Union Matters

MLB players union starts campaign to fund $1 million for workers affected by lockout

By STEPHON JOHNSON

Amsterdam News Staff

The Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) is looking out for the little guy.

The players’ union has launched a $1 million fund to assist workers who have been affected by the lockout that has left them shut out of work.

“There are a lot of people who make our game great. Many aren’t seen or heard, but they are vital to the entertainment experience of our games,” stated MLBPA Executive Leaders free-agent pitcher Andrew Miller and recently acquired New York Mets pitcher Max Scherzer last week. “Unfortunately, they will also be among those affected by the owner-imposed lockout and the cancellation of games. Through this fund, we want to let them know that they have our support.”

On Dec. 2, MLB franchise owners implemented a players’ lockout, banning all baseball activities. Opening Day has already been canceled from its original date of March 31 after MLBPA members voted unanimously not to accept the owners’ new contract by the beginning of this month. It will shorten baseball’s normal 162-game season. The league has lost at least two series in the season and won’t be made up. It could take a few months

before they reach a deal. Players and owners could continue work as a new collective bargaining agreement is being worked out, but the commissioner and owners decided that wasn’t going to be the case.

In a letter to fans in February, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said that there are issues on both sides, but he put much of the onus on the players.

“We hope that the lockout will jumpstart the negotiations and get us to an agreement that will

allow the season to start on time,” he said. “The result of that jumpstart? The league waited 43 days to return to the negotiating table with a response to the last proposal from the players. If MLB had an interest in establishing a regular cadence of bargaining, it did nothing to show it.” All for Manfred to walk in front of the cameras Thursday and talk about the pace as a matter of “mutual responsibility.”

During a recent news conference, Manfred said, “In the history of baseball, the only person who has made a labor agreement without a dispute, and I did four of them, was me.” Manfred ignored that MLB was on the brink of a labor work stoppage in 2002. In a recent statement, MLBPA leaders called out the owners stating that this is simply a negotiating tactic designed to break the players’ union.

“From the beginning of these negotiations, Players’ objectives have been consistent—to promote competition, provide fair compensation for young Players, and to uphold the integrity of our market system,” the statement read. “Against the backdrop of growing revenues and record profits, we are seeking nothing more than a fair agreement.

“What Rob Manfred characterized as a ‘defensive lockout’ is, in fact, the culmination of a decadeslong attempt by owners to break our Player fraternity.”

MLBPA Executive Director Tony Clark stated that the people who work concessions and hospitality jobs around stadiums need to be thanked not only verbally, but financially.

“This fund is intended to support workers who are most affected by the MLB-imposed lockout but whose livelihoods have been disregarded by the owners in their efforts to pressure Players into accepting an unfair deal,” Clark said.

The players’ union has a friend in AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “Whether you’re a worker on the baseball field, or a worker behind the scenes, we all deserve respect and dignity on the job,” said Shuler in a statement. “The labor movement will do everything in our power to support these and all workers.”

MLBPA looks out to help workers affected by owners’ lockout. (Image courtesy of Major League Baseball)

Local 79 officials attempt to look out for immigrants and Black workers

By STEPHON JOHNSON

Amsterdam News Staff

On Monday, Laborers’ Local 79 officials announced their support for Excluded No More, a piece of state legislation that sets up a program to provide unemployment benefits to undocumented immigrant workers.

The state needs $3 billion to replenish the fund that made its way through the government last year, according to a study by the Immigrant Research Initiative.

New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul is proposing $2 billion in the state budget for lawmakers to allocate where they choose. Some elected officials believe that money should go to the Excluded Workers Fund. Others think it should go to the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (or ERAP).

We know what side Mike Prohaska stands for.

“We’re proud to offer our support for the Excluded No More legislation. Our message to Gov. Hochul and the state legislature is: let’s get it done,” said Prohaska, business manager of Laborers’ Local 79, in an emailed statement. “This commonsense bill will not only empower immigrant workers who make up the lion’s share of the nonunion construction workforce in New York. It will also close the gap between union and nonunion contractors, enabling undocumented workers to file for unemployment benefits, organize more freely on the job, and contribute more to our state’s economy and recovery after COVID.”

Laborer’s Local 79 are skilled tradespeople who worked in construction around the five boroughs. Prohaska said that policies like this one will only help the union, the workers and anyone connected to Local 79.

“Excluded No More will level the playing field for responsible contractors who support their workers, regardless of immigration status, by paying into workers’ compensation, unemployment and payroll taxes.”

