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CLEVELAND, Ohio Anyone who follows Samaria Rice, the mother of Tamir Rice, on social media got a clear look into the frustration that comes with seeking justice for the death of a child at the hands of police.

Rices latest display of vexation began during Sunday nights Grammy Awards. A performance by rapper Lil Baby of his song protest The Bigger Picture opened with the reenactment of a Black man being stopped and ultimately shot by the police. Some critics have called the reenactment of the violence traumatizing and unnecessary.

While Rice says she has no problem with Lil Baby or his message, she does have an issue with the presence of activist Tamika Mallory who delivered a speech during the performance saying, its time we take a stand. We demand the freedom this land promises.

Look at this clout chaser, Rice said of Mallory in a Facebook post on Monday while sharing a clip of the speech. Did she lose something in this fight? I dont think so. Thats the problem. They take us for a joke. Thats why we never have justice cause of s*** like this.

In an interview with Cleveland.com, Rice elaborated on her social media post. She says she feels activists like Mallory, who Rice says shes never met, are benefitting off the blood of families who have lost loved ones, gaining fame in the process.

Who hired them to represent these families? Rice says. She doesnt speak for us. If you were going to do anything you should have had the mothers on stage so they could speak for themselves.

Mallory first gained prominence as one of the lead organizers for the 2017 Womens March, which earned her a spot in Time magazines list of the 100 most influential people of the year. Mallory turned her attention to the Black Lives Matter movement following the highly publicized deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd last year.

Tamika Mallory was representing women. So how did you come over in our fight for police brutality? Rice says. Ive never met Tamika Mallory. But I dont like the way shes moving. Youve seen her over the years and now [her status] is elevated. They need to go get a life and stand back and get up out our fight.

Rice has been vocal on social media about police brutality and other social issues since the death of her son seven years ago.

Tamir was playing with an Airsoft pistol outside the Cudell Recreation Center on Nov. 22, 2014, when someone called 911. Officers were told by the dispatcher that a guy with a gun was outside the rec center. Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann and his partner, Frank Garmback, drove to the park. Garmback drove the car up over the curb beside a gazebo where Tamir sat and Loehmann hopped out of the car and shot Tamir as he approached the car.

A criminal investigation into the shooting lasted more than a year with a grand jury ultimately choosing not to charge the officers in the killing of Tamir.

Following Sunday nights Grammy Awards, Rice also criticized well-known civil rights lawyers like Ben Crump, who leads the legal team of George Floyds family, and Lee Merritt, the lawyer for the family of Ahmaud Arbery.

Not one of you lost anything in this fight, Rice posted on social media. [Youre] robbing your own people from getting justice. They wont talk to me cause they know Im not with bulls***.

Rices social media posts drew both support and criticism, with detractors calling her a bully. But she says it wont silence her.

They can keep coming for me, Rice says. Im tired of it. Theyre making a mockery out of this fight. Theyre making a mockery out of us. Im trying to save your kids, your grandkids. So they can come after me all they want. Im not the only one who feels this way.

One person who fully supports Rice is Lisa Simpson, mother of Richard Risher, an 18-year-old who was fatally shot by LAPD officers in Watts this summer after allegedly pointing a gun at them. Simpson, who has become close friends with Rice, says her son was unarmed and running away from police.

People like Tamika Mallory are making money from this, while Im homeless living in a hotel, says Simpson. If they dont give us justice, were taking it by any means necessary. That goes for the Tamika Mallorys, the Shaun Kings, the NAACP, ACLU, Al Sharpton or anyone trying to get in our way.

Rice and Simpson arent alone in criticizing the efforts of some activists. Last August, Karen Attiah, Global Opinions Editor for the Washington Post, called into question BreonnaCon, a four-day event held in Louisville and put on by activist group Until Freedom, co-founded by Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour, in support of Breonna Taylors family.

The event featured appearances by several reality stars. Meanwhile, celebrities and activists were featured on promotional flyers rather than Taylors. The Louisville chapter of Black Lives Matter refused to work with Until Freedom, feeling the group was parachuting into the city without properly addressing the issues of police brutality.

Almost instantly, [Taylors] death became fodder for various memes and social media gimmicks that draw attention, not so much to what justice for her death would mean, but rather to the wokeness of the sender, Attiah wrote.

