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Tag: discrimination

  • Justice: Hotel sued for denying rooms to Native Americans

    Justice: Hotel sued for denying rooms to Native Americans

    SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — The U.S. Department of Justice sued the owners of a Rapid City, South Dakota hotel on Wednesday, alleging that they violated the civil rights of Native Americans by trying to ban them from the property.

    The Justice Department alleges that on at least two occasions in March, Connie Uhre and her son Nicholas Uhre committed racial discrimination by turning away Native Americans who sought to book a room at the Grand Gateway Hotel.

    Connie Uhre had also told other Rapid City hotel owners and managers that she did not want Native American customers there or in the hotel’s bar, the Cheers Sports Lounge and Casino. A post on her Facebook account said she cannot “allow a Native American to enter our business including Cheers.”

    Uhre’s comments and actions, which followed a fatal shooting involving two teenagers at the hotel, sparked large protests in Rapid City and condemnation from the city’s mayor, Steve Allender.

    Rapid City, known to many as the gateway to Mount Rushmore, is home to more than 77,000 people. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, at least 11% of its residents identify as American Indian or Alaska Native. The city has long seen racial tensions.

    Nicholas Uhre said he and his mother had been under pressure from the Justice Department to enter a consent decree settling the matter, but there were “sticking points” in the negotiation. “I guess they are going to do what they are going to do,” he said.

    The Justice Department sued under a section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that permits a judge to order changes to policies and practices at hotels and other venues, but does not allow the department to obtain monetary damages for customers who are victims of discrimination.

    “Restricting access to a hotel based on a person’s race is prohibited by federal law,” U.S. Attorney for South Dakota Alison J. Ramsdell said in a statement.

    The hotel owners have also been embroiled in separate lawsuits from the NDN Collective seeking monetary damages for the hotel’s policy, a counter-suit against the Indigenous activist organization, and another lawsuit from Connie’s son Judson Uhre, who said she harmed the family business when she “made a racially charged rant which was posted on a website with wide coverage and this led to financial loss of clients for the hotel as well as the damage to the hotel’s reputation.”

    Nick Tilsen, the president of NDN Collective, credited the protests for prompting the federal civil rights suit, and said Rapid City’s problems with racism persist beyond the hotel.

    “Let this be a warning to the city of Rapid City,” Tilsen said. “If they want to go after Indigenous people’s rights, we’re going to force institutions like the Department of Justice to hold people accountable.”

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  • Poor, less white areas get worst internet deals

    Poor, less white areas get worst internet deals

    A couple of years into the pandemic, Shirley Neville had finally had enough of her shoddy internet service.

    “It was just a headache,” said Neville, who lives in a middle-class neighborhood in New Orleans whose residents are almost all Black or Latino. “When I was getting ready to use my tablet for a meeting, it was cutting off and not coming on.”

    Neville said she was willing to pay more to be able to Zoom without interruption, so she called AT&T to upgrade her connection. She said she was told there was nothing the company could do.

    In her area, AT&T only offers download speeds of 1 megabit per second or less, trapping her in a digital Stone Age. Her internet is so slow that it doesn’t meet Zoom’s recommended minimum for group video calls; doesn’t come close to the Federal Communications Commission’s definition of broadband, currently 25 Mbps; and is worlds below median home internet speeds in the U.S., which average 167 Mbps.

    “In my neighborhood, it’s terrible,” Neville said.

    But that’s not the case in other parts of New Orleans. AT&T offers residents of the mostly white, upper-income neighborhood of Lakeview internet speeds almost 400 times faster than Neville’s—for the same price: $55 a month.

    —

    This story was reported by The Markup, and the story and data were distributed by The Associated Press.

    —

    The Markup gathered and analyzed more than 800,000 internet service offers from AT&T, Verizon, Earthlink, and CenturyLink in 38 cities across America and found that all four routinely offered fast base speeds at or above 200 Mbps in some neighborhoods for the same price as connections below 25 Mbps in others.

    The neighborhoods offered the worst deals had lower median incomes in nine out of 10 cities in the analysis. In two-thirds of the cities where The Markup had enough data to compare, the providers gave the worst offers to the least white neighborhoods.

    These providers also disproportionately gave the worst offers to formerly redlined areas in every one of the 22 cities examined where digitized historical maps were available. These are areas a since-disbanded agency created by the federal government in the 1930s had deemed “hazardous” for financial institutions to invest in, often because the residents were Black or poor. Redlining was outlawed in 1968.

    By failing to price according to service speed, these companies are demanding some customers pay dramatically higher unit prices for advertised download speed than others. CenturyLink, which showed the most extreme disparities, offered some customers service of 200 Mbps, amounting to as little as $0.25 per Mbps, but offered others living in the same city only 0.5 Mbps for the same price—a unit price of $100 per Mbps, or 400 times as much.

    Residents of neighborhoods offered the worst deals aren’t just being ripped off; they’re denied the ability to participate in remote learning, well-paying remote jobs, and even family connection and recreation—ubiquitous elements of modern life.

    “It isn’t just about the provision of a better service. It’s about access to the tools people need to fully participate in our democratic system,” said Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel at the ACLU. “That is a far bigger deal and that’s what really worries me about what you’re finding.”

    Christopher Lewis, president and CEO of the nonprofit Public Knowledge, which works to expand internet access, said The Markup’s analysis shows how far behind the federal government is when it comes to holding internet providers to account. “Nowhere have we seen either the FCC nor the Congress, who ultimately has authority as well, study competition in the marketplace and pricing to see if consumers are being price gouged or if those service offerings make sense.”

    None of the providers denied charging the same fee for vastly different internet speeds to different neighborhoods in the same cities. But they said their intentions were not to discriminate against communities of color and that there were other factors to consider.

    The industry group USTelecom, speaking on behalf of Verizon, said the cost of maintaining the antiquated equipment used for slow speed service plays a role in its price.

    “Fiber can be hundreds of times faster than legacy broadband—but that doesn’t mean that legacy networks cost hundreds of times less,” USTelecom senior vice president Marie Johnson said in an email. “Operating and maintaining legacy technologies can be more expensive, especially as legacy network components are discontinued by equipment manufacturers.”

    AT&T spokesperson Jim Greer said in an emailed statement that The Markup’s analysis is “fundamentally flawed” because it “clearly ignored our participation in the federal Affordable Connectivity Program and our low-cost Access by AT&T service offerings.” The Affordable Connectivity Program was launched in 2021 and pays up to $30 a month for internet for low-income residents, or $75 on tribal lands.

    “Any suggestion that we discriminate in providing internet access is blatantly wrong,” he said, adding that AT&T plans on spending $48 billion on service upgrades over the next two years.

    Recent research looking at 30 major cities found only about a third of eligible households had signed up for the federal subsidy, however, and the majority use it to help cover cellphone bills, which also qualify, rather than home internet costs. Connectivity advocates told The Markup that it’s hard to get people to jump through the bureaucratic hoops needed to sign up for the program when service is slow.

    Greer declined to say how many or what percentage of AT&T’s internet customers are signed up for either the ACP or the company’s own low-cost program for low-income residents.

    In a letter to the FCC, AT&T insisted its high-speed internet deployments are driven by “household density, not median incomes.” But when The Markup ran a statistical test controlling for density, it still found AT&T disproportionately offered slower speeds to lower-income areas in three out of four of the 20 cities where it investigated their service.

    “We do not engage in discriminatory practices like redlining and find the accusation offensive,” Mark Molzen, a spokesperson for CenturyLink’s parent company, Lumen, wrote in an email.” He said that The Markup’s analysis is “deeply flawed” without specifying how. He did not respond to requests for clarification.

    EarthLink, which doesn’t own internet infrastructure in the examined cities but rather rents capacity from other providers, did not provide an official comment despite repeated requests.

    Internet prices are not regulated by the federal government because unlike telephone service, internet service is not considered a utility. As a result, providers can make their own decisions about where they provide service and how much to charge. The FCC declined a request to comment on the findings.

    The investigation is based on service offers collected from the companies’ own websites, which contain service lookup tools that list all available plans for specific addresses, using a method pioneered by researchers at Princeton University. The Markup analyzed price and speed for nearly 850,000 offers for addresses in the largest city in 38 states where these providers operate.

    Las Vegas is one city where large swaths of CenturyLink’s offers were for slow service. Almost half didn’t meet the current federal definition of broadband. These fell disproportionately on Las Vegas’s lower-income and least white areas.

    Las Vegas councilwoman Olivia Diaz said that in the summer of 2020, she approached families where children had stopped showing up to virtual lessons the previous school year to find out what went wrong.

    City schools were preparing to begin their second school year marked by COVID-19 lockdowns.

    “We kept hearing there were multiple children trying to connect in the household, but they weren’t able to,” said Diaz, who represents a district that’s predominantly Latino and on the lower end of the city’s income spectrum.

    More than 80% of CenturyLink’s internet offers in her district were for service slower than 25 Mbps. Education advocacy group Common Sense Media recommends at least 200 Mbps download speeds for a household to reliably conduct multiple, simultaneous video conferencing sessions.

    “I think it’s unfair knowing that it is slow service that we’re paying for that is not commensurate with the faster speeds that they have in the other parts of the city that are paying the same price,” Diaz said. “It just breaks my heart to know we’re not getting the best bang for our buck.”

    Diaz said city officials have asked CenturyLink to expand high-speed service in her district, but the company declined, citing the prohibitive cost of deploying new infrastructure in the area. CenturyLink did not respond to emails asking about this request.

    Some officials told The Markup they’ve been yelling for years about bad service for high prices.

    “If I was paying $6 a month,” Joshua Edmonds, Detroit’s director of digital inclusion, “well you get what you’re paying for.” But he objects to people being asked to pay premium rates for bad service. “What I pay versus what I get doesn’t really make sense.”

    In a 2018 report, Bill Callahan, who runs the online accessibility organization Connect Your Community, coined the term “tier flattening” to describe charging internet customers the same rate for differing levels of service. He said The Markup’s findings show how much of America’s internet market is based on the “basic unfairness” of internet service providers deciding to deprioritize investing in new, high-speed infrastructure in marginalized areas.

    “They’ve made a decision that those neighborhoods are going to be treated differently,” said Callahan. “The core reason for that is they think they don’t have enough money in those neighborhoods to sustain the kind of market they want.”

    The FCC is currently drafting rules under a provision of the 2021 infrastructure bill aimed at “preventing digital discrimination of access based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin.”

    A coalition of 39 groups led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Center for Accessible Technology urged the FCC to take aggressive action rectifying broadband inequality by examining the socioeconomics of the neighborhoods getting the slowest speeds and the prices they pay—regardless of whether the companies intended to discriminate.

    AT&T insisted in filings with the agency that the standard for discrimination should be explicit, deliberate efforts to avoid building infrastructure in areas that are populated by people of color or lower-income residents.

    It also asked for subsidies to build high-speed internet in lower-income neighborhoods because, as AT&T asserted in its letter to the FCC, “most or all deficiencies in broadband access appear to result not from invidious discrimination, but from ordinary business-case challenges in the absence of subsidy programs.”

