Inglewood

Serena Williams Launches Line of Topical Pain Relief; Jay-Z Looks to Get Into Casino Business

Aa follow-up to her evolution from tennis, Serena Williams has teamed up with two CPG veterans to launch Will Perform, a line of clean, cruelty-free topical pain relief and daily muscle care solutions designed to reimagine recovery. The five available products span four categories of daily skin and muscle care, that aim to bridge the gap between performance and self-care in everyday life and fast track recovery. "Recovery has played an integral role in my performance and professional success. It's a practice that can benefit anyone with an active lifestyle. That belief is what inspired us to develop a line of products that targets your muscles and can be incorporated into your daily self-care routine," says Williams.

Comcast Rise

Comcast Corporation recently announced that Comcast RISE–an initiative created in 2020 to help strengthen and empower small businesses hard hit by COVID-19–has met its goal of supporting 13,000 small businesses nationwide by the program’s close at the end of 2022. In total, Comcast RISE has provided over $110 million in monetary, marketing, and technology grants to 13,000 small businesses owned by women and people of color — including Black, Indigenous, Hispanic, and Asian Americans, among others.

U.S. small businesses were particularly hard hit by the pandemic, which is why Comcast RISE was launched in 2020. A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research cited that Blackowned small businesses were hardest hit.

Comcast RISE is one of several programs that Comcast has overseen aimed at closing the digital divide and achieving digital equity. A new phase of Comcast RISE in 2023 will continue the company’s efforts and help an even broader range of small businesses, while continuing to focus on diversity, inclusion, and community investment.

“We recognize that small businesses are the backbone of our economy and look forward to taking our learnings from this program as we find new ways to further empower and strengthen even more small businesses and entrepreneurs at the heart of our local communities,” said Teresa Ward-Maupin, Senior Vice President, Digital and Customer Experience, Comcast Business.

Additional details about Comcast RISE in 2023 will be forthcoming. For more information on Comcast’s continuing programs and partnerships to advance economic mobility and open doors for the next generation of entrepreneurs, visit Project UP.

Jay-Z Teams With Investment Group for Stake in Casino Biz?

The New York Post is reporting that Jay-Z is teaming with SL Green and Caesars Entertainment to submit proposals to the state to erect the first full-scale boutique-style casino at 1515 Broadway office tower. For his part, Jay-Z would oversee entertainment programming at the property. “New York is the epicenter of culture. We have the opportunity to create a destination at the heart of the true crossroads of the word,” the rapper and entrepreneur said in a statement. “My partnership with SL Green and Caesars has all the promise and commitment to economic opportunity, growth and enrichment for the community and everyone that visits the Empire State.”

World’s Richest University Taps Black Woman to Lead

One of the world’s richest and most prestigious university will have a Black woman at its helm come July 1 when Claudine Gay officially takes the reins as the 30th president of Harvard University.

Gay, who has served as dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences since 2018, guided efforts to expand student access and opportunity, spur excellence and innovation in teaching and research, enhance aspects of academic culture, and bring new emphasis and energy to areas such as quantum science and engineering; ethnicity, and the humanities.

“People are Harvard’s institutional strength. I want to take on this role because I believe in them and I want a Harvard that matches their ambition and promise,” said Gay.

Last year, the near 400-year old university that boasts an endowment of about $53 million, announced a $100 million fund for slavery reparations. A report found that more than one third of its private donations came from fortunes tied to slavery and that. Harvard’s faculty and staff enslaved at least 70 Blacks in the 1800s.

Money Matters

Tips for Getting Your Finances On Track in 2023

Okay, 2023 is here and like most you’ve already made some resolutions and for most of us, reassessing our finances and more than likely course correcting them is among the top items on the list.

Interest rates have risen; the cost of living has skyrocketed–particularly if you are paying rent in Los Angeles County; experts suggest that stocks will remain in shaky territory for some time; and the Fed is signaling more rate hikes and experts continue to debate whether or not a recession could be on the horizon with most leaning towards the affirmative.

Putting a financial plan into place for your income, debts, savings can help to make some necessary adjustments to ensure you make progress with your goals in what has become an uncertain economy. That includes taking stock on how much you are spending and what you are spending it on.

Below are some helpful tips experts suggest that you should incorporate into your lifestyle to advance your financial goals in 2023 and beyond.

Set a budget

The hallmark of financial planning and the most important factor in getting your finances back on track is a budget that accurately reflects your real needs, circumstances and goals. Start by listing your income all of your expenses in a given month, including rent, utilities, food, entertainment, transportation, credit card balance and any other debt.