With no workers available to

comment, Prohaska directed the AmNews to a story in amNewYork about a recent protest regarding exploitative working conditions at Chelsea Terminal Warehouse (in Manhattan’s West Chelsea) after demolition workers were “illegally” fired by demolition company Alba (a company with a history of exploitative practices according to a judge from the National Labor Relations Board). They also called out ECD NY and New Line Structures, which are places with similar histories. Elected officials such as

New York State Sen. Jessica Ramos and Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine attended.

Local 79 has other things on their plate as well.

Laborers continued to take their vision and desires to City Hall. The union teamed up with the

Mason Tenders’ District Council of Greater New York and 100 Black Construction Workers on a campaign named #BuildOne45 to explain why the New York City Council should approve of a rezoning of the One45 development site, a proposed set of 365-foot towers on the corner of Lenox Avenue between West 144th and West 145th streets.

“When we #BuildOne45, we will empower Black construction workers, Black businesses, and Black households, while boosting public safety and our economy,” stated Barrie Smith, president of 100 Black Construction Workers, and an executive board member of Laborers’ Local 79. “That’s our message to elected officials and to our brothers and sisters in Harlem about why they should support this project. One45 will create good-paying union construction jobs, more affordable housing options for longtime Harlem residents, more space for Black-owned businesses, the city’s first green energy district, a nationally significant Civil Rights Museum, and new space for the National Action Network (NAN).

“Our campaign to #BuildOne45 is a campaign to build a better, fairer, and stronger future for Harlem and for our city.”

Laborers’ Local 79 officials have spent a lot of time fighting on behalf of all workers of color and the undocumented. (Photo courtesy of Laborers’ Local 79)

Our joy is not enough to mitigate the pain

Black Americans are well acquainted with misery and joy, and last week sent another example. On Monday, the Senate joined the House in passage of the Emmett Till Bill, making lynching a federal crime.

But a jury in Louisville, Kentucky found ex-police officer Brett Hankison not guilty on all three counts of wanton endangerment in the first degree. The shooting incident that left 26-year-old Breonna Taylor dead occurred on March 13, 2020, when three plainclothes officers—Jonathan Mattingly, Myles Cosgrove and Hankison—arrived at Taylor’s apartment under the pretext of investigating drug dealing operations.

Taylor was in bed with her boyfriend Kenneth Walker who was alarmed by the forced entry, and thinking an intrusion was in progress fired a warning at Mattingly in the leg. Subsequently, the officers unleashed a barrage of 32 shots. Taylor, in the EDITORIAL back of Walker, was hit by six bullets. Later, Walker was charged with assault and attempted murder but the charges were dismissed. Meanwhile, in the summer of 2020 Hankison was fired for recklessly shooting through the window and door of Taylor’s apartment. On Sept. 15, the city of Louisville agreed to pay Taylor’s family $12 million and to reform police practices. There was a general feeling in the community that Hankison wouldn’t be convicted, and to date none of the officers have been charged in Taylor’s death. It was determined that Cosgrove fired the shots that killed Taylor.

Attorney Benjamin Crump, who represents the Taylor family, said the acquittal was “further evidence of lack of police accountability. The fact that Brett Hankison was not even charged for Breonna Taylor’s killing and only faced charges for the wanton endangerment of her white neighbors was a slap in the face of Breonna and her family.”

And in our opinion another gross miscarriage of justice, which has become a sort of mantra when white officers gun down Black unarmed citizens.

It has taken more than a generation to get at least a semblance of justice for a teenager from Chicago who was brutally killed in Mississippi in 1955, and it may take just as long for Taylor to get hers, if ever.

Like some of the lyrics from our Black National anthem, our rejoicing has risen high as the listening skies but we have also come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered, and that latter perpetually outweighs the former.

Celebrating revolutionary African women: from Nzinga Mbandi to the rebels of the Americas

By JESÚS CHUCHO GARCIA, Translated by KAREN JUANITA CARRILLO

Slave trafficking and slavery, practiced by Westerners in Africa and the Americas, was decreed by the United Nations in 2001 as a crime against humanity. During the 17th and 18th century periods of this shameful process, brave women of Kongo-Ndongo origin opposed the slave trade in what is now the Republic of Angola. One of them was the warrior Nzinga Mbandi, who managed to create the kingdom of Matamba. Mbandi set a standard that was followed by the legendary Kimpa Vita in the early 18th century; Kimpa Vita was later burned alive by the Portuguese—in complicity with the Roman Catholic Church—for having led insurrections against African enslavement in the former empire of Kongo Dia Ntotela.

The fighting spirit of these two Africans became a moral example to the many women subjected to cruel enslavement in the Americas and the Caribbean; it pushed them to rise up against the slave system.

