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SLAVERY STILL INGRAINED IN MAURITANIA, ACTIVIST SAYS
(GIN)—Mauritanians have re-elected President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani with over 56% of the vote in a 6-way race. With provisional results from over 99.27% of polling stations, President Ghazouani, a retired army general and current president of the African Union, is serving his last five-year term with this election.
Mauritania achieved independence from France in 1960, but has since experienced recurrent coups and periods of military dictatorship.
Mauritania was the last country in the world to officially abolish slavery in 1981. But the practice was not criminalized until just over a decade ago in 2007.
Former slaves, known as Haratin, now form Mauritania’s lowest caste, living in extreme poverty under a regime that denies them access to work, education, and the basic rights that come along with citizenship.
Slave status is passed down from mother to child, and anti-slavery activists are often tortured and detained. Yet the government routinely denies that slavery exists in Mauritania, instead praising itself for eradicating the practice.
Fatimatou and her daughter Mbarka, profiled in Newsweek magazine, were enslaved to a family in the Aleg region, roughly 150 miles from the capital, Nouakchott. “They called me ‘Fatma the servant,’” she recalled. “I looked after the cattle, prepared food, and fetched water from the well.
“I lost two babies to this family because they prevented me from taking care of my own children. I was forced to work when I had just given birth.”
Fatimatou was freed with her children in the early 1990s by the organization SOS Slaves. Today, she lives with her family in one of the capital’s working-class neighborhoods.
In the recent presidential poll, Ghazaouni’s main rival was anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid.
“Slavery is ingrained in Mauritanian values,” commented Dah Abeid, a human rights defender. “That’s why it continues to plague Mauritania in such a massive way.”
Dah Abeid noted that his grandparents were enslaved, and as a consequence, he spent much of his life campaigning against the practice. His grandmother was enslaved until her death. His father later married an enslaved woman and saw his wife and their two children sold before his eyes.
“My father was driven by the fight against slavery and he left this legacy,” said Abeid. “I promised him that I would fight against slavery all my life, and that is what I am doing,”
Thousands of Black Mauritanians still live as unpaid domestic servants, while anti-slavery activists face repression.
Dah Abeid has been arrested and imprisoned over the years because of his work with the anti-slavery NGO “Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement.”
There are currently about 149,000 people enslaved in Mauritania, according to the Global Slavery Index in 2023.
Human rights in Mauritania are generally seen as poor according to international observers, including Freedom House, the U.S. Department of State, and Amnesty International.
GEN Z TAKES OVER THE STREETS IN KENYA, BLOCKING UNPOPULAR FINANCE BILL
Kevin P. Gallagher, director of Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center. Sharp rises in basic goods, especially food and fuel, often serve as a trigger for protest and social unrest. Yet like elsewhere, rising prices—and prospects of even higher costs— are only part of the story in Kenya.
The proposed taxes would have affected every segment of society but especially students, the unemployed, poor, and working-class people. The bill proposed taxing everything from income and fuel to essential items like eggs, sanitary napkins, and disposable diapers.
The proposed tax increases were also set to increase healthcare costs. Digital content creators would also have been affected.
Second, the government justified the tax as a way to pay down the national debt. Kenya owes $80 billion in domestic and foreign debt. Its debt stands at 68% of GDP,
(GIN)—In a move that surprised observers, Kenya’s President William Ruto has agreed to scrap a highly controversial finance bill that sparked two days of police violence against mostly young protesters demonstrating against unaffordable tax increases.
Ruto said he would seek new austerity measures, including in his own office, to make up for the public’s rejection of the finance bill meant to raise $1.55 billion in taxes.
But out in the street, police assaulted, arrested, and opened fire on demonstrators, a move that Ruto and other members of the government at first defended as necessary to protect public infrastructure, but which was widely criticized by Western governments and rights groups.
The police shootings killed 23 people and left more than 200 injured.
The chaotic events in one of Africa’s major economies, also a key U.S. ally, have led to questions about the debt choking many developing countries, and who is to blame.
Kenya owes billions of dollars to Western countries and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as China, to whom it owes $5.7 billion.
“The key culprit is the lack of a well-functioning global financial safety net,” said
well above the World Bank and IMF’s recommended maximum of 55%.
Yet, for many Kenyans, the deficit hinges not on taxation, but on rampant corruption at every level of government, financial mismanagement, and lavish consumption among political elites.
This includes a growing frustration at Ruto’s spending habits, such as hiring private jets for global trips, an eight-course dinner for King Charles III, and a love of expensive watches and other designer goods.
Third, many Kenyans felt that the finance bill showed an inability or refusal by political elites to recognize the grinding poverty and everyday struggle that many experience.
“It’s like (politicians) aren’t feeling our pain,” one woman told the New York Times
The protests signaled to the government and international lenders that there is little hope for raising revenue through taxes that place a higher burden on low-income rather than high-income earners.
In addition, the finance bill felt like betrayal for the people who voted for Ruto in the 2022 elections based on his appeals to the poor as well as promises of progressive taxation.
Fourth, protesters were motivated by the
(GIN photo)
(GIN photo)
The Renaissance Project: Building ‘Black jobs’ and Black businesses for NYCHA residents
By ARIAMA C. LONG Amsterdam News Staff
New York City’s post-pandemic economy saw a boom of Black-owned businesses that organizations like Progress Playbook wanted to channel as a means for community development and public safety within New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) communities. Two years later, the Renaissance Project is succeeding.
For all the progress the city’s economy has made in the wake of the pandemic, residents living in NYCHA housing were still trailing behind when it came to employment.
Black and Latino residents, particularly men, living in NYCHA de-
velopments were more likely to be missing from the city’s workforce altogether in 2023, reported the Community Service Society of New York (CSS). “Too many young Black and Latino men are currently caught between a lopsided post-pandemic recovery and a regime of over policing,” said CSS Senior Policy Analyst Iziah Thompson in a statement.
Beyond just giving people jobs, said Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS) Director Ranti Ogunleye, the city envisioned a way to motivate NYCHA residents to take the reins and build businesses that reflect the needs of their communities.
ONS partnered with Progress Playbook in 2022 to create the Renaissance Project.
“There is income that people
need to make and sustain themselves,” Progress Playbook founder and CEO Lloyd J. Cambridge said, “but we need to be in a position to thrive. And to thrive from an economic standpoint, it goes back to ownership. It’s not just these cute small ideas, it’s about how do we scale these ideas into bigger organizations and ensure they have the capacity to grow responsibly, sustainably, and also profitably so they can then hire in their communities.”
A native Brooklynite, Cambridge said he was inspired to start a small business training and economic development consultancy about eight years ago. The organization currently has three community-based incubators: Empire Project, Blueprint
See BLACK BUSINESSES on page 29
NYC Black political clubs sticking with Biden after debate debacle
By ARIAMA C. LONG Amsterdam News Staff
Despite growing calls from Democrats nationwide for President Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race after an anxiety-inducing debate with ex-President Donald Trump, some Black supporters say they’re sticking with the incumbent come hell or high water.
“It’s crazy. Everyone has a bad day, and I feel he did well. Answered all the questions without all the energy he usually has because he was under the weather going into the debate,” said Londel Davis Jr.,
70th Assembly District delegate to the Judicial Convention. “Barack Obama had the same thing: He had a bad showing and everyone was all scared and worried. In the next debate, he killed the guy. I think the same thing is going to happen.”
At Footprints Cafe, a Caribbean restaurant in Brooklyn, political enthusiasts—mostly Black and Brown older adults—from the Vanguard Independent Democratic Association (VIDA) and Unified Political Association (UPA) gathered to watch the highly anticipated presidential debate on Thursday night.
A short survey revealed that most
in attendance were hoping to see Biden deliver a “clear, sobering message” about populist policies, such as lowering insulin costs, abortion freedom, and student loan forgiveness, but also wanted him to dispel any speculation about his age and mental faculties declining.
There was a pretty big expectation that none of that would be happening, based on club leadership passing out a facetious bingo card at the start of the event. Options included “Trump makes a weird face” and “Biden whispers.”
A few raspy-voiced minutes into
See DEBATE on page 36
Money for immigrant language access makes it into $112.4 billion city budget;
By ARIAMA C. LONG Amsterdam News Staff
In continuing efforts to process arrivals of asylum seekers and migrants, local immigration groups are pushing for more language access services and a central interpreter bank in New York City’s $112.4 billion fiscal year 2025 budget. They were overjoyed to see funding for language services restored, despite the city’s recent failures to keep up with local language access law.
Although President Biden’s action plan temporarily shut down the southern border this June, asylum seekers are still arriving in New York City. According to city numbers, more than 205,000 asylum seekers have arrived since the spring of
2022, with more than 65,000 still in the city’s care.
One of the main issues among West African migrants from countries like Senegal and Guinea is that some speak lesser-known dialects of various African languages, said Aminata Chabi-Leke, a founding member of AfriLingual, a worker cooperative for native Africans.
“Sometimes they will say they speak a specific language and once you start the assignment, you figure out it’s not actually the correct language,” Chabi-Leke said. “They’ll tell you ‘I speak Fulani,’ but it’s not the Fulani from Guinea; it’s from Mauritania.”
In most instances, a fellow native speaker of any kind makes a person immediately feel comfortable and confident, said Chabi-Leke,
but some people remain nervous about communicating and sharing personal information, making it necessary to get training in legal interpretation, business practices, and trauma-informed interpretation for survivors—especially for asylum seekers dealing with navigating a new country’s infrastructure.
“Language access is not a luxury anymore,” Chabi-Leke said. “I feel personally that language access is a human right, because everybody should be able to say what they want to say in the language that makes them feel most comfortable. That’s how they can convey, to the best of their ability, the message.”
According to data from the city’s Language Access Secret Shopper (LASS) program, more than half of
See LANGUAGE ACCESS on page 36
orgs ‘relieved’
Andrea and James Woods, co-founders of Juiced It, at their table during the event. (Ariama C. Long photo)
Brooklyn political club members watch presidential debate between Biden and Trump on June 27. (Ariama C. Long photo)
African Communities Together (ACT) members at roundtable meeting with U.S. Department of Labor Acting Secretary Julie Su in Harlem in April. (Ariama C. Long photo)
Biden weighs in on ‘dark’ Trump Supreme Court immunity ruling
By ASHLEIGH FIELDS
Special to the AmNews
Former President Donald Trump has been spending most of his free time in courtrooms rather than on the campaign trail in hopes of rectifying his more than 30 pending criminal charges. But the Supreme Court ruled that the leader could be legally immune from official actions taken while in office but not for unofficial conduct on July 1, leaving lower courts to evaluate whether Trump can be held accountable for measures taken surrounding the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
After the decision came down, Trump posted in all-caps “BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND DEMOCRACY.
PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!” on his social media.
Many of his followers celebrated the announcement and regarded the decision as a chance for the former leader to return to power in the Oval Office. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan will now preside over the case and assess the extent of presidential protections.
“This decision today has continued the Court’s attack in recent years on a wide range of long-established legal principles in our nation, from gutting voting rights and civil rights to taking away a woman’s right to choose to today’s decision that undermines the rule of law of this nation,” Biden shared from the White House during prepared remarks.
He cited the ruling as, “one of the darkest days in American history.”
Biden is not alone in this sentiment.
“The indictment paints a stark portrait of a president desperate to stay in power,” Justice Sotomayor wrote in dissent.
“It is alleged that he went so far as to threaten one state election official with criminal prosecu- tion if the official did not ‘find’ 11,780 votes Trump needed to change the election result in that state,” she continued.
Later on, she wrote, “In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law. With fear for our democra-
cy, I dissent,” words repeated verbatim by Biden during his statement of disapproval.
However, conservative justices adamantly argued a decision of this magnitude could negatively impact precedent for future presidents. Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas concurred with the court’s decision proclaiming such an act could “threaten our constitutional order.”
“To conclude otherwise would hamstring the vigorous Executive that our Constitution envisions,” Thomas wrote, while
agreeing with an earlier Scalia dissent in an earlier case that said: “While the separation of powers may prevent us from righting every wrong, it does so in order to ensure that we do not lose liberty.”
Nonetheless, legal analysts have doggedly pursued Trump and his cohorts for acting as if they are above the law. Just one day after the trial, former New York City mayor—and Trump’s former lawyer—Rudy Giuliani was disbarred from practicing law in the state for perpetuating false claims pertaining to the 2020 election. In Georgia, Trump alongside a group of 18 others are facing charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).
Trump currently charts in history as the first to have held the presidency and faced prosecution. But yesterday’s decision could effectively shield him from further repercussions in legal jurisdictions across the country.
“Stated simply, the Court has now declared for the first time in history that the most powerful official in the United States can (under circumstances yet to be fully determined) become a law unto himself,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote, while also mentioning it “breaks new and dangerous ground.”
Now, Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting Trump for fraudulent 2020 election claims, must carefully navigate allegations deciphering between official and unofficial acts. Judge Chuktan says she will give both the defense and prosecution teams three months to prepare for trial. A date has yet to be set.
First Lady hosts Pride celebration at the White House
By ASHLEIGH FIELDS Special to the AmNews
Military service members, celebrities, and patrons gathered on the South Lawn of the White House on June 26 to celebrate the conclusion of Pride Month. In 1999, President Bill Clinton created the legislation recognizing accomplishments from members of the LGBTQ+ community, which has expanded and evolved as a national tradition.
“Sometimes, home is the bonds we build through choice and chance—the communities we create together,” said First Lady Jill Biden. “I hope all of you feel that freedom and love on the South Lawn today— because your home is here, too,” she later added, citing various LGBTQ+ barriers broken by the president.
Notable achievements include the new pardon for service members who were court-martialed for participating in samesex relations and ending the ban on gay and bisexual men donating blood. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Biden administration is committed to doing more. “The Biden-Harris administration launched the 988 line to help, and we have a line dedicated to serving LGBTQI+ young people that can be reached by dialing 988 and pressing 3,” she said at a
June 17 press briefing. “This month, we will continue to celebrate courageous LGBTQI+ people and take pride in the example they
set for our nation and around the world.”
“We celebrate Pride this month because 55 years ago, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera stood up and began a movement,” said Ashley Biden, a social worker, activist, philanthropist, and fashion designer who was executive director of the Delaware Center for Justice from 2014 to 2019, in lauding Black LGBTQ+ activists, in her opening speech. “Their fight against injustice continues through us.”
Rapper Da Brat, Jean-Pierre, and U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg were among the luminaries spotted in the crowd.
“I love seeing all these beautiful, talented queer people from all different walks of life,” said rapper Marcus “Lyrical Mar” Browning. “We need to be seen. We need to be respected and honored. That’s why I came today.”
On rainbow-painted pillars of the White House, colorful pride fans and polychromatic balloon arches relayed the message that love prevails, which persisted as a prominent theme. Longtime ally Deborah Cox performed renditions of hit songs like Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” and Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.”
Singer and actress Deborah Cox, right, performs at a Pride Month celebration on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Joe Biden walks from the podium after speaking in the Cross Hall of the White House Monday, July 1, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Gun violence interrupter Carlos Jones puts ‘credible’ in incredible
Black
New Yorker
By TANDY LAU
Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member
In the realm of gun violence prevention, Switching Lifestylez co-founder Carlos Jones is both an original gangster and the new kid on the block.
Incarcerated at age 11, Jones grew up in the prison system. In total, he has spent more than 27 years behind bars across multiple sentences. The Brooklynite decided to give his life to Cure Violence after coming home roughly five years ago, drawing from his past as a Bloods gang member to focus on disrupting the violence he once perpetuated. In other words, a credible messenger speaking from experience.
“I was the problem in the street, but I became a solution,” Jones said. “I was that gang member everybody looked up to, so I transformed that to something else. Now I’m the guy that’s changing lives. They’ve seen the destruction I’ve done in the street and they’ve seen my transformation. They see that I’m doing positive things, and they can gravitate to me because I was once them. That’s how we can relate.”
He soon enlisted with Gangstas Making Astronomical Community Changes, Inc. (G-MACC), then the leading anti-violence organization in Fort Greene, and quickly climbed the ranks. But the nonprofit abruptly fell apart and Jones found himself volunteering on the frontlines. He started over from humble (and unpaid) scratch with Switching Lifestylez, which he co-founded with fellow ex-G-MACC employee Inez Wilson. For the first two years, they brokered peace with no funding—only credibility.
“We used to work for another organization, but the contract was taken,” Jones said. “But we continue to do the work…We didn’t want to leave our community [as] if no one is there for them.”
He describes his duties as mentoring high-
risk youth, mediating conflicts, cultivating job readiness, and assisting with reentry (from gang life or prison to society). Ultimately, those efforts all contribute to stopping shootings long before a firearm is picked up.
Jones’s work can’t be gauged by gun arrests or prosecutions, but Councilmember Crystal Hudson believes if numbers could fully depict his successes, they would measure “lives saved, conflicts mediated, and the widespread empowerment of a community left to fend for itself after decades of disinvestment and policy failure.”
“Spend a day with Carlos and you’ll see a man who is as loved and respected as much as he loves and respects everyone in the community with which he works—from our youth to our elders,” Hudson said. “He is a role model, mentor, and friend to many, and watching him work is incredible. He brings an unwavering sincerity and empathy that makes it clear why he is so beloved. Across our city, there is a great need for more people like Carlos and organizations like Switching Lifestylez.”
Hudson also called for credible messengers like Jones to receive “full tools and resources” for the long run, remarking that “a labor of love can only last so long.”
Those two years have seen Switching Lifestylez do a lot, without a lot.
“It was great to see people step up, because they saw the mission and they knew I couldn’t pay them—they just jumped on board,” Jones said. “Once they saw the picture, they understood my mission. We had no grants. We had nobody to write grants for us. We had no funding. We just had our voice.”
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
THE URBAN AGENDA
By David R. Jones, Esq
FARE is Fair: Low-Income Tenants
Shouldn’t Have to Pay a Broker Their Landlord Hired
In many ways, New York has long been ahead of the United States when it comes to housing policy. We built the first public rental housing in the nation. Our rent stabilization system features some of the country’s strongest tenant protections. Mitchell Lama and union-built cooperatives proved that affordable cooperatives could be an enticing housing option for middle-class families.
These are just a few of the ways that New York’s housing history has been exceptionally progressive. But in other ways, we are exceptionally regressive.
One of the most blatant examples is how New York City deals with the cost of moving to a new home. Aside from Boston, New York is the only big city in the country where, in addition to a security deposit and first month’s rent, tenants are expected to pay a broker’s fee – often 15 percent of the annual rent – even when it was the landlord who hired the broker to show the apartment. Everywhere else in the United States, the party who hired the broker pays the broker. But recently this unjust practice has come under scrutiny, and City Councilmember Chi Ossé has offered an ingeniously simple solution.
His Intro 360, known as “the FARE Act” (Fairness in Apartment Rental Expenses), is essentially a one sentence bill: “A person collecting fees in connection with a rental real estate transaction, whether such person is a representative or an agent of the owner of the property or of the tenant or prospective tenant in such transaction, shall collect such fees from the party employing such person in such transaction.” If the tenant selects a broker to show them several options in a particular area or of a particular style, the tenant is on the hook for the broker’s fee. But if a landlord hires a broker to show their apartment – the more common scenario these days – the landlord pays the fee. Either way the broker earns their pay for the services rendered, but, crucially, the hiring party will now bear the cost.
Textbook Regressive Economics
Broker fees are not just a question of fairness, they’re also a question of equity. Home sellers often pay the broker fee for their buyers, but landlords typically do not pay the broker fee for their tenants. Meanwhile, according to a recent Community Service Society of New York (CSS) report AMI in NYC, New York City homeowners earn nearly twice the household wages of renters. This is textbook regressive economics.
Among tenants, the most recent New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey shows that those who are moving tend to be white and have higher incomes than tenants who stay put. Among tenants surveyed in both the 2021 and 2023 surveys, 56 percent of renters who moved into empty apartments since 2021 make over $100,000, even though such tenants only comprise 36 percent of renters overall. Meanwhile, 50 percent of recent movers were white, even though white households make up just 32 percent of all tenants.
Part of this is because there are so few apartments available at prices low-income renters can afford. But another contributing factor is brokers fees. Since low-income tenants often do not have the savings to pay a big up-front fee in addition to the first month’s rent and a security deposit, the idea of moving is simply unfeasible. According to CSS’s 2023 Unheard Third survey, most tenants have very little in savings. While most homeowners we survey reported having “$10,000 or more” in savings, the most common response for renters was “$0 to $99.”
In fact, a majority of tenants said they could not cover a $400 emergency expense without taking on debt, borrowing from friends or family, or selling something in their possession. Meanwhile, according to the website Zillow, the median asking rent for a vacant apartment in New York City today is $3,600. The first month’s rent, security deposit and a broker’s fee for that apartment could cost $13,680 – an upfront cost few tenants can cobble together.
Some of the poorest tenants in the city pay their rent with CityFHEPS vouchers, a rental assistance program sponsored by New York City. But if those tenants want to move to a different apartment, the city will only pay half of the apartment’s broker fee. This puts a cost on the tenant that, almost by definition, they cannot afford, and therefore locks them out of the very mobility a voucher system promises.
There are many vexingly complicated issues in this city, but this is not one of them. New York City should lead the way in progressive housing policy, not stand out as one of the country’s two regressive outliers. Councilmember Osse’s bill is so simple and fair that it boggles the mind why it is not already law. It’s time for the City Council to pass the FARE Act and correct this basic inequity in our housing system.
Carlos Jones (Photo contributed by Carlos Jones)
Face Off: New York State mulls banning masks
By TANDY LAU
Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member
Countless public awareness campaigns pleaded with New Yorkers to wear masks to curb the spread of COVID-19 not too long ago. Now state officials say the contrary is needed to stop the spread of hate.
Black civil rights leadership, including NAACP’s Dr. Hazel Dukes and the National Urban League’s Marc Morial, rallied outside Columbia University on June 27 in support of the prospective ban on masks, pointing to the history of antiBlack hate groups covering their faces to duck accountability.
“Black communities know all too well that individuals who hide their identities with intent to terrorize, intimidate, or harass are a threat to all of our safety and have no place in New York,” Dukes said during the rally. “Reinstating New York’s masking laws will protect New Yorkers from some of the most terrifying periods in our history: when the Klan menaced Black Americans, faces covered, without accountability. We can’t let history repeat itself.”
