New York Amsterdam News Issue Dec. 28, 2023

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Vol. 114 No. 52 | December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024

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2 • December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024

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INDEX Arts & Entertainment �������������������Page 17 » Astro ��������������������������������������������Page 20 » Jazz �����������������������������������������������Page 17 » Theater �����������������������������������������Page 21 Caribbean Update �������������������������Page 14 Classified ����������������������������������������Page 32 Editorial/Opinion �����������������������Pages 12,13 Education ���������������������������������������Page 30 Go with the Flo ������������������������������Page 8 Health ����������������������������������������������Page 28 Community ��������������������������������������Page 9 Sports ��������������������������������������������� Page 40

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

January The year begins somberly with a slew of heartbreaking deaths: singer Anita Pointer, 74, of the Pointer Sisters and drummer Fred White, 67, of Earth, Wind & Fire, as well as the burial of Brazilian soccer king Pelé in his hometown in Brazil. Mayor Eric Adams was ticketed for rats at his Brooklyn townhouse and vowed to fight his own City Hall. There was some good news, though: New York State Governor Kathy Hochul, the state’s first female governor, and State Attorney General Letitia “Tish” James, the first Black woman to hold the position, are sworn in at the Empire State Plaza Convention Center in Albany by National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) President Dr. Hazel Dukes. House Democratic Leader and Congressmember Hakeem Jeffries delivers a stylized speech to “welcome” Majority Speaker Kevin McCarthy, after several rounds of tumultuous votes to appoint him. Justice Hector LaSalle loses nomination for chief judge of New York State. Actresses Angela Bassett from “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan from “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Quinta Brunson and actor Tyler James Williams from “Abbott Elementary,” and Zendaya from “Euphoria” win Golden Globes. Bassett goes on to be nominated for an Oscar for her “Black Panther” role at the 95th Academy Awards and wins Entertainer of the Year at the NAACP Image Awards. A look at Dr. Martin Luther King’s “beautiful, yet fraught” relationship with the Jewish community. Mounting political pressure to deal with the immigration crisis in the city prompts Adams to travel down South and connect with fellow Democratic mayor of El Paso Oscar Leeser.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis backs the state’s rejection of a proposed nationwide AP Black studies course, saying it pushes a political agenda. Memphis police officers are caught on video “savagely” beating motorist Tyre Nichols for 3 minutes, likened to the infamous 1991 police beating of motorist Rodney King. A nurses' strike at Mount Sinai Hospital and Montefiore Medical Center hospitals is

1. NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL LETITIA JAMES SWORN IN ALBANY BY NAACP

2. HOUSE DEMOCRATIC LEADER HAKEEM JEFFRIES ADDRESSES HOUSE REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS ON JAN 7.

JAN 2023

6. REV. HERB DAUGHTRY SPEAKS AT THE FUNERAL FOR ABE SNYDER.

FEB 2023

3. ANGELA BASSETT WINS GOLDEN GLOBE FOR “BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER” 5. EAGLES' JALEN HURTS HEADS TO SUPER BOWL LVII

4. PROTESTS ARISE OVER POLICE KILLING OF TYRE NICHOLS. CALLS FOR RACIAL JUSTICE AND REFORM TO POLICING INCREASE NATIONWIDE

8. CHIEFS WIN A CLASSIC SUPER BOWL LVII

Photo credit: 1. Don Pollard/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul photo 2. Hakeem Jeffries’ office photo 3. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL. 4. Family photo of Tyre Nichols 5.

Wikipedia All-ProReels 6. Daleel Muhammad photo 7. Brenika Banks photo 8. AP Photo/Matt Slocum

December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024 • 3

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

quickly resolved with ratified contracts after a few days. Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs and Jalen Hurts of the Philadelphia Eagles are the first Black quarterbacks in U.S. history to face off in a Super Bowl.

7. BEYONCÉ ANNOUNCES THE SOON-TO-BE ICONIC RENAISSANCE WORLD TOUR

February

14. THE FIRST CREWED MISSION AROUND THE MOON IN MORE THAN 50 YEARS WILL HAVE A BLACK ASTRONAUT PILOT, VICTOR GLOVER

15. ROWAN D. WILSON BECOMES CHIEF JUDGE OF NEW YORK STATE COURT OF APPEALS

16.HARRY BELAFONTE PASSES AWAY AT 96

9. ASYLUM-SEEKER INFLUX CONTINUES

MAR 2023

10. HONORING HIT-ANDRUN VICTIMS TAMIKA RICHARDS AND RAYQUAN

APR 2023

11. RUTH E. CARTER POSES BACKSTAGE WITH HER OSCAR® WIN

12. LANCE REDDICK HAS PASSED AWAY

13. MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEY ALVIN BRAGG VERSUS FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP

Beyoncé wins her 32nd award at the Grammys and announces the soon-to-be iconic Renaissance World Tour. Viola Davis’s Grammy win for audiobook makes her an EGOT. The Brooklyn Nets trade NBA player Kyrie Irving, going to the Dallas Mavericks after a controversial year. The city ends the COVID-19 vaccination mandate for city employees. Harlem’s African American Day Parade founder Abe Snyder dies at age 87. Adams denies he has a rat problem at city hearing.

Locally collected data shows that mostly Black and low-income students left the New York City public school system in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic. Actress Sheryl Lee Ralph sings “Lift Every Voice” at the Super Bowl. A sixth Memphis police officer, who participated in Tyre Nichols’s beating, is fired and the first officer involved sent to prison. Chiefs beat Eagles 38-35 at the Super Bowl while superstar Rhianna surprises the audience with the announcement of her second pregnancy at the halftime show. Trugoy the Dove, onethird of De La Soul, dies at 54.

Asylum-seeker influx continues as the city scrambles to put people up in emergency shelters and hotels.

CBS’s Gayle King gets Cronkite journalism excellence award. Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce celebrates its 125th anniversary.

Brittney Griner re-signs with the Phoenix Mercury team. Simone Edwards, the first Jamaican to play in the WNBA, dies at 49. Adams makes another round of budget cuts to city schools. Adams’s brother leaves his volunteer post as a mayoral security adviser, a position he took after controversy over initial plans to hire him in a high-paid city job.

April

Trump is charged with 34 felony counts in a hush-money scheme.

The first crewed mission around the moon in more than 50 years will have a Black pilot, NASA astronaut, and former U.S. Navy Captain Victor Glover Jr. at the helm. Photographer Kwame Brathwaite dies at 85 and Sister Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam, an African nun and gifted classical music composer, at 99. An 84-year-old white man in Missouri is charged for shooting Black teen Ralph Yarl, who mistakenly went to the man’s home to pick up his younger brothers. Lawsuits pile up against companies who failed to honor diversity hire pledges after the murder of George Floyd. Judge Rowan Wilson becomes first Black chief judge for New York State. Frustrated by college diversity initiatives, Republican lawmakers set out to put an end to diversity, equity, and inclusion offices in higher education. Don Lemon, longtime CNN host, and Fox News’ Tucker Carlson are out at cable news netIncumbent Chicago Mayor Lori works virtually at the same time.

Lightfoot is voted out. Wayne Harry Belafonte, versatile enterShorter, jazz saxophone pioneer, tainer, and civil and human rights dies at 89. Out of tragedy, a new activist, dies at 96. Attorney Alton tradition of co-naming streets Maddox Jr. dies at 77. after the victims of gun violence See YEAR IN REVIEW on page 4

March

Photo credit: 9. Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office 10. Shaquana Folks Photo 11. Courtesy photo of Ruth E. Carter 12. Faye Sadou/MediaPunch/IPX 13. Amsterdam News Staff 14. AP Photo/ David J. Phillip 15. Contributed photos from Governor’s office 16. AP Photo

emerges. A year after Will Smith smacked comedian Chris Rock, he finally gives his rebuttal in a forceful stand-up special on Netflix.

Jon Jones returns to win the UFC heavyweight title in the first round.

Tamika Richards, 41, a Brooklyn mother of six and grandma to a six-month-old grandson, is fatally struck by a hit-and-run driver in Coney Island, and dies shielding her son Ray-Quan Parker, 18, from the oncoming red truck. The city’s education department develops a comprehensive Black studies curriculum for public schools. Angela Bassett is snubbed at the Oscars again, but Ruth E. Carter wins Best Costume Designer for “Black Panther 2.” Jazz vocalist Jann Parker dies, as well as soulful R&B singer Bobby Caldwell at 71; actor Lance Reddick, of “The Wire” and “John Wick’ fame, at 60; former NBA Knicks player Willis Reed at 80; and human rights advocate Randall Robinson at 81. Former President Donald Trump’s historic perp walk and indictment by District Attorney Alvin Bragg receives threats.

4 • December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

Homegoing services were held at Abyssinian Baptist Church on May 1, 2023, celebrating the life of Alton Maddox, Jr., who joined the ancestors on April 23 (Bill Moore photo)

May

By KAREN JUANITA CARRILLO Amsterdam News Staff The Metropolitan Transit Authority seeks multiple East Harlem properties along 125th Street and/or Second Avenue—both for temporary easements and permanent full taking—in the planned expansion of the Q line. The eminent domain claim to obtain nine East Harlem lots was filed on April 19.

Such a process allows the power of the government to seize private property for public use without the owner’s consent in exchange for financial compensation. Governor Kathy Hochul finally announces, on May 2, that a budget agreement has been struck with the state legislature. They approve the $229 billion budget after the deadline is pushed back from the past month, mostly due to contention over bail reform rollbacks.

Meanwhile, Mayor Eric Adams releases his $106.7 billion fiscal year executive budget 2024, which focuses on fiscal responsibility and remaining balanced in the coming years.

New York City’s pedestrians and cyclists are more at risk on the streets as the city’s traffic fatalities reach record-breaking levels.

The Vision Zero plan, initiated under former Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2014, was intended to dramatically improve street safety through comprehensive data and engineering. Ac-

Skater, coach, and choreographer Rohene Ward was honored with Choreography Award by Ice Theatre of New York (ITNY), given to a choreographer who has contributed to skating as a performing art (Ed Forti photo)

cording to Vision Zero data as of March 31, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx have the highest rates of traffic fatalities and injuries this year. Citywide, there’s been a total of 51 deaths and 11,043 people injured so far.

The City Council passes a bill to require the New York City Police Department to train officers to be better at identifying and engaging appropriately with New Yorkers with autism spectrum disorder as rates have risen in recent years.

Adams appoints Jasmine Blake as the city’s new lead compliance officer and releases a report about the city’s efforts to combat lead exposure.

Downtown Brooklyn parents are informed that a neighborhood staple, the Navy Yard Madison Boys & Girls Club, has filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 and will be closing at the end of the school year. After it was originally scheduled to close on May 12, recent announcements are that the clubhouse site will stay open through June 27 and close at the end of the school year.

January is now Muslim Heritage Month in New Jersey. Governor Phil Murphy signs a joint resolution, sponsored by Senators Joe Pennacchio and Brian Stack, and Assemblymembers Angela McKnight, Shanique Speight, and Annette Chaparro, to designate the month during an Eid celebration on April 29.

The name of Afro Puerto Rican activist María Civico, a native of Cabo Rojo, is scheduled to replace the name of a U.S. Confederate

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike, which started on May 2, saw WGA members picket HBO and Amazon offices on Wednesday, May 10, in Manhattan’s midtown neighborhood of Hudson Yards (Laurie Davidson photo)

officer on a municipal building in Puerto Rico.

Harry Belafonte, who died on April 25, is celebrated outdoors at Lincoln Center on April 28, 2023. Homegoing services were held at Abyssinian Baptist Church on May 1, 2023, celebrating the life of Alton Maddox Jr., who joined the ancestors on April 23. Maddox was known by his nom de guerre “Attorney-at-war” and as the “People’s Legal Warrior.”

The community comes out to celebrate the life of Thomas “Blood” McCreary, Black Panther/Black Liberation Army member, at a tribute at the Schomburg Center in Harlem on April 28. A massive turnout of activists, artists, and Pan-Africanists assemble at the Abyssinian Baptist Church on April 24 to pay their respects to Kwame Brathwaite, who joined the ancestors on April 1. He was 85.

The Phoenix Mercury hosted Brittney Griner’s April 27 press conference where she spoke about her December 2022 release from a Russian penal colony. Griner notes that there were more media representatives in attendance than what she normally sees at a Mercury press conference, and she encouraged the media to cover the WNBA throughout the 2023 season.

“I expect to see this same coverage because we have a great product,” she said.

Boxing champion Hector Camacho, Jr. returns home to his Spanish Harlem roots to make a special announcement: He will join EntroBox, American Dream Presents, and Harrell Media Inc., in launching the Macho Cup Boxing event, which is named in honor of

his father, Hector “Macho” Camacho, the legendary Puerto Rican world champion boxer.

Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James and Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry face each other for the sixth time in the NBA playoffs. The New York Jets acquires four-time league MVP Aaron Rodgers in a trade with the Green Bay Packers and on draft night, the Jets improve an already formidable defense by selecting edge rusher Will McDonald IV from Iowa State with the 15th pick. The Giants address three areas of need by taking University of Maryland defensive back Deonte Banks with the 24th pick in the first round, offensive lineman Michael Schmitz in the second round (No. 57), and wide receiver Jalin Hyatt from the University of Tennessee in Round 3 (No. 73).

Jordan Neely was the in-need-of-services homeless man known around the city as a Michael Jackson impersonator. He is killed when former Marine Daniel Penny puts him in a chokehold for a reported 15 minutes after he tells F train commuters he had no food or drink.

Penny is interviewed by NYPD officers and immediately released. The medical examiner deem it a homicide. At press time, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is still determining whether he would convene a grand jury.

Councilmembers Chi Ossé, Tiffany Cabán, Sandy Nurse, Shahana Hanif, and Alexa Avilés boo throughout most of a New York City Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) meeting.

They chant “Shame on you,” and take to the See YEAR IN REVIEW on page 6

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024 • 5

Rockette Minga Prather on her Radio City debut

By LINDA ARMSTRONG Special to the AmNews

where the Rockettes pull Santa’s sleigh, among many more.

Minga Prather (Matt Ramirez photo)

AmNews: What is the challenge to being a Rockette and perfecting the synchronized dance moves?

MP: The Rockettes are America’s longest-running precision dance company, so everything is just that—precise! Every detail matters: where your eyes are looking, where your fingertips are landing, where your elbows are facing, the angles of your body. Our stage is like one big piece of graph paper, and each step you take is perfectly mapped out on the floor. Every step, every move, every beat matters and has to be perfectly in sync with those around you. Combined with the athleticism needed to remain consistent over the course of our 200-show run makes the work incredibly challenging, but also very beautiful. The Rockettes are truly a team—we each independently do the work to maintain the integrity and strength of the show.

The Radio City Christmas Spectacular is happening right now, and what a wonderful way to enjoy the holiday season. This season sees the introduction of a new face to the Radio City stage— Rockette Minga Prather, a Dallas, Texas, native. She recently spoke with the AmNews about her audition, training at the Rockette Conservatory, and the show.

AmNews: How did you hear about the Rockettes Conservatory?

MP: The first time I heard about Rockettes Conservatory was when I first auditioned to become a Radio City Rockette in 2022. Auditioning for the Rockettes is truly an experience like no other. I auditioned in spring 2022 and got a callback to move forward in the audition process. During our second day of auditions, the artistic team announced that even if we didn’t make it through the entire audition process, we would still be in consideration for the Rockettes Conservatory—a nocost, invite-only dancer development initiative that will serve as a pipeline for future Rockettes.

AmNews: When did you get accepted to do the week-long program?

MP: A few weeks after my initial audition, I received an email inviting me to the week-long program. Rockettes Conservatory was held in person for the first time in 2022, so it was really special to be a part of the inaugural in-person class, and be invited to return this year. They really invest in everyone they invite to this program—they provide housing, transportation, airline tickets, and catering. They even provided LaDuca dance heels, which are the shoes the Rockettes wear in the show, and all shoes were hand-painted to match each participant’s skin tone! Anything and everything you could possibly need, they provided, so all we had to do was focus on our training.

Conservatory really prepared me with the tools I needed to be successful during my first season. We each have had our own journey to becoming a Rockette, and we all are so grateful to be here. In fact, seven of us were hired after our second year of participating in the AmNews: The Conservatory is Rockettes Conservatory. The newa program set up to make sure bies, in particular, have a really that the Rockettes stay inclusive. strong bond and sisterhood that What did it mean to you and the we’ve forged, so going through other 13 people who got the op- this experience with them has portunity to be in this show? made it all the more special.

MP: We have a very diverse group of incredibly talented AmNews: What type of dance women from various backgrounds training did you have before who joined the line this year. I feel joining the conservatory?

AmNews: How much joy do you feel when you’re on that stage and see the joy you and your fellow Rockettes are bringing to the packed auditorium?

MP: There’s something truly special about being a part of every family’s holiday tradition. One of my favorite parts of my job is looking out into the house at a small child and the wonder they have in their eyes as they’re taking everything in.

MP: I come from the concert dance world—think companies similar to Alvin Ailey or the American Ballet Theater. Most of my training comes from the Ailey School and the performing arts high school, Booker T. Washington HSPVA, so my background is mostly in ballet, modern, and contemporary. I had taken tap and jazz as a small child, but have been working professionally and touring with modern and contemporary dance companies since 2017.

AmNews: Do you have a favorite dance number?

MP: My favorite dance number is “Dance of the Frost Fairies.” The number transforms Radio City into an immersive winter wonderland, and each Rockette becomes a magical, winged fairy dancing alongside fairy drones that soar above the audience. The dazzling costumes and immersive technology, combined with the Rockettes’ athletic artistry, make for a truly mesmerizing experience.

Each Rockette has a unique costume designed specifically for them. I feel it really highlights one of the most special facts about being a Rockette—although we are known for our precision, unity, and perfect synchrony, each of us has a unique individuality that we bring to the line.

part of dance numbers that have touched families’ hearts for years?

MP: It’s truly special to be a part of the Christmas Spectacular. We’ll be celebrating our 100th anniversary in 2025, so there’s so much history in the show, and the Rockettes have an iconic legacy that feels surreal to be a part of! I get to be a part of numbers such as “Parade of the Wooden Soldiers,” which was introduced in 1933, and every woman who’s ever been a Rockette has performed that number; The Radio City Christmas SpecAmNews: What does it mean to “New York at Christmas,” which tacular will play through January you to be part of the Christmas features a real double-decker bus 4, 2024. For more info, visit www.

Spectacular and know that you are live on stage, and “Sleigh Ride,,” rockettes.com/christmas.

6 • December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024

Continued from page 4

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

The coming-of-age movie “CROWN” premiered on Friday, May 12, at Betty Carter Auditorium in Major Owens Community Center, Brooklyn (Brenika Banks photo)

May cont. stage, yelling “Rent rollbacks.” Despite the chaos during the preliminary vote, the RGB still decides to increase rents from 2–5% for one-year leases and 4–7% for two-year leases. If finalized, the decision will go into effect October 1.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports more than 104 million COVID-19 cases in the United States, but only 66% of those cases include race or ethnicity information. For comparison, the same data miss only 2% of sex data. Demographic data like race and ethnicity tell agencies and policymakers who’s vulnerable at different stages of the pandemic and helps them decide how and where to allocate resources like vaccines and testing. Understanding the extent of COVID-19’s impact on Black and brown communities remains incomplete due to a lack of federal data about race and ethnicity.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is sinking $500 million in investments to revitalize the Broadway Junction station and make it an inclusive and accessible space for commuters.

The AFL-CIO says in its latest report, “Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect,” that among the number of worker deaths in 2021, the union found that “Black workers died on the job at the highest rate in more than a decade” and “Latino workers continue to be at greater risk of dying on the job than all workers.”

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike, which started on May 2, sees WGA members picket HBO and Amazon offices on Wednesday, May 10, in Manhattan’s midtown neighborhood of Hudson Yards. Union leaders say that after trying to negotiate with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers for weeks, there is no resolution.

A jury of nine in Manhattan federal court took only three hours to find former president Donald Trump guilty of sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million in compensatory damages. The former Elle magazine advice columnist had accused him of raping her in the mid-1990s. He then defamed her by calling her a liar.

Seton Hall University students stage a sit-in outside the office of the school’s president under the banner of Protect AFAM to demand that the school direct more funding toward its Africana Studies (AFAM) program and hire up to four full-time faculty for its courses. Protect AFAM claims they have asked to speak with the administration about how AFAM appears to be being defunded.

Seven-time Olympic medalist Simone Biles marries Houston Texans safety Jonathan Owens on May 6 at Nobu Los Cabos in Mexico in front of 144 guests.

The coronation of the United Kingdom’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla was a sumptuous display of pageantry that meets

with many people waving signs reading “Not My King!” As the coronation took place, Belize and—surprisingly—Grenada say they were actively considering joining Guyana, Trinidad, Dominica, and Barbados to move from independent nations to full-fledged republics in the coming months.

“Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story” has its debut, serving as both a prequel and spinoff to the beloved Netflix series. This intellectual property is based on Julia Quinn’s Regencyera romance novels and produced by Shonda Rhimes’s production company, Shondaland.

Saturday, May 6, 2023, sees the janazah of Soke Ali Abdul Karim, martial artist and community treasure, who passed on Friday, May 5.

In a hotly contested matchup that went to the scorecards, UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling defeats Henry Cejudo by split decisions 47–48, 48–47, and 48–47 in the main event of UFC 288 at Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. For Sterling, a native of Long Island of Jamaican descent, his domination of Cejudo at the end of the first round seems to

provide the margin of victory.

Skater, coach, and choreographer Rohene Ward is honored with the Choreography Award by the Ice Theatre of New York (ITNY), given to a choreographer who has contributed to skating as a performing art.

Dozens of City University of New York (CUNY), the Professional Staff Congress (PSCNY) faculty union, and elected officials crowd the steps at the Tweed Court-house last week to protest against Mayor Eric Adams’s $60 million cuts to CUNY funding in the city budget.

Families are searching for a missing 11-yearold Bronx boy, Alfa Ousmane Barrie, and Harlemite Garrett Warren, 13. Alfa was reported missing on Sunday, May 14. Warren was reported missing on Monday, May 15.

Freshman Councilmember Kristin Richardson Jordan decides not to run for reelection, leaving her Harlem seat in District 9 up for grabs in a highly scrutinized City Council race.

