendants, executors, ad ministrators , devisees, legat ees, creditors, trustees, committees, lienor s and assigns, all of whom and whose names, except as stated, are unknown to plaintiff; BOARD OF MANAGERS OF THE PARC VENDOME CONDOMINIUM; SECRETARY OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT; NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF TAXATION AND FINANCE; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Defendant(s),

TO: THE ABOVE NAMED DEFENDANT(S)

YOU ARE HEREBY SUMMONED to answer the Complaint in the above entitled action and to serve a copy of your Answer on the plaintiff's attor ney within twenty (20) days of the serv ice of th is Summons, e xclusive of th e day of service, or within thirty (30) days after service of the same is complete where service is made in any ma nner other than by personal delivery within the State. The United Stat es of America, if designated as a defendant in this action, may answer or ap pear with in sixty (60) days of service. Your failure to appear or to answer will result in a judgmen t against you by defau lt for the relief demanded in the Complaint In the event that a deficienc y balance remain s from the sale proceeds, a judgment ma y be entered against you.

NOTICE OF NATURE OF ACTION AND RELIEF SOUGHT

THE OBJECT of the above caption action is to foreclose a Mortgage to se cure the sum of $625,500.00 and interest, recorded on February 24, 2009, in CRFN 200 9000055488, of the Public Records of NEW YORK County, New York., covering premises known as 340 W EST 57TH STREET, UNIT 9-E, NEW YORK, NY 10019.

The relief sought in the within action is a final judgment directing the sale of the premises described above to satisfy the debt secured by the Mortgage described above.

NEW YORK County is designated as the place of trial because the real property af fected by this action is located in said county.

NOTICE

YOU ARE IN DANGER OF LOSING YOUR HOME

If you do not respond to this summons and complaint by serving a copy of the answer on the attorney for the mortgage company who f iled this foreclosure proceeding against you and filing the answer with the court, a default judgment may be entered and you can lose your home

Spea k to an attorney or go to the court where your case is pending for further information on how to answer the summons and protect your property

Sending a payment to the mortgage company will not stop the forecl osure action.

YOU MU ST R ESPOND BY SERVING A COPY OF TH E ANSWER ON TH E ATTORNEY FOR THE PLAINTIFF (MORTGAGE COMPANY) AND FILING THE ANSWER WITH THE COURT

Da ted: January 25, 2023

No tice of Qualification of ASTON 41C LLC Appl for Auth filed with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 09/14/22. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in New Jersey (NJ) on 08/19/22. Princ. office of LLC : Ira Z. Kevelson, 410 Ce ntral Park West, #3A, NY, NY 10025. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon wh om process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Irina Stanovitch, 7 Berkley Pl., Co lts Neck , NJ 07722. NJ addr of LLC : 7 Berkle y Pl., Co lts Neck , NJ 07722. Cert of Form filed with Acting State Treasurer, 33 W. State St., Fifth Fl., Trenton, NJ 08646. Purpose: Any lawful activity

LYNX ASSET SERVICES, LLC, Plaintiff -against- PEGGY NESTOR, MARIANNE NESTOR, et al., Defendants. Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale and Decision and Order on Motion, signe d by the Honorable Francis A. Kahn, III on September 27, 2022, and entered in the Office of the New York County Clerk on Octobe r 5, 2022, and an Amended Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale and Decision and Order on Motion, signed by the Hono rable Francis A. Kahn, III on October 12, 2022, and entered in the Office of the New York County Clerk on October 12, 2022, I, the undersigned Referee will sell at pu blic auction at the New York County Courthouse located on the por tico at 60 Centre Street, New York, New York, on April 26, 2023 at 2:15 p.m., all that certain plot, piece or par cel of land, situate, lying and being in the Borough of Manhattan, City, County and State of New York, bounded and described as fo llows: BEGINNING at a point on the northerly side of East 63 rd Street distant 124 fe et 6 inches westerly from the corner formed by the intersection of th e no rtherly side of East 63rd Street and the westerly side of Madison Avenue;

RUNNING THENCE northerly pa rallel with the westerly side of Madison Avenue and part of the distance through a party wall 100 feet 5 inches to the center line of the block between Ea st 63r d and East 64 th Street; THENCE westerly parallel with the nor therly side of East 63rd Street 25 feet; THENCE southerly and again paralle l with Madison Avenue part of th e distance through another party wall 100 feet 5 inches to the northerly side of East 63rd Street; THENCE easterly along th e northerly side of East 63 rd Street 25 feet to the point or place of

BEGINNING Block: 1378 Lot: 12 on the Tax Map of the Borough of New York, County of New York All bidders must wear a face mask/shield at all time s and social distancing must be ob served by all bidd ers at all time s. Bidder s who do not comply with the face mask and/or the social distancing ma ndate will be removed from the auction.

Said pr emises known as 15 EAST 63RD STREET, NEW YORK, NY

Approximate amount of mortgage lien: $17,251,886.48 plus interest & costs.

Premises will be sold subject to provisio ns of the Amended Judgment and Terms of Sale, posted at the auction, and subject to (i) the prior mortgage held by Emigr ant Mortgage Company, In c., as recorded in th e Office of the City Register of the City of New York, C ounty of New York, on September 9, 2010 as CRFN: 2010000304435, (ii) the pr ior judgmen t he ld by Joseph Defino dated September 12, 2014, in the amount of $395,604.57, and (iii) the prior judgmen t held by DeLuca as Public Administrator of New York County and Administrator CTA of the Esta te of Oleg Cassini dated November 27, 2015, in the amount of $1,046,214.59.

