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Chancellor Banks checks out PS 161’s Summer Rising program

New York City Schools Chancellor David

Banks visited PS 161 Pedro Albizu Campos at 499 W. 133 Street in Manhattan to tour the school’s Summer Rising site.

PS 161, which serves grades kindergarten through 8th grade, is conducting its Summer Rising program from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. through August 19. The school places high priority on student engagement and has focused classroom learning this summer on an array of hands-on learning activities, especially in their arts and STEM classes.

Chancellor Banks had the opportunity to jump into a STEM class and an arts class to fully engage with Summer Rising programming before transitioning to the “CBO Carnival Space” where partnered CBOs (community-based organizations) host games and activities for students daily.

—Compiled by Karen Juanita Carrillo

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found veritably false and likely coerced.

These overturned convictions mark 33 individuals exonerated by Gonzalez’s Conviction Review Unit. According to VOCAL-NY, New York wrongfully convicts the third most people nationwide, with a staggering 3,068 years stolen from those imprisoned since 1989. To the nonprofit’s Civil Rights Union leader Roger Clark, the trio’s exoneration is just the “tip of the iceberg.”

“We have a wrongful conviction problem,” he said. “There were unscrupulous prosecutors who would do anything to get somebody convicted. They didn’t care what the charges were, [they didn’t] care if you were innocent or guilty. They simply used to convict. And I remember that clearly, because when I was 20 years old, I was accused of a shooting that I did not commit.”

Irons and Malik returned home after nearly three decades in prison. And Ellerbe recently wrapped up his parole while avoiding recidivism. Ronald Kuby, who represents Malik and Ellerbe, believes his clients are doing well, given the circumstances. The renowned civil rights lawyer says the two returned to supportive families. For Ellerbe, the overturned conviction means an easier time applying for work around the city, while Malik is moving out of New York to live in the countryside with his wife, who he knew before his sentence and married in prison. He met with his mom before departing town.

But leaving the outside as a teenager in 1995 and returning to a world of smart fridges, face-recognition lock screens and selfdriving cars is quite the time portal.

“I don’t think Tommy has moved up to QR codes yet,” said Kuby. “I know he has an email address his wife is setting up for him. He’s getting a cellphone.”

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 today by visiting: https:// tinyurl.com/fcszwj8w

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communities accept that. Exclusive monogamy doesn’t fit with our realities, our customs.

“We can’t just copy-paste legislation that was put in place in Western countries. We have to give people the option,” he maintains.

While polygamy has declined in recent years it is still widely accepted in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Nigeria, with a 10th of the population living in polygamous households, according to a 2019 study conducted by the Pew Research Center.

In Ivory Coast, 12% of all households are polygamous, according to the same study.

In Kenya, almost 1.5 million Kenyans––or 10% of the married population––are in a polygamous marriage, according to the Kenya Population and Housing Census. But women’s rights groups call this a gross underestimate as most of these marriages are customary and not registered.

The prospect of returning to outdated traditions has women’s rights advocates seeing a step back in the fight for equality.

“We can’t legalize polygamy to satisfy a man’s libido,” legal expert Désirée Okobé told the French news service France24.

“A man chooses to have more than one wife for personal, egotistical reasons. Legalizing polygamy would be a setback for Ivorian women who still face systemic inequalities and discrimination,” she said in an interview.

“It’s an excuse to justify the unjustifiable. This is not for women. This is all about men getting their way,” she says.

Most polygamous marriages across Africa fuel poverty, activists say, with husbands neglecting one family over another––leaving thousands of women and children impoverished and easy prey for exploitation.

Women’s rights organizations in Ivory Coast say they will fight the bill and do everything they can to prevent it from becoming part of the law. Former solidarity and women’s rights minister Constance Yai has been one of the most vocal critics of Sangare’s plan.

“All the noise you are hearing is being made by people who are using this law as a pretext to express once again their resentment of women,” she said. “This is nothing new. The [equality] law merely formalizes what we all knew already - gender equality in marriage. Protesting against this law should stop.”

The U.N. Commission on Human Rights and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women consider that polygamous marriages discriminate against women and have recommended their prohibition.

FUNDING FOR AFRICAN VICTIMS OF DROUGHT SEES DEEP CUTS AS MONEY FLOWS TO EUROPE

(GIN)––The war in Ukraine is draining millions of dollars away from crises in Africa as funds are being redirected to Europe.

Somalia, facing a food shortage largely driven by the war, could be the most vulnerable. Its aid funding is less than half of last year’s level while Western donors have sent more than $1.7 billion to respond to the war in Europe.

A $2.2 billion appeal for Ukraine is almost 80% funded, according to U.N. data––an “exceptional” level for any crisis at the midway point of the year. By comparison, a smaller appeal for Somalia is just 30% funded.

“They’re not saying openly, ‘We’re focused on Ukraine,’” said Nimo Hassan, director of the Somalia NGO Consortium. “But you can see what they’re doing in Ukraine.”

Hassan and several others said they believe donor countries understand the urgency, but decision-makers in capitals like Brussels and London appear distracted by the war in Europe.

In one case, a donor preparing to give a half-million dollars to a Somali aid group told its executive director and former Somali vice president Hussein Kulmiye it was redirecting the money to help Ukrainians instead.

Meanwhile, over 80 million people in the eastern African region are food insecure. Acute malnutrition is high, especially among children.

“We’re really trying to stave off mass deaths at this point,” Sarah Charles, assistant to the administrator for USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, told the AP, adding that “unfortunately, the nature of these crises is such that they go slow and then go very fast.”

At a single hospital in Somalia, more than two dozen children have died of hunger in the past two months. Dr. Yahye Abdi Garun has watched their emaciated parents as they stumble in from rural areas that are gripped by the driest drought in decades. And yet no humanitarian aid arrives.

Fleeing the drought, Somalis fill more than 500 camps in the city of Baidoa. There, aid workers are forced to make “horrific” choices to help one camp and ignore 10 others, Norwegian Refugee Council Secretary General Jan Egeland said, telling the Associated Press he is “angry and ashamed.” His group’s Ukraine appeal was fully funded within 48 hours, but its Somalia appeal is perhaps a quarter funded as thousands of people die.

AS YOU PREPARE TO HEAD TO THE POLLS FOR THE MID-TERM ELECTIONS, WHAT ISSUE(S) MATTER MOST TO YOU? FOR EXAMPLE:

• Are you concerned about the rising cost of living? • Is crime a top concern? • Does the impact of COVID-19 remain a concern? • Is climate change top of mind? • Are you concerned about prescription drug costs? • Are you concerned about the future of abortion rights?

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