“In the dark days of Jim Crow, those who carried out racial intimidation and violence felt no need to hide behind masks because they knew there would be no repercussions,” Morial added. “Those who carried out the violence at Charlottesville and on January 6 may have felt there would be no repercussions. They were wrong, but only because we saw their faces.”
But talks of a mask ban stem more directly from the recent pro-Palestinian protests than the history of anti-Black racism. Gov. Kathy Hochul floated the possibility of banning masks on the subway last month, citing a criminal incident involving demonstrators wrapped in keffiyehs—traditional Arabic head scarves frequently worn by movement members—allegedly demanding Zionist passengers to exit the train.
There is already a pending bill in the state legislature to ban masks at protests. Its author, Assemblymember Jeff Dinowitz, pointed to witnessing “more and more protestors openly target Jews, fully masked up, fully hidden” as being when he knew “we had to get our mask laws back on the book” during the rally. A previous statewide mask ban dated back to 1845, but was scrapped during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Of course, the rally took place in front of Columbia, where the most prominent antiZionist campus protest occurred. But even before the encampment of protestors and occupation of Hamilton Hall this spring, a “doxxing” truck blasted the identities of pro-Palestinian students and faculty on LED screens while calling them the university’s “leading anti-semites.”
Dovetailing the KKK with the pro-Palestinian movement drew outrage from Brooklyn Councilwoman Sandy Nurse, who took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to lambast
“We are still working through some of the language around health concerns for people who may have health issues after COVID19 and other respiratory issues,” said Assemblymember Brian Cunningham. “That is a primary concern of mine before signing on to any version of bills—making sure that we account for those particular situations.”
comparisons made at the rally. She later told the Amsterdam News that conflating the two “serves to create a flat and simplistic narrative that simply is not true.”
In a phone interview, Nurse said, “There is not a comparison to be made here, and it is not appropriate to liken the centuries of subjugation, bondage, and murder with impunity of Black people with protesters who are exercising their constitutional right to stand up against a genocide.”
Nurse, who was one of the councilmembers to visit the Columbia University encampments, also spoke about the doxxing concerns facing protesters. The propo-
nents promise a mask ban would curtail intimidation against Jewish New Yorkers and assist law enforcement in apprehending protesters who commit illegal acts. However, peaceful demonstrators may opt to cover their faces simply to protect themselves from harassment.
“I’ve been organizing protests in New York City since high school, and I’ve never seen this sort of level of fear about retaliation the way I have in recent months,” said Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. “It doesn’t matter if we have the right to protest in theory, if people are terrified that by simply raising
their voices they’ll be essentially punished by being kicked out of their school or stripped of their job or a number of other things.”
Assemblymember Brian Cunningham, one of the rally’s speakers, told the Amsterdam News that he sympathizes with the protesters’ concerns about doxxing and condemned attempts to jeopardize their use due to ideological differences, but he pointed to civil rights-era protests when demonstrators proudly showed their faces. Cunningham added that details are still being hammered out on Dinowitz’s pending bill, which he is currently not on, especially regarding public health concerns.
“We are still working through some of the language around health concerns for people who may have health issues after COVID-19 and other respiratory issues,” Cunningham said. “That is a primary concern of mine before signing on to any version of bills— making sure that we account for those particular situations.”
Proponents of mask bans have regularly underscored exemptions for public health and religious reasons, including current language in Dinowitz’s bill sparing “personal protective equipment for the the purpose of ensuring the physical health or safety of the wearer or others during a declared public health emergency.”
Despite exceptions firmly carved out for medical and religious purposes, Cahn questioned how authorities could properly verify an individual’s medical status under a mask ban.
Volunteers participate in the MTA Mask Force on Thu., March 18, 2021 at Broadway Junction. (Marc A. Hermann/MTA photo)
My ‘Black job’ is to protect democracy
By KEITH BOYKIN Word in Black
I’m not doing this again with y’all.
While Democrats debate about how to respond to Joe Biden’s debate performance, Trump and the Republicans are plotting to erase the entire 20th century.
That’s not an exaggeration. Donald Trump has publicly threatened to be a dictator on “day one” if he wins in November, and the Supreme Court justices he appointed have just immunized him from accountability and vested him with the unchecked powers of a monarch.
If Trump wins, he would empower an army of radical rightwing activists who plan to implement Project 2025; dismantle civil rights, women’s rights, and LGBTQ rights; rescind long-established progressive laws and policies; and swing a wrecking ball against the fragile institutions of government and democracy.
Yes, Joe Biden is a flawed candidate, but Donald Trump is a threat to America. If anyone should withdraw from the race, it’s the twice-impeached convicted criminal.
But some critics are making the same miscalculation they made with Hillary Clinton. A Trump victory will not bring on a progressive people’s revolution, strengthen third-party candidates, or buy us time to elect a better Democrat in the next election. It will set us so far back that it will take decades to unravel, no matter who wins in 2028. America cannot afford to make that mistake again.
Back in 2016, I was teaching at Columbia University when college students were complaining about Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee for president. Many raised legitimate concerns, including her support for the unpopular war in Iraq. But others raised less substantive issues. She’s not likable. She panders. And the most memorable critique: They didn’t believe her when she appeared on “The Breakfast Club” and announced that she carried hot sauce in her purse. I, too, opposed the war in Iraq, and that was one reason why I voted for Barack Obama instead of Clinton in the 2008 presidential primary. But then it was 2016, and Clinton was the Democratic nominee facing a
Republican opponent—Donald Trump—who posed a clear and present danger to democracy.
“If Hillary Clinton wins, we may have a liberal majority on the Supreme Court for the first time in nearly 50 years,” I posted on Twitter a few weeks before the election.
That was eight years ago.
Now, as Trump cements his legacy on the right-wing court, that opportunity could be lost for a generation, since Republicans have appointed six of the nine Supreme Court Justices.
Joe Biden is not the ideal candidate to represent the Democratic Party. He’s an 81-year-old white man leading a party that is increasingly represented by young people, women, and people of color.
I worked for Biden’s opponent when he ran for president in 1988. I did not vote for Biden when he ran the second time in 2008. I did not support him in the Democratic primary in 2020. I even wrote articles criticizing him after he was elected president. But I did vote for him in 2020 because I knew he was the best available option.
I am not invested in the question of replacing Biden on the
ticket. I would vote for Biden, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Wes Moore, Pete Buttigieg, or any other credible candidate whom Democrats nominate. This election is not about them. It’s about protecting our rights.
As a political commentator for CNN, I covered Trump for five years, following his racist speeches, midnight tweets, and unhinged press conferences. Some Americans may not remember the constant chaos and crises, from Charlottesville to Covid, that defined the Trump years, but I do, and I refuse to go back.
I know that Democrats prefer young, articulate, charismatic presidential candidates in the tradition of John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. I do, too, but the young guys don’t always deliver. It was not JFK, but an older, less attractive Lyndon Johnson who signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, 60 years ago today. As Jesse Jackson said at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, “I would rather have Roosevelt in a wheelchair than Reagan on a horse.”
Trump is far more enter -
taining than Joe Biden, but a presidential election is not a popularity contest. It’s a job interview. Unfortunately, the majority of white voters plan to install a twice-impeached, quadruple-indicted, convicted criminal with a 50-year history of racism in the most powerful position in America. My Black job, if there is such a thing, is to stop them.
Keith Boykin is a New York Times–bestselling author, TV and film producer, and former CNN political commentator. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Boykin served in the White House, co-founded the National Black Justice Coalition, cohosted the BET talk show My Two Cents, and taught at the Institute for Research in AfricanAmerican Studies at Columbia University in New York. He’s a Lambda Literary Award-winning author and editor of seven books. He lives in Los Angeles.
“Black Vote, Black Power,” a collaboration between Keith Boykin and Word in Black, examines the issues, the candidates, and what’s at stake for Black America in the 2024 presidential election.
Activists: Biden can win Black vote by forming a reparations commission
By KAREN JUANITA CARRILLO Amsterdam News Staff
Kamm Howard is leading a push to have a reparations commission established by President Joe Biden before the November 2024 general election. Howard, a Chicago-based entrepreneur and real estate investor, is the founder of the grassroots groups Reparations United and Earn the Black Vote. He says his organizations have been working along with several others to send weekly batches of postcards to the White House, urging Biden to fulfill the campaign promise he made to establish a reparations commission during his presidency.
When he campaigned for the presidency in 2020, Biden stated that his administration “will support a study of repa -
rations.” The postcards being sent to the White House call on the president to fulfill that pledge.
The Poynter Institute’s factchecking website PolitiFact noted this past February that “Biden promised to support the study of reparations. He did not promise to pay reparations— only to support its study.
“Biden could form a commission to study reparations or back a long-standing proposal in Congress to study it. He could give a speech calling for a study on reparations,” PolitiFact added, “We found no evidence that he took any such steps.”
Four years of waiting for Biden to take that step is no longer acceptable, Howard told the AmNews . It’s a goal that has been fought
for since the end of African enslavement in the United States. It was most recently a crusade waged by the late Rep. John Conyers Jr., who re-introduced his “H.R.40 - Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act” bill in every session of Congress from 1989 to 2017. Howard, a long-term reparations scholar, worked with Rep. Conyers for 12 years. He is a 16-year member of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) and has most recently been assisting Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee after she took on the task of championing H.R. 40 in Congress. Lee has sponsored the bill every year now since 2017.
Talks about the creation of a reparations commission had See ACTIVISTS on page 27
Go With The Flo
FLO
ANTHONY
Nelly threw his wife Ashanti a surprise baby shower recently at the Dolce & Gabbana Boutique in the Big Apple, reports Essence Magazine. The intimate soiree was attended by family and friends of both expectant parents, including Fat Joe, who credits himself for getting them back together last year after they broke up in 2013. The new bundle of joy will be Nelly’s third child. The St. Louisborn rapper also adopted his sister’s two children after she passed away from cancer. The baby is Ashanti’s first. Said Ashanti, “I’m excited about seeing this little human version of myself and the person that I love so much.” Congratulations Nelly and Ashanti. I just love it when a great love story comes to fruition….
Kicking off this year’s #Sharkfest, the new one-hour special “Shark Beach with Anthony Mackie: Gulf Coast” recently premiered on National Geographic in the U.S. The show is also available on Disney+ and Hulu in the U.S. The Marvel superstar, played by Mackie, tackles a huge challenge: the fishing phenomenon called depredation, where sharks prey on fishermen’s catches before they can be retrieved. Mackie, who is a lifelong fisherman, sets out to learn more about these encounters in his hometown New Orleans… Hip hop veteran Jim Jones showed up at All Elite Wrestling’s pay per view, The Forbidden Door at the UBS Arena in Long Island, N.Y., on June 30. The Dipset member introduced and escorted the company’s first Black world champion: professional wrestler and rapper Swerve Strickland to the ring for the main event. Jones got a huge ovation from the more than 11,000 people in attendance when he said he “swerves when he drives” and reminded fans that “we fly high, no lie—you know this.” AEW has become the biggest rival of WWE and has attracted celebrities like Shaquille O’Neal, Rosario Dawson, T-Pain, and Snoop Dogg on its shows, which air on the cable channels TBS and TNT. Sources say Damon Dash and comedienne Sam Jay were also backstage at the show… We hear… …SCCG management announced a joint venture with KSN Gaming to launch “BooRay!, The Biggest Gambling Card Game in Sports and Entertainment”...
Community Board 10 honors Harlem politicos
Friends, family, community members, and elected officials gathered recently to see the Manhattan Community Board 10 honor Dr. Hazel Dukes and Assemblymember Inez Dickens at the MLK Pavilion in Harlem Hospital.
Hazel Dukes and Inez Dickens (Bill Moore photos)
Harlem’s SCAN-Harbor’s gala shines spotlight on talented youth
Contributed Press Release
SCAN-Harbor, the largest youth service provider in Harlem, East Harlem, and the South Bronx, held a fundraising gala at the Plaza Hotel in New York recently, featuring appearances from partners such as the New York Yankees, Madison Square Garden Entertainment’s Garden of Dreams Foundation, YouTube Music, New York Life
Foundation, and an enthralling performance from hip hop legend Doug E. Fresh. The stars of the show, however, were the performers from SCAN-Harbor’s Performing Arts Academy, which is composed of program participants from SCAN-Harbor’s services. Young people ranging in age from 5 to 22 performed for nearly an hour, belting out rousing renditions of classics and a few originals.
Doug E. Fresh performs with youth from SCAN-Harbor’s Performing Arts Academy perform at the SCAN-Harbor 2024 Better Together Gala
Youth from SCAN-Harbor’s Performing Arts Academy at the SCAN-Harbor 2024 Better Together Gala
Siblings, Kai Rey, Madison, and Shawn Smith from SCAN-Harbor’s Performing Arts Academy at the SCAN-Harbor 2024 Better Together Gala (Photos courtesy of SCAN-Harbor)
Chloe McMillan, artistic director of SCANHarbor’s Performing Arts Academy at the SCAN-Harbor 2024 Better Together Gala
Shawn Smith Jr., an alumni of SCANHarbor’s Performing Arts Academy, accepts the inaugural Beth and Stephen Dannhauser Excellence in Performing Arts Award at the SCAN-Harbor 2024 Better Together Gala
Union Matters
OSHA, Dept. of Labor recommend federal standards for worker heat exposure
By KAREN JUANITA CARRILLO Amsterdam News Staff
Heat has become the leading weather-related killer in the United States. Death certificates show that “more than 14,000 Americans have died directly from heat-related causes since 1979,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Heat exhaustion, dehydration, heat stroke, and heat-related illnesses can be agonizing for people on a normal day, so just imagine how extreme heat affects those who have to labor in heat daily, for hours at a time.
The Biden administration has announced a docket of new actions designed to help individuals and communities deal with the heat. Under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Department of Labor, the administration is proposing a new rule that would set federal safety standards regarding the amount of excessive heat workers have to put up with in the workplace.
The administration says that if the new rules are finalized, they could protect up to 36 million U.S. workers from excessive heat.
The proposed new rules require employers to have injury and illness prevention plans in place so they can deal with workplace heat hazards. Employers will also be required to provide mandatory rest and water breaks when dealing with high heat conditions.
“Every worker should come home safe and healthy at the end of the day, which is why the Biden-Harris administration is taking this significant step to protect workers from the dangers posed by extreme heat,” said Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su in a statement. “As the most proworker administration in history, we are committed to ensuring that those doing difficult work in some of our economy’s most critical sectors are valued and kept safe in the workplace.”
“Outdoor workers, particularly those engaging in strenuous physical activity, disproportionately face greater heat-related health threats,” the EPA said in
its latest “Climate Change Indicators” report. “For example, construction workers represent only 6% of the total U.S. workforce, yet they account for more than onethird of all reported occupational deaths associated with heat exposure. Farmworkers also have disproportionately high rates of heat-related illnesses and deaths. Worker safety and productivity will likely be increasingly challenged as temperatures outdoors continue to rise.”
The EPA said to reduce risks, employers can implement preventive measures like consistent availability of drinking water, frequent work breaks, and training workers to recognize signs of heat-related illnesses, as well as limiting work hours during times when temperatures are known to peak.
The newly proposed federal
standards follow a national campaign created as far back as 2011 to urge the federal government to do more to protect workers from the impacts of climate change. Up to 130 organizations, including Public Citizen; the United Farm Workers Foundation; United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America; and Farmworker Justice, have called on the government to spotlight how susceptible workers are to the effects of excessive heat and that they could be liable to injury and death while just trying to earn a living.
“The new Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rule on excessive heat in the workplace that President Biden announced today will save lives,” asserted the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union in a statement. “The solu-
tions to heat-related injuries are common-sense: hydration, shade, and rest breaks. But most employers won’t implement them voluntarily and Republican governors, including Ron DeSantis in Florida and Greg Abbott in Texas, have blocked local governments from implementing these protections.
“The consequences are tragic. Last summer, Gabriel Infante died on the job while working for a contractor, digging a trench to move internet fiber in San Antonio. He became confused and dizzy in the high humidity under the hot summer sun. His co-workers tried to help him by cooling him down with water, but his supervisor thought he was on drugs and wanted to call the police. He died at the hospital from a severe heatstroke.”
“OSHA’s proposed standard con-
tains common-sense safeguards, including regular rest breaks and hydration, that will not only save lives but prevent countless illnesses and injuries,” added United Steelworkers International President David McCall. “While unions regularly negotiate these kinds of protections for their members, the new standard would set a high national bar and expand coverage for millions more workers at a time when the country is experiencing record heat waves triggered by climate change.”
OSHA encourages anyone who wants to add their views about the dangers of excessive heat and climate change and how new federal standards could affect workers to visit https://www.osha.gov/ laws-regs/rulemakingprocess#vnav-tab2 and submit a written comment for review.
A construction worker drinks water while on a break from working on a street paving crew in Orinda, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot photo)
How Harlem became an annual summer stage for Black LGBTQ+ visibility
By ENOCH NAKLEN Special to the AmNews
What began as a two-block party in its early years has matured into a vibrant smorgasbord of events spanning over half a mile, beckoning thousands of eager participants from all across the country at the edge of west Harlem. Along a now six-block stretch, tens of thousands of celebrants came out for Harlem Pride, now in its 15th year. On the penultimate day of Pride Month, the blocks of 12th Avenue between 133rd and 138th streets overflowed with song, dance and laughter.
At the nucleus of the event, Carmen Neely, co-founder and CEO of Harlem Pride, proudly oversaw a decade and a half of growth, nurturing what was once a relatively modest concept into a major, versatile attraction for scores of people each June. In recent times, Neely takes on the challenge of continuing this legacy of diversity and growth through Harlem Pride, making history as the first consistent, sponsored celebration of LGBTQ+ people in NYC. After 15 years, she recalls facing many setbacks, including achieving general acceptance, finding affordable event space, and fielding incessant questions of why Black Pride should even exist.
“Our key to overcoming these obstacles has been our willingness to learn and adapt, and take small steps to test the waters before fully implementing a new program or event,” Neely told AmNews
The modern Harlem revolutionary continues the legacy of generations of LGBTQ+ innovators who have consistent-
ly pushed the boundaries of culture in a historically underrepresented community. From the Harlem Renaissance onwards, Harlem has been a pioneering location for LGBTQ+ visibility, especially in the entertainment industry. It was here that the first drag balls were held, and queer nightclubs thrived, providing safe spaces for thousands to express their authentic selves.
Although Harlem Pride’s primary objective is to recognize the progression of Harlem’s LGBTQ+ community, the festival’s leaders expressed understanding of their duty as a collective of underrepresented groups to advocate for the wellbeing of other minorities. This year, Harlem Pride hosts Marquise Vilson and Dominique Jackson launched the day-of performances on the main stage with words of empathy and an appeal to action regarding the war in Gaza.
“We know it’s on us to show up for everybody, not just our own struggles,” Vilson said.
The Fair Housing Justice Center (FJHC) was one of many sponsored organizations curated for the advocacy of LGBTQ+ members in the face of domestic discrimination. The center’s executive director, Elizabeth Grossman, paired pens and bookmarks featuring liberating visuals with personalized brochures printed in both English and Spanish. Throughout the day, Grossman was able to advertise the center as a tool to “help eliminate housing discrimination”.
Although the FHJC is small, Harlem Pride provides ample opportunity to reach
How the 50-30-20 Rule Can Help You on Your Journey to Financial Success
Having a plan for your money is crucial to building a solid financial foundation. If you’re just getting started on your financial journey, the 50-30-20 rule can help you spend and save your money wisely.
By distributing your dollars into three main categories or buckets: needs, wants and savings, the idea is to limit fixed expenses (or needs) to 50% of your after-tax income and discretionary expenses (or wants) to 30%, leaving 20% for savings.
The 50-30-20 rule isn’t a requirement but can be a great starting point to help you take control of your finances, plan your spending and progress towards your financial goals.
50: What are your needs?
In this bucket, half of your funds go toward paying expenses you can’t avoid. We all need food, housing and healthcare, and other needs could include transportation, clothing and utilities. Regular debt payments, like monthly credit card minimums and loan payments, would also be considered a need because you have a deadline to pay them each month.
What makes something a “need” versus a “want” depends on your lifestyle. Transportation is typically considered a need, but the type of transportation you select might vary depending on where you live. Having a vehicle may be a legitimate need to get to work and earn money to pay bills, but consider whether you need a luxury car, or if something less expensive would work.
We also need food and clothing, but funds spent on these two categories can flow into the “wants” bucket depending on your choices, such as dining out versus cooking at home or wearing designer gear versus department store basics.
30: What do you want?
Everyone should be able to enjoy life’s simple pleasures, and maybe a few extravagant ones as well. Put aside 30% of your funds for these “wants,” which can include entertainment, cable/ streaming services, dining out, fitness memberships, travel, hobbies, personal care beyond the basics and a cell phone beyond the basic plan.
Overspending can be common in this category since it’s fun to spend money on things we enjoy. Take time to prioritize your most important wants and desires and cut back if you find your spending here going over 30%.
20: Save for the future
This category is all about what you want to do with the money in the future. Do you want to travel the world? Retire early? Help your children pay for college? Once your essential needs and more immediate wants are handled, you can put the rest of your funds — 20% — toward achieving your long-term goals.
If you want to pay off debt more quickly, beyond making your ongoing required payments, you can use money from this bucket to help speed up your plan as well.
Refilling your buckets
Once you’ve given this rule a try for a few months, you might notice your spending and savings habits fall well outside of the 50-30-20 guideline. That’s when it’s time to make some tradeoffs.
Be honest about whether the items you’re putting in the needs category are vital to your life or if you could classify some or all those expenses as a want. It’s OK to spend more on housing if having a more expensive place is important to you; it just means you spend less on a car to balance things out.
If your wants are way beyond 30%, consider scaling back and contributing more to saving for long-term goals. In the same vein, if you don’t have 20% leftover after spending on needs and wants, consider making some adjustments in your other buckets so you have enough for savings.
Tying it all together
The 50-30-20 rule can help you allocate your money to needs, wants and savings and offer insights into where you may need to cut back. Use it to help you on your journey to financial success.
