Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on June 26, 2020

Open Letter to Greenwich Schools Superintendent Dr.Toni Jones and Deputy Superintendent Anne Carabillo from Nina Hirai, Greenwich High School Class of 19, Wesleyan University Class of 2023

Dear Greenwich PS Administrators and Staff,

The recent instances of police brutality against the Black community have propelled the nation to reflect on its history of oppression and racism. With such reflection, Greenwich students felt encouraged to also reflect on our own experiences with race and diversity within the Greenwich Public School (GPS) system K-12.

We thank the school community for their support in the fight for a better future. However, the change the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement wishes to usher in extends beyond gestures and we believe more should be done to better serve the next generations.

Education plays a direct role in shaping the future of the United States and we ask that the Greenwich Public Schools system rethink how race is (and is not) discussed in the classroom. Furthermore, we implore that educators and administrators take steps to address their own prejudices and reflect on how they can cultivate a more diverse workplace. We also implore administrators to take actionable steps towards changes in curriculums, recruiting diverse educators, holding those who perpetrate racism in the Greenwich community accountable, and striving to be actively anti-racist, not neutral. Neutrality and passivity no longer have a place in society, and it certainly does not have a place in the discussion of race, it never should have.

Today, it is not enough to be neutral; being passive at the atrocities perpetrated by our system is to be willingly blind to the struggles of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities, especially Black communities.

In historically white towns such as Greenwich, students often lack exposure to racial inequalities and are subject to a race-blind narrative. The homogeneity of Greenwich- albeit unintentionally- systematically discourages students from exploring both their own and other racial and ethnic identities by depriving them of fundamental information and discourse. While some may do their own research, a vast majority of students are left out of this conversation.

The lack of nuanced classroom discourse surrounding race, gender, and sexuality produces ignorance and a dissociation of Americas history with ones identity.

Furthermore, a continued emphasis on white-by-default culture favors white students while alienating BIPOC individuals from their racial realities. It impedes students from acknowledging the experiences of minorities and BIPOC at large.

Moreover, the lack of diversity of faculty at Greenwich Public Schools is detrimental towards promoting an anti-racist culture and harms efforts to cultivate a more diverse and inclusive environment.

In fact, 89.5% of teachers in the Greenwich school system are white.

Therefore, now more than ever Greenwich Public Schools cannot take a passive stance on their employment process; the Greenwich Public Schools must not only broaden its advertisement of available positions in order to attract more BIPOC faculty, but should also actively reach out to and recruit capable BIPOC candidates in order to diversify its faculty.

We recognize that Greenwich and GPS subsequently homogeneous racial make-up is owed to centuries of imperialism and systemic racism and that the problems and tensions expressed above echo all throughout America. Schools are routinely underfunded with teachers being pushed by the government and administrators to cover too much content in too little time.

Our goal is not to undermine all that GPS has done to cultivate a sense of diversity (such as Greenwich High School annual diversity week). Our goal is not to unduly stress the system; it is however, paramount that we start addressing these long standing issues within our own community.

Both subtle and overt acts of racism thrive in Greenwich and have gone unnoticed for too long. As you may be aware, up until the mid 1970s, Slave Day was a GHS fundraising tradition in which slaves were auctioned off to masters. More recently in 1995, five boys cooperated with each other to code Kill all N****** through their senior quotes.

Even today, just by observing the GHS student center at lunch times, it is obvious that we as a community feed into racial prejudice. One student, when being explained where people sat in the student center was told that Hispanics sit over there, in Little Mexico pointing to the cluster of tables near Bella House, and that the Black people all sit together (whispering Black in a hushed tone as if it were a swear) and that the nerds are in that corner referring to a group of Asian students.

Establishing this toxic status-quo however, is far from the only instance of racism in Greenwich. In fact, racism permeates through our community so deeply that many students are being discriminatory on a daily basis by actions such as saying the n-word despite not being Black. The amount of times the n-word would be shouted across the hall in a ~63% white school is absurd and quite frankly should have been a mathematical impossibility. Again, we would like to stress that these are far from the only instances of discrimination in Greenwich.

Not only do faculty and administrators fail to actively root out racist behaviors in the student body on and off Greenwich school grounds, but the punishments for those who perform racist acts are ultimately useless. Students are rarely held accountable for perpetrating acts of discrimination whether it be racial, sexual, ablist, etc. In fact, there have been instances in which those who tried to report such incidents were the ones reprimanded for being troublesome and unforgiving. Furthermore, those who are held accountable are often reprimanded with an in-school or an at-home suspension. These punishments however, do nothing to motivate reflection and growth. Students should not simply be punished but taught why their behaviors are harmful and how they can change in the future; rehabilitation, not condemnation.

Current punishments and solutions to discriminatory behavior are not only a waste of time but let off students with minimal repercussions, further encouraging said behavior. Not to mention, an at-home suspension is secretly every students dream.

What is perhaps more atrocious than Greenwich Public Schools handling of discriminatory incidents among students is the way in which faculty who have been reported for such behavior are held accountable, or rather how they are not held accountable.

The faculty at Greenwich High School especially have time and time again perpetrated acts of racism, whether it be subtle or overt. You have it easier than the rest of us because youre Asian so you were born smarter is an example of a joke made by GHS faculty that is seemingly harmless yet epitomizes the racial biases in faculty that ostracize BIPOC students.

Furthermore, one of the more problematic departments within Greenwich High School that further cements stereotypes (whether racial, sexual, etc.) is our acclaimed theater department.

The theater department is notorious for its type-casting, casting the same group of students as the main roles for the majority of its productions. For instance, when the theater department announced that they would be doing Hairspray for their 2018 spring musical, many students voiced their concerns on type-casting and how they would carry out the racially sensitive topics. Such concerns were immediately shut down and not taken seriously, brushed off as its a statement about our battle against racism. However, unsurprisingly, the department was unable to fill its cast for the African American roles, leading them to cast every BIPOC student who auditioned as African Americans.

Furthermore, these type-casts were so prominent that those who were involved with the theater department made accurate predictions of who would be cast for which role. Even more telling of the biased casting process is the fact that students jokingly pointed out that this was the only time Black students would be cast as the lead roles of a GHS production. The glaring reality however, is that this was one of the only instances where Black students were cast as the leading roles in more recent GHS history.

The discussion of race is not a simple one and yes, it is challenging to convey both the pride and suffering of minority communities. The BIPOC experience (especially in America) is extremely complex and should be more centrally discussed in the system of education. The experiences of BIPOC in America is as hopeful as it is tragic and whilst no child should nor desires to be victimized and told that they are a minority and therefore are seen as fundamentally other in White America, to exclude such discussion from the K-12 education system is a grave mistake that has and will continue to lead to generations of ignorance and color-blind narrative.

Thus, Greenwich needs to re-address their education system and make fundamental changes to the system in order to more accurately depict race, gender, and sexuality in America and to catalyze productive discourse in classrooms. Additionally, the way in which those who perpetrate acts of racism are held accountable needs dramatic revision.

Furthermore cultivating an environment of diversity within Greenwich Public Schools is crucial to the normalization of diversity and complex discourse in Greenwich which can be achieved through the recruitment of a more diverse faculty and staff. Greenwich must take actionable steps towards the creation of a holistically diverse and inclusive K-12 curriculum.