If you spending more you are earning, it’s time to cut back your expenses in the area of non-essential needs. It may mean going to the hairstylist less, thinking twice about eating out or putting off that dream vacation. Another easy place to find spending cuts is at the grocery store. Trade out those high end brands for their store or off-brand competitors.

Pay down credit cards

The first order of business is to pay down those highinterest credit cards. Not paying off the balance by the end of your billing cycle can drive those interest fees up quickly. Be sure to take the time to research credit cards before you sign up and steer clear of “buy now, pay later” programs as the devil may be in the details.

Create an emergency fund

Establish an emergency fund of six months to help with any sudden financial emergencies or any expenditures you haven’t made part of your monthly budget. It may mean storing up any extra cash you come across or perhaps a tax refund. Kickstarting that side hustle can also help to create a cash cushion to fall back on in case of a reduction in or loss of your primary income. Keep in mind that in a recession people with access to cash are better positioned to take advantage of opportunities. And living in earthquake territory, experts suggest that you keep

Reassess your subscriptions and memberships

Whether it’s those TV streaming services or gym memberships you’ve signed up for but don’t use, take a hard look at what you’ve signed up for over the years that may still be charging you. On survey found that over 70 percent of consumers estimate that they waste over $50 every month on recurring payments for things they either no longer need or have forgotten about. Better alternatives may be to consolidate your streaming or check into those services like T-Mobile that offer free access to streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Be vigilant about energy & health costs

Keep those energy bills down by turning off the lights when you leave a room; do laundry and run the dishwasher after 7 p.m., when the cost of electricity is typically lower; and unplug electronics when you’re not using them as are still drawing electricity even when turned off.

Also check into low income energy efficient programs available to seniors and low income families that can assist in reducing household energy costs.

Medication is a major cost factor for many Americans, particularly seniors and too few of them take advantage of programs that lower the cost of expensive drugs. Medicare, the state of California and drug manufacturers offer such programs. Make sure that you are taking advantage of them if eligible.

Increase Your Savings

Experts suggest that 20% of your income should go towards savings. Check into savings accounts that offer automatic monthly contributions. While that is convenient, it can also make it easier to reach your goal. Also consider U.S. Treasury bills. Considered the safest of the safe investments, Treasury bond yields are the highest they’ve been since 2010 and they pay more than 4 percent.

Master the Art of Negotiation

Think smart and creatively when negotiating big ticket items like cars and rent. Don’t just accept the sticker price. Jockey for deals and or get creative with terms that will financially benefit you in the long run.

“A Life Not Measured in Dollars and Cents”

From 1957 until the day he died in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is said to have traveled 6 million miles, given over 2,500 speeches and written five books.

What he did not do was to make a lot of money.

He earned a base salary of $8,000 a year as a pastor, which would have been the equivalent of about $68,000 today and the $54,123 King received in prize money from his Nobel Peace Prize was donated back to the civil rights movement.

At the time of his death, his net worth was just under $6,000, (the equivalent of about $51,329 today) and the most valuable asset in his estate was reported to be a disputed bequest of $12,351.36 from poet Dorothy Parker.

Of money, Dr. King once remarked, “Money in its proper place is a worthwhile and necessary instrument for a well-rounded life, but when it is projected to the status of a God, it becomes a power that corrupts and an instrument of exploitation.”

King also shared his thoughts on money and how people spend it in a few of sermons. In his “The Drum Major Instinct” sermon, King spoke of people living beyond their means.

“Do you ever see people buy cars that they can’t even begin to buy in terms of their income?,” King said. “You’ve seen people riding around in Cadillacs and Chryslers who don’t earn enough to have a good TModel Ford. You know, economists tell us that your automobile should not cost more than half of your annual income… But so often, haven’t you seen people making five thousand dollars a year and driving a car that costs six thousand? And they wonder why their ends never meet.” “The Drum Major Instinct” was among about 7,000 items –including books, papers and speeches–that the City of Atlanta paid the King family $32 million to purchase and subsequently donate to Morehouse College, King’s alma mater.

In 2021, 12 rare autographs of the famed civil rights leader sold at auction for more than $130,000. The autographs ironically enough came from the logbook of the Birmingham jail from which he wrote his famed, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

Last year, draft pages from the civil rights icon's book "Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story” went up for auction with a starting bid of $225,000.

GERALD BELL & KEITH DELAWDER

Contributors

This December the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations (LACCHR) released their detailed fifty-two page “2021 Hate Crime Report'' which provides statistical evidence to support what law enforcement offices and citizen groups have been raising concern about for the last several years— hate on the rise in Los Angeles. According to the report there was a 23 percent increase in reported hate crimes from the previous year, totaling 786— which is the most recorded since 2002. And though the numbers for 2022 have yet to be finalized and confirmed, L.A. Police Chief Michel Moore announced at a recent Police Commission meeting that hate crime reports are up another 13 percent from last year's record setting numbers.