Sponsored content by JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Bestselling author Tunita James showcasing her LGBTQ+ children’s book universe, ‘Grace’s Universe,’ with a variety of products at Harlem Pride 2024. ((Photo by Enoch Naklen)
Some comeuppance for Giuliani
Mired in bankruptcy, Rudy Giuliani suffered another financial blow on Tuesday after the New York State Appellate Court disbarred him. The disbarment of New York City’s former mayor and erstwhile personal attorney of Trump came mainly for his role supporting Trump in the interference with the 2020 election.
Black New Yorkers and elsewhere, if not cheering this setback, probably have little sympathy for his predicament; many would like to see him behind bars. His most recent troubles stem from his defamation of two African American Georgia election workers—Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss—with baseless claims of fraud. They sued him for $150 million.
There was a time when Rudy was riding high after being deemed “America’s Mayor” for his presence and management of the city after 9/11. Even that conduct was not widely heralded, though, among those New Yorkers who remember his most egregious actions, particularly when he sided with off-duty police officers in 1992 in defiance of Mayor David Dinkins’s plan to make the Civilian Complaint Review Board independent of the police. When he defeated Dinkins and became mayor, Giulani accused Rev. Sharpton, who in 1995 joined picketers outside Freddy’s Clothing Store on 125th Street, as an “outside agitator.” That was akin to his reportedly calling Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis a “ho.”
As we often say in the Black community, “What goes around, comes around,” and it’s time for Giuliani to get some comeuppance for all of his misdeeds. Perhaps this current event augurs well for the ongoing counts against the man he once represented—who he claims still owes him money. Giuliani said he wasn’t surprised by the disbarment, nor are we. It’s not because the system is corrupt, as he charges, but because sometimes the system gets things right.
The War on Drugs has failed: The path to sensible marijuana policy
By SENATOR CHUCK SCHUMER
This week, Americans across the country will come together to celebrate our freedom and independence—but our current marijuana laws remind us that we still have a long way to go to achieve true freedom and justice for all.
For decades, millions of Americans— most often Americans of color—have had their lives ruined by the failed War on Drugs. America’s broken drug policies have disproportionately filled our prisons with Black and Latino Americans who, in many instances, possessed small amounts of marijuana. Studies show Americans of color have been arrested at rates nearly four times higher than their white peers despite similar levels of marijuana use.
The cycle of incarceration must end, and our imprecise and counterproductive drug policies need to be fixed.
I am the first Senate majority leader in U.S. history to call for the complete de-scheduling of marijuana, ending its federal prohibition once and for all. I have seen both the immense potential of commonsense drug laws at the state level, as well as the horrible consequences of outdated policies.
That’s why I was proud to see President Biden take a major step toward reversing the harms of the War on Drugs by announcing that his administration’s Drug Enforcement Agency is reclassifying marijuana from a Schedule 1 to a Schedule 3 drug.
The Drug Enforcement Agency’s decision is the most significant change in federal drug law in decades. Under the new Schedule 3 classification, cannabis will be recognized for its medical use. The move will also open the doors to conducting more research about its benefits, and potentially lower taxes for cannabis businesses.
But the work is not finished. Under the president’s announcement, cannabis is still not decriminalized. This is where Congress must step in.
It would call for commonsense safety guidelines, like guidelines on how marijuana products are labeled; require new standards to prevent impaired driving; and require Health and Human Services (HHS) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support research into cannabis’s health impacts.
ican people. A national survey from last month showed that 88% of Americans— nearly 9 people in 10—agree that marijuana should be legalized for medical or recreational use. In fact, roughly 90% of Americans live in states that have legalized cannabis for medical or recreational use.
Elinor R. Tatum: Publisher and Editor in Chief
Damaso Reyes: Executive & Investigative
Editor
Kristin Fayne-Mulroy: Managing Editor
Aaron Foley: News Editor
Cyril Josh Barker: Digital Editor
Siobhan "Sam"
Recently, I introduced the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act (CAOA) alongside Senators Cory Booker (DNJ), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and 15 more of our Senate Democrat colleagues. Our legislation would finally end the federal prohibition on marijuana and expunge past convictions for people charged with low-level, nonviolent offenses.
Our bill would also tear down long-standing barriers for a healthy marijuana industry to develop lawfully, by making sure that cannabis and cannabis-related businesses—particularly small businesses—have access to critical financial services to help them succeed in this booming industry.
I strongly believe that to end the harmful effects of the War on Drugs, something far more sensible must take its place. Our bill would provide a good solution, and I will work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pass this legislation as soon as possible.
Reforming America’s drug laws as they relate to cannabis is a step that aligns with the overwhelming majority of the Amer-
The consensus at the state level is hard to dispute: Cannabis decriminalization has been popular and successful, and it’s time the federal government caught up with the science and with public sentiment.
Now is the time for the federal government to seize the momentum and embrace an approach to marijuana policy led by science, justice, and common sense. As Majority Leader of the Senate, I will continue to make marijuana reform a top priority and will never stop until we finally achieve meaningful change.
Chuck Schumer is the Senate Majority Leader and represents New York State in the U.S. Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) calls for passage of the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, which would end federal prohibition on marijuana and expunge past convictions for people charged with low-level, nonviolent offenses (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite photo)
Remembering Willie Mays
By ALLISON J. DAVIS
I was never a baseball fan. But like so many, I was a fan of Willie Mays. Mays died on June 18 at the age of 93. As a writer-producer at NBC’s “Today Show,” I met many ball players. Yankee great Elston Howard lived in my town of Teaneck, New Jersey. His teammate Mickey Mantle signed a ball for my son Tyler. I shook the hand of home run hitter Hank Aaron who often visited the show.
But Willie and I went way back. When I was born in April 1953, my parents brought me home to their new apartment on Harlem River Drive. At the time, it was known as the Colonial Park Houses. My mother recalled that she wanted to live in the Riverton, but she and my father didn’t meet the income requirements at the time, so they settled on 159-26 Harlem River Drive. We lived on the 14th floor. Our bedroom faced the parking lot and the historic Polo Grounds.
I was about three years old when I got out of the crib and into a twin bed in a room shared with my brother who was two years older than me. As I was no longer restricted by the bars of a crib, I could jump between beds and watch the activity on the street, many floors below us. During the day, we often heard the roar of the crowd coming from the ballpark, but the real action
started when the sun went down. My mother insisted on an early bedtime so she could catch her breath as she awaited my father’s return home from work and school. He was attending Columbia University during the day and was a skycap at LaGuardia Airport at night. Finding a parking space when there was a night-time doubleheader proved challenging, but he managed to snag a place before taking the elevator up to our apartment. Though my brother and I were supposed to be asleep, my father often found us in the window attracted by the bright lights of the stadium. We tried to be quiet so as to not call attention to our antics because my mother would undoubtedly scold us and give my father a dirty look. So we were quiet as we watched the game together in the best seats in the house. Because I was pretty young, I didn’t understand the game or know that there were other players besides Willie Mays as that’s the only one my dad ever talked about. In fact, I called baseball “the Willie Mays game.” He was the best reference I had to someone hitting a ball with a stick. I remember one evening as we watched the game from our bedroom window, waiting patiently for my dad to come home, we heard the apartment door open, and my father quietly heading towards our bedroom. Realizing it wasn’t my mother, we quickly
opened our eyes and greeted our dad with smiles and hugs. My father, who had his hand behind his back, slowly showed us an old dirty baseball. He told us that it fell into his hand as he signaled to come into the parking lot. “You caught a Willie Mays ball?” I asked. My dad smiled and we believed he did. We kept the ball and that story until adulthood.
When the New York Giants announced that they would leave the Polo Grounds for San Francisco in 1957, my parents decided it was time for us to leave the projects as well. I initially thought it was because Willie Mays was leaving but in fact, my mother was pregnant with my younger brother and we needed more room. So, we moved to Teaneck.
Since learning of the death of Willie Mays, my older brother and I have been struggling to remember those days living across the street from the Polo Grounds. Though our shared memories are not identical, they are close enough to tell our story of the impact one sport’s hero had on two little kids watching history from our bedroom window.
Allison J. Davis is a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists and a member of the New York Association of Black Journalists. She spent much of her career at NBC News.
Fourth of July
CHRISTINA GREER, PH.D.
Every year on the Fourth of July holiday I have conflicted feelings, and this year was no different. As I see the countless American flags on lawns and on clothes, I cannot fully wrap my mind around two competing ideas. On the one hand, this is my country. My ancestors helped build every inch of this nation. Their labor, and the labor of millions of African Americans, is the reason this nation has been at the forefront of global power for so long. But on the other hand, how do I belong to a country that is seemingly and consistently trying to destroy people who look like me? From local police to national policy, the group that consistently feels the brunt of most ills are Black folks. “Last hired and first fired!” as James Evans from “Good Times” used to say. Needless to say, each year as America celebrates its independence, I am left to ask myself some hard questions about whether I truly belong to this nation and if I will ever be considered a full citizen.
This year, many Black folks celebrated the newly federally mandated Juneteenth holiday on June 19 as the “true” holiday to acknowledge Black people’s independence and freedom when the formal end of U.S. chattel slavery came to a close…on paper. As we know, many forms of slavery continued to persist for decades to come in the form of convict leasing, sharecropping, and draconian Jim Crow laws that limited Black American freedoms, mobility, financial advancement, and much more. This country has a well documented histo-
ry of brutality and exclusion. It also has a history of incorporating many different racial and ethnic groups (even if begrudgingly) who come to this independent nation seeking more freedoms and an opportunity to experience the American Dream. This dream has not been doled out equally and for many it feels permanently deferred. However, it is the promise and the hope of America that allows so many, Black folks included, to believe in and celebrate its promise. I am going to spend the remainder of the month thinking about what freedom and independence mean to me. It will be an interesting journey to do so since I’ll be spending the month in London, England. However, whenever I visit England, I always have such clear(er) thoughts about America. Possibly because, similar to what poet and philosopher Kahlil Gibran has written, the mountain is often clearer to the climber once the climber has left the mountain.
America is my complicated mountain. It is the recent home of my ancestors, it is the place they helped build, and it is a land that possesses some true beauty and amazing people within its borders. So, as I think about independence this month, I will process all of it, the ugly and America the beautiful.
Christina Greer, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Fordham University; author of “Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream”; and co-host of the podcast FAQ-NYC and host of The Blackest Questions podcast at TheGrio.
San Francisco Giants outfielder Willie Mays displays the four baseballs in the clubhouse representing the four homers he hit against the Milwaukee Braves, April 30, 1961. (AP Photo
Caribbean Update
As Beryl hits, Caribbean leaders warn about climate change
BY BERT WILKINSON Special to the AmNews
By the end of this week, the world will know the full extent of the damage caused by Hurricane Beryl, one of the earliest storms to have ever formed in the region, as it makes it way from Trinidad and Tobago at the southeast end of the Caribbean island chain to as far north as Jamaica and possibly Belize in the northwest.
The formation of the category four storm in the past week has triggered panic across the region, as most nations are not used to dealing with a fully developed storm this early in a season that normally begins on June 1 and concludes
at the end of November each year. Rewriting many records, Beryl, officials say, has moved from a depression to a full-fledged hurricane in less than 50 hours, a development that experts say is highly unusual but points to the realities of climate change that regional governments had been complaining about so persistently around the globe.
Forecasters say that the impact will be felt from Tobago, Trinidad’s sister isle to the north, right through the Eastern Caribbean island chain up to Jamaica by the end of the week. Prime Minister Andrew Holness, like leaders of other nations in Beryl’s path, took to national airwaves at the weekend to warn Jamaicans to be prepared for the very
worst as “all the models have suggested that if it is not a direct impact, it will be in the vicinity of Jamaica. We expect that this will bring adverse weather conditions, and we expect that by Wednesday morning we will be experiencing such conditions.”
Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves in St. Vincent also warned locals to take Beryl seriously, noting that “this is a major hurricane. This is not a joke. We see what major hurricanes have done nearby to Grenada with Hurricane Ivan, and what has happened to Dominica in 2017 with Hurricane Maria, though Category Five in those cases. But the point I want to make, I want to repeat, this hurricane is intensifying,” he said.
But Grenada, just north of Trinidad and down dip from St. Vincent, is the one preparing for a battering, as models have shown that it might well pass over the island of just over 100,000 people as Ivan did back in September 2004, when the storm left much of the country like a South American gold mining camp, with tarpaulins of various colors dotting the island and replacing blown off roofs. Mainland Grenada has, however, been spared the worst of the storm this time as the eye has picked out the two smaller islands, Petite Martinique and Carriacou. PM Dickon Mitchell urged citizens to remain indoors at least until midnight when attempts to assess the
See CARIBBEAN on page 15
While Biden is incoherent, Trump remains King Liar, including against immigrants
FELICIA PERSAUD
IMMIGRATION KORNER
What happened to Joe Biden between the State of the Union in February and the much-anticipated CNN debate on June 27? Biden appeared as a robotic, dazed version of himself, with his cognitive abilities and responses reduced to incoherence and absurdity, lacking the verbal pushback he needed.
By contrast, Donald “King Liar” Trump remained his usual bombastic, dishonest, xenophobic self, continuing to play the “blame the immigrants” card. Much like he did in 2016 and throughout his presidency, Trump continued his “blame the immigrants” rhetoric, avoiding direct answers and focusing on lies about his tenure and the 2020 election. His entire performance reminded me of a childhood song from Trinidadian Calypsonian Lord Nelson:
“Yuh hear lie, King liar.
Teacher Percy say if yuh tell ah lie
You going to hell as soon as yuh die.”
Here are some of the lies Trump told during the 90-minute debate about immigrants and immigration:
False claims on immigrant numbers and criminals
Trump claimed President Biden has allowed in 18 million people from “prisons, jails, and mental institutions,” which is unfounded. “We have a border that’s the most dangerous place anywhere in the world — considered the most dangerous
place anywhere in the world,” Trump falsely said.
But independent data shows that from 2021 to 2024, border officials arrested a little over 100,000 non-citizens with criminal convictions. Encounters do not equate to admissions; they often lead to expulsions, and one person may be counted multiple times.
Linking crime and immigration
Trump again linked crime to immigration, a recurring Republican theme. Research consistently shows immigrants, particularly undocumented ones, commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens. A Cato Institute paper found that undocumented immigrants were 26% less likely than native-born Americans to be convicted of homicide, and legal immigrants were 61% less likely. Texas data from 2013 to 2022 support this, showing lower conviction rates for undocumented immigrants than for natural-born citizens.
Despite high-profile crimes allegedly committed by undocumented immigrants, FBI statistics do not differentiate crimes by immigration status. Studies indicate undocumented individuals are less likely than native-born Americans to be arrested for violent, drug, or property crimes. While the number of foreigners on the terrorist watch list has increased, they remain a small fraction of total migrants, with the U.S. Border Patrol encountering 169 people from the list from October 2022 to September 2023.
Exaggerating threats and misleading comparisons
Trump falsely claimed the U.S. is overrun with terrorists, describing the
country as a “rat’s nest.” He said Biden “allowed millions of people to come in here from prisons, jails, and mental institutions to come into our country and destroy our country.”
He disparaged Biden’s efforts to seek congressional support for border control, claiming he managed without legislation by simply closing the border. Trump misleadingly compared migrant living conditions to those of unhoused veterans, labeling them “luxury hotels.”
Trump falsely accused Biden of causing deaths by allowing migrants into the country and used nearly every question to repeat his lies.
Immigrants getting Social Security
Trump falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants are being put “on Social Security.”
“They’re going to destroy Social Security. This man is going to single-handedly destroy Social Security. These millions and millions of people coming in, they’re trying to put them on Social Security. He will wipe out Social Security. He will wipe out Medicare.”
The fact is undocumented immigrants cannot qualify for either Social Security or Medicaid and CHIP coverage. Many lawful permanent residents (LPRs or green card holders) have a five-year waiting period before they can get Medicaid and CHIP coverage. Only individuals with a work permit who pay taxes with a valid Social Security number can eventually collect Social Security, as they would have paid into the system. Undocumented immigrants, many of whom pay taxes with a valid tax-ID number from the IRS, cannot file for Social Secu -
rity benefits. The Brookings Institution has noted that future U.S. population growth, including the sustainability of the Social Security trust fund, depends on immigration levels.
Immigrants taking Black and Hispanic jobs
Trump also used divisive tactics, claiming that new migrants were taking “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs,” terminology which received criticism.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that Black and Hispanic workers have seen gains during both the Biden and Trump administrations. Under Trump, the unemployment rate for Black people fell to 5.3% in September 2019 and to 3.9% for Latinos, reaching record lows at the time. These rates dropped again under Biden, with Black unemployment hitting a new low of 4.8% in April 2023 and Hispanic unemployment reaching 3.9% in September 2022.
Trump claimed: “The only jobs he (Biden) created are for illegal immigrants and bounce-back jobs.”
Ignoring direct questions
When asked if he would deport every undocumented immigrant, including those with jobs and families, Trump avoided the question, instead reverting to his xenophobic talking points and falsely linking immigration to crime.
“Yuh hear lie, King liar.
Teacher Percy say if yuh tell ah lie
You going to hell as soon as yuh die.”
Felicia J. Persaud is the publisher of NewsAmericasNow.com, a daily news outlet focused on positive news on the Black immigrant communities of the Caribbean and Latin America.
Caribbean
Continued from page 14
situation will be made.
Ironically, Grenada should have been hosting this week’s regional leaders summit, but the 15-nation bloc announced a postponement as priorities shifted to Beryl. The formation of the storm with 150 miles per hour winds during Monday, will give the region further evidence in arguing that the climate is changing and that the countries which pollute the least are bearing the brunt of storms, as Bloc Secretary General Carla Barnett and others have pointed out.
“Climate change has a very tangible human, economic, and financial impact on Caricom. We recall the record-breaking 2017 hurricane season when Hurricanes Irma and Maria, within a period of two weeks, charted paths of destruction across the region. Damage estimated at more than 200% of GDP occurred in one of our member states—Dominica. In Barbuda, the housing stock was almost totally destroyed. Critical infrastructure, including water and electricity, homes, health facilities and schools, were decimated in the wake of these storms,” she told a recent international forum in Antigua. “Even as we meet at this conference, the region is entering an Atlantic hurricane season that is expected to be extremely active with a forecast of 11 hurricanes, five
of them slated to be major storms of Category 3 intensity or higher. The Caribbean Climate Outlook Forum (CARICOF), coordinated out of the Caribbean Institute of
Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH), predicted near record heat for the Caribbean region from April to September 2024. Several of our member states have already
been experiencing periods of prolonged drought, and this has been compounded by forest and bush fires across our region,” she said.
Tai Chi Classes for Mind, Body, and Spirit
Learn the basic concepts, exercises, and techniques of Tai Chi in this series of free, weekly in-person classes, led by martial arts instructor Malik Cadwell, a Mind/Body Therapist with the MSK Ralph Lauren Center in Harlem.
your smartphone camera at the QR code and tap the link to learn more.
Evacuees from Union Island arrive in Kingstown, St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The island, in the Grenadines archipelago, was hit by Hurricane Beryl. (AP Photo/Lucanus Ollivierre)
Health
U.S. surgeon general declares gun violence a public health emergency
By AMANDA SEITZ Associated Press
WASHINGTON—On Tuesday, the U.S. surgeon general issued “Firearm Violence: A Public Health Crisis in America,” an advisory that declared gun violence a public health crisis, driven by the fast-growing number of injuries and deaths involving firearms in the country.
The advisory issued by Dr. Vivek Murthy, the nation’s top doctor, came as the U.S. grappled with another summer weekend marked by mass shootings that left dozens of people dead or wounded.
“People want to be able to walk through their neighborhoods and be safe,” Murthy told the Associated Press in a phone interview. “America should be a place where all of us can go to school, go to work, go to the supermarket, go to our house of worship, without having to worry that that’s going to put our life at risk.”
To drive down gun deaths, Murthy called on the U.S. to ban automatic rifles, introduce universal background checks for purchasing guns, regulate the industry, pass laws that would restrict gun use in public spaces, and penalize people who fail to store their weapons safely.
None of those suggestions can be implemented nationwide without legislation passed by Congress, which typically recoils at gun control measures. Some state legislatures, however, have enacted or may consider some of the surgeon general’s proposals.
Murthy said there is “broad agreement” that gun violence is a problem, citing a poll last year that found most Americans worry at least sometimes that a loved one might be injured by a firearm. More than 48,000 Americans died from gun injuries in 2022.
Doctors quickly praised Murthy’s advisory. The American Academy of Family Physicians, for example, has considered gun violence a public health epidemic for over a decade.
“Family physicians have long understood, and have seen first hand, the devastating impact firearm violence has on our patients and the communities we serve,” said the group’’s president, Steven Furr, in a statement.
Murthy’s advisory, however, promises to be controversial with the gun lobby and will certainly enrage Republican lawmakers, most of whom opposed his confirmation—twice—for the job over his statements about gun violence.
The National Rifle Association (NRA)
promptly rebuked Murthy’s advisory.
“This is an extension of the Biden Administration’s war on law-abiding gun owners,” said NRA president Randy Kozuch in a statement on X.
It was the NRA, and Republicans who enjoy the powerful gun lobby’s support, that almost derailed Murthy’s confirmation as surgeon general a decade ago. Murthy became quieter on the issue of gun violence after his past statements almost cost him the job. He ended up promising the Senate that he did “not intend to use my office as surgeon general as a bully pulpit on gun control.”
Then-President Donald Trump dismissed Murthy in 2017, but President Joe Biden nominated him to the position again in 2021.
Murthy has published warnings about troubling health trends in American life, including loneliness and social media use. In an opinion piece in the New York Times this month, he said social media has contributed to a mental health crisis among the country’s young people and asked Congress to require warning labels on social media platforms similar to
those on cigarette packets.
He also has faced mounting pressure from some doctors and Democratic advocacy groups to speak out more. A group of four former surgeon generals asked the Biden administration to produce a report on the problem in 2022.
“It is now time for us to take this issue out of the realm of politics and put it in the realm of public health, the way we did with smoking more than a half century ago,” Murthy told the AP.
A 1964 report from the surgeon general raised awareness about the dangers of smoking and is largely credited with reducing tobacco use and precipitating regulations on the industry.
Murthy now hopes his advisory on guns will shift the conversation on this issue. He has been encouraged by some developments in Congress, including passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022, which enhanced background checks for firearms.