Annotating Frederick Douglass Fourth of July speech is not enough.

LGBTQ+, Native American, Black, Hispanic, and Asian-American history should not be reserved for college lecture halls.

Teaching the true discriminatory nature of the history of America K-12 is critical to producing more accountable and educated people. By ignoring nuanced discussions of Americas racial history and its role in the perpetuation of racism (Mexican repatriation, Japanese internment, Stonewall Riots, L.A. riots, etc.), Greenwich produces sheltered and woefully under-informed white and POC students.

Simple alterations to the curriculum can greatly enhance the BIPOC experience at GPS as well as the development of diversity in Greenwich. For instance, freshman learning centers can be dedicated to teaching diversity, providing information and conducting discourse about historic injustices and white privilege rather than being an unstructured block of time.

The high school should also create a comprehensive list of resources that students can access to learn more about diversity (racial, sexual, ability, etc.) on their own time. Music and art classes throughout K-12 (especially during the younger years) should incorporate units on BIPOC artists.

Furthermore, Black History Month is an excellent opportunity to expose students to the contributions of Black Americans who are excluded from the typical curriculum. This can be achieved through hosting assemblies, having units surrounding important contributions by African Americans (outside of the standard trio of Rosa Parks, MLK Jr., and Malcom X), hosting fundraisers, and more. The same can be done for Asian-American Pacific Islander Month, Jewish Heritage Month, Hispanic Heritage day, and Pride month.

Specific departments play fundamental roles in the cultivation of diversity in Greenwich Public Schools. The history and English departments are among the most crucial to developing accountability and tolerance within the Greenwich community.

Exposing students to diversity (racial and other) at an early age is crucial to the development of tolerance and acceptance. English/Literature is one of the most fundamental aspects of education and should therefore be subject to intense revision. The English curriculum should actively seek to express the voices of all people, not just notable White authors and should actively strive to disrupt the inherited literary canon by incorporating works by female authors and other minority authors whenever possible. More literature tackling race and diversity written by those who actually experience such discrimination (not white authors writing about oppression) should be incorporated through the K-12 curriculum. Furthermore, summer reading books should be about marginalized communities rather than assigning more classic novels written by White authors. The classics tend to be dominated by white male writers an obvious result of the centuries-long oppression of BIPOC and women across the world. If in each grade level, the curriculum replaces even a single classic reading in favor of a lesser-known work by a minority author, students will develop a more nuanced understanding of literature and humanity.

History courses, especially American history courses, should also be heavily revised with BIPOC narratives in mind. For younger students especially, history should be taught accurately through an unbiased lens. Students should not grow up learning that America is innocent and great, a powerhouse of freedom and equality, as it creates a sense of false patriotism that when later exposed to the true discriminatory nature of America, is hard to undermine and discourages students from perceiving the reality of our world. Contemporary history courses should address modern racism, working towards dismantling the narrative that racism disappeared after the Civil Rights movement by teaching about modern forms of racism such as: redlining; school to prison pipeline statistics; legislations such as stop and frisk, and more. The fact that many students were unaware of Juneteenth or the Tulsa Massacres of 1921 until the recent uproar of the BLM movement is a testament to how our education system has failed us yet again. Diversifying curriculum allows students to academically and personally grapple with important questions of identity.

The concerns raised by the signatories of this letter are legitimate and substantiated by our own experiences within Greenwich Public Schools. We are current and former students that recognize we are inheritors and beneficiaries of privilege and race-blind narratives. We as a community must hold ourselves accountable for the development of a more just world. Greenwich has been a notoriously performative ally in the fight for diversity; it is time for us to take real steps towards progress. Including LGBTQ+, Native American, Black, Hispanic, Asian-American, and other minority history and literature is an actionable step. Properly admonishing and punishing students that make publicly racist remarks is an actionable step. Believing students when they recount their experiences is an actionable step.

We would like to stress that this letter is in no way intended to demonize the administration or staff of GPS. In fact, we celebrate the steps towards progress that the Greenwich community has taken but there is much more to be done, we are far from the end goal. We want to make Greenwich a more informed and more historically conversant place, we want the history taught right, resources made available, and students held accountable for racist actions. Please take those steps and encourage students to be empathetic. Lets endeavor to make Greenwich graduates more erudite and socially aware.

Thank you,Nina Hirai, Greenwich High School Class of 19

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LETTER: Greenwich Schools Must Diversify Their Faculty; Update Curriculum to Include Narratives of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color - Greenwich...

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Posted By admin on June 26, 2020