    Advocates say that’s just not true. “There are very few places in the country where it is not economically feasible to deploy broadband,” said Brian Thorn, who served as a senior researcher for the Communication Workers of America, a union representing telecom employees, which has been vocal on the issue and filed its own comment to the FCC. (The CWA is the parent union of The NewsGuild-CWA, which represents employees at The Markup and The Associated Press.) He said members are tired of seeing their employers make inequitable infrastructure deployment decisions.

    “We would hear from members all the time that they’re out laying lines on one side of the neighborhood and not on the other,” he said.

    In a letter to the FCC, the coalition asserted that “broadband users are experiencing discriminatory impacts of deployment that are no different than the impacts of past redlining policies in housing, banking, and other venues of economic activity.”

    The term “redlining” derives from efforts by the federal government to stem the tide of foreclosures during the Great Depression by drawing up maps, with the help of real estate agents, to identify areas that were safe for mortgage lending. Predominantly white neighborhoods were consistently rated better than less-white neighborhoods, which were shaded in red. Echoes of these maps still reverberate today in things like rates of home ownership and prenatal mortality.

    Notes on the historical map explaining why one part of Kansas City, Missouri, was redlined cited “Negro encroachment from the north.” In that same area, AT&T offered only slow service to every single address The Markup examined.

    Across Kansas City, AT&T offered the worst deals to 68% of addresses in redlined areas, compared to just 12% of addresses in areas that had been rated “best” or “desirable.”

    Redlining maps frequently tracked neatly with the disparities The Markup found.

    Addresses in redlined areas of 15 cities from Portland to Atlanta were offered the worst deals at least twice as often as areas rated “best” or “desirable.” Minneapolis, which is served by CenturyLink, displayed one of the most striking disparities: Formerly redlined addresses were offered the worst deals almost eight times as often as formerly better-rated areas.

    Pamela Jackson-Walters, a 68-year-old longtime resident of Detroit’s Hope Village, said she needs the internet to work on her dissertation in organizational leadership at University of Phoenix online and to virtually attend church services. The slow speeds AT&T offered were a constant annoyance.

    “They still haven’t installed the high-speed internet over here,” she said. “How do we get it? Are we too poor of a neighborhood to have the better service?”

    Hope Village has a per capita income of just over $11,000 and is almost entirely Black.

    To add insult to injury, last fall, AT&T internet service across Hope Village went down for 45 days before being restored. This summer, Jackson-Walters’s internet went down again, this time for four weeks, she said.

    Jeff Jones, another longtime Hope Village resident, noted a bitter irony amid all the service problems. “To add to the insult, I can look out my bedroom window literally, maybe 150 yards, is the AT&T service facility,” he said with a weary laugh. “I’m like, please help me! You’re right there! How can you ignore this problem that is just right in front of your face?”

    Until The Markup told Hope Village residents its findings about AT&T’s pricing practices in Detroit, they didn’t know that lower-income areas were more often asked to pay the same price for slower internet.

    “That’s the big piece,” said Angela Siefer, the executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, which advocates for broadband access. “Folks don’t know that they’re being screwed.”

    ———

    This story was reported by The Markup and the story and data were distributed by The Associated Press.

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  • LA City Council elects new president amid the fallout from leaked racist audio | CNN

    LA City Council elects new president amid the fallout from leaked racist audio | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    In a unanimous decision, the Los Angeles City Council voted for Paul Krekorian to take over as its president Tuesday following the resignation of Nury Martinez, who was heard making racist comments in a leaked audio recording that drew the nation’s attention to the city government.

    Krekorian, who represents Council District 2, an area stretching from Toluca Lake to the edge of Verdugo Mountain Park in Sun Valley, was elected in 2009 and served for years as chairman of the city’s Budget and Finance Committee. Previously, Krekorian was a California State Assembly member, according to his website.

    While Krekorian thanked his fellow city council members for their faith in him, he noted the serious conditions in which this vote occurred.

    “The city is not celebrating now, the city is grieving. And we are working overwhelmingly together to try to overcome what we experienced over the last week,” Krekorian said during the meeting.

    His predecessor, Martinez, resigned from her seat on Council District 6 last week, two days after stepping down from her post as president after the recording came to light, igniting outrage across the city.

    Krekorian said he plans to reduce the powers of the council president in light of recent events, and “the era of unilateral decision making and consolidating power – that ends today.”

    Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement Tuesday that Krekorian has his full support.

    “Paul is a committed and conscientious leader who can bring a smart, collaborative, and effective approach to a painful moment when Angelenos deserve steady leadership on the City Council,” Garcetti said. “I am confident that he’ll assemble a leadership team of bridge builders, and I’ll work closely with the Council to help heal the wounds caused by the hateful words of a few.”

    The leaked audio, which was posted anonymously on Reddit and obtained by The Los Angeles Times, details a year-old conversation between Martinez, council members Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León and Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera.

    Much of the conversation focused on maps proposed by the city’s redistricting commission and the council members’ frustration with them. But it also featured racist remarks about a fellow council member’s Black son and about Oaxacans.

    Herrera apologized in a statement released by the union and resigned last week. Cedillo apologized in a statement and said he should have stepped in during the conversation. De León called comments made during the conversation “wholly inappropriate,” and said he should have acted differently.

    Cedillo and de León, who both face mounting calls to resign, weren’t at Tuesday’s city council meeting.

    In addition to voting for a new president, the council on Tuesday also unanimously voted to look into the next steps to add a ballot measure to amend the city charter and create an independent redistricting commission.

    They are also looking into possible steps to add more city council member seats based on population and ethics reform legislation.

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  • Kanye West to buy conservative social media platform Parler

    Kanye West to buy conservative social media platform Parler

    The rapper formerly known as Kanye West is offering to buy right-wing friendly social network Parler shortly after being booted off Twitter and Instagram for antisemitic posts.

    Parlement Technologies, which owns the platform, and West, legally known as Ye, said the acquisition should be completed in the fourth quarter, but details like price were not revealed. Parlement Technologies said the agreement includes the use of private cloud services via Parlement’s private cloud and data center infrastructure.

    Ye, was locked out of Twitter and Instagram a week ago over antisemitic posts that the social networks said violated their policies. In one post on Twitter, Ye said he would soon go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” according to internet archive records, making an apparent reference to the U.S. defense readiness condition scale known as DEFCON.

    Ye is no stranger to controversy, once suggesting slavery was a choice and calling the COVID-19 vaccine “the mark of the beast.” Earlier this month, he was criticized for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to his collection at Paris Fashion Week.

    The potential purchase of Parler would give Ye control of a social media platform and a new outlet for his opinions with no gatekeeper.

    “In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” Ye said in a prepared statement.

    The acquisition could also breathe new life into Parler, which has struggled amid competition from other conservative-friendly platforms like Truth Social. Parler, which launched in August 2018, didn’t start picking up steam until 2020. But it was kicked offline following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. A month after the attack, Parler announced a relaunch. It returned to Google Play last month.

    “This deal will change the world, and change the way the world thinks about free speech,” Parlement Technologies CEO George Farmer said in a prepared statement.

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  • With far-right leaders, Italy remembers WWII roundup of Jews

    With far-right leaders, Italy remembers WWII roundup of Jews

    ROME — Italy’s far-right political leadership marked the 79th anniversary of the World War II roundup of Rome’s Jews on Sunday with calls for such horror to never occur again, messages that took on greater significance following a national election won by a party with neo-fascist roots.

    Giorgia Meloni, who is expected to head Italy’s first far-right-led government since the war’s end, phoned the leader of Rome’s Jewish community, Ruth Dureghello, to commemorate the anniversary, according to a community spokesman.

    Meloni said in a statement that the anniversary serves as a “warning so that certain tragedies never happen again.” She said all Italians bear the memory “that serves to build antibodies against indifference and hatred, to continue to fight anti-Semitism in all its forms.”

    On the morning of Oct. 16, 1943 during the German occupation of Italy, 1,259 people were arrested from Rome’s Ghetto and surrounding neighborhoods and brought to a military barracks near the Vatican, bound for deportation to Auschwitz. Only 16 survived.

    Meloni called it a “tragic, dark and incurable day for Rome and Italy,” that ended with the “vile and inhuman deportation of Roman Jews at the hands of the Nazi-Fascist fury: women, men and children were snatched from life, house by house.”

    Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party won the most votes in Sept. 25 national election — about 26% — and is expected to head a government along with the right-wing League and center-right Forza Italia. Her party traces its roots to the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, or MSI, which was founded in 1946 by the remnants of Benito Mussolini’s final government in the Nazi puppet state in Salo, northern Italy. It remained a small right-wing party until the 1990s, when it became the National Alliance, which sought to distance itself from its neo-fascist origins.

    Meloni, who joined the MSI as a teenager and headed the National Alliance youth branch, founded Brothers of Italy in 2012 along with another former MSI and National Alliance member, Ignazio La Russa, who was elected president of the Senate this week. La Russa has proudly shown off his Mussolini memorabilia collection and, early on in the pandemic, suggested Italians use the fascist salute rather than shake hands in a tweet that he blamed on an underling that was quickly removed.

    On Sunday, La Russa also commemorated the anniversary of the roundup, saying it was “one of the darkest days of our history.”

    “It is the duty of everyone, starting with the highest institutions, to pass on the memory so that similar tragedies will never happen again in the future. To the Jewish community, today as always, my sincere closeness,” he said in a Facebook post.

    Italy’s other political leaders also commemorated the anniversary with tweets, messages and statements. Rome’s mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, attended a commemoration in the Ghetto itself alongside Dureghello and other members of the Jewish community. They paused for a moment in front of a wreath outside Rome’s main synagogue alongside Rome’s chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni.

    The community launched a social media campaign #16ottobre43 with a video scrolling the names of the people killed “whose only ‘guilt’ was that of being Jewish.”

    Dureghello recalled that the anniversary marked “the date in which we remember the first Nazi-Fascist deportation of the Roman Jews. Men, women and children torn from their homes and sent to die. Keeping the memory alive is a moral imperative that serves to extinguish the sirens of hatred and fanaticism.”

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  • Kanye West canceled? Here’s why it probably won’t happen | CNN

    Kanye West canceled? Here’s why it probably won’t happen | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Kanye West has had so many controversies you may have forgotten a few.

    From his infamous interruption of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards to his early embrace of former President Trump and his “Make America Great Again” agenda, the artist, designer and entrepreneur is, perhaps, best known for being a provocateur.

    The latest calls to cancel West, who legally changed his name to Ye, may be the most intense yet.

    After he wore and featured “White Lives Matter” (The Anti-Defamation League categorizes the phrase as a “hate slogan” used by White supremacist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan) apparel in his recent Paris fashion show, there was new outcry against West.

    “Kanye’s actions are just so dangerous and irresponsible. I don’t care how great his music is, we have to stop supporting someone who uses their platform so irresponsibly,” TV host, professor and former CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill posted on social media.