Index Number 850129/2019

MARK L. MCKEW, ESQ., Referee

Attorney(s) for Plaintiff: McGRAIL & BENSINGER LLP

888-C Eighth Avenue, # 107, New York, NY 1 0019 Ilana Volkov, Esq.

Telephone: ( 201) 931-69 10, Email: ivolkov@mcgrailbensinger.com

No tice of formation of Lodeco Books LLC Arts of Org with the Secy of State of New York on 3/3/2023 New York (SSNY) Office lo cation : NY Co un ty SSNY ha s been designat ed as an agent upon wh om process against it may be serv ed and to which th e SSNY shall mail a copy of an y process against the LLC served upon is C/O the LLC/LLP 1390 Lexington Ave, #4 ; New York, NY 10128. Purpose: Any lawful activity

ROBE RTSON, ANSCHUTZ, SCHNEID, CRANE & PARTNERS, PLLC Attorney for Plaintiff Ma tthew Rothstein, Esq. 900 Merchants Concourse, Suite 310 Westbu ry, NY 11590 516-280-7675

No tice of Qualification of JLT HOLDINGS, LLC Appl for Auth filed with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 02/06/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Virginia (VA) on 01/29 /19. NYS fictitious

name: JLT HOLDINGS 197 1 LLC SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail pr ocess to c/o Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. VA

addr of LLC: 13511 Split Creek Dr., Ch ester, VA 23831. Cert of Form. filed with State Corp Commission, 1300 E. Main St., Richmond, VA 23219-3630. Purpose: Any lawful activity

No tice is hereby give n that an On-Premises Liquor License for beer, wine and liquor has been applied for by the under signed to permit the sa le of beer, wine and liquor at retail rates for on-premises consumption at the premises located at 750 Eighth Avenue under the Alcoholic Bever age Co ntrol La w. 750 Eighth LH, LLC and Distilled LLC

Adal ys Trains LLC filed Arts of Org. with the SSNY on 1/10/2023. Office: NY County SSNY ha s been de signated as agent of the LLC upo n wh om process against it may be served and shall mail process to : 530 East 88th St., #1B, New York, NY, 10128 Purpose: any lawful act.

He ar t & Seoul Food Co LLC filed Ar ts of Org. with the SSNY on 11/08/2022. Office: Ne w York County. SSNY has been designated as agen t of the LL C upon whom process against it may be serv ed and shall mail to: Heart & Seou l Co LLC, 55 W 95th Str eet, Ne w York, NY 10025 Purpo se: Food Ma nufacturing.

KLM Advisory , LLC filed Arts of Org. with the SSNY on 1/15/2023. Office loca tion: NY County. SSNY has been de signated as a gent of th e LLC upo n whom process against it may be serv ed and shall mail process to: KLM Advisory, LLC, 64 East 94th St., #6F, NY, NY, 10128. Purpo se: Any lawful act.

No tice of Formation of WALNUT HILL HOUSING CL ASS B, LLC Arts of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 02/27/23. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 30 Hudson Yards, 72nd Fl., NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail pr ocess to Corporation Service Co ., 80 State St., Alban y, NY 12207. Purpose: Any lawful activity

Ra mli Jewellery LLC Articles of Org. filed NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 02 /17/22. Office located in New York Co SSNY de signated agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. First Agent LLC, 447 Broadway 2nd Fl 18 7, New York, NY 10013. Purp ose: an y lawful activity

RHG Time Square LLC file d Arts of Org. with the SSNY on 01/12/2023. Office: New York County. SSNY has been de signated as a gent of th e LLC upo n whom process against it may be serv ed and shall mail to: Gary Wallach, 2 Re nwich St., NY, NY, 10013 Purpose: any lawful act.

Formation of NORTHERN STANDARD CONSULTING, LLC filed with the Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 2/17/2023. Office loc.: NY Co un ty SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. The address SSNY shall mail process to 517 W. 147th St., Apt. 32, New York, NY 10031. Purpose: Any lawful activity

Queen's Ransom Media LLC Articles of Org. filed NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 02/16/23. Office located in Ne w York Co SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: Queen's Ransom Media LLC, 360 W. 36th Street, Apt 7N, New York, NY 10018. Purpose: any lawful activity

RHG Chelsea LLC filed Arts of Org. with the SSNY on 01/12/2023. Office: New York Co un ty SSNY ha s been designat ed as a gent of the LL C upon whom process against it may be serv ed and shall mail to: Gary Wallach, 2 Renwich St., NY, NY, 10013. Purpose: an y lawful act.

