New York Amsterdam News Issue Jan 2-8, 2025 by AmsterdamNews

BEST OF 2024 PART II

If you or anyone you know are experiencing issues related to health care affordability and denials of care, student loan debt, access to services for people with developmental disabilities, or discrimination due to a criminal history, please contact CSS. Urban Agenda by David R. Jones,

President

and CEO of the Community Service Society of New York - See page 5

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2340 Frederick Douglass Boulevard

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BEST OF 2024 PART II

Dear Readers,

Happy New Year and welcome to Part 2 of our Best of 2024 review! In this issue we are giving you the chance to read (or re-read) even more of what we consider some of our best journalism. Enjoy!

Damaso Reyes Executive Editor

Dr. Hazel N. Dukes: A Harlem Legacy

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

On the fourth floor of an apartment building near Harlem Hospital, at the end of a long, grayish corridor, is the home of former National President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Dr. Hazel Nell Dukes, 92. Her attendant opened the door recently and welcomed two members of the Amsterdam News for a sit-down.

A civil rights activist and prominent voice in politics, Dukes has created a legacy that personifies the essence of Juneteenth: a lifelong fight for Black American freedoms. The AmNews had the opportunity to speak to her about her childhood, her life, her accomplishments, and her take on the current state of the nation.

Dukes has enjoyed close friendships with the late President Lyndon B. Johnson, Bill and Hillary Clinton, President Joe Biden, and former President Barack Obama.

We entered at the sound of Dukes’s voice in the distance. Her home furnishings were awash with pastels and cool, curved shapes, reminiscent of the ’70s, while tables were accented with flowers and Black art pieces. Dukes was working at a square table in the back of the apartment that was covered in papers and mail.

Well, more like fretting.

A cellphone in one hand, a landline phone receiver in the other, she was animatedly speaking to two people about former President Donald Trump being found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Moments before we arrived, Trump became the first U.S. president to be a convicted felon. The ruling was replaying constantly in the background on her mounted TV.

After she got off both lines, Dukes paused, looking disappointed, angry, and happy all at once.

“For this country, I’m saddened,” Dukes said about Trump. “I don’t know how this man, from his apprenticeship (TV program); from him and his dad denying Blacks to stay in their properties in Brooklyn; the things that he said about African

American people, how he ever became the president of this great nation. No one is above the law.”

We waited for her to take in the moment. She waited for us to set up.

Dukes went back to the beginning of her childhood in Montgomery, Ala., in 1932.

“I was the little princess, if you will, of the family,” she said. “Really a ‘daddy’s girl’ to the T. He thought that I could not do any wrong and I just loved that. My grandparents were gracious. I remember I had a godmother who was a seamstress and she would make me dresses, and I would change dresses on a Sunday. Oh, yeah, with…white socks with lace around them and dresses that had eyelet material on them. I was always perfectly dressed; hair and everything was perfect.”

She lived a good life, she said, as the only child of Edward and Alice Dukes. Her father was a Pullman porter. After the Civil War, thousands of formerly enslaved people were hired to serve white passengers on luxury overnight trains by

a time when no one

pay Black men for employment.

Despite deplorable working conditions and overt racism, being a Black pullman was a coveted position, compared to sharecropping, that helped shape the Black middle class in the 1860s. Edward Dukes went on to be active in the first allBlack railroad union, organized by civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph, in the deeply segregated South.

“My dad had to serve the whites,” Dukes said. “Me and my mom had to sit in the colored section and we had our fried chicken and our pound cake. But my Daddy was serving the whites, you know, with their napkins and all the food, whatever they wanted to order.”

As a child growing up in what would become one of the most active cities in the Civil Rights Movement, Dukes was always surrounded by history. She and her family lived in the Graetz neighborhood of See DR. HAZEL N. DUKES on page 19

white Chicago business mogul George M. Pullman at

would

Dr. Hazel N. Dukes in her Harlem apartment in May 2024 (Ariama C. Long photo)

Looking back with Pride: Examining our coverage of the queer community

By AARON FOLEY AmNews News Editor

I tell people that I grew up in the Black Press. When I was 4 years old, my mother began her first journalism job as a reporter for the Michigan Chronicle, the oldest Black weekly in its state, and stayed in various roles for nearly a decade, eventually becoming the first woman to hold one of the highest-ranking editorial posts there.

It’s because of my early education in Black newspapers that I was well aware of the history and impact of the New York Amsterdam News before I accepted the role of news editor in February of this year. I’ve worked in all types of newsrooms and outlets, each with their own strengths and weaknesses; the AmNews is not unique in this regard. We, like any other publication, face the challenge of delivering quality journalism in the face of an ever-changing, sometimes terrifying, news business.

But one thing about the Black press is that it’s unquestionably Black and thus, a story like that of O’Shae Sibley, who was stabbed to death on the penultimate day of July last year, would have no problem getting through decision-makers and gatekeepers in a newsroom. Holding the rank of decision-maker is why I came here, because I could not only push a story like Sibley’s with my direction and oversight, but can empower other staffers to do so as well. And I had a specific mission of making sure that stories at the intersection of Blackness and queerness would not be overlooked on my watch.

The AmNews did cover Sibley, to be clear, but in my short time here, I wanted to know where our paper stood with Black and queer New Yorkers, and if there was an opportunity to tap into those communities for story ideas. A story that went under the radar in most of the New York press was the closure of the Anchor Bar in Greenwich Village, the leading Black gay hangout in that neighborhood. Black gay bars and lounges are slowly disappearing across the country, and the fact that the only one in the mostly white and wealthy Village couldn’t hold on was devastating among the Black gay men in my circles. I came to the newsroom with coverage like that in mind, but was cautioned to assess how we’ve covered the LGBT community before. “We’ve never covered Harlem Pride,” one staffer said during one of many (many) meetings over the course of a typical working week in a newsroom, and I was caught off guard by my incorrect assumption that it had been. One of the Blackest pride celebrations in arguably the most iconic Black neighborhood in the country, incidentally where our offices have been for a century…and…never?

An uneven legacy

As much as the Black press has been there for Black people, historians both trained and

casual can agree that our coverage of Black queer communities is solidly mixed.

From a journalist’s standpoint, the staffing of Black newspapers has historically been small. Few Black newspapers anywhere will have as many staff journalists as the major mainstream local newspaper. The AmNews, though, would be comparable to a nonBlack publication of a similar size—think the Village Voice. New York is a big city and it is impossible for small papers to get to all the news. With more Black people in this town than anywhere else in America, that makes it just as hard for us to get to all the Black news. But my, oh my, let me just say for the record: After 114 years, we’ve gotten to a lot of it.

With smaller yet nimble staffs, decisions

in coverage clearly have to be made. I was tasked with assessing a century’s worth of archives here at the AmNews to see how we covered queer people, queer issues, queer anything. Again, keeping the dynamics of our news business in the forefront, it’s easy to understand why some historic queer topics—the Lavender Scare of the 1940s, for example—did not get as much coverage as the things that did.

Much of the AmNews’ first 75 years of operation runs the gamut of the entire Civil Rights Movement, the documentation of Harlem from destination for Southern migrants to the center of New York’s Black middle class and subsequent rise of a cultural capital of the Black diaspora at large, and the many notables at every level of recognizance—from neigh-

borhood legends like Hazel Dukes to worldchangers like Malcolm X—in between. And that’s just to name a few.

From a reader’s standpoint, though, and if you are someone who carries both Black and queer identities, you would wonder why you’d only feel half or part of yourself when reading the paper of the week. The Black press has owned, and is revered for, its role in documenting Black America where mainstream newsrooms didn’t—and, even if they tried, couldn’t. This is our historic record, born from the refusal and inability to chronicle our time when we were enslaved in this country.

Just as much as the Black press holds the identity of Black America, it has also molded our audience’s impression of it. Its influence on how communities at large view ourselves, particularly during subscription and circulation booms that came with more and more Black folks being able to buy a newspaper as they formed larger and larger economic classes in the mid-century, cannot be understated. That’s why going through the AmNews archives just now, I found myself both in awe of the things we did cover in the line of Black queerness, recoiling at other things we covered with a not-so-gentle touch, and a little bewildered at what didn’t make it in at all.

In short, the AmNews, like every other paper regardless of size, audience, or publication frequency, also has a mixed legacy when it comes to how we’ve historically covered the queer community.

Searching for ‘gay’

Search “gay” in the online archives of the AmNews (which you, dear reader, can do at the Schomburg Center in Harlem), and you find a lot of coverage of social groups and events. “Gay” was used in the names of a lot of well-to-do clubs and organizations for the prim and proper—where galas and debutante balls were fixtures of the social calendar alongside the regular trips upstate. Rare is it used as a descriptor of a person attracted to the same sex in the first few decades of the paper’s operation.

It’s important to note this because of how society at large came to assign the term gay to those people, and what other terms were used throughout the decades. Gay didn’t quite enter the mainstream—and as a caution, a mostly white one—as what it means now until the 1960s and 1970s. The term was used before then, often as code or in-jokes for people who were homosexual, and in some contexts as a derogatory put-down. The actual put-down used at large during most of the early century was the term “homosexual,” which had taken on a psychological identity that sounded, in those contexts, more like a condition. An affectation. A mental illness. Something that was wrong, or needed to be fixed.

The term “homosexual” first appears in the AmNews in the April 27, 1932 , edition in a book review. The book, a “miscegenation novel,” is a tawdry, scandalous (for its time) tale about a white woman who gets drunk See PRIDE on page 21

Confined: Mayor Adams fights to keep prisoners in solitary

By TANDY LAU

Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member

Mayor Eric Adams declared an emergency executive order on July 27 to suspend provisions delineated by Local Law 42 of 2024— better known as the city’s new “solitary confinement ban.” He attempted to block the bill’s passing earlier this year, but a city council supermajority overrode the veto.

The law technically went into effect a day after the emergency declaration. The mayor’s order largely suspends its safeguards restricting de-escalation confinement, emergency lock-ins and use of restraints, alleging safety concerns for NYC Department of Correction (DOC) staff and detainees.

To be clear, while the Adams administration did not suspend the legislation’s official ban on solitary confinement, the mayor maintains the practice was already abolished in 2019. But that only applies to its conventional definition established by the United Nations’ Nelson Mandela Rules entailing the “confinement of prisoners for 22 hours or more a day without meaningful human contact.”

There’s no universal definition for solitary confinement for the law’s proponents and they say research used for the bill determined even shorter stints in isolation can be severely damaging. And the city continues to separate detainees in cells under other practices that don’t meet the U.N.’s definition of solitary confinement, particularly for safety and disciplinary measures. Local Law 42 doesn’t blanket ban those practices, but restricts their use and requires further transparency, red tape, and oversight when employed.

“It’s more than just being in line with the U.N., it’s being in line with the citizens and doing the best for the city,” said solitary confinement survivor and organizer Five Mualimm-ak.

Then there’s the matter of checks and balances. Adams vocally opposed Local Law 42’s passing this past January, but his veto was powerless from the City Council’s 42-9 vote in favor to override it. Council member Carlina Rivera, who co-sponsored the bill with Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, called the move a “workaround.”

“By the Mayor declaring a state of emergency simply to issue emergency executive orders that allows this administration to avoid complying with a law the day before it takes effect is such an unprecedented abuse of mayoral power,” Rivera told the AmNews.

HALT Solitary Confinement co-director Victor Pate said the administration’s approach to legislation like Local Law 42 reflects how the system does not benefit people of color, who are disproportionately detained in city jails.

“There is an inequity in our legal system as to how laws are applied and who they are applicable to, and who it affects the most,”

Pate said. “The most adverse recipients of the legal system [are] people of color. That is translated over into the conditions under which people are held, people that haven’t been convicted—pretrial detainees—and their rights are being trampled upon.

“A law is passed and you refuse to follow that law and you’re not being held accountable…and of course, the majority of people that are affected by that are people of color, across the board, across the criminal legal system.”

The Adams administration argues that Local Law 42 strips the DOC of the ability to separate detainees after “serious acts of violence.” The executive order temporarily weakens four-hour time limits imposed by the legislation for how long someone can be confined during a lock-in or de-escalation.

“Local Law 42 would drastically alter and impact the department’s core strategy for addressing violent misconduct, its restrictive housing program,” City Hall Chief Counsel Lisa Zornberg said during a July 30 press conference. “Implementing the law would require changes that conflict with standard sound correctional practices and would therefore be dangerous.”

Additionally, the administration also reiterates the law would prevent DOC from handcuffing detainees during transport between the jails and courts. The bill’s sponsors dispute the claim, pointing to the actual law’s language allowing restraints under “individual determination” if “necessary to prevent an imminent risk of selfinjury or injury to other persons.”

“The [Adams] administration has repeatedly asserted that Local Law 42 entirely prohibits restraining incarcerated individuals,” Rivera said. “It does not.”

Local Law 42 only explicitly mentions restraints during transport in the matter of detainees under 22 and specifically allows it as an exception, as long as they aren’t secured to an “immovable object,” according to a spokesperson for Rivera.

And the administration continues pointing to compliance with the Nunez monitor, a court-appointed watchdog tasked with ensuring reforms mandated by a class-action lawsuit over jail conditions get properly implemented. The monitor previously posed concerns about staff and detainee safety under Local Law 42. Back in January, Public Advocate Williams dismissed the Adams administration’s use of compliance to Nunez for opposing Local Law 42 as bad faith.

“The administration, which routinely undermines and ignores the federal monitor, cannot credibly use the monitor’s condemnation of its long-standing failures and deceptions around running Rikers Island in order to condemn an effort to actually fix it,” Williams said in his Jan. 16 statement. “It is not our job to create laws that conform to failing systems. It is our job to create laws to change them, and if you want something different to happen, you have to do something different.”

The emergency order follows the recent death of Charizma Jones, who DOC staff al-

legedly claimed could not leave her Rikers Island jail cell for safety reasons when health workers repeatedly attempted to take her vitals due to a serious health condition sustained just weeks after she was placed on “RED ID” status for “an alleged assault on staff.” She was later taken to a hospital and died at age 23. An investigation is ongoing.

Local Law 42 now mandates “visual and aural observation” for those held in deescalation confinement and requires referring any health concerns to medical professionals. The law notably received support from healthcare union 1199SEIU. Its interim political director Helen Schaub called solitary “a discredited and cruel practice” and said it was wrong to suspend Local Law 42.

DOC spokesperson Annais Morales said the department is “working to determine the safest and most efficient way to deter violent acts” in city jails and adds that current Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie agrees with abolishing the “inhumane” practice of conventional solitary confinement. The department also echoed that conventional solitary confinement practices in city jails ended in 2019.

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.

Anti-solitary confinement advocates outside City Hall Park last year to protest on the birthday of Kalief Browder. (Tandy Lau photo)

Celebrating Congressmember Yvette Clarke

By ARIAMA C. LONG Amsterdam News Staff

Congressmember Yvette Diane Clarke, 60, has been a powerhouse New York politician for the last 22 years. She feels honored to represent the community that raised her.

Born in Flatbush, Brooklyn, Clarke is the daughter of Jamaican immigrants. She is especially proud to have literally followed in the footsteps of her mother, Dr. Una S. T. Clarke, in pursuing a life of politics and community service.

“She is the best mom ever, and growing up with her was just a life of love and laughter, discipline, and focus,” said Clarke. “I really developed my love of service because I was by her side as a child. My parents didn’t have access to daycare services and so my mom would basically take me to all of the organizing meetings that she attended. I was that kid in the corner with their lunchbox, their knapsack, and coloring book, just listening to how parents and community leaders were organizing.”

She attended Oberlin College and was a recipient of the Association for Public

Policy Analysis & Management (APPAM) Sloan Fellowship. She received the honorary degree of doctor of laws honoris causa from the University of Technology, Jamaica, and an honorary doctorate of public policy from the University of the Commonwealth Caribbean. She is also a proud member of the Brooklyn Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Before her time as a politician, Clarke served as director of business development for the Bronx Empowerment Zone (BOEDC). She was elected to serve as a City Council member for the 40th District in Brooklyn from 2000 to 2007 — succeeding her mother, who served in the same seat from 1992 to 2001.

Clarke went on to be elected as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, first in 2006 for New York’s 11th Congressional District from 2007 to 2013. Due to redistricting, she was moved to New York’s 9th Congressional District in the 2012 election.

As a daughter of immigrants, Clarke brought the passion of her Caribbean heritage to Congress. She co-chairs the Congressio-

nal Caribbean Caucus and the Congressional Haiti Caucus, working to foster relationships between the U.S. and the Caribbean Community. Both of her parents are naturalized U.S. citizens, and are keenly aware of the rise of anti-immigrant sentiments locally and nationally.

“Most immigrants come during the most productive years of their lives and all they want to do is add value,” said Clarke, “so to hear anti-immigrant sentiments that are clearly targeted toward communities of color more specifically — because they are immigrants from East and Western Europe that we don’t see the same vitriol targeted at — [is] a painful reminder of the systemic racism that is a part of this nation.”

Clarke is also co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Black Women and Girls, and the Congressional Caucus on Virtual Augmented and Mixed Reality Technologies. She has been a member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), serving as its first vice chair and chair of its Immigration Task Force. Recently, Clarke was elected to head the CBC as chairperson.

On

behalf of the Community Service Society of New York

(CSS), I want to wish Amsterdam News readers a Happy New Year and best wishes for 2025!