    Another lightening rod came earlier this week, when West’s Twitter and Instagram accounts were restricted for violating policies following posts that were criticized as antisemitic. Days later, it was announced that his episode of the YouTube series “The Shop: Uninterrupted” would not release because he used his appearance “to reiterate more hate speech and very ugly stereotypes.”

    This has led some to suggest that West’s career has crashed and burned and there’s no coming back from it all. But here’s why that’s not necessarily the case:

    For all the talk of “cancel culture,” we now live in an era where bad behavior, especially by public figures, garners all of the outrage – until it doesn’t.

    Not only do we live in a society that moves fairly quickly from scandal to scandal, racism and cruelty to others no longer live in the shadows.

    So while plenty of people have condemned West for his actions and comments, there are many who support both because they agree with him.

    Then there is the fame factor.

    Star power has only increased in recent years, especially because social media fosters a sense of intimacy between artists and their followers.

    “West’s celebrity status has kept us watching and listening mostly because we’re keenly aware that so many others are also paying attention,” Washington Post senior critic-at-large Robin Givhan recently wrote.

    “And each time he says something indecipherable or cruel, we recoil as if we are shocked anew, as if he has not been terrible before,” she continued. “We respond as if we believe that fame is a preventive to terrible behavior, that those who know they’re being watched will aim to be on their best behavior rather than using all that attention as an enticement to acting out.”

    West has been very clear about his admiration for Trump, and the two men do seem to share an approach to communication.

    West recently said in an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson that he “started to really feel this need to express myself on another level when Trump was running for office and I liked him.”

    West said he was warned against supporting Trump, telling Carlson people told him “my career would be over, my life would be over.”

    Instead, West earned new fans from some of the same people who also support the former president.

    After conservative author and ACT! for America founder Brigitte Gabriel tweeted her support for West, one of her followers responded, “I used to judge him quite harshly. I’m finding new respect for him now.”

    It’s long been debated whether one can embrace the art without supporting the artist. West has a history of coming out on the winning side of that question.

    There were calls to boycott West in 2018 after comments he made about the history of slavery in the United States.

    “When you hear about slavery for 400 years,” West said during an interview with TMZ. “For 400 years? That sounds like a choice.”

    Yet, a month later, all seven tracks on his “Ye” album debuted on Billboard’s Top 40 chart.

    There have been several other controversies since that have not stopped West from achieving mass success with his fashion and sneaker lines.

    And while West terminated his relationship with the Gap in September, and Adidas has put their partnership with him under review, he entered the public consciousness nearly two decades ago through music that people will likely continue to return to.

    The first words West speaks on his first hit, “Through the Wire,” in retrospect, may have been prescient: “They can’t stop me from rapping can they?”

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  • Banking breakup between Ye, JPMorgan planned for weeks

    Banking breakup between Ye, JPMorgan planned for weeks

    JPMorgan Chase and the rapper formerly known as Kanye West are ending their business relationship, but the breakup is not a result of the controversy over the hip-hop star’s recent antisemitic comments

    NEW YORK — JPMorgan Chase and the rapper formerly known as Kanye West are ending their business relationship, but the breakup is not a result of the controversy over the hip-hop star’s recent antisemitic comments.

    The letter ending West’s relationship with JPMorgan was tweeted Wednesday by conservative activist Candice Owens, who has been seen publicly at events with the rapper, who is now legally known as Ye.

    While Owens claimed that JPMorgan did not disclose the reason for severing ties, the letter was sent to West on Sept. 20, according to a bank spokesperson. The decision was made after Ye publicly said he was going to cut off ties with the bank. JPMorgan is giving West 60 days from the date of the letter to find a new banking relationship.

    West told Bloomberg News on Sept 12 that he planned on cutting much of its corporate ties, saying he “It’s time for me to go it alone.” In that interview, he also criticized JPMorgan for not giving Ye access to Jamie Dimon, the bank’s CEO and chairman.

    While Ye is wealthy from his hip-hop career, he also controls a popular fashion and shoe line under Yeezy Brands. In that interview with Bloomberg, he said he also planned to cut relationships with his corporate suppliers as well.

    Social media giants Twitter and Instagram have blocked Ye’s accounts from posting in recent days due to his antisemitic comments.

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  • Racist remarks: Hurt, betrayal among LA’s Indigenous people

    Racist remarks: Hurt, betrayal among LA’s Indigenous people

    LOS ANGELES — Bricia Lopez has welcomed people of all walks to dine at her family’s popular restaurant on the Indigenous-influenced food of her native Mexican state of Oaxaca — among them Nury Martinez, the first Latina elected president of the Los Angeles City Council.

    The restaurant, Guelaguetza, has become an institution known for introducing Oaxaca’s unique cuisine and culture to Angelenos, attracting everyone from immigrant families to Mexican stars to powerful city officials such as Martinez.

    But now after a scandal exploded over a recording of Martinez making racist remarks about Oaxacans such as Lopez, the 37-year-old restaurateur and cookbook author said she feels a tremendous sense of betrayal.

    Martinez resigned from her council seat Wednesday and offered her apologies. But the disparaging remarks still deeply hurt the city’s immigrants from Oaxaca, which has one of Mexico’s large indigenous populations. Sadly, many said, they are not surprised. Both growing up in their homeland and after reaching the U.S., they say they’ve become accustomed to hearing such stinging comments — not only from non-Latinos but from lighter skinned Mexican immigrants and their descendants.

    “Every time these people looked at me in my face, they were all lying to me,” Lopez said. “We should not let these people continue to lie to us and tell us we are less than, or we are ugly, or allow them to laugh at us.”

    Following Martinez’ departure, two other Latino City Council members also are facing widespread calls to resign since the year-old recording surfaced of them mocking colleagues while scheming to protect Latino political strength in council districts. Martinez used a disparaging term for the Black son of a white council member and called immigrants from Oaxaca ugly.

    “I see a lot of little short dark people,” Martinez said on the recording, referring to an area of the largely Hispanic Koreatown neighborhood. “I was like, I don’t know where these people are from, I don’t know what village they came (from), how they got here.”

    Lopez said she heard such racist comments growing up in California but had hoped they would be a thing of the past and that young Oaxacan immigrants would not have to hear them.

    “I want people to look at themselves in the mirror every day and see the beauty,” she said.

    Oaxaca has more than a dozen ethnicities, including Mixtecos and Zapotecs. The southern Mexican state is known for famously hand-dyed woven rugs, pristine Pacific tourist beaches, a smoky alcohol called Mezcal and sophisticated cuisine including moles — thick sauces crafted from more than two dozen ingredients.

    Los Angeles is home to the country’s largest Mexican population and nearly half the city of 4 million people is Latino, census figures show. Informal studies indicate that several hundred thousand Oaxacan immigrants live in California, with the largest concentration in Los Angeles, said Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, director of the University of California, Los Angeles Center for Mexican Studies.

    Demeaning language is often used against Mexico’s Indigenous people. It is“the legacy of the colonial period,” Rivera-Salgado said of Spanish rule long ago.

    Racism, and colorism — discrimination against darker-skinned people within the same ethnic group — run centuries deep in Mexico and other neighboring Latin American countries. A few years ago, Yalitza Aparicio, the Oscar-nominated actress in “Roma” who is from Oaxaca, faced racist comments in her country and derogatory tirades online over her Indigenous features after she appeared on the cover of Vogue México.

    Odilia Romero said the scandal doesn’t surprise her. The Oaxacan community leader is among many who had been pressing for the resignation of Martinez, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, and the two other councilmembers on the recorded conversation.

    Romero said she’s also fielded calls since the scandal broke, including from someone urging her not to let the hurtful remarks distract from critical working aiding the immigrant community.

    “That is a very paternalist comment,” said Romero, executive director of the group Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo or CIELO and a Zapotec interpreter. “How dare you tell us Indigenous people that we are not understanding. Of course we understand — we see this every day.”

    Lynn Stephen, an anthropology professor at University of Oregon who researches Mexican migration and Indigenous peoples, said the concept of mestizaje — or being a mixed-race and non-racial unified nation — intended to erase Indigenous communities, not uplift them, and the discrimination persists to this day. It is carried to the United States with those who migrate, she said, while similar divisions also exist in other Latin American countries.

    “These kinds of comments directed toward Indigenous people from non-Indigenous people from Mexico, Guatemala, etc., it’s a different kind of layer of racism,” Stephen said. “Folks from Oaxaca they have to contend with anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican backlash and racism often from non-Latino Americans, white Americans, sometimes other folks, and then within that, often where they’re living or in school.”

    Ofelia Platon, a tenant organizer, went to the Los Angeles city council chambers recently to demand the officials step down. She said she hasn’t experienced discrimination from within the Latino community as much as from outside it, but there’s no place for such — especially coming from elected leaders the poor count on to help improve their lives.

    “They think they have the power to step on people,” she said. “They’re two-faced.”

    It’s not just the hurtful remarks that sting Xóchitl M. Flores-Marcial, a Zapotec scholar and professor of Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Northridge. She called it very telling about the officials who make decisions affecting her community. She said she grew up in the United States hearing hurtful words and still faces similar rejection whenever she travels to Oaxaca and people there are surprised she’s the research team leader.

    “It’s so painful because those are consequential people,” she said. “This is hurting us — not just our emotions, but our actual life in terms of our jobs and our opportunities.”

    Still she said she has hope for future generations in “Oaxacalifornia” — the tight-knit community that has maintained traditions while embracing life in Los Angeles.

    ————

    This story was corrected to reflect that Martinez is not a Mexican immigrant, but the daughter of Mexican immigrants.

    ———

    Taxin reported from Orange County, California.

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  • LA City Councilmember Nury Martinez resigns from office, two days after stepping down from leadership post | CNN

    LA City Councilmember Nury Martinez resigns from office, two days after stepping down from leadership post | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    [Breaking news update, published at 5:50 p.m. ET]

    Los Angeles City Council member Nury Martinez resigned from her seat on Council District 6, two days after stepping down from her post as president for making racist remarks.

    “It is with a broken heart that I resign my seat for Council District 6, the community I grew up in and my home,” she said in a news release.

    [Original story, published at 4:32 p.m. ET]

    A day after Los Angeles City Council’s president resigned from her post for making racist remarks, the new acting president proposed several changes to help move the city forward.

    During a loud and contentious council meeting Tuesday – the first meeting since the scandal broke – Acting President Mitch O’Farrell proposed “major reform of the city charter, city council and how we approach redistricting, representation – the topics at the center of this crisis.”

    He called for expanding the council and an independent redistricting commission to map out representation of the “diverse metropolis.”

    It was the first council meeting since audio posted online revealed then-President Nury Martinez made racist comments about another council member’s family and said that colleague’s son “needs a beatdown.”

    The remarks were part of leaked audio that was posted anonymously on Reddit and obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

    Martinez publicly apologized for her comments Monday and resigned from her post as council president. On Tuesday, she also took a leave of absence from the council.

    O’Farrell presented a motion for a ballot measure that could be posed to voters to decide if the council should grow.