Luxury fitness gym company Equinox is found to have discriminated against and unlawfully fired fitness trainer Röbynn

Europe. Europe said she was subjected to a hostile work environment when she worked as a trainer at Equinox’s East 92nd Street location, which Europe alleges Equinox knew about. But instead of disciplining workers who violated company policy, Equinox fired Europe herself for “lateness,” even though some seven other managers at the Equinox on East 92nd Street regularly clocked in late and were never disciplined. A jury of five women and three men found that Equinox was at fault and had fired Europe based on both her race and gender. Europe was awarded $11,250,000 in the verdict: $1.250 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages.

Right-wing efforts are fomenting the idea that racist harassment and violence against Asian Americans is coming from Blacks, when “75% of the perpetrators of violent anti-Asian hate crimes were white.” Meanwhile, Citizens for Sanity and American First Legal—two nonprofits aligned with former Trump administration advisor Stephen Miller—spent millions of dollars on ads and outreach mailers promoting narratives falsely accusing the “left” of ignoring anti-Asian violence and promoting Asian American-Pacific Islander (AAPI) exclusion through Critical Race Theory and diversity initiatives. The right-wing increasingly uses Asian Americans as a wedge on affirmative action issues.

On May 10, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs Senate Bill 1718. This new law now makes any Floridian “who knowingly and willfully transports an undocumented individual into the state” a human smuggler, which comes with serious criminal penalties, including allowing for prosecution under the Florida Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act. Former First Daughter Sasha Obama graduates from the University of Southern California (USC) on May 12 with a degree in sociology.

The 33rd annual Malcolm X Black Power “Shut ’Em Down!” Rally and March takes place on Friday, May 193. This yearly action commemorates and shows respect for the legacy of Malcolm X—El Hajj Malik El Shabazz—on the anniversary of his birth.

Fans attending the Wednesday, May 10, Anita Baker concert at Newark’s Prudential Center are disappointed when the opening set by Babyface is canceled so Baker would have more time for her set.

BAM’s annual DanceAfrica Festival will offer a program titled “DanceAfrica 2023 Golden Ghana: Adinkra, Ananse, and Abusua” at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, May 26–29.

The movie “CROWN” premieres on Friday, May 12, at the Betty Carter Auditorium in the Major Owens Community Center in Brooklyn. The 20-minute coming-of-age story, written and directed by Karisma Jay and Love “Nofisat” Nafi, follows an aspiring teen ballet dancer dealing with the challenges of taming her natural hair into “submission” during an See YEAR IN REVIEW on page 10

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024 • 7

Affordable Housing for Rent

SENDERO VERDE PHASE II 276 NEWLY CONSTRUCTED UNITS AT 50 EAST 112TH STREET, EAST HARLEM, MANHATTAN

Amenities: Outdoor terrace, fitness center, community room, computer room, Free secure in-unit access to broadband internet for all households, bicycle storage, package lockers, on-site laundry room* (*additional fees apply).

Transit: 2, 3, 4, 6 Trains, M1/M2/M3/M4/M101/M102/M103 Buses No fee to apply • No broker’s fee • Smoke-free building • More information: https://senderoverdenyc.com/ This building is being constructed through the Mixed & Match program of the New York City Housing Development Corporation (HDC) and the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) Program of HPD. Who Should Apply?

Individuals or households who meet the income and household size requirements listed in the table below may apply. Qualified applicants will be required to meet additional selection criteria.

Applicants who live in New York City receive a general preference for apartments.

• •

A percentage of units is set aside for: o Mobility–disabled applicants (5%) o Vision/Hearing–disabled applicants (2%) Preference for a percentage of units goes to: o Residents of Manhattan CB 11 (50%) o Municipal employees (5%)

AVAILABLE UNITS AND INCOME REQUIREMENTS

2 bedroom

3 bedroom

$498

$632

$748

$856

Monthly Rent1

Studio

1 bedroom

2 bedroom

3 bedroom

60% AREA MEDIAN INCOME (AMI) UNITS

Unit Size

$1,134

$1,426

$1,702

$1,957

8

16

8

3

Household Size2

→

→

→

→

Units Available 24

35

8

2

→

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Monthly Rent1

Minimum – Maximum4

1 person

$ 19,646 - $ 29,670

2 people

$ 19,646 - $ 33,900

1 person

$ 24,583 - $ 29,670

2 people

$ 24,583 - $ 33,900

3 people

$ 24,583 - $ 38,130

2 people

$ 29,418 - $ 33,900

3 people

$ 29,418 - $ 38,130

4 people

$ 29,418 - $ 42,360

5 people

$ 29,418 - $ 45,750

3 people

$ 34,012 - $ 38,130

4 people

$ 34,012 - $ 42,360

5 people

$ 34,012 - $ 45,750

6 people 7 people Household Size2

→

Annual Household Income3

$922

50% AREA MEDIAN INCOME (AMI) UNITS

1 bedroom

30% AREA MEDIAN INCOME (AMI) UNITS

Studio

Units Available

Units Available 13

Household Size2

→

Annual Household Income3 Minimum – Maximum4

1 person

$ 34,183 - $ 49,450

2 people

$ 34,183 - $ 56,500

1 person

$ 42,720 - $ 49,450

2 people

$ 42,720 - $ 56,500

3 people

$ 42,720 - $ 63,550

2 people

$ 51,223 - $ 56,500

3 people

$ 51,223 - $ 63,550

4 people

$ 51,223 - $ 70,600

5 people

$ 51,223 - $ 76,250

3 people

$ 59,178 - $ 63,550

4 people

$ 59,178 - $ 70,600

5 people

$ 59,178 - $ 76,250

$ 34,012 - $ 49,140

6 people

$ 59,178 - $ 81,900

$ 34,012 - $ 52,530

7 people Monthly Rent1

Minimum – Maximum4

$ 41,452 - $ 59,340

2 people

$ 41,452 - $ 67,800

1 person

$ 51,806 - $ 59,340

2 people

$ 51,806 - $ 67,800

3 people

$ 51,806 - $ 76,260

2 people

$ 62,126 - $ 67,800

3 people

$ 62,126 - $ 76,260

4 people

$ 62,126 - $ 84,720

5 people

$ 62,126 - $ 91,500

3 people

$ 71,760 - $ 76,260

4 people

$ 71,760 - $ 84,720

5 people

$ 71,760 - $ 91,500

6 people 7 people

$1,384

$1,590

Annual Household Income3

1 person

$1,161

110% AREA MEDIAN INCOME (AMI) UNITS

Monthly Rent1

Unit Size

$1,834

$2,300

$2,750

22

12

4

→

→

→

Units Available 30

58

25

Household Size2

→

→

→

$ 59,178 - $ 87,550 Annual Household Income3 Minimum – Maximum4

1 person

$ 65,452 - $ 108,790

2 people

$ 65,452 - $ 124,330

1 person

$ 81,772- $ 108,790

2 people

$ 81,772- $ 124,330

3 people

$ 81,772- $ 139,810

2 people

$ 98,058 - $ 124,330

3 people

$ 98,058 - $ 139,810

4 people

$ 98,058 - $ 155,320

5 people

$ 98,058 - $ 167,750

3 people

$ 113,315 - $ 139,810

4 people

$ 113,315 - $ 155,320

5 people

$ 113,315 - $ 167,750

$ 71,760 - $ 98,280

6 people

$ 113,315 - $ 180,180

$ 71,760 - $ 105,060

7 people

$ 113,315 - $ 192,610

$3,169

8

→

1

Rent includes secure in-unit access to broadband internet Tenant is responsible for electricity, including cooking range (excluding AC).

Household size includes everyone who will live with you, including parents and children. Subject to occupancy criteria.

3 Household earnings includes salary, hourly wages, tips, Social Security, child support, and other income. Income guidelines subject to change.

4 Minimum income listed may not apply to applicants with Section 8 or other qualifying rental subsidies. Asset limits also apply.

2

How Do You Apply?

Apply online or through mail. To apply online, please go to https://housingconnect.nyc.gov/PublicWeb/. To request an application by mail, send a self-addressed envelope to: Sendero Verde Phase II / Murray Hill PO BOX 2051 New York, NY 10016. Only send one application per development. Do not submit duplicate applications. Do not apply online and also send in a paper application. Applicants who submit more than one application may be disqualified.

When is the Deadline?

Applications must be postmarked or submitted online no later than 2/9/2024. Late applications will not be considered.

What Happens After You Submit an Application?

After the deadline, applications are selected for review through a lottery process. If yours is selected and you appear to qualify, you will be invited to an appointment of eligibility to continue the process of determining your eligibility. Appointments are usually scheduled from 2 to 10 months after the application deadline. You will be asked to bring documents that verify your household size, identity of members of your household, and your household income.

Español

Presente una solicitud en línea en nyc.gov/housingconnect. Para recibir una traducción de español de este anuncio y la solicitud impresa, envíe un sobre con la dirección a: Sendero Verde Phase II / Murray Hill PO BOX 2051 New York, NY 10016. En el reverso del sobre, escriba en inglés la palabra “SPANISH.” Las solicitudes se deben enviar en línea o con sello postal antes de 2/9/2024.

简体中文

访问 nyc.gov/housingconnect 在线申请。如要获取本广告及书面申请表的简体中文版，请将您的回邮信封寄送至：Sendero Verde Phase II / Murray Hill PO BOX 2051 New York, NY 10016. 信封背面请用英语注明“CHINESE”。必须在以下日期之前在线提交申请或邮寄书面申请 2/9/2024.

Русский

Чтобы подать заявление через интернет, зайдите на сайт: nyc.gov/housingconnect. Для получения данного объявления и заявления на русском языке отправьте конверт с обратным адресом по адресу Sendero Verde Phase II / Murray Hill PO BOX 2051 New York, NY 10016. На задней стороне конверта напишите слово “RUSSIAN” на английском языке. Заявки должны быть поданы онлайн или отправлены по почте (согласно дате на почтовом штемпеле) не позднее 2/9/2024.

한국어

nyc.gov/housingconnect 에서 온라인으로 신청하십시오. 이 광고문과 신청서에 대한 한국어 번역본을 받아보시려면 반송용 봉투를 Sendero Verde Phase II / 으로 보내주십시오. 봉투 뒷면에 “KOREAN” 이라고 영어로 적어주십시오. Murray Hill PO BOX 2051 New York, NY 10016 온라인 신청서를 제출하거나 소인이 찍힌 신청서를 보내야 합니다 2/9/2024.

Kreyòl Ayisyien

Aplike sou entènèt sou sitwèb nyc.gov/housingconnect. Pou resevwa yon tradiksyon anons sa a nan lang Kreyòl Ayisyen ak aplikasyon an sou papye, voye anvlòp ki gen adrès pou retounen li nan: Sendero Verde Phase II / Murray Hill PO BOX 2051 New York, NY 10016. Nan dèyè anvlòp la, ekri mo “HATIAN CREOLE” an Anglè. Ou dwe remèt aplikasyon yo sou entènèt oswa ou dwe tenbre yo anvan dat 2/9/2024.

‫العربية‬

‫ تقدم بطلب عن طريق اإلنترنت على الموقع اإللكتروني‬nyc.gov/housingconnect. ‫ أرسل مظروف يحمل اسمك‬،‫للحصول على ترجمة باللغة العربية لهذا اإلعالن ولنموذج الطلب الورقي‬ 25‫وعنوانك إلى‬: Sendero Verde Phase II / Murray Hill PO BOX 2051 New York, NY 10016. ‫ اكتب باللغة اإلنجليزية كلمة‬،‫" على الجهة الخلفية للمظروف‬ARABIC". ‫ يجب إرسال نماذج الطلبات عن طريق اإلنترنت أو ختمها بختم البريد قبل‬2024/9/2 ،‫فبراير‬

Governor Kathy Hochul • Mayor Eric Adams • HPD Commissioner Adolfo Carrion Jr. • HDC President Eric Enderlin

8 • December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024

Go With The Flo FLO

ANTHONY Actor Jonathan Majors has returned to Los Angeles with his girlfriend, “Harlem” actress Meagan Good, after he was found guilty of harassing his ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari. The “Creed III” star and Good were photographed after they landed at LAX via a private jet on Dec. 19, the day after the verdict was reached in a Lower Manhattan courtroom. It looks like Good is staying with Majors despite his legal problems and left the courtroom holding his hand. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 6, 2024. Majors is the only actor in the history of the film business to have back-to-back number one movies at the top of the box office. The Yale University graduate was fired from Marvel and Disney, as well as removed from the boards of the Gotham Film and Media Institute Board and Sidney Poitier Initiative. He was also dropped by his talent agency Entertainment 360...

On Dec. 23, yours truly headed to Atlantic City to see Frankie Beverly & Maze perform as part of the group’s “I Wanna Thank You” Tour, and I took Michael Spinks, Olympic gold medalist and former undisputed champion boxer with me. He loves wearing his Frankie Beverly t-shirt.

The concert took place at Boardwalk Hall, which is located at 2301 Boardwalk in Atlantic City. I couldn’t wait to hear the band sing “Joy and Pain.” The Isley Brothers, Ronald and Ernie Isley, were the opening act. I used to always imagine they sang “Who’s That Lady” about me. Hey, Atlantic City is a fabulous place to be on Christmas Eve Eve!...

Journalist Tanya Hart received the 2023 Gold Circle Award at the 50th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards for her work as a TV host/producer and advocate of diversity. The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) announced the 2023 Gold and Silver Honors on Dec. 15 at the Daytime Emmys broadcast on CBS. The inductees are professionals who have performed distinguished service within the television industry, setting standards for achievement, mentoring, leadership, and professional accolades.

Aside from Hart, veteran actress Vernee Watson was also named to the Gold Circle, as a performer on the Daytime Drama, General Hospital. In addition, Hart was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Hall of Fame in 2023...

Noted producer, writer and director Dave Wooley, who oversaw the making of the awardwinning documentary “Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over,” recently was honored at Huron University in Canada, which awarded the veteran entertainment producer an honorary doctorate degree. Huron University President Dr. Barry Craig conferred the doctorate to Wooley on Dec. 8, 2023 during the institution’s annual scholarships and awards ceremony in the Frank Holmes Leadership Centre theater. Wooley is a lifelong entrepreneur who produced and directed many world-class entertainment and sports events...

G

O

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS W I T H T H E F L O

Rededicating the ‘Gate of the Exonerated’ The first anniversary of the Gate of the Exonerated in Central Park was observed on December 19, 2023, and a rededication tribute was attended by Councilmember-elect Dr. Yusef Salaam; his

mother, Sharonne Salaam; John Reddick, director of Community Engagement Projects for Parks; CB10’s Stephane Palmer; and Terri Wisdom of Harlem Network News. All came out to salute

the commemoration of the naming of the Gate in recognition of the five young men who are the Exonerated: Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Korey Wise, and Antron McCray.

Sharonne Salaam with her son, council-member-elect Dr. Yusef Salaam. (Bill Moore photos) (LR): Terri Wisdom, Stephane Palmer, Sharonne Salaam, John Reddick

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS O U T & A B O U T

December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024 • 9

46th annual LGBT Kwanzaa celebration slated in Harlem on Dec. 30

By TANDY LAU Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member Celebrating the seven principles since the 1970s, the 46th LGBT Kwanzaa celebration goes down at the SAGE Harlem Center this Saturday, Dec. 30.

Founder Imani Rashid, 83, first encountered the holiday almost half a century ago thanks to an Afrocentric alternative school her partner’s son attended. Back then, Kwanzaa was a fresh holiday created a decade prior by Maulana Karenga to celebrate pan-African heritage. Rashid soon pitched the holiday to Salsa Soul Sisters, the country’s oldest Black and brown lesbian organization now known as the African Ancestral Lesbians United for Societal Change.

“At the meeting, I introduced Kwanzaa and the sister that would become my very best, bestie said ‘if she wants to have Kwanzaa let her bring it here,’” said Rashid. “And I set the work to do that. That was 46 years ago.”

Like Rashid’s then-wife, many lesbians were rearing children from past relationships at a time when fertilization procedures were science fiction and samesex adoption was fantasy. So the women of LGBT Kwanzaa often brought up the children together, as a community. Rashid’s Riverside Drive brownstone became the staging ground for those youngsters to celebrate Kwanzaa. She recalls drumming, storytelling and setting up the table.

Through her work, Rashid has become a godmother to many youth. And she’s quick to adopt anyone, even a 28-year-old Chinese American reporter after just one interview.

Fast forward to today, LGBT Kwanzaa remains an intergenerational affair. Rashid calls her youngsters the “Kwanzaa kids.”

Participating elders put together stories for them months ahead in preparation. Together, they attend retreats and put together coloring books. This year, Rashid and team are even teaching the “Kwanzaa kids” how to shoot and edit so they can create a film about a young boy aspiring to become a pro boxer.

She says that Kwanzaa’s seven principles resonated with her community at the time, even if LGBTQ+ observers didn’t always feel welcome in other pan-Afri-

Imani Rashid (center-left) with the “Kwanzaa kids.” (Photo courtesy of Imani Rashid and Sasha Alexander)

kan movements. Umoja, or unity was a given, especially with their organizing. Rashid points to Kujichagulia (self-determination) as especially relevant today for trans community members who define themselves by pronouns of their choice. For elders like Rashid who are “not the elders of 20 years ago,” they get to spend time fostering the next generation rather than always in a nursing home (Rashid was moving her car for alternate side parking when the Amsterdam News initially reached out to her).

The LGBT Kwanzaa celebration lands on the fifth day, represented by the principle Nia, or purpose.

“It’s a very special principle because folks spend their whole lifetimes trying to figure out what is their purpose, [their] why are they here.” said Rashid. “So what I find [is] that Kwanzaa is the time when we can go inward and look at who we are, and what kind of work that we love to do and how we interact with others…for me, the purpose has changed every decade.

“Maybe some folks can have a

purpose for the last 80-some odd years [but] I don’t think so. I think your interest changes [based] on people, places and things that you come in contact with.”

This year’s LGBT Kwanzaa is held at the SAGE Center Harlem, a retirement community near Strivers Row for LGBTQ+ elders.

It’s a homecoming for Rashid, a Harlemite, and an opportunity for a return in-person connection after remote pandemic celebrations; the option to attend virtually is still available for those

who prefer. Admission is free and the event runs from 2-5:30 p.m., although Rashid asks for an advanced RSVP so she knows how much food to bring.

Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who 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.

10 • December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024

Continued from page 6

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

Councilmember and State Senator Bill Perkins, advocate for civil and human rights, joins the ancestors at 74 (Bill Moore photo)

May cont. important audition.

Former Councilmember and State Senator Bill Perkins, an advocate for civil and human rights, joins the ancestors at 74. Perkins is remembered as a relentless advocate for the marginalized and a member of the City Council, where he served Harlem’s District 9 from 1998 to 2005 and again from 2017 to 2021, and in the State Senate from 2007 to 2017, representing the 30th District in Harlem.

Hinchliffe Stadium, one of five stillstanding Negro Leagues stadiums, is being updated and refurbished so it can be used again. In the 1930s and ’40s, the Paterson, N.J.-based stadium was the homefield ballpark for the New York Black Yankees, New York Cubans, and often the Newark Eagles baseball teams.

The apparent drowning deaths of two young students—Ala Ousmane Barrie,11, and Garrett Warren, 13—rock NYC all the way to Africa’s west coast. There are so many unanswered questions in this case of the two uptown youths, who went missing on May 12 and whose bodies were found in the Harlem and Hudson Rivers—opposite sides of the city.

Harlem celebrates the life of Jordan Neely— the unhoused Black New Yorker killed on the subway by white passenger Daniel Penny—in a homecoming service Friday, May 19, at Mt. Neboh Baptist Church. He is laid to rest in a pearl-white coffin while family and friends remembered him as a promising basketball player and joyful street performer.

Rubu Zhao is the second person to die on Rikers Island this year. The 52-year-old was “severely injured” while detained at the George R. Vierno Center (GRVC) jail and pronounced dead at Elmhurst Hospital two days later (Wednesday, May 16).

Community members are urged to file objections to the sale of the Navy Yard Madison Boys & Girls Club at 240 Nassau Street in Brooklyn. The clubhouse’s building is set to be offered as an assent in bankruptcy court.

New York State and New York City are doggedly trying to coordinate in their handling of asylum seekers but continue to meet roadblocks at every turn. Nearly 30 upstate counties have declared states of emergency over Mayor Eric Adams’s relocation plan to offset the city’s burden to shelter individuals. Adams is also forced to walk back plans to house asylum seekers in school gyms and possibly on Rikers Island because of backlash.

On Friday, May 19, in honor of what would have been Malcolm X’s 98th birthday, the December 12th Movement organizations are joined by community and activist groups such as Lifecamp and Man Up Inc. as they marched along 125th Street.

They asked stores along that stretch of Harlem’s busiest thoroughfare to adhere to the 34-year annual tradition of closing from 1

to 4 p.m. The action—with pro-Black selfdetermination chants aloud, and a sea of red, black, and green flags hoisted high— celebrates the words and works of the great icon. Just about every store and bank closed, as usually has been the case for the last 34 years, with only a few defiant holdouts. The 98th Annual Birthday Celebration for Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik El Shabazz) Day at the Shabazz Center is a tribute to Malcolm in words and music that evolves into something much more than honoring him. Dr. Betty Shabazz, his wife, is cited numerous times, along with other long-gone and recent ancestors.

The second session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD) is set to take place at the United Nations’ New York headquarters from May 30 to June 2, 2023.

The murder of radio journalist Ralikonelo “Leqhashasha” Joki of Lesotho has stirred commentators from shore to shore. Joki, host of the current affairs show “Hlokoana-LaTsels” (“I heard it through the Grapevine”), worked for Ts-enolo FM radio station and covered government, agriculture, and corruption. He was shot at least 13 times on May 14 by unknown assailants as he left the studio at 10 p.m. after his Sunday evening show.

The characters, dialogue, and narrative in the new film version of “The Little Mermaid”––starring actress Halle Bailey––are extensions of Disney’s brand, which champions love and inclusion, as opposed to fear and exclusion. This live-action adaptation of

Jim Brown, one of the greatest running backs in the history of the NFL, died on May 18, at 87 in Los Angeles (John Mathew Smith & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA)

the 1989 animated Oscar-winning film dives deep into current culture wars.

In the 76th Annual Tony Awards (to be held Sunday, June 11), Black folks are truly abundant, receiving 25 varied nominations. Productions that stand out are “Some Like It Hot,” “Topdog/Underdog,” “Between Riverside and Crazy,” August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson,” “Fat Ham,” and “Ain’t No Mo.” Jim Brown, one of the greatest running backs in the history of the NFL, dies on May 18 at 87 in Los Angeles. His wife Monique posts on Instagram: “To the world he was an activist, actor, and football star. To our family he was a loving and wonderful husband, father, and grandfather. Our hearts are broken...”