George Orwells iconic book 1984 depicts a dystopian post-revolutionary world in which an all-powerful Party rules a totalitarian universe through the use of Thought Police.In Part Two of the prophetic novel, the protagonist of the story, Winston Smith, tries to impress upon Julia, the woman with whom he is having a dangerous and forbidden love affair, why it is so impossible to rebel against mind control. Do you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has been actually abolished? he asks rhetorically, during one their trysts, while recounting tales of his time as a forger of records. If it survives anywhere, its in a few solid objects with no words attached to them, like that lump of glass there.He goes on, Already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.These words published in Britain in 1949, four years after the end of World War II are particularly chilling today, in light of the current upheaval in the US.THE OSTENSIBLE catalyst for the explosion of what could be called the cancel-culture revolution was the May 25 killing of African-American George Floyd by a sadistic Minneapolis police officer. The ground was already fertile for the mayhem that ensued, however. Indeed, anybody who believes that the goal of the protesters certainly those rioting and looting, but even the ones marching and chanting peacefully has been to raise consciousness about the unfair treatment of blacks is missing the point and the bigger picture.What has become clear during the past few weeks is that the motive of the radicals leading the campaign is not to improve America by eradicating its social flaws. It is, rather, to demonize the countrys birth as a nation and delegitimize its entire existence, just like its enemies abroad, such as Iran, but from within.The Black Lives Matter and Antifa thugs barely disguise this aim. They dont need to do so. Nor are they embarrassed by their often inherently contradictory positions. They call the shots, after all, and are never called to task for their actions.Meanwhile, their numerous clueless fellow travelers in the media, academia, Hollywood, Silicon Valley and even Wall Street are too busy apologizing for being privileged to engage in any serious examination or debate. Yes, even seemingly intelligent and educated people are more preoccupied these days with firing employees who might harbor impure thoughts, banning books and changing the brand names of syrup and cereal to question the dubious practices of the activists to whom they are kowtowing.YES, AS professors and newspaper editors lost their livelihoods for defending free speech, their peers were penning letters of mea culpa for crimes against blacks that they have not committed. As Democratic members of the US Congress kneeled subserviently to the mobs defaming and attacking law enforcers, their partys state senators, governors and mayors were being pressured by radical constituents into defunding police departments that not only employ blacks, but die in the service of protecting them. And as these Democrats cloaked themselves in African Kente cloth, not one of them even mentioned that thousands of Nigerian Christians are being slaughtered by Boko Haram jihadists, who also happen to be black. But then, not a peep has been uttered by Black Lives Matter about the plight of their fellow Africans. You know, the ones who actually live in Africa, where racism is rampant and slavery still thrives. Nor do the people begging for acceptance and forgiveness from the Black Lives Matter radicals appear to notice, for instance, that among the symbols of American heritage and history being trashed by their supporters are those honoring famed abolitionists, such as Wisconsins Col. Hans Christian Heg, as well as monuments that pay tribute to blacks themselves. Take the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial in Duluth, Minnesota, for example, which was defaced in the immediate aftermath of Floyds murder. The monument consists of the statues of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie, three black men lynched by an angry mob in 1920 and hanged from a lamppost after being accused falsely of raping a white woman.Then theres the Robert Gould Shaw and Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial in Boston. The bas-relief sculpture was created at the end of the 19th century to highlight the evil of racial bigotry and pay homage to the black heroes who fought and died in the Civil War. The desecration of the above monuments can be explained in one of two ways: Either the fact that they were erected by Americans for Americans was sufficient to render them evil; or the perpetrators who vandalized them were too ignorant of their own history to be familiar with the figures in stone and bronze. Orwell explains this phenomenon from the grave.In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it, his protagonist muses. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.Whenever flagrant violations of reality become the norm, the Jews have to worry. Of course, like African Americans, Jews are not a homogeneous bunch. Just as many blacks are horrified and disgusted by the burning of the American flag and the denial of American exceptionalism plenty of Jews are siding with Black Lives Matter in the effort to destroy the land of the free and the home of the brave. Oh, and to take down Israel while theyre at it.Some of these are ideologues with an agenda; others are not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what [is] happening. Yet all are potential prey for the George Floyd fan club, whose targets for hatred and blame at the moment are the police, the president and anyone who dares to suggest that all lives matter.When enthusiasm for those common enemies starts to lose steam, the Jews will become an open scapegoat, as they always do when a society is in peril or decline. THIS HELPS shed light on the sudden surge in the interest of American Jews to immigrate to Israel. Between the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent anti-white demonstrations across the country both of which were accompanied by antisemitic undertones Jews who had spent years, if not decades, toying with idea of relocating to the Holy Land, began to take concrete steps in that direction. According to the aliyah-facilitating organization Nefesh BNefesh, this May saw a record number of applications from North America the highest in a single month since its founding 18 years ago. In anticipation, the Jewish Agency told the Knesset to prepare for the wave of new immigrants.Though good news for Israel, it is a bad sign of the times. Jews never before have felt the need to flee the US. If they made aliyah, it was by choice. That so many even are considering such a move during the global economic crisis, caused by coronavirus lockdowns, indicates uncharacteristic desperation.Their malaise is understandable. So is their hope that Israel will provide a safe haven from progressive totalitarianism. The problem is that Israelis mimic Americans, which is why a vigil for Floyd, replete with Black Lives Matter signs and slogans, was held in Tel Aviv. It is also the reason that Israeli pundits who appear regularly on one or another of Israels main TV channels assert with idiocy disguised as authority that America suffers from systemic racism, which everyone knows is the fault of US President Donald Trump. Alas, if Israel werent surrounded by Iranian proxies and other external enemies armed to the teeth, it easily could end up bathing in not just drinking the cancel-culture Kool-Aid.Israel, like the rest of the West, needs a strong and healthy America, not one forced into submission by fanatics bent on altering its nature and fundamental principles. Black Lives Matter and its sycophants must not be mistaken for people who care about the likes of George Floyd. They should be seen and understood in the context of George Orwell.

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The link between George Orwell, George Floyd and the Jews opinion - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on June 26, 2020

Lower Manhattans Local News

Tally Dally

The Election Is Over, But the Counting Continues

The preliminary results in the contested race to represent the 65th Assembly District (which stretches from the Battery to Vesey Street on the West Side and traces a jagged line between Broadway and the East River, topping out just above Houston Street, on the East Side) in Albany favor incumbent Yuh-Line Niou over challenger Grace Lee.

Of all the ballots 7,214 ballots cast in Tuesdays Democratic primary, according to the Citys Board of Elections, Ms. Niou garnered 4,440 (or slightly more than 61 percent of the total), while Ms. Lee took 2,741 (or 38 percent).

Although the November election will technically decide who represents Lower Manhattan in the State Assembly for the next two years, the heavily blue landscape of Lower Manhattan usually makes the nomination of the Democratic party tantamount to winning the wider contest, and most often relegates the actual election to the status of a formality.

But neither candidate has declared victory or conceded defeat, because this years contest will also incorporate an unknown (but much higher than usual) number of mail-in ballots, which were made available as a precautionary measure to help stem the spread of the pandemic coronavirus. These votes are unlikely to be counted until early July, City election officials say.

Whether the absentee ballots will break down differently than those cast in person, and whether they could do so in sufficient numbers to change the elections apparent outcome, remains unclear

In the meantime, Ms. Niou says, while we will continue to make sure every vote is counted, last nights numbers show us winning in every part of our district. We ran our campaign with integrity and persistence, powered by a grassroots army focused on lifting up our community in Lower Manhattan. She also expressed gratitude to supporters, ranging from Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, to member of Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and City Comptroller Scott Stringer.

In this truly unprecedented time, I believe that we need to meet this moment with bold ideas, followed up by bolder actions, she continues. New York needs a real plan for recovery that protects and supports our working families and small businesses, and we simply cannot pretend that there is some solution that does not involve asking the wealthiest among us to pay their fair share. Failing to do so means cuts to schools, cuts to hospitals, cuts to transit, cuts to infrastructure, cuts to our safety net, cuts to senior programs. And the impact of these cuts will put a stop to any recovery, so more people will suffer longer while we wait on a farcical trickle-down economy that will never arrive.

The votes have all been cast, but because we successfully fought for vote-by-mail, we have to be patient until every vote is counted, she concludes. I am immensely grateful to every person who sent in their ballot, voted early, or voted in person on Tuesday. With the power of our community behind us, we will make sure every vote is counted until our victory is affirmed!

Ms. Lee says, usually, on an election night we have answers, but our public-health crisis has made everything uncertain until the absentee ballots are opened on July 1. Still, I am proud of the movement we built, which started in my living room, and I am especially grateful to my friends, family and supporters who made this journey with me.

I am very thankful for the supporters who made calls, inspired others, went to the polls, mailed their ballots and voted for new leadership, Ms. Lee adds. We always knew this was an uphill battle.

Matthew Fenton

Centre Stage

City Plans Black Lives Matter Street Mural for Lower Manhattan

Lower Manhattan will soon have new piece of street art: the Administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio has commissioned a Black Lives Matter mural for Centre Street, between Worth and Reade Streets. The painting will consist of large letters emblazoned on the roadbed, and is among five such installations, with one planned for each borough.

This project was inspired by the impromptu creation of a similar mural on Fulton Street, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn a week ago. When word spread of this project, Mr. Blasio showed up at the site and helped paint it. A few days later, he announced that this section of Fulton Street was to be closed to vehicular traffic for the remainder of the summer.

Putting a Dent in Rents

Pandemic and Economic Downturn Impact Local Leasing

A new report from brokerage Douglas Elliman and appraiser Miller Samuel indicates that rents are trending downward in Lower Manhattan, while the inventory of vacant apartments is ballooning. These tidal shifts appear to be attributable to the health crisis associated with the pandemic coronavirus, and the economic slowdown it has triggered. The monthly Elliman Report for May documents that new lease signings have fallen at an unprecedented rate, while vacancies have surged to a new record.

For all of Lower Manhattan, the report finds that the median rent is now $3,895, which represents a 7.3 percent drop from one month earlier when the median rent was $4,200, but a slight increase of one-half of one percent from last May, when the median figure was $3,875.