    The number of members – 15 – has not changed since 1925, when Los Angeles had less than 1 million residents, O’Farrell said.

    The city’s population has since quadrupled, according to US Census data.

    “This council should reflect and represent the residents we serve,” O’Farrell said. “A ballot measure that increases the number of council seats to help us meet that goal and involve Angelenos in the process, as will an immediate redistricting process, should the people decide they want an expanded city council.”

    When the council reconvenes Wednesday, members will discuss another ballot measure that calls for an independent redistricting commission that would determine the boundaries set every 10 years.

    According to The Los Angeles Times. the leaked audio captured conversation from October 2021 involving Martinez; her fellow councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León; and Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera.

    Much of the conversation focused on maps proposed by the city’s redistricting commission and the councilmembers’ frustration with them, as well as the need to “ensure that heavily Latino districts did not lose economic assets” in the once-in-a-decade process, according to the Times.

    The councilmembers then discussed Councilmember Mike Bonin, a White man. In clips of the leaked audio posted by the Times, Martinez is heard recounting a conversation and says “Bonin thinks he’s f**king Black.”

    According to the Times, Martinez says Bonin appeared with his son on a float in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade and he “handled his young Black son as though he were an accessory.” The boy is 8 years old, according to a Facebook post by his father.

    The Times reported that Martinez also said of Bonin’s child, “Parece changuito,” or “He’s like a monkey.”

    In the leaked audio, Martinez can be heard talking about Bonin’s son allegedly misbehaving while at the parade by hanging from a railing of their float, saying “this kid is going to tip us over.”

    “They’re raising him like a little White kid,” Martinez said in the audio released by The Times. “I was like, this kid needs a beatdown. Let me take him around the corner and then I’ll bring him back.”

    CNN has not been able to verify the audio recording. But the fallout has been swift.

    On Monday, Herrera resigned as president of Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

    Councilmember Cedillo issued a public statement saying he should have stepped in during the conversation.

    “I want to start by apologizing. While I did not engage in the conversation in question, I was present at times during this meeting last year,” Cedillo said Sunday. “It is my instinct to hold others accountable when they use derogatory or racially divisive language. Clearly, I should have intervened.”

    Councilmember de León also said he should have acted differently.

    “On that day, I fell short of the expectations we set for our leaders – and I will hold myself to a higher standard,” he said in a written statement Sunday.

    “There were comments made in the context of this meeting that are wholly inappropriate; and I regret appearing to condone and even contribute to certain insensitive comments made about a colleague and his family in private. I’ve reached out to that colleague personally.”

    Officials near and far – including Sen. Dianne Feinstein and President Joe Biden – believe the councilmembers who took part in the recorded conversation should resign.

    “At a time when our country has seen a steep rise in racially motivated hate crimes, it’s critical that elected officials set a positive example on behalf of everyone they represent,” said Feinstein, the senior US senator from California.

    The city council’s new acting president also called for the full resignation of the three colleagues.

    “I do not believe we can have the healing that is necessary or govern as we need to while council members Martinez, de Leon, and Cedillo remain as members of this council,” O’Farrell said Tuesday.

    A motion to elect a new council president will be heard next Tuesday.

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  • NFL keeping watch on return of HBCUs to national prominence

    NFL keeping watch on return of HBCUs to national prominence

    KANSAS CITY, Mo. — During their original heyday in the 1960s, when much of the nation was still coming to grips with the end of Jim Crow, the Kansas City Chiefs and their visionary coach, Hank Stram, realized more quickly than perhaps any team in the AFL or NFL that players from historically Black colleges and universities were good.

    Really good.

    They were fast and strong and talented, just like the players produced by Bud Wilkinson at Oklahoma or Bear Bryant at Alabama. So the Chiefs drafted them, and Buck Buchanan and Willie Lanier and Otis Taylor went on to form the backbone of powerful teams that reached two Super Bowls and beat the Vikings for their first championship.

    So it made poetic sense in April when the Chiefs, on the clock in the fourth round of the draft and trying to revamp their aging secondary, turned in a card with Joshua Williams’ name on it. The cornerback from Fayetteville State was the first of four HBCU players chosen this year after none were selected in 2021 and just one went off the board in 2020.

    “I’m very proud of where I came from,” said Williams, who went seven spots before the Los Angeles Rams picked South Carolina State defensive back Decobie Durant. “It just speaks to the exposure we’ve been getting and also to the hard work that I’ve been putting in. I’m glad it all paid off. I’m glad all of these things are coming to fruition.”

    It might not be a one-year fluke, either. The talent level at HBCUs has improved recently, one of many byproducts of widespread societal changes. There is more exposure through television and streaming services. New bowls and showcase games are giving HBCU players an opportunity to earn coveted invitations to the scouting combine.

    As a result, NFL teams are once more mining those small colleges for hidden gems. When training camps opened this fall, 33 players from HBCUs were on rosters for 17 teams.

    “Having opportunities to go to bowl games, the (NFL) combine — now you’re getting kids motivated,” Prairie View A&M coach Bubba McDowell said. “They’re seeing kids prior to them leaving and going to the combine and all the all-star games, now you’re just increasing their ability (to say), ‘It can really happen in the SWAC.’”

    There are 33 players from HBCUs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but many of the biggest stars played during the 1960s and ‘70s. That’s when Eddie Robinson’s Grambling State juggernaut produced future Packers star Willie Davis, Bears offensive tackle Ernie Ladd and Buchanan, whom the Chiefs picked first overall in the 1963 AFL draft. And when rivals such as Southern, Tennessee State and Texas Southern had players capable of playing anywhere.

    The biggest reason many of them chose to play at HBCUs: It was one of their few options, and often the best.

    Sure, some progressive colleges had been fielding Black athletes for years. But others were painfully slow to integrate — the Crimson Tide didn’t have their first Black scholarship football player until Wilbur Jackson in 1969. And with racism still running rampant on many college campuses, talented recruits — particularly those in the Deep South — simply felt safer and more comfortable attending historically Black colleges and universities.

    They were coming of age during the Civil Rights Movement, and it became a point of pride to play for such schools.

    “I was determined,” Buchanan said years later, “to prove that players from small schools could play in the big leagues.”

    Indeed, during a five-year period in the late ‘60s, about 70 players from HBCUs were drafted each year, though that figure is somewhat inflated compared to today’s standard by the dueling AFL and NFL drafts and the fact that each had more rounds than today.

    As major Division I colleges integrated, though, Black players inevitably signed on with traditional powers such as Alabama and Texas. There were still outliers, of course — Walter Payton was a Mississippi prep legend who received no SEC offers and wound up at Jackson State, playing alongside another future NFL star, Jackie Slater. But by the mid-1980s, HBCUs were producing fewer than 20 draft picks in an average year, a third of the total a decade earlier.

    Every once in a while, generational talents would capture NFL attention, such as Jerry Rice (Mississippi Valley State) and Michael Strahan (Texas Southern). But for the most part, HBCUs became an afterthought for professional scouts.

    Until recently, that is.

    The Black Lives Matter movement coupled with a national reckoning in terms of social injustice, one largely led by young people, appears to have sparked renewed interest in HBCUs, just like the Civil Rights Movement a generation earlier.

    And when it came to the gridiron, the decision by Hall of Fame cornerback Deion Sanders to coach Jackson State in the fall of 2020 gave the longtime SWAC powerhouse — and other HBCU programs — a certain “cool factor” among recruits. That was evident last December, when five-star prospect Travis Hunter switched his commitment from mighty Florida State to the Tigers; other talented Division I prospects have followed suit and signed with HBCUs.

    “He’s changing the landscape of not only SWAC football but FCS football,” Florida A&M coach Willie Simmons said.

    That includes the MEAC, the other HBCU conference in the Football Championship Subdivision, but also smaller leagues such as the CIAA. That’s the Division II conference where Fayetteville State plays, and where Williams — the Chiefs’ draft pick this past April — did enough to warrant an invitation to the Senior Bowl.

    It was there that Williams shined against players from powerhouses such as Texas A&M and Michigan, putting him on NFL radars and earning him a spot at the draft combine, where his workout sent him climbing up draft boards.

    Including the one in Kansas City, where players from HBCUs flourished decades ago.

    “We’re just looking for football players, and it doesn’t matter where you come from, what your story is,” Chiefs general manager Brett Veach said. “If you can help us win games, and be a positive influence in the community, you know, we’re going to find a way to make you a part of this roster. Josh was the same. He falls into that category.”

    Williams and Durant were joined by fellow draft picks James Houston, the Jackson State linebacker who went in the sixth round to Detroit, and Southern offensive lineman Ja’Tyre Carter, who went in the seventh to Chicago.

    “If I see the burst and the acceleration, I see the change in direction, that translates if you’re at Alabama or if you’re at Fayetteville State,” explained David Hinson, the Chiefs’ co-director of college scouting. “If he’s got quick feet, if he has good hips and can change direction, if he can track the ball, that doesn’t change no matter the field you’re playing on.”

    Turns out there’s quite a few draft prospects playing on HBCU fields this season.

    Florida A&M pass rusher Isaiah Land is a potential Day 2 pick. Wide receiver Shaquan Davis could be the next star out of South Carolina State, which in recent years produced Shaq Leonard and Javon Hargrave. Bethune-Cookman tight end Kemari Averett, who began his career with Lamar Jackson at Louisville, could soon join the Ravens quarterback in the NFL, and wide receivers Abdul-Fatai Ibrahim of Alabama A&M and Hampton’s Jadakis Bonds also could get a shot.

    Where they’re coming from? That doesn’t matter anymore.

    The only thing that matters is what they can do.

    “I’m a firm believer what you put in you’re going to get out of it,” said Ibrahim, who would be the first Alabama A&M draft pick since Frank Kearse in 2011. “If I put in hard work day-in, day-out, the results are going to show eventually.”

    ———

    More AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl and https://twitter.com/AP—NFL

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  • Filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, is set to testify against Harvey Weinstein in his Los Angeles sexual assault trial | CNN

    Filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, is set to testify against Harvey Weinstein in his Los Angeles sexual assault trial | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Jennifer Siebel Newsom, an award-winning filmmaker and wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, is set to testify in the sexual assault trial of disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein in Los Angeles, her attorneys told CNN Monday.

    “Like many other women, my client was sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein at a purported business meeting that turned out to be a trap,” said Beth Fegan, one of Newsom’s attorneys.

    “She intends to testify at his trial to seek some measure of justice for survivors and as part of her life’s work to improve the lives of women,” Fegan said.

    Weinstein, 70, is set to go on trial again, more than two years after he was convicted of first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape charges in New York and sentenced to 23 years in prison.

    After he was found guilty in New York, the once-powerful movie mogul was moved to Los Angeles, where he’s been serving his prison sentence.

    In Los Angeles, Weinstein faces multiple sexual assault charges that he has pleaded not guilty to last year, including four counts of rape, four counts of forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by force and sexual battery by restraint in incidents dating from 2004 to 2013.