NOTICE OF SALE

SUPREME COURT - COUNTY OF NEW YORK

HILTON RESORTS CORPORATION, Plaintiff -aga in st- MICHAEL SCOTT FERRARO, NANCY

ANN FERRARO, et al Defendant(s). Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated October 4, 2022 and entered on October 7, 2022, I, the un dersigned Refe ree will sell at public au ction at the New York County Courthouse located on the portico at 60 Centre Street, New York, NY on April 26, 2023 at 2:15 pm premises situate, lying and being in the Borough of Manhattan, County of New York, City and State of New York, being an undivided ownership intere st as tenant-in-common with other owners in the Timeshare Unit in the bu ilding located at 1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY; known as The NYH Condominium. Together with an appur tenant undivided 1.4182% common intere st perce ntage. This a foreclosure on ownership interest in a timeshar e un it, a studio penthouse on a floatin g use ba sis every year, in a ccordance with and subject to declarations Declaration of Coven ants, Cond itions and Restrictions dated September 22, 2014, October 6, 20 14 as CFRN # 2014 00 0330111 as record ed in the Office of the City Register, County, City and State of New York The Timeshare Unit is also de signated as Block 1006 and Lot 1303

The Foreclosure Sale will be co nducted in accordan ce with 1 st Judicial Districts COVID-19 Policies an d Foreclosure Auction Rules.

All bidders must wear a face mask/shield at all times and so cial distancing must be observed by all bidder s at all times. Bidders who do not comply with the face mask and/or the social distancing mand ate will be removed from the auction.

Said premises known as 1 335 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS, NEW YORK, NY

Approximate amount of lien $142,531 81 plus interest &amp ; costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale

Index Number 850161/2020

ALLISON FURMAN, ESQ., Referee

DRUCKMAN LAW GROUP PLLC

Attorney(s) for Plaintiff

242 Drexel Avenue, Westbury, NY 1159 0#

NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT COUNTY OF NEW YORK Morgan Stan ley Private Bank, National Associatio n, Plaintiff AGAINST Joseph J. Ceccarelli, III aka Jos eph J. Ceccarelli; Susan K. Lagholz aka Susan L. Cecc arelli aka Su san Langholz Cecc arelli; et al., Defendant(s) Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale du ly entered Ap ril 29, 2021 I, the undersigned Refe ree will sell at public auction at the Portico of the New York County Courthouse, 60 Centre St, New York, NY 10007 on Apr il 12, 2023 at 2:15 PM, premises known as 200 Ea st 32nd Street, New York City, NY 10016. All th at certain plot piece or parcel of land, with the buildings and improvements erecte d, situate, lyi ng and being in the Boro ugh of Manhattan, County, City and State of NY, Block 912 Lot 1165. Approximate amount of judgmen t $1,6 76,660.05 plus interest and costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index# 850018/2017. The auction will be con ducte d pur suant to the COVID-19 Po licies Concerning Public Au ctions of Foreclosed Property established by the First Judicial District Ar thur Greig, Esq., Referee LOGS Lega l Group LLP

f/k/a Shapiro , DiCaro & Barak, LLC Attorn ey(s) for the Plaintiff

175 Mile Cro ssing Boulevard Rochester, Ne w York 1462 4 (877) 430-4792

Dated: December 7, 20 22 74355

NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT: NEW YORK. RIMBAMBITO LLC, ET AL

V. L.I. BUILDERS CORP., ET AL Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale filed on September 27, 2022, bearing Inde x No 850 012/2022, I will sell at public auction on Wednesda y, April 19, 2023 at 2:15 pm on the portico at the New York Co un ty Supreme Court, 60 Centre Str eet, New York, NY 10007, the premises known as 59 John Street, Unit 4F, New York, NY 10038 (Block: 78, Lot: 1622) Premises is being so ld subject to a filed Judgment of Foreclosure an d Sale and Terms of Sale. Judgment amount $1,543 ,053.58 plus interest and costs. The foreclosure sale will be conducted in accordance with the 1st Judicial District's Covid-19 Policies. All parties attending must wear a mask and practice social distan cing. SCOTT SILLER, Esq., Re feree. Harry Zubli, Esq., attorne y for plaintiff (516) 487-5777.

SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY- HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf v. MALOU RIVERA BRAGANZA, Deft.Index # #850 030/2021. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale da ted September 26, 2022, I will sell at public auction Outside the Po rtico of the NY County Courthouse, 60 Ce ntre Street, NY, NY on Wedne sday, Ap ril 12, 2023, at 2:15 pm, an undivided 10,000/28 ,402,1 00 tenant in common interest in the timeshare known as HNY Club Suites located at 1335 Ave nue of the Amer icas, in the County of NY, State of NY. Approximate amount of judgment is $82,674.53 plus costs and interest as of January 12, 2022 Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale wh ich includes annual maintenance fees and charges Jeffr ey R. Miller, Esq., Referee. Cruser, Mitche ll, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston, & Zimet LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingd ale, NY

UTOPIAN COLLECTIVE LLC filed Ar ts of Org. with the SSNY on 11/11/20 22 Office location: NY County. SSNY ha s been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served and sh all mail process to: Elitia Mattox, 19 90 Lexington Ave., Ap t. 3K, New York, Ne w York, 10035. Purpose: Any lawful activity

Sprezz atura Pa rtners, LLC Articles of Org. filed NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 01/13/23. Office located in Ne w York Co SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: United States Co rporation Agents, Inc., 7014 13th Avenue, Suite 202, Brooklyn, NY 1 1228. Purpo se: any lawful activity

SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK INDEX NO. 850236/20 22 COUNTY OF NEW YORK

U.S. BANK TRUST NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, NOT IN ITS INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY BUT SOLELY AS OWNER TRUSTEE FOR RCF 2 ACQUISITION TRUST Plaintiff,