Both the LACCHR report and the Police Commission found that of all the different targeted groups, black people were overwhelmingly the victims of the most hate related incidents. Although black people make up only 9 percent of the county’s population, the LACCHR reported that they made up a staggering 46 percent of racial hate crime victims, with Police Chief Moore reporting that another 279 crimes were reported against black people in 2022.

“I see anti-black rhetoric showing up implicitly and explicitly now more than ever in very disappointing ways,” says Jeff Tisch user, Senior Research Analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). "There still exists a lot of groups in this country that are very organized, white power groups, that are just trying to kill people who have melanin (skin of color) and certain types of hair."

The SPLC is a national agency that monitors political and individual hate and extremist groups across the U.S. who bring any expression or act of hate upon oppressed people. “We are here to provide general guidance on how to speak about hate in communities,” explains Tischauser. “But nobody knows what’s good for the black community like black people.”

To further understand how the existence of hate based activity has affected our community, L.A. Focus as part of the “Stop the Hate” initiative conducted our own survey with 340 readers, community members and parishioners sharing their attitudes and experiences relative to hate related activity.

Overwhelmingly, 71 percent of respondents reported feeling like the threat of hate crimes/incidents was more than it was five years ago. And while 65 percent of the survey respondents have experienced a hate crime, only 30 percent say they filed a report to law enforcement, and worse, 66 percent had little confidence that the police would view solving reported hate crimes as a priority.

“Law enforcement will let you know they hate you,” offered one survey respondent. Another went on to add, “Police officers act as if they are above the law.”

Circulating the L.A. Focus survey across several local Christian churches, it was no surprise to learn that pastors and parishioners alike reported having experienced incidents of hate, some as early as their elementary school years and others well into their elder age. Some indicated a wide range of incidents that included being racially profiled by police, being jumped by whites in grade school and college, chased by hate groups, being called racial slurs by total strangers while waiting at a bus stop or standing in the grocery store line, and even at the office by fellow professional colleagues.

“When I was a teen looking for a job, they said no n****s’ work at this hotel,” noted one respondent of the many that indicated in the survey that they have been called the “N word”. Of the respondents who gave written answers when asked whether they have experienced or witnessed a hate crime or hate speech, nearly 40 percent recalled experiences having the “N word” or other overt name calling hate speech aimed at them.

While the racial hate incidents Blacks have endured are staggering, the survey results also embodied MiCongresswoman Karen Bass We have to constantly remind the world that the number one victims of hate crimes are black people, and we don’t do it because we’re trying to win the oppression Olympics, but because we face a constant criminalization of blackness. So, by blaming the victim, which is always what has happened to us in this country, we’re perpetuating anti-blackness... ”

chelle Obama’s “when they go low, we stay high” mentality.

When asked if they harbor any ill will over another ethnicity, an overwhelming 88 percent of respondents said ‘no’.

“The church teaches us to love all,” says one respondent who noted facing hate incidents while on the job. “But I [still] have empathy for all.” Another survey participant chose the high road stating that they have “no ill will (against hate perpetrators), for God created us all the same.”

While it is impossible to put the cause of the uptick of hate activities on one particular event or person, many respondents believe the media is a significant contributor to the increasing rate of hate.

Survey participants credited the media, hate speech on TV, in music and on the internet as the biggest factors in the rise and spread of hate crimes. 54 percent say press coverage adds to the prevalence of the culture of hate, while 46 percent said press coverage helps people stay informed about what is going on when incidents of hate occur. 88 percent felt that media exposure further propagated incidents of hate. And moreover, of those who responded to the question “have they ever experienced hate speech online”, 66 percent responded in the affirmative.

The recent online comments made by Kanye West and Kyrie Irving that went viral resulted in both celebrities coming under fire and facing antisemitic accusations. Not only did the two suffer the loss of product endorsements, but they also had to contend with a backlash of slander being spewed from haters on multiple social media platforms.

“Anytime a high-profile person comes out and supports something as asinine as antisemitism it helps provide legitimacy to the hatred and evil ideology that’s been with us for so long, “says Jeff Tischauser. "It’s a falsehood and it undercuts a lot of things that historically point to today's civil rights leaders.”

Though there may be some correlations between the rise of anti-Semitic behavior and the antics of a celebrity like Kanye West, radio personality and activist Dominique DiPrima reminds us that putting the cause of the issue on one person is extremely problematic.

