Religion & Spirituality

Bernard Shaw, CNN’s first anchor, is dead at 82

By HERB BOYD

Special to the AmNews

As we waited to be inducted into the National Association Black Journalists Hall of Fame in 2014, there was an exchange of pleasantries and congratulations, and then we both fell into silence. It appeared to me that Bernard Shaw was not one for small talk, his words resonated on the airwaves, particularly on CNN where he was the network’s first chief anchor. Shaw joined the ancestors on Wednesday, Sept. 7, succumbing to pneumonia. He was 82.

His death was confirmed by CNN and was unrelated to COVID-19. He leaves behind his wife, Linda, and two children.

“Bernie was a CNN original and was our Washington anchor when we launched on June 1st, 1980,” said Chris Light, CNN chair and CEO. And for the next 20 years that was Shaw’s seat, his commanding voice and full afro reporting the latest news, especially from abroad or covering presidential elections. Most viewers became familiar with his incisive live reportage on the First Gulf War from Baghdad in 1991. “Even after he left CNN, Bernie remained a close member of our CNN family providing our viewers with context about historic events as recently as last year,” Light continued. “The condolences of all of us at CNN go out to his wife Linda and his children.”

Shaw was born May 22, 1940 in Chicago, Illinois. His father was a railroad employee and house painter, and his mother a housekeeper. He attended the University of Illinois at Chicago from 1963 to 1968. As a U.S. Marine, he served two stints—one in Hawaii and another in Cherry Point Air Station in N.C., where he was a specialist in the “Message Center.” There he increased his passion for print media, amassing a sizable collection of clippings and traveling to the nation’s capital. Along the way he cultivated a relationship with Walter Cronkite.

Before joining CNN, Shaw was a reporter and anchor for WNUS in 1964, Westinghouse Broadcasting, CBS News, and ABC News where he was Latin Correspondent and bureau chief before becoming the Capitol Hill’s senior correspondent.

One of the first big stories he covered at CNN was the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, working in concert with Daniel Schorr. Together they gave the new station added ballast and credibility.

Shaw gained further recognition when while moderating a presidential debate in 1988, he asked Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis, a known opponent of the death penalty, would he hold to that position if his wife was the victim of rape and murder. Dukakis said he would not, and the question ignited a firestorm of reaction. During his 1991 coverage of the First Gulf War, he secured shelter under a desk while reporting on missiles flying past his window. “Clearly I’ve never been there, but this feels like we’re in the center of hell,” he stated.

From 1992 to 2001, he co-anchored CNN’s “Inside Politics,” which was his last position at the station before retirement. Even so, there were numerous appearances with Judy Woodruff and Erin Burnett.

Besides his NABJ honor, Shaw was the recipient of a bevy of awards, including the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism in 1994; the Paul White Award, Radio Television Digital News Association in 1996; he was inducted as a laureate of the Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the state’s highest honor) by the governor of Illinois in the area of communication.

Upon departure from CNN, he said: “My best time has been simply being here, helping to do what attracts you, our viewers, your demand to be informed instantly with knowledgeable context and insight. And to you around the world and across our great land here in the United States, more than your praise I have valued your criticism and your suggestions. Scrutiny can be instructive,” he told viewers. “Harder than entering this business, is leaving it, and leaving CNN, especially after 20 years here. But you know, some roses are so fragrant. And as a gardener, I want to grow and smell them more—when I’m not writing.”

UnFOILed: Gwen Carr continues to seek justice for son Eric Garner

By TANDY LAU

Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member

In Gwen Carr’s search for closure, a case remains open. The mother of Eric Garner spent last Wednesday morning attending oral arguments for a legal battle over redacted information in the police records relevant to her son’s 2014 death at the hands of ex-NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo.

“The DOJ failed us, everyone failed us—that’s why I’m still out here today,” said Carr after the arguments. “One commissioner did fire Pantaleo, that was a step in the right direction. But we must go further. We have to get those other officers fired.”

Pantaleo was fired in 2019 by then-Police Commissioner James O’Neill under the recommendation of Deputy Commissioner of Trials Rosemarie Maldonado. According to Danny Kim of the Justice Committee, no one else lost their job over Garner’s death. Next to Carr, allies held signs demanding the firings of officer Justin D’Amico and NYPD Lt. Christopher Bannon.

The lawsuit stems from a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request filed by Carr, the Justice Committee and Communities United for Police Reform in August 2019. They sought public access to the police records to identify those culpable in Garner’s death and subsequent investigations. But when the request was met, the NYPD’s response was full of redactions and omissions. The police department argues the redactions are to protect the privacy of officers and witnesses.