Approximately 4,000 people attended the event, which Mallory told the Washington Post was the result of a request made by Taylors mom to organize events to honor her daughter. But thats not enough for Rice.

Youre not going to continue to benefit on the blood of these families, Rice insists. If youre fighting for justice of the families, make sure youve got the families on the front line. Dont make a career out of this, when your loved ones arent the ones who were killed.

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Samaria Rice rebukes Tamika Mallory, others benefitting off the blood of police brutality victims - cleveland.com

CHICAGO (CBS) Uber and Lyft on Thursday announced they are teaming up to protect their customers.

The rideshare companies have launched the Industry Sharing Safety Program, and are creating a database of drivers who have been deactivated because of sexual assault and other cries.

The database will allow the two companies to screen drivers more effectively by sharing information, so dangerous rideshare and delivery drivers cant simply switch from one company to the other undetected.

The information sharing will be administered by HireRight, which will collect and manage the data from each company and match and share information between them.

The program will also be open other transportation and delivery companies throughout the states, provided that they meet specific requirements and accuracy expectations.

Safety should never be proprietary. You should be safe no matter what ridesharing platform you choose. Were thrilled to come together with Lyft to improve safety for the entire industry, Tony West, senior vice president and chief legal officer at Uber, said in a news release. Tackling these tough safety issues is bigger than any one of us and this new Industry Sharing Safety Program demonstrates the value of working collaboratively with experts, advocates and others to make a meaningful difference. We encourage more companies to join us.

Sexual assault is drastically underreported, making these crimes less likely to show up in our rigorous background check and screening processes, Jennifer Brandenburger, head of policy development at Lyft, said in the release. With the Industry Sharing Safety Program, Lyft and Uber are working together to further enhance our screening capabilities, as well as the safety of the entire rideshare industry.

The program has also garnered the praise of the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), and National Action Network founder and president the Rev. Al Sharpton.

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Uber, Lyft Team Up To Protect Customers With Database Of Drivers Deactivated Due To Sex Assault, Other Crimes - CBS Chicago

In this April 18, 2020, file photo, people wait for a distribution of masks and food from the Rev. Al Sharpton in the Harlem neighborhood of New York. A new poll from the The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that Black and Latino Americans are more likely than white Americans to have experienced job and other income losses due to the coronavirus pandemic. | Bebeto Matthews / AP

NEW YORK (AP)A year ago, Elvia Banuelos life was looking up. The 39-year-old mother of two young children said she felt confident about a new management-level job with the U.S. Census Bureaushe would earn money to supplement the child support she receives to keep her children healthy, happy, and in daycare.

But when the coronavirus was declared a global pandemic last March, forcing hundreds of millions of people into strict lockdown, Banuelos outlook changed. The new job fell through, the child support payments stopped because of a job loss, and she became a stay-at-home mom when daycares shuttered.

The only thing I could do was make my rent, so everything else was difficult, said Banuelos, of Orland, California.

Millions of Americans have experienced a devastating toll during the yearlongcoronavirus pandemic, from lost loved ones to lost jobs. More than530,000 people have diedin the United States. Those losses havent hit all Americans equally, with communities of color hit especially hard by both the virus and the economic fallout.

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that compared with white Americans, Black and Latino Americans are more likely to have experienced job and other income losses during the pandemic, and those who have lost income are more likely to have found themselves in deep financial holes.

Thats on top of Black and brown Americans being more likely than white Americans to say they are close to someone who has died from COVID-19 andless likely to have received a vaccination. The pandemic has killed Black and Latino Americans at rates disproportionate to their population in the U.S., according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Banuelos, who identifies as Latina, said the disparity in pandemic experiences between the upper class and people who are in a tighter situation became glaringly clear to her early on in the pandemic. Even after two rounds of federal direct stimulus checks, she felt she was further behind than well-off Americans.

The relief didnt last that long, Banuelos said.

Overall, 62% of Latinos and 54% of Black Americans have lost some form of household income during the pandemic, including job losses, pay cuts, cuts in hours, and unpaid leave, compared with 45% of white Americans.

For other racial and ethnic groups, including Asian Americans and Native Americans, sample sizes are too small to analyze in the AP-NORC poll.

