Sunday, December 7

Tag: first

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Journalism

The First Guaranteed Basic Income Program Designed for Single Black Moms

The Magnolia Mother’s Trust asks participants what they need to not only pay the bills but also to fight generational poverty. Ebony, a single mother of three, works two jobs to make ends meet and takes in around $11,000 a year. In addition to a part-time job at a beauty supply chain, she works as a communication specialist at a Jackson, Mississippi, nonprofit, a temporary position that could end in December. She’s hoping her employers will keep her on, and she’s doing all she can to inspire them, including showing up for work an hour early. “I want to make a good impression,” she says about showing up to work early. “It would be great if [the employers] tell me, ‘You worked so hard, how about you go ahead and stay with us?’” Staying on could mean that Ebony’s annual income...
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Journalism, SOCIAL JUSTICE

This Isn’t the First Time White Supremacists Have Tried to Cancel Birthright Citizenship

History shows that a broad coalition of civil rights activists is how to fight back. In the latest in a long string of attacks on immigration, this week Trump declared he would issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship. Established by the 14th amendment to grant citizenship to freed slaves, the idea that all people born in the United States are U.S. citizens, regardless of race or where their parents came from, has long been upheld by the courts and the Constitution. But this is not the first time White supremacists have tried to restrict the rights of citizenship along racial lines. In a little-known episode from World War II, nativist agitators who had led earlier efforts to exclude Asian immigrant communities—and paved the way for Japanese American incarcerati...
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Memorial for Lynching Victims a First Step Toward Reconciliation
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Journalism

Memorial for Lynching Victims a First Step Toward Reconciliation

It offers a place of reckoning for generations of racial trauma. When she saw the name Ed Bracy on a placard in the The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, 68-year-old Sophia Bracy Harris felt goosebumps. “I just went frozen for a moment,” she recalls. This was the relative she remembers hearing about as a child growing up in Elmore County, just north of Montgomery, Alabama. The story goes, Ed Bracy was hanged for his work organizing tenant farmers in the mid-1930s. “In that moment, I was aware that this was a family member, that this was a direct connection to me,” she says. More than 4,000 African Americans were lynched from 1877 to 1950, giving rise to The Great Migration—as over 6 million African Americans left the South to resettle in the North and West. African America...
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Kennedy Resignation Sparks New Urgency for First-Time Women Candidates of Color
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SOCIAL JUSTICE

Kennedy Resignation Sparks New Urgency for First-Time Women Candidates of Color

If elected to Congress, they would counter conservative decisions from the court with progressive lawmaking. Nearly two years into the racially charged Trump administration and widespread exposure of sexual harassment and assault of women in public life, women of color have been engaged and eager to change the face of the Democratic Party and Congress. They now find new urgency in the recently announced retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose swing vote seat will likely be claimed by a hard-line conservative this year. President Donald Trump announced his list of replacements for Kennedy, many of whom are White social conservatives hostile to organized labor and young enough to steer the direction of the court for decades. Meanwhile, the rest of the nation ...
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US judge orders release of ‘first Black Identity Extremist’
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Journalism

US judge orders release of ‘first Black Identity Extremist’

Critics say African American activist Christopher Daniels has been held since December because FBI policed his views. A US judge has ordered that Christopher Daniels, considered by many to be the first person arrested under the FBI's Black Identity Extremist (BIE) designation, be released from pre-trial detention and dismissed the indictment against him. Daniels, a cofounder of the Huey P Newton Gun Club and Guerilla Mainframe (GMF), two armed organisations based in Dallas who regularly protest against alleged police brutality, "is entitled to be released from pre-trial detention based on the dismissal of the indictment", Judge Sidney Fitzwater wrote in the order issued on May 1. Daniels was arrested in December by the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms for possessing rifles ...
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SOCIAL JUSTICE

Is Trump a Threat to Your First Amendment Rights?

"If you don't agree with me, shut up!" "And if you don't shut your mouth, I'll shut it for you!" That seems to be the alarming attitude of a significant number of American college students, based on a new survey of 1,500 respondents from both private and public colleges, conducted by John Villasenor of UCLA. Among the disturbing findings, 19% advocate violence to silence a speaker engaged in "hate speech," and 51% think it is OK to shout down a speaker with whom they disagree. The students also showed serious ignorance about the First Amendment; only 39% knew that "hate speech" is indeed protected. While students' ignorance and these views are reprehensible, they are shared by some faculty members. Monday, at my alma mater at Georgetown University Law School in Washington, 30 academic...
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Ann Petry: First African American Woman to Sell Over One Million Books
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Journalism

Ann Petry: First African American Woman to Sell Over One Million Books

Ann Petry, the first African American female author to sell over one million copies of her book. Petry was born in 1911 in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, where her father and grandfather ran a drugstore. Petry loved to read and from the age of fourteen she knew she wanted to be a writer. She wrote poetry and short plays in high school, but after graduation she chose the safe route and enrolled in the pharmacy program at the University of Connecticut where she earned her PhG degree. Ann worked in the family business until she married in 1938 and moved to New York. The direction of Ann's life changed when she took her first job in the advertising department of an African American newspaper, The Amsterdam News. She later became a reporter and editor for the People's Voice, a weekly newspaper, w...
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Amanda Bynes SPEAKS OUT for the First Time in 4 Years! – FULL Interview | HS EXCLUSIVE
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CELEBRITIES

Amanda Bynes SPEAKS OUT for the First Time in 4 Years! – FULL Interview | HS EXCLUSIVE

Amanda Bynes breaks her silence for her first interview in 4 years! Amanda sits down with Diana Madison of The Lowdown to discuss her past controversies and hardships, the now-infamous 'Drake tweet,' her road to recovery, as well as what Amanda has been up to lately, and her future plans which involve a special surprise that her fans will be incredibly happy to hear! Welcome back, Amanda Bynes!
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ABC Names First Black President – Channing Dungey Makes History
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IN OTHER NEWS

ABC Names First Black President – Channing Dungey Makes History

​ ABC just made history. The network on Wednesday appointed Channing Dungey as its president, making her the first African-American president of a big four broadcast network (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox). She's also the only woman to currently hold the role (though not the first). Dungey replaces Paul Lee, who is resigning after a power struggle with the chairman of Disney-ABC Television Group, according to The New York Times. Lee was Dungey's boss. She steps into the new role after helping bring shows like Shonda Rimes' Scandal and How To Get Away With Murder as well as Quantico and American Crime to ABC. This isn't the first time ABC has made history in its executive suite. It became the first major broadcast network with a female president when in 1998 it named Patricia Fili-Krushel to the rol...
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