In honor of Labor Day, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman issued his third annual Labor Day report, Working for Justice, covering the enforcement actions of his Labor Bureau and the key policies promoted on behalf of working men and women. The labor cases he has pursued and the policies he has championed cover workers across the state and across industries; those working for small businesses, large corporations or on public works projects.
Some of the AG’s biggest achievements on behalf of workers this year include:
• Recovering almost $5.7 million for more than 3,300 low-wage workers, including fast-food employees, home health aides, taxi drivers, restaurant employees and construction workers, among others. Nearly $27 million for more than 20,000 workers victimized by wage theft has been covered, and $2.5 million in penalties against unscrupulous employers levied.
• A first-of-its-kind lawsuit against Domino’s Pizza as a joint employer responsible, along with three franchisees, for repeated violations of law and underpayment of workers at the three franchisees’ restaurants. $1.5 million for some 1,200 workers at 61 Domino’s stores across New York. His lawsuit against Domino’s corporate enterprise sought to hold the company responsible for the wage theft endemic to its franchises nationwide, given the level of control exercised by Domino’s over franchisees’ operations, including labor relations.
• Pursuing criminal prosecution for particularly egregious violators, including a home health care agency owner who repeatedly failed to pay his employees; a Papa John’s franchise owner who created fake records after being investigated by the U.S.
• Department of Labor, in joint investigations with the New York City Department of Investigations and the Inspector General of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, contractors on public works projects that paid below the legally required prevailing wage rates.
• Obtaining agreements from six retail corporations comprising 13 brands, such as the Gap, Victoria’s Secret, Bath & Body Works, and J. Crew to end the harmful practice of “on-call scheduling”, in which workers are required to call in to work a few hours in advance to find out if they are needed; such shifts require employees to obtain child care and forego other employment and educational opportunities without compensation.
• Ending unscrupulous noncompete agreements for workers at multiple companies, including Law360 and Jimmy John’s, after investigations by the AG’s Labor Bureau. Noncompete clauses are legal in New York only when a worker has highly specialized skills or access to trade secrets.
More than 300 local elites attended the annual United Negro College Fund(UNCF) “A Mind Is…Hamptons Summer Gala”, netting $300,000 for its scholarship coffers. Event honorees are denizens from the worlds of entertainment and finance: the 2016 Academy Award Producer Reginald Hudlin; Media mogul Cathy Hughes, Radio One Founder/Chairwoman; and Derek Jones, Managing Director, GCM Grosvenor Private Markets. Event sponsors read like a monthly ad schedule for Forbes and Town and Country magazines which was toplined by the Lincoln Motor Company, Sirius XM Satellite Radio, Palladium Equity Partners, Combs Enterprises and Moet Hennessy. Staying on message, UNCF Director Dr. Michael Lomax said that it is hard to resist the UNCF mission: access to American colleges for students of color. The guest list, which spanned four generations, included Dr. Janet Bell, Earl Graves, Joyce Mullins Jackson, Lauren Delly, Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren, Karen Hunter, Cheryl Hill and book publisher Regina Brooks. Nancy Silberkleit’s Easthampton estate and the sun-kissed day were pitch-perfect settings for the UNCF Hamptons outing, a veritable summer pleasure.
Dr. Janet Dewart Bell
Dr. Janet Dewart Bell, Joyce Johnson and Norma Darden co-hosted A Mid-Summer’s Night Social Mixer at Miss Mamie’s Spoonbread bistro, located at 366 West 110th Street. The invitation read gets fortified for the battles ahead and this summer of political, social discontent. A multicultural distaff thing, there were no speeches nor sales pitches, just a lot of savvy gals sitting around talking about everything from the US Presidential hopefuls to global warming and recent holidays to Vietnam and Barcelona. Miss Mamie’s was filled to overflow. Some of the smart set who attended the mixer included Attorneys Gail Wright Sirmans and Joy Vida Jones; Maddy deLone, Innocence Project; Harriette Mandeville; Sarah Kovner, Democratic operative; Irene Elmore; Brette McSweeney, Eleanor’s Legacy; genealogist Ruth Hunt; Rosemary Reed and Maxine Spence.