Tina Turner, 12-time-Grammy award winner, who Rolling Stone ranked as one of the greatest artists of all time, dies on May 24.

The wake and funeral services for the late advocate Bill Perkins are held at Rev. Michael Walrond’s First Corinthian Baptist Church on Thursday May 25.

The Connecticut Sun celebrates the career of one of its founding members, Taj McWilliams-Franklin, who began her 14year WNBA career with the Orlando Miracle (the team that relocated to Connecticut in 2003). Her time with the franchise—four of those years in Connecticut—included five WNBA All-Star appearances, two-time All-WNBA Second Team, and the WNBA Sportsmanship Award. The ceremony included hanging her No. 11 jersey in the rafters of the Mohegan Sun arena.

Historic Hinchliffe Negro Leagues stadium officially reopens in Paterson, N.J. Political, community, entertainment, and athletics dignitaries were among the large contingent of attendees at a ceremony to rededicate the renovated Negro Leagues Baseball venue.

A day of action is held outside City Hall on Thursday, May 25, in opposition to solitary confinement to commemorate the 30th birthday of Kalief Browder, who spent over twothirds of his time on Rikers secluded in a tight room, which decarceration advocates directly attribute to his suicide, along with alleged abuses by guards and other detainees when he wasn’t isolated.

Dr. James de Jongh, director of the Black Studies Program at City College of New York, dies on May 5 in the Bronx. He was 80.

Director/cinematographer Jessie Maple makes her transition on May 30, 2023, at her home in Atlanta, Georgia, in the company of family members. She was 76 years old.

Maple is known throughout the film world for having been the first Black woman to join the entertainment industry’s camera operators’ union, the International Photographers of Motion Picture & Television (IATSE), in 1975. After becoming a camera operator, Maple published the book “How to Become a Union Camerawoman: Film-videotape” (1977) to help steer others toward information they needed to know so that they could also join the union.

See YEAR IN REVIEW on page 14

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS NEWS

December14, - December 2023••11 15 December 2023 28, 2023 - January20, 3, 2024

DEEPEST THANKS TO ALL OUR SUBSCRIBERS, READERS, ADVERTISERS, DONORS AND SUPPORTERS! Our 114 years of racial justice journalism and programs continue!

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2340 FREDERICK DOUGLASS BLVD, HARLEM, NEW YORK, NY 10027 NY AMSTERDAM NEWS HEADQUARTERS SINCE 1936

12 • December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

Opinion Banning solitary is saving lives

Top economic stories for December

By JUMAANE D. WILLIAMS Public Advocate

By CHRIS LEE

loopholes to maintain solitary by other names.

Our bill does not prevent removing someone from a situation where they are dangerous If you ask the Adams administration, there to themselves or others. Instead, it makes clear is no solitary confinement in New York City’s the process for doing so, and the minimum stanjails. Or there is, but it’s called punitive segre- dards of humanity that must be followed. It puts gation. Or wait, it’s not punitive, it’s for safety. a system in place of separation and de-escalaOr hang on—we oppose solitary confinement tion—not one of isolation. morally, but we need it to keep Rikers safe. Or Our bill also presents the opportunity no, Rikers is unsafe and that’s why we can’t ban for programming aimed at rehabilitation solitary confinement. and correction.

Clearly?

Put simply, committing an infraction in jail can The United Nations has designated solitary cause you to lose privileges, but should not deny confinement as torture, but just across the East basic human rights. We can de-escalate conflict, River, solitary confinement is still being used and provide programs and resources to prevent on Rikers Island, where pain is policy. There is future harm, or we can perpetuate it by inflicta great deal of misinformation and misunder- ing irreparable harm to our fellow New Yorkers’ standing about solitary in New York City, but the mental health. We can have the due process our reality is no matter what terminology you use, legal system was founded on, or we can deny it. people in custody awaiting trial are facing the No one is saying there shouldn’t be consecruel and unusual punishment of isolation, and quences for infractions in jails—but those concarrying the damage from that treatment for the sequences shouldn’t be carried for the rest of a rest of their lives. person’s life. Most people detained on Rikers By no definition is this “correction.” It’s just Island will, at some point, return to their comconvenient cruelty. munities. If the response to every misstep or Many people who have spent time in soli- harmful behavior is isolation, they will be untary continue to suffer severely from debilitat- prepared for reentry. ing trauma long after incarceration. They leave Right now, time spent in solitary is linked to Rikers, but they still aren’t free. increased violence in jails and increased rates of People in solitary are denied human contact re-arrest, which means that banning solitary is and connection, denied support, and come out good for public safety. of these deplorable conditions worse than when The fear-mongering around this bill is disinthey went in—and some, like Brandon Rodri- genuous, bordering on absurd. If we prohibit guez and Layleen Polanco, don’t come out at all. torture on Rikers Island, argue opponents, then Despite what the mayor and Department of Rikers will be dangerous—in a state of crisis! But Corrections (DOC) argue, the city never stopped as we all know, that hysterical hypothetical is alusing solitary confinement. They just changed ready ongoing. the name, hiding the practice as much in lanThe problems detractors attribute to this guage as they do on an island: out of sight and bill had been happening for years before it’s out of mind. Our bill, scheduled for a City Coun- even passed. It is true that correction officil vote today, was crafted in collaboration with cers face real challenges and have valid fears experts, labor leadership, and people who have of dangers on Rikers that must be rectified— actually experienced this torture, and puts a ban but that is not connected to a ban on solitary in place that is clear, enforceable, and built on that hasn’t happened yet, and won’t be caused guidances that should already be in place. by this prohibition.

The DOC has historically shirked oversight Solitary is inhumane—morally unjust, sociand accountability, creating loopholes that allow etally inexcusable, and practically ineffective at them to continue abusive practices like harmful all but inflicting pain. It makes our jails less safe, isolation. Without clear, enforceable guidelines and it makes our city less safe. for what DOC can and cannot do to people in The opponents of this bill—the opponents its custody, it will continue to create and exploit of banning solitary—are trying to uphold a status quo of inhumanity, and hiding their effort in misinformation. They want us to look Elinor R. Tatum: Publisher away from the sufand Editor in Chief fering. But people Member Kristin Fayne-Mulroy: Managing Editor have been crying Cyril Josh Barker: Digital Editor out in pain for Damaso Reyes: Investigative Editor too long, and our Siobhan "Sam" Bennett: Alliance for city has to finalChief Revenue Officer and Head of Advertising Audited Media ly hear their isoWilbert A. Tatum (1984-2009): lated voices in one Chairman of the Board, CEO and Publisher Emeritus moral mandate: Ban solitary now.

(Note: I got laid off during the Great Recession, so I am way more concerned with There were a lot of important econom- keeping a job than the price of an egg or a ic stories over the past month. Inflation gallon of gas.) continued to drop. Unemployment stayed low. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates Other news on employment, inflasteady. The stock market rebounded. And tion, mortgage rates, and politics consumers, who have never been better Employment had a great report in Novemoff, complained about the economy and ber. The economy created 199,000 new jobs, took it out on President Biden. But the big- the official unemployment rate dropped to gest story of all is the recession that did not 3.7%, and wages grew at a 4% annual rate. happen. Here’s a quick look at these differThe Black unemployment rate was 5.8%, ent stories and what these changes mean among the lowest ever, and 20.8 million for Black folks.

Blacks are currently working. Blacks are 1.5 times more likely to be unemployed The Recession that did not happen than whites, but the record-low Black unMany economists, Wall Street investors, employment rate means three things: It’s a and media outlets predicted a recession great time to ask for a raise, it’s a good time in 2023. They believed a “small” recession to look for a new job, and it’s time to move was necessary to reduce inflation in the to a higher-paying field like cybersecurieconomy. Media outlets on the right were ty, nursing, or teaching. (Note: The United running a constant stream of inflation Auto Workers union ratified a new contract complaints, trying to make Biden look bad with 25% raises over four years.) and possibly cause a recession during the The inflation rate dropped to 3% during 2024 election year.

October as compared to a year ago.

A recession is when the economy shrinks.

The average 30-year mortgage interThe effect is widespread and affects most est rates dropped below 7% (6.95%) and industrial sectors. People lose jobs. Con- 10-year Treasury bonds fell below 4% sumer spending slows and corporate prof- (3.915%). As inflation cools down, the its fall. People lose their homes. mortgage interest rate will also drop.

Recessions are far worse than inflation.

Housing prices have continued to rise by In the Great Recession of 2008 to 2009, the 3.4%. Owning real estate is one of the best economy contracted by about 4.3%. It was investments Black people can make. the worst economic downturn since the The stock market rebounded since OctoGreat Depression, which lasted from 1929 ber, as indicated by the S&P 500. Corporate through 1939, and was caused in large part profits had flat growth but stayed near record by unethical real-estate lending practices. highs ($3.1 trillion). High corporate profits About 1.3 million Black people lost their are good news for investors and retirees, and jobs and the official Black unemployment bad news for consumers and workers. Those rate soared to 17%. The underemployment profits do not come magically out of thin air. rate was closer to 25%. Black homeowner- Profits come from somewhere: Your pocketship dropped from 48% of Black families book when you buy something or your payowning a home in 2007 to 41% in 2016. In check when you go to work. However, if you other words, 15% of Black people lost their are a Black investor, the steady increase in homes during the Great Recession. corporate profits will increase your investment returns.

What really happened this time?

And finally, even though the economy is Recessions are partially fueled by psy- performing better than average, President chology and fear. If I think I’m going to Biden continues to poll badly on the econlose my job, I stop spending. When many omy in key states. people stop spending, consumer demand plummets, and more people are afraid Conclusion of losing their jobs. The whole thing can This might be the first time the economy snowball unless someone steps in to create has managed a “soft landing” since I have demand or lower interest rates. been studying economics. Timely spendAnd that’s exactly what happened—the ing by Biden and Congress, along with Fed and Congress stepped in. The Federal great interest rate management by the FedReserve has carefully managed interest rates eral Reserve, have provided a soft landing (monetary policy) while constantly talking for the economy while reducing inflation. about being tough on inflation. In addition, Let’s hope we learn from this lesson and the government was able to spend money that good management of the economy at the right time (fiscal spending), adding continues. demand to the economy. Remarks from the last Federal Reserve meeting showed that Chris Lee writes at BlackEconBiz.com, a Americans have adjusted to higher prices website about Black Economics and Black while enjoying higher wages.

Economic success and happiness.

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS O P I N I O N

Looking backward, looking forward, is there a difference?

December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024 • 13

It’s the end of 2023…

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.

CHRISTINA

GREER, PH.D.

ARMSTRONG

WILLIAMS

Looking backward over 2023 and looking forward to 2024 recalls ancient wisdom. Ecclesiastes: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr employed different phraseology: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Lord Byron in “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” put it this way: “History, with all her volumes vast, hath but one page.” The choreography and personalities change, but the human narrative remains the same.

The anticipated similarities between this past year and the new year are striking.

To start, the national debt continues to soar past a staggering $33 trillion with $1–$2 trillion annual budget deficits forecast as far as the eye can see. Moreover, the multi-trillion-dollar military-industrial complex continues with its 800 military bases abroad and special forces in virtually every country in the world, fighting as a belligerent or co-belligerent without a constitutionally required congressional declaration of war in countries like Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Gaza, Ukraine, Iraq, and Syria, and against alleged terrorists everywhere in the world.

These pointless wars, ir-

relevant to the national security of the United States, provoke blowback and divert valuable resources necessary for invincible self-defense.

As it has every year, the right to privacy will continue to shrivel as AI races forward at supersonic speed. The Fourth Amendment right to be let alone from government snooping is a hoax.

Big Brother has arrived, targeting the “not-yetguilty” for warrantless surveillance.

Congress is balking at requiring search warrants before the intelligence community can gain access to information about American citizens collected via dragnet, warrantless, indiscriminate spying. Surveillance drones will soon be routinely employed by the police, and facial recognition, no matter how unreliable, will become a customary feature of law enforcement.

Furthermore, extreme tribalism and polarization continue to earmark politics. It is driving measured and balanced politicians to throw in the towel. As of December 7, 2023, some 38 members of the House and Senate have announced their intent to retire at the conclusion of the current Congress, including former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who announced that he will be leaving by the end of the new year.

Congress will soon be

occupied only by sociopathic, ill-informed narcissists on the right and left—a formula for gridlock, continuing resolutions in lieu of appropriations, and an ever-expanding, economically debilitating federal bureaucracy.

The tribalism in Congress will be reflected in the growing tribalism in the community at large, which portends strife and upheaval. Race, gender, or sexual orientation categories are multiplying like rabbits. Youths are taught not to think of themselves as Americans with the motto E Pluribus Unum. Instead, their loyalties are thrown to monochromatic subgroups occupying separate cultural universes.

Finally, the aspirants for the presidency in 2024 from both parties are uniformly dreadful. Former Republican President Donald Trump is likely to be sitting in prison on Election Day for orchestrating the January 6 attack on the Capitol to prevent Vice President Mike Pence from counting state-certified electoral votes under the Twelfth Amendment and Electoral Count Act. If elected, Trump plans a dictatorship on day one of his new term.

But it doesn’t get any better. His rivals for the Republican nomination, like Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis, are soporific and shallow. And Pres-

ident Joe Biden looks and acts like a mummy manipulated by his handlers or Praetorian Guard. He has been humiliated by the Israeli government, which has sneered at his calls to diminish violence and civilian casualties in Gaza.

He has surrounded himself with incompetents, like Secretary of State Tony Blinken or Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The United States, however, survived the presidencies of James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce, and it will survive Joe Biden and the winner of the 2024 presidential election. The American people remain as solid as gold, even if their leaders are pyrite.

America is an idea inclusive of all eager to work hard, respect others, celebrate the rule of law, and treasure the march of the mind over the march of the footsoldier. Every man or woman is a king or queen, but no one wears a crown. In the eyes of the Constitution, there is only one race, one religion, one ethnicity, one gender, one sexual orientation in the United States: It is American.

Armstrong Williams (@ ARight-Side) 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

We did it! We made it to the end of 2023. I don’t know about you, but this year felt like it flew by at the speed of light. It was packed with so many highs and lows my head is still spinning. I cannot believe we are over three years from the beginning of the pandemic and the major lockdowns that affected so many facets of our lives, our country, and our world. I am so thankful for some of the memories I made this year and I am trying to think about all of the blessings, minor and major, that surround us every day.

Though I did not go birding as much as I would have liked this year, I did spend quality time with dear friends around the globe. I celebrated milestone birthdays of friends in Iceland, Aruba, and Puerto Rico. I celebrated my own milestone birthday in Joshua Tree, California, with a friend of almost thirty years. I explored new U.S. states and went to New Mexico and Alaska for the first time, two experiences that will stay with me forever. I even treated myself to a quick trip to Paris and Lisbon to look at art and visit old friends. I do hope 2024 is filled with more travel and adventure. It is truly essential for my spirit to explore new locales and also connect with old friends near and far.

I must be honest and admit that I am a touch anxious about 2024. The impending November presidential election has filled me with a sense of

anxiety that is palpable in the tight muscles in my shoulders. I am uncertain about the future of our nation and I do not know if enough people are paying attention to the very real stakes at hand. The prospect of the return of the 45th president fills me with a sense of dread for the future of the United States, other nations, our economy, race relations, programs for the poor, and so much more. I fear too many people are judging President Biden on his lack of perfection at home and abroad, and are willing to gamble on the future leadership of the nation because he has not passed an impossible purity test.

It is my sincere hope that as we enter 2024, we take a moment to rest, reset, and recommit ourselves to bettering our nation.

But more importantly, I hope we make the time to do things in our lives that will make us feel happy and fulfilled. We do not know what the future brings, so let’s cherish the friendships and relationships we’ve cultivated and reward ourselves by spending time with those who nourish us and make our days brighter.

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 FAQ-NYC and host of The Blackest Questions podcast at TheGrio.

She is a 2023-24 Moynihan Public Scholars Fellow at CCNY.

14 • December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024

Continued from page 10

June There’s a growing call for the United Nations to extend its proclaimed “International Decade for People of African Descent.” The original declaration was announced by the U.N. General Assembly in 2013. It proclaimed the years 2015 through the end of 2024 as a time to promote wider recognition, stronger avenues to justice, and the social and economic development of Black communities in nations throughout the world. However, as the end of that decade approaches with the coming of 2024, many are saying the decade was not enough time to truly examine and promote the concerns of Black communities.

Tensions between the City Council and Mayor Eric Adams spike this past week over elements of the asylum seeker crisis, with both sides digging in their heels. Meanwhile, the care for some 70,000 newly arrived migrants hangs in the balance.

The Police Reform Organizing Project (PROP) releases its newest report, “The Notorious and True History of NYC’s Finest.” The report heavily highlights the relationship between New York City police and the Black residents they serve, dating back to the 1800s New York Kidnapping Club, a circle of “fugitive” slave-catchers and pre-NYPD cops who snatched and sold Black New Yorkers into southern bondage. A later excerpt details reporting by the Amsterdam News on the regular police brutality lawsuits against the NYPD in Harlem during the 1950s.

Rowan D. Wilson, 62, Governor Kathy Hochul’s second nominee for New York State Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals, is appointed after the Senate Judiciary Committee spectacularly rejected her first nominee.

Tracy McCarter graduates from Columbia University with a master’s in advanced clinical management and leadership after facing 25 years to life in prison when she was charged with second-degree murder in the 2020 stabbing death of her estranged husband, James Murray. McCarter maintained self-defense. Her high-profile case played a pivotal role in the Manhattan District Attorney election, with DA Alvin Bragg—who tweeted his support for McCarter during his campaign—pressured to follow through and discard the office’s prosecution against her.

Rideshare workers urge the governor and the MTA to refrain from imposing what they deem as a double tax on them and their jobs.

The Independent Drivers Guild, which says it represents many of the city’s rideshare drivers (as well as drivers in New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Florida), plans to rally in front of the governor’s offices in Manhattan on Friday, June 2, and deliver a petition that calls on Hochul to recognize that the proposed Central Business District (CBD) Tolling Program would amount to a second tax on for-hire vehicle (FHV) drivers.

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

Tracy McCarter graduates from Columbia University with a master’s in advanced clinical management and leadership after having faced 25 years to life in prison when charged with second-degree murder in the 2020 stabbing death of estranged husband James Murray (Contributed photo/Twitter)

Activists want the United Nations to extend its proclaimed “International Decade for People of African Descent” (Karen Juanita Carrillo photo)

Ghanaian author, poet, playwright, and scholar Ama Ata Aidoo rests in power after seven decades of an illustrious career (GIN photo)

Texas Tech sprinter (C) Terrence Jones is one of the favorites to win the 100 meters at 2023 NCAA (TexasTech. com photo)

Rashid Ali Bynum, 28, of Portsmouth, Virginia, is linked to the death of Sayreville Councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour, 30, after investigators traced his travels on February 1 using his cellphone and vehicle location data.

Federal prosecutors charge Jay Bryant, 49, in the death of Jason “Jay” Mizell, known professionally as Jam Master Jay. The hip hop trailblazer was shot in the head in his studio on October 30, 2002.

Bill Lee, a jazz bassist and composer whose versatility found him in demand among a varied spectrum of music icons and genres, from Duke Ellington to Odetta, Harry Belafonte, and—of course—those memorable film scores for his son Spike Lee, dies on May 24 at his home in Brooklyn. He was 94.

With hip hop’s 50th anniversary soon approaching, we’re delving into some history since its West Bronx inception in 1973. It eventually morphed into a global phenomenon, affecting aspects of society culturally, economically, educationally, politically, socially, and theologically. Kool DJ Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash, known as “The Hip Hop Trinity,” are recognized as its founders. Beginning as a way for local African Americans and Caribbean Americans to express themselves artistically, hip hop incorporated DJ-in’, MC-in’, B-Boyin’/B-Girlin’ (break dancin’), graffiti, and the “knowledge, wisdom, and overstanding” as “Hip Hop’s 5 Elements.”

Area youths are urged to invest time in developing their talents and using them to unite and better their communities, rather than combating each other in the streets.

NYC basketball legend God Shammgod and his son, God Shammgod, Jr., are featured in a campaign powered by Advil titled “The Show Must Go On,” which spotlights their tight bond, love of basketball, focus on coaching, and even the aches and pains that come with the sport. Just as point guard Shammgod taught his son the game, he now teaches it to NBA players in his role as a player development coach with the Dallas Mavericks.

African immigrants’ rights groups conduct a week of actions in the last week of May to point out that they cannot afford to wait years before being granted official U.S. government protection. Organizations representing immigrants from Sudan, Mali, Mauritania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Nigeria, and more came to Washington, D.C., to push the Biden administration to grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to individuals from African nations that are unsafe to return to.

The apparent drowning deaths of two young New York City students—11-year-old Alfa Ousmane Barrie and 13-year-old Garrett Warren—are still under investigation, and still bring many to tears. At the forefront are efforts to bring Alfa’s father to the USA for the child’s burial. “We are calling on the media to ask Governor Kathy Hochul, Sena-

tors Schumer and Gillibrand, and Mayor Eric Adams to put pressure on the State Department to grant the visa waiver quickly to get Alfa Ousmane Barrie’s father Abdoul Barrie to the U.S. for his son’s burial,” Alfa Ousmane Barrie family spokesperson Ahmadou Diallo told the Amsterdam News.

For the eighth year in a row, Brooklyn’s Launch Charter School leadership organize a schoolwide walkout and march to raise awareness of gun violence in the community for National Gun Violence Awareness Day. The NYC Department of Corrections (DOC) recently stops informing the public about custody deaths in the wake of the third known Rikers Island-related death this year. On Tuesday, May 30, the New York Times reported the death of Joshua Valles, who was held at Rikers’ Anna M. Kross Center jail. A DOC spokesperson confirmed the recent passing of a detainee who was released from department custody “on his own recognizance” before his death. Valles is not directly identified, although the information was provided in response to a media request in his name.

The intersection of the South Bronx’s East 165th Street and Rogers Place has been renamed “Cornell ‘Black Benjie’ Benjamin Way” to honor the 25-year-old former vice president of the Ghetto Brothers, an activist street gang.

Black Benjie and the Ghetto Brothers had been working on coordinating a gang truce

December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024 • 15

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre sweeps onto the stage of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) on June 6 for what has been described as “longawaited return to the BAM stage after more than a decade” (Paul Kolnik photo)

Nearly weeklong commemoration of 60th anniversary of assassination of Medgar Wiley Evers sees home of Medgar and Myrlie enshrined as a national monument (Herb Boyd photo)

Councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour passes away at 30 (Sayreville Borough Council photo)

when the gang member-turned-peace activist was beaten to death in December 1971.