Coaches Dana & Ann came up with some wild challenges for you to try.

Show off your skills at home, in the park, anywhere!

Rockefeller Rainbow#ROCKYRAINBOW

Make a rainbow with this classic soccer trick

B-Ball Court Balance #BBALLCOURTBALANCE

Get creative with a basketball balance

Teardrop TP Juggle #TEARDROPTP

How long can you juggle a roll of TP?

Wagner Wiggle#WAGNERWIGGLE

Show off your dance moves!

to receive a special Virtual BPC Community Field Day e-mail on June 26th!

The Downtown Virtual Calendar

Thursday June 25

12Noon

Pieces of China: Episode 5: Bohan Phoenix

China Institute

2PM

Understanding Anne Frank With Teresien Da Silva

Museum of Jewish Heritage A Living Memorial to the Holocaust

Ongoing

Battery Dance TV provides free online live dance classes and programming for the general public.

Each day, a different encore presentation from the companys Live in HD series is available for free streaming on the Met website, with each performance available for 23 hours, from 7:30 p.m. EDT until 6:30 p.m. the following day. The schedule will include outstanding complete performances from the past 14 years of cinema transmissions, starring all of operas greatest singers.

Tribeca Community On Display

All of Us Thank All of You

Fine artist and long time Downtown resident Adele H. Rahte has spent the stay-at-home period designing and creating these fabric collages representing the people in our community as a special form of thank you to the essential workers of our community andcity for keeping us safe.

On display during the month of July at the Tribeca Community WindowGallery located at 160 West Broadway.

Race and Class

A Lower Manhattan Community Leader Considers How Much Has Changed and How Much Still Needs To Change

Im a lot older than many of the young people now protesting in the streets, reflects Pat Moore, 67, who chairs the Quality of Life Committee on Community Board 1. And my father, who died last January, was a police officer at a time when there were very few black men on the NYPD. So I have a slightly more complicated perspective about all this.

I was born in 1953, and my family is from Louisiana, she recalls, so Im old enough to remember traveling to the South as a little girl, and sitting at the back of the bus, or visiting the public pool, where nobody who looked like me was allowed to go in.

Pushing for Peace of Mind

Local Leaders Urge Heightened Federal Response to September 11 Mental Health Issues

Community Board 1 (CB1) is urging federal lawmakers to expand benefits offered by the World Trade Center Health Program and the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund to include more robust help for survivors of the terrorist attacks who are grappling with mental health issues.

A Fraudulent Scheme to Evade the Rent Stabilization Laws

FiDi Renters Seek Recompense for Years of Rent Overcharges; U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Overturn Tenants Victory

More Financial District tenants are going to court to demand restitution from years of illegally high rent, on the heels of a 2019 ruling by New York States highest court, which found that as many as 5,000 Lower Manhattan apartments had been illegally deprived of rent stabilization benefits.

The most recent suit was filed on behalf of tenants at 90 Washington Street, a 397-unit rental building located between Rector and Joseph P. Ward Streets. This filing follows similar legal actions on behalf of tenants at 63-67 Wall Street, Ten Hanover Square, 50 Murray Street, 90 West Street, and 53 Park Place.

Eyes to the SkyJune 15 28, 2020

Summer Solstice June 20, 2020

Every day is Sun day for the month of June, when the Sun is up for 15 hours plus a few minutes most days and darkness prevails, most days, for a few minutes less than 9 hours.The longest days of the year occur as Earth reaches the point in its orbit when the North Pole is tilted closest to the Sun, known as the summer solstice. This year, astronomers calculate that the solstice occurs onSaturday, June 20 at 5:44pm. According to my pencil on paper figuring from Starry Night* data, whichis offered to a tenth of a second,day length at our location on Friday the 19this 3 seconds shorter than on the solstice and on the 20thday length is 2 seconds longer than on Sunday the 21st.

Changing Lanes

CB1 Wants to Claim Part of the Pike for Cyclists

Community Board 1 is calling upon City and State transportation officials to closeat least temporarilythe lane of Route 9A (also know as the West Side Highway) that adjoins the Hudson River Park, between Chambers and Canal Streets, to enable continued social distancing, as New York scales back quarantine measures in the wake of the pandemic coronavirus outbreak.

The plan would use concrete barriers to bar traffic from the westernmost lane of the eight-lane highway, for a half-mile stretch of the waterfront boulevard, in order to allow users of the Hudson River Park additional room for biking, jogging, and walking.

Honorable WilliamWall Opens for Business

The Honorable William Wall is open.

June 25: Today in History

1630 Fork introduced to American dining by Gov. Winthrop

1667 Dr Jean-Baptiste Denys, French doctor, performs first blood transfusion

1798 US passes Alien Act allowing president to deport dangerous aliens

1868 -President Andrew Johnson passes a law that government workers would work 8 hr day

1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn: 7th Cavalry under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne, Custer killed

1910 Mann Act passed (no women across state lines for immoral purposes)

1938 Federal minimum wage law guarantees workers 25 cents per hour (rising to 40 cents by 1945) and a maximum 44 hour working week

1940 Adolf Hitler views Eiffel tower and grave of Napoleon in France

1953 86F in Anchorage Alaska

1967 400 million watch Beatles Our World TV special

1987 Pope John Paul II receives Austrian President Kurt Waldheim

1988 Cal Ripken Jr plays in his 1,000th consecutive game

1997 Christies auctions off Princess Dis clothing for $5.5 million

June Lockhart with Lassie

Birthdays

1865 Robert Henri, US painter, leader of Ashcan school

1903 George Orwell, [Eric A Blair], British India, British writer (Animal Farm, 1984), (d. 1950)

1924 Sidney Lumet, Phila, director (Group, Pawnbroker, Fail Safe)

1925 June Lockhart, NYC, actor (Lassie, Lost in Space, Petticoat Junction)

1945 Carly Simon, NYC, singer (Anticipation, Youre So Vain)

Deaths

1767 Georg Philipp Telemann, German late-barok composer, dies at 86

1876 George Armstrong Custer, US General, dies at the Battle of Little Bighorn aged 36

1906 Stanford White, Architect, shot dead atop Madison Square Garden which he designed by Harry Thaw jealous husband of Evelyn Nesbit

1916 Thomas Eakins, American artist (b. 1844)

1979 Philippe Halsman, American photographer (b. 1906)

1995 Warren Earl Burger, Supreme Court Justice, dies of heart failure at 78

1997 Jacques Cousteau, French oceanographer, dies of heart attack at 87

2003 Lester Maddox, American businessman, one-time segregationist and Governor of Georgia (b. 1915)

2009 Michael Jackson, King of Pop (The Jackson 5, Thriller, Dangerous) dies of cardiac arrest at 50

Previously Published Downtown News

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The BroadsheetDAILY ~ 6/25/20 ~ The Election Is Over, But the Counting Continues - ebroadsheet.com

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Posted By admin on June 26, 2020