In Jamaica, Nanny, of Ashanti origin, led an army against British slavery. In Haiti, we have the vodún priestess, Cecile Fattime, who sparked a rebellion against the French at the end of the 18th century. In the United States, the rebel Harriet Tubman, at the beginning of the 19th century, developed an extraordinary network to free the enslaved, transporting them clandestinely to Canada where slavery had been abolished in 1833. This network was called the Underground Railroad, it was neither a train nor a subway but rather an intelligent system of routes and safe houses used to free enslaved people from different states of the U.S. It was based on a knowledge of geography, as well as the topography and names of places.

In Venezuela, there were self-liberated African women—women we call: cimarronas—who suffered the same fate as African men. Such were the cases for Manucha Algarín who established the Cumbe de Ocoyta rebel settlement alongside her husband, Guillermo Rivas in 1768 and Josefina Sánchez who was part of the formation of the Cumbe de Taguaza, both of which are currently in the city of Acevedo in the state of Miranda: they were clear examples of the rebel leadership of female Afrodescendants.

The moral contributions of Manucha Algarín, Josefina Sánchez, Queen Guiomar (who rebelled against enslavement alongside King Miguel in the Venezuelan mountains of Buría in the mid1500s) as well as the passive resistance of the enslaved María Dolores (wife of José Leonardo Chirino who took part in the 1795 uprising against slavery in Santa Ana de Coro, Venezuela), were not in vain, because they remained as references of struggle and proved that the chains, the rapes and the racism we faced were not barriers against our aspirations to freedom.

The official, racist, and sexist history only notes that white men have struggled for liberation.

See WOMEN on page 27

AmNews Reader Writes: The importance of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s locs

Dear Editor:

Since the announcement of her nomination, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has been heralded for the prestige her Ivy League background has afforded her, including serving in her current role on the D.C. federal appellate court. Reformers emphasized the importance of her record as a public defender and anyone who saw this a moment worthy of celebration, acknowledged the historical significance of her nomination. But few have isolated her perfectly coiled, yet noticeably different style of hair. Beyond representation, having a judge serve on the nation’s highest court with locs legitimizes Black hair in one of its truest forms.

Largely influenced by Rastarian culture, locs were the style of choice in various iterations of afrocentric expression in Black American culture. Images of bohemian rappers in the early ’90s strike the earliest of memories, and then those of neo-soul artists like Bilal, Lalah Hathaway, and India Arie a decade later. Nowadays all the rappers below the Mason Dixon line seem to have Skittle-colored ones. Jackson’s may be Sisterlocks, but when she arrived at her choice, she joined all of us in our dismissal of the standardization of straight hair. It may be spiritual for some and more aesthetical for others, but having locked hair is a political decision for everyone, repudiating one of the many ways Black bodies are held hostage by the law.

Every trip to the airport is made into a scene as TSA guards render it necessary to pat the puffy parts atop my head and then my dangling cowrie shells, as they wait to see if anything will detonate. As of right now, only 12 states have laws prohibiting hair discrimination in schools and workplaces. In 2020, a federal appeals court ruled that banning

Preventing a world war: what is in the United States’ playbook?

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

ARMSTRONG WILLIAMS

Many vital and strategically related events are going all but unnoticed or unmentioned by the mainstream media while we Americans and the rest of the world watch the unfolding events in Ukraine.

If we step back and view events impartially from a broad perspective and reflect, what would we know and what would we see?

Without a doubt, Ukraine’s resistance and geographic challenges have surprised Putin and his planners. It is widely understood that after first contact with the enemy, the massive planning sessions, PowerPoint presentations, predictions, and forecasts on what the enemy would do must be changed to adapt. Once the firing starts, only war’s brutality is capable of this slap in the face of reality. Putin, on the other hand, is nimble on the battlefield, and his command structure and capacity to adapt are far superior to those of the West, which wages limited wars by committees from the safety of bureaucratic cubicles and think tanks thousands of miles away. Russia is adapting.

The mobilization of reserves and soldiers from throughout Russia is an important event that demonstrates intent. How long will the conflict in Ukraine last? As long as it takes Putin to destabilize the country and seize everything. After only nine days of fighting, it’s becoming clearer what Putin plans to accomplish; the balance shifts in Putin’s favor after the Russian army enters and destroys Kyiv. When the power goes out, the internet goes down, and all contact with the outside world is lost or seriously hampered, Ukraine and its people will be left in the dark. Putin’s will to conquer won’t be found on Facebook, TikTok, or iMessage.