Dr. Cornel West, scholar and activist, announces in a June 5 video on Twitter that he has decided to join the 2024 presidential race on the People’s Party ticket.

Some local residents are angry after hearing the news that Gov. Kathy Hochul approved Mayor Eric Adams’s clearance for Harlem’s Lincoln Correctional Facility (31–33 West 110th Street), which closed in 2019, to be repurposed as a temporary shelter for displaced migrant workers. His administration has been grappling with finding housing for a wave of migrants who have relocated to the city in recent weeks.

Mayor Eric Adams signs a ban on discrimination because of a person’s height or weight in employment, housing, and public accommodations into law.

Several New Yorkers come out to take part in the annual #BlackBirdersWeek, which was also held in cities across the country from May 28 through June 3.

The 14th Annual NYC Multicultural Festival, held in Jackie Robinson Park Bandshell in Harlem and hosted by Joyce Adewumi, features music, dance, and delicious food from around the world. June marks not only Pride Month but also National Caribbean American Heritage Month, National Immigrant Heritage Month, and Black Music Month. Sadly, you wouldn’t know it

nent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD) brings activists and nonprofit and governmental representatives together to talk about the concept and possibility of reparations for African enslavement; the ideals of Pan Africanism and its suggestions for how to deal with past injustices and what to push for in the future; the racism and other difficulties people of African descent are facing as they migrate from wartorn or failing nations; methods of collecting and distributing high-quality and timely employment, economic, age, geographic, and economic statistics on Black populations; and practices communities can use to promote health and well-being, while dealing with intergenerational trauma.

Caricom—the Caribbean governments and the international community—begins three days of talks on Sunday aimed at coming up with solutions for the island’s decadesold crisis and are making sure that Haitian stakeholders are present. Frustrated by Haiti’s ongoing security and food crises, regional governments say they are putting everything into their latest effort at brokering peace in the country, which has been racked by a security crisis since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

The National Action Network house of justice hosts a lively debate between City Council District 9 candidates on Friday, June 9. The seat is currently held by Councilmember Kris-

from the prevailing media coverage, advertising, and national promotion, which primarily revolve around Pride Month.

The legendary hip hop trio the Fat Boys will receive a well-deserved honor when they are inducted into the Long Island Music & Entertainment Hall of Fame (LIMEHOF) at the LIMEHOF 50th Anniversary of Hip Hop Concert, at the LIMEHOF museum in Stony Brook (97 Main Street, Stony Brook, NY).

Ghanaian author, poet, playwright, and scholar Ama Ata Aidoo is resting in power after seven decades of an illustrious career.

A renowned feminist and celebrated writer and playwright, Aidoo spent most of her early life among the Fante community, later studying at the University of Ghana and University of Cape Coast. In the U.S., she attended Brown and Stanford.

The 2023 NCAA outdoor track and field championships begin at Mike A. Myers Stadium and Soccer Field in Austin, Texas, home stadium of the University of Texas Longhorns, and will conclude on Saturday, June 10. First held at Stagg Field in Chicago in 1921, the event has been the host of some of the greatest, most accomplished, and inspiring athletes in the history of sports. Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, and Jackie Joyner-Kersee are some of the towering historical figures whose monumental achievements include winning NCAA outdoor track and field titles.

The weeklong convening of the Perma-

tin Richardson Jordan, who has technically dropped out of the running.

New York City finishes first in the world’s worst air pollution rankings. City officials reported the local air quality index (AQI) climbed to over 480 on a 500-scale due to smoke traveling south from the ongoing Canadian wildfires, the worst since the 1960s.

“Just over a year ago, a monster drove hundreds of miles to kill New Yorkers, Black New Yorkers,” recalls NY State Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages, who chairs the Assembly’s Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, & Asian Legislative Caucus. “On his weapon...on his gun was a phrase. And it said, ‘This is your reparations.’ Some may argue that the past is the past and that we should move on. But how can we move on when the echoes of history still reverberate in the lives of millions? How can we build a future on a foundation stained with injustice?” Members of the caucus announced on June 8 that the state is now steps closer to putting the New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies in place.

President Joe Biden vetoes a bill passed by Congress that blocked his student loan forgiveness plan on June 7. The Republican-led effort throws the debt relief plan back into the air as the pause on student loans for more than 40 million borrowers is set to end in August.

After years of deliberation, the New York State Assembly and Senate finally agree to pass the Clean Slate Act, a law that will automatically clear a person’s conviction record so they can have better access to jobs and housing.

Thousands showed up to celebrate the 66th Annual National Puerto Rican Day: Since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered the city in 2020, parades and festivals have been slowly returning to their former glory over the last three years.

New York City Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell, the first woman to hold the position, is stepping down after 18 months on the job. Sewell, who was appointed by Mayor Eric Adams, announced her resignation in an email to department staff Monday afternoon.

Modern abolitionists are trying to abolish the police and prisons. To be clear, abolitionists are absolutists. Seemingly every interpretation of the practice opposes reform as a long-term goal. Prison abolitionists are ultimately not aiming to reduce the prison population or speed up the trial system—they want it completely gone. Police abolitionists aren’t advocating for better department training and replacing guns with tasers; they want the entire system to be dissolved. Yet the shortterm steps taken to achieve abolition—such as working through the legal system to overturn wrongful convictions—overlaps extensively with reform.

There were a number of memorable moments in the nearly weeklong commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the assassination of Medgar Wiley Evers, including the home of Medgar and Myrlie being See YEAR IN REVIEW on page 26

16 • December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

Caribbean Update

Former Surinamese president sentenced to 20 years for mass murder

By BERT WILKINSON Special to the AmNews More than 16 years after the first hearing and four decades after the crime, former military strongman and ex-elected President Desi Bouterse has been sentenced a Surinamese court to 20 years in prison for the 1992 mass murders of 15 government critics.

Bouterse, 78, had appealed the previous 2019 sentence for the December 8, 1982, murders of 15 professionals that the thenmilitary government had accused of plotting with the Dutch and other western nations to reverse the February 1980 coup that toppled the then-elected administration.

All through the trial, the judges and prosecutors had argued that the defense presented no new arguments or facts to change the 2019 verdict, so it was no surprise when the court reaffirmed the previous sentence on Bouterse, a two-time elected president who lost power in general elections three years ago.

“Bouterse has always accepted collective responsibility as the then-national leader, but has always denied giving any orders.”

The charismatic former president and leader of the powerful main opposition National Democratic Party (NDP) was absent from the sentencing hearing as large groups of supporters had urged at a weekend rally to prepare for what is clearly the final ruling on the case in Suriname. His attorneys have talked about the possibility of appealing to the hemispheric Inter American Human Rights Commission as an external oppor-

tunity to keep him out of prison.

Local media said the court did not order the immediate arrest and or imprisonment of Bouterse, apparently well aware that such actions could rile his supporters and raise tensions in the Dutch-speaking Caribbean Community (Caricom) country.

Security was tight for the verdict. Schools and roads near the courthouse were closed and so were some commercial buildings.

Bouterse faced the verdict along with four other ex-soldiers, none of whom appeared in court for the ruling.

General elections are due in Suriname in May of 2025, but it is unclear whether the former strongman will still be at the helm of the NDP by then, since he is nearly 80 years old.

Prosecutors say the 15, who had included members of the clergy, labor leaders, academics, and four journalists, were rounded up and shot by firing squads for allegedly plotting to stage a counter-coup against the military. Bouterse has always accepted collective responsibility as the then-national leader, but has also always denied giving any orders to do so and had not pulled any trigger during the mayhem at a Dutch-era colonial fort next to the presidential secretariat and the palace.

The case has been a burden for the country of about 500,000 people for four decades, which should now be able to breathe a sigh of relief because Bouterse had urged his supporters to act responsibly.

Biden is losing his base as he tries to be Trump-light on immigration FELICIA PERSAUD

IMMIGRATION KORNER As President Biden and Democrats face a new election in the New Year, it is increasingly obvious that they are in big trouble. A recent Wall Street Journal poll shows Biden’s approval rating hitting a new low. About 37% of respondents in the Journal poll said they approve of the job he is doing as president, while 61 percent of respondents had an unfavorable view.

Former President Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod called it “very, very dark” for Biden’s re-election campaign.

Meanwhile, a Gallup poll found that 56% of Americans view the Republican Party unfavorably and 58% saying the same of the Democratic Party. The GOP’s current standing with Americans is even stronger on matters of national security, where it leads the Democratic Party by 22 points for protecting the country from international terrorism and military threats.

This occurred as a KKF.org poll found that many immigrants do not feel that their views or the interests of immigrants generally are well represented by either of the two major U.S. political parties, and half of all immigrants say that who the president is makes no difference in their lives.

I don’t need polls to tell me the administration and Democrats are in big trouble.

The fact is that the administration continues to alienate its base of progressive and immigrant voters as it tries hard to be Trump-light, especially on immigration.

The man who came into the office promising to undo the aggressive immigration policies of the Trump administration and usher in a more humane approach is now making a deal with Republicans in the Congress to gut asylum and refugee legal protections in exchange for foreign military aid for Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel.

The White House seems to be opening toward the Republican position, potentially accepting a plan that would allow immediate expulsions akin to those used during the COVID-19 pandemic, detention for migrants, and deportations of those who do not seek asylum.

Progressive and Latino Democratic lawmakers and advocates are aghast, and rightfully so, because the changes in immigration policy mirror the far-right goals of the GOP, which is shoring up their own base while Dems move further and further into oblivion.

Caribbean immigrant and White House mouthpiece Karine Jean-Pierre, however, sees this as a “bipartisan compromise.” “(The president) believes we need to fix what’s happening with the broken immigration system,” she said. “He’s willing to find a bipartisan compromise to get that done.”

Perhaps what Jean-Pierre should note is that this so-called “bipartisan compromise” will continue to piss off the president’s fast-dwindling base, paving the way for the right wing to win again in 2024. They smell blood in the water—Biden’s and Democrats’—and they are happy to delay their holiday to go for the jugular as the Democratic-controlled Senate puts Israel and Ukraine first, over their American voting base.

As People’s Action Executive Director Sulma Arias pointed out: “President Biden won in 2020 by campaigning against Trump’s

racist immigration and asylum policies.”

Now, said Arias, “It is unconscionable for Majority Leader Schumer and the Biden Administration to even consider trading necessary protections for refugees and asylum seekers for foreign military aid.

“Democrats should not give in to Republican demands for more suffering for migrants. These callous and dangerous negotiating tactics that will harm many people are exactly the wrong direction for this country, and we will remember this moment in November,” he added.

Arias is right. The base that swept Team Biden into office in 2020 has lost all faith in the administration and that will undoubtedly be reflected in November 2024. Democrats and Biden, along with his overtly arrogant mouthpiece, would do well to take warning now.

Will the Ukrainians, Taiwanese, and Israelis vote for Biden and save him, instead of the base of immigrant, youth, and Black voters who have consistently helped Democrats win again and again? I think not!

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

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

Arts & Entertainment

December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024 • 17

Jazz pg 17 | Music pg 18 | Theater pg 21

Pg. 20 Your Stars

New Year’s Eve happenings Craig Harris (Ron Scott photo)

Once again, it’s time to celebrate bringing in a new year—a moment to reflect on last year and commit to New Year’s resolutions, make things happen, shake it up, be the change. Kick off 2024 by celebrating ’til the Big Ball drops, ’til the rooster crows!

The following is a short listing of New Year’s Eve jazz happenings around town.

Bill’s Place (148 West 133rd Street), owned by saxophonist and composer Bill Saxton, will be in New Year’s Eve stride as it stirs up spirits from those Prohibition days, when this authentic Harlem speakeasy had plates of Tillie’s fried chicken and a young Billie Holiday turned heads with song and a voice that caused listeners to tremble.

The spirits of such notables will be silently celebrating among live guests as Saxton’s Harlem All-Stars jam the night away.

The first set, at 7:30 p.m., will offer party favors/BYOB and a grand time. Admission is $60 per person. The second set begins at 10:30 p.m. with party favors, complimentary wine bar, and food to take you into the wee hours of a dawning New Year. Admission is $90 per person.

For reservations, visit billsplaceharlem. com/products/new-years-show.

Returning to Manhattan, the Smoke Jazz & Supper Club (2751 Broadway) will be jumping with vocalist Carla Cook, pianist Eric Reed, and the alto saxophonist Vincent Herring Quintet. The group will be rounded out with drummer Joe Farnsworth, trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, and bassist tba.

The set at 7 p.m. is $250, which includes a three-course holiday dinner and one show.

The 9:30 p.m. set is $350, which includes the dinner, two shows, and a midnight celebration with hats and noise-makers. Of course, customers will be so busy grooving to Cook’s magical vocals and the outstanding all-star quintet (of established musicians and band leaders) that noise-makers will only be an afterthought.

For reservations, visit tickets.smokejazz.com.

If you’re in the Washington, D.C., area for New Year’s, you might want to check out the celebration at Keystone Korner Baltimore, presenting a special double bill featuring pianist Cyrus Chestnut and Affirmation, along with violinist Chelsey Green & the Green Project.

In a grand finale closer, the two bands will perform together. The ticket of $130 plus tax includes a four-course meal (appetizer, entrée, dessert, and non-alcoholic drinks served from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m.) and a champagne toast at midnight.

For more information, visit the website keystonekornerbaltimore.com.

I would like to thank everyone for taking time to read this column and, more importantly, for reading the Amsterdam News, one of the oldest and most influential Black weekly newspapers in the United States. James Henry Anderson, the founder of the Amsterdam News, once stated, “Harlem is the Amsterdam News and we are Harlem.”

For 2024, the key words are resilience and perseverance. These words reflect the tenacity of our African ancestors. Cuba Gooding and the Main Ingredient said it best on their single, “Rolling Down the Mountainside”: “We all count/We got strength and we got pride/Fight when you know you’re right/Keep the truth in sight…” “Black seeds keep on growing.”

One Love 2024!!!

(Pexels photo bt Caio)

In Brooklyn at Sista’s Place (456 Nostrand Avenue), high-flyin’ notes will be bouncing off the ceiling as trombonist Craig Harris’s band infuse their jazz drenched in funk and swing. His trusted band members are pianist Yayoi Ikawa, bassist Calvin Jones, drummer Kahill Kwame Bell, and vocalist Milton Suggs.

The celebration begins at 10:30 p.m. and includes a champagne toast and traditional New Year’s Eve Southern cuisine (chicken, black-eyed peas, rice, potato salad, and fish). Admission is $75 per person.

For reservations, call 718-398-1766.

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Best Black albums of 2023, Part 1

By JORDANNAH ELIZABETH Special to the AmNews

space, “Central City” features Lil Wayne, Kelly Price, Faith Evans, and other impressive, iconic, and supportive artists.

Music can be considered one of our Freedia deserves it. Her contributions greatest contributions to American cul- to mainstream music include samples ture and Western counterparts. Hip hop, on “Break My Soul” and “Nice for What,” soul, jazz, and beyond are artforms that and recreated the blueprint of popular seep from every facet of the creative music in the late 2010s and 2020s.

Black being, offering a myriad of perspectives: self-reflection, imagination, El Michels Affair & Black Thought, observation, and emotion. Music is a “Glorious Game” realm where we can thrive and become The successful house band El Michels anything we want to be, including our- Affair, known for their accompaniment selves, and draw acceptance and adora- and collaboration with Raekwon and, tion to make the world feel something. later, other members of the Wu-Tang Here are our top choices for Best Black Clan (and creating the widely embraced Albums of 2023. cover album, “Enter the 37th Chamber”), teamed up with Philly’s lyricist, Black Angel Bat Dawid, “Requiem for Jazz” Jazz clarinetist and vocalist Angel Bat Dawid composed, engineered, and produced this new power work. This highsensory album, as a whole, is a critique of American racial politics and includes portions of audio capturing neighborhoods of Chicago and enriching sounds of experimental jazz, woven within the penetrating overtures of her chrysalis clarinet playing, driving jazz compositions and thought-provoking interrogation of the treatment of Black American citizens.

Big Freedia, “Central City” The postmodern queen of New Orleans bounce, Big Freedia has released her sophomore full-length album, “Central City,” nearly 10 years after her debut, “Just Be Free.” This well-produced, anthem-laden record reveals Freedia’s gift of consistency, glamor, grit, and sensibility. Not only is the album fun, high-energy, and full of Freedia’s individuality within the structured bounce

Thought, to release “Glorious Game.”

Irreversible Entanglements, “Protect The smooth, soulful musical tidings of Your Light” Michel’s tasteful and well-rounded jazzy A free jazz favorite of listeners from their inhip hop sound blends seamlessly with ception, Irreversible Entanglements (IE) reThought’s wise and laidback flow. leased their Impulse! Records debut, “Protect Your Light.” The group consists of core memCécile McLorin Salvant, “Mélusine” bers: vocalist and poet Camae Ayewa, also Three-time Grammy Award winner Cécile known as Moor Mother; bassist Luke Stewart; McLorin Salvant returned this year to release drummer Tcheser Holmes; and saxophonist another pristine Grammy-nominated work Keir Neuringer and trumpeter Aquiles Navarof art, “Mélusine.” She sounds like Billie ro, who continue their journey into high art creHoliday if Holiday had been born in a small ation by composing soundscapes of intellectual village in France during the Baroque era. and spiritual proportions. IE happens when McLorin Salvant functions as a beautifully you bring together five profoundly eloquent, crafted sonic time machine as she channels introspective, introverted, accomplished, and several centuries, ethnicities, and memories emotionally intelligent artists to send musical that span from moments ago to the halls of messages throughout the Universe. This time cathedrals built long ago. the message is “Protect your Light.”

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December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024 • 19

Best Black books of 2023, Part 1

By JORDANNAH ELIZABETH Special to the AmNews

“In spite of the challenges, this year has been fruitful and I’m grateful” is a sentiment that derives from a text message I recently sent. It beautifully sums up and expresses every emotion and experience I lived this year, and I hope it resonates universally to you as readers, thinkers, and our beloved community of Harlem and beyond.

This year, I thought it appropriate to revisit what was originally written about these brilliant Black books (with a bit of fresh commentary) for my Best Black Books of 2023 list. It is said that those who fail to look to the past are doomed to repeat it. Therefore, I hope to make the words of the past become words of the present in remembrance tof the rich releases; changing seasons; and bountiful creativ-ity, intelligence, and the gen-erous well of knowledge these tBlack writers have offered to me -and the entire world. o Happy holidays, happy New ;Year, and thank you to all of the tBlack authors who have been -published this year all over the -world.

n “Monsters in Love: Why Your ,Partner Sometimes Drives You dCrazy and What You Can Do lAbout It” by Resmaa Menakem e Psychotherapist Resmaa Menakem shares insights into the layers of relationships that are not often talked about: hatred in love relationships, the helpfulness of conflict as opposed to the detrimental view our culture tends to take, and so on. There is so much to learn from this book about the pursuit of “relationship realism,” which can create a roadmap and clarity regarding the path to positive long-term connections.

“Monsters” is a powerful, effective tool that demystifies the fractures and blessings, pitfalls who shared her observations and purity, and pain and plea- and wisdom to honor and acsure of Black love. knowledge the evolution of her son’s life. She wrote her long“Blackgirl on Mars” by Leslie awaited second book, “BlackAnn girl on Mars,” written while The AmNews had had the plea- journeying through the United sure of featuring Brown’s debut, States during the height of the 2018’s “Decolonial Daughter: Black Lives Matters protests and Letters from a Black Woman to finding herself in Trinidad and Her European Son,” a viscer- Tobago to lay her grandmother al, touching book by a mother to rest. Brown gives her account

fiction that, at times, falls flat in journeying through the intricate territory of the epic. This book does it beautifully.

“Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters” by Lynnée Denise The enigmatically intelligent and scholarly productive thinker Lynnée Denise, affectionately known as Big Mama Thornton, has made strides in Black realms of music for well over a decade, and is now presenting a new book. The exploration of the life and times of this enigmatic blues visionary gives the artist its due. “Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters” is a well-written examination of and homage to Black music enthusiasts should collect and enjoy.

of the existential reality of the maintenance of her own Black life within the realms of gender, sexuality, cultural connectivity, and self-awareness.

“The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi” by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o This story is of Gĩkũyũ, Mũmbi, and their nine daughters as they travel through mountains,

volcanos, and grasslands filled with wildlife and the lineage of their spirits and loins. It promises to be a classic in the coming decades—a work of epic proportion that positively differentiates itself due to its soothing, spacious, and airy voice.

The vividness of the storytelling, and mythical and imaginative folklore of “The Perfect Nine” brings life and joy to Black

“BLK ART: The Audacious Legacy of Black Artists and Models in Western Art” by Zaria Ware Award-winning author Zaria Ware looks at Western art in a way it has never been viewed and interpreted before. “BLK ART” is divided into two categories—art and models—and offers a comprehensive look into the presences, vitality, and importance of artists and Black models; muses of many European art pieces. This book is fresh and modern, and centers Western art around Blackness, not the other way around.

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HOROSCOPES BY KNOWYOURNUMB3RS

By SUPREME GODDESS KYA WWW.KYAFRENCH.COM | CONSULTATIONS 866-331-5088

Rebirth of A New Nation: 2023 was a euphoric year with many things revealed, a clarity of vision, and new wisdom and accomplishments. One must go through a process called growth which is a process until our body departs from this physical earth. Life is a learning experience and when you learn to manipulate energy, you reach another realm of this physical realm in life. We are entering the year 2024 (2+0+2+4=8) which numerically sums up to an 8 vibration. Celebrate, allow bygones to be bygone, and those folks you’ve outgrown who may not journey with you in 2024. Erykah Badu has a song, “Next Lifetime,” and 2024 is a year of separation, be it from people, clubs, places, habits, memberships, or government. An 8 vibration is a death and rebirth vibration, as some family members are in preparation for their departure for the next lifetime, and the new family members are arriving. The old souls are reborn again. “Rebirth entailed a true death, the serving of one memory and the loss of oneself” —Zen Cho

Happy Birthday Cappy! 2023 has been a tremendous year of allowing

The song “Get it Together” by 702 is the theme for January. The first month of the new year is a cleansing cycle that will feel like you are in mud, rain, or fog with an urgency to push for your reDec 22 June 22 ertoire and learn from experience. Now it’s time to apply all that you’ve birth. Patience is a virtue this month for the nourishment of your Jan 21 July 23 learned and create a book, course, or class, Embrace 2024 as January elesoul and is vital for the body. In the days leading up to January 5, vates you into higher grounds and arenas. 2024 is your progress forward, 2024, be mindful of the people in your space and the spaces you as Pluto in Capricorn is here to rebirth you from a long voyage which started January enter due to your sensitivity to other energies.