And if you or anyone you know are experiencing issues related to health care affordability and denials of care, student loan debt, access to services for people with developmental disabilities, or discrimination due to a criminal history, please contact CSS. We operate several consumer assistance programs designed to help New Yorkers enroll in health care coverage, dispute insurance denials, manage their student loan debt, navigate the state’s service network for developmental disabilities, and understand their rights and criminal records, fix errors, and apply for sealing under the new Clean Slate NY law. Here are some of the ways we can help:

Community Health Advocates (CHA) CHA is a health care consumer assistance program that helps New Yorkers enroll in and use health insurance, deal with medical debt, and otherwise access healthcare. CHA operates a live-answer helpline and also works through a network of communitybased organizations throughout the state. Our services are free and are offered in over 35 languages. To learn more about CHA, please visit communityhealthadvocates.org or call the CHA Helpline at: 888-614-5400

IDDO (Independent Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Ombudsman Program)

IDDO provides individualized consumer assistance to individuals, families and caregivers, and providers who need help navigating the NYS Office for People With Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD). IDDO’s mission is to act as a resource and advocate for individuals and families as they navigate OPWDD’s programs and services. CSS operates IDDO in partnership with one specialist agency, New York Lawyers for the

Public Interest (NYLPI) that provides technical assistance and training and a Regional Outreach Network of CBOs and parent led groups conducting outreach on this new program. To learn about these services please contact IDDO’s toll-free and confidential helpline (800-762-9290) or email iddo@cssny.org.

Education Debt Consumer Assistance Program (EDCAP)

EDCAP is New York State’s designated education debt consumer assistance program, providing comprehensive support to New Yorkers navigating all types of education debt, whether federal or private. As a one-stop shop, EDCAP offers financial guidance across the entire higher education continuum, assisting individuals in accessing financial aid and effectively managing existing student loans. For immediate support, borrowers can reach our liveanswer helpline at 888-614-5004 (Monday to Friday, 9 am – 4 pm), email edcap@cssny.org, or visit our website at edcapny.org

Next Door Project (NDP)

NDP helps New Yorkers understand their rights and criminal records, fix errors on their RAP sheets, apply for sealing under the Clean Slate NY law, apply for certificates to demonstrate rehabilitation and remove legal barriers to getting work, and provides help to challenge illegal job, license and housing denials. Please call (212) 6145441 to make an appointment anytime or to join one of our monthly group intake sessions. Intake sessions begin with a know-your-rights training followed by completing the paperwork necessary to request a person’s criminal record. We can request records from all states and the federal government, not just New York.

Congressmember Yvette D. Clarke at Dream and Promise Act press conference on June 15, 2023 (Photo contributed by Congressmember Yvette D. Clarke’s office)

New Yorker

Costs of gun violence hurt loved ones left behind. NY Victim Compensation program

doesn't meet their needs — but it could.

By HELINA SELEMON Amsterdam News Staff

“There’s no pain like that pain,” says Peggy Herrera, tears welling up, about the death of her son. Herrera describes her 24-year-old son Justin as her “little man.” He’s reflected in photos in almost every part of her Long Island home, where she moved from Jamaica, Queens, at his plea for somewhere safer and different to live. Anyone who talks to her would immediately note her expressions of love and doting care of her son.

Justin, who stood 5 feet 11 inches, played football competitively since childhood, and struggled with the loss of his father at a young age, was celebrating his birthday with friends on July 2 when he was shot to death.

“When my son was killed, I didn’t know what the next step was,” Herrera said. She needed financial support, but said she was unaware of victim’s compensation at the time of his murder and misinformed about when and how to get it.

New York’s Victim Compensation program has awarded victims and survivors of violent crime since the federal law was enacted in 1984. The safety net of victim compensation is meant to provide relief, but for many, that relief doesn’t go far enough to save them from financial turmoil.

Life for many is thrown into chaos after surviving a gun injury or losing a loved one to gun violence. Home may no longer be a safe haven, survivors face months of recovery and doctors’ visits, and families struggle with funeral costs. The loss may have been a parent, a child, a sibling, a provider, a leader of the family. Everyone grieves for a loss or altered life differently, and the high costs of therapy and trauma recovery often keep mental health care out of reach.

In New York, applicants may qualify for up to $30,000 in lost wages or support, up to $2,500 for moving expenses, or up to $2,500 for crime scene cleanup after an incident of gun violence. For funeral costs, the reward is $6,000, which has not increased since the 1990s. Some recipients said these amounts barely cover the costs of funerals or relocating from their homes for safety. For example, the average cost of a funeral with a burial vault is $9,995, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.

Victim compensation for many, whether reimbursement, one-time, or recurring payment, only scrapes the surface of financial burdens that follow the violent injury or death of a loved one.

Telling their stories

Gwendolyn Halsey, a mother of five and retiree from the New York CIty Transit Authority, said all of her children have been shot, and one died. She remembers the day that her son James Velz Halsey was killed six years ago: It was a Saturday, and he had asked her to come to Brooklyn to ad lib on a song of his. Her son and grandson had just come back from the store when she overheard an argument start outside their home. She said she partially opened the door to see if everything was OK. He replied, “Yeah, Ma.” Shortly after she went back in the house, she heard three shots. “I was frozen. I couldn’t move,” she said.

Halsey is left with memories of her son’s body splayed on her front steps and having to clean the brain matter left behind after the

If you or a loved one was a victim of a violent crime, scan this QR Code to apply for victim’s compensation.

If you need assistance to apply or help with a compensation claim, use your ZIP code to find a victims’ assistance program near you.

police came to the scene. She said she received some victim compensation — a one-time payment for funeral expenses — but currently doesn’t have a home of her own and has been staying with a relative.

Tragedy came to Janifer Taylor’s doorstep, too. She was living in Virginia when her daughter, Dawn Peterson, asked her to move to New York to live with her in 2020. She couldn’t have anticipated that she would have just 16 months left with her only child. Peterson, then a mother of a 2-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son, was gunned down on December 17, 2021, in front of their home by an unknown man.

Taylor was home when she heard the shots.

Footage she said she later saw from a neighbor’s security camera captured Dawn’s final moments.

“She was screaming, ‘Mommy, please help me,’” she said. “That’s the pain that I live with every day and the aftermath. It’s like she’s on vacation — she may come home one day, but then you feel it; they are not coming back. It’s a pain that never goes away.”

Peterson’s case remains unsolved, Taylor said. In the aftermath, she received an emergency housing voucher, but finding a place proved difficult.

“It’s considered an emergency housing

voucher, but it took me two and a half years to find a place to live because a lot of people didn’t take this voucher,” she said.

Taylor received compensation to help cover funeral expenses in a week’s time, and she credits Carolyn Dixon and Where Do We Go From Here, a support organization for grieving families, for helping her navigate that process. “I was one of the ones that did get the $6,000 and I’m appreciative, but…it definitely wasn’t enough,” she said.

In New York, applicants can qualify for up to a $3,000 emergency award within 24 hours of filing, but when it comes to processing compensation claims, it takes 107 days on average for the agency to either award or deny an entire claim application.

The 13-year-old murder case of Monica Cassaberry’s son Jamal Singleton Sr. remains unsolved. “I think that a lot of people don’t understand,” she said. “No mother should have to bury a child. That’s not scientifically correct. It’s wrong. They should be burying us, not vice versa.”

Her son’s case made her unwilling to return to work at the police department.

“After I went out on extended leave, I never went back to the police department,” she said. “I helped solve all these crimes…I felt like, why should I go back to a system that didn’t do nothing for me or mine?”

Cassaberry said her son’s shooting happened diagonally across the street from her. Soon after, she moved into her brother’s home before a shooting of her sister at her brother’s home forced her to move her family into a homeless shelter. She said it was difficult to uproot and move from her fully furnished three-bedroom home as a single mom in the aftermath of her son’s murder.

“My kids have been traumatized more than once…and then, not only are you getting traumatized by the shooting, you turn around, move somewhere else that don’t work out, then you end up in the shelter system,” she said.

“Any family who has been inflicted or impacted by gun violence should never be in the shelter. That’s the worst place,” Cassaberry added. “They need to have something set up for families and victims of crime. They need to have special housing for us.”

Cassaberry said housing is an under-realized need for victims of crime.

“A lot of families are still stuck in places where they have bullet holes in a window or a wall,” she said. “I would if I had the heart — I would have still been living where my son was shot diagonally from where I lived. I couldn’t do it.”

A myriad of compensation programs

New York has more than 200 victim assistance programs — nonprofits and advocacy organizations where New Yorkers can get help with applying for victim compensation. Pathways, a Kings Against Gun Violence’s (KAVI)

Photos of Peggy Herrera’s son Justin, in her Long Island, NY, home. Justin was fatally shot on July 2, 2022. (Photo by Damaso Reyes)

Compensation

Continued from page 6

program, is one of them, opening its doors on the third floor of Restoration Plaza in Bed-Stuy back in July. Program Coordinator James Peele said their program takes walk-in clients, along with referrals made at Kings County Hospital, where KAVI makes connections with future clients.

“I’m hoping that we are able to allow the community to know what resources and funds are available to them as crime survivors and victims of crime,” Peele said. “Different things that they may need — helping them with finances, funeral costs, hospital bills — some resources that they might not even have known were available to them and that they’re owed as victims of crime.”

Gun violence is one of many reasons people seek victim’s compensation. Applicants also seek relief from domestic violence, sexual abuse, homicide, and assault, which are among the most common reasons.

Peele said therapy is among the most pressing needs that come up for gun violence survivors. Centers like Pathways offer a safe place for victims and survivors to come and start the process. Peele said the program can reach people who would otherwise be intimidated by pursuing compensation.

“People [who] come into these situations are kind of scared of dealing with governmental affairs, for many reasons,” he said. “But I think one thing they should know: that these phones and resources are not only a gift but more so, required by law to help them through that situation.”

According to NY State Senator Jabari Brisport, who was also in attendance, “Violence is one of the most disruptive things in our communities when it happens. And it’s always a ripple effect, right? It’s never just simply the one victim, but also their friends and families who are impacted.”

KAVI’s work plays a crucial role: “They deserve all the resources and all the funding that myself or the state can give because it truly is a life-saving operation that they’re doing here,” he said.

Improving victim compensation

This year marks 40 years since the passage of the Victims of Crimes Act (VOCA), the law that established victim compensation funds. In University of Michigan sociologist Jeremy Levine’s words, the law was “the tail end” of a two-decade fight to get a federal subsidy for victim compensation. When the concept of financially supporting crime survivors came over from the U.K. in the 1960s, the idea was that the government’s shortcomings in protecting its citizens from the conditions that exacerbate violence made it the collective responsibility of the government to address. Unlike some legislation that uses tax dollars to help combat the problem, though, the dollars that support victims of violent crime go up and down every year, depending on the fines and fees collected from the prosecution of crime, white-collar crime in particular. In

other words, the amount of funding to support crime victims across the country depends on more crime taking place.

“Victims of crime, in the current way that the funding apparatus works, need corporations to do bad things,” Levine said. “It needs people to be convicted of crime at misdemeanor level, at felony level, at the corporate white collar level. That’s how it’s set up. I don’t think that’s right. I think the incentives are perverse. I think it incentivizes more crime, which makes, to me, really contradictory aims.”

This model for funding crime survivors operates in contrast from how other nations, particularly in Europe, fund victim compensation. Programs in countries like the U.K., Sweden, and France are supported by public funds. While the idea that those incriminated should be fined to provide restitution made sense to some at the time, the math hasn’t added up to enough to properly fund victim compensation. Attempts to change the fining model over the years to boost available funds

tions but 63% of denials, according to an Alliance investigation of 23 states. Denial rates for Black applicants tended to be for “subjective” rather than “administrative” reasons.

While New York’s denial rates for white and Black residents aren’t far apart, steps like requiring a police report within a week of the crime are hurdles that keep many Black New Yorkers from proceeding.

The trajectory for crime survivors changes dramatically when financial support is available. Survivors are less likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health conditions when they are able to cover the costs that follow their victimization. Without financial support, survivors are often left with devastating results, such as losing their jobs, substance use, developing an over-reliance on emergency rooms to manage pain and suffering, and even cycling through jail and prison.

Supporting and stabilizing crime survivors can reduce the costs of violence and even prevent gun violence, reducing its burden on society and state and local governments.

The state recently passed the Fair Access to Victim Compensation bill, a law removing the requirement for a police report to get compensation, although it will not be enacted until December 2025. “The main crux is that it would remove the police report requirement, and it would expand the types of evidence that survivors can use to show the Office of Victim Services that a crime has occurred,” said Tahirih Anthony, senior policy manager at Common Justice, an advocacy organization that campaigned for the bill. “This could be a victim service provider. This could be a licensed medical and mental health provider.”

The act also changes the amount of time for a survivor to file a claim from one year to three years, Anthony said, which opens the opportunity for people like Peggy Herrera to file a claim for her son’s death. This extended time range is important for victims.

haven’t worked, Levine said.

Funding for victim’s compensation has been dwindling federally, to nearly $3.3 billion in 2024, down 75% from its peak of $13 billion in 2017. Not many know about the program or apply: During the 2023 fiscal year, only 8,994 New Yorkers applied for victim compensation and 5,467 were approved, with payments at just over $18 million to those New York residents. For context, in the same fiscal year, the NYPD nearly doubled its overtime budget of $370 million, according to the comptroller’s office, projecting that they’d spend more than $700 million. The difference in spending is estimated to be 20 times what the state spent on victim compensation.

A recent poll by the Alliance for Safety and Justice estimated that 96% of crime survivors nationwide don’t get victim compensation. What’s more, the application processing is plagued by racial bias: Reporting from the AP found that nationally, Black applicants make up less than half of compensation applica-

“Through working with survivors, you realize that healing just isn’t linear. Everyone isn’t ready to start doing paperwork when they’re going through some of their darkest days,” Anthony said.

Despite the reforms to application requirements, people can still be barred from receiving victim compensation if they are deemed to have contributed to their crime, in a stipulation in the state law known as contributory conduct.

“If you’re a victim of crime and the police officer who takes the report says that they think that you were a rival gang member and that’s why it happened, or says they think that you started it, your compensation application can be fully denied, or vastly reduced, just based on that allegation,” said Danielle Sered, executive director of Common Justice.

OVS spokesperson Kava said that reducing or denying claims due to contributory conduct has been a rare occurrence in the past six years. Between 2018 and 2023, she said, 222 claims have been reduced and 19 claims have been denied due to contributory conduct, out

KAVI Executive Director Ramik WIlliams (left), Pathways Program Coordinator James Peele (center) and NY State Senator Jabari Brisport (right) officially open Pathways center in BedStuy. (Photo by Helina Selemon)

Mothers (left to right) Janifer Taylor, Monica Cassaberry, and Gwendolyn Halsey. (Photo by Damaso Reyes)

Union Matters

City Comptroller’s new employment violations dashboard shames city’s biggest labor law violators

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

Through a new dashboard on employer labor violations, the New York City Comptroller’s Office called out the city’s worst workers’ rights offenders through an inaugural “wall of shame.” Eleven companies were listed, including fast food chains Chipotle and Panda Express, rideshare services Uber and Lyft, and e-commerce giant Amazon.

Beyond massive corporations, Comptroller Brad Lander also pointed to a litany of local home healthcare companies on the blacklist as some of the worst wagetheft offenders, a crucial issue given the impact to a workforce composed primarily of Black and Brown women.

“The Wall of Shame is built on this broader employer violations dashboard, which is in different categories,” Lander said in a phone interview with the AmNews. “We look at companies that steal their workers’ wages through wage theft. We look at companies who put their workers’ lives at risk as measured by OSHA violations. We look at companies who commit unfair labor practices and violate their workers’ rights to organize, as determined by the National Labor Relations Board. We look at companies who don’t pay workers the prevailing wages they’re owed on city projects.

“What the wall of shame really is is the companies that were the worst in the different categories on the dashboard,” he added. “For example, Chipotle Mexican Grill, had the highest number of unfair labor practices [ULP] in New York City in 2023, and each company on the list was unfortunately top of one of those categories — and in some cases, they actually had violations across multiple categories.”

Chipotle earned a spot on Lander’s “wall of shame” for the highest number of unfair labor practices in the city with seven violations largely involving coercion and retaliation in response to union-organizing. In fact, the burrito bowl behemoth owed more than $350,000 to more than 9,000 employees when accounting for all violations recorded in the dashboard.

Meanwhile, Uber and Lyft paid out a combined $328 million, the biggest wage and hour settlement in the Office of New York State Attorney General prosecutorial history, after both companies allegedly deducted earnings from their drivers. Amazon faces the most amount of open ULP charges in the city. And Panda Express paid out $3.45 million in the largest Fair

Work Week and Paid Safe and Sick Leave Law settlement in the Big Apple last year.

Luxury brand Gucci also made the “wall of shame” due to a settlement with the NYC Commission on Human Rights (NYCCHR) over allegations that two store employees sexually harassed a colleague over a five year span, which the company was allegedly aware of. The $300,000 payout is one of the largest in NYCCHR history.

Lander stressed the fact that employers documented in the dashboard makeup just a small minority of the businesses operating in New York City. But he encouraged the public to dive into the database, which he hopes will serve as a resource to

job-seekers, consumers, and even the offending companies themselves. Currently, the dashboard tracks labor law violations from 2020 to 2023 that have been investigated by government agencies.

The “wall of shame” is partially inspired by other blacklists like the worst landlords watchlist started by the Village Voice and now carried on by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. The shaming tool led to direct accountability with city’s “worst” landlord Daniel Ohebshalom, who was court ordered to repair his units and subsequently held on Rikers Island after failing to. Initially, the slumlord listed his properties under proxy Jonathan Santana.

“By tracking these types of violations, we

can better protect workplace safety, prevent wage theft, and ensure fair treatment, respect, and the protected right to organize for all workers,” said New York City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO President Vincent Alvarez in his statement. Neither Chipotle, Amazon, Uber, Lyft, Panda Express, or Gucci responded by press time.

Union organizers protest Chipotle in 2021. (Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

Opinion

Stop vigilantism!