BLACK ENTERPRISE
Group Nduom of Ghana invested $9 million in the Illinois Service Federal Savings and Loan Association(ISF), a failing Black-owned Chicago bank. ISF was acquired in May 2016. Ghanaian businessmen reckoned that other foreign ethnic groups come to the rescue of people in their Diaspora, why not Blacks.
Arlington Leon Eastmond Jr. and Sr.
The EASCO Boiler Corporation, an African-American-owned, Bronx, NY-based company celebrates its 90th Anniversary this year. Founded by Barbados –born Arlington Leon Eastmond, Sr. in 1926 in Harlem on Lenox at 145th Street before moving to West 142nd Street between Eighth and Bradhurst Avenues where he realized his dream of manufacturing the first Eastmond steel storage tank. Eminent domain made business relocations necessary. The A.L. Eastmond & Sons, Inc. was formed in 1948. His son, Arlington Leon Eastmond, Jr., joined the business and started the old Victor Steel Plant in the Bronx in 1972, which begat EASCO, and manufactured the first Eastmond Federal Boiler. The Eastmond Group, Inc. is under the flagship Eastmond & Sons umbrella. The EASCO Boiler Corporation is a direct descendant of the Eastmond, Sr. business, founded 90 years ago. Today, Eastmond, Jr. is chairman of EASCO, which employs 80 staffers and boasts annual revenues just north of $12 million. He will soon be ready to pass the baton onto the next generation of Eastmonds.
ARTS/CULTURE/MEDIA
Read the Joel Dreyfuss Washington Post opinion piece, “Only HAITIANS CAN SAVE HAITI”. It refers to little victories like the UN acknowledging that its troops are responsible for the cholera epidemic in Haiti. It refers to larger and darker matters instigated by the USA and France for more than 200 years when the Haitians fought for their emancipation and independence. I think that Dreyfuss is on to a winning solution to Haiti’s monumental problems.
Auditions for Vy Higginsen’s Mama Foundation For The Arts “Gospel for Teens” Program will be held on September 10th and 17th from 1-3 pm at 149 West 126th Street. Sing gospel or R&B songs. Classes begin on October 2nd from 11 to 1. [Call 212.280.1045 or visit mamafoundation.org]
PEOPLE
Adenika Olanrewaju, NY Public Library senior publicist assigned to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture during Dr. Khalil Muhammad’s tenure, adds a new position to her CV. She joins the New York Times publicity department.
Birthday greetings to VIRGO the Virgin natives: Sherron Barnes; Angela Bassett; Beyonce; Shawnee Braggs, Catered by Shawnee; Kobe Bryant; Dave Chappelle; Ava DuVernay; Idris Elba; Fern Khan, Bank Street Dean Emerita; Justin Khan; Geoffrey Eaton, Mid-Manhattan NAACP President; Linda Haynes; Taraji P. Henson; Rocky Horsford; Jennifer Hudson; Ruth Hunt; Errol Louis, NY1; Dr. Kanya McGhee, Tree of Life guru; Jada Pinkett; Valerie Simpson; Barbara (B.) Smith; Iyanla Vanzant.
The astrology cognoscenti should know that a retrograde Mercury is in effect from August 30th to September 22nd. Beware of communication glitches!
RIP: Beloved Harlem community matriarch Henrietta Johnson, 106, longtime resident of the Gladys/Lionel Hampton apartment complex in Harlem, died. Born and raised in North Carolina, the widowed Johnson was one of New York City’s oldest residents. A mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, she had a large family circle of friends which spanned 4 generations.
Gideon Manasseh
RIP: Harlemite Gideon Manasseh, 77, died. Born Gerald Shaw in Chicago, Illinois, Gideon was a filmmaker, photographer and educator. A CBS-TV Morning News cameraman for more than 10 years, he aspired to higher posts like cinematographer, which did not materialize. He launched his still photographer career which became lucrative and was the master of the Kodak moments while shooting African-American subjects. A photojournalist, his work was published extensively in most NY Black newspapers.