I just finished a book giving to me by a dear Muslim brother. ( To protect his identity, I am going to keep his name anonymous. He is one of the most respected community activists and community organizers in the NJ and NYC area. And a committed supporter of Black political prisoners and New Afrikan prisoners of War. I have nothing but love, respect, and admiration for this brother. I am honored that the brother wanted me to review the book.) It is called Defining Legends: An Analysis of Afrocentric Writings Against Islam. The book is written by an English born western and Saudi Arabia educated Ghanaian named Dr. Abdul Haq al Ashanti. His book was published in 2019. In my navet, I thought Defining Legends was going to offer a balanced critique of Afrocentricity written by a Black scholar. Unfortunately, I was completely wrong. From start to finish, his "scholarship" clearly demonstrates that Dr. al Ashanti is a Arabized self hating Afrikan. (Arabized Afrikan is a term describing a Black person who firmly believes that the authenticity of the religion of Al-Islam is founded on Arab culture. The majority of Black Muslims do not follow this thinking. Not all Black Muslims in the Islamic world are Arabized Afrikans. Many Black Muslim are pro-Black. However, Arabized Afrikans do exist in the world. Arabized Afrikans are against Blackness and anything that promotes Blackness. Arabism is a racist belief that Arab history, culture, and language are superior to all non-Arab civilizations.) He has a deep religious problem with Afrocentricity. Dr. al Ashanti's writings are absolutely committed to helping to destroy Black people's path to Black liberation using Afrocentricity.

Unfortunately, his book comes in the same line of Dr. Mary Lefkowitz's work 'Not Out of Africa: How "Afrocentrism" Became An Excuse To Teach Myth As History.' Dr. Lefkowitz used White supremacy to create racist "scholarship" to attempt to debunk the validity of Afrocentricity.

It was published in 1996. Not Out of Africa was produced in response to the popular and massive Afrocentric movement taking place amongst Black people in America and in the world in the late 1980s to the mid 1990s. She argues that Kemet (Egypt) did not play any role in the development of Greek culture and civilization.

The late Cornell University scholar and professor Dr. Martin Bernal, a internationally respected writer of European classics, wrote Black Athena. His important anti-racist work was published back in 1987. His book argues that Kemet (Egypt) payed a major role in helping to create Greek philosophical, scientific, religious, liturgical cultural traditions. He once participated in a huge debate in New York City with Professor Lefkowitz. The debate also included, Professors Guy Maclean Rogers (Black Athena Revisited), and John Henrick Clark (Afrikana Studies). It was moderated by legendary journalist Utrice Leid ( WBAI ) in 1996. At the debate, Dr. Bernal said, "Not Out of Africa is an extremely provocative book."

Dr. Bernal, who was White, wrote a review of the book Not Out of Africa, in the London Review of Books dated on December 12, 1996 titled, "Whose Greece." He wrote, "Mary Lefkowitz's concern, or obsession, with Afrocentrism emerged suddenly in 1991, when she wrote a review of my book Black Athena for the New Republic. As a professor of classics, she was appalled to discover that people were writing books and teaching that Greek civilisation had derived or even been 'stolen' from Egypt, and claiming that the Ancient Egyptians were black, as were Socrates and Cleopatra. The Afrocentrists maintained that Greece had been invaded from Africa in the middle of the second millennium, that Greek religion and the mysteries were based on Egyptian prototypes, and that what was called 'Greek' philosophy was in fact the secret wisdom of Egyptian Masonry."

Dr. Bernal went on to say, "For this reason, she has published a series of overlapping articles denouncing these Afrocentrist 'myths'. Not Out of Africa is a compilation of these pieces, along with some added material and new arguments. The blurb on the back of the book proclaims it to be 'a thoughtful inquiry', 'detailed, carefully researched and fully documented'. In fact, this is not an argument conducted with the Afrocentrists, but an attempt to finish them off."(https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-pape)

The background information on Professor Lefkowitz is very interesting. Mary Lefkowitz, a White Jewish professor, is financed and supported well by ultra right-wing conservative groups. He said, "She has found powerful helpers on the far right. In her preface she thanks the Bradley and John M. Olin Foundations for their grants. These bodies are among the most generous contributors to right-wing organisations such as the National Review, the Heritage Foundation and the National Association of Scholars. Lefkowitz sits on the advisory board of the last and plays an active role on its journal, Academic Questions. The concern of these organisations and journals is to turn back what their members and contributors see as the tides of liberalism that have engulfed not only American society but also education and the highbrow media."(ibid)

Dr. Martin Bernal comes from many White intellectuals and scientists that presented the real facts on Black people, Afrikan History, Afrikan culture, and Afrikan spirituality, European History, world history, and American History. White scholars such as Herodotus, JeanFrancois Champollion, Basil Davidson, Count C.F. Volney, Charles Darwin, Dr. Louis S. B. Leaky, Dr. Donald Johanson, E. A. Wallis-Budge, Gerald Massey, and Leo Frobenius, to name a few. Unfortunately, their works are not presented in the main stream.

Afrocentricity is an Afrikan centered intellectual movement challenging White supremacist and racist notions about Black people, Afrika, Afrikan History, Afrikan culture, Afrikan spirituality, Black people, World History, Caribbean History, western religions, and American History. Some of Its leaders consists of the following scholars: Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop, Dr. John Henrick Clarke, Dr. Yosef Ben Jochannan, Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, Dr. Asa Hilliard, Professor Jacob Carruthers, Professor Ashra Kwesi, Tony Browder, Professor Dr. Runoko Rashidi, Professor James Smalls, Dr. Naim Akbar, Dr. Lenard Jeffries, Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, Dr. Marimba Ani, Dr. Charshee McIntyre, Dr. Amos Wilson, Dr. Maulana Karenga, and Dr. Molefe Kete Asante.

But unlike Dr. Lefkowitz, who uses skewed secular scholarship to obliterate Afrocentricity, Dr. al Ashanti uses only religious books, such as Qur'an and Hadith, as the only cited credible texts and sources to try to discredit Afrocentric ideology.

His efforts are clear to the reader: to undermine Black people's struggle to look at the world from their own Afrikan -centered perspective. He believes in his mind that Afrocentricity is the threat to Al-Islam. Dr. al Ashanti does not see Afrocentricity as the proper and natural vehicle for Black people to liberated ourselves from centuries of world-wide White supremacy and systematic institutionalized racist oppression.

Dr. al Ashanti writes page 19, "since the 1960s there has been a rapid and phenomenal increase of people in the West embracing Islam and the majority of those in the West who are turning to Islam are people of African origin in the UK and the USA. At the same time, Afrocentric ideology has also spread in the West which has, since the 1970s, argued that Islam itself was a religion of Arab conquerers that plundered Africa to the detriment of the African people themselves and this (Kemet Afrocentricity, various Hebrew Israelite cults or 'black Orientalism has emerged to counter this growth of people of African origin turning to Islam." In other words, Dr al Ashanti believes Afrocentricity, not White hegemony, is a threat to the existence of Al-Islam and Muslims. He throws away his western educated methodology and scholarship to analyze Afrocentricity. He instead uses the biased religious lenses of his Saudi Arabian Islamic centered scholarship to distort and misrepresent Afrocentricity.

Dr al Ashante argues that the religion Al-Islam is the only way of life for Black people in the world. Dr. al Ashanti writes on page 20 his book, "Defining legends will critically evaluate mainstream Black Orientalism and extremist Afrocentric claims about Islam and being new evidence to challenge their false assumptions."