Like many Black Americans, and certainly Black New Yorkers, we knew what the verdict would be in the subway death of Jordan Neely once the judge removed the possibility of Daniel Penny being convicted of second-degree manslaughter. Doubtful, too, that he would be found guilty of criminally negligent homicide.

Over the last score of years we’ve witnessed Black men being killed without any recourse of justice, mainly by white police officers, and to have a citizen apprehend a mentally disturbed Black man, apply a fatal chokehold, even as he no longer was a threat — real or imagined.

Even as other passengers approached the situation, Penny refused to relinquish his chokehold. It was a horrible and gruesome reminder of what happened to Eric Garner and George Floyd. Police officers killed Garner and Floyd; Penny was acting as judge, jury, and executioner of Neely.

It’s hard to believe that there wasn’t a point when Penny realized Neely had been completely restrained, and no longer a dangerous threat. Equally reprehensibly, after being acquitted, there was no indication of remorse for what he had done; not a second of reaching out to Neely’s family and friends to offer some form of condolences.

The family may pursue some restitution for Neely’s loss of life, but something must be done to improve the system of injustice that transpired here and a better way of bringing relief and assistance to people walking around in need of treatment for ailments that too many construe as threats on their lives. To be sure, it will happen again, and we will be as beleaguered and distressed as we are now about the quest for remedies. To some extent, we’ve curtailed the police atrocities; now we need to take some concrete measures to subdue vigilantism.

Mask bans make NY less safe

By JESSICA LYNN

When I was going to visit my 93-year-old grandfather earlier this summer, I donned my N95 mask in the grocery store and on public transit in the days leading up to the trip. During cold season last year, when I started noticing more sniffles and coughs among my law school classmates, I decided it would be better to mask up than catch COVID at the height of final exams. While I don’t wear them as much as I did at the height of the pandemic, masks remain a tool that I use to keep my high-risk loved ones safe from COVID and protect myself during spikes of the virus.

But now, recent legislation in New York threatens to make these precautions illegal.

Earlier this month, the Nassau County legislature approved a bill banning people from wearing masks or face coverings in public. Violations could result in a $1,000 fine, up to a year in jail, or both. In May, a state legislator introduced a similar bill that would ban face coverings specifically at public gatherings, like protests. Governor Kathy Hochul has also expressed support for a mask ban on New York City’s subway.

Supporters of these bans claim they are necessary to protect public safety and point fingers at pro-Palestinian activists who cover their faces at protests—but these bans aren’t about public safety at all. They’re about suppressing speech.

wouldn’t be completely safe— they’re likely to face more invasive questions and harassment about their health status. Further, police can ask them to remove their masks if they’re suspected of a crime or even of having the mere intent to commit a crime.

As with all overly broad policies, these bans are likely to be disproportionately enforced against historically over-policed groups, namely low-income Black and Brown communities. The exceptions to the bans are vague and leave it up to law enforcement to decide who is wearing a mask for an acceptable reason. In absence of further guidance, police officers’ own biases about who is a “criminal” are likely to influence who they stop, question, or charge for violating the policy.

The vast majority of pro-Palestinian protests have been peaceful and tolerant. One independent nonprofit found that 97% of proPalestinian demonstrations that took place at U.S. universities in April and May caused no serious damage. Yet, this didn’t stop law enforcement or the public from coming down hard on college activists. The same nonprofit documented that in at least 70 of the 553 campus demonstra-

tions, officers dispersed protesters with physical force, such as by deploying chemical agents or using batons.

Online, pro-Israel groups have doxxed campus activists, attempting to damage their future career prospects. Protesters cover their faces not because they are doing anything wrong, but because they face state violence and online harassment for simply expressing their views. The Supreme Court has long held that the First Amendment protects anonymous speech, which allows people to express themselves freely without risking retaliation. Mask bans strip activists of this right and attempt to bully them into silence.

Meanwhile, these bans are being implemented as COVID is surging in New York and across the nation. As of July, COVID cases in New York City were up about 150% compared to May. In Nassau County, they were up more than 220% over the same time period.

Masking remains one of the most accessible and effective ways that people can prevent contracting of the virus.

The proposed state ban would prevent even people with disabilities from masking to protect health at protests. The bill contains a narrow carveout that would allow people to use masks to protect health during a declared health emergency, but the COVID emergency declaration has lapsed. Thus, this legislation essentially asks people with disabilities to choose between their right to assembly and their personal safety.

The Nassau bill includes broader health exceptions, but they still don’t go far enough to protect New Yorkers. For example, the Nassau ban’s exception only applies to people who are masking to protect their own health and safety. Under such a policy, my masked trips to the grocery store to protect my elderly grandfather could be interpreted as illegal. People with disabilities who mask to protect themselves still

Despite explicit exceptions for religious face coverings, law enforcement will also doubtlessly become more likely to question and harass Muslim women who wear garments that cover their faces, like burkas or niqabs. Thus, these bans will perpetuate trends of over-policing and expose already vulnerable groups to potential police violence.

If mask bans were really about safety, their supporters wouldn’t put protesters at risk of doxxing, people with disabilities at risk of contracting COVID, or people of color at risk of police abuse. Instead, these bans are about control. They sacrifice our health to improve state surveillance. They give our governments power over what we wear, how we protest, and the ways we can protect ourselves.

New Yorkers deserve the right to decide these issues for themselves. Legislators must oppose these regressive mask bans and stand up for their constituents’ autonomy.

Jessica Lynn is a legal intern at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) and rising 2L at Berkeley Law. She is a co-leader of the Digital Rights Project, a program through which law students conduct factual research to support the ACLU of Northern California in its digital civil liberties work.

Elinor R. Tatum: Publisher and Editor in Chief

Damaso Reyes: Executive & Investigative Editor

Kristin Fayne-Mulroy: Managing Editor

Cyril Josh Barker: Digital Editor Siobhan "Sam" Bennett:

Woman wearing homemade facial mask when sheltering in place in Brooklyn, NY (Adjoajo photo via Wikimedia Commons)

My breast cancer journey: taking control, breaking silence, and empowering women

By SHARON JOSEPH

I don’t know what I thought a cancer patient looked like, but I didn’t think it looked like me, so when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was shocked. I had supported others, but now I was faced with my own health issue.

I was determined not to see myself as a victim. I would see myself as someone who had caught the disease at an early stage, largely because I was pro-active about my health. Due to having dense breasts and a family history of breast cancer, I start-ed my mammograms and ultra-sounds early, and that vigilance saved my life. However, my story is shaped by more than just early detection — it’s shaped by the si-lence that came before.

My mother had breast cancer, but she never told me. I vividly remember driving her to get her procedure (which I would later learn was a lumpectomy), yet the words “breast cancer” were never spoken. I thought about all the women at church whom we prayed for who were having “a procedure.” Now I wonder how many were quietly battling breast cancer.

My mother’s silence allowed the cancer to spread further than it needed to. She didn’t get the information that could have made a difference, and she didn’t talk about it with her family. When it was my turn, I knew I couldn’t be silent.

I chose to speak to doctors at two hospitals, consulting breast oncologists and plastic surgeons. I wanted all the facts before making my decision. After doing my research and speaking with women who had chosen vari-ous forms of surgery, I decided to have a mastectomy. It wasn’t an easy decision, but it was my way of taking control and reducing the chance of further spread.

Beyond the medical decisions, I also took control of the emotional and spiritual aspects of my journey. I hosted a farewell party for my breasts with family and friends, and I held a Zoom prayer meeting with loved ones. These moments gave me the strength to face my diagnosis on my own terms, and not let it define me.

Breast cancer is not just a personal battle — it’s a public health issue, especially for Black women. We are disproportionately affected by the disease, and many of us don’t get the information or support we need. Black women are also more likely to be diagnosed with triple-negative

breast cancer, an aggressive form that doesn’t respond to hormonal therapies and has a higher mor-tality rate. This makes genetic testing and early detection even more critical. Understanding your genetic predisposition can be lifesav-ing. If you have a family history, getting tested for mutations like BRCA1 and BRCA2 is essential, because these can increase the risk of both breast and ovarian cancers. Knowledge is power, and genetic testing is one of the most important tools we have in the fight against breast cancer.

My doctor, Dr. Lisa Newman, a pioneering surgical oncolo-gist and researcher, has focused much of her work on under-standing the disparities in breast cancer outcomes, especially for Black women. Her research has shown that women of African ancestry, including African American women, have a higher likelihood of developing aggressive forms of breast cancer like triple-negative. Her work under-scores the importance of tailored treatment, increased awareness, and genetic counseling for women at higher risk.

For those of us with dense breast tissue, mammograms alone might not be enough. Dense breasts can mask cancer on a traditional mammogram, which is why additional screen-ings like ultrasounds and MRIs are often recommended. Women with dense breasts have a higher risk of developing breast cancer, so early and frequent screenings are critical. The problem is many women don’t know this — either be-

New Year, New Attitude

GREER, PH.D.

cause they aren’t informed by their doctors or because they don’t ask. We need to ask questions, and we need to advocate for our-selves. Don’t be afraid to push for additional testing if you have dense breasts or a family history. And don’t be afraid to talk about your diagnosis. Silence only feeds fear and ignorance.

I want women — especially Black women — to understand that we cannot afford to stay silent about breast cancer. Our health depends on our ability to gather information, to speak out, and to support one another. Talk to your doctors, ask the tough questions, and don’t be afraid to seek second opinions. Speak with women who have walked this path before you and do your own research.

In my case, taking control of the situation meant talking openly with my family and friends, gathering information, and making a decision that was right for me. But every woman’s journey is unique, and that’s why having access to research, support, and resources is so important. We must be our own advocates and push for the best care possible.

Breast cancer doesn’t have to define us, but we do need to face it. By speaking out, staying informed, and finding the right support, we can take control of our health and our futures. Let’s break the silence, and empower ourselves and each other to fight this disease.

Sharon Joseph is a Harlem native, CEO of the Boys and Girls of Harlem, and former founder of Harlem Lanes.

I have always liked the old Patti LaBelle song “New Attitude.” I know it’s about love but I think it can be applied to this upcoming year as well. We have a lot of changes on the horizon. Lots of items to be thankful for and excited about and with the incoming regime in Washington, D.C., lots to be apprehensive about as well. Knowing that the future is uncertain, it is important to remember that the future is always uncertain and we actually don’t control as much as we think we do. Keeping that in perspective is helpful for me to stay relatively calm and move forward in a productive manner.

Some of the lyrics that replay in my head: “I’m feelin’ good from my head to my shoes. Know where I’m goin’ and I know what to do. I tidied up my point of view. I got a new attitude. I’m in control, my worries are few…”

I know it will be easier said than done on certain days, but I must try to remember that I have been blessed with a new year and a new opportunity to readjust my mindset and my habits. Not only do I have a new year ahead of me, I must remember that each day is a new opportunity to dust myself off and try again.

As I envision what I want my 2025 to look like, I must remember that the more grace and compassion and patience I practice with myself, the better I am at extending it to others. I must also remember that as I get

older, I must adjust certain habits and begin to add and subtract certain things from my life such as more time in nature and exercising and possibly a little less time having cocktails. Everything in moderation of course… What goals have you set for 2025? Are you thinking of finding a new job or starting a new passion project that has been on your mind? Are you planning on traveling more or is this a year to tighten the belt and save money? I am eager to do more journaling and personal writing. I love traveling internationally and want to plan more trips with friends and family. I also need to think about my next big academic writing project and set some goals for myself for the months ahead.

As we think about all of the potential and possibility in the year ahead, we must also remember our neighbors and the well being of the larger community. We must resist the rhetoric that immigrants and our neighbors are the enemy taking resources from us. We must remain vigilant in our desire to do better and be better as individuals and Americans. Happy New Year!

Christina Greer, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Fordham University; author of book “How to Build a Democracy: From Fannie Lou Hamer and Barbara Jordan to Stacey Abrams” and “Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream” and is co-host of the podcast FAQ-NYC.

CHRISTINA

Sharon Joseph

Health Dawnette Lewis, MD, MPH on maternal health, birth complications for Black patients, and solutions

By HEATHER M. BUTTS, JD, MPH, MA Special to the AmNews

The Amsterdam News recently talked with Dr. Dawnette Lewis, MD, MPH, director of the Northwell Health Center for Maternal Health and director of Maternal Fetal Medicine at North Shore University Hospital, about maternal health issues, birth complications for Black patients, and potential future solutions. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

AmNews: Could you talk about the Maternal Outcomes Navigation Program?

DL: It’s a program that started during the pandemic, when patients were being discharged early from the hospital, and it started at three of our hospitals that had the highest COVID rates. It was designed to follow these patients to make sure that they were doing well. We didn’t know what the results were going to be with this program.

What we saw was that over 30 days after discharge, we were able to decrease the 30-day readmission due to severe maternal morbidity by about 50% in the overall population. For our Black birthing patients, we were able to decrease the 30-day readmission rate due to severe maternal morbidity by 60%.

AmNews: Who is particularly at risk for birth complications?

DL: Our program initially focused on patients who are at highest risk—those who have comorbid conditions or pre-existing medical conditions: chronic hypertension, preeclampsia, Type-1 diabetes, renal disease, any autoimmune conditions, any cardiac abnormalities, or any cardiac complications that emerged during pregnancy. I know from the statistics that Black women are three times more likely to die than white

women when giving birth.

AmNews: Why are Black women three times more likely to die than white women giving birth?

DL: I think there’s not only one reason why—I think it’s multiple reasons. Certainly, we know that the population having babies is getting older, [and] the older you are, the more likely you are to have a pre-existing medical condition, and that can contribute to maternal morbidity, maternal mortality. Where Black birthing patients are concerned, we know that the data shows that even if you’re a highly educated Black patient or healthy patient, your outcomes are worse than a white woman who has less than a high school education, so I don’t think it’s simply that patients have preexisting medical conditions.

I think it’s also the way Black women are treated when they’re entered in the healthcare system. I also think that the support that

you have in labor and delivery is important. I think your nurses in labor and delivery are important. There are multiple factors that contribute to poor outcomes.

AmNews: What can be done to help this situation?

DL: As simple as it seems, a lot of it is education. Any time a woman enters health care for whatever reason, whether they’re seeing their family physician or their primary care physician, I think it’s an opportunity to talk to patients about their plans—whether they’re planning a pregnancy soon or maybe in the next two or three years—to just talk about how patients can prepare to have a healthier pregnancy. I think if patients have existing medical conditions, like chronic hypertension, it’s important to optimize their blood pressure control before becoming pregnant. It’s also important for patients to be on medications that aren’t

contraindicated in pregnancy because some medications can cause anomalies in the baby. What often happens is someone who has chronic hypertension, [which are among medications that are contraindicated for someone who is pregnant], then [the medications should be] stopped. Then the patient has to wait until they present to an obstetrician or midwife or maternal fetal medicine specialists before they can get restarted on their medications to control blood pressure.

Those are opportunities where patients can be educated before delivery. We certainly continue to educate our patient population and our staff, our nurses, our physicians, about implicit bias training in the disparate outcomes for our Black birthing patients.

AmNews: What should new mothers be looking out for?

DL: Oftentimes, being a new

mom—or even if you’re a secondtime mom, it can be overwhelming. We encourage patients, anytime they’re having any feelings of being overwhelmed or feeling that they can’t manage what they’re doing, to reach out for support and not feel like it’s a weakness.

AmNews: Is there anything else you would like our readers to know?

DL: One of the things that is really inspiring and heartening is that when I started in obstetrics and maternal fetal medicine, no other specialty was interested in taking care of a pregnant patient, and now we’re seeing other medical disciplines who are very involved in publishing and talking about pregnancy complications. It’s exciting for me to know that there are other medical disciplines outside of OB/GYN that are paying attention to the maternal health crisis and who are willing to help.

Dr. Dawnette Lewis (Photo courtesy of Northwell Health Center )

Arts & Entertainment

2024: The Year In Review in Black Theater, Part 2

By LINDA ARMSTRONG Special to the AmNews

In August, “Six Characters” by African American playwright Phillip Howze played at Lincoln Center’s Claire Tow Theatre on West 65th Street. What started off with a lot of humor and some very oddball characters, would reveal, as it went on, a very deep message. The audience was introduced to a company of actors who play the roles of Character 1, Character 2, Character 3, Character 4, Character 5, and Character 6. Through intense conversations, the playwright let the audience witness how Black people have been mistreated and devalued by society for so long that they are not only used to it, but sadly accept it and in some cases feel that there is no way out. Even amongst each other, we find that we are victims of belittling. The playwright dra-

matically showed that we fear the racism that comes at us from so many different angles. Howze cleverly delivers this story with a great deal of heart and complexity, while also making it a lesson on how things have not really changed. The cast was absolutely stunning and included Julian Robertson, Claudia Logan, Seret Scott, Will Cobbs, CG, and Seven F. B. Duncombe. Director Dustin Wills truly did a fine job of crafting these actors, words, and exchanges to engage and entertain the audience, but also walk away with a great deal to ponder.

In September we lost the great James Earl Jones, who passed away on Sept. 9 at the age of 93. It was a month that also saw the world premiere of “Table 17”, a comedy by African American writer Douglas Lyons, which played at MCC Theater on West 52nd Street in Manhattan. The play gave the audience a look into the relationship

of Jada and her ex-boyfriend Dallas. They met at a restaurant for dinner and took the audience on a romantic, funny trip down memory lane. The restaurant scenes were off-the-chain funny due to the restaurant host, River, and the character of Eric, Jada’s co-worker. I hope at some point this production is brought back, and with the same cast. These three actors are top of the line, and include Kara Young as Jada, Biko EisenMartin as Dallas, and Michael Rishawn as River and Eric. There was also marvelous direction by Zhailon Levingston.