    Jury selection for Weinstein’s trial began Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Newsom will likely testify “on or around November 8” but this could change as the schedule is fluid, attorney Mark Firmani said.

    As the trial in Los Angeles is set to get underway, Weinstein has maintained his innocence and denied all allegations against him. New York’s highest court in August agreed to hear his appeal challenging his 2020 conviction on sex crime charges.

    The allegations against Weinstein helped fuel the global #MeToo movement, encouraging women around the globe to speak out against sexual abuse.

    Just a day after The New York Times published its bombshell report on Weinstein in October 2017, Newsom wrote an opinion editorial for the Huffington Post where she shared that she had an experience very similar to the allegations reported by the Times.

    “I was naive, new to the industry, and didn’t know how to deal with his aggressive advances ― work invitations with a friend late-night at The Toronto Film Festival, and later an invitation to meet with him about a role in The Peninsula Hotel, where staff were present and then all of a sudden disappeared like clockwork, leaving me alone with this extremely powerful and intimidating Hollywood legend,” Newsom wrote.

    Weinstein spokesman Juda Engelmayer declined to comment on Newsom’s allegation.

    Siebel Newsom is a Stanford University graduate who has written, directed and produced several documentaries, including “Miss Representation,” “The Mask You Live In” and “The Great American Lie.” During her time as California’s First Partner, Siebel Newsom has advocated for working mothers and launched initiatives focused on closing the pay gap, among other efforts, and has been involved in several social activism campaigns.

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  • Los Angeles Council president resigns after racist remarks

    Los Angeles Council president resigns after racist remarks

    LOS ANGELES — The president of the Los Angeles City Council resigned from the post Monday after she was heard making racist comments and other coarse remarks in a leaked recording of a conversation with other Latino leaders.

    Council President Nury Martinez issued an apology and expressed shame.

    “In the end, it is not my apologies that matter most; it will be the actions I take from this day forward. I hope that you will give me the opportunity to make amends,” she said in a statement. “Therefore, effective immediately I am resigning as President of the Los Angeles City Council.”

    The statement did not say she would resign her council seat. There was no immediate response to a call and email sent to her spokesperson.

    Martinez said in the recorded conversation that white Councilman Mike Bonin handled his young Black son as if he were an “accessory” and described the son as behaving “Parece changuito,” or “like a monkey,” the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.

    Martinez also referred to Bonin as a “little bitch” and at another point mocked Oaxacans, the Times said.

    “I see a lot of little short dark people,” Martinez said in reference to a particular area of the largely Hispanic Koreatown neighborhood.

    “I was like, I don’t know where these people are from, I don’t know what village they came (from), how they got here,” Martinez said, adding “Tan feos” — “They’re ugly.”

    The recording’s content rocked the political establishment just weeks before elections for the mayor’s office and several council seats.

    Bonin and his husband, Sean Arian, issued a statement calling on Martinez, De León and Herrera to resign.

    “The entirety of the recorded conversation … displayed a repeated and vulgar anti-Black sentiment, and a coordinated effort to weaken Black political representation in Los Angeles,” they said.

    The conversation was recorded in October 2021, and other participants were Councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León and Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera, the Times reported. The overall discussion was about frustrations with redistricting maps produced by a city commission.

    The Times reported that the approximately hourlong audio was posted on Reddit by a now-suspended user, and that it was unclear who recorded the audio and whether anyone else was present at the meeting.

    Martinez initially issued an apology after the Times article appeared online.

    “In a moment of intense frustration and anger, I let the situation get the best of me and I hold myself accountable for these comments. For that I am sorry,” she said.

    “The context of this conversation was concern over the redistricting process and concern about the potential negative impact it might have on communities of color,” she said. “My work speaks for itself. I’ve worked hard to lead this city through its most difficult time.”

    Martinez, whose district website describes her as “a glass-ceiling shattering leader who brings profound life experience as the proud daughter of working-class immigrants,” was elected to the council in 2013 and became the council’s first Latina president in 2020.

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  • Kanye West’s Twitter, Instagram locked over offensive posts

    Kanye West’s Twitter, Instagram locked over offensive posts

    Kanye West’s Twitter and Instagram accounts have been locked because of posts by the rapper, now known legally as Ye, that were widely deemed antisemitic.

    A Twitter spokesperson said Sunday that Ye posted a message that violated its policies.

    In a tweet sent late Saturday, Ye said he would soon go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” according to internet archive records. That’s an apparent reference to the U.S. military readiness condition scale known as DEFCON.

    In the same tweet, which was removed by Twitter, he said: “You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.”

    Earlier this month, Ye had been criticized for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to his collection at Paris Fashion Week.

    Rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs posted a video on Instagram saying he didn’t support the shirt, and urged people not to buy it.

    On Instagram, Ye posted a screenshot of a text conversation with Diddy and suggested he was controlled by Jewish people, according to media reports.

    Ye’s account on Instagram was locked Friday for policy violations, according to media reports. Spokespeople for Instagram’s parent company, Meta Platforms, didn’t immediately respond to a request to confirm the reports.

    Under their policies, the two social networks prohibit the posting of offensive language. Ye’s Twitter account is still active but he can’t post until the suspension ends, after an unspecified period.

    Ye had returned to Twitter on Saturday following a nearly two-year hiatus, reportedly after Instagram locked his account.

    Billionaire Elon Musk, who last week renewed his $44 billion offer to buy Twitter following a monthslong legal battle with the company, greeted Ye’s return to the platform before his suspension by tweeting “Welcome back to Twitter, my friend.”

    Musk has said he would remake Twitter into a free speech haven and relax restrictions, although it’s impossible to know precisely how he would run the influential network if he were to take over.

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  • Kanye West’s Twitter account locked for anti-Semitic tweet | CNN

    Kanye West’s Twitter account locked for anti-Semitic tweet | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Twitter locked rapper Kanye West’s Twitter account over an anti-Semitic tweet posted on the account on Saturday.

    In the since-removed tweet, West said he was “going death con 3 [sic] On JEWISH PEOPLE,” and also that, “You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda,” without specifying what group he was addressing, according to internet archive records pulled by CNN.

    A spokesperson from Twitter confirmed to CNN that the account was locked for violating Twitter’s policies. The tweet has been replaced on the account by a message from the company saying, “This tweet violated the Twitter Rules.”

    The spokesperson did not say which policy was violated but instead sent a link to Twitter’s rules, which include guidelines against hateful conduct.

    Twitter would not say how long the account would be locked or when the user would be able to tweet again.

    On Friday, West’s Instagram account was restricted for violating the company’s policies, a Meta spokesperson told CNN.

    In a tweet, the Anti-Defamation League said, “Power. Disloyalty. Greed. Deicide. Blood. Denial. Anti-Zionism. All of these are antisemitic tropes that we break down in our #AntisemitismUncovered Guide at antisemitism.adl.org. Many of these myths have influenced @KanyeWest’s comments recently, and it’s dangerous.”

    CNN has been unable to reach a representative for West for comment.

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  • Iran’s ‘women’s revolution’ could be a Berlin Wall moment | CNN Politics

    Iran’s ‘women’s revolution’ could be a Berlin Wall moment | CNN Politics

    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    The Islamic regime in Iran has ruled for decades with fear and intimidation.

    Outrage at the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22 year-old who died after being detained by Iran’s morality policy, allegedly for improperly wearing her hijab, ignited nationwide protests across the country that have gone on for weeks.

    That Iranians are risking their lives and freedom to stand up to their government has sparked hope among many that change is coming. Read CNN’s latest report.

    I talked on the phone to Masih Alinejad, an Iranian in exile in the US who works as a journalist and activist.

    Key points:

    • She uses social media – 8 million followers on Instagram alone – to amplify and aid the protests inside Iran.
    • US authorities charged four Iranian nationals with trying to kidnap her last year.
    • To Alinejad, that women in Iran are removing their headscarves as an act of protest is equal to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
    • She sees solidarity with dissidents from other oil-rich autocracies like Russia and Venezuela, and has a stern message for feminists in the West.

    Our conversation, edited for clarity and length, is below. I’ve also added some context and links in parentheses where appropriate.

    WHAT MATTERS: This newsletter is not usually focused on Iran. Can you first just explain what’s happening?

    ALINEJAD: Mahsa Amini was only 22 years old. … She came from Saqqez to Tehran for a vacation. Then she got arrested by the so-called morality police – because I call them the hijab police.

    And for your audience, if they don’t know what morality police means, they’re a bunch of police walking in the streets, telling people whether their way of wearing hijab is proper or not.

    Mahsa was arrested for wearing inappropriate hijab. So she was not unveiled.

    (Here is a CNN report in which the Iranian police deny the allegation she was beaten.)

    ALINEJAD: That created huge anger among Iranians. And that is why women across Iran first started to cut their hair. Then they took to the street and they started to burn their headscarves. And now, with men, shoulder to shoulder, across Iran they’re not only saying no to compulsory hijab, they are actually chanting against the dictator and they are saying we want an end to the Islamic Republic.

    This is a revolution.

    To me, this is a women’s revolution against a gender apartheid regime.

    WHAT MATTERS: The Iranian government has tried to crack down on this. We see video that gets out of Iran of these protests. How have things changed in the weeks since Mahsa’s death?

    ALINEJAD: From the beginning, the level of crackdown was so brutal. They opened fire, they really opened fire on teenagers, school leaders, university students, they opened fire on unarmed people.

    Now some reports say more than 130 people have been killed. But it’s strongly believed the number is much more than this. Only in Zahedan on only one day, they opened fire on those who were praying. Who were praying. They killed more than 80 people in Zahedan.

    (CNN has not verified all of these claims. Related CNN report: Iranian security forces beat, shot and detained students of elite Tehran university, witnesses say.

    Amnesty International has reported on the killing of 66 in Zahedan along with other deaths recorded in other places.

    Regarding death tolls: CNN cannot independently verify the death toll –  a precise figure is impossible for anyone outside the Iranian government to confirm – and different estimates have been given by opposition groups, international rights organizations and local journalists.)

    ALINEJAD: The Iranian regime cut off the internet in some cities to prevent the rest of the world from getting to know about the crackdown, to get to learn about the number of people killed.

    But again. That didn’t stop people. Actually, it changed the tone of the protesters. They became more angry. They were holding the names and photos of those who got killed and the major slogan was this: ‘We are ready to die, but we won’t live under humiliation.’

    One of the young women whose name was Hadis Najafi, she was only 20 years old. She made a video of herself walking in the street and saying I’m joining the protests. In the future, if I see that Iran has changed, that change came, then I was proudly part of this demonstration. She got killed. There are many of them.

    (CNN has reported that Najafi’s family said she was shot six times and never made it home from a protest. She was 23. There are reports of multiple young women killed. Here’s a CNN video report on Nika Shahkarami, whose family found her body at a morgue after not being able to find her for 10 days following an Instagram story of her burning her headscarf.)

    Students filmed themselves burning their headscarves, but they got killed. But murdering and killing didn’t stop the protests. Instead they became more angry. Now schoolgirls came out, university professors came out, teachers came out and ask for a strike.