Jeremy Shouse, a restaurant manager from North Carolina, saw his hours greatly reduced during the early months of the pandemic when the small business was forced to shut down. Shouse, a 33-year-old Black man, said the restaurant has since reopened but went from making more than $5,000 in-house per day prior to the pandemic to only $200 on some days.

One year later and things still arent the same, Shouse said, adding his wages have dropped 20%.

About 6 in 10 Latinos and about half of Black Americans say their households are still facing the impacts of income loss from the pandemic, compared with about 4 in 10 white Americans. Black and Hispanic Americans are also especially likely to say that impact has been a major one.

We find that systemic racism plays a huge role in this process, said Rashawn Ray, a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institute who co-authored a recent report on racial disparities and the pandemic in Detroit. I think what were going to see once the dust settles is that the racial wealth gap has actually increased.

There have long been racial disparities in how Americans experience economic downturns and recessions. However, following a recovery from the Great Recession and well into the Trump administration, the unemployment gap between Black and white Americans narrowed amid strong job growth and economic activity. But a recent analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found a gap that had declined to as little as 3 percentage points rose to 5.4 percentage points last August, erasing some of the gains made during the recovery.

The AP-NORC poll also finds Latinos are especially likely to think it will take a long time to dig their way out of the financial hole. About half say that they are still feeling the effects of income loss and that it will take at least six months to recover financially. About a third of Black Americans say the same, compared with about a quarter of white Americans.

Forty-one percent of Latinos say their current household income is lower than it was at the start of the pandemic, compared with 29% of Black Americans and 25% of white Americans.

And about 4 in 10 Black and Latino Americans have been unable to pay a bill in the last month, compared with about 2 in 10 white Americans.

For people of color, the trauma experienced due to economic turmoil has been compounded by immense personal losses. About 30% of Black and Latino Americans say they have a close friend or relative who has died from the coronavirus since last March, compared with 15% of white Americans.

Debra Fraser-Howze, founder of Choose Healthy Life, an initiative working to address public health disparities through the Black church, said she is confident in the Black communitys ability to recover economically and medically.

The emergency economic situation of the community is dismal, Fraser-Howze said, and its going to be worse for a long time. But we are a community of survivorswe came through slavery and Jim Crow. We figured out how to stay alive. I do believe and have faith that our community will come back.

AP writer Emily Swanson also contributed to this article.

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Data confirms what we already knew: Pandemic hit people of color harder - People's World

Eda Aker 12:27 am, Feb 26, 2021

Contributing Reporter

David Zheng, Senior Photographer

As Black History Month comes to its end, the Virtual Tour Series Civil Rights from Reconstruction to Right Now, co-sponsored by Yale Alumni Academy and Yale Alumni College, concluded with its last installment highlighting the Daughters of the Movement, a podcast and speaker series featuring daughters of civil rights activists, on Feb. 25.

Professor of African American studies Crystal Feimster hosted a conversation Thursday night with speakers who lived on the front lines of the African American Civil Rights Movement. At the end of the conversation, the audience of over 200 Yale students, alumni, faculty and members of the general public, had the opportunity to ask the Daughters questions about their stories.

Yale Alumni Academys Black History Month series has been superb, and the Daughters of the Movement event is the perfect capstone, YAA Executive Director Weili Cheng 77 wrote in an email to the News. The YAA has been fortunate to feature so many remarkable speakers and presenters in our programming, including Yales outstanding faculty professors like Crystal Feimster.

The guest speakers included the daughters of civil rights activists such as Gina Belafonte, the daughter of Harry and Julie Belafonte; Suzanne Kay, the daughter of Diahann Caroll; Hasna Muhammad, daughter of Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis Hasna; Stacy Renae Lynch, daughter of Bill Lynch; Dominique Sharpton, daughter of Al Sharpton; Ilyasah Shabazz, daughter of Malcolm X; and Keisha Sutton-James, granddaughter of Percy Sutton.

According to Senior Director of Lifelong Learning and Travel at the YAA, Lauren Summers, the event was meant to serve as a dynamic forum for communication, connection and learning for the love of learning. Summers noted that the YAA and YAC came up with the idea for a virtual tour to allow audiences to connect with the history of civil rights from Reconstruction to now through the lens of Yale. The event was available free of charge to all Yale students and faculty.

The Civil Rights from Reconstruction to Right Now virtual tour has been one of the most popular programs on the YAAs website, with upwards of 2,000 visitors over the past month, Summers said.