For a brief time, the one-and-only Stephanie Mills was back on Broadway as Hermes in “Hadestown,” and she was fantastic! “The Bleeding Class” by Chisa Hutchinson also played at 59E59 Theaters. Chisa Hutchinson is a poignant playwright who took a serious issue and delivered it through a powerful script that looked at

how minorities are simply used to make money for corporations in any way that serves society. In her play “The Bleeding Class,” which was part of the AMPLIFY Festival (in which three of Hutchinson’s works were featured), an escort who hailed from the Dominican Republic named Adina “Sugar” Moreno was the world’s answer to a mystery plague that was killing hundreds of millions of people around the world. Her blood was able to not only resist the virus, but destroy it. All the pharmaceutical company cared about was the money it would make by developing a cure based on Sugar’s blood. Sugar had a very unusual relationship with Dr. Pennington, the Black doctor who observed her and talked with her about all types of subjects. The racism and greed depicted in this play were bla-

Scene from “Table 17” (L-R) Biko Eisen-Martin, Michael Rishawn and Kara Young at MCC Theater. (Daniel J. Vasquez photo)

tant and overwhelming; the message in this play left the audience speechless. Hutchinson had a bold voice that needed to be heard, and the cast gave captivating performances and included Reginald L. Barnes, Tamar Lopez, Vincent Szutenbach, and Jackson Hayes. The production had stunning direction by Cezar Williams. October gave audiences the chance to experience a classic in a reimagined way: “Medea: ReVersed,” which played at the Frank Shiner Theatre at the Sheen Center on Bleecker Street. You’ve never seen Medea like this. The production was the creative, brilliant work of Luis Quintero, who actually wore three hats as the playwright, chorus leader, and emcee in his rap-filled version of the Greek tragedy adapted from Euripides. This play was presented by Red Bull Theater and Bedlam in co-production with Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. There was rap, singing, and rhymes everywhere, along with a tremendous amount of passion, revenge, and fun. The raps that Quintero put together allowed the characters involved to speak their truth in ways that made the audience swoon with admiration and delight. Whether or not you know the story of Medea and the route she took to get revenge on King Creon and Jason, you would have seen it with new eyes from the depth and clarity of the meticulous script. The superb cast included Sarin Monae West; Jacob Ming-Trent; and Stephen Michael Spencer. The production was vividly co-conceived and directed by Nathan Winkelstein.

The Thornton Wilder classic play “Our Town,” currently playing at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on West 47th Street, is a production that truly demonstrates that the play is “the thing” under the precise direction of Kenny Leon. There are no props used throughout the production. You find yourself truly focusing on the importance and value of the words that Wilder wrote. You find yourself listening to the story’s details with gripping attention. Wilder wrote about the lives of the people in a small town, their relationships, the makeup of the town over the years, the deaths and struggles that the townspeople experienced. He showed the commonality that all of us share as human beings. The cast that Leon has assembled is absolutely marvelous and features Jim

See 2024 Black Theater PT2 continued on next page

Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler in “Romeo + Juliet” at Circle In The Square Theater. (Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman photo)

Heather Ayers, Willa Bost, Bobby Daye, Doron JéPaul, Shyla Lefner, Anthony Michael Lopez, John McGinty, Bryonha Marie, Kevyn Morrow, Hagan Oliveras, Noah Pyzik, Sky Smith, Bill Timoney, Ricardo Vázquez, Matthew Elijah Webb, Greg Wood, and Nimene Sierra Wureh. For tickets to “Our Town” visit www.ourtownbroadway.com.

“Good Bones” by James Ijames played at the Public Theater and looked at gentrification and the relationships between the Black people who live in the community and don’t want change, and others who live in the community and encourage gentrification — a move which will result in neighborhood people being displaced. This play also looked at the idea of a successful Black woman, Aisha, being haunted in her newly renovated home and not knowing what the ghost wanted to convey to her. Every part of the storyline that captured attention was developed — but only to a point. The cast delivered engrossing performances and included Susan Kelechi Watson, Mamoudou Athie, Khris Davis, and Tea Guarino. The play featured direction by Saheem Ali. New Heritage Theater celebrated 60 years and Daniel Koa Beaty performed his one-man show “Love Warrior” to commemorate the event! Dominique Morisseau’s new work “Bad Kreyòl,” co-produced by Signature Theatre and Manhattan Theatre Club was presented at the Pershing Square Signature Center. It was a story that was very personal to the playwright because it told the story of the lives of people from Haiti from their perspective. Morisseau’s father was from Haiti and she had the opportunity to go with him to visit after the earthquake. This play gave details about the terrible things Haitian people had suffered in their country, during the crippling dictatorship and rebuilding the country after the earthquake. The playwright gives us two cousins: Simone, who is Haitian American and visiting her cousin Gigi, her last family member born and raised in Haiti. They’re coming together was the dying wish of their grandmother, the family matriarch. We meet Pita, who was like family to Simone, and whom she protected. Pita was flamContinued

Sarin Monae West, Jacob Ming-Trent, Mark Martin (in the background) in a scene from “Medea: Re-Versed” at the Sheen Center. (Carol Rosegg photo)

Continued from page 16

boyant in his dress and manner — something very dangerous in Haiti. This was a country where members of the LGBTQIA+ community were targeted by gangs who would attack and kill them just for their sexual preferences. The play also addressed how NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) took advantage of native Haitians. The cast gave powerful performances and included Pascale Armand, Jude Tibeau, Fedna Jacquet, and Andy Lucien. Tiffany Nichole Greene’s direction was absolutely charming to witness.

In November, New York City Center celebrated 80 glorious years of providing amazing performances for audiences. We got to experience a beautiful revival of “Ragtime” at NYCC. The production was marvelous and very timely as it tells a story of racism, injustice, and the indignities that Black and immigrant people have experienced in this country and still do today. The book by Terrence McNally, adapted from the E.L. Doctorow’s novel, was important, and the music by Stephen Flaherty, with lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, touched your heart and

soul. The songs showed the societal issues that are in this country’s past and present, and the story of Coalhouse Walker Jr. and Sarah made one take pause. The production showcased a huge ensemble cast and featured some of the most incredible talent in theater today which included Joshua Henry, Nichelle Lewis, Caissie Levy, Brandon Uranowitz, Matthew Lamb, John Clay III, Ben Levi Ross, Rodd Cyrus, Stephanie Styles, Shaina Taub, Colin Donnell, and Tabitha Lawing.

The 52nd Annual AUDELCO Awards, which honor excellence in Black Theater, were phenomenal this year as they took place at the Alhambra Ballroom in Harlem. The hosts of the annual celebration were Jerome Preston Bates and Toni Seawright. This year the honorees were extraordinary individuals. June Terry received the Legacy Award, and Outstanding Achievement Awards went to Daniel Koa Beaty, Layon Gray, and Alyson Williams. Lifetime Achievement Awards went to Trezana Beverly, A. Dean Irby, George Faison, and Lizan Mitchell. Pioneer Awards were bestowed upon Obediah Wright, Ralph Carter, and Mi-

Dinwiddie. Board of Directors Awards were given to Voza Rivers, Stephanie Berry, and John-Martin Green. The Rising Star award was given to Christopher Woodley. A detailed story of all the productions and the winners for the evening can be found on the AmNews website.

“A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical” is delivering a quite candid and revealing look into the life of this gifted performer. Playing at Studio 54 on West 54th Street, the musical depicts the trumpet player extraordinaire, singer, and actor, a talented man who faced many obstacles and found himself face-to-face with racism in this country. Through the book by Aurin Squire, the audience gets to meet a man who grew up poor and struggled with his mother; a man who found his gift and love in being a musician and singer; a man who had looked at love in a cavalier way and paid the price for it. The cast is one you will not forget, and they bring the energy as you also get to experience some of Armstrong’s best known and loved songs. The musical features the enormous talents of James Monroe Iglehart, who not only stars in it, but is a co-director.

The cast also includes Dionne Figgins, Jennie Harney-Fleming, Kim Exum, and Darlesia Cearcy. Gavin Gregory and an enormous ensemble. As I mentioned earlier, Iglehart is a co-director, an honor he shares with Christina Sajous. Christopher Renshaw, who is listed as director, co-conceived this musical with Andrew Delapaine. For ticket information, go to www.louisarmstrongmusical.com.

“Romeo + Juliet” is currently playing at Circle In The Square Theatre on West 50th Street, and it is a must see! It features a mainly minority cast and it tells the story with singing, humor, and playfulness. It is definitely a modern, refreshing spin on the Bard’s work. The cast is quite superb and will give you chills!

It includes Kit Connor, Rachel Zegler, Gabby Beans, Tommy Dorfman, Sola Fadiran, Taheen Modak, Gian Perez, Daniel Bravo Hernandez, Jasai Chase-Owens, and Nihar Duvvuri. Make plans to get to Circle In The Square to see the tragic star-crossed lovers. For tickets visit www.romeoandjulietnyc.com.

One of the most anticipated musicals that is back on Broadway is “Gypsy,” currently playing

at the Majestic Theatre on West 44th Street. The musical stars record-holding six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald in the title role as Gypsy Rose Lee. The cast on stage with McDonald features Danny Burstein, Joy Woods, Jordan Tyson, and includes Kevin Csolak, Lesli Margherita, Lili Thomas, Mylinda Hull, Jacob Ming-Trent, Kyleigh Denae Vickers, Marley Lianne Gomes, Jade Smith, Natalie Wachen, Tryphena Wade, Shanel Bailey, Jace Bently, Brandon Burks, Hunter Capellán, Tony d’Alelio, Summer Rae Daney, Kellie Jean Hoagland, Sasha Hutchings, Aliah James, Brittney Johnson, Zachary Daniel Jones, Ethan Joseph, Andrew Kober, Krystal Mackie, James McMenamin, Cole Newburg, Joe Osheroff, Majo Rivero, Ken Robinson, Sally Shaw, Thomas Silcott, Brendan Sheehan, Jayden Theophile, Jordan Wynn, and Iain Young. “Gypsy” has a great creative team that includes a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Jule Styne, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, choreography by Camille A. Brown, music direction and supervision by Andy Einhorn, and additional orchestrations and arrangements by winner Daryl Waters. For tickets, visit www.gypsybway.com.

chael

Scene from “Our Town” (L-R) Ephraim Sykes, Richard Thomas and Zoey Deutch. (Daniel Rader photo)

of a total of 55,511 claims filed.

“OVS reviews all claims in the light most favorable to the individual filing the claim, Kava said. “The agency makes all decisions, including conduct contributing determinations, solely on the actions or conduct of individuals at the time of the crime for which the claim is filed,” Kava wrote in an email.

But Sered criticized the philosophy behind denying aid to those deemed responsible for their injuries, especially because many perpetrators of harm have been exposed to harm themselves.

“It reflects a broader belief that we think there are some people who don’t deserve care; where, even if they’re hurt, their pain doesn’t matter to us. It’s not important to us anymore,” she said.

Common Justice is working on legislation to remove the contributory conduct stipulation and increase access to the program, having successfully campaigned for a state law that eliminates the requirement that applicants report their crime to police. But Sered said that in an ideal world, gun violence survivors wouldn’t need to rely on victim compensation to support themselves financially.

Creating supportive circles

Peggy, Gwen, Janifer, and Monica recently met in Peggy’s yard. Some of them wore black

vests with pictures of their children and white printed numbers: birthdays, death days. They are part of Not Another Child, a support organization founded by Oresa Napper-Williams that provides a support system for survivors of gun violence. They know from experience exactly what their peers need, from help with funeral arrangements, memorial services, and crime victims compensation applications to peer support sessions and retreats.

“She gives me the strength to be a better me every day,” Cassaberry said of NapperWilliams.

Reflecting on the needs that go unmet for survivors, Napper-Williams said, “The priority should be to get us the funding to do the work.”

Not Another Child, Napper-Williams, and the organization’s work to meet survivor needs has gotten the attention of the White House on the importance of community-based victim support organizations.

Napper-Williams envisions Not Another Child offering temporary housing to immediately relocate survivors of violence, but building support systems for survivors is difficult with the delays in getting the public funds they are allocated, like the $35,000 and $25,000 discretionary pay from the city that she received months after their completed contract. She feels that organizations like hers

are better suited to meet the needs of victims than government.

“NYPD gets their money upfront. We do the work on a reimbursable contract most of the time.”

These women know that support that’s sensitive to survivor needs, such as check-ins, funds to support their children in the short term, aid with housing and relocation, is what many others need to to get to healing.

“I tell people, it took pain to heal pain for my own life,” Herrera said. “I just want, when

someone goes through that, they can heal from their pain, but that it wouldn’t keep them stuck… they will go out and help somebody heal from their pain.”

Blacklight Investigative Reporter Shannon Chaffers contributed to reporting this story.

DR. HAZEL N. DUKES

Montgomery, which would eventually be known as the former home of civil rights icon Rosa Parks. Parks had moved to Montgomery and had gotten married the year Dukes was born. The couple joined the Montgomery NAACP chapter. Parks would go on to inspire the Montgomery Bus Boycott of the 1950s.

“I could stand on my front porch and look at Ms. Parks’s front porch,” Dukes recalled. “Sweet, kind, low-key woman who went to work every day. She and her husband had no children.”

Dukes said that those early years in the South were a “quiet kind of radical” environment that relied on furtively organizing Black labor efforts instead of the loud protests of future decades. Although she was young, she took after her father in questioning the status quo of racial segregation. She didn’t quite understand why things were the way they were, she said, but never equated the feeling to others taking issue with her skin color.

“I knew something was wrong,” said Dukes. “In my books, there were pages torn out of them and the word nigger [written] in them. When I would want to talk about it, my Mom would say ‘just learn.’”

Her parents’ families were both involved in education. Dukes had thought she’d be a teacher, even enrolling at Alabama State Teachers College in 1949 for a year, but when her family moved to New York in 1955, she ended up attending Nassau Community College on Long Island. There, she got involved with tenant and community organizing through the Economic Opportunity Commission (EOC) of Nassau County in the town of Roslyn in North Hempstead. The town had very few Black residents—mostly those who had migrated from North and South Carolina. She set out to educate impoverished Black children in the neighboring towns, get them into pre-K, and speak about health screenings.

In the 1960s, Dukes was appointed by Johnson to his Head Start early childhood education program—one of the oldest and largest programs of its kind. Around this time, she was attending classes at Adelphi University. She said a Jewish professor inspired her to pursue a career as an attorney.

In 1966, she became the first Black person to take a position in the Nassau County Attorney’s Office. Her job was to work with the attorneys and assign their cases. It gave her an exciting chance to debate with lawyers, dive into housing and foster care issues from a legal standpoint, and explore politics, she said. She was a staunch Democrat in a wholly Republican county, but things were changing.

Dukes eventually received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Adelphi University in 1978 and completed post-graduate work at Queens College.

“It’s still very segregated in certain parts of Long Island,” said Dukes. Despite that, Roslyn named a street after Dukes in 2023 for her work as a fierce advocate against housing discrimination.

By 1989, Dukes headed the national NAACP organization with the help of Dr. Benjamin L. Hooks, who was elected executive director of the NAACP at the time. She remained in that office until 1992 and is the only woman still alive to have held that title.

A very outspoken person, Dukes made incredible allies and infamous enemies throughout her lifetime. She sparred publicly with former Mayors Ed Koch and Rudy Guiliani.

“I had fights with them,” said Dukes. “We had a NAACP convention. Giuliani was so bad that I said he could not even bring greetings. His behavior toward the Black community was so bad that he could not speak at an NAACP convention.”

During her time as national president of the NAACP, Dukes said that fostering relationships with other women leaders and mentoring Black youth was probably her greatest accomplishment.

In 1990, Dukes also became the president of the New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation (NYCOTB), but her reign wasn’t completely without stain. In 1997, at the age of 65, Dukes pleaded guilty to attempted grand larceny, which caused a shockwave of scandal throughout New York City. She was accused of stealing $13,000 from longtime friend and disabled employee Velma McLaughlin in 1993. McLaughlin had reportedly given Dukes permission to cash her NYCOTB paychecks and pay her bills after her cancer diagnosis. Dukes took a plea bargain to pay the money back, although she did maintain her innocence.

“It wasn’t a failure,” said Dukes about the trial. “This young woman I had helped so much—she got cancer, she had one son, no other family member. I had signed papers for her at Sloan Kettering, never taking a penny.”

Despite the negative media attention about the case, Dukes said she had the support of the late AmNews publisher William Tatum, former Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton, former Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania C. Delores Tucker, and the community at large. McLaughlin died recently, right after the COVID-19 pandemic. Dukes said she felt sorry for her and the entire situation.

Duke’s list of accomplishments since the 1990s is vast.

Among them, Dukes was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the City University of New York Law School at Queens College in 1990, an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Medgar Evers College in 2009, and an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2012. She has also received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, YWCA City of New York John La Farge Memorial Award for Interracial Justice, Guy R. Brewer Humanitarian Award, Network Journal’s 25 Most Influential Black Women in Business Award in 2007, a city proclamation at the New York City Council’s 3rd Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Awards ceremony, the First Annual Ruth Clark Trailblazer Award, National Action Network Legacy Award, City & State 50 Over 50 Lifetime Achievement Award, and John E. Zuccotti Public Service Award by the Real Estate Board of New York.

Dukes received the key to the city from former Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2020, was a Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce 125th Anniversary Gala honoree in 2023, and made history by becoming the first civilian person in the United States to administer the oath of office to a governor—Kathy Hochul, New York State’s first female governor. She was especially proud of that.

She dreams of being remembered for helping others and educating the youth,

and believes the secret to a long life is being kind and healthy. “I feel that my legacy for my community has left a mark and is very well respected,” Dukes said. Currently, Dukes is president of the NAACP’s New York State chapter and an active member of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Northern Manhattan Alumnae Chapter. She was married once and is divorced with one son, who lives in New Jersey.