    (Here’s a CNN report that explains the special significance of strikes in Iran.)

    WHAT MATTERS: The flashpoint is one woman’s death that set off all of these protests. But it’s a movement that’s been building for months –

    ALINEJAD: Don’t say for months. I don’t accept that. It has been building for years. Years of women pushing back the boundaries the anti-woman laws, especially compulsory hijab laws.

    For years and years, these women that you see in the streets, they have been fighting back compulsory hijabs alone. Like lonely soldiers. I myself have published videos of women being beaten by morality police under the hashtag #mycameraismyweapon. I really want you to go and check this hashtag. Brave women filming themselves while being harassed by morality police and looking to the morality police and saying that you cannot tell me what to wear.

    Slavery used to be legal. I’m not going to respect bad law in Iran.

    This is being built up by women within the society practicing their civil disobedience in bravely saying no to forced hijab and the gender apartheid regime for years and years. That’s my opinion. Mahsa’s name became a symbol of resistance for women to take to the streets in large numbers. That’s the new thing.

    WHAT MATTERS: How will this be transformed into permanent change? How will it evolve from here?

    ALINEJAD: Look, this is not going to happen overnight. This is the beginning of an end. It takes time. It reminds me of the revolution 40 years ago. People were taking to the streets for like one month and were going back home and then coming back again. The national strike helped a lot. For me and millions of people, this is just the beginning to an end.

    The compulsory hijab is not just a small piece of cloth for Iranians. It’s like the Berlin Wall. I keep saying that. If women can successfully tear this wall down, the Islamic Republic won’t exist.

    Maybe in the West, people ignore me and they never take this seriously. But the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, he knows what I’m talking about. That’s why, just two days ago, he referred to my statement comparing the hijab to the Berlin Wall, saying that ‘she is an American agent and we have taken action against her.’

    (Alinejad shared this video of Khamenei on Twitter, in which he refers to US political elements making the comparison to the Berlin Wall.)

    ALINEJAD: But it’s not me. It’s millions of people who believe that compulsory hijab is like the main pillar of the religious dictatorship. It’s like the main pillar of the Islamic Republic.

    That’s why I believe that now people are being fearless and clear that we want to break this weakest pillar of the Islamic Republic… I strongly believe that the biggest threat to the Islamic Republic are the women who are leading the revolution, who are facing guns and bullets and saying that we want an end for this gender apartheid regime.

    WHAT MATTERS: In Iran, and we’ve seen this in Russia as well, social media is helping spread the word and is essential to organizing protests. Here in the US, it is often viewed as a threat to our democracy because that’s where misinformation is spread. I wonder if you had any thoughts on that dichotomy.

    ALINEJAD: Let me be very clear with you. Right now, the tech companies are actually helping the Islamic Republic. First of all, Iranians are banned from using social media – Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are filtered. The leaders like Khamenei and other officials who ban 80 million people from using social media, they all have verified accounts. They have multiple accounts on social media. Basically, the Iranian regime cut off the Internet for its own people, but they’re being more than welcomed on social media to spread fake information, misinformation, disinformation.

    (Accounts that appear to be associated with Khamenei are on Twitter and Instagram and have large followings. They are not verified by Instagram or Twitter. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Meta said this in an email: “Iranians use apps like Instagram to stay close to their loved ones, find information and shed light on important events – and we hope the Iranian authorities restore their access soon. In the meantime, our teams are following the situation closely, and are focused on only removing content that breaks our rules, while addressing any enforcement mistakes as quickly as possible.”)

    WHAT MATTERS: The US government has tried to increase Iranian’s access to the internet. Is that working?

    ALINEJAD: Oh, of course, this is phenomenal. But we need more. We need more.

    The thing is, at the same time, the US government, we’re pleased that they’re providing internet access for Iranians. This is good. We appreciate that.

    But at the same time, the US government is focused on getting a deal from this regime, the same regime.

    They condemn the brutality, they condemn the Iranian government for killings, but at the same time, they try to give money, billions of dollars, to the same murderers. And I don’t understand this contradiction.

    (The US government could give Iran’s government ​access to billions of dollars of frozen Iranian funds if it re-joins an agreement whereby Iran can sell oil in exchange for abandoning nuclear weapons capability. Recent talks, however, have not gone well. Read more.)

    ALINEJAD: Many people in the streets are now risking their lives and want an end for the same regime. They aren’t asking for US government to go there and save them at all. They’re brave enough to do it themselves. But they’re really clearly asking the US government not to save the Iranian regime. …

    People believe that the money goes to the benefit of the people. It doesn’t go to the people. The money goes to Syria, Lebanon, to Hamas, Hezbollah, to terrorist organizations.

    For millions of Iranians now, this is the moment they want the US government to ask its allies, the European countries, to recall their ambassadors and to cut their ties with the murders until the day that they are sure that the Iranian regime is stopped killing its own people.

    (CNN isn’t able to confirm that all the money goes to terrorist organizations or that none of it goes to Iranian people. Iran does fund terror groups outside its borders, according to the US government, and its own Islamic Revolutionary Guard is a terror group, according to the US government.)

    WHAT MATTERS: I want to talk about another dichotomy you’ve pointed out. You wrote in The Washington Post that feminists all over the world need to pay attention and take to the streets.

    ALINEJAD: You cannot call yourself a feminist in the West, in America, and not take action on one of the most important feminist revolutions, in Iran.

    By saying that, I don’t mean that I want the feminists to just appear on TV and cut their hair to show their solidarity.

    I want, especially the female politicians, to cut their ties … and instead take to the streets to show their solidarity with the women of Iran. When the Women’s March happened here in America, like every single feminist around the world showed solidarity. I was part of the Women’s March in New York. The main slogan was ‘my body my choice.’

    But at the same time I’m witnessing that when it comes to Iran and Afghanistan, it seems that my body my choice is not as important as it is in the West.

    (Here Alinejad said women representing Western governments who meet with Iranian and Afghan officials should refrain from wearing headscarves.)

    WHAT MATTERS: You took part this week in an Oslo Freedom Forum event in New York with other dissidents from Russia and Venezuela. Those are two places that are repressive, and they’re also funded largely by oil. The US wants more oil on the market. I just wondered if you had any larger comments to make on this question?

    ALINEJAD: This is what’s missing here. The dictators are more united than our freedom fighters.

    Let me give you an example. Just two months ago, (Vladimir) Putin went to Iran. (Nicolás) Maduro from Venezuela went to Iran … from China to Russia to Venezuela to Nicaragua, everywhere. The leaders from autocracies and dictatorships are united. They’re helping each other. They’re supporting each other to oppress protests taking place in each country. But we the freedom fighters, we the opposition to these dictators must be united as well, because when we fight against autocracy or dictatorship on our own, we’re not going to be successful.

    (Alinejad said she has talked to dissidents from Russia and Venezuela about calling a World Liberty Congress for opposition and activist leaders.)

    ALINEJAD: If we don’t get united to end dictatorship, then the dictators will get united to end democracy. We’re not fighting just for ourselves. I’m not fighting just for Iran. Garry Kasparov is not fighting for just Russia. Leopoldo Lopez is not fighting just for Venezuela. We are fighting for democracy. We’re trying to protect the rest of the world from these dictators.

    (Our conversation continued from here and Alinejad argued the “United Nations is useless.” It’s true the United Nations prioritizes inclusion of most countries over action. And it is awkward at best that Iran sits on the UN’s Commission on Women’s Rights and Russia sits on the Security Council.)

    ALINEJAD: We need to have our own alternative United Nations, where all the good people get united, not the bad guys. Now the bad guys are winning because they’re helping each other. So this is the time that all the good people who care for freedom and democracy get united and have their own society.

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  • A ‘Great British Bake Off’ episode is getting heat for stereotyping Mexican culture | CNN

    A ‘Great British Bake Off’ episode is getting heat for stereotyping Mexican culture | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    A recent episode of “The Great British Bake Off” is drawing criticism from some viewers for its depictions of Mexican culture.

    In the “Mexican Week” episode of the reality competition series, which aired in the UK on Tuesday and was released in the US on Friday, contestants are tasked with making pan dulce, tacos and tres leches cake – dishes that critics saw as cliché and uninspired. The hosts, meanwhile, pepper in attempts at tongue-in-cheek humor that not all viewers found funny.

    In the opening scene, hosts Noel Fielding and Matt Lucas wear sombreros and serapes while quipping about whether people might find such jokes offensive. At another point, Fielding muses, “So, is Mexico a real place?” while Lucas, in turn, likens the country to Xanadu. Other scenes include Lucas shaking maracas and contestants butchering pronunciations for guacamole and pico de gallo.

    The episode’s flippant tone and use of stereotypes rubbed many viewers the wrong way.

    Lesley Tellez, a food journalist and author of the cookbook “Eat Mexico: Recipes from Mexico City’s Streets, Markets and Fondas,” said that while she hadn’t seen the full episode, she found the snippets that were circulating on social media unimaginative.

    Despite its diversity, Mexican cuisine gets overshadowed in the culinary world by European cuisines, she added, and the show’s treatment of it perpetuates misconceptions.

    “I think they should have been a lot more thoughtful about it,” Tellez told CNN. “It reduces Mexican food to stereotypes – to being this two-dimensional cuisine.”

    Though it would have veered from the show’s typical format, Tellez said she would have liked to see “The Great British Bake Off” bring in a Mexican chef as a guest, as opposed to having two White, British judges serve as authorities.

    Alejandra Ramos, host of “The Great American Recipe” on PBS and a chef of Puerto Rican descent, said the episode reflected a lack of diversity behind and in front of the camera.

    “This would have been a perfect moment to bring in a Mexican guest judge or host to lead the discussions on camera and to guide the contestants,” she wrote in an email to CNN. “There should have also been consultants with actual Mexican cultural and food background and expertise brought in to consult on the story, scripting, food styling and challenges – as well as the post-production and marketing.”

    Ramos also questioned why a baking competition would challenge contestants to make tacos – a point viewers of the show have also called out on social media.

    “Mexico has incredible pastries, cakes, breads, and even baked savory dishes that they could have made instead,” she said. “But that would have called for more actual knowledge about Mexican culture and cuisine which is clearly lacking here.”

    CNN has reached out to “The Great British Bake Off” for comment.

    Since the first episode aired in 2010, “The Great British Bake Off” – which streams stateside as “The Great British Baking Show” – has become a cultural phenomenon, soothing viewers with its spirit of camaraderie and offering them an escape. Still, it’s garnered complaints of cultural insensitivity before.

    During a “Japanese Week” episode in 2020, some contestants devised concoctions that instead relied on Chinese and Indian flavors, which some critics said amounted to conflating distinct Asian cuisines. That same episode saw Lucas refer to katsu curry as “cat poo curry.”

    “Anyone who’s watched GBBO also knows how prickly the judges get when they think something has too much spice, how easily they exoticize non-British foods, and how the standard marker of a good baker is their ability to make a Victoria Sponge,” Jaya Saxena wrote in a 2020 article for Eater.