At this point, media commentators and a parade of government “experts” who declare Putin is insane, out of control, must be stopped, and so on are just like a candle in the wind. Putin is a KGB intelligence officer at his core, one who is extremely capable. He isn’t insane or out of his mind; he’s calculated and astute, always thinking on what he sees and making adjustments on the field as a result. He is surrounded by specialists that are mature and have a great deal of experience; he and his system are driven by timely intelligence from reliable sources. He is familiar with the United States, our government bureaucracy, and our systemic flaws; more importantly, he has had 50 years to observe how our current president and team would likely make choices, and he understands how to exploit weaknesses and avoid falling victim to our strengths. His knowledge and influence in Europe are equally impressive.

History is also important. We can look to Muscovy, the original name for the area that is now known as Moscow. After destroying Kyiv in 1240, a Mongol-Tatar force built a colony in the wetlands of north Rus lands. Moscow absorbed and created the Kyiv Rus legacy through centuries of misinformation and active measures; this ruse has been passed down across generations. History shows us that, for a long time, Russians have been killing Ukrainians.

In a recent conversation with Charles S. Faddis, the former chief of the CIA’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism Unit, I was told that war is messy and can often quickly spiral out of control. Not the weapons themselves, but the lack of communication between the warring nations tends to be one of the deadliest components of war. Soldiers and civilians do not want to die, but things spiral out of control when those in charge fail to engage in meaningful dialogue with their adversaries. Faddis was able to shed some much-needed light onto the complexities of war.

When asked as to whether there were any similarities between what led up to the former world wars and this current conflict, Faddis stated, “Without question…[in the former world wars] nobody sat down and said ‘Hey, here’s my plan I think we should fight this war and get a whole bunch of people killed’; it got out of control really fast—and conflicts do that. So, we need to manage this…when you’re talking about force and national security, it is no time for emotion, boast, chest thumping, and all of this nonsense. You’ve got to get really clear eyed, very sober, very rational, and be very careful.”

The world looks to be set up to witness land combat in a way that the contemporary West has never seen before. A conquering and annexation conflict. When it comes to a man like Putin, there isn’t much that can stop him. Our optics continue to be used in the United States and Western Europe to assess impact and risk. We continue to be profoundly inadequate at assessing impact and risk from the perspective of our opponents. Yet rather than truly understanding how Putin perceives the risk vs. benefit and consequences equation, we base our actions and judgements on how we would behave or respond.

We appear to have learnt nothing from the previous 20 years of abysmal military failure. With another world war looming, we must utilize our knowledge and interconnectivity to make sensible and wise decisions in the coming months to prevent a catastrophe.

Sometimes you have to leave NYC to love it

CHRISTINA GREER PH.D.

I recently left New York City for a few days and was reminded that sometimes we have to leave the place we love for a short spell in order to remember how much we love it. For those of us who live in cities, we can get bogged down with commuting, the constant barrage of people, the noise, and the never-ending movement. Sometimes, it is imperative we leave for a short time to remember why we have chosen to live in expensive cities––sometimes literally on top of one another.

I recognize everyone may not be able to hop on a flight and escape the city. Some folks may not have the time or resources to jump on a train and head out of town. However, I find that sometimes just spending the day in a different part of my own city makes me feel lightyears away. I realized it’s been months since I took a ferry ride to Staten Island and back. I didn’t even get off the boat, but feeling the saltwater in my face and being on the water helped my blood pressure immensely. It was far from a Caribbean cruise, but for those of us who like to be on the open water, that short time on a “boat” made me temporarily forget about the hustle and bustle of Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Traveling during COVID has filled some of my friends and family with significant anxiety and they are not comfortable being on an airplane, train, subway, bus, or even an Uber. If that is the case, I would suggest scheduling long walks to explore different parts of your own neighborhood. These past two years have been a lot, for all of us. We are living in the midst of a global pandemic, we must remind ourselves of that constantly. We are doing our best. We are surviving. We are trying to be conscious about thriving. But the fact remains, we are in the midst of a global public health crisis, and we are continuing to work, learn, laugh, grieve, and stay healthy. To quote my students, “Issa a lot!”

It is my sincere hope that wherever you are and however you have been managing and/or coping through this pandemic, you will find time for a respite. Whether you hop on a plane and dust off your passport, jump on a train or bus and travel to a nearby state, or stroll through a different part of your city, I hope you discover a new place to reinvigorate you and unlock a new sense of wonder and excitement during this surreal time. We can explore within our comfort levels and within our respective budgets. Let us not lose our sense of wonder and excitement and exploration.

Christina Greer, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Fordham University, the author of “Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream,” and the co-host of the podcast FAQ-NYC.