For decades, Dukes has worked behind the scenes in New York and national politics, but has never wanted to run for office.

“I wanted to be outside and make government work,” Dukes said. “If you’re inside, yes, you’re sitting at the table, but you have to negotiate with other people. As president of the NAACP, I have my voice. I don’t have to decide whether it’s the right thing to do or is somebody gonna re-elect me. (I want) to be outside to make government and people work for the people that elect them. That’s why I never wanted to be (an elected official).”

Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member who 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.

Factcheck: False—Long COVID is just in your head

By DEREK LAMB AND JANA ZAHLAN

As COVID-19 infections continue to rise around the globe, so has the number of people diagnosed with Long COVID. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), “Long COVID is a wide range of new, returning, or ongoing health problems that people experience after being infected with the virus that causes COVID-19.” A survey conducted by the CDC last June showed that one in 10 U.S. adults who reported having COVID-19 in the past had Long COVID symptoms at the time of data collection.

Still, Long COVID symptoms, such as fatigue and a range of mental symptoms given the umbrella label “brain fog” has led to the disease being often dismissed as a psychological issue. Dr. Michael Peluso, a physician and infectious disease researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, discussed the myth of Long COVID being a psychological issue in an interview with the AmNews

When asked whether Long COVID is a psychological issue, Peluso stated that “the broad answer is no...Medicine has always been very bad at addressing issues that it doesn’t understand, and often those issues get kind of dismissed as either issues that people are imagining or making up.”

As the pandemic progressed, scientists and doctors began to better understand what Long COVID is and how it occurs. Peluso explained that the current understanding has shifted beyond a purely psychological origin of the condition.

“The important message is...that is not our current biological understanding of it,” said Peluso, but notes that “that is the way, unfortunately, that people who are skeptical of the condition or don’t want to deal with someone who has the condition try to dismiss it.”

While many questions regarding Long COVID and its treatments remain unanswered, Peluso emphasized that significant progress has been made toward our understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying this syndrome. He explained that Long COVID can develop in several different ways, including persistence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, or malfunctions of the body’s normal processes, such as the immune system and blood clotting system, among others. However, he added that despite

this progress, physicians do not currently have ways to test patients suffering from Long COVID symptoms.

Long COVID has entered the mainstream conversation as a disease that comes after recovering from a viral infection—a socalled post-viral disease—but it’s not unique.

To learn more about how the symptoms of Long COVID come about, the AmNews also spoke with Dr. Douglas B. Kell, a professor of systems biology at the University of Liverpool. Dr. Kell is an expert

in blood clotting and has been researching Long COVID since the early days of the pandemic.

“SARS-CoV-1 had post-viral syndromes. It’s likely that Gulf War syndrome was a post-viral [disease] ... post-Dengue as well, so these diseases aren’t nearly as common or prevalent as COVID, but it’s clearly Long COVID that has brought this into prominence,” Kell explained.

He added that when SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, gets into the blood, proteins on the surface of the virus start to interfere with the body’s normal

systems that control the clotting of blood. In particular, this leads to the formation of small persistent clots, called ‘microclots’, which are “clots that have clotted into an anomalous form…[making] the clots more resistant . . . so that’s why they’re hanging around,” he added.

These stable clots then travel throughout the body through the bloodstream. Sometimes, they can get stuck, blocking blood vessels and preventing oxygenrich blood from getting to tissues in the body. The cells that end up being starved of oxygen stop working normally, leading to the symptoms of Long COVID.

“Which ones in particular are most starved are the ones that manifest the particular subset of symptoms that you happen to have,” Kell explained. “If [microclots] are in the CNS [Central Nervous System], it’s brain fog, and if they’re in the muscles, it’s muscle fatigue, and so forth.”

Researchers, including Dr. Kell, are currently working on developing treatments for Long COVID that tackle the varied origins of the disease. But even though treatments for the physical symptoms of Long COVID are still under development, “we do have good treatments for mental health symptoms,” said Peluso, “but people are often hesitant to seek care for those things...because they don’t want their physical symptoms to be dismissed.”

If you are recovering from #COVID19 or experiencing #longCOVID, you can call 212-COVID19 to receive specialty care, or visit www.nychealthandhospitals.org/ services/covid-19 to learn more about NYC’s COVID-19 Centers of Excellence. For additional resources about COVID-19, visit www1. nyc.gov/site/coronavirus/index. page. COVID-19 testing, masks, and vaccination resources can also be accessed on the AmNews COVID-19 page: www.amsterdamnews.com/covid.

Claim: Claim: Long COVID symptoms are just in people’s heads. Factcheck: False. Long COVID symptoms are well documented and not purely psychological.

People protest during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing to examine addressing long COVID, focusing on advancing research and improving patient care. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib photo)

PRIDE

Continued from page 3

and wakes up married to a Black man; a side plot includes the white character’s “homosexual” brother who’s actually in love with the guy. Said character is also described in the novel as a “pansy.”

From the 1920s until roughly the late 1940s, several coded words were used alongside or in place of homosexual: pansy, fairy, queer, dandy, bull, queen, “feministic male.” Sometimes these terms were used as mere descriptors to identify someone who is gay or lesbian. More often than not, it was used in a mocking or derogatory context.

The ball culture that we all came to know and love through seminal media works like “Paris is Burning” and “Pose” have deep roots in Harlem and greater New York City—and we have this on record because the AmNews covered ball culture since its inception in the 1920s; by that time, as many reports in the paper noted, balls had been going on for decades, and were tradition by that point. But it’s here where that “mixed” feeling comes in full force: On one hand, we have this indelible record of the earliest days of a uniquely Black and queer form of expression, but on the other is how such events were described.

“3,000 people gathered…to watch the antics of 2,000 more who are regularly attracted to the annual masquerade and civic ball which Hamilton Lodge No. 710 G.U.O. Oddfellows has been giving for the past sixty-one years,” reads a dispatch from an infamous masquerade ball in the February 20, 1929, edition . The ‘3,000 people’ constituted the normal ones who looked on in mirth at the girlish antics of the other 2,000, whose acts certainly class them as subnormal, or, in the language of the street, ‘fairies.’ Among those who looked on were some of Harlem’s best known people… Among those who seized the opportunity of a masquerade to get off some of their abnormality in public were some of the most notoriously degenerate white men in the city.”

I’m not sure if even Elektra Evangelista could deliver a read that nasty.

Coverage of similar gatherings—almost all of them are fundraisers for various causes and charities—throughout the 1920s and 1930s reads the same each time. There will be attention paid to gorgeous outfits, fine fabrics, and jewels—“gossamerlike crepe silk” in a 1937 issue. Mentions of finery alongside the elite guests, money raised, and big turnouts are overlaid with sardonic descriptions of men behaving like “pansies” and “blossoms,” or behaving like the women guests also in attendance. We should not, obviously, hold coverage of a ball in 1924 to editorial standards in 2024, but the associations made between queerness and the then-socially unacceptable would echo throughout in many different coverage areas of the paper.

Growing pains

The growing pains of booming Harlem in the 1940s and 1950s become evident in the

pages of the AmNews as more reports of narcotics abuse, sales, and crime begin to become the norm in weekly headlines.

Dope—picking your poison depends on the decade—was always around Harlem and the rest of New York. “Reefer Madness”-style panic hits near-comical peaks in some AmNews coverage in the 1930s and lingers well into the 1960s, but heroin becomes the big moneymaker by the 1950s. As a result, reporters found themselves covering more and more of society’s “degenerates,” and the paper’s commentators over these years began issuing more and more warnings to readers about the dangers associated with drugs.

In the January 27, 1951 , issue, a story caught my eye about weed and smack hitting the streets at the same time and the lengths, allegedly, people would go to for a fix. I say allegedly because the piece is unbylined and relies on anonymous sourcing, but it hones in on growing drug use among teenage girls, and the direct path between casual drug use to being “enslaved by pimps” once they get strung out.

“‘Once teen-age girls become confirmed users of heroin, they’ll do anything to get a shot. That’s when the pimps get them, but many times the procurers for lesbians get them first. This is quite easy because they are sold the idea that there is no risk of pregnancy involved,’” an unidentified police officer told the AmNews back then.

By the 1940s, a strong correlation between queerness and all things both illegal and immoral begins. “Perverts,” “inverts,” and “deviants” begin to appear more frequently alongside lesbians, gays, and homosexuals— all or some of these words used in tandem. And while the decades-long fear of infiltration by “degenerate” whites in these scenes were still a concern, there were increasing worries of grooming at the hands of adults.

For three consecutive weeks in February 1955, the AmNews ran a three-part series titled “Are the Fairies Running Harlem? ”, an investi-

gation that, albeit laced with unsavory undertone, essentially details how gay men—called “queens, swishes, gays, homosexuals” in this context—were becoming more visible in Harlem. It’s possible this series has many firsts, or at least some publishing milestones: the use of the term “trade” (“Queens do occasionally pick up a stray young man (trade)”; a photo of two Black men kissing each other on the mouth (caption: “A queen and his mate…openly display their tendencies”); and, in a roundabout way, a challenge to the gender binary—albeit, very awkward in hindsight, as some gay men here are perjured as “the third sex” while others are acknowledged for not wanting to identify as men at all because “they think of themselves as more female than male.”

Throughout the entire series, and peppered throughout the decade, there are cautions about older gay men going after younger men, and the perceived fears within.

In efforts to either investigate, educate, or pontificate, AmNews staffers found themselves on the wrong end of criticism for some of its coverage. In 1957, under the headline “Singer Says Many Men In Harlem Choirs Are ‘Queer ,’” the opening paragraph questions whether society should “take steps to curb sexual perversion” by essentially bringing men suspected to be gay out of hiding— we might classify this as “outing” now—or leave people and their “abnormalities” alone. But when a locally popular tenor singer went on to say that most folks in Harlem’s music scene were a little bit queer, readers were incensed and wrote responses by the ream before the next issue hit stands. Some readers said another person’s business isn’t the paper’s to print, others were shocked at the level of “perversion” in the piece. But a hopeful, progressive comment comes at the end of a follow-up report to that story: “Many current men of great ability are homosexuals… but they are not degenerate.”

Making inclusive strides Amid the more fear-mongering tones of

some archival coverage (which, as I must reiterate often, were in lockstep with the attitudes of the day), the AmNews was concurrently positioning itself as a future journal of Black queer upstarts and pioneers who’d become legends with each passing issue on newsstands.

James Baldwin, and his outsized presence in the culture during his lifetime, was regularly featured in the paper’s pages; it would be incorrect to say all queer coverage in the paper was negative. And although Langston Hughes was not out during his lifetime, it’s worth noting that the frequent AmNews coverage of him makes the paper essential to archiving his timeline, allowing for future historians to contextualize his work in modern queer contexts. Hughes’s assistant and confidant, Raoul Abdul, makes his first appearance in the paper as a featured performer in a preview of a night at the opera in a May 16, 1958, issue. Abdul, a trained baritone whose performances are covered regularly well into the 1960s, makes his debut as a writer in 1962, and between gigs and hosting star-studded parties, starts regularly writing a column for the paper in the mid-1970s, going on to become the AmNews’ long-running classical music columnist—and occasional chronicler of POVs directly from a gay man; several of his columns frequently included personal anecdotes from the colorful singer’s day-to-day life.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, as the term “gay” becomes more widespread, the AmNews previous style of reporting on gays in the context perverts and druggies starts to become old hat among increasingly progressive—or perhaps just fed up—readers, with no starker change in tone than in November of 1975. An unbylined piece in one issue that week charged that “lesbian gang members” were wreaking havoc on an allgirls’ school in Manhattan by molesting or attacking students.

The problem with the story? It was all

Early childhood education is essential, but is funding it? City in final days of budget negotiations

By ARIAMA C. LONG Amsterdam News Staff

New York City parents are in an uproar over childcare this month. Mayor Eric Adams had repeatedly promised 3-K seats would be available for early childhood education services, but more than 2,500 families said they couldn’t get placement.

“New Yorkers are relying on the City to deliver a budget that prioritizes and funds early childhood education,” said speaker Adrienne Adams in a statement. “The Council is fighting for equitable opportunity for working families, investments in our children’s education, and dignity for our providers. The reality is that not every child has a seat, and we must confront that with investments that fund and fix the system. Now is the time to strengthen 3-K, Pre-K, preschool special education, and Promise NYC to make good on our promise to New Yorkers. Our children and families need us to get this right.”

Parents and education advocates have called for the restoration of proposed $170 million city cuts to pre-K and 3-K programs, as well as expansion of free seats to include full-day and full-year scheduling for all kids under the age of 5. To heighten matters, the city budget deadline is on June 30.

“The city’s been making cuts. That has consequences. They don’t have seats in the right area where kids are, which is the other issue. Kids got into places just too far away,” said Rebecca Bailin, executive director of New Yorkers United for Child Care (NYUC). “They have not prioritized it or invested in it.”

Last year, the Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York (CCC) released a report that concluded the “vast majority of New York City families cannot afford any form of child care” for children under 5 years old. This escalating problem feeds into a child’s overall development and has ramifications for the city’s economy. Families in the Bronx and Brooklyn experience the highest childcare cost burden, the CCC found.

In general, childcare costs can range from $20,000 to $40,000 annually, said Bailin. Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island continue to have the most extreme shortages of 3-K seats, according to a Gothamist analysis, while other neighborhoods in north Brooklyn or the Lower East Side had hundreds more 3-K seats available than applicants.

Bailin said she isn’t sure whether the mayor’s repeated promise was an outright lie or just misleading.

“Child care has been an enormous strain on our budget,” said Suz Kroeber, a mother from Washington Heights and a member of New Yorkers United for Child Care. “My wife

and I both have major school debt and the $29,000 a year we spend on child care for our 2 year old is a real hardship. New York City is famously unaffordable, but the fact that there was the promise of free child care made it feel like we would be insane to leave. But now we’re deeply concerned about the future of our city. The idea that the mayor would take away something that’s helpful, beloved, and represents our values is mind-boggling.”

A coalition of parents partnered with NYUC to deliver about 6,000 petitions to City Hall on June 6 and demonstrate their growing frustration with Adams. The coalition was joined by United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and local electeds such as Public Advocate Jumaane Williams; Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso; and councilmembers Jennifer Gutiérrez, Pierina Sanchez, Lincoln Restler, Tiffany Caban, Julie Won, and Alexa Aviles.

“The city has said that 3-K would be universal, yet clearly, many families are still unable to access these programs,” Williams said in a statement. “This is alarming, as cuts deny services at critical ages for children to learn and grow. Access to this care is especially important for low- to middle-income working parents, often Black and Brown families facing existing inequities and injustices. The promise of every applicant getting a seat regardless of neighborhood, income, or immigration status should be fulfilled not only in words, but results.”

The New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) also joined in demanding $25 million in funding for Promise NYC, which provides childcare vouchers for immigrant families.

“Data from my office shows that the number of children and young people living in shelters in NYC has more than doubled since January 2022, largely due to newly arrived asylum seekers,” said City Comptroller Brad Lander in a statement. “As a city, we should be increasing our support for new

New Yorkers, not ending programs that serve English Language Learners (ELL) and immigrant students. Immigrant families need child care that provides safe, enriching spaces for their children so they can work to build new lives here. Schools must be able to help newly arrived parents navigate enrollment, homework, vaccinations, and so much more. This is why we urgently need sustainable funding for programs such as Promise NYC, Immigrant Communication and Outreach, and ELL transfer schools.”

Councilmember Rita Joseph, education committee chair, NYUC, and unions held an additional rally last week Thursday to call on Adams to restore cuts to the early childhood education programs ahead of the looming budget deadline.

“We are here to address a critical issue that impacts every one of us: the future of our children and the vitality of our city,” said Joseph.

“Our youngest New Yorkers deserve the best start in life and it’s our duty to provide it. Service providers across New York City are the backbone of the family, of early childhood education. They dedicate their lives to nurturing, teaching, and guiding our children during their most formative years. These educators need our unwavering support and robust funding to continue their invaluable work in time.”

According to the city council, at the end of the 2022-2023 school year, more than 1,100 students were waiting for a seat in a preschool special education class and 12,300 children didn’t receive a preschool special education seat or at least one of their mandated preschool special education services.

“The high cost of child care is forcing many families to make difficult choices and sometimes resulting in even leaving the city,” continued Joseph. “This is unacceptable. New York City should be a place where families can grow and prosper, not a place they feel

compelled to leave due to financial strain.”

Council members also drilled down on the need to pay early childhood education providers equitably and on time.

The mayor’s office has since pushed back on the disinvestment narrative and reversed some unpopular budget cuts.

A city hall spokesperson said in a statement that the administration deeply believes every child deserves the opportunity to succeed. Compared to five years ago, three times as many children are applying for seats, they said. They maintained that more children are getting a seat with their top choice and more seats are available.

“Under our administration, the system is serving more young New Yorkers than ever before, and with recent investments of more than $640 million for educational programs and school budgets, we are investing in our young people and making our city more livable for working-class families,” the spokesperson said.

The city received a $4 billion commitment from New York State for Child Care Block Grant funding over four years, the spokesperson added. This funding was used to increase the number of children enrolled with Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) low-income vouchers—by nearly 500%, to more than 38,000 children. It also funded child care for eligible families who wanted an ACS voucher or have an active cash assistance case, or for infant, toddler, and Extended Day 3K/Pre-K seats through city public schools.

“Thanks to our efforts, the overwhelming majority of children are getting into the early childhood programs their parents wanted them in. Already this year, despite the fact that the number of applicants more than tripled in the last five years, 94% of families have received an offer compared to just 67% in 2019,” the spokesperson said.