OUT AND ABOUT
The West Indian Day Parade, a celebration of Caribbean history and culture, will be held on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn on Monday, September 5th, Labor Day.
NY FASHION WEEK is from September 8-15. The NYFW show heads Uptown for the first time with Harlem Fashion Week, which runs from September 7-10, including fashion-centric symposia, receptions, fashion shows at venues from the Harlem State Office Building, Cherie bistro, the Museum of the City of NY and beyond. The Harlem Fashion Week Uptown Satellite is the brainchild of Yvonne Jewnell and Tandra Birkett, a mom/daughter team, themselves principals of the Yvonne Jewnell fashion design company. [Visit harlemfw.com]
West Indian Carnival in Harlem: The nation of Antigua and Barbuda, bitten by the NY West Indian Carnival bug, will host a special Labor Day weekend event, “Antigua Day – Caribbean Splashdown”, on Saturday, September 3rd at 2 pm at the Marcus Garvey Park, along Madison Avenue between its 120th to 124th Street corridor, Harlem USA. The Antigua Day Cultural Festival will showcase some of the nation’s finest musical talents, including Tian Winter, Claudette Peters, Ricardo Drue, Laurena Davis, Supa Mario. The Antigua Day Splashdown 2016 doubles as the official launch of a yearlong international tourism/culture promotion of the 60th Anniversary of the Antigua/Barbuda Carnival on August 8th, 2017. A delegation of Antigua/Barbuda VIPs, headed by Minister of Culture E.P. Chet Greene, will attend the NY Antigua Day event.
THE MID-MANHATTAN BRANCH OF THE NAACP celebrates its 50th Anniversary and the 15th Annual Freedom Fund Luncheon on Saturday, September 10th at Marina Del-Rey, Bronx, NY. Luncheon honorees are Frederic Roze, L’Oreal USA-America President/CEO; Marci McCall, Director, NYS of Health; Paul McIntosh, Wadleigh School for Performing & Visual Arts Librarian; Micki Grant, composer, playwright, actress; and Sylvia White, Mid-Manhattan branch. Luncheon menu includes music by the Warren Daniels Band and dancing. For reservations, call 212.749.2323.
“Have you Americans gone bonkers?” my friends in England keep asking. The Donald makes them nervous.
It’s not just what he says.
A landmark study called The Silent Language identifies 93 percent of all communication as unconscious. Fifty-five percent of the message is conveyed through physiology: facial expression, posture, gestures, breathing and the faintest ideomotor muscle movements known as “tells”. Thirty-eight percent comes through tone of voice: volume, pitch and rhythm. Only seven percent is verbal content.
That’s correct. Only 7% of any given message is conveyed in words.
With two doctoral papers on the physiology of nonverbal communication and 25 years of private practice under my belt, I consider myself a student of the unconscious mind. What I see is that Trump’s march through the electoral minefield has gained such momentum because he speaks to the collective unconscious; specifically, that collective 11-year-old who feels threatened and helpless. Although a number of analysts have accurately identified the current of anger that Trump has tapped, anger comes from feeling helpless. Fusing with a wave of rage makes us feel empowered. The Republican candidate’s physical bulk, posture, facial expressions and tone of voice hook into the psyche of that 11-year-old who wants Daddy to beat up those bad guys.
Seriously, no one person can fix the range and complexity of crises erupting right now. It is as delusional for us to believe that any one person can rescue us as it is for anyone to believe that he or she alone can do it. But riding in on a primal wave of visceral emotion, Trump wants you to believe that if elected, yes, Daddy will fix it.
As a reality TV star, Trump swept onto the political center stage as a glamorous celebrity whose status reflects cultural values gone south. No longer are we focused on the Founding Fathers’ values—freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to assemble peacefully and the rule of law. They have been replaced with what I call The Four Assumptions: Bigger is better. Faster is better. Newer is better. More is better. To millions of voters, more fame plus more money = more smart.