In conclusion, this is very disturbingly dangerous and problematic book to Afrika, Black people, and the Afrikan world community. Like White hegemony, as well as some religious leaders of the world; see a danger in Black people challenging the world's Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Euro, and Arab centered versions of history and culture. The world's powers do want Black people to rescue reconstruct, restore, embrace, and accept our own history, culture, languages, and spiritual traditions as vehicles for Black liberation. Although mother Afrika is the origin of the world's civilizations and religions, she is consistently disrespected. Afrika, and Black people, have been under attack for nearly 500 years, some say thousands of years, through invasions, by White supremacy, systematic institutionalization of racism, colorism, classism, enslavement by Europeans and Arabs, colonialism, segregation, US Cointelpro (counter intelligence program), Black self-hatred, Afrikan ethnic and religious divisions, and police violence. They, the world's powers, have worked, and will continue to work, night and day, to maintain its dominance over Black people using all resources (i.e. media, cable tv, traditional tv, movies, films, rap music, R&B music, rock music, political parties, class divisions, policing agencies, scholars, racism, economics, money, religion, the synagogue, the church, the masjid, minsters, pastors, Imams, etc) including our own people, to keep us at the bottom of every society on the planet earth for the sole purpose of the oppression and exploitation of Black humanity. Therefore, If Black lives are going to matter in America, and in the world, then we as Black people must continue to push the world to rid itself, and even some of our own people, of bigotry and disdain for Black people, for our own Afrikan history, for our own Afrikan culture, and for our own Afrikan spirituality.

-Hotep!!!

Asante sana (Kiswahili for thank you very much) for reading my commentary.

O Dabo (Yoruba for go with God until we meet again)!!!

-Bashir Muhammad Akinyele is a History Teacher, Black Studies Teacher, Community Activist, Chairperson of Weequahic High School's Black History Month Committee in Newark, NJ, commentary writer, and Co-Producer and Co-Host of the All Politics Are Local, the number #1 political Hip Hip radio show in America.

Note: Spelling Afrika with a k is not a typo. Using the k in Afrika is the Kiswahili way of writing Africa. Kiswahili is a Pan -Afrikan language. It is spoken in many countries in Afrika. Kiswahili is the language used in Kwanzaa. The holiday of Kwanzaa is celebrated from December 26 to January 1.

#Hotep#afrocentricity#nationofislam#kemet#blacktheology#kwanzaa#blackstudies

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A Review of the book Defining Legends - Patch.com

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Posted By admin on June 26, 2020

Facebook has been criticized for policy decisions that civil rightsgroups claim allowconspiracy theorists toproliferateand harassment to go unpunished.Facebook has been hammered over a failure to punish the account of President Donald Trump, after he posted a message in May that suggested shooting protesters. Trump posted the message to Facebook and Twitter, and Twitter slapped the tweet with a warning label while Facebook dealt no punishment.

It was a divisive message from the president, but Facebook has been in a difficult position catering to forces in Washington and the demands of activists, who want ittotake a harder line.On Thursday, a report in The Wall Street Journalsaid Trumps campaign was bewildered by social media companiesthat have penalized him. And Facebook has taken steps to moderate how Trump uses the platform. Last week, it removed one of his ads for featuring Nazi-era imagery.

In recent days, Facebook executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, have spoken with advertisers to lay out the case that the company is taking hate speech anddisinformationseriously. CarolynEverson, Facebook's VP, global marketing solutions, has sent emails to advertisers to assure them of the platform's progress.

In her email to advertisers sent this week, which Ad Age obtained, Everson addressedthe boycott, and saidFacebook is making strides, especially when it comes to handlingdisinformationand election ads.

"In the interest of making sure I stay in as close contact with you as possible given the recent call for a boycott and more importantly given some of your feedback on what Facebook is doing to address Hate Speech overall, I wanted to provide an important update and a path forward." Everson said in her email. "I deeply appreciate all the calls, meetings and messages that so many of you have participated in and led that demonstrate the spirit of wanting to partner together to not only improve Facebooks role in society but also more broadly the entire online ecosystem."

Facebook recently updated its election ads policies that give people the ability to block all political ads, andalso launched an election hub, whichdisplaysfullyvetted information.

With its letter, the ADL said it was rebutting the arguments put forth by Facebook executives. One of the areas the letter addressedwasthe "civil rights auditors."

Facebook has said that it catches 89 percent of hate speech before it spreads on the social network. The civil rightsgroups saidthat Facebook needs to be more transparent about how it identifies andeliminates hate speech.

Facebook generated $70 billion in advertising revenue in2019 andhas more than 8 million advertisers.It isnot clear how much a one-month boycott would affect itsbottomline. Still, theADLis trying to prod Facebook to adopt stricter policies to prevent harassment by hate groups and limitdisinformation.

TheADLsaid itfoundat least two brands, Geico and Verizon, running adsnext tooffensive posts by conspiracy groups.

"Our analysts were easily able to find examples like an ad from the auto insurance company Geico appearing alongside an antisemitic and racist conspiracy post accusing George Soros of funding Black civil rights efforts in order to fuel martial law," the letter says. "Similarly, we found an advertisement for Verizon appearing next to a video from the conspiracy groupQAnondrawing on hateful and antisemitic rhetoric."

AnADLspokesmansaid the group found the Geicoand Verizonads while browsing Facebook on desktop, and they appeared to the right of theNewsfeed.

Geico was notimmediatelyavailable for comment.

All digital platforms have come under scrutiny for allowing fringe groups to spread messages. Twitter and YouTube have facedsimilar criticisms. In 2017, brands supported a boycott of YouTube because ads were appearing in videos related to extremist and terrorist content.

Brands are concerned about running messages whenthey areadjacent topotentially harmful content, but it has not typically been a major issue on Facebook. The social network has 2.6 billion users across all its services, and they see feeds of content personalized to their tastes.Most ads run in their own sponsored posts, aside from pre-roll video ads.

Still, the ADL said there was too much hatefuldisinformationon Facebook, which is also a sensitive subject as the U.S. elections heat up. The 2016 race was marred by the spread of foreign propaganda on social media, and Facebook has been blamed for being a channel that could lead people to conspiracy theories.

"Given where Facebook is now, improvement is not that hard," The ADL said in its letter. "Clamp down on common misinformation and conspiracies. Stop recommending hate. Make a number of clear, common-sense changes toameliorateand mitigate hate."

Contribution from George P. Slefo

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Anti-Defamation League sends letter to advertisers, urging them to boycott Facebook - AdAge.com

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Posted By admin on June 26, 2020

Verizon said on Thursday it is pulling advertising on Facebook until the company "can create an acceptable solution that makes us comfortable."

A company spokesperson said the pause applies to both Facebook and Instagram. It comes as marketers including Ben & Jerry's, Patagonia and REI have also said they plan to pause advertising on the platforms.

Facebook's stock was down nearly 2% Thursday evening.

Last week, a group of six organizationscalled on Facebook advertisersto pause their spending on the social media platform during the month of July. The groups the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Sleeping Giants, Color of Change, Free Press and Common Sense asked "large Facebook advertisers to show they will not support a company that puts profit over safety."

On Thursday, the Anti-Defamation League addressed an open letter to companies advertising on Facebook, signed by the organization's CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt. In the letter, the organization said it "found an advertisement for Verizon appearing next to a video from the conspiracy group QAnon drawing on hateful and antisemitic rhetoric, warning that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is planning to bring on civil war with concentration camps and coffins at the ready and claiming Americans are already quarantined in militarized districts."