    Former contestants have also spoken out on the show’s diversity issues.

    In an interview with Insider last year, Rav Bansal called for new hosts and judges who were better versed in non-English ingredients and recipes, and who could better reflect the show’s diverse cast of contestants. Ali Imdad expressed surprise that production staff had allowed certain missteps to occur. Ruby Tandoh referred to the show as a “strange vehicle for change,” writing in an essay for the food publication Heated that it had launched the careers of several Black and brown chefs while being “steeped in the symbolism of an old-fashioned, implicitly white Britishness.”

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  • How Buffalo is ensuring the Black community isn’t left behind after mass supermarket shooting | CNN

    How Buffalo is ensuring the Black community isn’t left behind after mass supermarket shooting | CNN


    Buffalo, NY
    CNN
     — 

    The day after Buffalo experienced the largest mass shooting in its history, teams of emergency volunteers and mental health counselors arrived on the scene, offering emotional support and distributing food.

    The response was robust and swift, but there was one big problem.

    “The community didn’t feel comfortable coming up the stairs to the center because what they saw was a large group of White people,” said Kelly Wofford, Erie County’s director of health equity.

    A White gunman had deliberately opened fire at a predominantly Black neighborhood’s only grocery store, a Tops supermarket, on a busy Saturday in May. Eleven of the 13 people shot were Black, including the 10 killed. Authorities called the shooting racially motivated.

    “In any other kind of tragedy, like a hurricane or flood, anyone offering resources would be gladly welcomed, but this was different. This tragedy had a face and a hatred for a certain group of people,” said Thomas Beauford Jr., president and CEO of the Buffalo Urban League, which was one of the community organizations on site the day of the shooting.

    “They completely rejected it,” said Beauford, adding, “The immediate reaction to the counselors was, ‘We need to see counselors that look like us.’”

    By Monday, the problem was addressed. Wofford, who grew up down the street from the Tops, tapped her network to ensure there were more Black counselors on site, that Black people were the ones handing out flyers on the street about available services, and that Black people greeted folks at the help center.

    “We made sure the community affected felt comfortable seeking the services they need,” Wofford said.

    Her response efforts – and the spotlight the May 14 shooting put on the community’s existing disparities – exemplifies the role Erie County’s newly formed Office of Health Equity is meant to play in the community: ensuring that health services are equitably distributed across disadvantaged and marginalized populations.

    Within Erie County, there is a significant disparity between the health outcomes of White residents and residents of color, which became even clearer as Covid-19 disproportionately affected Black and brown communities there, as well as across the country.

    Even before the pandemic, the life expectancy of Black Buffalo residents was 12 years shorter than White residents, according to a report published by the Buffalo Center for Health Equity in 2015, the most recent data available.

    Erie County’s Office of Health Equity was launched to help address those disparities. It was established in January by county law, and the funding was made possible by a major federal pandemic relief package known as the American Rescue Plan that distributed money to states, counties and cities across the country.

    Kelly Wofford is the first director of the Erie County Office of Health Equity, which launched earlier this year.

    Erie County allocated roughly $1 million of the nearly $179 million it received from the American Rescue Plan for the creation of the Health Equity Office. It is using the remaining funds on a variety of needs, including economic assistance for small businesses, water treatment infrastructure and restoring jobs and spending that were initially cut due to the pandemic.

    While issues of health equity were addressed prior to the formation of the office, the law formalized the efforts and put funding behind them, ensuring it can work to address long-term solutions. With Wofford at the helm, the office has nine staff members, including two epidemiologists.

    “The Office of Health Equity – which did not exist and would not have existed without the funding we received from the American Rescue Plan – immediately became an integral partner in the response to the Tops shooting on May 14, by being in some ways the boots on the ground and the coordinator between third-party agencies and the county’s delivery of these services to the community,” said Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz.

    “It was unlike any experience we’ve ever had,” Poloncarz added, “and I’m very grateful that we had the Office of Health Equity in place because it would have made our job a lot tougher without it.”

    Addressing health disparities is something communities across the country are grappling with, and while the pandemic caused illness and death for millions, it also has helped spur some momentum.

    State and local health equity offices are far from being as prevalent as water departments, for example, but they are having a moment – due in part to the influx of money from the federal government meant to help communities recover.

    “The pandemic really highlighted the gross differences in our ability to keep people healthy, related to race and ethnicity,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

    The group hasn’t tracked how many formal equity offices have opened, but the number is growing, Freeman said. Philadelphia hired its first chief racial equity officer earlier this year.

    In the past, some communities have not had the political will or the resources to formalize their health equity efforts, she added.

    A memorial waterfall was built inside the renovated Tops supermarket in Buffalo, which reopened in July, two months after the mass shooting.

    High-profile killings of Black people by police, notably the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, gave rise to a number of communities declaring racism as a public health crisis, laying the groundwork for some of the offices opening now. In April 2021, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also declared racism a serious public health threat.

    Resolving health inequities will take time and requires tackling the social determinants of health. These are the factors that contribute to someone’s health that they don’t have control over themselves, like access to clean water and healthy food and other conditions where they live, work and play that can affect their health.

    “You’re really trying to create the same opportunity for health for every single person in the community, no matter what their economic status is, where they live or whether they have a job,” Freeman said.

    In mid-July, the Tops grocery store reopened to mixed reactions from the community.

    Without the supermarket, those without a car may have lacked convenient access to nutritious food. For others, it was emotionally difficult to reenter the store.

    Migdalia Lozada, a crisis counselor with the Buffalo Urban League, spent one August morning offering support to shoppers. Lozada took one woman by the hand as she walked into the store for the first time since the tragedy, feeling the woman’s tears fall onto her arm.

    The Buffalo Urban League’s community resource center, located just two blocks from the Tops, continues to serve the traumatized neighborhood. People can walk right into the space and speak with a crisis counselor. Some people are regulars who come in nearly every day. Others may have been triggered by an event like a shooting elsewhere or movement in a court case against the shooting suspect.

    “We just try to give the person some space to open up in a safe, confidential place,” said Lozada.

    While the Buffalo Urban League’s crisis counselors had already been serving the community for months, its leaders wanted a physical space nearby the Tops store after the shooting. The group found an open space down the street that had once been a neighborhood bar known as Pixie’s and opened a resource center there within days after the tragedy. The building intentionally looks and feels much more like a local watering hole than a health institution.

    Buffalo Urban League's Yukea Wright (left), a crisis counselor team leader, and Migdalia Lozada, a crisis counselor, work at the resource center near the Tops.

    The center also serves as a place that connects people with other resources to address a wide range of social determinants of health, like employment, housing and education.

    The Buffalo Urban League plans to work closely with the county, especially with the new Office of Health Equity, to help drive long-term change going forward.

    The county office is first working on training people in the Mental Health First Aid national program, so that the county can deploy counselors throughout the community – like at Bible studies and community centers – to meet people where they already may be. A recent nationwide study found that while the share of US adults who received treatment for mental health grew throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, people of color are less able to access mental health services.

    The office is also working on a survey that, in part, will show what problems members of the community would like addressed – it could be the high prevalence of diabetes or high blood pressure, for example.

    “When you look at the social determinants of health, there are inequities across all of them, so you can pick whichever one you want,” Wofford said.

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  • Instruction about race may be under siege across the US, but this course is empowering students at a Southern high school | CNN

    Instruction about race may be under siege across the US, but this course is empowering students at a Southern high school | CNN


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    In the early 2000s, when I was a student at Ridge View High School, in Columbia, South Carolina, I loved to parse the legacies of certain historical figures: W.E.B. Du Bois, in AP US History; Malcolm X, in AP English Language and Composition.

    At the same time, I wanted more. Too often, Advanced Placement curricula seemed to give attention to just a handful of Black heavyweights and, as a result, neglect the countless ways Black Americans have shaped US society. Only rarely were Black students like me reflected in lessons. (I remember learning about “A Raisin in the Sun,” Lorraine Hansberry’s jewel of a play about a Black family in south Chicago, from my mom and wondering, Why aren’t we studying this in school?)

    But things are beginning to change. Ridge View is one of about 60 high schools across the country piloting AP African American Studies in 2022. The interdisciplinary course will be the newest addition to the College Board’s panoply of AP offerings and delve into the history of the African continent and Black contributions to music, literature, science, politics and mathematics, among other fields. Mere weeks into the pilot course, students and faculty at Ridge View already see AP African American Studies as something of a salve. The course arrives at a moment when instruction about race is under siege: Educational gag orders abound, and “critical race theory” has become a lightning rod for the right.

    Given the meager representation I observed as a high school student, I was stunned – and thrilled – to learn that Ridge View, which is majority Black, is piloting AP African American Studies. It would’ve been so welcome, I thought, to see myself in this context, to probe questions of identity and inheritance.

    Plus, it’s no small thing to test out the course in South Carolina, which didn’t banish the Confederate battle flag from statehouse grounds until 2015, in the heartrending aftermath of a White supremacist massacre.

    The significance of the moment isn’t lost on Ridge View students.

    “It really makes me happy to be in this class – to know that I’m a part of history,” Nacala McDaniels, a senior, told CNN.

    In August, the Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the architects of the AP African American Studies curriculum, stressed the course’s educational value.

    “Nothing is more dramatic than having the College Board launch an AP course in a field – that signifies ultimate acceptance and ultimate academic legitimacy,” he told Time magazine. “It is a mainstream, rigorously vetted, academic approach to a vibrant field of study, one-half a century old in the American academy, and much older, of course, in historically Black colleges and universities.”

    Like so many in the Ridge View community, McDaniels wants AP African American Studies to help not only other Black students but all students become well-versed in under-told histories and cultures and incubate meaningful discussions about race.

    “I hope that the course will be offered to other people who look like me and to other people who just want to learn about history that’s been covered up and history that’s been ignored,” she said. “And I hope that the course makes room for more conversation. Lots of people are scared to talk about race, but with more conversation comes better understanding.”

    High schools had been hungry for an AP African American Studies course for years. However, when the College Board asked universities about a decade ago if they’d give credit for a corresponding exam, they said no.

    But the uprisings of 2020 caused a long-overdue shift.

    “The events surrounding George Floyd and the increased awareness and attention paid toward issues of inequity and unfairness and brutality directed toward African Americans caused me to wonder, ‘Would colleges be more receptive to an AP course in this discipline than they were 10 years ago?’” Trevor Packer, who heads the College Board’s AP program, told Time.

    Yes, was the answer.

    Maybe the most exciting thing about teaching AP African American Studies is the fact that educators get to talk about people, subjects and slices of history students don’t know much about, according to Daniel Soderstrom, who leads the course at Ridge View.

    “Over the past few decades, we, as a society, have done a better job of teaching Black history and African American Studies. But I’d argue that many teachers still fall short,” he told CNN. “What I mean is that our kids hear the same stories every year. And that’s not to diminish the contributions of Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King Jr. But if those are the only people our students are learning about in school, they’re missing a lot of what’s really there.”