Girl in a classroom (Photo by RDNE Stock project via Pexels)

Councilmembers and parents held rally for early childhood education investments in front on City Hall on Jun 20, 2024. (Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit)

Continued from page 21

based on rumor; no students interviewed on the record could confirm any such rumor. Printing a rumor did not go over well with readers; gay rights’ activists swiftly and publicly condemned the story, with a leading activist writing a letter to the editor hoping that “your journalism will show the respect for gay people that you show toward other minorities.”

Gradually, subsequent coverage did just that, but not without discourse. The 1970s brought increased awareness of the Gay Liberation Movement, increased mention of out gay and lesbian personalities, and increased attention to how politicians were grappling with attracting support from voters of color and LGBT voters. In many ways, combing through AmNews archives chronologically from 1970 until the end of that decade reads like a real-time conversation about the further intertwining of Black civil rights with gay civil rights—today, progressive activists see both as one and the same.

In that same time period, however, the paper frequently printed opinions from clergy condemning gays and lesbians, and incited a new kind of fear that echoed the Black is Beautiful mantra of the era: a (less homophobic than it is podcast-level chauvinistic, actually) perception that if a single woman

can’t find a man, she’s destined to become a lesbian. All along the way, though, readers increasingly wrote letters to the editor, and we published rather than ignored them, with more calls for the paper to more and more consider not only Black readers who are also gay, but also to be more considerate of the queer community period.

A pronounced tonal shift in coverage of gay communities comes as AIDS ravaged Black and Brown America in the 1980s. After decades of winks, teasing, and innuendo, the AIDS crisis, for better or for worse, prompted many members of the Black LGBT community to firmly take a stand and let people know that they weren’t hiding anymore. Institutions like the Black church, Black political elite, and Black press especially, were forced to take notice.

“The press in general, and especially the Black press, has never gone into homosexuality, although a fair portion of Black males— 10 percent—are homosexual, and until a few years ago the number was rising,” longtime AmNews writer Abiola Sinclair writes in the first piece of a series exploring AIDS in Black communities, partially titled “New face of homosexuality.”

That was in August 1985, a month before President Reagan would acknowledge the virus by name for the first time, two months before Rock Hudson became the first celebrity to die from it, and a few months before Dr. Anthony Fauci would deduce that nearly 1 million Americans had died from the virus so far.

“Every Black family, if it is large enough, has one gay member somewhere—a brother, a cousin, or nephew. Blacks deal with it by not dealing with it. They simply accept them, providing they’re not too outlandish,” Sinclair continues.

A new era

The AIDS epidemic, which is still ongoing, was not the only extent of covering Black queerness in the AmNews. Well into the 1990s and 2000s, Black queerness in general was difficult to ignore, as evidenced by increased coverage of LGBT-owned businesses, queer film festivals, and other events that would be commonplace in the gay community.

That said, I looked at our coverage of the aforementioned Harlem Pride. We were there when Harlem Pride kicked off its first celebration in 2010; technically, my coworker’s assertion that the paper had never covered it was incorrect, but you wouldn’t fault them for being totally wrong. In 14 years since Harlem Pride has been established, one might guess there would be 14 archival pieces in the AmNews vault. There aren’t, and I’m not here to throw anyone under the bus because of that. That we covered it at all is a powerful testament as is.

I’m here with 114 years’ worth of digging to ask out loud: What role did we have in shaping the identity of people who are Black and queer all that time, and what role will we play going forward?

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Learn to make healthy, low-cost meals through our free online cooking series led by Karla Giboyeaux, a registered dietitian at the MSK Ralph Lauren Center in Harlem.

We can stand in the legacy that we have chronicled the likes of Hughes and Baldwin, but also Audre Lorde, E. Lynn Harris, Barbara Jordan, and Richard Bruce Nugent. We have published—in some cases, been the first to publish—queer writers like Charles Michael Smith and James Earl Hardy, who have done the work to amplify LGBT culture not just in our pages, but in other mediums beyond our weekly product.

We can also look ahead to all the possibilities for more, while acknowledging the journey, however arduous it might have been, along the way. Our archives are part of the long-running conversation about where Black people who are also queer stand in this community—yes, even if the language is a bit crude and cringe-worthy at times. Queerness in Black communities has shifted over the century from being mocked, feared, silenced, ignored, scandalized, misunderstood, and—at least I’d like to think— almost equalized. It sounds very much like the journey of Black Americans regardless of how else they might identify.

Both paths—and by now, yes, they do run parallel—are not complete, and we’ve got so far to go in many respects.

Even as we celebrate the progress we’ve made, as a news organization and as a community, it is vital that we examine and remember our past so when future generations look back at us, they understand that we did our best to fully represent the Black experience in all its diversity and glory.

Point your smartphone camera at the QR code and tap the link to find festive recipes for the holidays, including a red meat-free version of Pastelón.

Failure to comply: NYPD falls short in stop-and-frisk reforms a decade into monitorship

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

A federal monitor determined the NYPD remains “not in compliance” with decadeold court orders to reform stop-and-frisk practices in a report published Sept. 6.

Back in 2013, a judge found the department’s racial profiling of Black and Brown New Yorkers unconstitutional in the landmark class action lawsuit Floyd et. al v. City of New York. Lead plaintiff David Floyd, a Black Bronx resident, was stopped and frisked by police twice including while assisting his neighbor with reentering his unit. However, the case also broadly represented all minority New York City residents.

A remedial order was issued following the Floyd decision mandating the NYPD to curb racially-biased stop-and-frisks.

Sweeping policy changes and a body-worn camera pilot also sprung from the court order. The department rewrote its bias policing policy and overhauled its training for stop-and-frisks. And the court appointed the monitor to see the reforms through.

Two other lawsuits were brought into the fold after challenging similar practices. Davis et al. v. City of New York was settled after alleging unlawful stops and arrests in public housing. Ligon et al. v. City of New York challenged the NYPD’s Operation Clean Halls, which allowed police patrols in private apartment buildings, many with majority Black and Brown tenants.

More than ten years later, the NYPD still fails to monitor when stop-and-frisks racially target Black and Brown New Yorkers. The department is required to “develop sound policies” overseeing compliance to the 14th Amendment’s equal protection rights, which it was found liable for violating in Floyd.

No plan exists, although the monitor notes the NYPD is currently working on developing one.

Charles McLaurin, a senior counsel for the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund (which represented plaintiffs in Davis), says despite the NYPD’s implementation of other reforms, the remedial order remains rooted in addressing racial profiling.

“This is not just the nuts and bolts on how the searches are done in accordance with the Fourth Amendment,” he said. “[These are] racial disparities that the department has to ameliorate per the 14th Amendment. The police department is supposed to actually come up with a plan [to] mitigate these disparities in how they conduct their stops and searches. Here we are more than 10 years later, and as this report indicates, they still have really produced a tangible plan that would give the public confidence that they’re actually taking this seriously.”

To be clear, stop-and-frisks — known as Terry stops or level 3 encounters in law-enforcement jargon — are broadly constitutional under the Fourth Amendment, which the NYPD was also found liable for violat-

ing in the case. Such stops require reasonable suspicion that a crime was or will be committed and subsequent frisks require further reasonable suspicion that the individual stopped is armed and dangerous. The officer can conduct a search during a Terry stop if the frisk yields an object with reasonable suspicion of being a weapon.

The monitor’s findings indicate the department’s reform efforts seem in better compliance with the Bill of Rights-based Fourth Amendment rather than the emancipation-based 14th Amendment. Earlier this year, the NYPD implemented “ComplianceStat” meetings, which regularly gather bureau officials from Patrol, Housing and Transit to scour body-worn camera footage for Terry stop violations.

Back in 2020, the department established an early intervention program for further oversight and training for problem officers suspected of conducting unlawful stopand-frisks or racial profiling.

An NYPD spokesperson touted these reforms over an email statement, calling public safety and constitutional policing as “both critical components of the NYPD’s mission.”

“The Department is proud that New York remains the safest big city in America and of the reforms that it has made, which the Monitor has recognized,” the spokesperson wrote. “The NYPD is committed to working collaboratively with the Monitor to address the areas of concern raised in this latest report.”

Friday’s report marked the 21st since the monitorship began and looked at data between 2020 and 2023. Mylan Denerstein, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, currently serves as the federal monitor after her predecessor and original appointee Peter Zimroth died in 2021.

Stop-and-frisks continue to generally rise under the Adams administration according to the monitor. In 2022, there were 15,102 reported Terry stops. Last year, there were 16,971.

The nature of stop-and-frisks are increasingly more aggressive as well. Previously, most encounters overwhelmingly originated from responding to a 911 or 311 call dispatch. Now most stops are self-initiated by police officers. Self-initiated Terry stops skyrocketed from 19% in 2020 to 46% in 2023.

While unconstitutional stop rates remain low, unconstitutional frisks and searches are up significantly under Mayor Eric Adams. In 2021, 15.8% of frisks were unlawful. The rate rose to 23.9% in 2022 after Adams took office.

Such increases coincide with the March 2022 creation of Neighborhood Safety Teams (NST), which the Adams administration frequently credits for reductions in citywide shootings since taking office. The squads staffed by handpicked cops in unmarked cars are deployed in neighborhoods disproportionately affected by gun violence, many home to a majority Black and Brown population.

Specialized units like NSTs conducted more than half of the NYPD’s unlawful Terry stops in the first half of last year according to the monitor’s report, noting specific targeting of young Black and Brown men for wearing fanny packs. And such squads are also self-initiating stops the most frequently.

Last year, the monitor’s report emphasized the unlawful practices of NSTs, spurring the NYPD’s refresher training for incoming unit members.

Additionally, NSTs are regarded as the “spiritual successors” of the now-disbanded anti-crime units, which deployed plainclothes officers in similarly hotspot neighborhoods. The officers who stop-and-frisked David Floyd were notably part of the program.

The findings also mentioned severe underreporting by officers conducting Terry stops but did not document them. Through reviewing body-worn camera footage, the monitor found 31.4% of stops were not reported in 2022.

Jennvine Wong, supervising attorney for Legal Aid Society’s Cop Accountability Project, believes it goes beyond a paperwork issue.

“There are too many officers who are making Terry steps and not documenting them in a stop report as required,” Wong said. “But it’s not just that, right? There’s a culture issue. It’s not taken seriously. Officers are not disciplined appropriately when they fail to do their duty…unless you have sergeants and leadership at the command level taking appropriate action to correct and address unconstitutional practices,

they’re going to keep occurring.”

The report found supervisors approved improper stops conducted by officers in their charge, which the monitor fears will enable “renewed stop-and-frisk-related problems in the future.” For example, 11% of stops were unconstitutional according to the monitor’s audit. Yet NYPD supervisors found just 1% of all stops as improper.

Before 2022, racial profiling and other bias-based policing was investigated internally by the NYPD. Unsatisfied with how the police policed the police, the city council passed legislation granting the Civilian Complaint Review Board jurisdiction of such investigations. A Racial Profiling and Bias-Based Policing Unit was established with Darius Charney, lead counsel in the Floyd lawsuit.

“The stop and frisk cases we get time and time again, we really see in the allegations and in the evidence that we received in these cases very similar fact patterns in terms of stops to what we saw 10-15 years ago in Floyd,” said Charney to the AmNews.

Last year, the NYPD would not provide the CCRB with certain evidence to complete racial profiling investigations. Ultimately, the monitor ended up stepping in to ensure the necessary information was provided.

Guadalupe Aguirre, senior staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union (which represented plaintiffs in Ligon), says ultimately, the NYPD is prioritizing form over substance in its reforms.

“The report says they’ve done all the trainings and the policy changing,” Aguirre said. “But that doesn’t matter if New Yorkers of color who [bear] the brunt of the unconstitutional stop-and-frisk and trespass enforcement [are not] feeling those changes on the ground.”

Like McLaurin, Aguirre believes the NYPD cannot decouple the 14th Amendment from complying with the court ordered mandates.

Beyond constitutional violations, the NYPD’s racial profiling is also simply ineffective policing. 2012 research by then-Public Advocate Bill de Blasio’s office reported police were twice as likely to find a weapon on a white New Yorker than a Black New Yorker during a stop-and-frisk.

There is precedent for the courts cracking down on law enforcement after failing to comply with mandates to reform racial profiling practices. A judge held Maricopa County Sheriff Office officials in Arizona in contempt after court orders from a class action lawsuit over targeting Latino drivers were not met. Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio was convicted on criminal charges, but was pardoned by thenPres. Donald Trump.

David Floyd, the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit regarding police stop and frisk tactics, leaves federal court in New York, Monday, March 18, 2013. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

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NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT. NEW YORK COUNTY. USALLIANCE FEDERAL CREDIT UNION BY MERGER WITH NEW YOTK METRO FEDERAL CREDIT UNION, Pltf. vs., UNKNOWN HEIRS AT LAW OF JAMES MCCASKILL A/K/A JAMES MC CASKILL, HIS NEXT OF KIN, DISTRIBUTEES, EXECUTORS, ADMINISTRATORS, TRUSTEES, DEVISEES, LEGATEES, ASSIGNEES, LIENORS, CEDITORS, AND SUCCESSORS IN INTEREST, AND GENERALLY ALL PERSONS HAVING OR CLAIMING, UNDER, BY OR THROUGH SAID DEFENDANT WHO MAY BE DECEASED, BYPURCHASE, INHERITANCE, LIEN OR OTHERWISE, ANY RIGHT TITTLE OR INTEREST IN AND TO THE PREMISED DESCRIBED IN THE COMPLAINT HEREIN, ALL OF WHOM AND WHOSE NAMES AND PLACES OF RESIDENCE ARE UNKNOWN TO THE PLAINTIFF AND CANNOT AFTER DILIGENT INAUIRY BE ASCERTAINED, et al Deft. Index #850257/2022. Pursuant to judgment of foreclosure and sale entered August 12, 2024, I will sell at public auction on January 8, 2024 at 2:15 p.m. prem. k/a 61 West 126 th Street, New York, NY a/k/a Block 1724, Lot 11. Approximate amount of judgment is $180,402.81 plus cost and interest. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed judgment and terms of sale and the right of the United States of America to redeem within 120 days from the date of sale as provided by law. CHRISTY M. DEMELFI, Referee., Attys. for Pltf., 165 Eileen Way, Ste. 101, Syosset, NY. #101714

NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK: COUNTY OF NEW YORK. JYBGAD L.P. Pltf v. WEST 26 TH STREET REALTY LLC, et al., Defts. Index No. 850024/2023 pursuant to the Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated August 13, 2024 and entered on August 15, 2024, 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 February 5, 2025 at 2:15 p.m., prem. k/a 35 West 26 th Street, New York, New York (Block 828, Lot 13). Approx. amt of judgment is $ 8,934,402.69, plus costs, attorneys’ fees and interest. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed judgment and terms of sale. Clark Whitsett, Esq., Referee. Jacobowitz Newman Tversky LLP, Attys. for Plaintiff, 377 Pearsall Ave., Ste C, Cedarhurst, NY.

Madison & Hart LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 9/16/2024. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail to: 228 Park Ave S #112800, New York, NY 10003. Purpose: Any lawful act.

SUPREME COURT - COUNTY OF NEW YORK. BOARD OF MANAGERS OF THE ALTAVISTA CONDOMINIUM, acting on behalf of the unit owners of THE ALTAVISTA CONDOMINIUM, Plaintiff -against- JOHN ANDREW LUMPKIN, et al. Defendant(s). Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated August 2, 2024 and entered on August 6, 2024, 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 22, 2025 at 2:15 p.m. premises situate, lying and being in the Borough of Manhattan, City, County and State of New York, known as Unit No. 20 in the building designated as "The Altavista condominium" together with an undivided 3.6214% interest in the Common Elements. Section: 2 Block: 621 lot: 1120 Said premises known as 92 PERRY STREET, CONDOMINIUM UNIT 20, NEW YORK, NY

Approximate amount of lien $50,354.13, through April 11, 2024, plus interest fees & costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale. Index Number 158019/2023.

ROBERTA E. ASHKIN, ESQ., Referee

Seyfarth Shaw LLP

Attorney(s) for Plaintiff 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10018

Hollywood Gyms West LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 11/12/2024. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail to: LEGALCORP SOLUTIONS, LLC 11 BRODWAY SUITE 615, NEW YORK, NY 10004. Purpose: Any lawful act.

O&E Enrichment2 LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 10/5/2024. Office location: Bronx County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail to: 335 Concord Avenue, Bronx, NY 10454. Purpose: Any lawful act.

Notice of Qualification of GUZMAN ADVISORY HOLDINGS, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/22/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 11/21/24. Princ. office of LLC: 405 Lexington Ave., 8th Fl., NY, NY 10174. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o 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.

SUPREME COURT - COUNTY OF NEW YORK.

JPMORGAN CHASE BANK, N.A., Plaintiff -against- DENNY MARTIN M.D. P.C., et al Defendant(s). Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated July 26, 2024 and entered on July 31, 2024, 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 15, 2025 at 2:15 p.m. premises situate, lying and being in the Borough of Manhattan, State of New York, known as Unit No. 2A in the condominium known as "The Ruppert Yorkville Towers Condominium" together with a 0.097375% undivided interest in the common elements. Block: 1537 Lot: 2089 Said premises known as 1641 3RD AVENUE, APT 2A, NEW YORK, NY 10128

Approximate amount of lien $1,654,551.66 plus interest & costs.

Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale. Index Number 850143/2022. CLARK WHITSETT, ESQ., Referee Buonamici & LaRaus, LLP Attorney(s) for Plaintiff 222 Bloomingdale Road, White Plains, NY 10605

Notice of Qualification of ALVAREZ & MARSAL FORENSIC TECHNOLOGY SERVICES, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/21/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 04/13/16. 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: CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State of DE, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK: COUNTY OF NEW YORK. JYBGAD L.P. Pltf v. WEST 26 TH STREET REALTY LLC, et al., Defts. Index No. 850024/2023 pursuant to the Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated August 13, 2024 and entered on August 15, 2024, 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 February 5, 2025 at 2:15 p.m., prem. k/a 33 West 26 th Street, New York, New York (Block 828, Lot 14). Approx. amt of judgment is $ 8,934,402.69, plus costs, attorneys’ fees and interest. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed judgment and terms of sale. Clark Whitsett, Esq., Referee. Jacobowitz Newman Tversky LLP, Attys. for Plaintiff, 377 Pearsall Ave., Ste C, Cedarhurst, NY.