The speakers are all of different ages and lead in different fields of activism,ranging from politics to education to film, yet are united by intertwined legacies. Lynch said that she came up with the idea to form this sisterhood amongst the Daughters to connect with women of similar experiences in relation to African American history.

All the Daughters were raised in households with similar teachings of valuing African American culture and similar experiences as well as shared the importance of self-love with the audience. According to Sharpton, many of the Daughters were unaware of controversy surrounding their parents work and have had to learn to have similar strength and solidarity in their activism.

I never really saw [my parents] shape to the controversy of what was going on because they were grounded in faith, and they instilled that in us from a very young age, Sharpton told the audience. That we are not only representing ourselves but we are representing a generation of people and we are representing the victory and promise of progress.

Shabazz added that it is through self-love and sisterhood that they are able to build on their parents work. She said, in her eyes the mentality that the Daughters have is lets control our narrative and make sure that America gives liberty and justice for all.

Full biographies of the guest speakers are available online.

Eda Aker | eda.aker@yale.edu

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Virtual Tour Series Civil Rights from Reconstruction to Right Now comes to an end with Daughters of the Movement talk - Yale Daily News

Black Greek-letter sororities and fraternities have been a pivotal part of African American history and culture since the early 20th century. Launched on the campuses of historically black colleges, these organizations have been a central resource for support and service in the educational advancement and strengthening of social bonds among black students, entrepreneurs and professionals, especially when the organizations expanded to majority white institutions of higher learning. Also, they were a way to combat racism, as many campus organization memberships were exclusionary to students and professionals of color.

The pioneer black Greek-letter organizations have become known as the Divine Nine, and among their ranks have been some of the most influential leaders of color in healthcare, fashion, business, global affairs, politics and more.

Among the ranks of black fraternities are leaders from W.E.B. DuBois; Martin Luther King Jr. and Al Sharpton to Hill Harper, Al Roker, Emmitt Smith, Robert Johnson, and hundreds of thousands more. And the sororities boast an impressive roster of sorors as well, from Vice President Kamala Harris, First Lady Michelle Obama, Shirley Chisholm, and Loretta Lynch to Nikki Giovanni, Soledad OBrien, MC Lyte, and many more.

The National Pan-Hellenic Council Inc. (NPHC), formed on the campus of Howard University on May 10, 1930, is a collective of the nine pioneering black Greek-letter organizations: Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Inc., Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc., Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc., Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., and Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.

Since these nine were started and incorporated, membership has spread globally, with chapters in Asia, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa. Their impact is also widespread professionally and financially, as they have contributed millions to uplift communities, send students to college via scholarships and support professionals in both corporate America and entrepreneurship via mentorship and sponsorship.

Alpha Phi Alpha is the oldest fraternity, founded in 1906, followed by Kappa Alpha Psi and Omega Psi Phi in 1911, Phi Beta Sigma in 1914 and Iota Phi Theta Fraternity in 1963. Among the sororities, Alpha Kappa Alpha is the oldest, founded in 1908, followed by Delta Sigma Theta Sorority in 1913, Zeta Phi Beta in 1920 and Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. in 1922.

Since the Divine Nine have been founded and incorporated, other black Greek-letter organizations have followed, and though they are not part of the Pan-Hellic Council, they have been vital in their impact of promoting service, scholarship, and fellowship among students and professionals of color around the world as well. These organizations include sororities such as the National Sorority of Phi Delta Kappa, Inc., founded in 1923 for educators; Gamma Phi Delta Sorority, Inc., an affiliate organization of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) founded in 1942; Zeta Delta Phi founded 1962 at Bronx Community College, and fraternities such as Sigma Phi Rho, chartered at Wagner College; Delta Psi Chi, founded in 1985 at University of WisconsinMilwaukee; and Nu Gamma Alpha, which was founded on Howards University Campus in 1962.

The pioneer black Greek-letter organizations have become known as the Divine Nine, and among their ranks have been some of the most influential leaders of color in healthcare, fashion, business, global affairs, POLITICS AND MORE.

Submitted by Rosetta Brown, Proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc

4th Ward Candidate for Alderwoman in the City of Alton

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Letter To The Editor: A Black History Tribute To The Devine 9 - RiverBender.com