Plaintiff designates NEW YORK as the place of tria l situs of the real property

SUPPLEMENTAL SUMMONS

Mortgaged Prem ises: 418 CENTRAL PARK W EST, NEW YORK, NY 10025 Blo ck: 1837 , Lot: 1036 vs ALON BARASHI; B418 CPW LLC ; BOARD OF MANAGERS OF THE BRAENDER CONDOMINIUM, its successors and/or assigns; NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF TAXATION AND FINANCE; NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF FINANCE; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE; NEW YORK CITY PARKING VIOLATIONS

ROLECKS LLC Articles of Org. filed NY Se c. of State (SSNY) 07 /26/22. Office located in New York Co SSNY de signated agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail pr ocess to: 156A 83rd Street, Ne w York, NY 10028. Purpo se: any lawful activity

Ru by and Rosey LLC Articles of Org. filed NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 01 /07/23. Office located in New York Co SSNY de signated agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail pr ocess to: United States Corp oration Agents Inc., 7014 13th Ave, Su ite 202, Brooklyn, NY, 11228. Purpose: any lawful activity

No tice of Qualification of energyRe Services, LLC

Appl for Auth filed with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 02/15/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in De laware (DE) on 11/04/22.

Princ. o ffice of LLC: 30 Hu dson Yards, NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corp oratio n Service Co (CSC), 80 State St., Alban y, NY 12207-2543. DE addr of LLC: c/o CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 1 9808. Cert of Form filed with DE Secy of State, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 40 1 Federal St - Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19 901. Purpose: Any lawful activity

TICKET ME PINK LLC Arts of Org. filed with the SSNY on 02/13/23. Office : New York County. SSNY de signated as agent of the LLC upo n wh om process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLC, 178 Duane Street, 3rd Floor, Ne w York, NY 10013. Purpo se: Any lawful purpose.

Un ited Laundre LLC filed Arts of Org. with the SSNY on 11/16/2022. Office location: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agen t of the LL C upon whom process against it may be serv ed and shall mail process to: 2320 Frederick Douglass Blvd ., Ne w York, NY, 100 27 Purpo se: Any lawful activity

BUREAU; NEW YORK CITY ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL BOARD; NEW YORK CITY TRANSIT

ADJUDICATION BUREAU; THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK “JOHN DOE” (REFUSED

NAME) AS JOHN DOE #1; “JOHN DOE” (REFUSED

NAME) AS JOHN DOE #2; “JOHN DOE” (REFUSED

NAME) AS JO HN DOE #3, “JOHN DOE #4” through “JOHN DOE #12,” the last nine names being fictitious and unknown to plaintiff, the per sons or parties intended being the tenants, occupants, per sons or corporations, if any, having or claiming an interest in or lien upon the premises, de scribed in the comp la int, Defe ndants

To the above named De fendants

YOU ARE HEREBY SUMMONED to answer the Complaint in the abo ve entitled action and to serve a copy of your Answer on the plaintiffs attorn ey with in twenty (20) days of the service of this Summons, exclusive of the day of serv ice, or within thirty (30) days after service of the same is complete wh er e service is made in an y ma nner other than by personal delivery with in the State. The Un ited States of America, if designa ted as a defendant in this action, may answer or appea r within sixty (60) da ys of service. Your failur e to appear or to answer will result in a judgmen t against yo u by default for the re lief demanded in the Complaint. In the even t that a deficiency balan ce re mains from the sale proceeds, a judgment may be entered against you.

NOTICE OF NATURE OF ACTION AND RELIEF SOUGHT

THE OBJECT of the above caption action is to foreclose a Mortgage to secure the sum of $741,000.00 and interest, recorded on June 21, 2016, in CRFN 2016000207933, of the Public Re cords of NEW YORK County, New York., covering premises known as 418 CENTRAL PARK WEST, NEW YORK, NY 10 02 5.

The relief sought in the within action is a final judgment directing the sale of the premises de scribed above to satisfy the debt secured by the Mortgage described above.

NEW YORK County is designated as the place of trial because the real property affected by this action is located in said county.

NOTICE

YOU ARE IN DANGER OF LOSING YOUR HOME

If you do not respond to this summon s and complaint by serv ing a copy of the answer on the attorney for the mortgage company who filed this fo reclosure proceeding against you and filing the answer with the court, a defau lt judgment may be entered and you can lose your home Speak to an attor ney or go to the cour t wher e your ca se is pending for further information on how to answer the summons and protect your prop er ty

Sending a payment to the mortgage compan y will not stop the foreclosure action. YOU MUST RESPOND BY SERVING A COPY OF THE ANSWER ON THE ATTORNEY FOR THE PLAINTIFF (MORTGAGE COMPANY) AND FILING THE ANSWER WITH THE COURT

Da ted: February 24, 20 23

ROBERTSON, ANSCHUTZ, SCHNEID, CRANE & PARTNERS, PLLC

Attorney for Plaintiff Matthew Rothstein, Esq. 900 Merchants Concourse, Suite 310 Westbury, NY 11590 516-280-7675#

SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY- HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf v. ROSA LIE T. MALONEY, Deft.- In dex #850005 /2022. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated March 2, 2023, I will se ll at public auction Outside on the Portico, NY County Courthouse, 60 Centre Str eet, NY, NY on W ednesday, April 12, 2023, at 2:15 pm, two undivided 0.00986400000% tenants in common interest in the timeshare known as 57th Str eet Vacation Suites lo cated at 102 West 57th Street, in the County of NY, State of NY Appr oximate amount of judgment is $51,714.89 plus costs an d in terest as of April 22, 202 2. Sold subject to terms and condition s of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale which include s a nnual maintenance fees and charges Allison Furman, Esq., Refe ree. Cruser, Mitchell & Novitz, LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingda le, NY

CRYSTAL UP! LLC filed Ar ts of Org. with the SSNY on 12/02/2022. Office loca tion: One Commerce Plaza, 99 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12231, New

Ha ar ex Laboratorie s LLC filed Ar ts of Org. with the SSNY on 12/22/2022. Office:

Ne w York County. SSNY has been designated as agen t the LL C upon whom proces against it may be serv ed and shall mail to: Firstbase Agent LLC, 477 Broad way, Ne York, NY 10013. Purp ose: an y lawful act.

Guangs tar LLC filed Ar ts of Org. with the SSNY on 1/17/2023. Office loca tion: NY County. SSNY has been de signated as a gent of th e LLC upo n whom process against it may be serv ed and shall mail to: 307 W. 111th St., Apt. 2R, NY, NY, 10026. Purpo se: any lawful activity

Zobuilden LLC filed Arts of Org. with the SSNY on 02/05/2023. Office: New York Co un ty SSNY ha s been designat ed as a gent of the LL C upon whom process against it may be serv ed and shall mail to: Reindaldo Alvarado, 3556 Webster Ave. Purp ose: any lawful act.

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Opening Day is a week away for Mets and Yankees

By RASHID MCDONALD

Special to the AmNews

With only one week until Opening Day, the Mets and Yankees are making the final cuts and sorting out roster spots to begin the 2023 season. Unfortunately, the question marks have turned into legitimate concern for both teams heading into their respective first series of the season.

The Mets will be in Miami next Thursday to face the Marlins, which were 69–93 last season. In the opener of a four-game season Max Scherzer will be the starter for the Mets, which had a record of 101–61 a season ago. The ace of the pitching staff went 11–5 and posted the best ERA of his career at 2.29 in 2022.

Yet, the lingering memory of Scherzer allowing seven runs against the Padres in Game 1 of the National League Wild Card Series will be etched in the minds of Mets fans. The Mets dropped the series to the Padres 2–1.

Scherzer, who turns 39 in July, can create positive last-

ing thoughts by having another strong regular season and redeeming himself in the playoffs if his team gets there. The Mets lost Jacob deGrom, one of the most dominant pitchers in the franchise’s history, in free-agency to the Texas Rangers. However, with the addition of 2022 American League Cy Young Award winner Justin Verlander and three-time Nippon (Japanese) Professional League All-Star Kodai Senga to the rotation, manager Buck Showalter’s squad should still have a strong rotation.

The 40-year-old Verlander led all of MLB last season with a 1.75 ERA and was second in wins with 18.

Next Thursday in the Bronx, the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole, who was 13–8 in 2022 and topped MLB with 257 strikeouts, is scheduled to be on the mound to take on the San Francisco Giants. Who will follow Cole is a question that is likely to be answered by Yankees manager Aaron Boone in the coming days.

Lefty Nestor Cortes is gradually recovering from a ham -

string strain and former Giants lefthander Carlos Rodon, who signed a $162 million deal with the team in the offseason, has been shut down with a forearm strain and will be on the injured list Opening Day. Key injuries have piled up for both Mets and Yankees over the past few weeks, and those voids must be filled. None bigger is the void in the Mets’ bullpen after closer Edwin Diaz tore the patellar tendon in his right knee during Puerto Rico’s World Baseball Classic team’s victory over the Dominican Republic on March 15. Diaz will be out for the entire 2023 season. Last season, he was a dominant 3–1 with 32 saves and a 1.31 ERA. Diaz is in the first year of a five-year, $105 million contract.

Japan edges Team USA 3-2 in gripping WBC final

By JAIME C. HARRIS AmNews Sports Editor

The ending of the World Baseball Classic on Tuesday night at LoanDepot Park in Miami, Florida, couldn’t have been more dramatically scripted by a movie screenwriter.

Japan’s Shohei Ohtani, the 2021 American League MVP, dominant as both a pitcher and hitter since entering Major League Baseball from Nippon Professional Baseball in 2018, faced Mike Trout, a three-time American League MVP and arguably the sport’s best player over the past decade.

With defending champion Team USA down 3–2 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning and the count 3–2, the Los Angeles Angels teammates stared each other down. Ohtani, who was Japan’s designated hitter in the championship game before being called on a closer, then unleashed a wicked whirling slider that Trout could not manipulate his bat to touch. Game over. WBC over. Exuberant celebration by Japan and their fans.

“This really proves that Japanese baseball can beat any team in the world,” said Ohtani after the Japanese baseball program captured its third WBC title in five tournaments since the event’s inception in 2006. “It was a very short time, but I really enjoyed playing with my teammates,” gushed the 28-year-old sensation, who may

be the most coveted free-agent in baseball history—his contract with the Angels is set to expire at the end of this season.

Over the 12 days the WBC was held, it proved to be one of the most compelling and appealing sporting spectacles on the planet. Some of the game’s brightest and richest stars played for the pure love of the game, the opportunity to represent their country, and to show they are indeed among baseball’s elite.