CLYDEWARE LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 11/11/2024. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail to: LLC, LEGALCORP SOLUTIONS, LLC 11 BROADWAY SUITE 615, NEW YORK, NY 10004. Purpose: Any lawful act.

NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT COUNTY OF BRONX US Bank National Association, as Trustee for Credit Suisse First Boston Mortgage Securities Corp., CSAB Mortgage-Backed Trust 2006-4, CSAB Mortgage-Backed Pass-Through Certificates, Series 2006-4, Plaintiff AGAINST Martina R. Garcia; et al., Defendant(s) Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale duly entered May 8, 2018, and Amended April 18, 2024, and Amended August 23, 2024, I, the undersigned Referee, will sell at public auction at the Bronx County Courthouse, 851 Grand Concourse, Room 711, Bronx, New York on January 13, 2025 at 2:15PM, premises known as 1500 Vyse Avenue, Bronx, NY 10460. All that certain plot piece or parcel of land, with the buildings and improvements erected, situate, lying and being in the Borough and County of Bronx, City and State of NY, Block 2995 Lot 120. Approximate amount of judgment $857,204.83 plus interest and costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index# 381047/2011E. The auction will be conducted pursuant to the COVID-19 Policies Concerning Public Auctions of Foreclosed Property established by the 12th Judicial District. Only cash or certified funds payable to the Referee will be accepted as a deposit in the amount of ten percent of the purchase price. Leticia Arzu, 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: November 15, 2024 For sale information, please visit www.Auction.com or call (800) 280-2832 82353

Savoir-Faire Projects LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 11/26/2024. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail to: 166 East 61st Street,10F, New York, NY 10065. Purpose: Any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of Motivate Through Play OT PLLC. Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/26/2024. Office Location: New York County. SSNY designated for service of process. SSNY shall mail process to: 767 Broadway #1451, New York, NY 10003. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

6 Hillside, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on Nov. 1, 2024. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail to: 700 Columbus Avenue, Unit 20027, New York, NY 10025. Purpose: Any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of RJMD HOLDINGS II LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/19/24. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 201 W. 79th St., NY, NY 10024. 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.

MICRO PRO ASSOCIATES LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 09/24/24. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLC, c/o Foster Garvey, P.C., 100 Wall Street, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10005. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

The Welliverse LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 10/29/2024. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail to: 280 Park Avenue South, 9H, NY, NY 10010. Purpose: Any lawful act.

SUPREME COURT - COUNTY OF NEW YORK. NYCTL 1998-2 TRUST AND THE BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON, AS COLLATERAL AGENT AND CUSTODIAN, Plaintiffs -against- CONOR J. CAMPBELL, KRISTIN C. WALKER, et al Defendant(s). Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale entered herein on July 30, 2024, 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 22, 2025 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, known and designated as Block 858 and Lot 1039 on the New York County Tax Assessment Map.

Said premises known as 31 EAST 28TH STREET, UNIT SU-16, NEW YORK, NY 10016

Approximate amount of lien $2,647.19 plus interest & costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale. Index Number 150481/2023.

MATTHEW D. HUNTER, III, ESQ., Referee Phillips Lytle LLP

Attorney(s) for Plaintiffs

28 East Main Street, Suite 1400, Rochester, NY 14614

NOTICE OF SALE

SUPREME COURT: NEW YORK COUNTY. BMARK 2018-B1 BLEECKER STREET, LLC, Pltf. vs. 156 BLEECKER OWNER LLC, et al, Defts. Index #850257/2021. Pursuant to judgment of foreclosure and sale dated Aug. 27, 2024, I will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the New York County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street, New York, NY on February 5, 2025 at 2:15 p.m. premises k/a 156-160 Bleecker Street, Unit 1, New York, NY a/k/a Section 2, Block 525, Lot 1001. The Commercial Condominium Unit (the “Unit”) in the building known as the Atrium Condominium (the “Condominium”) and located and known by street number 156160 Bleecker Street, New York, New York, designated and described in the Declaration (hereinafter called the “Declaration”) made by 160 Bleecker Street Owners, Inc. under the Condominium Act of the State of New York (Article 9-B of the Real Property Law of the State of New York) (the “New York Condominium Act”), dated 3-14-84, and recorded 4-1484 in the Office of the Register, the City of New York, County of New York in Reel 784, Page 730 establishing a plan for condominium ownership of said Building and the lands upon which the same is erected (hereinafter sometimes collectively called the “Property”), and also designated as Tax Lot 1001 on the Floor Plans of the Building certified by Charles Lobell, R.A., on 3-14-84 filed with said Declaration in the Office of the City Register for New York County as Map No. 4239. Together with an undivided 15.57% interest in the Common Elements of the property as described in said Declaration, recorded in Reel 784, Page 730. Approximate amount of judgment is $41,863,779.16 plus costs and interest. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed judgment and terms of sale.

THOMAS R. KLEINBERGER, Referee. BALLARD SPAHR LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 1675 Broadway, 19th Floor, New York, NY 10019. #101933

NOTICE OF SALE

SUPREME COURT, NEW YORK COUNTY,

DCR MORTGAGE 10 SUB 2, LLC, Plaintiff, against

179 LUDLOW OWNERS LLC, SHARON SUTTON, et al., Defendants.

Pursuant to a Final Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated July 9, 2024, and entered on July 12, 2024, I, the undersigned Referee appointed in said Judgment, will sell at public auction at the New York County Supreme Courthouse, 60 Centre Street, Room 130, New York, New York, on January 29, 2025, at 2:15p.m., the premises known as and located at 179 Ludlow Street, Unit C, New York, New York 10002. All that certain plot, piece or parcel of land, with the buildings and improvements situated, lying and being in the Borough of Manhattan and County of New York, State of New York, Block 0412, Lot 1101. Premises will be sold subject to the terms of the filed Judgment, Index No. 850662/2023, and the Terms of Sale, all of which are available from Plaintiff’s counsel upon request.

The approximate amount of the Judgment is $2,310,814.68 plus interest and costs, as provided in the Judgment. COVID-19 safety protocols will be followed at the foreclosure sale.

Ronald Zezima, Esq., Referee.

Rosenberg & Estis, P.C.

Attorneys for Plaintiff

733 Third Avenue, 15th Floor

New York, NY 10017

(212) 867-6000

Attention: Richard Y. Im, Esq.

Notice of Qualification of TTF, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/26/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 08/08/23. NYS fictitious name: TTF FAMILY LLC. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC, 107 Greenwich St., NY, NY 10006. DE addr. of LLC: Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State of the State of DE, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

NOTICE OF SALE

Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County, Index No. 850623/2023

Newtek Small Business Finance, LLC, Plaintiff, v. DBMS Consulting, Inc., et. al., Defendants.

TAKE NOTICE that pursuant to the Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated August 27, 2024, the undersigned referee will sell at public auction on January 29, 2025 at 2:15pm in Room 130 at 60 Centre Street, NY, NY, the property located at 164 West 83 rd Street, Units CF1 and CF2, New York, NY 10024 (Block 1213, Lots 1303 and 1304).

The approximate amount of Plaintiff’s lien is $2,015,909 plus interest and costs. The premises will be sold in two parcels and subject to provisions of the judgment and terms of sale.

AMENDED NOTICE OF SALE

SUPREME COURT COUNTY OF New York, U.S. Bank National Association as Legal Title Trustee for Truman 2016 SC6 Title Trust, Plaintiff, vs. Moshe Rahimi, Defendant(s).

Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale and Decision + Order on Motion duly entered on February 15, 2024 and a Decision + Order on Motion duly entered August 1, 2024, I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction at Room 116 of the New York County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street, New York, NY 10007 on January 15, 2025 at 2:15 p.m., premises known as 635 West 42nd Street a/k/a 627635 West 42nd Street, Unit 15J, New York, NY 10036. 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 of New York, City and State of New York, Block 1090 and Lot 1351 together with an undivided 0.12612 percent interest in the Common Elements. Approximate amount of judgment is $570,028.95 plus interest and costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index #850111/2020. Paul R. Sklar, Esq., Referee The previous Notice of Sale having listed a different courtroom.

Friedman Vartolo LLP, 85 Broad Street, Suite 501, New York, New York 10004, Attorneys for Plaintiff Firm File No.: 201235-1

Notice of Formation of 37 GROUP LLC. Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of New York SSNY on 11/15/2024. Office located in NEW YORK. SSNY has been designated for service of process. SSNY shall mail copy of any process served against the LLC to: 11 W 36TH STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10018, USA. Purpose: any lawful purpose.

7 CHILDCARE LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 11/13/24. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail to: LLC, LEGALCORP SOLUTIONS, LLC 11 BROADWAY SUTIE 615, NEW YORK, NY 10004 Purpose: Any lawful act.

Matthew Hunter, Esq., Referee

Law Offices of Tae H. Whang, LLC, Attorneys for Plaintiff, 185 Bridge Plaza North, Suite 201, Fort Lee, NJ 07024, Tel. (201) 461-0300.

Notice of Formation of NFF NEW MARKETS FUND XLVIII, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/26/24. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 5 Hanover Sq., 9th Fl., NY, NY 10004. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Nonprofit Finance Fund at the princ. office of the LLC. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of Concentric Chemists LLC. Filed with SSNY on 1/29/24. Office: New York Co. SSNY designated as agent for process & shall mail to: 52 Morton St, 1, NY, NY 10014. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

KEN & RITA REAL ESTATE HOLDINGS LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 12/10/24. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLC, c/o Rita Warner, 15 West 81st Street, New York, NY 10024. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

Notice of Filing of Application for Authority of Foreign LLC. South Dayton GLS-NY Solar LLC (LLC) filed App. Of Auth. With Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/12/2024. Jurisdiction of Organization: Vermont. Date of Organization: 5/2/2024. Office location: New York County. Principal business location: c/o CT Corporation, 28 Liberty Street, New York, NY 10005 . SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process may be served and SSNY shall mail process to c/o CT Corporation, 28 Liberty Street, New York, NY 10005. Address of office required to be maintained in the jurisdiction of formation is 121 South Pinnacle Ridge Road, Waterbury, VT 05676. The name and address of the authorized official in its jurisdiction of organization where a copy of its articles or organization is filed is: c/o Secretary of the State, 128 State Street, Montpelier, VT 05633. Purpose: any business permitted under law.

NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT COUNTY OF NEW YORK Freedom Mortgage Corporation, Plaintiff AGAINST The Estate of Melanie Silvera a/k/a Melanie Grace Silvera, et al., Defendant(s) Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale duly entered August 16, 2024, 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 22, 2025 at 2:15PM, premises known as 21 South End Avenue, Unit #435, New York, NY 10280. All that certain plot piece or parcel of land, with the buildings and improvements erected, situate, lying and being in the Borough of Manhattan, City, County and State of New York, Block: 16, Lot: 6073. Approximate amount of judgment $570,477.89 plus interest and costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index #850553/2023. The aforementioned auction will be conducted in accordance with the NEW YORK County COVID-19 Protocols located on the Office of Court Administration (OCA) website (https:// ww2.nycourts.gov/Admin/oca. shtml) and as such all persons must comply with social distancing, wearing masks and screening practices in effect at the time of this foreclosure sale. For sale information, please visit Auction.com at www.Auction. com or call (800) 280-2832. Tom Kleinberger, Esq, Referee Frenkel Lambert Weiss Weisman & Gordon, LLP 53 Gibson Street Bay Shore, NY 11706 01-098657-F00 82254

NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT COUNTY OF NEW YORK CITIBANK, N.A., Plaintiff AGAINST THOMAS N. PIEPER, CAROL ANN FOLEY, Defendant(s) Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale duly entered August 1, 2024, 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 22, 2025 at 2:15PM, premises known as 250 South End Avenue, Unit 4D, New York, NY 10280. All that certain plot piece or parcel of land, with the buildings and improvements erected, situate, lying and being in the Borough of Manhattan, City, County and State of New York, Block: 16, Lot: 2222. Approximate amount of judgment $28,099.34 plus interest and costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index #850158/2023. The aforementioned auction will be conducted in accordance with the NEW YORK County COVID-19 Protocols located on the Office of Court Administration (OCA) website (https:// ww2.nycourts.gov/Admin/oca. shtml) and as such all persons must comply with social distancing, wearing masks and screening practices in effect at the time of this foreclosure sale. Scott H. Siller, Esq., Referee Frenkel Lambert Weiss Weisman & Gordon, LLP 53 Gibson Street Bay Shore, NY 11706 01-095756-F00 82425

Julie Christie LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 12/20/2024. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail to: 29 Cooper Street Apt 3D, New York NY 10034. Purpose: Any lawful act.

BilinguaLit Compass L.L.C. Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 10/12/2024. Office location: Bronx County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail to: 2234 Wilson Avenue, Bronx, New York 10469. Purpose: Any lawful act.

SUPREME COURT - COUNTY OF NEW YORK. NYCTL 2021-A TRUST AND THE BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON, AS COLLATERAL AGENT AND CUSTODIAN, Plaintiffs -against- D.K.S. LTD, et al Defendant(s). Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale entered herein on July 16, 2024, 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 February 5, 2025 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, known and designated as Block 1262 Lot 603 on the New York County Tax Assessment.

Said premises known as 62 WEST 47TH STREET #602, NEW YORK, NY 10036 Approximate amount of lien $291,253.74 plus interest & costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale. Index Number 158753/2022.

CLARK WHITSETT, ESQ., Referee Phillips Lytle LLP Attorney(s) for Plaintiffs 28 East Main Street, Suite 1400, Rochester, NY 14614

SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY- HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf. v. JOE C. PLUNKETT III and BARBARA G. PLUNKETT, Defts. - Index # 850205/2021. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated October 3, 2023, I will sell at public auction in Room 116 of the New York County Courthouse located at 60 Centre Street, New York, NY on Thursday, January 16, 2025, at 2:15 pm, an interest of an undivided 0.0519144314871446% tenant in common interest in the timeshare known as Phase 1 HNY CLUB SUITES located at 1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY. Approximate amount of judgment is $58,015.75 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. Matthew D. Hunter III, Esq., Referee. Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston, & Zimet LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingdale, NY.

Sensible Pet Care Services LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 12/18/2024. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail to: 105 West 125th St Front 1 #1225, New York Purpose: Any lawful act.

Notice is hereby given that a license, serial #NA-0370-24146487 for beer, wine & liquor has been applied for by the undersigned to sell beer, wine & liquor at retail in a bar under the ABC Law at 109 E. 116th St., NYC 10029 for on-premises consumption; Agave Azul CNT Corp.

Notice of Formation of BLUE & WHITE BROADWAY CLUB, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 12/03/24. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 545 Madison Ave., 6th Fl., NY, NY 10022. 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.

NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT – NEW YORK COUNTY BOARD OF MANAGERS OF THE 610 PARK AVENUE CONDOMINIUM, Plaintiff -against16EF APARTMENT, LLC and MARA ENTERPRISES, et al Defendant(s). INDEX NO. 151261/2023

Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale and Decision + Order on Motion duly entered herein and dated September 29, 2023, I, the undersigned Referee will sell at a public auction located in Room 116 of the New York County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street New York, New York on January 29, 2025 at 2:15 p.m. E.T., premises situate, all that certain plot, piece or parcel of land, with the buildings and improvements thereon erected, lying and being in the Borough of Manhattan, City and State of New York, Block: 1379, Lot: 1189. Said premises known as 610 Park Avenue, PH16E, New York, New York 10065. The approximate amount of the judgment is $171,820.02 plus post-judgment interest & costs. The premises will be sold subject to provisions of the filed Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale and Decision + Order on Motion and Sale and Terms of Sale.

CHRISTY M. DEMELFI, ESQ., Referee

Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton, LLP

Attn: Benjamin O. Gilbert bogilbert@sheppardmullin.com

Attorney(s) for Plaintiff 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10112 (212) 896-0682

SUPREME COURT - COUNTY OF NEW YORK THE BOARD OF MANAGERS OF THE AMERICAN FELT CONDOMINIUM, Plaintiff against GRIFFON REX LLC, Defendant. Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale and Decision + Order on Motion, dated August 15, 2024, I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the New York County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street New York, New York 10007 on the 22nd day of January, 2025 at 2:15 PM premises lying and being in the Borough of Manhattan, City, County and State of New York, known as the Commercial Unit in the condominium Known as "The American Felt Condominium". Together with an undivided 3.9% interest in the common elements. This Unit is also designated as Tax Lot 1001 in Block 558. Said premises known as 114 East 13th Street, the Commercial Unit, New York, New York 10003 Approximate amount of lien $50,418.07 plus interest & costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed judgment and terms of sale. Index Number 150137/24. SCOTT H. SILLER, ESQ., Referee. Axelrod, Fingerhut & Dennis Attorney(s) for Plaintiff 260 MADISON AVENUE, 15th Flr. New York, NY 10016-2404

AMENDED NOTICE OF SALE

SUPREME COURT COUNTY

OF New York, Wilmington Savings Fund Society, FSB, Not in its Individual Capacity but Solely as Trustee of MFA 2021-INV2 Trust, Plaintiff, vs. 414 East 115 LLC, ET AL., Defendant(s).

Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale and Decision + Order on Motion duly entered on August 6, 2024, I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction at Room 116 of the New York County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street, New York, NY 10007 on January 15, 2025 at 2:15 p.m., premises known as 414 East 115th Street, New York, NY 10029. 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 1708 and Lot 142. Approximate amount of judgment is $1,800,390.76 plus interest and costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index #850427/2023. Tom Kleinberger, Esq., Referee

The previous Notice of Sale having listed a different courtroom.

Friedman Vartolo LLP, 85 Broad Street, Suite 501, New York, New York 10004, Attorneys for Plaintiff Firm File No.: 224262-2

NOTICE OF SALE

SUPREME COURT COUNTY OF New York , CAPITAL ONE, N.A., Plaintiff, vs. KENNETH D. LAUB, ET AL., Defendant (s).

Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale duly entered on October 11, 2022, I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction at Room 130 of the New York County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street, New York, NY 10007 on January 29, 2025, at 2:15 PM, premises known as 163 EAST 64TH STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10065. 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: 1399, Lot: 25. Approximate amount of judgment is $10,653,559.26 plus interest and costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index # 159315/2017.

If the sale is set aside for any reason, the Purchaser at the sale shall be entitled only to a return of the deposit paid. The Purchaser shall have no further recourse against the Mortgagor, the Mortgagee, the Mortgagee's attorney, or the Referee.

DORON LEIBY, Esq., Referee

Roach & Lin, P.C., 6851 Jericho Turnpike, Suite 185, Syosset, New York 11791, Attorneys for Plaintiff

Notice of Formation of MOLLY LIPPERT LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy of State of NY

NOTICE OF SALE

WILMINGTON TRUST, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, AS TRUSTEE FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE REGISTERED HOLDERS OF WELLS FARGO COMMERCIAL MORTGAGE TRUST 2016-C34, COMMERCIAL MORTGAGE PASS-THROUGH CERTIFICATES, SERIES 2016-C34, BY AND THROUGH ITS SPECIAL SERVICER, LNR PARTNERS, LLC, Plaintiff v. 153 ELIZABETH STREET, LLC, 153 ELIZABETH HOTEL LLC, 30 KENMARE MASTER, LLC, EDMOND LI, ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL BOARD OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, THE CITY OF NEW YORK, and PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, Defendants, Index No. 850275/2021. Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale and Decision & Order on Motion dated August 12, 2024, and duly entered in the above-entitled action and filed in the Office of the New York County Clerk on August 12, 2024 (the “Judgment”), I the undersigned Referee in said Judgment named, will sell at public auction to the highest bidder at Room 130 of the Courthouse, located at 60 Centre Street, New York, New York, the premises directed by said Judgment to be sold. The premises will be offered for sale, as one parcel, on Wednesday, January 22, 2025 at 2:15 p.m. The premises therein described are located at 153 Elizabeth Street, New York, New York 10023, also known as Block 479, Lot 29 on the Tax Map for the County of New York, together with the buildings, improvements, fixtures, machinery, equipment, personalty and other rights or interests of any kind or nature located thereon, and more particularly described in the Judgment.

The premises will be sold subject to the provisions of the filed Judgment, Index No. 850275/2021, and the Terms of Sale , all of which are available from plaintiff’s counsel upon request.

The approximate amount of the Judgment, for the property referred to therein, is $35,767,489.10, plus interest and costs, as provided in the Judgment. The successful bidder will be required to deposit 10% of the bid by certified or official bank check, unendorsed, made payable to the Referee.

Scott H. Siller , Esq., Referee ( 516) 644-6769

Herrick, Feinstein LLP, Attorneys for Plaintiff, Two Park Avenue, New York, New York 10016, (212) 592-1461, Attention: Scott T. Tross, Esq.

NOTICE OF LEGAL POSTPONEMENT OF SALE SUPREME COURT COUNTY OF NEW YORK U.S. BANK NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, AS TRUSTEE FOR BEAR STEARNS ASSET BACKED SECURITIES TRUST 2004-AC3 ASSET-BACKED CERTIFICATES, SERIES 2004AC3, Plaintiff AGAINST MARC BERNSTEIN, DONNA BERNSTEIN, ET AL., Defendant(s) Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale duly entered March 5, 2024, 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 8, 2025 at 2:15PM, premises known as 330 East 33rd Street, Unit 4M, New York, NY 10016. 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 936, Lot 4054. Approximate amount of judgment $1,325,461.27 plus interest and costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index #850325/2013. 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. Original Sale Date: December 18th, 2024. Mark McKew, Esq., Referee Gross Polowy, LLC 1775 Wehrle Drive Williamsville, NY 14221 00-296966 83579

NOTICE OF SALE

SUPREME COURT COUNTY OF NEW YORK, 2 Cap Investments, LLC , Plaintiff, vs. Frog Investments, LLC, ET AL ., Defendant(s).

Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale and Decision + Order on Motion duly entered on August 9, 2024, 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 January 29, 2025 at 2:15 p.m., premises known as 321 West 110th Street, No. 7A a/k/a 321 Cathedral Parkway, Unit No. 7A, New York, NY 10026. 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 of New York, City and State of New York, Block 1423 and Lot 1846. Approximate amount of judgment is $2,931,375.00 plus interest and costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale Index #850074/2022.

Allison M. Furman, Esq., Referee

Underweiser & Underweiser LLP, One Barker Avenue, Second Floor, White Plains, New York 10601, Attorneys for Plaintiff.

SUPREME COURT - COUNTY OF NEW YORK. NYCTL 1998-2 TRUST AND THE BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON, AS COLLATERAL AGENT AND CUSTODIAN, Plaintiffs -against- BO HONG REALTY, INC., et al Defendant(s). Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale entered herein on July 29, 2024, 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 15, 2025 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, known and designated as Block 1535 and Lot 27 on the New York County Assessment Map. Said premises known as 1737 2ND AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY 10128

Approximate amount of lien

$6,668.73 plus interest & costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale. Index Number 160227/2022.

CLARK A. WHITSETT, ESQ., Referee Phillips Lytle LLP Attorney(s) for Plaintiffs 28 East Main Street, Suite 1400, Rochester, NY 14614

Large kitchenette w. refrig. Good heat & hot water. Nr all transp. Job refs checked. Also, small rooms avail. 118 W. 121st St. Call 917.583.4968 or 917.500.8373

Young stars continue to push women’s college basketball forward

DERREL JOHNSON

Special to the AmNews

Since the days of women’s college basketball dynasties such as Immaculata University, which won three straight NCAA Division I titles from 1972 to 1974, and Louisiana Tech, which captured the 1982 and 1988 championships, and was the runner up in 1983, 1987, 1994 and 1998, playing in the shadows of their male counterparts is past history.

The popularity of Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese elevated women’s basketball even more in recent years as they led their teams, the Iowa Hawkeyes and LSU Tigers, respectively, to consecutive Final Four appearances, with Reese’s Tigers defeating Clark’s Hawkeyes in the 2023 NCAA Championship game.

Clark’s Hawkeyes avenged the loss in the 2024 Elite Eight by eliminating LSU before losing in the championship game to Dawn

Documentary ‘Breaking Boundaries’ raises issues of race and body image

By LOIS ELFMAN

Special to the AmNews

After a screening of the documentary “Breaking Boundaries,” shown as part of the 32nd Annual African Diaspora Film Festival, panelists discussed some of the issues covered in the film. Nastasya Generalova, who was raised by her Russian mother in California, spent her youth and teen years competing in rhythmic gymnastics, rising to one of the top spots in the U.S. Despite her successes, though, Generalova, whose absent father is African American, endured comments about her body and performance style.

“One little thing makes such a difference in the sport,” said Wendy Hilliard, founder of the Wendy Hilliard Gymnastics Foundation and the first Black rhythmic gymnast to represent the U.S. internationally.

“It’s really difficult when you don’t have people [who] look like you,” said Alexis Page, a former Team USA rhythmic gymnast, now the program manager of athletics and fitness at Trinity Church Wall Street. “I was third in the country (as was Generalova). It’s lonely and it’s hard. When you have nobody [who] looks like you … it’s tiring and you’re in a sport where you’re not included from head to toe. You’re told

that your hair has to look a certain way and your hair is damaged because you’re trying to make it look a certain way. Your shoes don’t even match your skin color.”

Generalova is a few years younger than Page and recalled how Page was supportive and willing to be a source of information. “It’s a lot

of mental work,” said Generalova. “You doubt yourself and think, ‘I’m not meant for this.’”

Both she and Page said it was incredibly motivating when young girls told them they were inspirations. “I think I did it more for the culture and the people than at that point for myself,” said Generalova,

who competed until 2019. “I wanted my personal style to be remembered over first, second, or third.”

Throughout the film, Generalova mentions hearing comments about her weight: Even though she was thin, her body type didn’t match the Eastern European ideal. Today, she works for the One Love Community

Fridge in Brooklyn, which addresses issues of food insecurity.

“A lot of gymnasts, at least during our times, didn’t have the most healthy relationships with food; I was one of them,” said Generalova. “It took time to understand that food is nutrition; it’s not an esthetic … My work today helps my inner child.”

Hannah Hidalgo (AP Photo/Michael Caterina) JuJu Watkins (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) Lauren Betts (AP Photo/Jason Redmond)

Pioneering gymnast Wendy Hilliard (far right) moderates panel discussion with (l-r) model Joan Smalls and former rhythmic gymnasts Nastasya Generalova and Alexis Page. (Lois Elfman photos)

Participants in Breaking Barriers panel discussion included (l-r) Joan Smalls, Nastasya Generalova, Wendy Hilliard, and Alexis Page

See YOUNG STARS continued on page 30

History-making fencer Lauren Scruggs preps for collegiate season

By LOIS ELFMAN

Special

to the AmNews

By mid-December of 2024, Queens native Lauren Scruggs, the first Black female fencer to win an individual Olympic medal (silver in foil) and the first Black female fencer to win Olympic gold (team foil), was back in Cambridge, Mass., preparing for final exams at Harvard University. A few days earlier, she was far from campus, earning a silver medal in women’s team foil at the Busan World Cup.

Young stars

Continued from page 29

Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks as the ratings for the matchup peaked at 12.3 million viewers — the most-watched men’s or women’s college basketball ever on ESPN. While Clark and Reese are now in the WNBA, they left women’s college basketball in a great position.

“It’s been pretty calm and chill now that I’m back from the Olympics, just because I’m not competing as hard as I was last year,” said Scruggs, a senior philosophy major, who did not take time off from Harvard while training for the 2024 Olympics but does appreciate that her professors were supportive. “I’m trying to take the coolest classes that Harvard has to offer. This semester, I took a class solely on Bob Dylan … I took an entrepreneurship class because with the Olympics, I’m trying to learn more about how I can take that and use it

After finishing second in the country in scoring last season as a freshman, averaging 27.1 points per game and breaking the alltime women’s freshman scoring record with 920 points, USC’s Juju Watkins is back as a sophomore and has the Trojans as one of the top teams in the country. The 19-year-old Los Angeles native is on pace to break Clark’s all-time Division I scoring record of 3,951 points if she plays four years.

in other aspects of my life.”

It was an intense year for Scruggs, who was training and competing in hope of making the Olympic team. Then there was her time in Paris, followed by interviews and appearances after the Games. Getting back to being a student, focused on classes and studying, felt strange, but eventually, she eased herself back into college life.

“Socially, it was a pretty big adjustment; people on campus know who you are, which is kind of weird,” said Scruggs, who ap-

After USC’s loss to UConn in the Elite Eight of last season’s NCAA tournament, Watkins said, “I think just coming up short, that adds a lot of fuel to the fire for the next couple of years. I’m just excited to go back home and get in the gym now. I’m really focused on learning from this season as a whole, things I can improve on. Definitely my efficiency and stuff like that. But I’m just grateful for

preciates but doesn’t focus on her historic accomplishments. “I wouldn’t say it changed me as a person in terms of how I see myself or my personality, but obviously, I’m super-proud of the result and seeing how it’s impacted people.”

In addition to Harvard and the Olympics, Scruggs also has a connection to the Peter Westbrook Foundation. She appreciates that elite fencers give back to the community and said the foundation gives her a sense of pride and satisfaction. “I’m not just competing for myself; I’m competing for the

this year because I’ve learned a lot.” Watkins continues to prove that she did indeed learn a lot as a freshman.

Doubleheader women’s basketball events like the inaugural Women’s Champions Classic at Barclays Center and the 2024 Basketball Hall of Fame Women’s Showcase at Mohegan Sun Arena, both held in Dec. 2024, are emblematic of sponsors’ increased investment in women’s

kids, because it really does make them more excited about the sport,” she said.

Scruggs said she’s looking forward to representing Harvard in collegiate competition this winter and is even willing to pass on a couple of World Cup events to win an Ivy League Championship.

“I’m still fencing for myself on the strip, but having my teammates cheer for me, cheering for them, having the other team cheer against me — I thrive in that environment,” Scruggs said. “It makes the sport more fun.”

college basketball. Ultimately, the talent on the court will push the game forward, and there is plenty of that. UCLA center Lauren Betts, Ta’Niya Latson of Florida State, New Jersey native Hannah Hidalgo of Notre Dame and Sarah Strong of UConn have all had tremendous starts this season.

The women’s college game is in a great place and the stars of today hope to push it even further.

Lauren Scruggs (far right) and teammates celebrate podium finish in women’s team foil event at the Busan World Cup. (#BizziTeam via USA Fencing photo)

SPORTS

Caitlin Clark’s polarizing ascension transcends sports in 2024

By JAIME C. HARRIS

AmNews Sports Editor

Last September 10, almost immediately after the presidential debate between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican candidate Donald Trump concluded, mega pop icon Taylor Swift, who has over 280 million Instagram followers, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency on her social media platform. Subsequently, basketball star Caitlin Clark, a supremely gifted point guard for the WNBA’s Indiana Fever, who a few weeks later would be named the league’s rookie of the year, liked Swift’s post on her account. The backlash from Trump supporters and

ardent right-wing voices was prompt and harsh.

They had wrongly assumed that Clark, a native of Middle America in Des Moines, Iowa, who rose to fame as one of the best women’s college basketball players of all time at the University of Iowa, scoring the most points (3,951) in NCAA Division I history for a man or woman, who had not publicly stated who she voting for, was a member of the MAGA cult or hopeful she was a passive adherent of white supremacist ideology. Two days later, Clark explained her position.

“I have this amazing platform, so I think the biggest thing would be to just encourage people to register to vote,”

she said. “Continue to educate yourself on the candidates that we have, the policies that they’re supporting.”

While Clark has endeared herself to teammates of all ethnicities, she has become, undeservedly, a polarizing figure along the fractured lines of race and sexual preference. Many past and present players, as well as sports and cultural pundits, contend her enormous popularity is in large part because she is white and/or that she is a heterosexual white woman in a league with many openly gay players. Clark’s popularity drove record-breaking attendance and television ratings while she was at Iowa and in this past WNBA season.

They refer to Breanna Stewart, a gay white woman whose superlative resume includes the unmatched accomplishment of winning four straight NCAA championships and four NCAA Tournament most outstanding player awards, as someone who should receive the same widespread love as Clark. There is also Angel Reese, who led LSU to a victory over Clark and Iowa in the 2023 NCAA championship game and battled Clark for most of last season for the rookie of the year honor.

Three weeks ago, Sheila Johnson, co-founder of Black Entertainment Television and owner of the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, was critical of Time Magazine for naming Clark its “Athlete

of the Year.” Johnson pondered why Time “couldn’t have put the whole WNBA on that cover,” in an interview with CNN Sport. She also echoed the view of many that the league and their broadcast partners, including Disney-owned ABC and ESPN, fostered envy of Clark among players by intensely building their marketing campaigns around her while minimizing other stars.

“When you just keep singling out one player, it creates hard feelings,” said Johnson. “This year, something clicked with the WNBA and it’s because of the draft of players that came in. It’s not just Caitlin Clark, it’s (Angel) Reese (also). We have so much talent out there.”

(L-R) Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark (pictured with WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert) were instrumental in driving the unprecedented attention women’s basketball received in 2024. (AP photos / Charles Rex Arbogast)

New York Amsterdam News Issue Jan 2-8, 2025

BEST OF 2024 PART II

DIRECTORY

BEST OF 2024 PART II

Dear Readers,

Dr. Hazel N. Dukes: A Harlem Legacy

Looking back with Pride: Examining our coverage of the queer community

Searching for ‘gay’

Confined: Mayor Adams fights to keep prisoners in solitary

Celebrating Congressmember Yvette Clarke

Costs of gun violence hurt loved ones left behind. NY Victim Compensation program

Telling their stories

Compensation

Improving victim compensation

Union Matters

City Comptroller’s new employment violations dashboard shames city’s biggest labor law violators

Opinion

Stop vigilantism!

Mask bans make NY less safe

My breast cancer journey: taking control, breaking silence, and empowering women

New Year, New Attitude

Health Dawnette Lewis, MD, MPH on maternal health, birth complications for Black patients, and solutions

Arts & Entertainment

2024: The Year In Review in Black Theater, Part 2

Creating supportive circles

DR. HAZEL N. DUKES

Factcheck: False—Long COVID is just in your head

PRIDE

Growing pains

Early childhood education is essential, but is funding it? City in final days of budget negotiations

A new era

Reduce Your Cancer Risk by Eating Healthy

Failure to comply: NYPD falls short in stop-and-frisk reforms a decade into monitorship

Failure to comply: NYPD falls short in stop-and-frisk reforms a decade into monitorship

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Young stars continue to push women’s college basketball forward

Documentary ‘Breaking Boundaries’ raises issues of race and body image

History-making fencer Lauren Scruggs preps for collegiate season

Special

Young stars

SPORTS

Caitlin Clark’s polarizing ascension transcends sports in 2024