From this perspective, it’s easy to perform sleight-of-mouth maneuvers that distract attention from core values to pseudo values that fame and wealth are more important than freedom and integrity. Seduced by The Four Assumptions, we see what we want to believe rather than believe what we see. After awhile, we can’t tell the difference between reality and reality TV. It’s easier to be entertained by someone who plays three-card monte with the facts. His unpredictability keeps us wondering what’s going to happen next. What’s happening next is that for the first time, Amnesty International is sending human rights observers to the Republican and Democratic National Conventions to document potential abuses by law enforcement. “There’s a potentially toxic mix here of very heated rhetoric and an increase in law enforcement preventing people from protesting lawfully, and that combination is deeply concerning to us,” Eric Ferrero, Amnesty International USA’s deputy executive director told CNN on Thursday.
On May 22nd, Randy Kay reported on CNN’s AC360 that Drs. Drew Weston and Joel Weinberger had conducted a study of some 750 voters’ unconscious responses to words associated with both candidates. Participants were shown 15 words in different colors and asked to click on those they associated with each candidate. The unconscious response to candidate Clinton was that she is “scary” and “presidential”. Candidate Trump: “bigot” and “leader”. Regarding the apparent cognitive dissonance Dr. Weinberger said, “Consciously, you don’t like what he (Trump) says, but laughing is a positive emotion”. Therefore, the unconscious mind coded Trump as more likeable.
According to Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, the collective unconscious is a reservoir of universal patterns of perception that anyone understands. He found that universal patterns and symbols occur in cultures all over the world going back to the primitive cave dwellers who carved into the walls symbols of stars, moons and crosses as a way of seeking connection to a force greater than themselves.
In announcing Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate Donald Trump said, “I’m doing a good job, but I’m only a messenger”. Teresa Oster, a retired Jungian analyst and screenwriter in Stuart, Florida says, “The collective and cultural unconscious communicates to Trump. It has possessed Trump. He reflects this message back to his audience. Unconsciously, the audience has created him”. Oster sees Trump as the archetype or universal symbol of the Greek god Hermes, the messenger. But Hermes is also the trickster. “He is the jokester, a thief and the inventor of lying,” she says. “He is disruptive to Apollo and turns the tables on power. This is what Trump’s audience seems to feel about him, so they hear what they want to hear. His audience feels disenfranchised, left out of America’s promise of prosperity. Trump promises to give it back to them. They are not much concerned about Trump’s contradictions (another Hermes trait), or his lies or his ruthless style.”
Oster sees Hillary Clinton as the archetype of Athena, “the Greek goddess of wisdom, war, the arts, industry, justice and skill”. She says, “Athena is the goddess most prepared to win in what is still called a man’s world. On the level of the cultural unconscious, Clinton would be on the receiving end of negative projections of deeply held American beliefs in male dominance, which goes back to our Puritan roots”. Athena is perceived as unfeminine and her double-edged sword, warlike.
No one understands the collective unconscious better than Dr. Clotaire Rapaille, author of the international best-seller The Culture Code. A Jungian analyst in Paris in the 1970s, Dr. Rapaille was asked by an executive of Nestle to see if he could figure out why the company was having so much difficulty introducing coffee to Japan. He writes, “I knew that tea meant a great deal to this culture but I had no sense of what emotions they attached to coffee”.
He developed a three-stage process for focus groups to help him get to emotions and beliefs that were embedded well below the level of conscious, rational thought. First, they sat around a table and responded to questions. Then the table was removed and participants sat on the floor cutting up magazines to create collages about how they felt about coffee. In the third stage, they had to lie on the floor, listening to soothing music while Dr. Rapaille conducted a hypnotic regression session, taking them back to childhood. They revealed that they felt tea was the drink of their grandparents. It represented history and tradition. On the other hand, coffee was the drink of America and America was the land of tomorrow. Coffee was the beverage of the future. Dr. Rapaille told Nestle to develop animated commercials to air on Saturday mornings when children were watching cartoons on TV. Today, he writes “coffee sales—nearly nonexistent in 1970—now surpass half a billion dollars a year in Japan”.