Chicago White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson Jr. used the WBC to affirm the latter. He was called on to play second base in the tournament so Team USA manager Mark DeRosa could maximize his club’s offense. The 29-year-old from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, won the Silver Slugger Award, which honors the best offensive player at each position in both the American and National Leagues, in 2020; led MLB in batting with a .335 average in 2019; and was an All-Star in 2021 and last season.

“I’m always out to prove something,” he said to reporter Ken Rosenthal, who works for both Fox, which broadcast the WBC, and The Athletic. “Just to be among some of the greats—I just get a chance for the world to see what kind of athlete I am. And also, the guys get to know what kind of person I am—the human being.”

The WBC provided that platform, and Japan and Team USA gave baseball fans a memorable closing act.

Mets closer Edwin Diaz will be out for the entire 2023 season after tearing the patellar tendon in his right knee while celebrating Puerto Rico’s win over Dominican Republic in World Baseball Classic (Wikipedia photo)

Players for Team USA meet at the mound on Tuesday night in their eventual 3-2 loss to Japan in the WBC championship game (USABaseball.com photo)

Lower seeds look to continue their March Madness magic

By VINCENT DAVIS Special to the AmNews

Every bracket has been broken. None are intact. It's been that way since Round 1 of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. March Madness is in effect.

Tri-state area teams have done their part in wrecking the brackets. Fairleigh Dickinson University, a No. 16 seed, and Princeton, a No. 15 seed, both repping New Jersey, opened the first round with shocking upsets.

FDU defeated No. 1 seed Purdue 63–58 last Friday in the East region, only the second time in the tournament’s history a 16-seed beat a 1-seed. Princeton knocked off No. 2 seed Arizona 59–55 last Thursday in the South region.

Princeton, the fourtholdest institution of higher learning in the United States, chartered before the American Revolution, didn't stop there. They ad -

vanced to Round 2 last week, decisively defeating 7-seeded Missouri last Saturday by 78–63, earning the right to play in this week's Sweet 16, which begins today. They’ll face No. 6 seed Creighton tomorrow night.

FDU, looking to make it to Madison Square Garden, a short drive from their Teaneck campus and site of the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 for the East region, fell to Florida Atlantic University 78–70 on Sunday night. Creighton, one of three Big East teams in the Sweet 16, defeated NC State 72–63 and Baylor 85–76.

The University of Connecticut, out of the Big East and No. 4 in the West region, will meet up with No. 8 Arkansas this evening. UConn, projected by many pundits to go deep into the bracket, eliminated Iona in Round 1 by 87–63. They took care of No. 6 seed Saint Mary's College 70–55. Days after Iona’s loss, their now former head coach, Rick Pitino, signed a sixyear deal to become the new head coach for St. John’s.

Two No. 1 seeds remain: the

Alabama Crimson Tide in the South, and the Houston Cougars in the Midwest. The Tide defeated Texas A&M by 96–75 and pulled away from Maryland in the second half for a 73–51 victory. The Tide will play No. 5 San Diego State tomorrow. Houston dismissed Northern Kentucky by 63–52 and battled Auburn for a 81–64 win.

The Cougars, which reached the Elite 8 last year and the Final Four in 2021, also plays tomorrow, facing the University of Miami. Houston had a major challenge getting past Auburn. "I was most disappointed in our competitiveness in the first half," said their head coach, Kelvin Sampson, after his team was behind 41–31 at halftime. Sampson's adjustments limited Auburn to 31 second half points while his offense picked it up and scored 50. "Second half, we made it hard for them to score,” he noted.

The Cougars have added incentive to reach the Final Four as it will be played at NRG Stadium in Houston.

WNBA star Angel McCoughtry featured in new Fuse series “Like a Girl”

By LOIS ELFMAN Special to the AmNews

Two-time Olympic gold medalist and WNBA veteran Angel McCoughtry is hoping to return to WNBA action this summer with a team that appreciates her skills honed through college, the league, and international play. In the meantime, those interested in her journey can check out Fuse Media’s unscripted series “Like a Girl,” which debuts on March 29. Former baller Beija Marie Velez speaks with several female athletes who provide their perspective on women in sports.

“Obviously, I get into a lot of the issues that we face as women, as athletes,” said McCoughtry, the top pick in the 2009 WNBA Draft. “Different things we fought [for] to get to where we are now.”

No subject was off limits for Paralympic swimmer Anastasia Pagonis, beach volleyball champion April Ross, skateboarder Jennifer Soto, and other athletes as they discussed challenges they face on and off the field, such as mental health, social stigmas, body image, and racial inequality.

“Playing overseas and in the WNBA for 10 years straight with no break, that is not normal,” said McCoughtry, who has played professionally in Turkey, Slovakia, Hungary, and Russia. “I spoke about my

experiences that I’ve faced and also added experiences I’ve seen through others.”

Last month, McCoughtry participated in USA Basketball’s training camp in Minneapolis, which provided a good opportunity to show her skills are sharp. “I’m back healthy again,” she said. “The Olympics are next year, so I’m hoping I can contend at least one more time…I have a lot left in the tank and I have a lot of experience.”

“Like a Girl” gave McCoughtry a chance to speak about the grind that WNBA players face with nearly year-round play. “I discuss a lot of deep aspects on the show,” she said. “It’s not easy to go live in another country for seven or eight months. I explain a lot about the life and the journey of it. We need more storytelling on those aspects.”