“No matter how you feel about [West], blaming him for the rise in anti-Semitism is a form of anti-blackness,” explains DiPrima. “When our Chief of Police came out and named Kanye as the cause of a spike in anti-Semitism without talking about the former President who has been race-baiting since day one, and the countless other hate groups like the ‘Proud Boys’ who have made anti-Semitism a pillar of their organization— it’s a form of blaming the victim and it’s a problem.”

Just as telling for DiPrima is the sentiment of a great number of her listeners who feel that the Kanye West situation confirms that hate speech is only taken seriously when it’s aimed at a group that isn’t black.

“When [West] was saying anti-black remarks like ‘white lives matter’ or that ‘slavery was a choice’, nothing really happened,” recalls DiPrima. “It was only when he started saying anti-Semitic things that there began to have real consequences. It gives the impression that no one really cares about hate speech against black people.

“We have to constantly remind the world that the number one victims of hate crimes are black people, and we don’t do it because we’re trying to win the oppression Olympics, but because we face a constant criminalization of blackness. So, by blaming the victim, which is always what has happened to us in this country, we’re perpetuating anti-blackness”.

As documented incidents of hate have increased largely due to the abundance of resources and training law enforcement is now prepared with for these crimes, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), confirms that nearly half of all violent hate crimes are not reported to law enforcement and an even greater portion of hate incidents and nonviolent hate crimes go unreported.

And while the reasons for not reporting hate are many— including mistrust of law enforcement, believ-

ing the incident may not important enough to be reported, believing there is nothing the police could do to help, and believing reporting the incident would bring more trouble for the victim, just to name a few— there is a common misunderstanding about the difference between hate crimes and hate incidences.

Because the right to free speech is protected by the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, instances of hate such as name calling, insults, displaying hate material on your own property, posting hate material that does not result in property damage, and distribution of materials with hate messages in public places— are not technically crimes but referred to as hate incidents.

While hate incidents are not prosecuted and punished the way crimes such as assault, larceny, property damage, threats of violence, etc. are, LAPD Deputy Chief Blake Chow wants you to know that hate incidents are still reportable to law enforcement and he highly encourages you to do so if you are witness to or a victim of a hate incident.

“You can still be a victim of an instance of hate when there is no crime involved due to the protections of the first amendment. So, if someone sees a hate incident or is themselves a victim, it’s still a reportable incident,” says Officer Chow. “We want to know about these things because it allows us to get a feeling about what's going on in the community. Also, it gives us the ability to identify someone who was involved in a hate incident, and if they commit a hate crime later on it will be important for prosecution purposes to show a pattern of behavior.”

Former L.A. County Deputy District Attorney and current Victims’ Rights and Family Law Attorney Adrien Gidaya Roxas, of the law firm Roxas, APC, agrees that the first thing you should do is contact law enforcement.

“Law enforcement cannot act on the incident unless they are reported,” says Roxas. “Prior to contacting them, record the details of the incident on your phone such as what was said and done and how to identify the suspect— it can really make or break the case.”

When the hate event is occurring Roxas says that California law protects the right to intervene with force without liability, but only if certain very important criteria are met.

“You are allowed to use force in self-defense if you reasonably believe that you or another person is in imminent danger of physical harm and that force is necessary to stop the danger,” says Roxas. “However, there are three important things you must ask yourself before you decide that self- defense is necessary. The first is whether the danger of suffering bodily harm is immediate, or happening now, not in the future or past. Secondly, is it reasonable for you to use force and was it necessary at that moment. And thirdly, be sure that you are using reasonable force that is proportional to the attack. Self-defense laws won’t work for you if you use too much force than is necessary.

Roxas emphasizes his third point because he warns that he has seen the law work against people who step into a situation in defense but use too much force.

“For example, if someone were to tell me to go back to where I came from and punch me, I would be within my rights to punch back. I would not however be protected if I pulled out a baseball bat and beat them half to death,” says Roxas. “In that case I could potentially be prosecuted.”

While the law does protect against force in a situation of defense, Roxas advises to use nonviolent methods of defense whenever possible.

“There are steps you can use that are nonviolent, nonphysical, and much safer that can de-escalate situations,” says Roxas. “You can use what are known as the ‘five D’s’-- Direct, Distract, Document, Delegate, and Delay. Also consider carrying non-lethal weapons as a way of defense such as pepper spray, stun guns, or personal alarms.”

Though reporting an instance of hate is emotionally and mentally taxing, Roxas wants you to know that there are resources out there to support you or your loved ones in your time of crisis.

“If you are a victim of a hate crime or a hate incident, you're going to feel alone, alienated, isolated and even embarrassed,” says Roxas. “But I hope you feel empowered to take action because there are rights and protections under the law that are set up to support you.”