What’s Going On – 7/22

NEW YORK, NY
Eric Adams is the Democratic nominee for NYC Mayor. His invite by President Biden to attend a gun violence Conference convened by city and state leaders last week was followed by a joint Adams/Gov. Cuomo press conference on gun violence. It makes one wonder if he is unofficial Hizzoner since 6/22 Primary.

Leonard Greene’s 7/18 Daily News article, “NEW POWER RISES: City Pols Reveling in New Black Surge, from City Hall to Boroughs, to Albany and Washington” is informative. Greene’s piece was accompanied by a photo gallery of Black political-power elites Tish James, Eric Adams, Hakeem Jeffries, Alvin Bragg, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Carl Heastie.

SUMMER: USA AND BEYOND

Texas Democratic lawmakers fled the state and are relocating to the nation’s Capitol to avoid a vote on the abridgement of voting rights. Governor Greg Abbott, who runs for re-election in 2022, threatened to arrest them when they return. Five of the lawmakers tested Covid-positive in DC. Will Black votes matter in red states during the 2022 midterm elections? What’s the US Senate doing on the Voting Rights bill crafted by the House a few months ago? The U.S. Supreme Court is not averse to red states’ voter repression laws. Both parties are amassing huge 2022 war chests.

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Problems persist in Haiti following the 7/7 assassination of its president Jovenel Moise and in Cuba where protests escalate because of food and medicine shortages. The Biden Administration’s response to those crises is that neither Haitian nor Cuban refugees would not be welcome in the USA. Read some recent media headlines about Haiti: The 7/16 Haitian Times publisher Garry Pierre-Pierre wrote “Haitians Can No Longer Hide Behind the Caste System Killing Our Country.” (Pierre-Pierre’s Op-Ed is on OTP’s p.11); A 7/20 NY Times headline reads “Haiti, Urged by Foreign Powers, Announce New Government”. Huh? A 7/20 NY Daily News opinion piece, “Can Haiti’s Diaspora Save It” by Haitian American writer Fabrice Guerrier, continues the narrative. AP says “A New Leader is on Tap for Haiti. Some Object to Foreign Influence.” The US heads the list of foreign interference re: governance of Haiti, including a role in the ouster of the democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Coronavirus delta variant surges are widespread all over America. The most vulnerable people are those who live in states with low vaccine counts. Lots of Black Americans are in hospitals. Did USA officials relax virus protocols prematurely? The delta variant is a global menace threatening the Olympic Games which begin tomorrow, July 23, in Tokyo, Japan, a city with mostly unvaccinated residents. It’s reported that 80 % of the Japanese wish that both the virus and the Games would go away.

ECO DEV
Byron Allen, Media Broadcasting Corporation is on another shopping spree, acquiring WJRT-TV, an ABC affiliate, owned by Gray TV in Flint-Saginaw, Michigan. The Allen Media Broadcasting owns and operates 24 TV stations in 24 markets and 12 TV networks, including the Weather Channel. AMBC will acquire ten TV stations currently owned by Quincy Media for $380 million by year’s end. (Read: OTP’s Byron Allen story starts on cover.)

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Check out Jon Laster’s new Black app BLAPP, set to launch next month. Laster, a popular comedian and , majored in economics in college, decided he wanted to do something to support Black-owned businesses after a George Floyd protest march on Eastern Parkway, last summer. He developed BLAPP, an app which enables Black merchants to directly sell their products and services — from handbags, glasses, clothes, jewelry, to restaurants, to doctors and dentists offices — as well as guide consumers to local Black-owned businesses. The technology provides a map of local Black-owned businesses anywhere a person visits in the USA. BLAPP is “Black-owned business shopping mall in your hand.” Visit BLAPP.COM

ARTS/CULTURE
Read African American Brent Staples, NY Times editorial board member’s essay HOW THE WHITE PRESS WROTE OFF BLACK AMERICA which chronicles how white media, including the NYT, all over the nation contributed to the horrors afflicted upon Black Americans, from reconstruction to the rise of Jim Crow, the two World Wars, the Civil rights movement, Viet Nam and beyond, by not reporting facts about the myriad aspects of Black life in America.

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BOOK: Blackstarnews.com publisher Milton Allimadi’s new book, “MANUFACTURING HATE: How Africa was Demonized in Western Media,” which internationalizes the Brent Staples argument. Uganda-born Allimadi cites the NY Times and British media as major Africa demonizers.

HIGHER ED
Dr. Cornel West, scholar/public intellectual, resigned from Harvard because he was denied tenure since his 2017 return to that campus. He said that Harvard is in “a state of decline, decay and spiritual rot.” A professor with faculty creds at Princeton and Yale, West’s immediate destination is a return to the NY Union Theological Seminary. Dr. West’s story is akin to the recent Nikole Hannah-Jones’ (co-creator of the NY Times “1619 Project” special issue) ordeal at UNC, Chapel Hill. She landed at Howard University with a tenured post.
Delaware State University, a public HBCU, recently acquired Wesley College, the state’s oldest private college. Situated on 50 acres, the Wesley College of Health and Behavioral Sciences, now within the Delaware State University orbit, will include an Academy of Healing Trauma. DSU president Tony Allen announced that his HBCU is the first to acquire another college or university in the U.S.

NEWSMAKERS

Birthday greetings to Leo lions and lionesses: Leah Abraham, Settepani Restaurant; General Lloyd Austin, US Secretary of Defense; Angela Bassett; Rev. A.R. Bernard, Christian Cultural Center; Halle Berry; Charles Blow, NY Times; Ryan Brooks, college junior and OTP Gen-Z columnist; NYS Senator Leroy Comrie; “Dapper Dan” Day, haberdasher and business man; Sarah Dash; Viola Davis; Ambassador Alice Dear; Vivica Fox; Barbara Harris, real estate; Ramona Grey Harris, Edwards Sisters Realty; Amari Jacobs; Michael Horsford; Victoria Horsford,WGO; Lois Knox, NY/NJ doyenne; Woodie King, New Federal Theatre; Madonna; Mona Wyre Manigo, Antigua Progressive Society; Mari Moss, Harlem Community leader; President Barack Obama; fine artist Danny Simmons; Dr. Yinka Stanford, educator; Professor Keith Taylor, PhD, Harlem preservationist and politico; Congress member Maxine Waters; Meghan Markle, Windsor, Duchess of Sussex; and Barack Obama and Hakeem Jeffries who share August 4 birthdays.

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A Harlem-based branding/media consultant, Victoria is reachable at victoria.horsford@gmail.com