McCoughtry is also an entrepreneur, having opened McCoughtry’s Ice Cream store in Atlanta. The store closed during the pandemic, but she’s reopening it this spring. It’s all homemade ice cream, and there are some unique delicious flavors. She has a mobile truck that will be seen at various festivals and events in Atlanta, and she is in the process of exploring a new storefront.

This week, she’ll be watching the NCAA March Madness women’s basketball tournament and cheering for her alma mater, University of Louisville.

Angel McCoughtry works for a WNBA return (WNBA photo)

UConn center Adama Sanogo will lead the Huskies into their Sweet 16 matchup versus Arkansas tonight (Uconnhuskies.com photo)

Upsets mark opening rounds of NCAA Tournament

By LOIS ELFMAN Special to the AmNews

Perhaps the biggest upset of the opening rounds of the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament was Stanford’s loss to Ole Miss in the round of 32. It was the first time a regional number-one seed has failed to advance to the Sweet 16 since 2009 and the first time since 2007 that the Cardinal didn’t make the Sweet 16.

All four teams from New York and New Jersey have exited the Tournament. Monmouth was defeated by Tennessee Tech in the First Four/Round of 68. St. John’s won an incredibly close First Four battle with Purdue, but then lost an equally close game to North Carolina in the round of 64. Iona was overpowered by Duke in its first round game. Princeton upset NC State in the first round on a thrilling closing seconds threepointer from senior Grace Stone. The second round game was a ferocious battle, but Utah came away with the win.

Louisiana State University has advanced to the Sweet 16, play-

ing with confidence and conviction. Now under the leadership of head coach Kim Mulkey, who led Baylor to three NCAA titles, the team is poised to return to its place on the national stage.

“When I watch the ladies play, the atmosphere is electric,” said Marie Ferdinand-Harris, LSU alumna and former WNBA player.

“It’s heartwarming to see the program moving in the right direction…Kim Mulkey brings that passion. As a player, that’s what you want because it motivates you to play even harder.”

South Carolina, the overall top seed in the Tournament, has advanced through the first two rounds with ease. After its first-round win

Columbia reaches Super 16 in the WNIT

By LOIS ELFMAN Special to the AmNews

Before Monday night’s women’s basketball game between Columbia University and Fordham University, Columbia coach Megan Griffith was honored as the winningest coach in program history. By evening’s end, Griffith had increased her win total as Columbia edged Fordham 78–73 in a tight game that saw the lead change multiple times. With that victory, Columbia advanced to the Super 16 of the postseason WNIT.

“We left it all out there,” said Fordham’s interim head coach Candice Green. “We played our hearts out. All respect to Columbia, they played a fantastic game. There was a lot of up and down, a lot of nice shots.”

The top three scorers for Fordham were Jada Dapaa, Anna DeWolfe, and Asiah Dingle, who played all 40 minutes of what was her final collegiate game. Postgame, Dapaa spoke about raising her scoring thanks to Green’s confidence in her. “I’m honing in a lot on defense and getting rebounds,” Dapaa said. “Knowing [my teammates] trust me in giving me the ball and opportunities to score makes me trust myself.”

Griffith referred to the game as a great

battle between two very experienced teams. “It was a fun game to coach; it was a fun game for these guys to play,” said Griffith. “Big time players on both sides of the ball.”

Top scorer for Columbia Abbey Hsu echoed Griffith’s sentiments. Other Lions in double figures were Kaitlyn Davis, Hannah Pratt, and Jaida Patrick.

“We don’t like to keep it that close, but it’s March—they’re going to bring their best game,” said Hsu.

The Lions face Syracuse University at Levien Gymnasium on Friday. Syracuse earned its spot in the round of 16 by defeating Seton Hall University. While Griffith was clearly happy to be advancing in the WNIT, she is still frustrated that Columbia didn’t earn a spot in the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament.

“I thought we should have had two teams from the [Ivy] League in the Tournament,” said Griffith, noting that Princeton upset NC State in the first round.

“We were better than [Princeton] the entire season until the very last week [Princeton won the Ivy League Tournament]. Our net was higher. Our résumé was better. We beat them at least once. It makes no sense; we should have been in the Tournament.”

over Norfolk State, an HBCU, South Carolina coach Dawn Staley visited the losing team’s locker room to offer the players encouragement. She also praised the team in the post-game press conference.

“It was great hearing that Dawn Staley can see that our team is more than what most people see us as…We’re just getting

started and we’re going to continue to make history,” said sophomore guard and Brooklyn native Da’naijah Williams.

“To be able to hear these words from such a remarkable coach and see that she meant it and didn’t just say it to say it was a great feeling,” said sophomore guard Niya Fields, from Peekskill.

Da’naijah Williams of Norfolk State (Nick Sutton/Kinetic Stills photo)

NJ native Diamond Miller of University of Maryland is aiming for the Final Four (Maryland Athletics photo)

Senior Jaida Patrick played huge role in Columbia’s win over Fordham (Columbia University Athletics/Kathy Fang photo)

Asiah Dingle of Fordham played all 40 minutes versus Columbia (Fordham Athletics photo)

Knicks enter stretch run as franchise mourns ‘the Captain’

By JAIME C. HARRIS AmNews Sports Editor

The Knicks were in Miami last night to face the Heat, one day after the death of franchise and NBA icon Willis Reed on Tuesday from congestive heart failure. Known as the Captain, Reed was the heart and soul of the organization’s two NBA titles in 1970 and 1973. The Grambling Tiger great played his entire career with the Knicks from 1964–1974. He was one of the most revered and respected figures in the history of New York sports teams.