A White House report obtained by the Associated Press said that more-thorough background checks have stopped roughly
800 sales of firearms to people under age 21. More than 500 people, including some linked to transnational cartels and organized crime rings, have been charged with gun trafficking and other crimes under the landmark gun safety legislation.
Children and younger Americans, in particular, are suffering from gun violence, Murthy noted in his advisory. Suicide by gun rates have increased by nearly 70% for those between the ages of 10 to 14. Children in the U.S. are far more likely to die from gun wounds than children in other countries, the research he gathered shows. Even when children are not direct victims of a gun shooting, they may suffer from mental health blowback from gun violence, the report said. About half of teens in the U.S. worry about a school shooting, and in areas that have been exposed to a fatal shooting at a school, youth antidepressant use jumps by more than 20%.
In addition to new regulations, Murthy called for an increase in gun violence research and for the health system to promote and educate patients about gun safety and proper storage during checkups.
On June 25, 2024, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared gun violence a public health crisis, driven by a growing number of injuries and deaths involving firearms in the country. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey)
Arts & Entertainment
BCKBONE: Zine of empowerment for Black women, created by Black women
By LEAH MALLORY Special to AmNews
BCKBONE, a literary project and social experiment for Black women by Black women, is making its way through the city and beyond, boldly reminding Black women of their value and self-worth.
The foldable zine, described by creator, activist, and brand strategist consultant Nicole Moore as a “love note to Black women,” features symbolic art, encouraging messages, and quotes from Black women writers and creators.
“Nah sis—you’re a big deal. Stand in that. Own that. Believe that. Trust in that,” reads the front page of the zine.
Moore says the inspiration for the zine came from a series of dreams, saturating her with a vision to uplift Black women through a creative project. “I was called to do it. I felt like I had to do it. I can’t really even put it into words,” she said. “I would dream about having a magazine or some kind of pamphlet or a zine, something that I wanted to give out to Black women.”
She also cites her personal experiences with self-doubt as inspiration.
“I ended up being terminated from my job in the fall of 2020–2021, and that termination, I took it on as a personal failure, forgetting who I was, forgetting that I really had so many accomplishments while I worked there,” she said. “This was my way to resist all of that b**s**. It’s become my language to say, no, that is not our truth. That is not of us, and I’m reminding everybody else.”
The nontraditional structure of zines appeals to her—she views it as a powerful symbol of liberation. “[Zines] come out of a radical notion of doing it yourself, not sticking to any kind of traditional rules around what publishing looks like,” she said. “I can do it on my own terms. I can do it how I want. I can make it look the way I want.”
In the zine, Moore encourages readers to make copies and distribute them as part of the social experiment. Te zine’s distribution relies on communal support, as she doesn’t charge for it.
“...if you love this, I don’t want you to say, ‘Hey, can you send me another one?’” she said. “Just unfold it and make a copy of it, and you can give it out yourself. It gives other individuals the same type of power and agency that I have to make another woman feel good about herself.”
For artist and educator Adama Delphine Fawundu, whose artwork is featured in the zine, the shareable element of the project makes it even more meaningful.
“Knowing that it’s not something that has to be so immediate—five years from now, I could make copies, ten years [from now] I could continue to make copies of this thing and send it— just shows that it’s for the community and it’s really for our future,” Fawundu said. “(It’s) like a nice little something to read [and] to make us think more about who we are, particularly as Black women.”
Fawundu’s artwork displays her back covered in words written in white paint, which she explained are titles projected onto Black women. The piece, she said, is inspired by Nina Simone’s “Four Women” and is called “What Do They Call Me, My Name is Aunt Sara.”
“I wanted to break the boundary—this idea of the strong Black woman—what does that actually mean? All of these things that we’re sup-
posed to carry on our back, but we’re human beings,” she said. “I wanted us also to be reminded that sometimes, it’s like, ‘Oh, you’re so strong,’ but we’re also very soft, and we also need to be cared for.”
Since launching in February, Moore says the response has been largely positive. She first began distributing copies of the zine at a convention in Montgomery, Ala.
“I was giving it out there, and people were stunned. [They] were like, ‘Wait, this is for me?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah,’ because when I hand it out, I say to people what’s on the cover: ‘Sis, you’re a big deal,’ and immediately that gets their attention,” she said. “I’m like, yeah, I’m talking to you. You’re a big deal, so don’t forget it.”’
She has since distributed the zine in several other places, making Harlem a staple location. Looking toward the future, Moore hopes the project continues to grow. “I’m hoping for bigger and better things and looking for partners to help me do this again; I don’t want it to just be me.”
What do they Call Me? My Name is Aunt Sara. Nina Simone’s Four Women Series, 2010 by Adama Delphine Fawundu (Photo courtesy of Adama Delphine Fawundu)
Zines (Will Vaultz Photography)
Nicole Moore signing a BCKBONE issue for Denise Greene, director of programs at Black Public Media (her husband Emir Lewis in background) at BCKBONE launch party at NiLu in Harlem (Will Vaultz Photography)
Do The Right Thing Block Party celebrates film's 35th year
By SIYAKA TAYLOR-LEWIS
Special to the AmNews
Infants, teens, and elders. Brownstone stoops. Printed clothing, graphic t-shirts and hats all pay homage to renowned director Spike Lee’s films. Though the Do the Right Thing 35th Anniversary Block Party had started only two hours prior, by 2 p.m. it was already crowded. By 3:30, people came in droves. Local families took to the crowded street to dance, people watch, and take phone photos. Others found a haven on their stoop with family and friends, grill-
ing and enjoying what must’ve been the best day in the neighborhood all year.
On Sunday, June 30, 2024, the Do the Right Thing 35th Anniversary Block Party set up a stage on the corner of Do The Right Thing Way (Stuyvesant Avenue between Lexington Avenue and Quincy Street in Bed-Stuy), where Spike Lee’s classic movie, “Do The Right Thing,” was filmed. Spike wore clothing representing Sal’s Pizzeria from the movie, while event goers held signs reading, “JUSTICE FOR RADIO RAHEEM,” blurring the line between fiction and real life. Every year in the Brooklyn community, film
lovers, photographers, fashionistas, people who have traveled across the country, and sometimes across the world, come out to enjoy music and experience the greatness and fun that is the Block Party. Everyone could feel the love, happiness, and joy of the event. Autographed hats were being sold, along with Lee’s 40 Acres and a Mule merchandise. Food and drink vendors had a field day, while everyone was comfortable, ate, and partied properly. The entire crowd looked amazing. At around 4:30, large dark clouds rolled in and the crowd began to disperse, preparing for cer-
tain rain, which started light, but picked up quickly making it clear the party was over. Folks made solid memories at The Do the Right Thing Block Party. Although the ending was abrupt, the party was a success for everyone, especially the BIPOC community. It’s extremely important to remember the film, which this party pays homage to, and the still relevant issues within the Black community including gentrification and systemic oppression; but the party is a celebration about Brooklyn Pride and togetherness. All was well in Bed-Stuy. If you didn’t come, you didn’t Do The Right Thing.
A woman holds a “Justice For Radio Raheem” sign (Siyaka Taylor-Lewis photos)
Spike Lee hands out drinks to a packed crowd enjoying the music
Community members enjoy festivities; a portrait from a scene in “Do The Right Thing” hangs on the door.
A woman shades herself from the 90-degree sun
Spike Lee smiles as a Sals Pizzeria representative engages with the crowd (Siyaka Taylor-Lewis photos) A woman poses with a DIY classic Radio Raheem radio
A Teenage boy attempts double-dutch for the first time
HOROSCOPES BY KNOWYOURNUMB3RS
SUPREME GODDESS KYA
By
It's a wonderful time to reevaluate your dietary habits, including a new exercise regime, and change your appearance and how you operate to navigate this month to meet your goals. July is a nonstop month filled with doing what’s required to get where you need to go. From July 9 at 9:48 a.m. until July 11 at 9:51 p.m., ask folks for assistance, as they can help direct you. An ending transformation is due to aid you in your growth on your journey forward. Do things in short terms to get the tasks done sooner rather than later.
Brag about yourself for the accomplishments you completed. You have come a long way from where you started. That’s the whole point of any process, to continue even when you see no progress. Remember, there is always progress when you keep going forward. Beginning on July 11 at 10:06 p.m., rapid changes are forthcoming in your life this week, as are chances to explore the different amenities life has to offer. Listen carefully to your body as it gives you signals, signs, and sends messages for your own awareness. Ask for what you need and apply the footwork to level up.
You have all the ingredients to create a solid blueprint. Follow through this week as things get intense, yet the rewards you received are a part of that process. Utilize all the resources, tools, and people you know who can assist in your agenda. From July 4 at 4:51 p.m. until July 6 at 11:47 p.m. upon completion of any project, plan, etc., keep your eye on the vision as you have all the details and ingredients needed to thrive. No matter what folks say or do, it's part of your growth. Work in silence to allow your work to be your noise when complete.
July is a month to take inventory on home, business, financial, and personal issues, and to prioritize your time and money and to clear your space. Trim the fat where needed and attend to any obligations old or new. Hard lessons, tests, and quizzes will pop up to see if you are ready for what your soul is directing you to do to reach the next level. From July 6 at 11:56 p.m. until July 9 at 9:39 a.m., it’s vital you reconstruct, reorganize, and revamp your lifestyle to prioritize your needs rather than wants. Something you have been sensing or had an inkling of is now presenting itself to you. Ready or not, it’s happening.
Make your request simple, informative, and straight to the point. From July 9 at 9:48 a.m. until July 11 at 9:51 p.m., visions, déjà vu, and revelations show some of the answers to your questions. In July, showcase and network your services, skills, knowledge, and expertise to be of service to someone. Having a service or product assists in solving a problem, to a related solution one can benefit from.
The up-in-the-air cycle has you sensing, feeling, and getting an inkling that something is forthcoming, which is correct. Things have been building up since March, and July is showing you what it is. Pay close attention; conversations with folks you engage with all have a meaning. Beginning on July 11 at 10:06 p.m., getting through what may feel like an opposition is only a test for you to level up and operate on your own will and law. When you do, folks and things that are for you will come to you. Take time to cleanse your home and purge away things that no longer serve a purpose in your life. Seek and you shall find. Be and you shall hear, see, feel, sense, and know.
Independence Day comes right before a new moon phase in Cancer at 14 degrees. The universal cycle this week indicates change and a new order of formation and structure on a global level. Things, people, and organizations are positioning themselves in areas of authority and ownership to operate differently. The week may feel like a challenge, but stay the course, because nothing changes an outcome when you stop. Elevating and advancing is the only way to see progress in your life. Bob Marley has a song titled “Natural Mystic.” Listen to it, as there is a natural mysticism occurring in the spiritual realm that has been building up that will partially show by October. Keep implementing, improving, and building on your plan until you manifest. Stay in position so that when it’s your turn you are ready.
Mentally you are energized to do almost anything that’s been delayed. Seeing the bigger picture is key to your success in completing things. Financial gain is open like a wide receiver, meaning you need to position yourself to receive. From July 4 at 4:51 p.m. until July 6 at 11:47 p.m., continue to apply the essential footwork to see the new opportunities. Review, revise, and renew to execute any mission. Remember you are a major key player to make it happen. Ask and follow your task, even when people are asking you for a favor. The key is to ASK!
You are receiving and seeing floods of revelations, déjà vu, and manifesting right before your eyes and even in your dreams. Remember, all things occur spiritually before occurring in the physical realm. It’s just that simple. From July 6 at 11:56 p.m. until July 9 at 9:39 a.m., gather up the details as you have the resources in your life to assist you to answer your questions. Believing is vital to creating the life you imagine. Public and private affairs need attention.
What you want to do begins with a thought, which is the concept. After the concept, you work towards it to see results and gain from the feedback you receive to do better. You have the details and pieces to the puzzle, and now it’s time to plug in. From July 9 at 9:48 a.m. until July 11 at 9:51 p.m., once you create the story you can tell and share your story to help others on their journey to advance within their environment. Knowledge is power only when you apply it and create a service, product, or something to assist personal growth.
Not everything you hear is true. What your eyes see and digest is perceived based on your experience and growth. The spiritual realm has a message for you that requires you to send or speak a message to the public. Beginning on July 11 at 10:06 p.m., a shift or change will occur in your normal routine and domestic affairs. Allow the spiritual realm to assist you in the change by showing you the vision or message. Do things in the short term that lead to long term results later.
Matters of the heart, responsibility, obligations, and relationships all require balance. In the midst of everything, follow your heart as your mind and heart must be in sync to manifest the outcome. Get through the tough lessons, tests, and old and new affairs. Distractions are there to sidetrack you no matter what, so keep going with the plan you created for yourself. From July 4 at 4:51 p.m. until July 6 at 11:47 p.m., what you do daily increases your profitability to make improvements for tomorrow’s plan.
As soon as you begin something it’s already ending, moving you right along to the next phase. Make sure you have all the information, tools, resources, people, and items in position to advance to the next level. Mainly women will be a guide to you, or wise men will consult and inspire you not to quit. You are closer to your dream or vision than you think. From July 6 at 11:56 p.m. until July 9 at 9:39 a.m. when folks get close to the end of something, a test is presented. The key to the test is, what will you do when it gets tough and overwhelming? Review WHY you begin what you are doing and allow that to be your inspiration to pull you through.
Trends
A designer’s ‘Rebirth’ fall ’24 collection
By RENEE MINUS WHITE AmNews Fashion & Beauty Editor
Fashion designer Tyran Marquis recently presented his fall ’24 “Rebirth” fashion collection at the historic Gymnopedie (1139 Bushwick Ave., Brooklyn). “I found this unique place and knew it would be perfect for my opening and my collection,” Marquis said
My early arrival afforded me the chance to speak with this 33-year-old designer while he attended to last-minute details before the show. Backstage, as usual, was total chaos. The experience reminded me of the designers I used to interview in the late ’70s—they were often on their knees in unattractive, behind-the-scenes spaces, just like Marquis, pinning garments and making sure the clothes fit their models properly. While we were waiting for the show to begin, his company served sparkling cider, water, and delicious light hors d’oeuvres.
When asked what inspired his collection and how long he had been designing, Marquis said, “The collection was inspired by my old collection of denim looks. I launched my company in 2012, and started my career by creating ties, handkerchiefs, and other accessories. My father was a tailor for the late singer James Brown, so from a young age, I was introduced to
fashion. I was well-trained by African and many other tailors.”
Marquis hails from Jamaica, Queens, and was raised by his mother, aunts, and grandmother. His fall ’24 Rebirth collec-
tion pays homage to his old denim collection. “I used to gather rags, damaged materials, and create new garments for my line,” he recalled. This collection is enhanced with stylish influences includ-
ing cuts, stitches, and colorations from the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s.
This collection’s looks revisit the essence of his earlier “Under Pressure” collection, which innovatively tied into the theme of rebirth. “This collection also embodies the theme of life after loss, exhibiting resilience and transformation. It’s Urban Couture.”
Eventually, his collection bloomed to a full line, after he gained experience with Bloomingdale’s and working as a designer for Chris Brown, Netflix, and others.
While building his business, Tyran faced significant challenges, and found solace and a unique purpose in fashion. Tye, as close family and friends call him, began sewing, designing, and channeling his pain and experiences into his work. His collections—Concrete Jungle, Bittersweet, Under Pressure, and Keys to the Kingdom—are all reflections of his life story.
His Rebirth collection was absolutely fabulous, and the fact that he designs for sizes 0–24 makes his looks available to everyone. At the show, folks could purchase clothing on the spot, and jewelry was also for sale on side tables. Prices for his T-shirts, hoodies, sweat pants, and high-fashioned designs range from $40 to $2,500. Since he’s a custom designer, you can bring him an idea and know that he will create it for you.
The Tyran Marquis collection is available at www.TyranMarquis.com.
Designer Tyran Marquis works on model’s outfit before show at Gymnopedie (Renee Minus White photos)
Designs by Tyran Marquis
NEC’s explosive production of ‘Zooman and the Sign’ runs through July 7
By LINDA ARMSTRONG Special to the AmNews
I need you to run, not walk, to the American Theatre of Actors (W. 54th Street), where an explosive production of Charles Fuller’s classic story “Zooman and the Sign” is playing only through July 7.
Presented by the Negro Ensemble Company and PENN LIVE ARTS, this story is as relevant today as ever. Set in 1980 in Philadelphia, it is amazing and sad to witness how Fuller was able to capture some of the issues that plague a Black community of neighbors not looking out for each other when there is rampant gun violence.
In this storyline, 12-year-old Jinny Tate is playing outside in front of her home when Zooman, trying to kill an enemy, murders her instead. The play dramatically begins with Zooman unapologetically telling the audience what has happened.
The intensity in his monologue chills you to the bone, but it shows that life has made him hard. He also shares details of a disturbing childhood.
When we meet Jinny’s parents, brother, and uncle, they are in the living room still in shock that this sweet child is gone. A police investigation begins, and that is when the drama takes a devastat-
ing turn, as neighbors show their true colors.
This cast is captivating to watch. Isaiah Joseph plays his role of Zooman to the hilt. He is cold, angry, unapologetic, and ruthless, but is also quite damaged. With each of his mesmer-
‘Illinoise’ is a dancer’s story
BY LINDA ARMSTRONG
Special to the AmNews
When I saw the new Broadway musical “Illinoise,” a theatrical adaptation of Sufjan Stevens’s concept album “Illinois,” playing at the St. James Theatre on (W. 44th Street), I was unfamiliar with the album and had no idea what I was about to see for 90 minutes straight with no intermission. For that hour and a half, I heard three singers perform songs that told stories about the characters in the musical, and I watched accomplished dancers perform interpretative dances to the words. The characters were far off in the mountains, baring their souls by the campfire. I have to admit I was somewhat disappointed. This is not what I expect to see from a Broadway musical.
izing speeches, you get to know the character a bit more and you understand to an extent what has brought him to be the person he is today. Joseph is definitely a gifted actor.
Constance Sadie Thompson delivers a powerful performance
as Rachel Tate. She lets you know all the emotions this character is going through—guilt, anger, devastation. Her delivery is heartfelt and will grip your soul.
Benjamin Rowe as Reuben Tate, Jinny’s father, brings a justified anger and outrage to
When I go to a Broadway musical, I like to witness a blatantly clear storyline, but this was very off the beaten path for me and made me feel confused at times. While it was definitely not my cup of tea, I must say that the
performers were quite talented. They included Yesenia Ayala, Kara
the role. He has lost his daughter to a senseless murder and has to figure out how best to handle the situation, even if no one else agrees with him. Rowe plays his character beautifully as he
Chan, Ben Cook, Gaby Diaz, Jeanette Delgado, Carlos Falu, Christine Flores, Jada German, Zachary Gonder, Rachel Lockhart, Brandt Martinez, Dario Natarelli, Tyrone Reese, Craig Salstein, Ahmad Simmons, Byron Tittle, Ricky Ubeda, and Alejandro Vargas.
What’s interesting is that the person I took with me is a former dancer—and she loved it. While I found it engaging at some point, it just did not do it for me as a thrilling Broadway experience.
The production is the work of book writers Jackie Sibblies Drury and Justin Peck, with music and lyrics by Stevens, and direction by Justin Peck, who also wears the hat of choreographer.
If you’re a dancer, or just a lover of dance, maybe you would have a better time than I did. I just did not walk out with any sense of satisfaction.
For more info, visit www.illinoiseonstage.com.
Scene from “Illinoise,” playing at St. James Theatre (Matthew Murphy photo)
Scene from “Zooman and the Sign,” with (l-r) Reggie Wilson, Isaiah Martinez, Constance Sadie Thompson, and Benjamin Rowe (Jonathan Slaff photo)
See ZOOMAN continued on page 31
Theater For the New City presents ‘Ella The Ungovernable’ through July 7
By PLAYTHELL BENJAMIN Special to the AmNews
“Ella The Ungovernable”—currently running at Theater For The New City (155 First Avenue between 9th and 10th Streets) through July 7—is, according the website: “...a play based on the true story of 15 yearold Ella Fitzgerald’s incarceration and eventual escape from The New York Training School For Girls in 1933.” I approached this work with considerable trepidation, as I could foresee several problems inherent in the work; built-in pitfalls, the seriousness of which could make or break the production.
First, there is the problem of credibly reconstructing an actual historical event involving real people. What are the limits of literary license? (Some critics who have opined on this question argue that since both history and fiction are narratives constructed by the author, they should be given equal weight. However, as a former history professor, I disagree.) The question of historical authenticity was candidly addressed in the Playbill: “This is a work of speculative fiction about what might have happened over the course of Ella’s incarceration.”
The fact that the author of this play is a white male presents yet another set of problems: being able to get into the mindset of characters who are Black and female, which requires a double leap of the imagination. Hence I continued to view this play with a jaundiced eye. However, as the play unfolded, my doubts began to gradually dry up like a raisin in the sun; the playwright David McDonald proved well up to the task.
With a sparsely designed set reflecting the economics of the off-off Broadway theater in New York, this work required an exercise of the imagination on the part of the audience similar to the demands of the novel. It also placed heavy demands upon the actors to make the illusion believable, which required a sorority of conjure women with mad skills: Tyra Hughes, Ebony Nixon, Gabrielle Farley, Colleen Hayden, Autumn McCree, et al. With tight ensemble acting, studded with individual arias in words and song, and effective performances from the male supporting cast, they pulled it off in fine fashion.
Virtually all of the action takes place in the dormitory of the New York “Training School For Girls,” which was actually a teenage prison masquerading as an educational institution, located upstate from the city in Hudson. The play opens with the girls marching in formation into the induction room where they will receive their introduction to the institution by the stern, prim, white superintendent. But Ella receives her real orientation about what’s up in the joint from her new cellmate, who has been locked up for a while.
The place is infested with treacherous inmates and corrupt sadistic white guards, both of whom are prone to sudden acts of
violence at the slightest infraction of the written rules of the administration and the unwritten rules imposed by the inmates. She describes it as a hell hole where “nobody is to be trusted,” which left Ella, convincingly played by Christian Neal, bewildered and somewhat paranoid. Especially as she is warned to “never back down from a fight,” and to always try and make herself invisible to the guards by doing nothing to call attention to herself.