23, 2008 and lasts until November 19. 2024. An awakening cycle between December 31, 2023, around 12:08 p.m. and January 2, 2024 around 7 p.m. is an opportunity to purge, rebirth, emerge and rebrand you from all the knowledge you acquired and applied.

You are born to be wild, adventurous, bold, a brave one who doesn’t conform. You are a bit rebellious in a great way; like most leaders, they don’t follow the crowd. They are the crowd by what Leo January is ringing in promotions, opportunities, and a change, be it they bring to the table as a service, product, or something of value.

July 24 Aug 23 a shift in residence, location, office, or things around you. Structure From December 28, 2023 around 7:23 p.m. until December 31, 2023 around 11:45 a.m., value doesn’t necessarily have a face on Aquarius and organization are key, and essential for 2024. Grab your to-do list to Jan 22 check off the completed tasks. From January 2 around 7:47 p.m. until it: it can be wisdom, a simple touch, a heartfelt letter. As you venture into a new Feb 19 January 5 around 7 a.m., remember the foundation of the idea of why plateau, not everyone can journey with you. you started anything to take it to the next level. Certain information is now being revealed only for your ears to hear. You heard it through the grapevine.

January is a month that feels like the help needs help. You need help in certain areas you know aren’t your cup of tea. Make your Time to give your character a reality check with an upgraded version life easier by helping or negotiating with someone who can assist Virgo Aug 24 of yourself. Look at it like taking your dirty car to the car wash, cleanyou with your task as an even or fair exchange. It’s a great cycle to Sept 23 ing it inside and then washing the outside, leaving you and your car promote, advertise, receive offers, and make speculations on outPisces feeling so fresh and so clean like the OutKast song.

Consider yourself comes that pay off handsomely. From December 31, 2023 around Feb 20 a vital asset just like the oxygen flowing through your body. In the days 12:08 p.m. until January 2, 2024 around 7 p.m., what’s it going to be? Make the Mar 20 leading to January 5, 2024, begin the new year with writing down what best decision in your best interest and wellbeing. you need and want, and then speak it into existence with great feeling looking into the mirror. Ask, command, and demand for the help you need.

You have a knack of running into things and situations you’d rather not see or be involved in. Well, that’s your spirit team putJanuary 2024 sets the tone of things coming to an end that are lagging ting you on notice on how to assist with folks’ circumstances when Libra Sept 24 and dragging out for some time as a new beginning is coming rapidly. they come to you for advice by observing, listening, and watching, Oct 23 Do what’s in your heart to follow and the mind will produce the paths to even when you’re not trying. It’s part of life, and how the air blows Aries navigate.

What’s the dream, that thing that nags at you and is constantinformation your way. From January 2, 2024, around 7:47 p.m.

Mar 21 ly on your mind as a reminder? That’s your cue to make your exit and until January 5 around 7 a.m., watch and learn as things fall right into your lap.

Apr 21 walk into a new entrance. From December 28, 2023 around 7:23 p.m. until December 31, 2023 around 11:45 a.m., are you ready to take the quantum leap?

Before you begin something new, an ending or separation must take place for a higher purpose. The universe always tests humanOn December 31, Jupiter in Taurus retrograde stations direct and ity to see if you are strong and disciplined enough to let whatevScorpio these effects will feel like a soul reunion, like a family reunion. Januer it is go. Utilize your strength and know your weakness as this Oct 24 Nov 22 ary is a slow month, like a woman taking her time to get dressed for a too shall pass. A new voyage is on the brink; you can feel it apTaurus special occasion. May I advise, you honor, respect the process as you proaching. In the days leading up to January 5, 2024, get ready or Apr 22 receive what you need to know. What you need to know will come in the universe will take you out of your comfort zone to get you ready. That back May 21 various forms. That’s why January is deliberately slow on purpose. From and forth rocking only soothes the issue, it does not solve the problem—so stop December 31, 2023 around 12:08 p.m. until January 2, 2024 around 7 rocking the chair and make a move. p.m., do things on purpose to be purposeful.

 your intuition to guide you. Apply attention to your health and wellness, Capricorn attending community events, classes, and programs to add to your rep-

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January is about expanding your reputation, social aspects, and January is a month of change like the four seasons. When it’s time for what or who influences your immediate environment emotionthe next season to arrive, nature allows the process for its higher growth ally. Can you say “this big light of mine??” Who said it has to be a Sagitarius little light? You have so much energy to utilize, to carry out any and contribution to society, and also for humanity. Decisions and plans Nov 23 Gemini need to be made. Gemini, you normally know what you need and want, mission you need to fulfill, like an Amazon fulfillment center. You Dec 21 May 22 but this time it’s different, and it’s pulling on you physically and menare packed, wrapped, loaded and ready to roll to deliver on what June 21 tally to make a move. From January 2, 2024, around 7:47 p.m. until Jan- you believe is true. No mission is too small or too big, because you always can uary 5 around 7 a.m., follow the path that’s conducive and allows the most flexibility. learn something you didn’t know. Smile.

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The year in review in Black theater, Part 1

By LINDA ARMSTRONG Special to the AmNews 2023 was a year of Black greatness on and off Broadway. It was a year of Black acting veterans like Stephen McKinley Henderson starring in “Between Riverside and Crazy” at the Helen Hayes Theatre; a year of reviving Black classics like “Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch,” penned by the late Ossie Davis; a time when new Black voices were heard on offBroadway with “Triple Threat” by James T. Lane.

It was a time of fantastic Broadway musicals that starred Black talent. like “Some Like It Hot” and “Spamalot.”

There was just so much to embrace when it came to Black folks in theater productions in 2023.

Milestones included productions like “Mama, I Want to Sing” celebrating 40 years, and priceless theater companies like the Billie Holiday Theatre in Brooklyn commemorating 50 years of telling our stories in the special way that only that theater can do. Let’s take a look back at 2023 in theater.

In January, Broadway audiences got such a thrill when Stephen McKinley Henderson brought his role of Pops—Walter Washington—to Broadway at the Helen Hayes Theatre (W. 44th Street) as he starred in Stephen Adly Guirgis’s play “Between Riverside and Crazy,” a role that Guirgis created with Henderson specifically in mind. Watching this thespian perform the role was like witnessing a master class in acting. He moved across the stage with such grace, humanity, and power that you couldn’t help but be captivated and proud.

Henderson was joined on stage in this 2nd Stage production by a capable cast that included Victor Almanzar, Common, Rosal Colon, Elizabeth Canavan, Michael Rispoli, and Maria-Christina Oliver.

The production had poignant direction by Austin Pendleton.

“Some Like It Hot” just completed a successful run at the Sam S. Shubert Theatre (W. 44th Street).

This production took you back to the nostalgic days of the dance musicals, where the tappers went to town, there were hi-jinks, and you were floored and awed by the creativity, costumes, and dazzle of watching a full-out musical.

The production truly put a spot-

(L-R): Stephen McKinley Henderson, Victor Almanzar, Elizabeth Canavan, Michael Rispoli, LizaColón-Zayas, Rosal Colon, and Common in “Between Riverside And Crazy” (Joan Marcus photo)

Adrianna Hicks as Sugar in “Some Like It Hot” on Broadway (Matthew Murphy photo)

light on one of its stars, J. Harrison Ghee, who later in the year came away with a well-deserved Tony Award, becoming the first nonbinary actor to win a Tony for best actor in a musical.

The musical extravaganza also featured stunning performances

by Adrianna Hicks and Natasha Yvette Williams.

February is when Classical Theatre of Harlem (CTH) took the stage at the NYU Skirball Theatre and delivered an amazing, hilarious, afrocentric version of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.” Ty Jones always presents Shakespeare’s work with a fresh, modern, Blackfocused flair.

The production was ingeniously directed by Carl Cofield and starred one of my favorite actresses, who is currently starring in “Purlie Victorious” on Broadway: the one and only Kara Young. She was joined onstage by a phenomenal company of actors, whose singing and comedic timing were outstanding to behold.

The company included William DeMerritt, Chivas Michael, Carson Elrod, Israel Erron Ford, Cassandra Lopez, and Allen Gilmore. Any time that you hear that CTH is presenting a Shakespeare classic in 2024, you must make plans to attend. This company never disappoints.

“The Harder They Come” musical featured a book by SuzanLori Parks, songs by Jimmy Cliff, and additional songs by Parks. It played at the Public Theatre (425 Lafayette Street) and was based on the film of the same name made 50 years ago. It told the story of Ivan, a young Jamaican man who had a dream of being a music star in Kingston, Jamaica. His mother tried to warn him that Kingston was a dangerous place. The audience saw how big the drug trade was and how the music industry could be controlled by one powerful person.

The cast was stellar and included Natey Jones, Jeannette Bayardelle, Meecah, Jacob Ming-Trent, along with Dominique Johnson, Andrew Clarke, and Ken Robinson. The musical had entertaining direction by Tony Taccone; co-direction

by Sergio Trujillo; engaging choreography by Edgar Godineaux; and vibrant, pulsating music supervision, orchestration, and arrangements by Kenny Seymour.

See BLACK THREATER on page 22

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Cast from “Twelfth Night” in CTH production (Richard Termine photo)

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March was a glorious month as the Billie Holiday Theatre in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn celebrated its 50th anniversary with an event called “Black Genius in the American Theatre: A Concert Reading.” And it was packed with just that—genius! There were readings from productions that got their start at the Billie Holiday Theatre, and a production was selected to represent each decade.

Productions included “Over Forty” by Celeste Walker; “Inacent Black and the Five Brothers” by A. Marcus Hemphill; “Tamborines to Glory” by the late, great Langston Hughes; “The Past Is the Past” by Richard Wesley; “Faith On Line” by Joyce Sylvester; “Brothers from the Bottom” by Jackie Alexander; and “The Old Settler” by John Henry Redwood.

There was also a stunning recital of Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” by Phyllis Yvonne Stickney, who co-hosted the event with Harry Lennox. The actors who took part were tremendous and included Pauletta Washington, Denise Burse, Peggy Alston, Shani Tabia, Donald Hinson, Terrence Riggins, Joyce Sylvester, Billy Eugene Jones, and Kim Sullivan.

Credit was also given to the people who have had a hand in the Billie Holiday Theatre over these many years, including Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Samm Art Williams, Count Stovall, Debbie Allen, Woodie King Jr., and Peter Jay Fernandez. Director Emeritus Marjorie Moon shared a message with grace, love, and humility, showing her appreciation for all those who helped to make the theater what it is: a gem in Brooklyn, where you can go and experience our stories.

“Mama, I Want to Sing” is a musical production that we’ve all grown up with, but 2023 made it 40 years old, and the show came back with gusto as it played at El Museo’s El Teatro (1230 Fifth Avenue at 104th Street). It is the musical that got us all to love the phrase “Mama, I Want to Sing.”

This revival used participants from Vy Higginsen’s Mama Foundation for the Arts and its choir, and showcased the lovely talents of Asa Sulton, Elisa Silva, and Faith Cochrane, who all rotated in the lead role of Doris Troy.

It also featured Letrice Arlene CherrySturdivaat, Dawn Joyner, Leah Stewart, Richard Hartley, Lamont O’Neal, and Carlton Ellen. It had impressive direction by Ahmaya Knoelle, Vy Higginsen’s daughter, and musical direction by Kevin McCoy. The late, great playwright and poet, Micki Grant, was on everyone’s mind at the end of March as Woodie King Jr.’s New Federal Theatre presented a tribute to her at the Castillo Theatre (W. 42nd Street).

The event, “Micki Grant: Step Into My World,” featured unpublished works by Grant compiled by her long-time friend, actress Nora Coles, who performed along

Scene from “Mama I Want To Sing” 40th anniversary production (Carol Rosegg photo)

with Ebony Marshall Oliver and Debra Walton, and it was beautiful. You could feel Grant’s presence in the room through audio of her reciting her own poetry. There was such a warm vibe and feeling of honoring a great lady in that theater. It was amazing.

Theatre Row served up a theatrical feast as Lynn Nottage’s “Crumbs from the Table of Joy” played. This production told a story of a Black family that suffers the death of its mother; moves to Brooklyn from the South in 1950; and has to deal with racism, death,

interracial relationships, and trying to build their lives again.

The cast was superb and included Shanel Bailey, Malika Samuel, Sharina Martin, and Natalia Payne. This Keen Company production was powerfully directed by

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Cast of “Fat Ham” on Broadway (Marc Franklin photo)

LINCOLN CENTER PRESENTS

Continued from page 22

Collette Robert.

“Black Odyssey,” presented by Classic Stage Company (E. 13th Street) was the creative work of Marcus Gardley. Inspired by Homer’s “The Odyssey,” he set it in Harlem during modern times. Gardley focused on a modern-day Black veteran—Ulysses Lincoln—trying to return to his family after the war in Afghanistan; a war he carried guilt for because of having to kill, and in which he is used as a chess piece as two gods, Deus and Paw Sidin (God of the Sea), battle.

Featuring an all-Black cast, Gardley’s play boldly and creatively spoke of the Scottsboro Nine; the four little girls who died in the church bombing; the assassinations of Dr. King, JFK, and Malcolm X; and so many other atrocities that have befallen the Black community. He delivered the point that Black people must know their history to know themselves.

The cast that delivered his message was extraordinary and included James T. Alfred, Jimonn Cole, Sean Boyce Johnson, Harriett D. Foy, Temidayo Amay, Adrienne C. Moore, Lance Coadie Williams, D. Woods, and Marcus Gladney Jr. Stevie Walker-Webb provided wonderful direction.

In April, originality and a Black urban tint on a classic story were alive, well, and funny as Hell, as “Fat Ham,” James Ijames’ 2022 Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama, played on Broadway at the American Airlines Theatre (42nd Street), after a successful run at the Public Theatre, where it was co-produced

by National Black Theatre.

“Fat Ham” was a Black take-off of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” that hit on all thrusters.

It was a story of murder, betrayal, and revenge, but done with some amusing twists that you never saw coming. Taking place in

a backyard during a wedding celebration, there was a lot more spice than the sauce on the barbecued ribs.

Ijames created a piece that focused on a gay college student named Juicy, his father’s death, and his mother’s quick marriage to his uncle. Then his father’s ghost commanded him to avenge his murder. This play had such humor, sexiness, and wit, you just had to love it—and the audiences did.

The production had fabulous direction by Saheem Ali and starred a phenomenal cast that included Marcel Spears, Nikki Crawford, Billy Eugene Jones, Chris Herbie Holland, Benja Kay Thomas, Adrianna Mitchell, and Calvin Leon Smith. “Fat Ham” was a filling theatrical feast that left the audience satisfied and bent over with laughter.

“Camelot” was presented at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater and starred Jordan Donica as Lancelot. Donica was absolutely marvelous and proved there is life after “Phantom of the Opera,” in which he was the first Black Raoul.

A play touched my heart and soul in a way I never expected. It candidly looked at how COVID affected our lives, our world. It looked vividly at the emotional, fear, confusion, sadness, feelings of being out of control that we all faced, but it showed how creativity keeps us going and helps us reinvent ourselves.

That play was “Plays for the Plague Year,” written by and starred Suzan-Lori Parks, who also sings and plays guitar (something I didn’t previously know she did). Parks wrote a play in a day and captured what was going on in the world during COVID. She told stories of some of those who died— educators, doctors, and people in the Black community who were murdered; George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery. She See BLACK THEATER on page 24

THE MOVIE MUSIC OF

TERENCE BLANCHARD JANUARY 28TH AT 7:30 PM DAVID GEFFEN HALL

Presented by Lincoln Center in collaboration with the New York Philharmonic as part of The Art of the Score

Join the New York Philharmonic and Oscar-nominated composer Terence Blanchard as they perform highlights from Blanchard’s astonishing 80 film & television credits including Malcolm X (1992), 25th Hour (2002), and BlackKklansman (2018).

LincolnCenter.org/Blanchard

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Alex Newell in “Shucked” on Broadway (Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman photo)

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addressed people’s frustrations over everything being shut down.

Parks and the cast who joined her on stage gave impeccable performances as they portrayed many different scenarios. Other cast members included Greg Keller, Leland Fowler, Danyel Fulton, Rona Figueroa, Orville Mendoza, Lauren Molina, and Martin Sola. Niegel Smith’s direction was absolutely glorious.

“Shucked,” playing at the Nederlander Theatre (W. 41st Street), tells the story of the people of Cobb County, who love corn and make all types of things with it. Suddenly they are devastated when the corn starts dying. They have to find a way to save the corn that is at the center of their lives.

This very funny musical is an absolute blast. It stars Alex Newell as Lulu, doing such a splendid job in the role that this non-binary actor earned a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. What a year!

Newell played Lulu with a charm, confidence, and sass that is glorious to behold.

Rheaume Crenshaw played Storyteller 1 at the performance I attended and was off-the-chain hilarious. A featured actor in the show was Dwayne Clark in the role of Grandpa—his character was a smoothtalking, dancing, riot.

Glenn Davis and Chris Perfetti in scene from “King James” (Luke Fontana photo)

Libya V. Pugh, Leland Fowler Julian Elijah Martinez, and Ezra Knight (L-R) in “This Land Was Made” (Carol Rosegg photo)

May was marvelous as “King James” was staged at New York City Center (W. 55th Street) as a Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Center Theatre Group Production.

Written by Rajiv Joseph, it showed the relationship between two Cavalier basketball fans—one white, one Black—and how they were affected when LeBron James left the Cavaliers for Miami.

This play was brilliantly directed by Kenny Leon and showed how life and where we are in it can flip the script in a heartbeat. It was quite poignant and memorable to see the relationship between these men grow, get torn down, and then try to rebuild. Glenn Davis delivered a fascinating performance as Shawn and Chris Perfetti was perfect as Matt.

In June, I thoroughly enjoyed “This Land Was Made,” a powerful piece written

by Tori Sampson, presented by the Vineyard Theatre (108 E. 15th Street). and directed by Taylor Reynolds, a Black female.

This play featured a mainly Black cast and told the story of Huey P. Newton, leader of the Black Panther party in Oakland, California, in 1967, where an incident occurred with police.

There were too many poignant moments in this play to name. A narrator named Sassy took the audience on a journey they wouldn’t forget. Sampson delved into the racism that was happening via the police.

She told the story of the positive things that the Black Panther Party stood for, and the principles they taught. You realized that

Scene from “Shadow/land” (L-R) Lizan Mitchell and Joniece Abbott-Pratt (Joan Marcus photo)

Newton and the Black Panther Party were there for the betterment of Black people overall, although they often were victimized by the police because of it.

The ensemble cast was absolutely perfect and included Antoinette Crowe-Legacy, Libya V. Pugh, Yasha Jackson, Leland Fowler, Matthew Griffin, Ezra Knight Curtis Morlaye, and Julian Elijah Martinez.

A play that focused on how Hurricane Katrina devastated the people of New Orleans

was “Shadow/land,” at the Public Theatre.

This play was created by Ericka DickersonDespenza and featured direction by Candis C. Jones. It told the story of a family who owned a club called “Shadow/land” in New Orleans, a club that had been passed down from generation to generation in the family.

Daughter Ruth was trying to convince her mother Magalee to sell the club. On the eve of Katrina, they were arguing about selling, with Magalee trying to tell her daughter

the history of the club and its significance in the family, while the ancestors were represented by the Grand Marshal.

The play also looks at the issue of complexion in the Black community and how a mother might favor one child over another due to her being light-skinned. This play was amazingly spiritual to experience. The production featured three Black actresses who were stunning: Lizan Mitchell, Joniece Abbott-Pratt, and Christine Shepard.

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024 • 25

Sen. Sanders, NYS reparations commission

By ARIAMA C. LONG Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member New York State’s new law, signed this week

by Governor Kathy Hochul, establishes its first reparations commission to research the state’s role in perpetuating slavery in the U.S., study the years of racial discrimination after emancipation, and recommend if there should be financial compensation to the descendants. It is the second state in the nation to pass this kind of legislation.

“Today, we are continuing our efforts to right the wrongs of the past by acknowledging the painful legacy of slavery in New York,” said Hochul in a statement. “We have a moral obligation to reckon with all parts of our shared history as New Yorkers, and this commission marks a critical step forward in these efforts.”

Prior to the 1770s, “the population of enslaved Africans accounted for 20% of New York’s population, while 40% of colonial New York households owned enslaved Africans,” said the governor’s office. The state didn’t abolish slavery until 1827. The institution of slavery was an “integral part of the development” of the state, as was the discrimination and systemic racism that came from it, said the governor’s office.

The bill S.1163-A/A.7691 is sponsored by State Senator James Sanders and State Assemblymember Michaelle C. Solages.

Sanders has championed reparations for years, first introducing the bill in 2017. An amended version of the bill finally passed both the state Senate and Assembly this June.

Reparations advocates took to the streets throughout the state raising awareness about the bill, hoping Hochul would sign it into law.

The governor hadn’t commented publicly on whether she would.

Up until the beginning of December, Sanders worried that the bill would fall victim to a “pocket veto” if not addressed by the end of the year, the Amsterdam News reported.

Sanders has been ecstatic about the signing.

“Today, we plant a seed of hope, not just for the city of New York and New York State, but for the nation,” said Sanders in a statement. “Let this be a beacon, a call to action for every corner of this country to confront their own histories, to acknowledge the injustices that bind us, and to work together towards a future where reparations are not just a word, but a lived reality for all. I want to express my deepest gratitude to Governor Kathy Hochul for signing this historic bill into law.

This is a monumental step forward in our fight for racial justice, and it would not have

Governor Kathy Hochul today signed legislation to continue New York’s leadership on racial equity by creating a new commission to study reparations and racial justice. This commission acknowledges the horrific injustice of slavery and will be tasked with examining the legacy of slavery, subsequent discrimination against people of African descent, and the impact these forces continue to have in the present day.

(Photo courtesy of Gov. Hochul’s office)

been possible without the Governor’s courage and commitment.”

Sanders views the reparations commission as a solid starting point to addressing the harms of the past and preparing for a more equitable future. According to City Comptroller Brad Lander’s report on the state’s racial wealth gap, released on Dec. 6, homeownership, retirement funds, investment assets, and student debt are factors exacerbating the wealth gap created by historical racial injustices, reported AmNews.

“I believe that reparations are essential to achieving true racial justice in our country. We must acknowledge and address the harms of the past in order to create a more just and equitable future for all,” continued Sanders.