“The Knicks organization is deeply saddened to announce the passing of our beloved Captain, Willis Reed,” the Knicks said in a statement. “As we mourn, we will always strive to uphold the standards he left behind—the unmatched leadership, sacrifice, and work ethic that personified him as a champion among champions.”

NBA commissioner Adam Silver also paid tribute to Reed, a 6'10'' center who was the 1965 NBA’s Rookie of the Year, 1970 league MVP, a seven-time AllStar, and honoree of the NBA’s 50th and 75th anniversary teams.

“Willis Reed was the ultimate team player and consummate leader. My earliest and fondest memories of NBA basketball are of watching Willis, who embodied the winning spirit that defined the New York Knicks’ championship teams in the early 1970s,” said Silver in a statement released through the league.

Reed also coached the Knicks from 1977–78, as well as Creighton from 1981–85 and the New Jersey Nets from 1988–89.

The current group of Knicks is trying to continue the legacy established by Reed. On Monday at Madison Square Garden, Julius Randle scored a careerhigh 57 points, but it came in a 140–134 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves. Randle’s

tone after the game reflected his desire to win more so than achieving individual accomplishments.

“Those are legends in this game, and pioneers specifically for this organization, who laid the groundwork and led the way for players like myself to come behind them and be able to play the game I love and be able to go out and put on that Knicks jersey with pride," Randle said.

“I just want to win,” he said of being behind Carmelo Anthony’s franchise record 62 points and Bernard King’s 60. Richie Guerin also scored 57.

The Knicks were 42–31 and the No. 5 seed in the East before playing Miami. They were 3.5 games behind No. 4 seed Cleveland Cavaliers. They have eight more regular season games remaining, including tonight versus the Magic in Orlando and the Houston Rockets and Miami Heat at MSG next Monday and Wednesday respectively.

As Simmons continues to sit, Nets labor to gain wins

By JAIME C. HARRIS AmNews Sports Editor

The Nets’ 115-109 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Tuesday night at the Barclays Center marked the 14th straight game that forward Ben Simmons has been out of the team’s lineup due to knee and back soreness. He hasn’t played since Feb. 15, and the Nets could use him after losing four in a row heading into tonight’s rare second consecutive game at home against the same opponent, the Cavaliers.

While the 26-year-old Simmons has not performed at the level this season that earned him three-All-Star game selections (2019–2021), an All-NBA Third Team honor (2020), and two NBA All-Defensive First Team accolades (2020, 2021), his presence would add depth, ball handling, and defense to a team that has been uneven since trading Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant nearly seven weeks ago.

In 42 games, the 6-10 Simmons is averaging 6.9 points, 6.3 rebounds, and 6.1 assists in 26.3 minutes.

The Nets are 39-33 with 10 games remaining, with six of them against teams with records under .500 when the NBA schedule began last night (Wednesday). They were sixth in the Eastern Conference standings, one place above a Play-In Tournament spot, which the No.7 through No. 10 seeds will hold at the conclusion of the regular season. Head coach Jacque Vaughn’s group was just half a game ahead of the No. 7 Miami Heat and two and a half games behind the No. 5 seed Knicks, which faced the Heat in Miami last night.

As far as Simmons’ potential return, Vaughn is confident he’ll return before the Nets’ last regular season game on April 9 against the Philadelphia 76ers in Brooklyn. “There is zero discussion about him not playing,” he emphatically stated last week. “We expect him to be back, we’re waiting for him to be back.”

Until that happens, if at all, they will have to coalesce with the players that are available. They were 20th in the 30-team NBA in scoring at 113.4 points per game prior to yesterday’s slate of games and 12th in defense, with opponents’ averages of 112.8 ppg on 46.2% shooting overall, and 37.1%

on 3-point attempts, the latter slightly above the league average of 36.1%.

The Nets had no effective solutions to stopping the Cavaliers explosive guard Donovan Mitchell on Tuesday. The league’s eighth leading scorer (27.4) torched them for 31 points and the Cavaliers were plus20 when he was on the court. His performance was highlighted by a poster-worthy dunk over Nets forward Yuta Watanabe. “I don’t know if it’s my best one, but it’s definitely up there,” Mitchell said when asked about it after the game.

Forward Day’Ron Sharpe led the Nets with 20 points off of the bench, and starting point guard Spencer Dinwiddie had 19. The Nets will travel to Florida to play the Heat on Saturday and the Orlando Magic on Sunday, then will return to Barclays to face the Houston Rockets next Wednesday.

Ben Simmons Spencer Dinwiddie

Knicks forward Julius Randle scored a career-high 57 points on Monday at Madison Square Garden, one day before the passing of franchise and NBA legend Willis Reed (Left photo credit: Bill Moore, right photo credit: Wikipedia)

Nets point guard Spencer Dinwiddie scored 19 points on Tuesday in a 115-109 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers while forward Ben Simmons missed his 14th straight game with injuries. (Bill Moore photos)

Julius Randle

Willis Reed