As her new cellmate gives her the skinny on the realities of life at the “Training School,” the spotlight shifts to the other side of the stage, where there are two chairs and a little table. Two older Black women are sitting and discussing how they were forced to leave the South because they could not make a decent living from the backbreaking labor of sharecropping. Apparently, one of the women is Ella’s mom, who is shown
going to and fro offering her expert domestic services, speaking directly to the audience to great dramatic effect. This is the first of several flashbacks through which the series of events that landed Ella in the Training School unfolds.
Employing this technique, we are provided cameos of scenes from Ella’s past. We see her come up from Virginia to live in Harlem with her mom; we see her mom seduced by a handsome Latin Lothario of Portuguese extraction; we see her mother suddenly killed by a hit-and-run driver. Not knowing where her father is, Ella is left to live with her mother’s Portuguese lover, who tries to sexually molest her but is unsuccessful because she smashes him in the head with an iron. We see her abused by a drunken aunt with whom she is placed after reporting her situation to the Child Welfare agency. Her Aunt Edna takes her in only to collect
the stipend from the state. The aunt drinks up all the money, and works her around the house because she is a drunken slob. (Simone Black invests the character with such villainous evil that the audience, including this writer, forgot she was playacting at moments and got pissed at her!) When the aunt does not feed her regularly, Ella is forced to scavenge in garbage cans for food. When she is discovered by a happy hooker, ebulliently played by Shadenia Davis, who has a soft spot for girls in trouble because “I have been there,” Ella is offered a job as a lookout for the whores on the stroll.
Her job was to warn them whenever the cops approached so they could flee. The saucy happy hooker delivers her lines in rhythm and rhyme that evokes both Moliere and hip-hop, during a stunning cameo that is a highlight of the show. But Ella is a good student and does her schoolwork while on lookout duty. One night, thoroughly engrossed in her studies, she does not notice the encroaching cops and is arrested along with the hookers. That’s how she ends up in the New York Training School for girls. However, she is befriended by a kindly white psychiatrist who provides services for the school. He discovers that Ella can sing and arranges an audition for her with the school choir, which has a Black director. Ella sings a hymn that is popular in the Black church, a Gospel song wrongly labeled a “Negro Spiritual,” and blows the choirmaster away. She is given a spot as soloist in the choir. Here is the first time we are shown what a talented singer Christian Neal is.
When the choir performs in a concert, attended by a Harlem-based physician and NAACP official investigating racism and sexual exploitation of the girls at the “Training School,” the Black doctor and his wife are so moved they offer to take Ella into their home and provide for her. After helping Ella and her cellmate escape from the institution with the help of the white psychiatrist, the wife, still mesmerized by Ella’s gift of song, pushes her to enter the Amateur Night contest at the famous Apollo Theater in Harlem, which was then the thriving cultural capital of Black America and the most famous community in the U.S., renowned around the world for its outstanding performing artists.
The play ends on a triumphant note as Ella gives a bravura performance at the Apollo. Elegantly dressed, she sang and danced marvelously on her performance of “A Tisket A Tasket” and won first prize. It was a wonderful conclusion to a very grim tale. The audience roared its approval. Under the imaginative direction of Michele Baldwin, who performed a compelling cameo in the role of Ella’s mother, the play was a hit, and all my anxieties proved to be for naught—bravissimo! For more info, visit www.theaterforthenewcity.net.
The choirmaster rehearses singers at New York State Training School for Girls at Hudson, New York. Left: Huston Pigford. Right: Ebony Nixon, Tezha Davis, Gabrielle Farley, Christian Neal, Autumn McCree, Kiara Joseph. (Jonathan Slaff photos)
(L-R) Christian Neal as Ella Fitzgerald and Tyra Hughes as Alice, Ella’s best friend, at New York State Training School for Girls in “Ella The Ungovernable.”
Jazzmobile, Village Vanguard, Tyshawn Sorey
To everyone’s joy, summer has finally arrived: loud splashes at the beach, barbeque pits ablaze, Harlem strolls, and weekly nights at Jazzmobile Summerfest. New York’s favorite free festival (Marcus Garvey Park, 124th Street & Fifth Avenue) kicks off on July 5 with the intoxicating honey-coated voice of Allan Harris, beloved for his reflective warm tones of Nat King Cole, deep timbre of Billy Eckstine, and Eddie Jefferson’s fast-paced scat. Harris’ originality brings it all together with his native Harlem swing. He will be joined by pianist John DiMartino, saxophonist Irwin Hall, bassist Jason Clotter, drummer Willy Rodriguez and violinist Alan Grubner.
Recently, more people are acknowledging the presence of Black artists in country music, but Harris has been playing guitar and performing country western songs before his creation of “Cross That River” in 2006, which is his musical expression of the Black American West. Harris has become a household name in his Harlem community and as far away as Europe, where he has attracted a strong fan base.
Regardless of what Harris sings, standards, originals or western, it will be a moving journey. Show time is 7 p.m.–8:15 p.m.
Jazzmobile, the city’s longest-running jazz festival since 1964, will offer a string of exciting jazz musicians now through September 30 (Fridays at Marcus Garvey Park and Wednesdays at Grant’s Tomb, 122nd Street & Riverside Drive). The Jimmy Heath Big Band, under the musical direction of alto saxophonist Antonio Hart (Heath’s protégé), comes to Grant’s Tomb on July 10, 7 p.m.–8:30 p.m. NEA Jazz Master Jimmy Heath noted, “The big band is our symphony orchestra, it’s the biggest sound we get in jazz. You can take a small duet or trio or quartet out of a big band, but the reverse is impossible.”
The inventive trombonist and composer Craig Harris demolishes the concept of genres with every performance. He connects funk, blues, jazz, and sounds he’s experienced from Harlem to Africa. It’s all there, dance, shout, holla. He appears on July 12 at Marcus Garvey Park, 7 p.m. The following day, July 13, the engrossing vocalist Antionette Montague and pianist Danny Mixon step out of Harlem for an afternoon Brooklyn Block Party (500 McDonough Street), 4 p.m.–5:30 p.m.
For a complete schedule, visit jazzmobile.org.
Saxophonist Javon Jackson, who earned his “university of the bandstand” degree
from Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, will perform with his Quartet on July 9–14, at the Village Vanguard (178 7th Avenue South). Jackson’s Quartet features his able circle of music makers with pianist Jeremy Manasia, bassist David Williams, and drummer McClenty Hunter. The saxophonist centers his repertoire around hard bop straight-up jazz with accented blues roots and soul. As a leader, Jackson has recorded more than 25 albums (some of the more recent albums were recorded on his independent label Solid Jackson). He has contributed to recordings for the likes of Ron Carter, Freddie Hubbard, and Elvin Jones.
There will be two shows each night, at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. For reservations, visit villagevanguard.com.
The multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey, who finds favor in his roaring drums, recently brought his boundless world of inventiveness to Dizzy’s jazz club. It was a one-night-only gig that sold out for both sets, which shouldn’t be surprising, considering Sorey is one of the most captivating drummers of his generation.
Sorey’s project, a reimagination of Roach’s 1968 album release “Members, Don’t Git Weary” (Atlantic Records), was a high-octane performance with trumpeter Adam O’Farrell, tenor saxophonist Mark Shim, pianist Lex Korten, and bassist Tyron Allen, stretching out for an hour and a half set, which rarely happens—most sets are limited to an hour, but the music was so good that time restraints weren’t relevant: raging drums, bellowing bass, blazing horns, and
soaring piano. Sorey, who is known on the avant garde scene, hurdles genres beyond any type of categorization. As a composer of jazz and classical music, he sees improvisation and composition as mutually exclusive. He is less interested in combining genres than in movement across varying musical terrains.
“Max is a big influence as a person and composer, he directed choirs, performed with symphony orchestras and dance companies. He used his music as a weapon against societal ills. I listen to Max for his totality,” said Sorey. “I got the opportunity to work with Max and Amiri Baraka during The Lost Jazz Shrine series, when I was playing trombone. That was a profound experience for me that I will carry with me always.”
Roach’s “Members Don’t Git Weary” left room for reimagination. It is drenched in the blues with the moving vocals of Andy Bey, along with the horns of Charles Tolliver and Gary Bartz, pianist Stanley Cowell, and electric bassist Jymie Merritt, with Sorey’s arrangements and the band’s intuitive locomotive style enhanced Roach’s masterpiece. Tolliver, an original band member, noted, “I saw Tyshawn and the guys perform their reimagine not too long ago and they were very good. They are moving the music forward the way Max wanted it to be.”
Oddly enough, this is the 2024 Pulitzer Prize-winning composer’s first time performing at Dizzy’s as a leader. The reason could possibly have something to do with his Lower East Side avant-gardism. Ironi-
cally, the iconic bassist, composer, and poet William Parker, also from that same community, has only had one-night stands at the Dizzy’s that were also sold out. The pianist Matthew Shipp is also a one-night-only member and that was as a sideman.
On leaving Sorey’s show, a long-time NYC jazz supporter and Dizzy’s regular noted, “Wow, I thought Sorey was going to be too far out for me, but he was great; they had me swinging.” Genres are the great divide, and avant-gardists playing mainly on the Lower East Side and straight-ahead cats only on the West Side is an even greater divide. This leaves the jazz consumer enthusiasts without being able to sample a large piece of this music called jazz (Black American music).
“I knew I wasn’t going in there to play avant garde, but I’m doing something that’s true to me. No matter what I change, it has to come from integrity and something I want to do,” said Sorey in a phone interview. “Reading the audience and who’s at the venue is something to consider, but I will also challenge them to see the music from a different perspective.”
About Roach, Sorey said, “Max is a big influence as a person and composer. He directed choirs, performed with symphony orchestras and dance companies. He used his music as a weapon against societal ills. I listen to Max for his totality. I got the opportunity to work with Max and Amiri Baraka during the Lost Jazz Shrine series, when I was playing trombone. That was a profound experience for me that I will carry with me always.”
Allan Harris (Photo courtesy of Jazzmobile)
government’s brutal attempt to repress the uprising. The resolve of many protesters deepened as the police and military became more violent, reportedly shooting live bullets and tear gas into crowds.
These frustrations are coupled with enduring and profound economic inequality. To this day, just a few Kenyan families own a vast share of the country’s farm land. In 2022, the richest 10% of Kenyans owned 48.5% of the nation’s wealth.
Norbert Mwalo, a young protestor, had this to say about the uprising: “We currently have a president who is not a president. This president, William Samoei Ruto, follows the orders of the constitution.
“The constitution is fine, but the government should be of the people, by the people, for the people,” Mwalo said. “Now, we will change Kenya to be governed by the youth, for the youth, and by the youth.”
FOOD INSECURITY IN NIGERIA AT ITS WORST STATE IN YEARS
(GIN)—The United Nations has announced the allocation of $11 million to address the food crisis surging in Nigeria’s northeast.
The United Nations Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffith, who disclosed this on X (formerly known as Twitter), said the allocation was
drawn from the UN Central Emergency Response Funds (UNCERF).
Conflict in the Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa states has displaced some 2.2 million people and left another 4.4 million food insecure, along with armed banditry and kidnapping in states such as Katsina, Sokoto, Kaduna, Benue, and Niger.
Continued conflict, climate change, inflation, and rising food prices are key drivers of this alarming trend. Some 26.5 million people across the country are now projected to face acute hunger in the lean season from June to August of this year.
This is a staggering increase from the 18.6 million people experiencing food insecurity at the end of 2023.
Civilians continue to bear the brunt of the crisis, with women and girls paying the harshest price and facing increased risk of violence.
UNCERF allows the UN to offer immediate funding to those affected by disasters caused by nature, wars, and other emergencies.
The food crisis in the country’s northeast, according to Griffiths, is considered a challenge that requires urgent attention.
In 2023, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projected that over 31.5 million people in Nigeria would face insufficient food between June and August 2024.
According to the report, other factors will contribute to the alarming food insecurity, including fuel scarcity, naira devaluation, currency crisis, rising inflation, and consumer price index.
Mask ban
Continued from page 6
“How do you know who is immunocompromised, who’s not?” Cahn said. “Right now, we’re letting New Yorkers who need these masks stay healthy [and] wear them without having to worry about being harassed or arrested. I’m terrified to think how many people are going to be wrongly detained, wrongly held, wrongly put in a cramped police station or central booking [and] exposed to so many more people and deprived of their mask.”
Cunningham said growing up as a Black man during the era of “stop, question, and frisk” certainly makes him sensitive to policies that lead to unnecessary stops, which he faces to this day.
“There are mechanisms in place that if those things were to occur, we can hold police and other actors accountable for their behaviors,” he said. “What’s not in place right now is protecting people from intimidation—the people who wear masks at protests and also during committing acts of crime.”
The state lawmaker also lends his support to a mask ban due to recent shootings in his Central Brooklyn district involving suspects concealing their identities with masks. Will a ban have any impact on crime-fighting, though? Adam Scott Wandt, associate professor and Deputy Chair for Technology at John Jay College, says yes.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that wearing a mask makes it more difficult for facial recognition in law enforcement to identify somebody,” Wandt said. “There are multiple cases across the U.S. that occur regularly where criminals are wearing masks in order to avoid being recorded. We know without a doubt that criminals are wearing masks to thwart law enforcement.”
According to the NYPD website, facial recognition assisted in identifying “suspects whose images have been captured by cameras at robberies, burglaries, assaults, shootings, and other crimes.” However, the technology is just one tool used by law enforcement, and a fairly new one, said Wandt. And the ethical implications remain somewhat unexplored.
“A lot of people are comfortable with using facial recognition on a one-on-one basis, but not comfortable using facial recognition en masse on the population,” said Wandt. “Does law enforcement get pictures of [a] potential hate crime and run it through facial recognition? Absolutely. Are they using large facial recognition cameras at political rallies to identify everyone who’s there? Hopefully not.”
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
CLASSROOM IN THE
John E. Nail, a real estate tycoon and visionary
By HERB BOYD Special to the AmNews
The first entry under the letter N in “The Harlem Renaissance—A Historical Dictionary for the Era,” edited by Bruce Kellner, is John Nail, for being considered “the most successful real estate man in New York City in the early 20th century.”
James Weldon Johnson, in his book “Black Manhattan,” quoted Nail, a member of the Real Estate Board of New York and an appraisal authority, as saying that “Negroes own and control real estate property worth, at a conservative estimate, between fifty and sixty million dollars.”
It is important here to note there was a John B. and a John E. Nail, the latter being the son of the former.
John E. Nail, like his father, who owned a saloon before he began accumulating property, immersed himself in real estate, so he was able to speak with authority about the value and the extent to which African Americans were financially involved, but he obviously learned much about the trade and business from his industrious father. Our focus here is on the son, with a promise to profile the father later.
Nail, perhaps to distinguish him from his father, was called Jack, and was born in New London, Conn. He moved with his parents—John B. and Elizabeth—to New York City, where his father was soon the owner of a hotel, restaurant, and billiard parlor, after working temporarily in a gambling house.
After Jack graduated from high school, he began working at his father’s hotel. All of this, by 1904, was in preparation for his employment with Philip A. Payton and the Afro-American Realty Company. Payton, a phenomenal visionary, was ahead of the curve when it came to understanding the shifting demographics of the city and the heavy migration from the South. He advised Black homeowners and entrepreneurs to relocate to Harlem. Key to his success was his ability as a salesperson and uniting African American renters and white landlords.
Three years after Jack arrived at Payton’s company, there were financial difficulties, which con -
vinced him that it was time to forge his own business with Henry C. Parker as his partner. At the core of his real estate plan was to stabilize homeownership among Black residents, thereby minimizing the widespread discriminatory practices.
One of the major deals Jack facilitated in 1911 with the Rev. Hutchens C. Bishop, pastor of St. Philips Episcopal Church, totaled more than $1 million in real estate property. Since the pastor could pass for white, he made it possible for their partnership to acquire large plots of land for a new church and apartment buildings.
Six years later, Jack was among the chief organizers of the Silent Protest Parade, and eventually became the most influential Black realtor in New York City. His
business acumen, good looks, and engaging personality were recognized by thousands of Harlemites, Black and white. His sister, Grace, married the poet and leader of the NAACP, which added to his popularity. He was a member of several prominent organizations in the city, including the Housing Committee—in fact, its only Black member. President Herbert Hoover was among the notables seeking his advice about real estate matters. At one time, he was owner of the Marshall Hotel in midtown Manhattan, a cultural beehive of activity.
Jack Nail distributed his wealth to various cultural and political formations, further establishing his dream to uplift the community. He was the first president of the Negro Board of Trade in Harlem
and the first Black elected to the Real Estate Board of New York. When Harry Pace and W.C. Handy formed their Black Swan recording company, Jack was a member of the board of directors.
Jack’s overall plan was to consolidate the Black middle class with Harlem as the center of business and cultural enterprises. By 1925, he and his associates owned and managed 50 apartment complexes and an annual income of $1 million. Some of their accumulated capital was earmarked for charity and funding the Harlem branch of the YMCA.
Like most Americans, when the depression hit, Jack was not immune. He went bankrupt in 1933.
He died on March 5, 1947, in New York City.
ACTIVITIES
FIND OUT MORE
Nail’s name pops up in several books about the history of Harlem at the turn of the century, including Gilbert Osofsky’s “Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto.”
DISCUSSION
More can be found about Nail’s early years in Harlem through the newspapers of the day, none more vital than the New Age and the Globe
PLACE IN CONTEXT
Jack Nail was more than a man about town—he embodied the dreams and aspirations of many enterprising Harlemites of the era.
THIS WEEK IN BLACK HISTORY
June 30, 1984: Vocalist and actress Fantasia Barrino was born in High Point, N.C.
July 1, 1899: Gospel pioneer Thomas A. Dorsey was born in Villa Rica, Ga.
July 2, 1925: Civil rights legend Medgar Evers was born in Decatur, Miss. He was shot and killed in 1963 by a member of the KKK.
John E. Nail
been moving forward, Howard said, because several meetings have been held with the president’s team and the congresswoman. But a few weeks ago, Rep. Jackson Lee announced that she has pancreatic cancer, and reparations commission talks have been postponed while she looks after her health.
Biden’s Emancipation Proclamation moment
The Earn the Black Vote campaign kicked off in August 2023, based on the understanding that some 83% of Black registered voters support the Democratic Party, and Black voters are widely seen as being able to carry the Democratic Party to electoral victory. Progressive policies that lead to greater inclusion of Black people tend to come from centerleft politicians, who are usually Democrats.
Howard said they base their campaign on the following data: “One, that the president cannot win [re-election] with the amount of Blacks who have defected from the Democratic Party. A company that we’re working with put that number at about 2.9 million Blacks who voted for him in 2020 and disapprove of him now –to the point where they’re talking about not voting at all, voting third party, or possibly voting for Trump. We’re messaging that he definitely can’t win if those numbers stay the same, and that in order to turn those numbers around, he needs to establish a reparations commission. That’s one message.
“The second message is that we’ve already demonstrated the political will in the Democratic Party for reparations. In the last Congress, when the Democrats controlled the Congress, 88% of Dems in the House and the Senate pledged support for the bill if it came to the floor. We had 96 House sponsors and over 23 Senate sponsors of the Senate bill. And then there were others who pledged [that] once it comes to the floor, they would vote for it. We had the votes if passed by the House; we just didn’t get it to the floor.
“The third message is that this is his [Abraham] Lincoln moment,” Howard continued. “Lincoln had to do what he clearly did not want to do: He clearly did not want to sign the Emancipation Proc -
lamation, he didn’t want to [let[ enlist Blacks in the army, he didn’t want to give Blacks weapons when they were allowed to join the army. But he did what he had to do in order to save the union. We’re saying this is Biden’s Emancipa tion Proclamation moment: He has to do what’s necessary if he wants to save democracy, which is at risk in this elec tion.
“Our fourth message is that Black reparations [are] good for all of America. We have economic data, social data, to back that claim up.”
Simply establishing a reparations commission could help restore the faith of Black people in U.S. democracy, Howard said; a faith that has been tested frequently. It would also help the nation view itself as capable of facing its past and dealing with that past justly.
“It would be great if we could get reparations established without the commission, but the policies that the president has been pushing are pretty nonspecific,” Howard said. “They’re not targeted toward the descendants of the slave system in this county; they’re pretty general.”
Howard said the creation of a reparations commission would drive more Blacks to vote for Biden. Plus, establishing a commission now would give it time to get up and working within the next administration. The commission’s tasks can be completed within the first two years of Biden’s next presidency, and, by the third year, legislation and resources about it could pass through Congress.
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The Earn the Black Vote campaign is not specifically targeting Republican party representatives because the GOP has not voiced any interest in supporting reparations for African slavery, activists say. But Howard said that conservatives are also welcome to push for a reparations commission.
“Our message to the Republican Party[is] if you really want Black votes, then have [Speaker of the House] Mike Johnson call the bill to the House, have the Senate Republicans not filibuster the bill, let it come to a vote––we have enough Democrats for the vote––and we could expect it to pass.
“That’s really our message: Our campaign is about before the election, what can happen before the election. After the election, then we’re going to go back and roll up our sleeves and see what’s available to us.”
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New Louisiana law requiring classrooms to display Ten Commandments churns old political conflicts
By KEVIN McGILL and SARA CLINE Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS—A bill signed into law this week makes Louisiana the only state to require that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every classroom in public schools and colleges—a move that stirs the long-running debate over the role of religion in government institutions.
Under the new law, all public K–12 classrooms and state-funded universities will be required to display a poster-sized display of the Ten Commandments in a “large, easily readable font”” next year.
Civil liberties groups planned lawsuits to block the law, signed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, saying it would unconstitutionally breach protections against government-imposed religion. “We’re going to be seeing Gov. Landry in court,” said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. State officials are stressing the history of the Ten Commandments, which the bill calls “foundational documents of our state and national government.”
Similar bills requiring the Ten Commandments be displayed in classrooms have been proposed in other statehouses, including Texas, Oklahoma, and Utah.
Reasonable and needed or unconstitutional and harmful? At Archbishop Shaw High School, a Catholic-run school in suburban New Orleans, Head of School the Rev. Steve Ryan said he was pleased that the Ten Commandments will be posted on public school walls.
“These laws, which are part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, are good safeguards for society. They are actually reasonable,” Ryan said.
In Baton Rouge, Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican ally of Landry, said she was looking forward to defending the law.
“The 10 Commandments are pretty simple (don’t kill, steal, cheat on your wife), but they also are important to our country’s foundations,” she said on social media.