In the 1990s, he was hired by Chrysler to figure out what the collective unconscious wanted in a Jeep. “They’d done extensive market research and had asked dozens of focus groups hundreds of questions…they just hadn’t asked the right ones,” he writes. “They kept listening to what people said. This is always a mistake.”
Following a similar three-stage focus group format that he had developed for Nestle, Dr. Rapaille uncovered people’s early memories about Jeeps. The recurring theme was being in the great outdoors and being able to drive where there were no roads. The Jeep represented the American pioneers’ spirit of freedom. “The Jeep means, ‘I don’t need a road. I make the road’. That’s what the American spirit is all about. Let’s go and do where nobody has gone before,” he says. It was Dr. Rapaille who came up with the strategy of those TV commercials showing a businessman leaving the office, getting into a Jeep and driving to the top of a mountain. Sales exploded. The collective unconscious had a new vehicle. But did the dream deliver?
In the 1990s, I was teaching critical thinking for the American Management Association, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and several pharmaceutical companies. For two and a half years, I conducted an informal survey of the executives and managers from major corporations who were my students. My question: “Did you ever make a decision without thinking critically?” Consistently, in each class, more than 2/3 of my students raised their hands. The answers went something like this: “I saw a TV commercial with a Jeep on top of a mountain and I had to have one. So I bought it and now it doesn’t fit in the company garage/my driveway/the parking garage in the mall.”
The margins of reality blur when the conscious mind is lulled into a quasi-hypnotic state. Maybe spending 12 hours a day staring at screens has something to do with it but when the conscious mind is on overload, the unconscious takes the wheel and starts driving the personality. Not only does the collective unconscious go shopping, it votes.
I caught up with Dr. Rapaille in between his consulting trips to China and Europe to ask him how the collective unconscious is affecting our electoral process. (He and I met several years earlier when I was a field producer on a shoot for a documentary about the business of disease.)
“If you don’t understand the collective unconscious, you don’t get anything done. Here’s what’s fascinating about this election,” he says. “It’s better than any novella. That’s why the cable stations are so happy with Donald Trump. They never had so many people watching. If we didn’t have a Donald Trump we would have to invent one.” Comparing the candidates as cars Dr. Rapaille says, “Trump is doing something that nobody has done. I hope he can be the Jeep. As for Hillary Clinton, she’s a Volvo station wagon”.
Americans are “anti-intellectual..afraid of ideologies,” according to Dr. Rapaille, who believes that “Donald doesn’t have an ideology. I’m not sure he knows what an ideology is”. His appeal to the collective unconscious comes from his ability to be surprising. Dr. Rapaille says, “We don’t know what the next crazy thing he is going to do or say. He sees Trump as a John Wayne archetype, “the hero who shoots first and asks questions later”. In contrast, Hillary Clinton speaks to the conscious rational mind. “She is giving us a structure that is from the cortex: pre-organized, coached and reading from the teleprompter. Something is missing,” he says. “Maybe she should go out with a crazy boyfriend like a hard rock singer. It will make her more human.”
In the end, it comes down to survival and safety. The candidate who can reassure the voters at an unconscious level that ensuring their safety is his or her prime directive will come in first. “We need to take our kids to school without worrying that a crazy guy with a machine gun is going to kill them,” says Dr. Rapaille. “To do this, we need a breakthrough.”
If not, my English friends’ concerns could come to pass. A year from now, we may indeed be going bonkers.
* ******
One winter Wednesday morning in August I huddled against the snow to look for flowers. On my way to Buenos Aires Airport, I planned to bring them to the Mothers of the Disappeared who march in front of the Presidential Palace holding photos of their children who were taken by the secret police during the Argentine military government’s
“dirty war”. Between 1976 and 1983, between 10,000 and 30,000 people were killed after being arrested for being dissidents or on suspicion of opposing the military regime. The statistics vary so greatly because thousands disappeared. Elections were restored in 1983 but the mothers walk to remind the collective unconscious not to forget to remember.
The woman who sold the flowers worked out of the back of a small van. She wore a sweater with holes, held together with safety pins. The tips of her fingers were red and chapped. Clearly, she was struggling to earn a living standing in the cold. This was the best she could do. So I felt bad when she pointed out that I had paid for the roses with Chilean, not Argentine, coins. I offered to go to the drugstore on the corner to get the correct change.