"We have strict content policies in place and have zero tolerance when they are breached, we take action," Verizon's chief media officer John Nitti said in a statement. "We're pausing our advertising until Facebook can create an acceptable solution that makes us comfortableand is consistentwith what we've done with YouTube and other partners."

According to marketing analytics company Pathmatics, Verizon spent an estimated $406,600 in Instagram ads between May 22 and June 20. The firm said Verizon spent $1,460,300 on Facebook in that same time period.

Facebook didn't immediately return a request for comment Thursday. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company sent a memo from the company's VP of global business Carolyn Everson to advertisers last week saying that it does not "make policy changes tied to revenue pressure" and that it sets "policies based on principles rather than business interests."

"We respect any brand's decision, and remain focused on the important work of removing hate speech and providing critical voting information," Everson said in an emailed statement sent by the company Thursday. "Our conversations with marketers and civil rights organizations are about how, together, we can be a force for good."

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Verizon is pulling advertising from Facebook and Instagram - CNBC

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Posted By admin on June 26, 2020

Just briefly

Penn's play: The Stagwell Group late Thursday proposed a merger with MDC Partners in a move that would combine two firms led by Mark Penn into a $2 billion agency group.The combined firms would generate $35 million in cost synergies, Penn estimates.

Black, Pride: Ben & Jerrys, Chipotle and streaming services are celebrating Pride with campaigns that also elevate the Black community. Black LGBTQ+ individuals were a large part of New York Citys Stonewall Inn protests of 1969, the start of Pride, writes Ad Ages Ilyse Liffreing. Many believe that the uprising was initiated when police tried to shove Black lesbian Storm Delarverie into a police car. Netflixs virtual event features Laverne Cox, and Amazon Prime is offering dance classes, makeup tutorials and documentaries. And Karamo Brown of Queer Eye is taking over Chipotles TikTok.

Running backward: Ad portrayals of women didnt improve last year, according to a new study from Cannes Lions and The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. Male characters outnumber female characters by almost two-to-one and have twice the screen time and speaking time as women, writes Ad Ages Luke Guillory. Although 10 percent of people globally identify as LGBTQ+, they represented just 1.8 percent of characters with discernible sexual orientation; people with disabilities and the elderly are underrepresented. Depictions of people of color also fell 5 percent from 2018.

Magnified voices: Twitter is taking Black Lives Matterone of its most popular hashtagsout-of-home. Real Tweets from Black users around the world have been magnified on out-of-home signs in U.S. cities where major protests have occurred, writes Ad Ages Ann-Christine Diaz. They include messages from writer Ashley Simpo, Bernice King, CEO of The King Center and daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, writer and marketer Frederick T. Joseph and many more.

That does it for todays Wake-Up Call. Thanks for reading and we hope you are all staying safe and well. For more industry news and insight,follow us on Twitter:@adage.

From CMO Strategy to the Ad Age Datacenter Weekly, weve got newsletters galore. See them all here.

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Verizon drops Facebook ads after being called out, and Apple shuts stores again: Friday Wake-Up Call - AdAge.com

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Posted By admin on June 26, 2020

Thirty-eight years ago this week, Vincent Chin, an Asian American man, in Detroit, Michigan, died after being attacked because of his race At the time, a growing Japanese auto industry was leading to major job loss in the citys own auto sector, and his killers, two auto workers, mistook him for a Japanese person and used racial slurs when they beat him outside a strip club where he was celebrating his bachelor party. He died from his injuries days later.

It wasnt the first such hate crime, nor the last, but it did galvanize Asian Americans from disparate backgrounds to unite against anti-Asian racism and attacks. Now, some of those same advocates who mobilized during the Vincent Chin movement warn that theyre seeing the same sort of scapegoating towards the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. Only this time, its the coronavirus pandemic, which was first reported in Wuhan, China, driving xenophobia and racism in the United States.

Instead of blaming Japan, now were blaming China, and anybody who looks Chinese, said Helen Zia, a Chinese American activist who helped found a pan-Asian civil rights group, American Citizens for Justice, following the sentencing of Chins killers. (The two men ultimately paid a $3,000 fine and served no prison time).

Its actually pretty terrifying for most people because we have been through this before. And we know what dog whistles to racism, and calling people who look a certain way the enemy we know what that leads to.

Its actually pretty terrifying for most people because we have been through this before. And we know what dog whistles to racism, and calling people who look a certain way the enemy we know what that leads to, said Zia, who is also the executor of the Chin estate.

READ MORE: Asian Americans describe gut punch of racist attacks during coronavirus pandemic

When nationwide shutdowns began in March, the FBI warned that hate crimes against the Asian and Asian American communities would grow, according to reports obtained by ABC News. Official government data on this is hard to come by, but statistics compiled by other organizations show that anti-Asian racism, which has been an ugly, persistent part of American history, is now tinged with anti-Chinese, coronavirus-related sentiment. The website Stop AAPI Hate has been tracking anti-Asian American discriminatory incidents since mid-March, when social distancing measures started to take effect in the U.S. It has identified more than 1,800 such cases reported to them by people across the country, 502 of which included assailants mentioning the terms China or Chinese. The Anti-Defamation League keeps its own list of anti-Asian crimes dating back to January based on media reports from across the country.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said last month it was concerned about how the pandemic was contributing to anti-Asian racism, noting in a list of recommendations for federal agencies that this kind of discrimination can not only lead to hate crimes, but also to discrimination in education, housing and employment, among other areas. Other countries have reported a rise in crimes targeting Asian communities in the wake of the pandemic, too; ministers in the UK have reported a 21 percent increase in such hate crimes since lockdown measures were put in place.

But Cynthia Choi, an activist who helped create Stop AAPI Hate, attributed the rise in anti-Chinese rhetoric in the U.S. to President Donald Trumps use of terms like Chinese virus and Kung flu to describe the coronavirus. He used the latter term in two rallies this month, both times eliciting cheers from the audience.

Theyre parroting Trumps language; animus thats tied to China being the source and spread of the virus and the pervasive use of orientalist stereotypes and racist demagoguery, Choi said.

For example, one person who contributed to Stop AAPI Hates tracking effort said a middle-aged white woman yelled Chinese virus! and then threw an empty soda can in their direction. A student teacher at an elementary school reported one student, whose race was not identified, teasing a Chinese student, saying he had the coronavirus and saying the virus spread because of what Chinese people eat.

The White House has defended Trumps use of the term; earlier this week, when asked about the presidents use of a racist term to describe the virus, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said what the president does do is point to the fact that the origin of the virus is China.

Choi also said she believed Trump was employing such rhetoric deliberately.

We know this is an intentional and orchestrated tactic to deflect attention from his epic mismanagement from what we know is the worst public health crisis in recent history, she said.

The rise in anti-AAPI racism borne of one global movement is taking place against the backdrop of another: the worldwide reckoning over race, and systemic racism against Black people in America. All the AAPI activists noted that the Black-led civil rights movement has always embraced the struggle of Asian Americans as part of its own, and worked to amplify their voices.

Writer Jeff Yang, cohost of the podcast They Call Us Bruce, noted that even the term Asian American is rooted in Black activism, as it was coined in 1968 by college students who were inspired by and wanted to show solidarity with the Black Panther movement.