“Today was an interim victory in this struggle to get every scrap of paper from the police department and from the CCRB,” said Carr’s lawyer Gideon Oliver. “And every other record that relates to the police department’s killing of Eric Garner and related investigations and discipline. We’ve been litigating these Freedom of Information Law requests for years now.

“And although we don’t yet have a final decision from the court, what happens today is a positive step toward shaking loose for records on top of the 10s of 1000s of pages of records that we’ve already managed to get from the police department and from the CCRB.”

“The NYPD has been fully transparent in its response to this FOIL request in accordance with the law,” said a New York City Law Department spokesman in a statement. “It has disclosed over 36,000 pages of records and 340 videos and audiotapes. We are reviewing the judge’s interim order and will respond accordingly.”

This isn’t the first time Carr encountered bureaucratic roadblocks when requesting public records on Garner’s death. Civil Rights Law 50-a initially concealed personal records of police, firefighters and correctional officers during such requests. But Panteleo’s history of allegations were leaked by a whistleblower in 2017 and the law was ultimately repealed in 2020 by Andrew Cuomo with the help of Carr’s co-petitioner, Communities United for Police Reform.

This past July marked the eighth anniversary of Garner’s death in Staten Island. It remains one of the most high-profile, national instances of police brutality in recent memory. Back in 2014, a viral video of the killing showed Pantaleo putting Garner in a banned chokehold while the 42-year-old man repeatedly said “I can’t breathe” before dying.

On Wednesday, Judge Erika Edwards kicked the can down the road, with the next court date on Nov. 17. Carr hopes the day will serve as one step closer to peace.

“It’s been eight long years, although it seems like yesterday to me because I’m still fighting—because I’m trying to get clarity and closure on my son’s murder,” she said. “And we want all the cops fired [that were] involved in my son’s death."

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

they knew their father did. So Ziggy [Zachary] said, how are we going to pay the bills? What’s going to happen? How are we going to live? Because they know that their father was the only one who went to work. They knew that we had one income.”

Sisters Yasmin, 10, and Aslin, 15, lost their father, Warren Bates, to COVID-19 on March 22, 2020––a mere eight days after he was admitted to the hospital. Aslin says, “It was rough. I couldn’t, like, focus as much at school.” Their mother, Ingrid Cardona, shared that: “It started affecting her academically. She was an honor student at that time. Honor Society, assistant principal’s award, and her academics declined, like really bad, to the point where she was actually struggling, and almost did not pass middle school.”

Low student engagement directly impacts academic performance and compounds the struggles of kids who lost a caregiver to COVID-19. Issues like grief, survivor’s guilt and possibly caring for other siblings after losing a parent negatively impact academic progress.

Some families took issue with the preparations made for public school reopening in Fall of 2021. Public school counselor and certified grief counselor, Diane Nathaniel, told the AmNews, “They said they were going to fund all this money for social emotional learning and mental health. But that did not happen. And it didn’t happen, because I guess it’s two-fold. You didn’t have enough therapists to do it.”

Grief-induced anxiety is another residual effect that bereaved children of COVID19 children in New York City are battling with. Both Madison and Yasmin, the youngest children of two affected families, are dealing with anxiety. Madison’s mother, Veronica Fletcher, shared that Madison has broken into hysterics when she leaves the house for simple grocery shopping. The fear of losing her mother is real. Veronica makes an effort to spend individual time with Madison, and also encourages journaling and supports her using her art as a form of therapy.

Ingrid Cardona, mother to 10-year-old Yasmin, shared that: “If any little thing like a cough, or I would come home from work and say I’m not feeling well, I can automatically see her demeanor change. You can see the face of fear and I’m like, everything is alright. And then she would cry and say: ‘I don’t want you to die Mommy. I don’t want you to die next, Mommy.’”

The Fletcher and Bates children have received therapy but not through city services. The Fletcher children get support from Diane Nathaniel, a certified grief counselor who is their church sister, and the Bates access private therapy sessions through Life Works, which Ingrid’s employment-based health insurance covers along with a copay.

Both families admit to needing help and support but would prefer if there was a framework in place for the help to find them. Veronica Fletcher remarked that school officials would say “let us know what we can do,” but reaching out for help is just another task on the list of things to do.