The commission will have nine members qualified in the fields of African or American studies, the criminal legal system, human rights, civil rights, and reparations organizations, among other things. They’re mandated to examine the state’s legacy of slavery and how it’s impacting people today in a report.

The commission will also examine how the state and federal government engaged in the interstate transfer of enslaved Africans and their descendants during the period between

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the end of the Civil War and the present. The report must be delivered within a year.

“In acknowledging New York’s history, we confront the high cost of racial injustices,” Solages said in a statement. “Reparations lay the groundwork for a future where all New Yorkers can thrive and prosper. I commend the Legislature, the governor, and advocates for their collaborative efforts. I am proud to have sponsored this legislation and eager to continue advancing together in shaping our shared future.”

The law has generally been hailed by legislators as an amazing leap forward in the fight for racial justice.

Jennifer Jones Austin is the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies (FPWA) CEO and chaired New York City’s Racial Justice Commission from 2021 to 2022. She commends the law, and said it will put the state on a clear path to redressing the egregious wrongs of slavery.

“New York’s participation in the slave trade left not only scars but a gaping wound on people and communities of African origin that has yet to heal because of slavery and resulting structural and systemic racism,” said Austin in a statement. “This legislation, which establishes a commission to examine these

injustices and chart a pathway forward, paves the way for reparations for our state and potentially for the nation.”

Trevor Smith, co-founder and executive director of Narrative Power of the BLIS Collective, said that anti-Black policies are a stain on society. “Our nation was founded on two ugly myths—the lie that this land was uninhabited and that Africans were subhuman and thus subject to lifelong enslavement,” said Smith in a statement. “As a state and a country, we must fulfill the broken promise of Reconstruction and deliver reparations to the Black community.”

Others see the law creating an even wider ‘racial divide.’ About 77% of Black adults surveyed by the Pew Research Center said the descendants of people enslaved in the U.S. should be repaid, while 18% of white Americans said the same.

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.

26 • December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

Libya V. Pugh, Leland Fowler Julian Elijah Martinez, and Ezra Knight (L-R) in “This Land Was Made” (Carol Rosegg photo) Continued from page 15

June enshrined as a national monument during the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute of Courage and Justice Gala from June 7–12 in Jackson, Mississippi.

Black Restaurant Week begins on Juneteenth. In the New York City/New Jersey area, more than 100 African American, African, and Caribbean-owned restaurants have already signed up and are ready to take part in this period of recognition.

New York City is set to establish a minimum wage rate for restaurant delivery workers. In an announcement on June 11, Mayor Eric Adams and Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) Commissioner Vilda Vera Mayuga said that New York City— famed as a place where many residents don’t mind having tiny kitchens because they’re used to having prepared foods delivered straight to their front doors––will become the first in the U.S. to have app-based delivery workers who can do their job and earn, at least, the minimum wage.

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre sweeps onto the stage of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) on June 6 for what has been described as the “long-awaited return to the BAM stage after more than a decade” and is embraced by an audience that repeatedly greeted the dancers with heartwarming displays of affection and thunderous applause.

The Vegan Night Market is one of the newest vegan weekly series. It debuted in Wollman

Rink at Central Park on Tuesday, June 6. This plant-based market promises customers will “enjoy the best plant-based cuisine” every Tuesday night at 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. from now until early October.

“This Land Was Made,” the brainchild of African American female playwright Tori Sampson, with direction by African American female Taylor Reynolds, features a mainly African American cast of actors who all bring their A-game to the stage. The play tells the story of Huey P. Newton, leader of the Black Panther party in Oakland California, in 1967, where an incident occurred with police.

Mae Duncan Carson, the “quiet revolutionary” wife of Robert “Sonny” Abubadika Carson, makes her transition on June 2, 2023. Born Mae Catherine Haynes in 1937 in Orangeburg, South Carolina, she came up north at age 11, and eventually met and married Ralph Duncan in Brooklyn, N.Y. They had three children: Khaba Sahu Re, Randall Duncan, and Robynn Duncan.

The marriage was dissolved, and she found love again, marrying Carson and receiving the title Queen Tetisheri. They were married for more than 30 years, until he died in December 2002. Carson was the grassroots activist who inspired a movie, “The Education of Sonny Carson,” and thousands of articles and radio and television news segments.

Senbere Teferi, a two-time Olympian from Ethiopia, sets a new record of 30:12 at Saturday’s Mastercard New York Mini 10K, held in Central Park by the New York Road Runners (NYRR), by holding off Kenya’s Helen Obiri, this year’s women’s Boston Marathon

winner. Teferi has the fastest time since the event’s inception in 1972.

In recognition of Juneteenth, the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund (AACHAF) announces that $3.8 million in funds would be granted to some 40 African American U.S. sites. The AACHAF is the largest fund dedicated to supporting and preserving historic sites in the U.S. that represent African American history, such as homes, museums, centers, schools, and more. One of the sites to receive funding is the United Order of Tents Eastern District #3, the oldest Black women’s social organization in the U.S. The funds will be used to preserve their historic headquarters at the mansion (87 MacDonough Street in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn).

The racial and social justice advocacy group New Jersey Institute for Social Justice (NJISJ) has worked with the state’s Legislative Black Caucus since 2019 to push for passage of a New Jersey Reparations Task Force bill (A-938/S-386), but the state legislature has not pushed the bill forward. It is sponsored by Assemblymembers Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, Britnee N. Timberlake, and Shavonda E. Sumter. Now NJISJ says it’s moving to begin the work of documenting the information needed for a reparations push in New Jersey and has created its own New Jersey Reparations Council.

Mayor Eric Adams and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the union that represents about 120,000 municipal employees, reach a tentative five-plus-year contract agreement last week.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is

struggling to defend his security forces after they failed to block a June 16 attack on a secondary school where some 39 students were murdered, and others were abducted.

The essay by Roberto Almanza, a professor at the University of Magdalena (Colombia), entitled “La Orilla de Caliban: El Rastro de la filosofia Afrocaribe en el siglo XXI (The Land of Caliban: The trail of AfroCaribbean philosophy in the 21st century)” wins the Casa de las Américas “Black Presence in the Caribbean” award.

The third annual Juneteenth celebration, on Monday, June 19, seems to magically turn one of NYC’s busiest vehicular corridors into a vibrant live stage of beautiful original creations by an array of artists; with something of interest to both young and old. Nostrand Avenue, between Jefferson to Putnam, is closed to traffic and packed with people rhythmically swaying to sweet sounds of R&B, African drumming, and conversations about reparations and jazz.

Hip hop progenitors the Last Poets commemorate their 55th anniversary on May 19. Artistically inspired by Black Arts Movement alumni such as Amiri Baraka and Nina Simone, and socially motivated by iconic activists Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., they created the template for a generation of urban artists who emerged in the succeeding decades.

A True Skool-era hip hop tribute occurs on a recent Saturday afternoon with several pioneers in attendance for the fifth annual Sha-Rock Day in honor of the culture’s first female MC. The throwback event at the

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024 • 27

2023 Harlem Pride (Amanda Ulloa photo)

Bronx’s Magenta Playground is reminiscent of back-in-the-day park jams, complete with DJs, MCs, B-Boys/B-Girls, and graf writers. It also doubles as a pre-50th anniversary of hip hop recognition, with several luminaries navigating down memory lane.

Bridging Grenadian and American culture through fashion is a unique way to launch a physical boutique. Fe Noel Little Caribbean (1133 Nostrand Avenue in Little Caribbean, Brooklyn) has done just that, and has its grand opening on Thursday, June 15. The boutique’s debut displayed its latest in-shop-only exclusive dresses, shirts, swimsuits, and more.

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture hosts its fifth Annual Literary Festival on Saturday, June 17. This year’s theme is “Literacy is Generational Wealth.”

Just before being consecrated as the next Bishop of New York, Rev. Matthew Heyd holds a formal conversation with Presiding Bishop Rev. Michael Curry at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Friday, May 19. They talk about the direction the Episcopalian Church is heading in as it takes on issues of social justice.

The play “Flex,” written by Candrice Jones, begins previews at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater and opens on July 20. It tells the story of a high school girls’ basketball team in rural Arkansas in the late 1990s shortly after the launch of the WNBA. With aspirations of going pro, these young women must first navigate the pressures of being young, Black, and female in their surroundings.

It is a somber, sometimes tearful scene on Friday, June 23, as friends and family

gather at the Futa Islamic Center in Morrisania in the Bronx to funeralize 11-year-old Alfa Barrie. The Democracy Prep Harlem Middle School student was last seen in Harlem on May 12, with 13-year-old Garrett Warren. The city was put on alert as a search was launched for the two boys. On Thursday, May 18, Warren’s body was recovered from the East River. On Saturday morning, May 20, it was announced that Barrie’s body had been recovered under the Madison Avenue Bridge over the Hudson River.

Multiple media sources said that the boys climbed through a hole in a fence close to the 145th Street Bridge.

As of Tuesday night, two candidates are advancing to the November election for City Council in Harlem’s District 9. Exonerated Five’s Yusef Salaam takes an early lead in the polls with 50.14% of the votes, or 5,540 votes. Assembly Member Inez Dickens has 25.02% of the votes, or 2,764 votes, while Assemblymember Al Taylor has 14.39% of the votes, or 1,590 votes.

Black and brown New Yorkers received 85% of the NYPD’s criminal summons last year, according to John Jay College’s Data Collaborative for Justice (DCJ), and the number issued is up for the first time since 2017, when the Criminal Justice Reform Act funneled many such low-level offenses out of the criminal courts and into the civil justice system.

On June 22, the New York City City Council, on a unanimous voice vote, passed Resolution 0285, calling upon the president and the United States Congress to end the Cuban embargo and travel ban and remove

Cuba from the U.S. list of “state sponsors of terrorism list.”

A coalition of organizers and the Human Services Council (HSC) spends a particularly chilly June night sleeping outside City Hall last week to demand “JustPay” for “underpaid, city-contracted essential workers.”

The LGBTQ+ community comes out to celebrate Harlem Pride 2023 on Saturday, June 24. The neighborhood’s Pride events stretches along 12th Avenue and features food, music, and informational vendors. Electeds joined with community members to celebrate the acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community and its achievements.

J. Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell make history at the 76th Annual Tony Awards on Sunday, June 11, when they became the first non-binary performers to win a Tony Award. They did so with beauty, grace, and a lot of PRIDE! The San Antonio Spurs select Victor Wembanyama, No. 1 overall in the N.B.A. draft at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. “One of the best feelings of my life,” says the Parisianborn teenager known as Wemby. “Probably the best night of my life. I’ve been dreaming about this for so long. It’s a dream come true. It’s incredible.”

New York City basketball luminary Rod Strickland has continually remained connected to his Bronx hoops roots, paying his good fortune forward in various ways. One aspect of his altruism has been the Rod Strickland Summer Basketball League, now in its 26th season. The program is the brainchild of longtime New York basketball figure and youth development professional LaMarre Dyson, who

has run the league since its inception.

The number of retail jobs is on the decline in New York City. According to a report from the Center for an Urban Future (CUF), the city’s retail sector is not recovering from the pandemic in the same way other city jobs have—and the retail sector is one of the main areas young Blacks and Latinos turn to for initial employment.

Black studies scholar Charles L. Blockson dies at his home on Wednesday, June 14, at 89. The author, historian, and bibliophile was the creator of Temple University’s Charles L. Blockson Afro American Collection, which features more than 700,000 material artifacts that detail the global Black experience. The Blockson archive includes information dating from the 1500s through the 21st century.

Brooklyn-born super-middle-weight Edgar Berlanga earns a unanimous 116–108, 116108, 118–106 over Ireland native Jason Quigley Saturday night at the Theater at Madison Square Garden. Berlanga (21–0, 16 KOs) drops Quigley four times in the 12-round match, including twice in the final round, to seal the victory.

The Liberty keep stacking up wins and continuing to affirm their standing as one of the best teams in the WNBA. Their thrilling comeback victory over the Washington Mystics on Sunday improves their record to 9-3: third best in the league when they faced the Connecticut Sun Tuesday night on the road.

"YEAR IN REVIEW" CONT'D IN NEXT WEEK'S ISSUE

28 • December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

Health New York removes medical debt from credit reports

By MAYSOON KHAN Associated Press/Report for America ALBANY, N.Y. (AP)—Unpaid medical debt will no longer appear in New York residents’ credit reports under a bill signed into law

by Governor Kathy Hochul.

The law prohibits credit agencies from collecting information about or reporting medical debt.

It also bans hospitals and healthcare providers in the state from reporting such debt to the agencies.

New York is the second state, after Colorado, to enact such a law. A similar nationwide measure is being considered by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

“Medical debt is such a vicious cycle. It truly hits low-income earners, but it forces them to stay low-income earners because they can never get out from under it,” said Hochul, a Democrat, at the bill-signing ceremony in New York

City. State lawmakers approved the legislation in June despite Republican objections that the legislation is too broad and should not apply to non-emergency care.

The new law will take effect immediately. “No one should ever have to make a horrible choice between their physical health and their financial health,” Hochul said.

The new law won’t necessarily stop all medical debt from affecting New Yorkers’ credit scores. It won’t apply to debt that is charged to a credit card, unless the card was issued specifically for health services, and it doesn’t apply to out-of-state healthcare providers.

People hit with hefty, sometimes unexpected, medical bills can experience roadblocks in renting a house, securing car loans, or getting a new job because of a bad credit report. Supporters of the law argued that credit reports are meant to measure how responsible a person is with their money, but don’t account for life’s un-

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul addresses media during press conference in New York, Monday, Mar., 13, 2023. New York’s hospitals and healthcare providers are now banned from reporting medical debt to credit agencies, after governor signed a series of consumer protection bills into law on Wednesday, Dec. 13 (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)

expected realities, like suffering from a disease or injury.

More than 740,000 New Yorkers had unpaid medical debt owed to collection agencies on their credit reports as of February 2022, ac-

cording to a study by the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research organization. The study also found that in most regions in the state, communities of color had higher rates of medical debt than pre-

Home for the Holidays?

Knowing your family health history is important for your health.

Holiday gatherings can be a chance to talk with family members about health issues you and your loved ones may share.

For tips on getting the conversation started, point your smartphone camera at the QR code and tap the link.

Find us in Harlem at the MSK Ralph Lauren Center, and at msk.org/RLC.

dominantly white communities.

Three major U.S. credit reporting companies agreed this year to stop counting unpaid medical debt under at least $500, but advocates have long said that isn’t enough.

The Urban Institute study found that in communities with the lowest incomes in New York, more than half of consumers with medical debt owed $500 or more.

The federal CFPB began its rulemaking process to remove medical bills from Americans’ credit reports this year. It’s part of the Biden administration’s lengthy push for minimizing the importance of medical debt in how people’s creditworthiness is measured. ___ Maysoon Khan is a corps member for the Associated Press/ Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on otherwise undercovered issues.

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024 • 29

30 • December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024

Education

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

Students around the world suffered huge learning setbacks during the pandemic, study finds

By COLLIN BINKLEY AP Education Writer WASHINGTON (AP)—Students around the world suffered historic setbacks in reading and math during the COVID-19 pandemic, with declines in test scores so widespread that the United States climbed in global rankings simply by falling behind less sharply, a new study finds.

The state of global education was given a bleak appraisal by the Program for International Student Assessment, the first study to examine the academic progress of students in dozens of countries during the pandemic. Released Tuesday, it finds the average international math score fell by the equivalent of three-quarters of a year of learning. Reading scores fell by the equivalent of half a year.

The setbacks spanned nations rich and poor, big and small, with few making progress. In the countries where students were tested, a quarter are now considered low performers in math, reading and science, meaning they struggle to perform basic math problems or interpret simple texts.

Usually given every three years, the latest test was delayed a year because of the pandemic. It was administered in 2022 to a sample of 15-year-olds in 37 countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ()ECD), plus 44 other partner countries. The OECD has been conducting the test since 2000.

The new results point to an “unprecedented drop in performance,” the report says. It raises concerns about countries, including Germany, Iceland, and the Netherlands, which saw drops of 25 points or more in math scores; 20 points is seen as equivalent to a year of learning.

Among all participating countries, the average math score fell by about 15 points since the 2018 tests. Reading scores fell by 10 points. Neither subject had seen a change of more than five points previously. The bright light was in science, where scores changed little since 2018.

In the U.S., which historically has lagged in math, the average math score fell by 13 points. Reading and science stayed mostly even. Overall, the country improved to No. 26 in math, up three spots from 2018. It ranked No. 6 in reading and 10th in science, up two and one spots, respectively.

America’s math score was about even with the international average. Science and reading were slightly higher.

“The whole world is struggling with math, and we are not immune from that,” said

A new study finds that students around the world suffered historic setbacks in reading during the pandemic and even deeper losses in math, with test score decreases so wide that the United States climbed in global rankings simply by falling behind less sharply (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)

Peggy Carr, head of the National Center for Education Statistics, an office of the U.S. Education Department. “Everyone had struggles during the pandemic. What we’re seeing here is we had less.”

The new results line up with findings from individual countries reporting deep and persistent academic setbacks, especially in math. A national study in the U.S. last year found math scores fell by more than ever, with reading scores dropping to 1992 levels.

There’s no doubt the disruption of the pandemic was a major factor in the global setbacks, but the OECD cautions against blaming it all on COVID-19. Science and reading scores were falling before the pandemic, it says, and some countries were already trending downward in math, including Belgium, Finland, Canada, and France.

It also finds the link between school closures and academic setbacks was “not so direct.”

A survey of students found about half faced closures of more than three months, but it didn’t always lead to lower scores. There was “no clear difference” in performance trends between countries that had limited closures, including Iceland and Sweden, and those with longer closures, including Brazil and Ireland, according to the report.

“Many other factors impacted learning during this period, such as the quality of remote teaching and levels of support granted to struggling students,” it said.

Singapore, long seen as an education powerhouse, had the highest scores by far in every subject. It was joined in the upper echelons by other East Asian countries, including Japan and China. Also among the higher performers were Estonia, Canada, and Ireland.

Albania saw the biggest decrease in math scores, with a staggering 69-point decrease, followed by Jordan, with 39 points, and

Iceland, with 36. Iceland’s drop knocked it below the U.S. and the OECD average.

Norway fell 33 points, dropping to the global average.

Most of the countries that saw math gains had relatively low performance levels to start with, including Saudi Arabia, the Dominican Republic, and Cambodia.

In the U.S., Education Secretary Miguel Cardona attributed the relative success to President Joe Biden’s investments in education, including $190 billion in pandemic relief that Congress sent to schools. Still, he said, America’s math scores remain “stubbornly low.”

“We cannot be complacent at home,” he said—“not when math is critical to our global competitiveness and leadership.”

The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

Joy to the world

December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024 • 31

The White family (Bill Moore photos)

Mt. Morris Ascension Presbyterian Church held its fourth annual Christmas Concert, “Songs of the Season,” featuring Pastor Terrance Kennedy, the Reach Music Ministry, and the White Family.

The Reach Music Ministry Choir

P U T H O L I D AY

HOPE IN THE SPOTLIGHT

The Coney and the vibrant Coney Island community are celebrating the season with togetherness and opportunity… center stage.

Raise a glass to the wonders of the holidays and a more prosperous community.

Have a Merry Christmas!

Ya n k e e s

theconeynyc.com

32 • December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024

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NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT - COUNTY OF NEW YORK HNY CLUB SUITES OWNERS ASSOCIATION INC., BY AND THROUGH ITS BOARD OF DIRECTORS, Plaintiff -against- WILLIAM D. VONVOSS, et al Defendant(s). Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated July 18, 2023 and entered on July 20, 2023, I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the New York County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street New York, NY on January 10, 2024 at 2:15 p.m. premises situate, lying and being in the Borough of Manhattan, County of New York, City and State of New York, being an undivided ownership interest as tenant-in-common with other owners in the Timeshare Unit in the building located at 1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY; known as The NYH Condominium. Together with an appurtenant undivided 1.4182% common interest percentage.

This a foreclosure on ownership interest in a timeshare unit, a studio penthouse on a floating use basis every year, in accordance with and subject to declarations. Declaration of Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions dated October 27, 2003 and November 3, 2003 as CFRN # 2003000442513 as recorded in the Office of the City Register, County, City and State of New York. The Timeshare Unit is also designated as Block 1006 and Lot 1303. Said premises known as 1335 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS, UNIT HU2, NEW YORK, NY. Approximate amount of lien $17,119.13 plus interest & costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale.

Index Number 850042/2020.

TOM KLEINBERGER, ESQ., Referee DRUCKMAN LAW GROUP PLLC Attorney(s) for Plaintiff 242 Drexel Avenue, Westbury, NY 11590 SUPPLEMENTAL SUMMONS SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK - COUNTY OF NEW YORK 57TH ST. VACATION OWNERS ASSOCIATION, INC., BY AND THROUGH ITS BOARD OF DIRECTORS, Plaintiff, -against- DIANA GOMEZ JUAREZ , if living, and if he be dead, any and all persons unknown to Plaintiff, claiming, or who may claim to have an interest in, or generally or specific lien upon the real property described in this action; such unknown persons being herein generally described and intended to be included in the following designation, namely: the wife, widow, husband, widower, heirs-at-law, next of kin, descendants, executors, administrators, devisees, legatees, creditors, trustees, committees, lienors and assignees of such deceased, any and all persons deriving interest in or lien upon, or title to said real property by, through or under them, or either of them, and their respective wives, widows, husbands, widowers, heirs-at-law, next of kin, descendants, executors, administrators, devisees, legatees, creditors, trustees, committees, lienors and assigns, all of whom and whose names, except as stated, are unknown to Plaintiff, Defendants. INDEX NO.: 850070/2020 FILED: DECEMBER 12, 2023 TO THE ABOVE NAMED DEFENDANTS: YOU ARE HEREBY SUMMONED to answer the complaint in this action, and to serve a copy of your answer, or, if the complaint is not served with this summons, to serve a notice of appearance on the plaintiff's attorney within 20 days after the service of this summons, exclusive of the day of service or within 30 days after completion of service where service is made in any other manner than by personal delivery within the State. In case of your failure to appear or answer, judgment will be taken against you by default for the relief demanded in the complaint. TO THE ABOVE NAMED DEFENDANTS: The foregoing Summons is served upon you by publication pursuant an Order of the Hon. Francis A. Kahn III, a Justiceof the Supreme Court, of New York County, dated November 28, 2023 and entered November 30, 2023. Dated: October 6, 2023, Westbury, New York. Maria Sideris, Esq., DRUCKMAN LAW GROUP PLLC, Attorneys for Plaintiff, 242 Drexel Avenue, Westbury, New York 11590, (516) 8760800. WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO COLLECT A DEBT AND ANY INFORMATION OBTAINED WILL BE USED FOR THAT PURPOSE. SUPREME COURT - COUNTY OF NEW YORK BOARD OF MANAGERS OF THE 425 FIFTH AVENUE CONDOMINIUM, Plaintiffs -against- UNITED ENTERPRISES INTERNATIONAL INC., et al. Defendant(s). Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated September 5, 2023 and entered on September 8, 2023, I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the New York County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street New York, NY 10007, on Wednesday on January 31, 2024 at 2:15 pm premises situate, lying and being in the Borough of Manhattan, City, County and State of New York; known and designated as Block 868 Lot 1547. Said premises known as 425 FIFTH AVENUE, UNIT 25-C, NEW YORK, NY. Approximate amount of lien $46,778.62, through July 1, 2023, plus interest fees & costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale.