Decades later, following Chins murder, Black civil rights leaders like Jesse Jackson rallied on the Chin familys behalf.

There would not be an Asian American community as we know it, had it not been for both the civil rights victories that African Americans won with blood and sweat and tears, but also the desire by early Asian American activists to create common cause, Yang said. Theres absolutely a sense in which African American activists and political leaders have been a key part of ensuring that Asian American activists and political voices could be amplified.

Choi said that the rise in anti-Asian sentiment meant it was all the more important for AAPIs to stand with the Black Lives Matter movement.

We see that this is the same racist system that has defined our treatment, Choi said. Of course there is no question in our minds that Black Americans have endured tremendous brutality and systemic racism more than any other racial group in this country. And so its really important for us to talk about [anti-AAPI discrimination] and to connect this to the racial reckoning thats happening sparked by George Floyds murder.

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We have been through this before. Why anti-Asian hate crimes are rising amid coronavirus - PBS NewsHour

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Posted By admin on June 26, 2020

CNBC.com's MacKenzie Sigalos brings you the day's top business news headlines, and what to watch as the coronavirus pandemic continues sweeping through the U.S. On today's show, CNBC's Meg Tirrell breaks down how rising case counts have caused some states to put their reopening plans on pause. Plus, CNBC's Kate Rooney has the latest numbers on how the pandemic is affecting the largest swath of the nation's workforce Millennials and Generation Z.

Texas pauses reopening plan and elective surgeries as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations rise

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Thursday that the state will pause any further reopening as it continues to report record increases in Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations.

Businesses that were permitted to open under the previous phases can continue to operate at the designated occupancy outlined by the Texas Department of State Health Services, according to statement from Abbott's office.

"The last thing we want to do as a state is go backwards and close down businesses. This temporary pause will help our state corral the spread until we can safely enter the next phase of opening our state for business," Abbott said in the release.

Young people are stressed out all over the world, but don't blame the pandemic

For Gen Z and millennial individuals in countries all over the globe, anxiety levels are high. Nearly half of Gen Zs (48%) and millennials (44%) say they are stressed all or most of the time, according to the 2020 Deloitte Millennial Survey, released Thursday. The causes of high stress are rooted in financial concerns, family welfare and career expectations. But don't put the Covid-19 pandemic at the top of that list.

The coronavirus outbreak has brought an economic downturn in the U.S. and globally, and even amid some signs of rebound, uncertainty continues to weigh on the global economy and markets.

Verizon is pulling advertising from Facebook and Instagram

Verizon said on Thursday it is pulling advertising on Facebook until the company "can create an acceptable solution that makes us comfortable."

A company spokesperson said the pause applies to both Facebook and Instagram. It comes as marketers including Ben & Jerry's, Patagonia and REI have also said they plan to pause advertising on the platforms.

Last week, a group of six organizations called on Facebook advertisers to pause their spending on the social media platform during the month of July. The groups -- the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Sleeping Giants, Color of Change, Free Press and Common Sense -- asked "large Facebook advertisers to show they will not support a company that puts profit over safety."

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Texas pauses reopening as coronavirus cases surge in southern states, plus everything else you missed in business news: CNBC After Hours - CNBC

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Posted By admin on June 26, 2020

Iconic ice cream brand Ben & Jerry's became the latest company to join the growing boycott of Facebook and Instagram ads at the urging of the NAACP and other civil rights advocacy groups.

"Ben & Jerrys stands with our friends at the NAACP and Color of Change, the ADL, and all those calling for Facebook to take stronger action to stop its platforms from being used to divide our nation, suppress voters, foment and fan the flames of racism and violence, and undermine our democracy," the company said in a statement Tuesday.

A person walks past Ben & Jerry's on May 11, 2020 in New York City.

"As of July 1st we will pause all paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram in the United States as part of the #StopHateForProfit," the statement added. "We call on Facebook, Inc. to take the clear and unequivocal actions called for by the campaign to stop its platform from being used to spread and amplify racism and hate."

Last week, a coalition of advocacy groups lead by the NAACP, Colors of Change and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) launched the #StopHateforProfit campaign, calling on corporations to pause advertising on Facebook during the month of July.

The campaign comes as the nation has been rocked by protests over the killing of George Floyd, and corporate America has faced immense pressure to reaffirm commitment to racial justice initiatives through actions not just words.

Ben & Jerry's co-founders Ben Cohen, right, and Jerry Greenfield serve ice cream following a press conference announcing a new flavor, Justice Remix'd, September 03, 2019 in Washington, DC.

"The campaign is a response to Facebooks long history of allowing racist, violent and verifiably false content to run rampant on its platform," the groups said in a joint statement. "The campaign will organize corporate and public pressure to demand Facebook stop generating ad revenue from hateful content, provide more support to people who are targets of racism and hate, and to increase safety for private groups on the platform, among other measures."

The organizations accused Facebook of allowing incitement to violence against protesters fighting for racial justice, silencing Black users on the platform and failing to protect them from online threats, as well as allowing the platform to be used as part of "widespread voter suppression efforts, using targeted disinformation aimed at Black voters."

"Facebook remains unwilling to take significant steps to remove political propaganda from its platform," Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, said in a statement.

"It is clear that Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, are no longer simply negligent, but in fact, complacent in the spread of misinformation, despite the irreversible damage to our democracy," Johnson added. "Such actions will upend the integrity of our elections as we head into 2020. We will not stand for this. While we recognize the value that Facebook provides in connecting people of color with one another, we call into question a platform that profits from the suppression of Black votes or Black voices.

Ben & Jerry's is the latest company to join a growing number of brands boycotting Facebook ads in July. Outdoor brands REI, the North Face, and Patagonia all affirmed their commitments to the #StopHateForProfit campaign via social media

"For 82 years, we have put people over profits. We're pulling all Facebook/Instagram advertising for the month of July," REI said in a tweet last Friday, with the hashtag #StopHateForProfit.

The North Face wrote on Twitter: "Were in. Were Out @Facebook," along with the hashtag and a link to the Stop Hate for Profit's demands.

Patagonia shared a Twitter thread on Sunday, saying it will pull all ads on Facebook and Instagram at least through the end of July, "pending meaningful action from the social media giant."

Tourists enter the Patagonia outdoor clothing shop in Vail, Colorado.

"For too long, Facebook has failed to take sufficient steps to stop the spread of hateful lies and dangerous propaganda on its platform," Cory Bayers, the head of marketing at Patagonia, wrote on its official Twitter handle. "From secure elections to a global pandemic to racial justice, the stakes are too high to sit back and let the company continue to be complicit in spreading disinformation and fomenting fear and hatred."

Facebook responded to the campaign saying it remains focused on the work of removing hate speech and providing voting information.

"We respect any brands decision, and remain focused on the important work of removing hate speech and providing critical voting information," Carolyn Everson, the VP of global business group at Facebook, told ABC News in a statement on Wednesday.

"Our conversations with marketers and civil rights organizations are about how, together, we can be a force for good," she added.

Facebook noted that it has made significant improvements to their work of removing hate speech, noting that it assesses notifications in less than 24 hours for more than 95% of the cases.

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Ben & Jerry's the latest to join the #StopHateforProfit Facebook ad boycott - ABC News

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