Suzan Sumer, associate press secretary for New York City Department Of Education, said in a statement to the AmNews that “every one of our schools is a caring, supportive environment where our students can connect with one another, communicate with a caring adult, and access the resources they need to heal. It’s our priority to provide our schools with the resources needed, such as School Crisis Teams, ensuring that every school has access to a mental health professional, such as a school social worker, to meet students where they are, centering their well-being through difficult times and beyond.”

Sumer went on to say that in-School Crisis Teams trained by Dr. David Schonfeld of the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement are available to facilitate guided conversations with students experiencing grief.

Community based organizations have received external funding to create programs specifically to support bereaved families. Montefiore Medical Center created the COVID-19 Family Resilience Program which provides personalized assessments, referrals to resources, and financial support to New York City and lower Hudson Valley families who have lost a loved one to COVID-19.

Montefiore created a portal that allowed MDs, RNs and social workers to make referrals and the team combed through records at Montefiore and did chart reviews to determine if deceased patients had children. Then the social work team reached out to the families to assess, which was a time consuming and labor-intensive process as it wasn’t done with automation.

New York Life has also launched the Grief-Sensitive Schools Initiative which aims to better equip educators and other school personnel to support grieving students, and supports Tuesday’s Children which builds the capacity of youth-serving community providers to support children in the U.S. who have lost a parent or primary caregiver in the pandemic.

The plans of COVID Collaborative and their partners will not immediately solve all the problems for these bereaved children. Dr. Jaynes openly admits that, “We’re using COVID as a wedge issue, to get in to get better resources to schools, mental health, broadly for bereavement more specifically, and then COVID. We know that COVID is going to come and go but what isn’t going to come and go is the impact of the death of a parent.”

For more information about COVID related resources in NYC including mental health and housing assistance visit: www1. nyc.gov/site/acs/about/covidhelp.page

You can also access resources on the AmNews COVID-19 page: amsterdamnews.com/covid/

Zachary Fletcher lost his father to COVID-19. “We became more sensitive. And, like, we felt lonely in the house too, like our family would never be, like, fine again.”

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Apartment Size Occupancy Income Limits Min-Max* 30-95% AMI**

One Bedroom Two Bedroom Three Bedroom 1-3 Persons 3-5 Persons 5-7 Persons $28,020 - $114,095 $36,030 - $136,895 $43,230 - $157,225

*Based upon the number of persons in household. **Please note, the rent will not be greater than 30% of the household’s gross income.

OCCUPANCY STANDARDS:

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• Applicant must be at least 18 Years old at the time of the lottery. • Applications are not transferable. • Applicants must be financially responsible. • Preference will be given to documented veterans selected in the lottery that are NY State residents only. • Any applicant that does not have the proper family composition will automatically be disqualified. • ONE REQUEST ONLY PER APPLICANT. Any applicant placing a duplicate request will not be entered into the lottery.

An applicant can only submit a paper entry or an on-line entry. If applicants enter on-line and also mail in a letter or postcard, they have submitted a duplicate request and will not be eligible for the lottery. • Applicants can only be on one waiting list at a development. If applicants have the right family composition, they can apply to more than one lottery. However, if they are selected for more than one lottery, they will have to choose which waiting list they prefer. • An applicant whose name is selected in a lottery cannot be included in the family composition of any other applicant who is selected in the same lottery for that particular housing company development.

Failure to comply will result in the disqualification of both applicants. Additional Information: The waiting lists will be established by a limited lottery. There will be a limit of 500 applicants drawn from each list from the One-Bedroom & Two-Bedroom Lotteries. There will be a limit of 200 applicants drawn from the Three-Bedroom Lottery. HOW TO APPLY: ONLINE You can now apply to a lottery online through Mitchell-Lama Connect. Applying is fast, easy and you will be able to check the status of your entry to see if you have been selected. To apply on line go to: https://a806-housingconnect.nyc.gov/nyclottery/lottery.html#ml-home BY MAIL Mail Post Card or Envelope by regular mail. Registered and Certified Mail will not be accepted. Clearly print your full first and last name, current address and last 4 digits of your social security number and the bedroom size lottery that you wish to apply for. If you do not include the last 4 digits of your social security number or fail to indicate the bedroom size lottery, you will not be entered into the lottery. Mail post card or envelope to:

RAHF IV Tower West, LLC One Bedroom Lottery P.O. Box 937 114 John Street New York, NY 10038 RAHF IV Tower West, LLC Two Bedroom Lottery P.O. Box 946 114 John Street New York, NY 10038

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