Index Number 656892/2021.

ROBERTA ASHKIN, ESQ., Referee Seyfarth Shaw LLP Attorney(s) for Plaintiffs 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10018

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SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK COUNTY OF NEW YORK HSBC BANK USA, N.A., Plaintiff, -againstCarmen Patricia Armendariz Guerra if living and if any be dead, any and all persons who are spouses, widows, grantees, mortgagees, lienor, heirs, devisees, distributees, or successors in interest of such of the above as may be dead, and their spouses, heirs, devisees, distributees and successors in interest, all of whom and whose names and places of residences are unknown to Plaintiff , Juliana Hinestrosa Armendariz if living and if any be dead, any and all persons who are spouses, widows, grantees, mortgagees, lienor, heirs, devisees, distributees, or successors in interest of such of the above as may be dead, and their spouses, heirs, devisees, distributees and successors in interest, all of whom and whose names and places of residences are unknown to Plaintiff , Maria Hinestrosa Armendariz if living and if any be dead, any and all persons who are spouses, widows, grantees, mortgagees, lienor, heirs, devisees, distributees, or successors in interest of such of the above as may be dead, and their spouses, heirs, devisees, distributees and successors in interest, all of whom and whose names and places of residences are unknown to Plaintiff , The Board of Managers of Trump Parc Condominium, State of New York Commissioner of Labor, New York City Environmental Control Board, New York City Parking Violations Bureau, New York City Transit Adjudication Bureau, United States of America-Internal Revenue Service, New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, Defendants, Index No. 850396/2023 SUPPLEMENTAL SUMMONS Plaintiff designates New York County as the place of trial. Venue is based upon the County in which the Mortgage premises is situated TO THE ABOVE NAMED DEFENDANT(S): YOU ARE HEREBY SUMMONED to answer the Complaint in this action and to serve a copy of your Answer or, if the Complaint is not served with this Summons, to serve a Notice of Appearance on the attorneys for the plaintiff within twenty (20) days after service of this Summons, exclusive of the day of service (or within thirty (30) days after service is complete if this Summons is not personally delivered to you within the State of New York). In case of your failure to appear or answer, judgment will be taken against you by default for the relief demanded in the Complaint.

NOTICE OF NATURE OF ACTION AND RELIEF SOUGHT THE OBJECT of the above captioned action is to foreclose a Mortgage to secure $945,000.00 and interest, recorded in the Office of the Clerk of the County of NEW YORK on August 10, 2011, in Book CRFN 2011000281448, Page , covering premises known as 106 Central Park South, Unit 15G, 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.

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 filed this foreclosure proceeding against you and filing the answer with the court, a default judgment may be entered and you can lose your home.

Speak 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 your Mortgage company will not stop this 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. Dated: Bay Shore, New York November 7, 2023 By: Kristina Negri, Esq. Frenkel, Lambert, Weiss, Weisman & Gordon, LLP Attorneys for Plaintiff 53 Gibson Street Bay Shore, New York 11706 (631) 969-3100 Our File No.:01-097442-F00 SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY- HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf. v. FELIX R. SANCHEZ, NYC PARKING VIOLATIONS BUREAU, NYC TRANSIT ADJUDICATION BUREAU, NYC ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL BOARD, COMMISSIONER OF SOCIAL SERVICES, CRIMINAL COURT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, NEW YORK SUPREME COURT, Defts. - Index # 850098/2018. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated August 8, 2003, I will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the New York County Courthouse located at 60 Centre Street, NY, NY on Thursday, January 11, 2024, at 2:15 pm, an interest of an undivided .09864% tenant in common interest in the timeshare known as 57TH STREET VACATION SUITES located at 102 West 57th Street, New York, New York. Approximate amount of judgment is $12,839.39 plus costs and interest as of October 26, 2017. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale which includes annual maintenance fees and charges. Scott H. Siller, Esq., Referee. Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston, & Zimet LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingdale, NY.

101 LEGAL NOTICES NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT COUNTY OF NEW YORK 21ST MORTGAGE CORPORATION AS MASTER SERVICER FOR CHRISTIANA TRUST, A DIVISION OF WILMINGTON SAVINGS FUND SOCIETY, FSB AS TRUSTEE FOR KNOXVILLE 2012 TRUST, Plaintiff AGAINST JIN HUA LIN, et al., Defendant(s) Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale duly entered September 19, 2023, I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction at the New York County Courthouse in Room 130, located at 60 Centre Street, New York, NY on January 10, 2024, at 2:15PM, premises known as 44-46 MARKET STREET, UNIT 10A, NEW YORK, NY 10002.

All that certain plot piece or parcel of land, with the buildings and improvements erected, situate, lying and being in the Borough of Manhattan, County, City, and State of New York., Block 274, Lot 1216. Approximate amount of judgment $831,930.17 plus interest and costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index #850085/2018.

The aforementioned auction will be conducted in accordance with the NEW YORK County COVID-19 mitigation protocols and as such all persons must comply with social distancing, wearing masks and screening practices in effect at the time of this foreclosure sale. Clark Whitsett, Esq., Referee Gross Polowy, LLC 1775 Wehrle Drive Williamsville, NY 14221 19002279 77271 NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK: COUNTY OF NEW YORK. JY TANGEROUS L.P., Pltf v. SIXTH STREET COMMUNITY CENTER, INC, et al., Defts. Index No. 850041/2021 pursuant to the Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated August 16, 2023 and entered on October 12, 2023, I will sell at public auction at the New York County Courthouse, at the Courthouse located at 60 Centre Street, New York, New York, room 130 on January 24, 2024 at 2:15 p.m., prem. k/a 638 East Sixth Street, New York, New York 10009, Block 387, Lot 128 (the “Property”). Approx. amt of judgment is $1,483,225.50, plus costs, attorneys’ fees and interest. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed judgment and terms of sale. Peter Sklar, Esq., Referee. Jacobowitz Newman Tversky LLP, Attys. for Plaintiff, 377 Pearsall Ave., Ste C, Cedarhurst, NY. Bronx Creative Crafts LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 10/23/2023. Office: Bronx County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: United States Corporation Agents, Inc., 7014 13th Ave., Ste. 202, Bklyn, NY 11228. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

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NOTICE OF SALE RSS CD2017-CD-4-NY T5B, LLC, A NEW YORK LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY, Plaintiff, vs. THOR 50 BOND STREET LLC, ET AL., Defendant(s).

Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale and Decision + Order on Motion duly entered on September 21, 2023, and an Order Substituting Plaintiff and Amending Judgment Caption Nunc Pro Tunc duly entered on October 25, 2023, I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction at the New York County Courthouse, Room 130, 60 Centre Street, New York, NY 10007 on January 17, 2024 at 2:15 p.m., premises known as 50 Bond Street, Unit C-1, New York, NY 10019. All that certain plot, piece or parcel of land, with the buildings and improvements thereon erected, situate, lying and being in the Borough of Manhattan, County, City and State of New York, Block 530 and Lot 1301 together with an undivided 14.00 percent interest in the Common Elements. Approximate amount of judgment is $10,995,481.84 plus interest and costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index #850068/2022. COVID-19 safety protocols will be followed at the foreclosure sale.

Jeffrey R. Miller, Esq., Referee Duane Morris, LLP, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036, Attorneys for Plaintiff

SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY- HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf. v. MARTIN J. COYNE, Defts. - Index # 850415/2023. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated November 9, 2023, I will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the New York County Courthouse located at 60 Centre Street, NY, NY on Thursday, January 11, 2024, at 2:15 pm, an interest of an undivided 0.00986400000% tenant in common interest in the timeshare known as 57TH STREET VACATION SUITES located at 102 West 57th Street, New York, New York. Approximate amount of judgment is $132,551.49 plus costs and interest as of August 16, 2023.

Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale which includes annual maintenance fees and charges. Matthew D. Hunter III, Esq., Referee. Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston, & Zimet LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingdale, NY.

NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT COUNTY OF NEW YORK U.S. Bank National Association, not in its individual capacity but solely as trustee for the RMAC Trust, Series 2018 G-CTT, Plaintiff AGAINST Latasha O’Bryant; et al., Defendant(s) Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale duly entered October 2, 2023 I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction at Room 130 at the Supreme Court, New York County, 60 Centre Street, New York, NY 10007 on January 17, 2024 at 2:15PM, premises known as 297 West 137th Street, Unit No. 2574D a/k/a 2574D, Frederick Douglas Boulevard, New York, NY 10030. All that certain plot piece or parcel of land, with the buildings and improvements erected, situate, lying and being in the Borough of Manhattan, County, City and State of New York, Block 2023 Lot 1114. Approximate amount of judgment $459,098.00 plus interest and costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index# 850120/2019. The auction will be conducted pursuant to the COVID-19 Policies Concerning Public Auctions of Foreclosed Property established by the First Judicial District. Jeffrey R. Miller, Esq., Referee LOGS Legal Group LLP f/k/a Shapiro, DiCaro & Barak, LLC Attorney(s) for the Plaintiff 175 Mile Crossing Boulevard Rochester, New York 14624 (877) 430-4792 Dated: August 30, 2023

NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT - COUNTY OF NEW YORK 57TH ST. VACATION OWNERS ASSOCIATION, INC., BY AND THROUGH ITS BOARD OF DIRECTORS, Plaintiff -against- JULIA ALEXIS AS ADMINISTRATOR OF THE ESTATE OF EILEEN DUIGNAN WOODS, et al Defendant(s). Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated August 29 and entered on September 1, 2023, I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the New York County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street New York, NY on January 24, 2024 at 2:15 p.m. premises situate, lying and being in the Borough of Manhattan, County of New York, City and State of New York, being an undivided ownership interest as tenant-in-common with other owners in the Timeshare Unit in the building located at 102 West 57th Street, New York, NY. Together with an appurtenant undivided .009864% common interest percentage. This a foreclosure on ownership interest in a timeshare unit, a studio penthouse on a floating use basis every year, in accordance with and subject to declarations. Declaration of Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions dated October 10, 2008 and October 31, 2008 as CFRN # 2008000426142 as recorded in the Office of the City Register, County, City and State of New York. The Timeshare Unit is also designated as Block 1009 and Lot 37. Said premises known as 102 WEST 57TH STREET, NEW YORK, NY. Approximate amount of lien $17,972.99 plus interest & costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale.

Index Number 850024/2022.

ALLISON M. FURMAN, ESQ., Referee DRUCKMAN LAW GROUP PLLC Attorney(s) for Plaintiff 242 Drexel Avenue, Westbury, NY 11590 SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY- HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf. v. SEAN PATRICK FRANCIS, CATHERINE ELAINE FRANCIS and NYC TRANSIT ADJUDICATION BUREAU, Defts. - Index # 850039/2023. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated August 24, 2023, I will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the NY County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street, NY, NY on Thursday, January 4, 2024, at 2:15 pm, an interest of an undivided 0.00986400000% tenant in common interest in the timeshare known as 57th STREET VACATION SUITES located at 102 West 57th Street, New York, New York.

Approximate amount of judgment is $29,758.29 plus costs and interest as of March 29, 2023. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale which includes annual maintenance fees and charges. Allison M. Furman, Esq., Referee. Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston, & Zimet LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingdale, NY.

Notice of Formation of JDW SOCIAL, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 10/11/23. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: John David West, 536 W. 47th St., Apt. PHE, NY, NY 10036. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served.

SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the addr. of its princ. office. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY- HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf. v. JOHN THOMAS SHAPAKA and PATRICIA ADELE SHAPAKA, Defts. - Index # 850038/2023. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated September 5, 2023, I will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the NY County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street, NY, NY on Thursday, January 4, 2024, at 2:15 pm, an interest of an undivided 7,000/28,402,100 tenant in common interest in the timeshare known as HNY CLUB SUITES located at 1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York. Approximate amount of judgment is $10,845.39 plus costs and interest as of March 29, 2023. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale which includes annual maintenance fees and charges. Sofia Balile, Esq., Referee. Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston, & Zimet LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingdale, NY.

SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY- HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf. v. JULIA FAIRBANKS, Defts. - Index # 850419/2023. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated November 9, 2023, I will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the New York County Courthouse located at 60 Centre Street, NY, NY on Thursday, January 11, 2024, at 2:15 pm, an interest of an undivided 0.00986400000% tenant in common interest in the timeshare known as 57TH STREET VACATION SUITES located at 102 West 57th Street, New York, New York. Approximate amount of judgment is $46,108.24 plus costs and interest as of August 16, 2023.

Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale which includes annual maintenance fees and charges. Matthew D. Hunter III, Esq., Referee. Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston, & Zimet LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingdale, NY. SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY- HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf. v. ALAN ROGER EFRON, MARGARET HOBLIT, Defts. - Index # 850175/2023. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated November 9, 2003, I will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the New York County Courthouse located at 60 Centre Street, New York, NY on Thursday, January 11, 2024, at 2:15 pm, an interest of an undivided 8,000/28,402,100 tenant in common interest in the timeshare known as HNY CLUB SUITES located at 1335 Avenue of the America, New York, NY. Approximate amount of judgment is $69,746.92 plus costs and interest as of August 10, 2023. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale which includes annual maintenance fees and charges. Elaine Shay, Esq., Referee. Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston, & Zimet LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingdale, NY.

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SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY- HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf. v. PATRICK FRANK ROSS and CARLA HENRIQUES-ROSS, Defts. - Index # 850403/2023. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated November 9, 2023, I will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the NY County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street, NY, NY on Thursday, January 4, 2024, at 2:15 pm, an interest of an undivided 0.00493200000% tenant in common interest in the timeshare known as 57th STREET VACATION SUITES located at 102 West 57th Street, New York, New York. Approximate amount of judgment is $15,278.67 plus costs and interest as of August 15, 2023. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale which includes annual maintenance fees and charges. Roberta Ashkin, Esq., Referee. Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston, & Zimet LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingdale, NY. SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY- HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf. v. MARIO ROMO AHUMADA and TAMMY ANN AHUMADA, Defts.

- Index # 850408/2023. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated November 9, 2023, I will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the NY County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street, NY, NY on Thursday, January 4, 2024, at 2:15 pm, an interest of an undivided 0.00493200000% tenant in common interest in the timeshare known as 57th STREET VACATION SUITES located at 102 West 57th Street, New York, New York. Approximate amount of judgment is $29,797.40 plus costs and interest as of August 11, 2023. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale which includes annual maintenance fees and charges. Roberta Ashkin, Esq., Referee. Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston, & Zimet LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingdale, NY. SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY- HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf. v. CARL T. ANDERSON, PATRICIA ANN ANDERSON, NY STATE OF TAXACTION AND FINANCE, NYC TRANSIT ADJUDICATION BUREAU, Defts. - Index # 850400/2023. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated November 9, 2023, I will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the New York County Courthouse located at 60 Centre Street, New York, NY on Thursday, January 11, 2024, at 2:15 pm, an interest of an undivided 0.0519144314871446% tenant in common interest in the timeshare known as HC SUITES located at 1335 Avenue of the America, New York, NY. Approximate amount of judgment is $75,344.14 plus costs and interest as of August 15, 2023. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale which includes annual maintenance fees and charges. Scott H. Siller, Esq., Referee. Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston, & Zimet LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingdale, NY. SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY- HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf. v. KIM RENAYE NWAGWU, GORDIAH NWAGWU, Defts. - Index # 850402/2023. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated November 9, 2023, I will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the New York County Courthouse located at 60 Centre Street, New York, NY on Thursday, January 11, 2024, at 2:15 pm, an interest of an undivided 0.00493200000% tenant in common interest in the timeshare known as 57TH STREET VACATION SUITES located at 102 West 57th Street, New York, NY. Approximate amount of judgment is $20,587.05 plus costs and interest as of August 10, 2023. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale which includes annual maintenance fees and charges. Scott H. Siller, Esq., Referee. Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston, & Zimet LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingdale, NY. SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY- HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf. v. JOSEPH G. DONOVAN, PATRICIA A. DONOVAN and BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF 57TH STREET VACATION OWNERS ASSOCIATION, INC., Defts. - Index # 850217/2021. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated August 9, 2023, I will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the NY County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street, NY, NY on Thursday, January 4, 2024, at 2:15 pm, an interest of an undivided .015838% tenant in common interest in the timeshare known as 57th STREET VACATION SUITES located at 102 West 57th Street, New York, New York. Approximate amount of judgment is $38,019.21 plus costs and interest as of May 5, 2023. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale which includes annual maintenance fees and charges. Roberta Ashkin, Esq., Referee. Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston, & Zimet LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingdale, NY. SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY- HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf. v. SAIF A. AMAN, Defts. - Index # 850037/2023. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated August 24, 2023, I will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the NY County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street, NY, NY on Thursday, January 4, 2024, at 2:15 pm, an interest of an undivided 5,000/28,402,100 tenant in common interest in the timeshare known as HNY CLUB SUITES located at 1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York. Approximate amount of judgment is $32,542.31 plus costs and interest as of March 29, 2023. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale which includes annual maintenance fees and charges. Allison M. Furman, Esq., Referee.

Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston, & Zimet LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingdale, NY. Notice of formation of Hagley's West 137 Management LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 5/11/2023. Office: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail copy to: 226 West 136th St, Apt 1R, New York, NY 10030. Purpose: Any lawful act.

Snackbasket LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 10/03/2023. Office: NY County.

SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail copy to: MYCOMPANYWORKS, INC., 187 E. WARM SPRINGS RD. SUITE B, LAS VEGAS, NV, 89119. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

101 LEGAL NOTICES LEGAL NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE, Supreme Court – New York County, Board Of Managers Of Morningside Parc Condominium, Plaintiff v. Jacqueline E. Pugh a/k/a Jacqueline De Veaux, et al., Defendants, Index #156822/2022. Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale entered on September 18, 2023, I will sell at Public Auction to the highest bidder in Room 130 of New York County Supreme Court, 60 Centre Street, New York, New York 10013, on January 31, 2024 at 2:15 PM of that day, the premises known as Unit 4E in the building located at 370 West 118th Street, New York, New York 10026, Block 1944 Lot 1120. The Unit is a one-bedroom apartment that is approximately 674 square feet. Approximate amount of Judgment is $63,127.14 plus interest, common charges, assessments, late fees accrued from March 1, 2023 to the date of sale of the Premises plus plaintiff’s attorneys’ fees and expenses allowed by the Court. Premises will be sold subject to: (a) provisions of Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale entered September 18, 2023; and (b) the terms of sale.

ALLISON FURMAN, ESQ., Referee. Attorney for Plaintiff: ANNA GUILIANO, BORAH, GOLDSTEIN, ALTSCHULER, NAHINS & GOIDEL, P.C., 377 Broadway, New York, New York 10013, (212) 431-1300 Ext. 628.

NIROLA GOLF LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 11/14/2023. Office: NY County.

SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail copy to: UNITED STATES CORPORATION AGENTS, INC., 7014 13TH AVENUE, SUITE 202, BROOKLYN, NY, 11228. Purpose: To teach golf or to engage in any lawful act.

Notice of Qualification of STANDARD POWER HOSTING ULTRA COMPANY LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 12/14/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 12/12/23. Princ. office of LLC: 551 Madison Ave., Ste. 450, NY, NY 10022. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: c/o CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Jeffrey W. Bullock, DE Secy. of State, DE Div. of Corps., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of TRIPLE P SECURITIES, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 12/18/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 08/31/22. Princ. office of LLC: 640 Fifth Ave., 10th Fl., NY, NY 10019. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served.

SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543.

DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808.

Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

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Notice of Qual. of MOSTLY TRUE FILMS LLC Auth. filed with SSNY on 09/21/2023. Office location: New York. LLC formed in TX on 06/08/2022.

SSNY desg. as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY mail process to: 66 Leonard Street, New York, NY 10013. Arts. of Org. filed with TX SOS. P.O. Box 13697, Austin, TX 78711-3697.

Any lawful purpose.

Notice of Formation of 17 EAST 70TH HOLDINGS LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/28/23. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of STRENTA PHILANTHROPIC GRANTING SERVICES, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/27/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 11/10/20. Princ. office of LLC: 600 Brickell Ave., Ste. 1720, Miami, FL 33131.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of WILLETS TRIANGLE HOUSING LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/09/23. 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 process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of RGNMCA ITHACA I, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/01/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 10/27/23. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served.

SSNY shall mail process to Corporataion Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of TrayScapes LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 10/25/23. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Kent Beatty & Gordon, LLP, 11 Times Sq., 10th Fl., NY, NY 10036. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of (C)worthy, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/14/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 05/05/23.

Princ. office of LLC: 1909 Broadway, Ste. 200, Boulder, CO 80302. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served.

SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Charitable and scientific purposes.

Deborah's Beauty Spa, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 12/08/2023. Office: NY County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: 115 W. 142 St., Apt 6B, NY, NY 10030. Purpose: Any lawful act.

AC TAXPROS LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 8/07/2023. Office: NY County.

SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail copy to: 157-16 45th Avenue, 1st floor, Flushing, NY 11355. Purpose: Any lawful act.

CREEK CAPITAL, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 11/8/2023. Office: NY County.

SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail copy to: 180 WATER ST APT 810, NEW YORK, NY 10038. Purpose: Any lawful act.

Notice of Qualification of CORIO GENERATION USA LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/22/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 10/25/23. Princ. office of LLC: One Lincoln St., Ste. 2400, Boston, MA 02111.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808.

Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, Wilmington Office, 820 N. French St., 10th Fl., Wilmington, DE 19801. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of HabSchu Holdings, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/21/23. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 311 11th Ave., Apt. 5306, NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Attn: Brian Haber at the princ. office of the LLC. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of TET FIFTH AVENUE LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 12/05/23. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 6400 Georgetown Pike, McLean, VA 22182. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207. Purpose: To own and hold real estate investments.

Notice of Formation of WEST 48 MASTER TENANT LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/10/23. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 7 Penn Plaza, Ste. 600, NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Jeffrey Levine at the princ. office of the LLC. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of 163 CSTREET LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/21/23. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 121 Varick St., 4th Fl., NY, NY 10013. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the addr. of its princ. office. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

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Shirty Words LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 12/04/2023. Office: New York County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: 28 E. 21st St, #1A, NY, NY 10010.

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Dewy Dawn LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 12/16/2023. Office: New York County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: 89 Jewel St, Brooklyn, NY 11222.

Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

Studio Unfurl LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 11/16/2023. Office: NY County.

SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: Karen Wertheim, 44 W. 62nd St., Apt 15B, NY, NY 10023. Purpose: Any lawful act.

Notice of Qualification of SUGAR FOODS LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 12/01/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 09/18/23.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

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December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024 • 37

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS S P O R T S

Season of Giving highlights the Liberty’s commitment to community

By LOIS ELFMAN Special to the AmNews

Arielle Chambers (l), founder of HighlightHER, joins Breanna Stewart to announce the Liberty’s 2024 schedule.

The New York Liberty have announced their 2024 schedule. Play kicks off on May 14 and the first home game at Barclays Center is on May 18. For the announcement, the Liberty teamed up with “Hot Ones,” a popular YouTube interview show, which put Breanna Stewart through their full gauntlet of hot sauces with each representing a different WNBA team.

Stewart, the first Liberty player to earn MVP honors while with the Liberty, has continued to be a presence in New York City since the WNBA season wrapped after the team’s first trip to the WNBA Finals since 2002. She has been an integral part of the Liberty’s Season of Giving, a series of events that showcased the team’s deep commitment to underserved communities throughout the five boroughs.

Johnna Hayward, the Liberty’s head of strategy and partnership marketing, and Allie Moogan, social responsibility coordinator, worked closely to identify local non-profit organizations throughout NYC and present those opportunities to the team’s corporate partners. The Season of Giving grew from seven sponsors in 2022 to 11 this year.

“Especially in New York City, there’s a sig-

nificant number of vulnerable community members, so we are utilizing our corporate partnerships and their resources to further what we’re doing in the community,” said Hayward. “With the New York Liberty, we’re trying to align our values and our players’ values intentionally with those of our communities,” said Moogan. “We’re able to genuinely show up in a multitude of ways.”

The campaign has four pillars: basketball, embracing women, social justice/unity, and

New York Liberty mascot Ellie the Elephant serves Stewart a spicy challenge. (New York Liberty photos)

LGBTQ pride. Stewart volunteered at The Bowery Mission’s annual holiday coat drive, for which Snipes donated 300 coats for New Yorkers in need. She was also part of Ticketmaster hosting a suite at a Brooklyn Nets game for a group of students from the Sadie Nash Leadership Project. Stewart surprised the young women with Puma Stewie 2 shoes.

Among other community events were a CarMax-sponsored basketball clinic for kids, and a lunch and professional day for

women at Bottomless Closet sponsored by M.M.LaFleur which included Liberty CEO Keia Clarke leading panel discussion. Consumer electronics company Withings also donated 15 health monitoring products for SAGE, an organization for LGBTQ+ elders. “[I’m] excited to see all the pieces come together and hone in on the authenticity behind what we’re doing, especially when we have Liberty players dedicating their time to some of these events,” said Hayward.

College student-athletes rightly maximize NIL and the transfer portal

By JAIME C. HARRIS AmNews Sports Editor Three central components of capitalism are free markets, competitive markets, and capital accumulation.

College head football coaches, especially those at the top programs, greatly benefit from the capitalist system that has afforded them generational wealth. They have obtained tens of millions of dollars through their coaching contracts and endorsements.

The four head coaches who will lead Michigan, Washington, Texas, and Alabama into the College Football Playoff games on New Year’s Day have gained their fortunes by seizing on opportunities to scale their careers by moving from one coaching job to another.

Alabama’s 72-year-old Nick Saban, arguably the best college coach ever, whose net worth is reportedly close to $94 million, held assistant and head coaching positions for a combined nine college and NFL teams from 1973 to 1994. There was no requirement that Saban sit out a year between jobs or other restrictions precluding him from exercising his legal right to move from the University of Toledo after only one year as their head coach in 1990 to become the Cleveland Browns defensive coordinator under their then-new head coach, Bill Belichick, in 1991.

Yet many of Saban’s former and current coaching colleagues are opposed to student-

University of Colorado head football coach Deion Sanders has used NIL (name, image, and likeness) and NCAA transfer portal to revitalize the program (cubuffs.com photo)

athletes following the same paradigm via the NCAA transfer portal. It’s “Do as I say, not as I do.” They decry young men and women simply taking advantage of the rules that provide the latitude to attend and play for three and four institutions of higher learning, many earning graduate degrees in the process.

“The NIL (name, image, and likeness) and the transfer portal are both terrible for college athletics,” said 86-year-old Hall of Fame coach Lou Holtz in October as reported by the Palm Beach Post. The selfrighteous, sanctimonious blowhard and ardent Donald Trump supporter is dripping with irony and hypocrisy: He made his career coaching teams largely com-

posed of Black players, many whose lives were rooted in poverty.

Under the old policy, a transfer would have to sit out a full year from playing with their new college teammates, unless there were extenuating circumstances. But in 2021, the NCAA Division I Council voted to allow college athletes to transfer one time as an undergraduate without having to miss the following season. Student-athletes who have completed their undergraduate studies and still have eligibility can transfer again and play the next season.

The NCAA NIL policy was approved on July 1, 2021, as a result of federal and state lawsuits, and ended the oppressive, indentured

servitude culture of major college athletics by granting athletes the right to monetize their name, image, and likeness. Young men and women are now inking endorsement deals valued at hundreds of thousands and millions, and immeasurably bettering the conditions of themselves and their families.

Given the money athletic programs produce for their colleges (Ohio State’s athletic department generated $251.6 million between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022) and, by extension, their coaches (Texas’s Steve Sarkisian earns $5.6 million per year) through lucrative multi-year contracts, student-athletes have at last arrived at a place in this nation’s capitalistic system they should have reached a long time ago.

Holtz paradoxically is anti-abortion (he once said President Joe Biden is “Catholic in name only”) but pro-suppression of a fetus when it has developed into young adulthood being able to create a pathway to educational and financial success via a moral instrument.

Parenthetically, the NIL and transfer portal system could be refined and, in some cases, does affect aspiring high school athletes—the portal system could reduce their opportunities to be offered scholarships as some coaches are leaning toward more mature, experienced college prospects.

Yet, they are a microcosm of America’s overarching economic and employment architectures.

38 • December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS S P O R T S

2023 was entertaining year for high-demand boxing matches

By DERREL JOHNSON Special to the AmNews This was a spectacular year for fight fans almost from beginning to end, with several matches that had been anticipated for years finally taking place.

Financially, Gervonta Davis facing off against fellow undefeated pugilist Ryan Garcia was the most lucrative, becoming the sixth highest-grossing boxing contest of all time. Davis, 28 at the time of their April fight in Las Vegas, entered the event with a 28–0 record and 26 knockouts.

Garcia, then 24, came in at 23–0 with 19 knockouts.

Ultimately, Davis, the more experienced of the two, dominated Garcia, dropping him in the second round and earning the knockout in the seventh.

In a fight that fans eagerly craved, unified and undefeated welterweight champion Errol Spence, Jr., who entered the fight 28–0 with 22 knockouts, took on undefeated WBO welterweight champion and former undisputed light welterweight champion

Terrance Crawford dominated Errol Spence this past summer in longawaited fight to become undisputed welterweight champion (Esther Lin/Showtime photo)

boxing associations and media platforms after becoming the undisputed champion in a second division (the other was light welterweight). He is the first male boxer to do so in the four-belt era.

Clarissa Shields also held the distinction of being a two-division undisputed champion. She is currently the light middleweight champ and previously was the middleweight title holder.

A case can be made for Devin Haney to be Fighter of the Year as well. In a pairing promoted to be a chess match, Haney battled 35-year-old Vasiliy Lomachenko for 12 rounds in May in a highly contested fight.

Ultimately, Haney handed Lomachenko the third loss of his career with a controversial 115–113, 116–112, 115– 113 unanimous victory to retain his WBA (Super), WBC, IBF, WBO, and The Ring lightweight titles.

Terence Crawford, who was 39–0 old Spence. He put on a clinic Spence was badly hurt in the first A large sector of the boxing with 30 knockouts. Each was con- from the second round, when fight and a date has yet to be de- community scored the fight a sidered among the best pound- he dropped Spence, to the ninth, termined for another meeting draw or a win for Lomachenko. for-pound boxers in the sport. when he was awarded a TKO vic- between them.

Haney, who turned 25 in NoShockingly, Crawford, 35 when tory. There was a rematch clause Crawford, in the view of many vember, followed up that victory the opening bell rang, thor- for both fighters to be complet- fans and journalists, should be by moving up to the super lightoughly dominated the 33-year- ed before the end of 2023, but named Fighter of the Year by weight division.

Return of Jon Jones highlights MMA in 2023 In March, UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones made his return to MMA after a three-year layoff to win the title (Photo courtesy of UFC)

By DERREL JOHNSON Special to the AmNews Jon Jones, one of the greatest fighters of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), returned to the octagon in 2023 to be perhaps the most notable story of mixed martial arts (MMA) of the year. He had stepped away in part because of a disagreement with UFC president and CEO Dana White over how much he would be paid, seeking more to fight as a heavyweight than as a light heavyweight.

The 36-year-old grappler, born and raised in Rochester, N.Y., and the brother of one-time NFL players Arthur and Chandler Jones, is the former light heavyweight champion. But when Jones finally agreed to challenge for the UFC heavyweight championship (between 206 and 265 lbs.), moving up from his previous weight class of 186 to 205 pounds (light heavyweight) after a 37-month layoff, there was a rightful curiosity and doubt about whether he was too old and too far removed from competition.

Could he carry enough weight to battle much heavier opponents?

Once the contest started on March 4 in Las Vegas, Jones didn’t wait long to answer those questions.

After a low blow stopped the action in the opening seconds, Jones (27–1) took heavyweight contender Ciryl Gane to the ground and earned a submission victory and the UFC heavyweight championship at the 2:05 mark of the opening round.

Jones was scheduled to make his long-awaited Madison Square Garden debut at UFC 295 on November 11, but suffered a pectoral injury while training to face former two-time UFC heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic. UFC fans are hoping that matchup between two legends will be rescheduled.

Aljamain Sterling had two matches in a three-and-a-half month span, successfully defending his UFC bantamweight championship by split decision against former two-division champion Henry Cejudo at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., at UFC 288 on May 6. Sterling wasn’t as successful at UFC 292 in Boston on August 19: He was knocked out by current UFC bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley.

It was an up-and-down year

for two-time UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya. He regained the middleweight title he lost in November 2022 at Madison Square Garden at UFC 287 in Miami on April 8, but lost the title for the second time in three matches on September 10 at UFC 293 in Sydney, Australia, to Sean Strickland. Strickland who will make his first title defense next month against Dricus du Plessis at UFC 297.

Other highlights of 2023 included Leon Edwards defending his UFC welterweight championship against Colby Covington at UFC 296 in Las Vegas earlier this month.

One of the greatest women’s champions in MMA history, Amanda Nunes, retired after defending her UFC women’s bantamweight title against Irene Aldana at UFC 289 in Vancouver in June.

In other MMA news, the Professional Fighters League (PFL) MMA acquired Bellator MMA in November, which now makes ESPN the biggest home of MMA in the U.S. Bellator contests previously aired under the Showtime Sports banner, which ended production of all events in December 2023.

December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024 • 39

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS S P O R T S

Riverside Hawks celebrate the success of their girls’ program

By LOIS ELFMAN Special to the AmNews Earlier this month, the Riverside Hawks program, a staple in the Harlem community since 1961, held its annual gala at the Mandarin Hotel. The organization’s mission is to improve the lives, academic opportunities and career prospects of young people, utilizing sports as a vehicle. Almost 70% of the participants come from either Harlem, Washington Heights or the Bronx.

“The room was packed,” said board member Erika Irish Brown, chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer and global head of talent at Citi. While two of the program’s teams were honored, “the focus was really on the girls.”

The program is excited by the success of the girls’ teams overall. The program currently has 109 female participants from elementary to high school. Combining training and academic support makes them college ready. Last year’s graduating seniors are now playing collegiate basketball at Division I schools like Rider, Fairleigh

Board member Erika Irish Brown (l) and the evening’s emcee Maurice DuBois join other attendees on the gala’s red carpet. (Riverside Hawks photos)

Members of the Championship Riverside Hawks Class of 2030 and members of the celebrated Riverside Hawks Girls Team.

Dickinson, Fordham, Hofstra and St. John’s. Brown hopes all the current participants are gaining leadership skills and learning how to be a team player.

“We want people to understand what Riverside is, and that it’s not just basketball,” said Brown. “This year, we really wanted to talk about the success of the girls’ program. … With increasing opportunities in women’s sports, we’ve seen the

In addition to the teams, the 2023 gala honorees included Dr. Monique Couvson, CEO and president of Grantmakers for Girls of Color; Alexander Smalls, an award-winning chef and author (introduced by Sheila Johnson, owner of the Washington Mystics); and the corporation GCM Grosvenor, a global leader in alternative investments.

Brown noted that Couvson is

same for our teams at Riverside.

Our teams [of all ages] are winning big tournaments. They’re a growing group of confident scholar-athletes.

“That’s the ABCs of Riverside: academics, basketball and community,” she added. “We have a track record of young men who have gone to prep schools, to college, [and] to the NBA. Now, we have that growing pipeline on the young women’s side.”

a former basketball player who has taken an interest in the Riverside Hawks. “Knowing what being involved in sports does for young women, their futures, everything from their body images to their ambition to their competitive spirit,” Brown said. “She gave an inspirational speech about the data around what’s not happening for our young women of color and why we need to invest in them.”

Manhattan College women’s hoops off to a solid start

By LOIS ELFMAN Special to the AmNews With two MAAC games already under their belts, the women’s basketball team at Manhattan College is ready to go hard in conference action starting next week. Head coach Heather Vulin said the eight new players, which includes two freshmen, several transfers, and a player who redshirted last season, are gelling well.

“We’re off to a great start,” said Vulin. “I’ve been really pleased with how quickly they have become a team on and off the court.”

The roster includes three graduate students, three seniors, and one fifth-year, who bring maturity and poise under pressure.

Their presence has been a boost to the Jaspers. The last two years, Manhattan has played for a conference championship, and Vulin hopes this year they can go one step further.

“They obviously bring talent into the program, but I really feel with the athletes being able to play right away (transfers no longer have to sit out a year), they

Manhattan College women’s basketball team. (Manhattan College Athletics photos)

are able to bring a level of experience,” said Vulin. “Not just experience on the court, but also experience being away from home, being in a college setting, going through the rigors of being a Division I student-athlete.”

Junior guard Nitzan Amar is leading the team in scoring with 12.7 points per game. Vulin said Amar is a tremendous player.

In her third year with the Jaspers, senior forward Jade Blagrove is putting up solid numbers in scor-

ing and rebounding. Blagrove is eligible to play another year, but has not yet decided, so she’s making the most of this season.

“Jade is having her best season,” Vulin said. “She’s by far our best post defender. She’s been a consistent starter. We’ve had some injuries, and she’s been able to stay healthy and be that glue player for us. She’s also a first-time captain this year.”

The program’s culture is important to Vulin, who noted that new players are always welcomed and

appreciated, which leads to success on the court.

Vulin is also enjoying working with Manhattan College’s new athletic director, Irma Garcia.

“She’s an incredible leader, and she really cares about the coaches that she leads and also the student-athletes,” Vulin said.

After a break for the holiday, the Jaspers are back in action on New Year’s Eve versus Hofstra. Conference play is in full swing on January 4 with a home game against Siena.

Manhattan College Senior forward Jade Blagrove.

40 • December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024

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01444 Can Brunson and Randle carry the Knicks past the league’s best?

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By JAIME C. HARRIS AmNews Sports Editor

News By virtueAM of the Knicks making it to the quarterfinals of the NBA’s well-received in06/08/23 augural in-season tournament, won by the Los Angeles Lakers, schedule alterations have them facing the Boston Celtics and Milwaukee Bucks five times this season instead of the normal four games.

The Bucks were at Madison Square Garden AM News on Saturday and two days later on Christmas, and will face the Knicks one more time in the 06/15/23 regular season in Milwaukee on April 7. They will square off against the Celtics, against which they are 0–3 this season, on February 24 at the Garden and April 11 in Boston.

The Knicks were the No. 5 seed in the East at 16–11 before two-game clash with the AM their News Bucks. At the same time last season, they were 14–18, but ultimately went into the playoffs as 06/22/23 the No. 5 and advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals, losing to the Miami Heat 4–2.

Point guard Jalen Brunson emerged as an All-Star and even an All-NBA worthy candidate, although he wasn’t selected for either.

AM This season, heNews seems to be a near lock to make the former and will get strong consideration for06/29/23 the latter if he continues on his

current path, including his career-high 50point performance in the Knicks’ 139–122 victory over the Phoenix Suns on the road AM News on December 15.

Pairing Brunson with Julius Randle, a 08/24/23 two-time All-Star and two-time All-NBA selection, both in 2021 and last season, has created the cornerstones for the reconstruction of a franchise that last season made its first playoff appearance since 2013. Now, heading into 2024, they are once again one AM News of the league’s most engrossing teams.

But do the Knicks have enough to get past 08/31/23 the Celtics and or Bucks, and even the Philadelphia 76ers with reigning MVP Joel Embiid, to reach the conference finals and beyond, especially with center Mitchell Robinson out for the remainder of the season after having left ankle surgery earlier thisAM month after sustainNews ing an injury against the Celtics on December 8? Now the Knicks’ calculus and playoff pros09/07/23 pects have ostensibly changed.

As it stands today, the Knicks would need favorable circumstances to defeat the Celtics or Bucks in a best-of-seven series, in which the better team usually wins. There are exceptions, but all things AM beingNews equal, particularly the Bucks, Celtics, and Knicks all being 09/14/23 at full strength, the Knicks would have to be

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near flawless to conquer them. The addition Jalen Brunson has provided Knicks with of an effective two-way wing, a need for the All-Star–level play since debut last season.

Knicks for the past several seasons, could (Bill Moore photo) dramatically shift their trajectory. AM News The Chicago Bulls’ DeMar DeRozan, 11/09/23 the San Antonio Spurs’ Keldon Johnson, and the Toronto Raptors’ O.G. Anunoby and Pascal Siakam might be available.

The Knicks have Evan Fournier’s $18.9 million expiring contract, four potential 2024 first-round picks, three 2024 second-round AM News picks, and two first-rounders and two second-rounders in 2025 who are valuable 11/23/23 assets with which to bargain.

But the Knicks have a long, contentious history with the Raptors, notably an ongoing lawsuit alleging that former Knicks video, analytics, and player development staffer Ike Azotam, who worked for AMNew News York from 2020–23 before being hired by Toronto last summer, stole thousands of 11/23/23 confidential, proprietary files, including a Knicks prep book, and shared them with Toronto coaches and other key personnel.

In other words, it seems unlikely that the two clubs will engage in a trade.

News This intrigue only adds to whatAM should be an interesting remainder of the season 11/30/23 for the Knicks.

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Will the Brooklyn Nets make the 2024 NBA Playoffs?

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Nets forward Ben Simmons has only played in six games this season due to a 07/06/23 nerve impingement in his back. (Bill Moore photo)

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By DERREL JOHNSON Special to the AmNews 09/21/23 When the 2023-2024 NBA season began, those evaluating the Brooklyn Nets’ roster had questions as to whether they could repeat as a playoff team after finishing as the No. 6 seed at 45–37AM on the heels of tradNews ing both Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant in 09/28/23 succession last February.

Irving was moved to the Dallas Mavericks and Durant to the Phoenix Suns, with which they remain.

A little over 30 games of the season is in the books and some of those questions have been answered, but uncertainty still hovers AM News over the Nets as a potential postseason team. Right now they are a play-in tournament candidate, spots 10/05/23 reserved for the No. 7 to No. 10 seeds, The season began with skeptics wondering if 6-foot-3-inch shooting guard Cam Thomas could continue his prolific scoring following the departures of Irving and AM News Durant. Last February, at age 21, he became the youngest player in 10/12/23 NBA history to register 40 or more points in three straight games. The 2021 No. 27 overall pick by the Nets out of LSU ended the season averaging

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10.6 in just 16.6 minutes per game. for his return to action. He looked promisHe returned to Brooklyn last week after ing in his short stint, averaging 6.5 points, 12/07/23 the Nets five game west coast road trip av- a career high 10.8 rebounds and close to 7 eraging 24.4 points. After facing the Milwau- assists. Simmons has not played in more kee Bucks last night at the Barclays Center, than 60 games since the 2018-2019 season, the Nets begin another long period away a streak that will continue this campaign. from home, as they will be in Washington Mikal Bridges, who the Nets acquired in the tomorrow to play the Wizards then AMhave NewsDurant trade, has been the Nets’ most regames against the Oklahoma City Thunder liable player. Although Bridges has played 12/14/23 (Sunday), the New Orleans Pelicans (next well, he hasn’t scored the ball at the same Tuesday) and the Houston Rockets (next level he did last season in his first full month Wednesday), a total of four over six days. in a Nets uniform (28.8 points per game in Thomas proved to be no one-hit wonder, March). This season he has stayed in the 22 and began this season setting anoth- points per game range. er record. He scored 36 points in the Nets’ The Nets will need their core of Thomas, AM News first game, a 114–113 loss in Brooklyn to Bridges, forward Cam Johnson and center the Cleveland Cavaliers, the most ever in Nic Claxton to play a majority of the 51 12/21/23 a season opener for a player coming off of games left to be a playoff team with the outthe bench. Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn look on Simmons iffy. quickly moved him into the starting lineup before he was sidelined for 22 consecutive days, missing nine games with a sprained left ankle. He came back on November AM30.

News Three-time NBA All-Star point-forward Ben Simmons has only played in six12/28/23 games due to a nerve impingement in the left side of his lower back. Simmons hasn’t played since November 6 and there is no timetable

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