    The first part of the course examines early African kingdoms and some of their foundational figures, including Queen Nzinga of Ndongo, located in present-day Angola.

    “She was a very strong woman – a heroine – and fought on the front lines with her soldiers,” Soderstrom said of Nzinga, celebrated for pushing back against Portuguese colonization and the trade of enslaved people in Central Africa in the 16th and 17th centuries. “But we tend to skip the stories of people from Africa.”

    So far, the lessons appear to be resonating with the kids.

    “I didn’t even know that there were any queens in Africa in any time period. Like, at all,” Ashton Walker, a junior, told CNN. “We got to learn about Queen Nzinga and Idia. They’re both very interesting because they were powerful women leaders who did amazing things for their kingdoms.”

    Walker, who’s White, sees AP African American Studies as a means toward visibility for her Black peers, who get to be participants in their history.

    “It matters that we get to learn all these things as a society. We don’t ever really get to hear about any of these figures or what they went through,” she said. “And my (Black) classmates deserve to hear this history. It’s awesome that Ridge View is a majority-Black school and gets to help create this course.”

    Her mother, Nicole Walker, who was involved in bringing the pilot course to Ridge View and is the director of the school’s Scholars Academy Magnet for Business and Law (she also was my 9th grade English teacher), echoed some of these sentiments.

    “We know that what’s best for kids is for them to see themselves reflected in the curriculum, for them to celebrate their cultures, for them to feel valued,” she told CNN. “We know that a kid who feels safe and valued is going to do better in school.”

    Martin Luther King Jr. addresses crowds during the March On Washington, August 28, 1963.

    Jacynth Tucker, a senior, is intimately familiar with the power of inclusivity. She said that at a previous school, she and other Black students felt invisible.

    “I can’t even remember a time when we really explored Africa – talked about the history and the culture,” she told CNN. “Being in a class where that’s more of a focus is very special to me.”

    Further, the course gives Black Americans more dimension, per Clementine Jordan, a senior.

    “One activity I really liked was when our teacher showed us a collage and asked, ‘What do all these people have in common?’” she told CNN. “Their commonality was that they’re all Black. But the point of that discussion was that, yes, they’re all Black, but there’s so much diversity within the Black community, within my community: diverse religions, gender expressions, sexualities, things like that.”

    Crucially, Soderstrom noted that AP African American Studies isn’t a standard-issue history course, though it proceeds in a relatively chronological fashion and will eventually make its way to the US.

    “We’re studying Black excellence and African American success through art, through literature, through culture, through dance, through mathematics, through science, through lawyering,” he said. “It’s interesting that one day we’re looking at an art piece, the next day we’re listening to music, the next day we’re reading a poem and then the day after that we’re listening to a mathematician speak.”

    In other words, while the course charts struggles – including the mid-century civil rights movement – it also underscores Black excellence in a variety of disciplines.

    It’s pretty much impossible to separate the debut of the AP African American Studies pilot course from the Republican-led racial panic looming over many schools.

    According to an August analysis by PEN America, a literary and free expression organization, legislators in 36 states have introduced 137 laws this year restricting discussions about race, US history and gender in K-12 schools and higher education. This figure is a 250% increase over 2021.

    And last month, the American Library Association predicted that the number of attempts this year to censor books in K-12 schools, universities and public libraries grappling with race, gender and sexuality will exceed 2021’s record count. The ALA tallied 681 attempts between January 1 and August 31; the 2021 total was 729.

    These attacks seek to determine what content is and isn’t legitimate in an academic context; they’re part of a much broader counter-mobilization against efforts to topple racial and social hierarchies.

    “We’re not seeing different political conflicts. We’re seeing one big political conflict – one big reactionary political project,” as Thomas Zimmer, a visiting professor at Georgetown University, where his research focuses on the history of democracy and its discontents, told CNN in July.

    Yet Soderstrom minced no words: AP African American Studies is a vital course, regardless of anyone’s political affiliation.

    “Henry Louis Gates Jr. is one of the senior minds when we’re talking about American studies and African American history. He was quoted recently explaining that the course isn’t political,” Soderstrom said. “We’re teaching factual information, and everything is verifiable.”

    Lylou, a sophomore, shared this conviction.

    “I’m a White person, and I wanted to take this class because I don’t know that much about Black history,” she told CNN. “The course should be in the curriculum. Because why would we want to ignore this history?”

    (Lylou’s mother asked that her daughter’s last name not be included, given the intense political climate hovering over lessons about race in the US.)

    The pilot course is expected to expand to include additional high schools next year and then be available to all interested schools the following year, per the College Board.

    Ridge View kids, for their part, seem eager to see how the rest of the year unfolds.

    “The class is a learning opportunity for everybody. I take every interaction I have with anybody as a learning experience,” McDaniels said.

    Then, mirroring the same fundamental curiosity I had as a high school student nearly two decades ago, she added, “I’m just excited to see what’s next.”

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  • ‘Predatory,’ widespread sexual harassment on Australia’s Antarctic research bases, report finds | CNN

    ‘Predatory,’ widespread sexual harassment on Australia’s Antarctic research bases, report finds | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Australian women working on research bases in Antarctica have been plagued by a widespread culture of sexual harassment, a recently released report found.

    The report, commissioned by the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD), notes that the women reported unwelcome requests for sex, inappropriate sexual comments and displays of offensive or pornographic material.

    “Given the underrepresentation of women in the AAP (Australian Antarctica Program) (especially during winter) some women also described the culture as ‘predatory’ and objectifying,” the report said, while other participants described a homophobic culture on stations.

    The report, conducted by associate professor Meredith Nash from the University of Tasmania, also revealed female expeditioners feel they “must go to great lengths to make their menstruation invisible” and go through “additional psychological and physical labor to manage” menstruation, including changing their menstrual products without privacy or adequate sanitation.

    Australia’s Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek said in an interview with Australian public broadcaster ABC she was “gobsmacked” to read the report.

    “Let me be absolutely clear: there is no place for sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior in any workplace,” Plibersek said in a statement Thursday, calling the treatment described in the report as “unacceptable.”

    The report made recommendations on how to change the culture at the stations, including the creation of an “equity and inclusion task force.”

    Plibersek said Australia’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water is working through the recommendations.

    Australia is not alone in combating these issues.

    The report on the Australian research bases in Antarctica comes a month after the US National Science Foundation (NSF) released an assessment of the US Antarctic Program which found that “sexual harassment, stalking, and sexual assault are ongoing, continuing problems in the USAP community.”

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  • GOP congressional candidate Joe Kent’s ties to white nationalists include interview with Nazi sympathizer | CNN Politics

    GOP congressional candidate Joe Kent’s ties to white nationalists include interview with Nazi sympathizer | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Despite disavowing White nationalism last spring when one of its adherents endorsed him, a US House candidate in Washington subsequently gave a previously unreported interview in June to a Nazi sympathizer and White nationalist.

    While Republican Joe Kent touted his support for prominent far-right figures like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green and Paul Gosar and supported MAGA policies, he was speaking with Greyson Arnold, a Nazi sympathizer.

    Kent’s exchange with Arnold is all the more notable because just weeks later Kent’s campaign worked to distance him from Arnold after photos surfaced of the pair together. A Kent campaign strategist told the Associated Press in July that the campaign did not do background checks on those who took selfies with the candidate.

    Arnold has a well-documented history of making White nationalist, racist, antisemitic and pro-Nazi statements, including once calling Adolf Hitler “a complicated historical figure which many people misunderstand.”

    In a statement to CNN, campaign spokesperson Matt Braynard said, “Joe Kent had no idea who that individual was when he encountered him on the street and Joe Kent has repeatedly condemned the statements that the individual is accused of making.”

    Braynard added that the campaign screens all interview requests and that Arnold approached Kent on the street by what he assumed was a local journalist. “None of the questions gave Joe any indications that the individual had any racist or antisemitic views and, if he had, Joe would have cancelled the interview immediately,” said Braynard.

    The campaign said that Arnold “is not in any way part of our campaign nor would we allow our campaign to be associated with someone who has that background. We also have no record of any contribution from that individual and if we had received one, we’d return it.”

    Kent, a former Green Beret and gold star spouse endorsed by former President Donald Trump, ran in this summer’s primary against Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, one of ten Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in 2021.

    In August, Kent advanced to November’s general election against Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez under the state’s top-two primary system after edging out Beutler, who placed third. Inside Elections recently redesignated the race as more competitive, moving it from “Safe Republican” to “Likely Republican.”

    On a since-suspended Twitter account and active channel on Telegram called “Pure Politics,” Greyson, or “American Greyson” as he calls himself, has shared posts that called Nazi men the “pure race” and that the US should have sided with the Nazis during World War Two. Arnold has falsely claimed there were “Jewish plans to genocide the German people,” and in a post, he shared a quote that said the “Jewish led colored hordes of the Earth” were attempting to exterminate White people.

    Arnold was pictured in multiple photographs with Kent at a fundraiser in April and has been canvassing for Republican candidates with Washington State Young Republicans, with one recent photo showing Arnold in a Joe Kent shirt according to photos on their public Instagram.

    Speaking with Arnold, Kent praised Gosar’s stance on illegal and legal immigration in a friendly five-minute interview.

    “Paul Gosar has been excellent, obviously immigration – border state down there. He took me down to the border, so I got a firsthand feel of all the crises we face there,” said Kent. “Representative Gosar also has some awesome legislation he’s proposed about getting rid of a lot of the legal immigration.”

    Arnold was at the Capitol during the January 6, 2021, riot, posting a video of himself leaving the steps of the front of the building saying they were being “chased out by communists,” calling the riot “an American baptism,” as he said police were deploying tear gas. There is no indication he entered the building, and he has not been charged with any crime.

    While Kent has tried to shift his campaign rhetoric toward the center – including by removing calls to adjudicate the 2020 election from his website sometime between June and July – his campaign has been bogged down by associations with white nationalists and extremists, whom Kent has repeatedly had to distance himself from.

    Back in March 2022, Kent disavowed Nick Fuentes, a 24-year-old far-right white nationalist, after Fuentes endorsed Kent in the primary. Fuentes is the architect of the America First Political Action Conference, a white nationalist conference held annually that received intense backlash this year after Gosar appeared at the event and Greene attended it.

    Kent said at the time that he was unfamiliar with Fuentes despite a brief call with him in spring 2021 about the candidate’s social media strategy. In April 2021, Kent tweeted in defense of Fuentes after he was banned from Twitter.

    “Many are glad that their political rivals are targeted by the state & big tech, they hate Trump, @NickJFuentes & MAGA. This short side thinking has led to some of the greatest tragedies in human history. We must fight for all speech & fight the confluence of gov & big tech.”

    He later said he stood by his comments but reiterated he did not want Fuentes’ endorsement because of Fuentes’ “focus on race/religion.”

    Kent’s website also features an endorsement from Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers who was censured by the Republican-controlled Arizona senate after she gave a speech to the white nationalist conference calling for public hangings.

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