Opponents of the law argued that eroding the constitutional barrier between religion and government is illegal and unfair.
“We’re worried about public school families and students in Louisiana,” Laser said. “They come from a variety of different traditions and backgrounds, different religious beliefs, nonreligious beliefs, and students in those classrooms will be made to feel like outsiders when they see the government endorsing one set of narrow religious beliefs over others.”
Chris Dier, Louisiana’s 2020 teacher of the year, echoed those fears, and said he doesn’t intend to post the Ten Commandments in his classroom.
“I don’t believe in doing something that is unconstitutional and harmful to students,” he said. It is unclear whether there is a punishment for refusing to comply with the mandate.
The law was praised by former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who was removed from office in 2003 after disobeying a federal judge’s order to remove a 5,280-pound (2.4 metric tonne) granite Ten Commandments display from the state court building.
“Nobody can make you believe in God. Government can’t tell you that, but it must acknowledge the God upon which this nation is founded,” Moore said.
Members of the Islamic Society of North America and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) expressed concerns about the law.
“Is it to highlight universal principles that everyone should embrace? Or is the intent to send a message to Muslim students or others that “Your religion—not welcome here, only one understanding of one religion is welcome here?’” said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of CAIR.
Mitchell said Muslims respect the Ten Commandments, which are largely reinforced by similar passages throughout the Quran and the teachings of the prophet Muhammad, but that the context is troubling for reasons, including the use of a Ten Commandments translation associated with evangelicals and other Protestants.
Earlier Ten Commandments controversies
In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The high court found that the law had no secular purpose but rather, served a plainly religious purpose.
In its most recent rulings on Ten Commandments displays, the Supreme Court held in 2005 that such displays in a pair of Kentucky courthouses violated the U.S. Constitution. At the same time, the court upheld a Ten Commandments marker on the grounds of the Texas state capitol in Austin. Those were 5-4 decisions, but the court’s makeup has changed, with a 6-3 conservative majority now.
The main differences in the two cases— at least, according to the one swing vote, then-Justice Stephen Breyer—was that the Kentucky county officials demonstrated an unmistakable track record of religious motives in the posting, while the motives behind the Texas display were more on the “borderline” between religious and secular. In addition, Breyer said, the Texas monument had passed a test of time, standing among other monuments for decades without legal challenge.
Other religion-government fights
After he was removed as chief justice of Alabama Supreme Court in 2003 for his refusal to remove the Ten Commandments monument, Moore was elected to the post again, but was suspended from the bench in 2016 after a
judicial discipline panel ruled he had urged probate judges to refuse marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Moore disputed the accusation. Louisiana has had a prominent role in the church-state legal fight before. In 1987, the Supreme Court struck down a 1981 Louisiana statute that required instruction about evolution to be accompanied by teaching about “creation science.” The court found that the statute had no identifiable secular purpose and the “pre-eminent purpose of the Louisiana Legislature was clearly to advance the religious viewpoint that a supernatural being created humankind.” Mississippi has mandated the display of “In God We Trust” in schools since 2001. Louisiana passed a similar mandate that became law last year. The latest pushes to post the Ten Commandments follow a major victory for the religious right in 2022: The Supreme Court ruled that a high school football coach in the state of Washington who knelt and prayed on the field after games was protected by the Constitution.
How the Ten Commandments are viewed Jews and Christians regard the Ten Commandments as having been given by God to Moses, according to biblical accounts, on Mount Sinai. Not every Christian tradition uses the same Ten Commandments. The order varies as does the phrasing, depending on which Bible translation is used. The Ten Commandments in the signed Louisiana legislation are listed in an order common among some Protestant and Orthodox traditions.
Disputes over the law probably will not be about only whether the commandments should be mandated on schoolroom walls, but also which version should be used, said James Hudnut-Beumler, a professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. “The Ten Commandments always look universal until you put a shortened list up on the wall and discover that there’s room for dispute,” he said.
Cline reported from Baton Rouge, La. Associated Press writers Stephen Smith in New Orleans; Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Ala.; Mark Sherman in Washington, D.C.; Holly Meyer in Nashville, Tenn.; Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Miss.; and Peter Smith in Pittsburgh contributed to this report.
Copy of Ten Commandments is posted along with other historical documents in hallway at Georgia State Capitol Building in Atlanta. Louisiana has become the first state in the country to require Ten Commandments be displayed in all public schools (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
3.
founder of CONBUD and ConBody, was the keynote speaker at the Renaissance Summit on Saturday, June 29.
4. Lloyd J. Cambridge, founder & CEO of Progress Playbook, addresses the crowd at the
Black businesses
Continued from page 3
Project, and the Renaissance Project.
Originally called NYC Safe, the Renaissance Project works with individuals to identify solutions for issues in the community ranging from education to LGBTQ safety, said Cambridge. Ten entrepreneurs living in NYCHA developments across the city are chosen for the program. Over the course of 12 weeks, they are given business training, mentorship, $4,000 in stipend payments to support their business, and an opportunity to win up to $10,000 in additional funding at Progress Playbook’s Pitch Competition.
This past weekend, the program showcased their second cohort’s business ideas at a festive inaugural summit in Brooklyn held June 29. The event featured a variety of entrepreneurs, speakers, music, food, demonstrations, and networking sessions.
Stanley Johnson, a tenant association president for Metro North Plaza Houses in East Harlem, wants to install sensory equipment in all of NYCHA’s playgrounds for families with autistic children. His fledgling company is called Metro Sensory Project. Johnson currently works at Bellevue Hospital as a community health advisor and never saw himself as an entrepreneur. “This was not on my vision board. This was not something that I thought I would be doing, but it’s so fulfilling,” he said.
Lashante Briscoe, who started the nonprofit, Be The Light, was excited about her entrepreneurial journey. Her nonprofit focuses on aiding single mothers transitioning from the shelter system. Briscoe is a special education teacher studying for her doctorate and a single mother who lived in the
shelter system herself. She offers her clients networking opportunities, resources, mindfulness and wellness classes, and financial literacy courses.
“A lot of my counterparts who were given vouchers and apartments lost those apartments within two years because the city will pay your rent, but if you’re not solidifying your financial path and managing your finances when it comes time for you to be independent– you can’t,” Briscoe said at the summit. “I said, ‘What if I can create something where I can provide this for other women?’”
This year the city’s employment rates among Black residents slightly improved compared to pre-pandemic levels, according to the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) April 2024 economic snapshot. But there remains a significant disparity between the unemployment rates of Black (7.9%), Latino (6.7%), and white New Yorkers (3.3%).
In an attempt to close the jobs gap, Mayor Eric Adams announced $1.2 billion in city contracts for security guard services and fire safety personnel with a concentration on community hiring this June. The city’s goal is for 40% of the labor hours to be performed by individuals who live in NYCHA housing or reside in a ZIP code where at least 15% of the population lives below the federal poverty threshold.
It’s important to note the city’s public workforce is comprised of mostly women and people of color, yet continues to shoehorn women of color into civil service job titles with lesser pay—earning them $0.84 for every $1 paid to white city employees, per city pay parity reports. Higher paying jobs are dominated by white and male employees.
1. Harlem Cookery Chef Jonte Ouattara (left) prepared food for her interactive cooking demonstration at the Brooklyn event.
2. Lashante Briscoe, founder of Be The Light, holds a seminar during the Renaissance Summit at BKLYNCommons on Saturday, June 29.
Coss Marte,
Summit. (Ariama C. Long photos)
How a Maryland pastor ended up leading one of fastest-growing churches in nation
By DARREN SANDS Associated Press
CALVERTON, Md.—The Rev. Matthew L. Watley says it’s not happenstance that his suburban Maryland congregation, part of the historically Black African Methodist Episcopal denomination, has landed at the top of a list of the fastest-growing churches in America.
From hearing his call to ministry while dancing with his Step Afrika troupe in South Africa to giving up his law school aspirations and enrolling at the Howard School of Divinity, all paths led Watley to the pulpit— and eventually Kingdom Fellowship AME Church—for this son and grandson of AME ministers.
“There’s a phrase that says, ‘In America, we believe in God, but in Africa, they depend on God,’” said Watley, who met his wife, a lawyer and federal lobbyist, at Howard. “I had never seen faith like that before.”
In 2019, the year Kingdom Fellowship AME was founded, the church had about 3,000 members and an average weekly attendance of about 1,800 people, according to the church’s figures. Today, membership has swelled to nearly 8,000, and weekly services draw about 2,500 attendees.
On a recent Sunday morning, Watley, 50, preached to a packed sanctuary from the Gospel of Luke about Zacchaeus’s transformative meeting with Jesus. The corrupt tax collector changed his ways after climbing a tree to see Jesus over the crowd.
“When Zacchaeus climbed that tree, that was his way of doing what he needed to do to become whole—to become healed from the stuff he’d been carrying his whole life,” Watley said.
Afterward, more than 20 people, some with tears in their eyes, retreated to an intake room for new members. Kingdom Fellowship is averaging about 110 additions per month, according to the church.
Before Kingdom Fellowship, Watley built a robust following for years through a ministry called Power Lunch, the first of which drew about 300 people. These were midday worship hours held in the District of Columbia and the greater Washington, D.C., metropolitan area that provided attendees with a to-go meal before they headed back to work.
Watley also brought a church to the people, taking note of the scores of Black Americans relocating from D.C. to the suburbs and in need of a place to worship. Although outside the district, Watley and Kingdom Fellowship have remained in the capital’s political orbit, sharing his pulpit with Baptist pastor and U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., and hosting Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff for the inaugural service in its new church building. They have also welcomed Angela Alsobrooks, the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee challenging former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, among other politicians.
However, Kingdom Fellowship still wants to be identified with its homespun hospitality and a culture that puts its members on an equal footing regardless of what they do outside the church.
“We appreciate that you’re the CEO, whatever. We need some help on the parking lot. It’s great you’re…the head of the ER medical unit. We need somebody to hold this door. And that’s the culture,” Watley said.
Kingdom Fellowship began as a satellite campus of the growing Reid Temple AME Church in nearby Montgomery County, which is where Watley served as executive pastor, overseeing the budget, local ministries, and its 132,000 square-foot-facili-
ty featuring a sanctuary, credit union, and bookstore that was completed in 2004. Watley also served as de facto chief of staff for Reid Temple’s senior pastor, the Rev. Lee Washington.
“He [Watley] had a lot of ideas,” said Washington, who recently retired. “I gave him the freedom and the flexibility to do what he thought was best.”
With Washington’s blessing, those ideas included launching Reid Temple North with a small contingent of volunteers. They held the first worship service in 2006 in the Montgomery Blair High School cafeteria, where they met until 2010. The growing congregation moved into a renovated building in Silver Spring, Md., where Watley added a second Sunday service in 2011 and a third in 2013. The campus eventually became financially self-sufficient.
Instead of naming Watley his successor, Washington, with an eye on retirement, opted to spin off Reid Temple North as an independent church. It was renamed Kingdom Fellowship AME and Watley became its inaugural senior pastor in 2019.
“Our church was growing by leaps and bounds, and I did not believe in hoarding,” Washington said. “I believe in sharing.”
Even as a young leader, Watley was noticed within the denomination for his maturity and strong opinions, said Bishop James Levert Davis, presiding prelate for the AME district that includes Kingdom Fellowship. Davis has selected Watley to be part of his district’s delegation to the upcoming AME General Conference, where the denomination’s ban on same-sex marriage is expected to be debated—an issue Watley hopes won’t cause a schism.
“I tease Matthew constantly, telling him that he’s the oldest young person that I know,” Davis said. “Between his father and his grandfather, he has been anchored and nurtured by the best of who we are.”
Watley’s role as the first leader of Kingdom Fellowship also came with a nerveracking capital project: building a new worship center with sky-high ceilings and an amphitheater-style sanctuary. Not only was there a recent example of a similar project falling apart at another church in the region, but Kingdom Fellowship was preparing to break ground when the COVID19 pandemic hit.
“I was very cognizant of that. Absolutely,” Watley said.
But no one pulled out: neither the bank nor the contractor or the congregation. Instead, members of Kingdom Fellowship increased their giving, and the congregation celebrated their first service in the new worship center in 2022 at Easter.
Recently, Outreach magazine named the church the fastest-growing, a ranking based on a self-reported Lifeway Research survey that compared average weekly, in-person attendance for February and March 2023 to 2022 numbers.
In the U.S., Black Protestants’ monthly church attendance declined 15% from 2019 to 2023, a larger drop than any other major religious group, according to a 2023 Pew Research study. They are also more likely than other groups to attend religious services online or on TV, with more than half (54%) saying they attend services virtually.
The pace of growth at Kingdom Fellowship AME has been rapid but seamless, said Sharon and Billy Watts, of Upper Marlboro, Md. What has remained constant is the kindness and care of church staff, they said.
The couple previously attended Reid Temple North, where they regularly witnessed Watley’s gift for preaching and reaching people. Watley inspires outside the church, too, said Sharon Watts, noting the speech the pastor gave at her husband’s retirement party that had the crowd of soon-to-be retirees wondering how and where they could hear Watley again.
“It’s something about that man and what he brings forth in his preaching,” she said. She first noticed Watley’s knack for drawing crowds in the Power Lunch days. “To me, it seems like we’re called to bring the community together to hear the word of God, to not just prepare them spiritually, but to prepare the whole person.”
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from the Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Reverend Matthew L. Watley delivers sermon during Sunday service at Kingdom Fellowship AME Church in Calverton, Md., which has landed at top of a list of fastest-growing churches in America (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)
Harlem Pride
Continued from page 11
hundreds of LGBTQ+ members in NYC in need of this support. In this way, the venues’ multifunctional structure promotes a broader sense of reassurance regarding the continuous commitment of major NYC corporations to ensure the safety of LGBTQ+ members in the city Alongside the sponsored venues were countless more independent Harlem-
Zooman
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displays multiple emotions in reaction to losing his baby girl.
Reggie Wilson plays Emmett Tate, Jinny’s uncle. His outrage and desire for vengeance are palpable. Wilson, at times, also serves as comic relief and does a marvelous job.
Isaiah Martinez plays Victor Tate, Jinny’s older brother. Martinez has a captivating stage presence, particularly in a scene where he talks about no one acknowledging his pain as a brother who lost his little sister. This young man is someone to watch out for.
Ashlee Danielle is wonderful in the role of Rachel’s cousin Ash. She touches the heart as she shares her feelings for this little girl who had so much love and joy.
based businesses. The Harlem Pride festival provided an outlet for established and upcoming LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs in need for some well deserved exposure. Among these entrepreneurs was Tunita James, author of Barnes and Nobles bestseller, “Ma, Where’s Mommy” and “Grace’s Playdate.” Recognizing a disparity in the representation of LGBTQ+ families, James created “Grace’s Universe” for “all children to see their families in books” and “for future families and what they could be.” Reminiscent of all other vendors, the
Steven Strickland is sympathetic as Donald Jackson, a neighbor who does not know how to express to the Tates how much Jinny meant to him.
Salif Bobby Kone II gives a memorable performance as Russell Adams, Victor’s best friend.
Wadiah Waliah plays Grace Georges, a neighbor who comes to visit, but has her own agenda. Waliah gives a spot-on performance.
The play features scenic design by Patrice Davidson, lighting design by Melody A. Beal, sound design by Twan Howard, and costume design by Rhonda Lucas, with meticulous direction by Phyllis Yvonne Stickney. You experience every mountain and valley that the characters go through. You won’t soon forget “Zooman and the Sign.” For tickets, visit www.NEC.org. HURRY!
mission, as James remarks, is rooted in the idea of “spreading self love and actualization.” These participants were inspired by the shared goals of promoting innovation and joy within the LGBTQ+ community. The festival also interactive pop-up shops from over 20 sponsors from across NYC and beyond, including TD Bank, NYC Health, New York Presbyterian, and DoorDash that shared the blocks with smaller organizations that assisted with providing various contraceptives, HIV testing, and outlets to help with name changes.
Neely spent most of the celebration hovering around the center stage on 138th street, which offered a huge platform for 15 upcoming artists within the LGBTQ+ community throughout the festival. She pointed to that stage as another visible sign of the celebration’s growth over the years.
“Most of our stage show artists have large social media followings, but rarely get to perform live in front of a large audience. Black prides like Harlem Pride are key in providing visibility for such artists,” she said.
Isaiah Joseph as Zooman in “Zooman and the Sign” (Jonathan Slaff photo)
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NOTICE OF SALE
SUPREME COURT, NEW YORK COUNTY, ROYS REALTY GROUP LLC, Plaintiff, against EIGHTH AVENUE 154 LLC, et al., Defendants.
Pursuant to a Final Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated January 18, 2024, and entered on February 23, 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 Wednesday, July 17, 2024, at 2:15 p.m., 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 767, Lot 74. Said premises known as 154 8th Avenue, New York, NY 10001. Premises will be sold subject to the terms of the filed Judgment, Index No. 850022/2022, and the Terms of Sale, all of which are available from Plaintiff’s counsel upon request.
The approximate amount of the Judgment is $8,462,096.48 plus interest and costs, as provided in the Judgment.
The foreclosure sale will be conducted in compliance with the First Judicial District’s Covid-19 Policies concerning public auctions of foreclosed properties and the New York County Foreclosure Auction Rules which can be found on the Court’s website.
Clark Whitsett, 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.
Lanark Consulting LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 3/18/24. Office location: Queens County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: 983 Wyckoff Ave #1, Ridgewood, NY 11385. Purpose: Any lawful act.
Rebel Soul Music Fair LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 04/23/2024. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: 228 Park Ave S PMB 304952, New York, NY 100031502. Purpose: Any lawful act.
Zyero LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 4/7/2024. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: 228 Park Ave S PMB 416142, New York, NY 10003. Purpose: Any lawful act.
SUPREME COURT, COUNTY OF NEW YORK, BOARD OF MANAGERS OF TOWERS ON THE PARK CONDOMINIUM, Plaintiff against CLAUDETH R ADAMS, ALLEN HEZEKIAH, and SECRETARY OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, Defendant(s). Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale entered February 26, 2024. I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction at the front steps of the Supreme Court, County of New York, 60 Centre Street, Room 130, New York, New York on the 31st day of July, 2024 at 2:15 p.m.; premises described as follows: All that certain plot, piece or parcel of land, with the buildings and improvements thereon erected, situate, lying and being partially in the Incorporated County of New York, State of New York. Said premises known as 300 Cathedral Parkway, Unit 11K, New York, New York (Block: 1845, Lot: 1110). Approximate amount of lien $136,333.24 and such additional common charges and assessments and late fees, legal fees as may accrue up to the date of sale or so much of it as the purchase money of the mortgaged premises will pay of the same not previously included in the computation and upon presentation of proofs of same to Referee, together with interest thereon pursuant to the common charge lien. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed judgment and terms of sale and any amount owed on underlying mortgage. Index No. 157781/2020, Scott H. Siller, Esq., Referee. Ian J. Brandt, Esq, Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP Attorney(s) for Plaintiff 605 Third Avenue, 34th Floor, New York, New York 10158 (646) 428-3291
SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY-HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf. v. MICHAEL G. STRUNK, Deft. - Index # 850616/2023. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated May 10, 2024, I will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the New York County Courthouse located at 60 Centre Street, New York, NY on Thursday, July 11, 2024, at 2:15 pm, an interest of an undivided 0.00986400000% tenant in common interest in the timeshare known as 57TH STREET VACATION SUITES located at 102 West 57th Street, New York, NY. Approximate amount of judgment is $42,026.00 plus costs and interest as of December 19, 2023. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale which includes annual maintenance fees and charges. Sofia Balile, Esq., Referee. Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston, & Zimet LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingdale, NY.
SUMMONS
SUMMONS IN TAX LIEN FORECLOSURE –SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, COUNTY OF NEW YORK– NYCTL 19982 TRUST AND THE BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON AS COLLATERAL AGENT AND CUSTODIAN FOR THE NYCTL 1998-2 TRUST, Plaintiffs, against Annabelle Baires de Garcia-Rossi as Heir and Distributee of the deceased Ernesto Juan Garcia-Rossi and unknown Heirs and Distributees of the deceased last owners of record Dr. Francis A. Garcia-Rossi, Ana Maria Dina Garcia-Rossi,, if living, et. al., Defendants. Index No. 160295/2022 . To the above-named Defendants –YOU ARE HEREBY SUMMONED to answer the complaint in this action within twenty days after the service of this summons, exclusive of the day of service or within thirty days after service is completed if the summons is not personally delivered t o you within the State of New York. In case of your failure to appear or answer, judgment will be taken against you by default for the relief demanded in the complaint. Plaintiffs designate New York County as the place of trial. Venue is based upon the county in which the property a lien upon which is being foreclosed is situated. The foregoing summons is served upon you by publication pursuant to the Order of the Hon. Francis A, Kahn III, J.S.C., dated June 12, 2024. The object of this action is to foreclose a New York City Tax Lien covering the premises located at Block 1342 Lot 1013 on the Tax Map of New York County and is also known as 309 East 49th Street, Unit 3C, New York, New York. Dated: June 14, 2024. BRONSTER LLP, Attorney for Plaintiffs, NYCTL 1998-2 TRUST AND THE BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON AS COLLATERAL AGENT AND CUSTODIAN FOR THE NYCTL 1998-2 TRUST, By: Josef F. Abt, Esq., 156 West 56 th Street, Suite 703, New York, NY 10019 (347) 246-4776
SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY- HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf. v. HASMAIK ESTEVEZ IT SERVICES, LLC and HASMAIK ESTEVEZ, Defts. - Index # 850115/2022. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated May 15, 2023, I will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the New York County Courthouse located at 60 Centre Street, New York, NY on Thursday, July 25, 2024, at 2:15 pm, an interest of an undivided 0.00493200000% tenant in common interest in the timeshare known as 57TH STREET VACATION SUITES located at 102 West 57th Street, New York, NY. Approximate amount of judgment is $25,164.06 plus costs and interest as of January 4, 2023. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale which includes annual maintenance fees and charges. Scott H. Siller, Esq., Referee. Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston, & Zimet LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingdale, NY.
Ambitious Soule L.L.C. Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 03/08/2024. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & mail a copy to: 7014 13th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11228. Purpose: Any lawful act.
NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT COUNTY OF New York, The Board of Managers of the 184 Thompson Condominium, Plaintiff, vs. Tet Thye Chan, Defendant. Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale and Decision + Order on Motion duly entered on October 5, 2023, 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 July 24, 2024 at 2:15 p.m., premises known as 184 Thompson Street, Unit LD, New York, NY 10012. 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 525 and Lot 1731 together with an undivided 0.9553 percent interest in the Common Elements. Approximate amount of judgment is $62,853.50 plus interest and costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index #850156/2022. COVID-19 safety protocols will be followed at the foreclosure sale. Allison Furman, Esq., Referee Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C., Attn: Courtney Lerias, Esq., One Battery Park Plaza, 18th Floor, New York, New York 10004, Tel: 212.825.0365, Attorneys for Plaintiff
Notice of Formation of MAD RIVER MANOR PRESERVATION GP, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/16/24. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 30 Hudson Yards, 72nd Fl., NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
Notice of Formation of NORWALK NORTH HOUSING CLASS B, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/20/24. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 30 Hudson Yards, 72nd Fl., NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
Notice of Formation of NORTHCREST GARDENS HOUSING GP, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/17/24. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 30 Hudson Yards, 72nd Fl., NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
NOTICE OF SALE In pursuance and by virtue of a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale duly granted and entered in an action entitled NYCTL 2021-A Trust and The Bank of New York Mellon as Collateral Agent and Custodian for the NYCTL 2021-A Trust v. South Atlantic Trading Ltd., et al., bearing Index No. 157450/2022 on or about February 29, 2024, by the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, I, the Referee, duly appointed in this action for such purpose, will expose for sale and sell at public auction to the highest bidder on July 24, 2024 at 2:15 p.m., at the New York County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street, Room 130, New York, New York 10007, the liened premises designated as Block 1419, Lot 1740, in the City of New York, County of New York and Borough of Manhattan, State of New York and known as 214/216 East 65 th Street (a/k/a 225/235 East 64 th Street a/k/a 220 East 65 th Street), Unit 18L, New York, New York 10065 , directed in and by said judgment to be sold. The sale will be conducted pursuant to the Court’s Auction Rules and any COVID Restrictions.
The approximate amount of the judgment is $118,585.40 plus interest and other charges, and the property is being sold subject to the terms and conditions stated in the judgment, any prior encumbrances and the terms of sale which shall be available at the time of sale.
Dated: June 20, 2024 New York, New York Matthew D. Hunter III, Esq. Referee 71-01 Austin Street Forest Hills, New York 11375 (718) 309-1660
David P. Stich, Esq. Attorney for Plaintiff 521 Fifth Avenue, 17th Floor New York, New York 10175 (646) 554-4421
LF 2024 RETAIL LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 05/09/24. 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 Larstrand Corporation, 500 Park Avenue, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10022. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.
Notice of Formation of FAIRVIEW HOUSING I AND II, L.P. Cert. of LP filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/21/24. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LP: 30 Hudson Yards, 72nd Fl., NY, NY 10001. Latest date on which the LP may dissolve is 12/31/2123. SSNY designated as agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. Name and addr. of each general partner are available from SSNY. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
SUPREME COURT - COUNTY OF NEW YORK.
CIPRIANI CLUB RESIDENCES AT 55 WALL CONDOMINIUM, BY ITS BOARD OF MANAGERS, Plaintiff -against- SOLU PROPERTIES LLC, et al Defendant(s). Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale entered herein and dated February 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 August 7, 2024 at 2:15 p.m. premises situate, lying and being in the Borough of Manhattan, City, County and State of New York, known as "The 55 Wall Condominium" designated and described as Unit 622. Together with an undivided 0.4804% percent interest in the common elements. Block: 27 Lot: 1033 Said premises known as 55 WALL STREET, UNIT 622, NEW YORK, NY
Approximate amount of lien $45,598.51 plus interest & costs.
Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale.
Index Number 154426/2023.
ELAINE SHAY, ESQ., Referee
Schwartz Sladkus Reich Greenberg Atlas LLP
Attorney(s) for Plaintiff
444 Madison Ave., 6th Floor, New York, NY 10022
Notice of Formation of DD BEDFORD PARKING LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/09/24. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 7 Penn Plaza, Ste. 600, NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the addr. of its princ. office. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
Notice of Formation of 2125TH9B LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/01/24. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 212 Fifth Ave., 9B, NY, NY 10010. 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 122072543. Purpose: Rental.
Notice of Qualification of PRIVACORE CAPITAL ADVISORS, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/02/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 02/05/24. Princ. office of LLC: 1411 Broadway, 17th Fl., Ste. B, NY, NY 10018. 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, 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Investment advisor.
Velvet Riot Creative LLC Auth. filed w/ SSNY 5/20/24. Off. in NY Co. Cert. of Form filed w/ SSDE 4/4/24. Process served to SSNY - desig. as agt. of LLC & mailed to the LLC, 2912 Hostetler St, Raleigh, NC 27609. Add. maint’d. in DE: 3500 S Dupont Hwy, Dover, DE 19901. Name & add. of auth. officer in DE where Cert. of Form filed: SSDE Div. of Corp, 401 Federal St, Ste. 4, DE 19901. Any lawful purpose.
SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY- HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf. v. NAYDA FIGUEROA AND CARISSA R. VILLANUEVA, if living, and if they be dead, any and all persons unknown to Plaintiff, claiming, or who may claim to have an interest in, or generally or specific lien upon the real property described in this action; such unknown persons being herein generally described and intended to be included in the following designation, namely: the wife, widow, husband, widower, heirsat-law, next of kin, descendants, executors, administrators, devisees, legatees, creditors, trustees, committees, lienors and assignees of such deceased, any and all persons deriving interest in or lien upon, or title to said real property by, through or under them, or either of them, and their respective wives, widows, husbands, widowers, heirs-at-law, next of kin, descendants, executors, administrators, devisees, legatees, creditors, trustees, committees, lienors and assigns, all of whom and whose names, except as stated, are unknown to Plaintiff, Defts. - Index # 850135/2020. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated May 10, 2024, I will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the New York County Courthouse located at 60 Centre Street, New York, NY on Thursday, July 25, 2024, at 2:15 pm, an interest of an undivided 0.00986400000% tenant in common interest in the timeshare known as 57TH STREET VACATION SUITES located at 102 West 57th Street, New York, NY. Approximate amount of judgment is $42,303.39 plus costs and interest as of February 9, 2024. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale which includes annual maintenance fees and charges. Matthew D. Hunter III, Esq., Referee. Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston, & Zimet LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingdale, NY.
SUPREME COURT-NEW YORK COUNTY- HILTON RESORTS CORP., Pltf. v. ELIZABETH BARON and BRUCE R. BARON, Defts. Index # 850531/2023. Pursuant to Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale dated May 30, 2024, I will sell at public auction in Room 130 of the New York County Courthouse located at 60 Centre Street, New York, NY on Thursday, July 25, 2024, at 2:15 pm, an interest of an undivided 0.00493200000% tenant in common interest in the timeshare known as 57TH STREET VACATION SUITES located at 102 West 57th Street, New York, NY. Approximate amount of judgment is $20,123.92 plus costs and interest as of February 27, 2024. Sold subject to terms and conditions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale which includes annual maintenance fees and charges. Scott H. Siller, Esq., Referee. Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston, & Zimet LLP, Attys. for Pltf., 341 Conklin Street, Farmingdale, NY.
Notice of Qualification of ARTEMIS OUTDOOR HOLDINGS, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/14/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 05/07/24. 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 DE Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
Notice of Qualification of ARTEMIS INVESTOR HOLDINGS, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/14/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 05/07/24. 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 DE Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
STARLIGHT EVENTS GROUP
LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 02/24/2024. Office location: NY County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: 7014 13th Ave Ste 210, Bklyn, NY 11228. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.
The West Prjct LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 3/14/2024. Office: NY County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: 110 Horatio St #111, New York, NY 10014. Purpose: Any lawful act.
NOTICE OF SALE
SUPREME COURT COUNTY OF New York , HMC Assets, LLC Solely in its Capacity as Separate Trustee of Cam XI Trust , Plaintiff, vs . Leo Tsimmer a/k/a Leo E. Tsimmer , ET AL., Defendant(s). Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale and Decision + Order on Motion duly entered on April 8 , 2024 , 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 August 7, 2024 at 2:15 p.m., premises known as 200 East 58th Street, Unit 16F, New York, NY 10022. 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 1331 and Lot 1083 together with an undivided 0.68227 percent interest in the Common Elements. Approximate amount of judgment is $645,401.04 plus interest and costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index #850209/2020. COVID-19 safety protocols will be followed at the foreclosure sale.
Paul R. Sklar, Esq., Referee Friedman Vartolo LLP, 85 Broad Street, Suite 501, New York, New York 10004, Attorneys for Plaintiff. Firm File No.: 150137-5
NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT COUNTY OF NEW YORK Morgan Stanley Private Bank, National Association, Plaintiff AGAINST Eric Braverman a/k/a Eric R. Braverman; et al., Defendant(s) Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale duly entered February 22, 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 10007 on July 17, 2024 at 2:15PM, premises known as 200 Chambers Street Unit 26C, New York, NY 10007. 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 142 Lot 1183. Approximate amount of judgment $4,900,532.49 plus interest and costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index# 850253/2019. The auction will be conducted pursuant to the COVID-19 Policies Concerning Public Auctions of Foreclosed Property established by the First Judicial District. Matthew D. Hunter, III, 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: February 26, 2024 79829
Notice of Formation of NORTHCREST GARDENS HOUSING, L.P. Cert. of LP filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/21/24. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LP: 30 Hudson Yards, 72nd Fl., NY, NY 10001. Latest date on which the LP may dissolve is 12/31/2123. SSNY designated as agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. Name and addr. of each general partner are available from SSNY. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
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 , ET AL., Defendant(s). Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale and Sale and Decision + Order on Motion duly entered on February 15, 2024 , 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 July 31, 2024 at 2:15 p.m., premises known as 635 West 42nd Street a/k/a 627-635 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, 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. COVID-19 safety protocols will be followed at the foreclosure sale.
Paul R. Sklar, Esq., Referee Friedman Vartolo LLP, 85 Broad Street, Suite 501, New York, New York 10004, Attorneys for Plaintiff. File Firm No.: 201235-1
Notice of Qualification of Cameron Enterprises A Limited Partnership filed with the NY Secretary of State on January 30, 2024, Office Location New York County. LLC formed in Oklahoma (OK) on 2/18/1986. Secretary of State of New York is designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. Secretary of State of New York shall mail process to 28 Liberty Street, New York, NY 10005. Oklahoma address of LLC is 9000 Cameron Parkway, Oklahoma City, OK 73114. Certificate of Formation filed with OK Secretary of State, 421 NW 13th St., Ste 210/220, Oklahoma City, OK 73103, Purpose: any lawful activity.
Notice of Qualification of ARTEMIS MANAGEMENT MERGER SUB, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/14/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 05/07/24. 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 122072543. DE addr. of LLC: CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
Notice of Formation of NORWALK NORTH HOUSING, L.P. Cert. of LP filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/21/24. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LP: 30 Hudson Yards, 72nd Fl., NY, NY 10001. Latest date on which the LP may dissolve is 12/31/2123. SSNY designated as agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. Name and addr. of each general partner are available from SSNY. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
TOP CHOICE SERVICING, LLC. App. for Auth. filed with the SSNY on 05/14/24. Originally filed with the Secretary of State of Delaware on 9/27/2023. 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, 1500 Broadway, 2022, New York, NY 10036. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.
SNF Global LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 3/23/2022. Office location: NY County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: 100 W 31 St Apt 20D, NY, NY 10001. Purpose: Any lawful act.
Notice of Formation of FIVE IRON GOLF KIRKLAND LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 2/26/2024. Office location: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: 883 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS, NEW YORK, NY 10001. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
Notice of Qualification of BST KNOX LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/01/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 04/22/24. 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., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
Notice of Qualification of COMBINED BUILDING SERVICES, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/07/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 06/24/86. Princ. office of LLC: 150 E. 42nd St., Fl. 7, NY, NY 10017. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: c/o CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
ALL ANGLES PRODUCTIONS LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 06/03/2024. Office location: NY County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: 40 Bruckner Blvd, Apt 1213, New York, NY 10454. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.
IQEQ Law, PLLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 5/06/2019. Office: Queens County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail copy to: 237 36th St., Brooklyn NY 11232. Purpose: Any lawful act, including laws of business practices.
The Missouri Rowe Collective LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 03/07/2024. Office location: NY County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: 228 Park Ave S PMB 321009, New York, NY, 100031502. Purpose: Any lawful act.
KingCo Ventures LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 05/27/2024. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: 7014 13th Ave, Ste 202, Brooklyn, NY, 11228. Purpose: Any lawful act.
Compass Rose Publishing LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 4/27/2024. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: 7014 13TH AVENUE, SUITE 202, BROOKLYN, NY, 11228. Purpose: Any lawful act.
One Golden Eagle LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 03/23/2024. Office location: NY County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: U.S. Corp. Agents, Inc., 7014 13th Ave., Ste. 202, Bklyn, NY, 11228. Purpose: Any lawful act.
DK LEGAL LLP. Notice of Registration filed with the SSNY on 06/13/24. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLP upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLP, 502 Park Avenue, 9D, New York, NY 10022, which is also the location of the partnership. Purpose: For the practice of the profession of Law.
Mega Mode LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 02/19/2024. Office location: NY County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: 207 W 110th St, Unit 16, New York, NY 10026. Purpose: Any lawful act.
Notice of Formation of LP PRESERVATION HTC LLC
Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/23/24. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 116 E. 27th St., 11th Fl., NY, NY 10016. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 122072543. Purpose: Real estate.
Notice of Formation of 251 WEST 91ST STREET 4A LLC
Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/23/24. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
Notice of Qualification of BMH Penn, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/16/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Pennsylvania (PA) on 06/21/18. Princ. office of LLC:
Three Logan Sq., 1717 Arch Street, Ste. 5100, Philadelphia, PA 19103. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of the Commonwealth of PA, 302 N. Office Bldg., 401 North St., Harrisburg, PA 17120. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
Notice of Qualification of FORTHILL WALKER HOLDER, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/20/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 05/16/24. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, 802 N. French St., 10th Fl., Wilmington, DE 19801. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
Notice of Qualification of 980 MADISON AVENUE HOLDINGS LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/30/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 06/14/07. 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 122072543. DE addr. of LLC: c/o CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., #4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
FEATHERS MANAGEMENT, LLC, filed App. for Auth. with the SSNY on 1/25/2024. Office: New York County. LLC formed in DE on 6/10/2021. SSNY is designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served and shall mail process to: c/o Blair Feldman, 30 W 57th St, NY, NY 10019. Address required to be maintained in DE: 1105 N Market St. Ste 801, Wilmington, DE 19801. Cert of Formation filed with DE Sect’y of State, 401 Federal St #4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: any lawful act.
Notice of Qualification of 170 EAST 83RD STREET OWNER
LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/24/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 05/07/24. Princ. office of LLC: 7 Penn Plaza, Ste. 600, NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543, regd. agent upon whom and at which process may be served. DE addr. of LLC: CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808-1674. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
Notice of Qualification of AlleyCorp Exavir 2022, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/23/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 02/07/22. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC, 220 5th Ave., 17th Fl., NY, NY 10001. DE addr. of LLC: Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
Notice of Formation of HAUTE HOME LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/29/24. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 17 E. 84th St., Apt. 9A, NY, NY 10028. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Sandi Harris Pleeter at the princ. office of the LLC. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
Breakfast Bar Books LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 5/31/2024. Office location: NY County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: Cohen Schneider Law, P.C., 275 Madison Ave., Suite 1905, New York, NY 10016. Purpose: Any lawful act.
CORE SETON AVENUE PROPERTIES, LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 06/12/24. 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, 3184 Westchester Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.
RIVIERA DEL CORALLO LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 06/12/24. 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, 1-50 50th Avenue, Apartment 2508, Long Island City, NY 11101. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.
Notice of Formation of H 18 & 8TH, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 04/18/24. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 115 W. 30th St., Ste. 1107, NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP, 605 Third Ave., 15th Fl., NY, NY 10158. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
GEBAYA LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 04/04/2024. Office location: NEW YORK County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: 420 EAST 111TH STREET, P.O. BOX 689, NEW YORK, NY 10029. Purpose: Any lawful act.
Crowned Marketing Solutions LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 6/6/2024. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail a copy to: 88 Greenwich St #809, New York, NY 10006. Purpose: Any lawful act.
100 BARCLAY 16M LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 06/05/24. 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, 100 Barclay Street, 16M, New York, NY 10007. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.
the debate, it was clear that the audience was disappointed but not entirely surprised by Biden’s performance. Even halfway through, as people began to leave the venue, mentally check out, or argue about the lack of factchecking in regard to Trump’s rebuttals, very few wavered in their support for the 81-yearold incumbent.
“We cannot afford for our country to go back into the hands of a tyrant. Somebody that does not care about any of the national concerns that we have or the local concerns,” community leader Anthony Beckford said during a commercial break.
When the debate wrapped, a media storm complete with negative polling descended on the Biden campaign. Democrats openly and privately started speculating about how to replace Biden as the Democratic nominee by the time the convention will be held in August in Chicago. At this point in the national primaries, Biden has secured enough delegates to be the nominee and can only be unseated if he chooses to drop out of the running of his own volition.
“His performance was very, not reassuring after we kept hearing from his camp, ‘Oh, he’s sharp, he’s on point,’ and everything but our eyes and ears are not lying to us,” said VIDA President Henry Butler, a firm Biden supporter. Butler said if a
Language access
the city’s 148 service centers were in violation of Local Law 30, the city’s local language access law. The shopper program found that only four service centers had both translated signage and documents on-site for those newly arrived. At other service centers, people were uninformed about their right to interpretation services; did not make use of telephonic interpretation services through the language line, instead relying on tools like Google Translate; and were frequently denied interpretation.
ACT Executive Director Amaha Kassa said city agencies need more bilingual staff, more cultural training, and better enforcement of the language law to improve the situation for both newly arrived and established migrants and asylum seekers when it comes to looking for work, housing, and healthcare.
“People are seeking vital services—certainly new arrivals over the last couple of years, but also long-term New Yorkers who are limited English-proficient and seeking services—and they expect that those services will be accessible in their language,” Kassa said. “That’s what the city advertises and tells people. That’s what the law says. And often they’re not able to access those services.”
Francis Madi Cerrada, a staff person at New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), said her family members have experienced language barriers for decades. Her family migrated to the city from Venezuela about 20 years ago,
younger person were in question, the panic about age wouldn’t be so palpable.
“To this whole part about replacing him, the question Democratic voters have to ask themselves, and be realistic about this, [is] replace him with who? Who out there do they truly think can beat Trump?” Butler said. “I think they’re under this delusion, the superleft progressives, that if we throw a progressive in there, somehow they would win. They live in their own progressive silos in these big cities like New York, Philly, and Chicago, and LA, and Miami. That’s not America.”
Voters are placing unconventional bets on alternate presidential candidates, such
when she was a teenager, but her mother still speaks limited English. “A lot of the infrastructure we have today, we didn’t have back then, and it just sort of fell on the kids to translate,” said Madi Cerrada. “I had to translate during the parent-teacher meetings [and when] getting things in the mail. Surprisingly, just a few weeks ago, I still had to translate for her in the hospital. She was getting a routine colonoscopy. They got their own interpreter and I sat back, but I also watched the interpreter not always translate what the doctor was saying. It’s an issue even to this day.”
Madi Cerrada said more awareness and resources are definitely available now for immigrant families, but it’s still frustrating for people like her mother. “My mom is in a little better position because she speaks a little more English,” she said. “I know that it’s difficult for folks that arrived recently that don’t know how to access information.”
The Language Justice Collaborative (LJC), which is made up of immigration groups like NYIC, African Communities Together (ACT), the Mexican American Students’ Alliance (MASA), and the Asian American Federation (AAF), received much-needed funding in the 2024 city budget to address these gaps in language services amid the migrant influx. The money went toward language services staffing, training for interpreters, and testing language proficiencies, Kassa said.
Before the city budget passed this week, councilmembers and advocates were reeling over Mayor Eric Adams’s sweeping cuts to beloved programs, especially ones for libraries, cultural institutions, and pre-K and 3k seats
as Governor of California Gavin Newsom, former First Lady Michelle Obama, current Vice President Kamala Harris, Governor of Michigan Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Pennsylvanis Josh Shapiro, and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. But nothing’s concrete yet.
Biden has said publicly that his age, getting over a cold, traveling extensively without rest, and other factors led to his weak showing at the debate. He hasn’t given any indication that he’s stepping down.
Manhattan party boss Keith L.T. Wright doubled down on sentiments that one debate, albeit a “horrible” one, doesn’t war-
for early childhood education. Kassa said immigration groups had heard about $3.8 million in cuts to language access services and wanted that funding restored as well.
Mayor Adams and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams agreed to the budget on time with little spectacle this year, and made many of the requested restorations.
“I want to thank Speaker Adams and our partners in the City Council for joining us in passing a budget that addresses the affordability crisis head-on and that invests in the future of our city and the workingclass people who make New York the greatest city in the world,” Mayor Adams said in a statement. “Despite facing unprecedented challenges, including a $7.1 billion budget gap, a $4.9 billion international humanitarian crisis, and hundreds of millions of shortterm stimulus dollars used to fund crucial long-term programs, we still passed a collaborative budget that addresses the three things that cost New Yorkers the most: housing, childcare, and healthcare.”
The adopted city budget dedicated $100 million to an early childhood education strategy with $25 million specifically toward child care services for undocumented children, $600 million for equitable education initiatives, more than $22 million for cultural institutions and libraries, $5.4 million for HIV/ AIDS related programs, and a robust affordable housing plan.
The LJC applauded the inclusion of several priorities in the budget as well as language access worker cooperatives.
“The final New York City budget for FY25
rant calls for Biden to drop out. He said Black voters for Biden aren’t likely to waver, despite a small wave of younger voters defecting to the independent side or men to the Republican side.