Folding my hand in hers, she placed the Chilean coins in my hand and held on. Our eyes locked. “Senora,” she said, “Sometimes we lose things that are worth far more than money.”
It’s never too early to talk about some hoops, especially when some of the best high school players in the country took their talents to the Brooklyn Bridge Park last week in the 2016 Under Armour Elite 24 game. Although there was a lot of raw talents from across the country, there were some standout New York City ballers as well. One of the standouts was St. Raymond’s guard Isaiah Washington, who was named one of the game’s Most Valuable Players with a 36-point performance. Washington was a late addition to the Elite 24 roster and was only 3 points shy of breaking former Lincoln High School star and current NBA player Lance Stephenson’s single-game scoring record. When the game was over, it was hard not to talk about Isaiah Washington.
Eager to display his skills and prove many people wrong, Washington had this to say after the game, “Nobody’s ever going to count me out again. There was a bit of a chip on my shoulder, I just wanted to prove to everybody that they were wrong for not putting me in the game in the first place”.
Early and often, Washington went up against Trevon Duval, who is ranked the number one point guard in the Class of 2017. He made his presence known and in front of a lively crowd at Pier 2, both players channeled their inner competitive levels. With several Division 1 college scouts and professional scouts in attendance, there were other players who stepped up as well. Players such as former St. Raymond’s star Sidney Wilson, Archbishop Molloy center Moses Brown and Brooklyn resident Nick Richards all put their marks during the game. It was a very exciting game, a game where team Drive squeezed out a 140-143 victory over team Clutch. Now that the game is over and done with, these young stars will continue to keep the drive in them and hopefully have a clutch-like future in hopes of getting better and being recognized by a top-level college program. Best of luck to the local basketball players as well as every player involved in what was a very exciting game.
Sports Notes: (Little League Baseball) Congratulations to the young kids of Endwell, New York who won the 2016 Little League World Series with a 2-1 victory over South Korea. They became the first U.S. team since 2011 to win the World Series. (Baseball) Both the Mets and Yankees are still in the hunt in their respective leagues as both teams look to make one final push towards capturing a wild card in hopes of making the playoffs. (Football) There is only a little over 2 weeks left till football returns. How do the Jets and Giants look to you so far? Our Time Press universe, E-mail me at Castroeddie714@gmail.com and share your thoughts!
Citing the danger that climate change poses to the oceans, President Obama will establish the largest marine reserve in the world today, protecting nearly 600,000 square miles off the coast of Hawaii.
Commercial fishing, mining and extraction are prohibited in the expanded Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, though subsistence fishing and scientific research will be allowed.
“The oceans are the untold story when it comes to climate change and we have to feel a sense of urgency when it comes to protecting the ocean that sustains us,” said Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii. George W. Bush originally established the reserve a decade ago, protecting 140,000 square miles.
“President Obama’s expansion of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National makes it the largest sanctuary for ocean life in the world,” Greenpeace oceans campaign director John Hocevar said.
“This is a bold decision that will have lasting benefits for Hawaii’s unique ecosystem. Networks of sanctuaries have proven to be powerful tools to ensure the health of our oceans. Setting aside areas closed to fishing, drilling and other extractive uses is the best way to protect biodiversity, rebuild depleted fish populations and increase the resilience of marine ecosystems so they can better withstand the impacts of climate change.
“Bolder steps are still needed. Less than two percent of the world’s oceans are protected from fishing, and many scientists suggest a target of 40 percent. It is vital that we take steps like President Obama did in Hawaii to prevent future expansion of industrial fisheries, but we also need to look at areas closer to our population centers. Most of the world’s coastal fisheries have been severely depleted. With few limitations on fishing in these areas, recovery is slow. Our coasts are dotted with former fishing communities that are no longer able to find enough fish to sustain their livelihoods.
“Setting aside 40 percent of our marine ecosystems—in remote areas as well as those closer to home—will help preserve the health of our oceans and our communities.”