“I am not calling for him to step aside. It all comes out in the wash,” Wright said. “Trump will be Trump and Biden will be Biden.” Josue Pierre, one of the founding members of the Shirley Chisholm Democratic Club (SCDC) in Brooklyn, said that the ageism people have against Biden should apply to Trump as well. He believes that his vote should go to the best policy-maker who can be seen as a national leader.
“Against Biden is a fellow that’s been convicted of a number of things; has said a number of disturbing things about not just minorities and immigrants, just policy-wise; things that make you wonder if he even believes in democracy,” said Pierre.
On July 1, the Supreme Court ruled that U.S. presidents are immune from prosecution for their “official” acts, directly affecting Trump’s court case in D.C. and delayed sentencing for his New York conviction.
The next debate between Biden and Trump is scheduled for September. Pierre hopes the second debate will be engaging and factual, with more of an emphasis on abortion, affirmative action, and economic recovery and low employment rates.
“I believe as folks start to pay attention, it’ll become clear who the best option is and that’s clearly Joe Biden,” Pierre said.
brought major reversals to Mayor Adams’s unnecessarily austere proposed budget that would have left too many New Yorkers in need,” said NYIC President and CEO Murad Awawdeh. “This budget will give our immigrant neighbors—whether they arrived here 30 days ago or 30 years ago—a better opportunity to fully integrate into their lives as New Yorkers, and will ensure that families can stay together while they contribute to our economy and their children are safe, learning, and cared for. We look forward to building on these investments in the year to come to ensure that everyone who calls New York home can thrive here.”
At least $1 million of the funding will go to a centralized interpreter bank for public-facing spaces, which was proposed by the LJC.
“Right now, City Council offices are providing their own interpretation out of their district budget(s),” Kassa said. “We proposed that this new language bank focus on filling the gaps for offices, like City Council offices, community meetings, clinics. That’s where those funds would go, as well as to contracted city agencies; for example, legal service providers or a [nonprofit or church-based] charity. You’re kind of on your own in figuring out where to find interpretation for clients.”
Kassa said there’s also hope for the funding to be more inclusive of indigenous Latin American languages such as Kaqchikel & Kich’e or Nahuatl; African languages like Wolof, Fulani, Mandingo, Hassaniya, French, and Arabic; Asian languages like Mandarin, Cantonese, Min Nan Chinese, Bengali, Japanese, and Korean; and Haitian Creole.
Brooklyn political club members watch presidential debate between Biden and Trump on June 27. (Ariama C. Long photo)
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone sets another world record to cap off
the Olympic trials
By JAIME C. HARRIS
AmNews Sports Editor
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone continues to inscribe her name among the greatest track and field athletes of all-time. And the New Jersey native, who was born in New Brunswick and raised in Dunellen, less than 40 miles from Manhattan, is just 24.
On Sunday at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field trials at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field, McLaughlin-Levrone, who regularly competed as a scholastic prodigy at the Nike Track & Field Center at The Armory in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan as student attending Union Catholic Regional High School, blazed a time of 50.65 in the women’s 400-meter hurdles finals to set a new world record.
Anna Cockrell and Jasmine Jones were a distant second and third respectively to earn spots on the United States’ women’s 400-meter hurdles Olympic team.
McLaughlin-Levrone’s father, Willie McLaughlin, was a star in his own right out of East Orange High School before becoming a three-time All-American track performer at Manhattan College. And her mother, Mary McLaughlin was a noted high school distance runner while at Cardinal O’Hara High School in Tonawanda, New York near Buffalo. The young star will now endeavor to win her second consecutive 400meter hurdles Olympics gold in Paris, France, when the opening heats begin on August 4 with the finals scheduled for August 8.
She was the champion in the event at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, held in the summer of 2021 after a one-year postponement due the global COVID-19 pandemic, crossing the finish line in a the world record time of 51.46.
Subsequently, McLaughlin-Levrone lowered the mark to 51.41 in June 2022 at Hayward Field at the USATF Championships and set a new standard just one
New Brunswick, New Jersey native Sydney McLaughlinLevrone rejoices on Sunday in clocking 50.65, breaking her own world record in winning the women’s 400-meter hurdles at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field trials. (AP Photo/ George Walker IV)
month later back on the same track, winning the World Championships in 50.68.
McLaughlin-Levrone is also one of the sport’s preeminent 400-meter runners, having been a member of the United States gold medal contingent in the 4x400 meter relays at the Tokyo
Olympics, a dazzling quartet composed of her, Allyson Felix, 800-meter specialist and fellow New Jersey product Athing Mu, and Dalilah Muhammad,, who was born and raised in Jamaica, Queens, and starred for Benjamin Cardozo High School.
Additionally, McLaughlin-Lev-
rone ran her personal best in the 200 (22.07) this year.
The 34-year-old Muhammad, who won gold in 2016 in the women’s 400-meter hurdles at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, announced that Sunday was her last Olympic trials race as she finished the finals in sixth place.
James Wood’s MLB debut brings much needed juice to Nationals Park
By DEVON MASON MLBbro.com
Special to the AmNews
Washington, D.C.—On Monday night, the Washington Nationals’ top-ranked prospect and MLB Pipeline’s No.3 ranked prospect James Wood took the field in the majors for the first time as his team faced the New York Mets.
The 6-foot-7, 240-pound slugger worked his way up from Single-A to the majors when he arrived via the 2022 Juan Soto blockbuster trade between the Nationals and San Diego Padres.
Wood didn’t waste any time making his presence felt in front of a crowd of 26,719 in normally subdued Nationals Park, but the anticipation of his debut turned them relatively raucous. The Olney, Maryland native, who grew up just about 45 minutes from where he now plays his home games, hit an opposite field single in his first at-bat.
He finished the night 1-4, with some nifty base running ,though the Nationals ultimately lost 9-7 in 10 innings. Before the game, an eager Wood
told reporters, “It’s unreal. Just being able to play for the team I grew up around and watching— it’s a blessing.”
The arrival of Wood is on par with that of former Nationals superstars Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg: It revived a
fanbase that’s been waiting for something good to happen since the team won its lone World Series title in 2019, roughly four months before COVID-19 ravaged the world. You could feel the energy in and around Nats Park before the
opening pitch as loads of spectators were seated in anticipation of team batting practice just to get a glimpse of Wood at the plate.
As many as 50 of the slugger’s family members were seated and ready to see Wood work. As usual,
the even-keeled 21-year-old took it all in stride, seemingly unfazed by the moment.
“It’s cool just being back home and having my family here and trying to soak it all in,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s still baseball, so [I’m] just trying to look at it that way.”
For a team in dire need of a jolt, Wood’s arrival definitely provides that.
In an effort not to put too much pressure on his talented newcomer, an excited Nationals manager Davey Martinez did his best to temper the expectations for Wood.
“It’s exciting,” he said. “I don’t want him to feel like he’s the face of anything. I just want him to go play baseball.”
No matter how much Martinez tried to downplay the expectations that are attached to Wood, they won’t stop. The Nationals fanbase is hungry for a face of the franchise with Harper, Soto, and Scherzer no longer around, and Wood fits the bill. Baseball is a rocky road, especially when expectations are high, but Woods seems up to the task.
The Washington Nationals James Wood made his highly anticipated Major League debut on Monday night in a 9-7 loss over the Mets. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
center
Knicks look to fill a center hole after the departure of Isaiah Hartenstein
By JAIME C. HARRIS AmNews Sports Editor
No one should be mad at Isaiah Hartenstein for grabbing the bag, a sack that contains $87 million no less.
The 26-year-old center emerged as a key component for a Knicks team that finished this past NBA regular season 50-32, the No. 2 seed Eastern Conference and reached Game 7 of their conference semifinals match up against the Indiana Pacers before falling 130-109 at Madison Square Garden with a crew emotionally and physically decimated by injuries.
But Hartenstein had made around $22 million in career earnings, a modest sum by today’s NBA measure, including the twoyear, $16 million deal he signed with the Knicks in July 2022. So the contract offered by the Oklahoma City Thunder, a rising championship contender, on Sunday night, the official start of NBA free-agency, was hard to refuse.
Upon announcing the acquisition of the 7-footer 24 months ago, Knicks team president Leon Rose said this:
“We are very excited to welcome Isaiah Hartenstein to the Knicks’ family,” he expressed to open his comments. “He’s a versatile big man who impacts the game on both ends of the floor and who plays with a passion and energy that is contagious.”
Rose’s words proved to be prescient. With starting center Mitch Robinson finding consistently stable health elusive, undergoing left ankle surgery in May following his exit from Game 1 versus the Pacers, the same ankle on which he had surgery in December that kept him out until his brief return for the playoffs, Hartenstein’s quantifiable and intangible effect on the Knicks’ success was considerable.
This past season, Hartenstein, who was born in Eugene, Oregon, and moved to Germany in 2008 with his family, where his father, Florian Hartenstein, was playing basketball professionally, appeared in 75 of the Knicks’ 82 regular season games, starting 49, and averaged 7.8 points and 8.3 rebounds. He then started all 13 of their postseason games, posting 8.5 points and 7.8 rebounds in 29.8 minutes. Hartenstein played
youth and pro basketball in Europe prior to making his NBA debut with the Houston Rockets in 2018 and also spent time with the Denver Nuggets, Cleveland Cavaliers and Los Angeles Clippers.
Now Rose and the Knicks front office staff will have to weigh options to fill the void left by his departure. Robinson’s injury history makes him a liability and his offensive limitations necessitate the Knicks ultimately add a center that can be more than just a lob threat with the ability to effectively pass out of the low and high posts, and score from beyond the front of the rim, skills Hartenstein ably provided. Jericho Sims, heading into his fourth season with the Knicks, has not demonstrated the requisite offensive prowess
Some of the names being mentioned as potential trade targets are Walker Kessler of the Utah Jazz and Nick Richards of the Charlotte Hornets. But for now these names are just conjecture. Rose and company have demonstrated they have a clear direction and executable plan. Fans of the team are anxiously waiting for the next chess move.
to a
The Nets are in rebuild mode with a new head coach and cache of draft picks
By DERREL JOHNSON Special to the AmNews
The Brooklyn Nets have started each of the last two seasons a vastly different team, and the same will be true going into next season.
The Nets finished 32-50 this past season and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2018. They changed course again by hiring Jordi Fernandez in April. The 41-year-old Fernandez, who was the associate head coach for the Sacramento Kings this past season. He is the Nets’ fifth head coach since 2016. In order Kenny Atkinson, Jacque Vaughn (interim), Steve Nash, Jacque Vaughn again, Kevin Ollie (interim) and Fernandez have held the position. Vaughn was fired last February during the NBA All-Star break and replaced by Ollie, who was in his first year with the Nets as an assistant. The team chose not to retain Ollie after he went 11-17 taking over a difficult situation.
Fernández, born and raised in Badalona, Spain, is also the head coach of Canada’s Senior Men’s National Team, where he led them to a bronze medal at the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup after defeating Team USA. That American team had a roster that included Jalen Brunson, Anthony Edwards
and Mikal Bridges, who the Nets traded to the Knicks a little over a week ago in a major deal. The Nets, led by owner Joe Tsai and general manager Sean Marks, moved Bridges, who was their best player and one of the top two-way wings in the league, and included a 2026 second
round pick to the Knicks for a trove of first round picks. The Nets received a four unprotected first-round picks (2025, ‘27, ‘29, ‘31), a 2025 protected first round pick, and pick swaps in 2028; as well as a 2025 second-round pick.
The Nets also completed a trade with the Houston Rockets in
which they reacquired their 2025 first round draft pick that was sent to Houston as part of the 2021 James Harden trade, and a 2026 first rounder. The moves signal the Nets being all-in for the 2025 NBA Draft, which is considered to be deep. Rising college freshmen such as Cooper Flagg, a 6’9’’ forward who will attend Duke in the upcoming season, is the early favorite to be selected with the first pick next June. Ace Bailey, a 6”8” wing, and combo guard Dylan Harper, the son of former NBA player Ron Harper, are also projected to be taken near the top of the draft. Both will attend Rutgers, The Nets have other valuable assets to construct their roster, notably forward Ben Simmons’s contract, which expires at the end of next season. Simmons is set to make $40 million next season. The team will look vastly different from the team that had championship aspirations with Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden two years ago.
After two seasons with Knicks,
Isaiah Hartenstein will be joining the Oklahoma City Thunder after agreeing
three-year, $87 million free-agent contract with the rising Western Conference squad. (Bill Moore photo)
The Brooklyn Nets are in full rebuild mode, including the hiring of new head coach Jordi Fernandez. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
St. John’s alumna Danielle Patterson promoted to director of basketball operations
By LOIS ELFMAN Special to the AmNews
When Brooklyn native Danielle Patterson transferred to St. John’s University for her final two years of playing eligibility, she felt at home, finding the basketball sisterhood she’d been seeking. Having already completed her bachelor’s degree before joining the Red Storm, Patterson used her two years to earn one master’s degree, sports management, and begin another, an MBA in strategic management. She completed her studies while working with the women’s basketball team as a graduate assistant this past season. Last week, Patterson’s promotion to director of basketball operations was announced. “If you would have asked me even two years ago if I would still been playing now, I probably would have said, ‘Maybe I’ll be playing overseas,’ or something like that in some form or fashion,” she said. “After Joe [Tartamella, head coach] asked me to stay and be a graduate assistant, I learned that this is a path that I want to take. It’s opened my eyes to the other side of basketball, not being a player.”
Ending her final year as a player on a high note—a trip to the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament—she felt com-
plete. Now, being trusted with this new position has given her confidence. “I’m going to do my very best to help this program,” said Patterson.
The position of director of basketball operations has become more expansive in recent years. In addition to daily tasks related to housing, scheduling, equipment and making the day run smoothly for the players and coaches, it now involves having awareness of name, image and likeness (NIL) issues, and mental health.
“Five years ago, it was more of a traditional role—booking flights and buses and scheduling things,” Patterson said. “You’re still doing all of those things, but you can also be someone that your girls feel comfortable enough to go to about certain things that maybe they wouldn’t even go to the coaches about.
“Life lessons they can take with them even far beyond when they’re done playing basketball,” she added. “You’re going to have to put the ball down one day. I think I’m an example of that. That can be a very hard transition if you’re not prepared for it. Now, it becomes my duty to make sure I’m pouring into them what I know now, so they’re prepared to go out into the world and handle themselves as people.”
Harlem Lacrosse receives $100,000 DICK’s Sporting Goods Sports Matter grant
By LOIS ELFMAN
Special to the AmNews
Harlem Lacrosse has endeavored to not only teach the sport to young athletes, but also use the sport as a platform to improve academics, discipline, and focus. Those efforts have been rewarded with a substantial grant from DICK’s Sporting Goods Sports Matter.
Gender equity is obvious because young women participate in equal numbers to young men and actually have more opportunities to compete at the college level.
In 2008, Harlem Lacrosse co-founder Simon Cataldo joined the Frederick Douglass Academy I (FDA) in Harlem as a special education math teacher with Teach for America. Seeing sports as a potential entry point for engaging students, he introduced lacrosse. It sparked excitement in the students and their academic performance improved significantly. This evolved into the idea of placing full-time coaches in schools.
“We put a full-time coach at a public community middle or high school, both a boys’ and a girls’ program,” said Joel Censer, chief pathing officer. “Their job is to coach the after-school lacrosse program at that school and leverage the power of being a coach and using the unique power of sport to try and
support students in a variety of ways.”
When Censer was the program director at FDA, he checked students’ grades and set
up a night-time tutoring program. Now he runs the organization’s support programs.
The coaches/program directors embedded
in NYC public schools continue to check grades, coordinate study hall, and provide motivation and resources to excel.
In addition to New York, Harlem Lacrosse is in Baltimore, Boston, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. There are 40 programs, half of which are for girls. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the DICK’S FOUNDATION Sports Matter, which brought national attention to the positive impact of this program. The latest grant includes new gear and $100,000, which will go to placing a full-time coach in a school and providing support services.
Censer noted that if young people practice lacrosse diligently, there are obvious results. “It’s such a powerful tool for young people,” he said. Among those who have seen results is Mariama Camara from Harlem, who used the sport to attend the Westminster School, a private prep school in Connecticut, and is now entering her sophomore year at Brown University, where she plays on the women’s lacrosse team.
“For girls to actually have an athletic outlet where they can be part of a team, make it their own, show leadership, and fail without judgment is really important,” said Censer. “It’s a huge confidence-builder for girls.”
Danielle Patterson has been promoted to director of basketball operations at St. John’s. (St. John’s Athletics photo)
Harlem Lacrosse alumna Mariama Camara is now playing at Brown University. (Brown Athletics photo)
Sports
Injuries, pitching woes spell midseason slump for the Yankees
By RUDY ROBINSON Special to the AmNews
As the Yankees battle the Baltimore Orioles for first place in the American League East division, Murphy’s law has taken hold of a team that was dominant up until the middle of last month, when they took a sudden and rapid fall. Before losing to the Boston Red Sox on the road on June 15, the Yankees had gone 13-3 in their previous 16 games and were 27 games over .500 at 50-23.
Going into Tuesday night’s game versus the Cincinnati Reds to open a three-game series at home, the Bronx Bombers have been defused. They were on the losing end nine of their previous 13 games, and at 54-32 were tied with the 53-31 Orioles. The Yankees had lost four consecutive series before splitting four games in Toronto against the Blue Jays last Thursday through Sunday.
The causes for the team’s decline have been multifaceted. A left hamstring injury to designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton had the Yankees place him on the injured list on June 23; he is expected to be out at least two more weeks. Moreover, first baseman Anthony Rizzo fractured his left forearm on June 16 facing the Red Sox and the recovery time was projected to be two months from the time of the incident.
In their absence, right fielder Juan Soto and center fielder Aaron Judge have been carrying the offense. Judge led Major League Baseball with 31 home runs and 82 RBI as of Tuesday, the only player with 30 or more homers and more than 80 RBI, and Soto was batting .303 with 20 homers (7th) and 61 RBI (6th). But it is the Yankees’ pitching, which was the best in baseball for the opening three months of this season, that is at the center of their current struggles.
Prior to Sunday’s game 8-1 victory over Toronto, the Yankee starters had given up 100 runs since June 15. That number leads the majors. Until that point, their earned run average was the lowest in the league. They went into Tuesday’s game fifth in ERA. Gerrit Cole, who pitched well Sunday in just his third start this season after recovering from right elbow inflammation, was beaten badly by the Mets in his previous start. He allowed just one earned run in five innings against the Blue
Jays, but gave up four home runs to the Mets on June 25 in a 9-7 Yankees loss.
The other starters haven’t fared well during this stretch. Rookie Luis Gil, who was scheduled to start on Tuesday, had a 2-2 record in June after winning the AL Pitcher and Rookie of the Month Award for May going 6-0. Same decline for Carlos Rodon, who went 5-1 in May but 2-3 in June. Only Marcus Stroman had an above-.500 record in both months. However, in a start against Boston on June 16, a 9-3 defeat, he allowed seven stolen bases. The total of nine by the Red Sox was the most in MLB in over 100 years.
There is a variation among the pitching styles of the starters. Cole, Rodón, and Gil being hard throwers; Stroman and Nestor Cortez finesse pitchers, relying on movement and location to master hitters. It is necessary for manager Aaron Boone to put together the right order for the rotation to alter opponents’ hitting patterns in a series. Change of speed is probably the most effective way to get hitters out, and the Yankees can create difficulty for batters with this strategy. Analytics will play a role, but numbers aren’t always the best indicator of effectiveness.
The Yankees will host the Red Sox for three games tomorrow through Sunday, then take on the Rays in Tampa for three next Tuesday through Thursday.
The Liberty stay ahead of the pack with a key win over the Minnesota Lynx
By LOIS ELFMAN
Special to the AmNews
As the WNBA season heads toward the Olympic break, the New York Liberty sit atop the WNBA standings with a record of 17-3. It is the Liberty’s best start to a season in franchise history.
After a disappointing loss in the Minnesota Lynx in the Commissioner’s Cup, the Liberty returned to action on Sunday against the Atlanta Dream, coming away with an 81–75 home win at the Barclays Center. On Tuesday, the Liberty avenged their loss to the Lynx a week earlier with a blistering fourth quarter, ending the game on a 15-2 run, for a 76-67 victory.
Liberty forward Jonquel Jones scored a game-high 21 points and added 12 rebounds. Afterwards, the 2021 league MVP was named to the WNBA All-Star team that will face the Team USA Olympic squad on July 20 in Phoenix, Arizona. Olympians Breanna Stewart (her third selection) posted a strong double-double of 17 points and 17 rebounds, and point guard Sabrina Ionescu (her first Olympics appearance) registered a stat line of 17 points,
five assists and five rebounds.
“This was personal,” said Ionescu, who helped keep head coach Sandy Brondello’s group ahead of the 15-4 Connecticut Sun and 14-5 Lynx, which face each other tonight.
“Obviously, they’re a great team. They were 2–0 against us. This was a bigger game than it really was in terms of it being a regular season game. We had to understand that.”
In the win over the Dream, Stewart became the fastest player in WNBA history to surpass 5,000 points (242 games). “It’s a cool honor, for sure,” acknowledged the 6 ‘4’’ UConn
alum, who played for the Seattle Storm for six seasons (2016-2022) before signing with the Liberty in February 2023.
“I wouldn’t be able to be here and do all the things without my teammates and I really appreciate them setting me up to get to this point, but we’re trying to do more than just get accolades,” said the 29-yearold reigning WNBA MVP.
The Liberty take on Caitlin Clark and Indiana Fever on the road this Saturday (1:00 p.m., CBS) and then have a morning matinee (11 a.m.) versus the Connecticut Sun next
Wednesday. They will follow up those games with a July 11 game at home against the Chicago Sky, the Sky again on July 13 on the road, and July 16 hosting the Sun at the Barclays before the All-Star game and a month-long league pause for the Olympics.
Clark and the Sky’s Angel Reese, whose intense and highly followed rivalry goes back to the 2023 college season when Reese and LSU defeated Iowa, led by Clark, in the NCAA women’s Division I championship, will now be teammates on the WNBA All-Star team as named by the league on Tuesday.
Reese, a 6’3” power forward, and Clark, a 6’0” point guard, are continuing their competitive battle as leading candidates for WNBA Rookie of the Year honors.
Yankees designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton (center), looking on with Aaron Judge (left), will be out for at least the next two weeks recovering from a left hamstring injury. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
