Vice President-elect Kamala Harris made a plea to the public at the United Medical Center in Southeast Washington D.C., a predominantly Black community, where she received her first dose of the Moderna vaccine. TheGrio was on the ground as the vice president-elect emphasized that the vaccine is about saving lives, saying, “I trust the scientists and it’s the scientists who created and approve the vaccine … I urge everyone when it’s your turn to get vaccinated.” Harris addressed the press at the hospital’s auditorium that became a makeshift vaccination hospital room. She sat in a standard mint green hospital recliner that was accompanied by a hospital room table that had tissues and hand sanitizer visible as she received the vaccination from nurse Patricia Cummings, a Guyana born immigrant to the United States. Vice President-elect Harris said the vaccine was “relatively painless.” She added, “It is safe … literally this is about saving lives.” The venue and the backdrop of her public vaccination was no coincidence. It is meant to combat the mistrust in minority communities with medical trials and other health disparity matters. As it relates to the COVID-19 vaccination, which is still in the trial phase for Moderna and Pfizer, theGrio asked Harris specifically about the issue of minority mistrust of the vaccine. “I’m [here] today because first of all we have phenomenal healthcare providers like Patricia who serve the community and we have hospitals and medical centers and clinics like these all over the country who are staffed by people who understand the community, who often come from the community and who administer all-year-round trusted healthcare,” said Harris. “I want to remind people that right in your community is where you can take the vaccine, where you will receive a vaccine by folks you may know. Folks who work in the same hospital where your children may have been born. Folks who work in the same hospital where an elderly relative received the kind of care that they needed.” On hand for the event was Dr. Talal M. Nsouli, the director of the Watergate & Burke Allergy and Asthma Centers. He further discussed the success of the vaccine saying out of the 2 million people who have taken the vaccine in medical trials and in the disbursement of the emergency use authorization, “only four people had allergic reactions.” .
Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff campaign together
Georgia voters have begun early voting in the state’s U.S. Senate January runoff that will determine the balance of power in Washington. Democrats Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are in tight races with their GOP opponents Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, respectively. Neither candidate was able to get to the 50 percent threshold on Election Day, which is why the runoff is taking place. More than 2 million people have already voted so far and activists on the ground are continuing to help folks who haven’t cast a ballot get to the polls. There are a lot of moving pieces and stakes in this race, so The Root is breaking it all down for you to get a better grasp of what is happening. Why is there a runoff in the first place? Under Georgia state law, candidates for office need to get 50 percent of the vote to win. If they do not, it triggers an automatic runoff. As The Root previously reported, Warnock, who is running against Sen. Loeffler, led all of the challengers in his jungle primary (read our explainer on what that is) and some of his Democratic opponents were encouraged to drop out so that Warnock could reach the 50 percent threshold, making a runoff unnecessary. No one dropped out. Even if all of the other Democratic contenders dropped out, that would have accounted for 15.5, if you add up all of the percentages of votes they got. That would have given Warnock 48.4 percent in total. Neither Ossoff, who political observers say has the more challenging race, nor Purdue got to 50 percent. Then, there is racism, as political consultant Christine Beatty told The Root. “They were put in place for African Americans, especially in Georgia, to discourage them from voting again,” she said. “We’re one of the few states with a runoff. The majority is usually the majority vote, whoever gets the most votes wins. The history of that is steeped in racism.” According to CNBC, the original intent of the law was to weaken the power of Black voters after Reconstruction. It first started with the county unit system, formalized in 1917 but introduced informally in 1898, which gave more voting power to mostly white and less populated areas of the state. Votes were allotted to candidates by county, essentially making it an Electoral College system through which to elect candidates to office. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1962 that the system was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause. Georgia State Rep. Denmark Grover blamed his 1958 loss to Black voters, thus introducing the runoff system in the legislature in 1964 after he won back his seat. The runoff system became law and stands to this day. Nse Ufot of the New Georgia Project told The Root that she and other activists are getting death threats for organizing people to vote in January. People claiming to be members of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and investigators from the secretary of state’s office have regularly stopped Ufot and other organizers. Ufot has security at her home and the organization has a detail at her office. “I want to be really clear: The work that we do is important,” she said. “I’m very proud of our team. I’m very proud of where our state is right now. We will not be deterred, but I am hyper-aware of the waters that we’re swimming in. There’s been a ton of de-escalation training, so we aren’t encouraging our people to be heroes. We aren’t encouraging our people to be martyrs. I would argue that the work of the president, these two Senate candidates, Loeffler and Perdue, and national Republicans and right-wing media are absolutely fanning these flames. And it’s a problem.” Why is this race so important?
Republicans control the U.S. Senate, and if Democrats do not win both of those seats, the GOP can make life for president-elect Joe Biden very miserable—just as they did for his former boss, Barack Obama. So far, Democrats have 46 seats to the GOP’s 50. It is important to note that there are two independent senators, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine, who caucus with Democrats regularly, essentially giving Democrats 48 seats. If Warnock and Ossoff win, that will give Democrats 50 seats and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be able to break any ties, making her office uniquely important and influential. Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has essentially been the leader of mass obstruction when it comes to pushing forward any progressive legislation. Hundreds of bills continue to linger in the Senate because McConnell simply has not called votes on them. Democrats have long called for Americans to get upwards of $2,000 checks in pandemic relief (the House approved the amount yesterday), and the Equality Act, a bipartisan gun control background check bill, as well as the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019 all remain in limbo. With Democrats in the majority, those bills can move for a vote. Beyond that, a GOP Senate will have power to counter any nominations Biden has for the judiciary. Even with a House controlled by Democrats, unless the Senate approves the nomination, Biden’s hands are tied. Georgians, if they send Ossoff and Warnock to Washington, will give Biden the power he needs to pass legislation under his agenda. Will voters turn out for a second election? They already have. Nearly 2.1 million people voted early so far; around 4 million voted early in November. Part of the challenge is voter fatigue, something Ufot said there is no getting around, acknowledging that the job of organizers is to stress how crucial this runoff is. “We’re giving rides to the polls, trying to eliminate that barrier for people participating and direct voter contact, she said. “We’re going back to the people who we touched throughout 2020, it’s our 10 touch strategies. We try to touch the people that we’ve registered to vote 10 times, reminding them to vote, reminding them to bring people with them for the polls. And so some of those touches include phone calls, text messages, and high-quality face-to-face conversations on the doors. We’re sending out postcards. We have these amazing digital ads and all of it is designed to be just this side of annoying, so that folks know how important this moment is and that they show up to vote.” Andra Gillespie, assistant professor of political science at Emory University, told The Root that while numbers are pretty high for this runoff, generally it is very difficult to get folks out a second time—especially for voting outside traditional cycles. Voters who come out for runoffs are usually the types of die-hard, regular voters who show up at primaries and vote in municipal elections where people vote for mundane ordinances in months when people aren’t paying attention. It’s a rarefied electorate, Gillespie said. What is making this runoff competitive, Gillespie said, are the activists who converted all of the state’s unregistered people of color into voters. “It’s that activity that started to change the demographic nature of the electorate, which made Democrats more competitive,” she said. All of a sudden, those double-digit margins by which Republicans were winning started to shrink to single-digit margins, then started to shrink within a point or two of winning races and culminated in Joe Biden being able to pull off a narrow victory in the state. Georgia is diverse, but that diversity wouldn’t have translated into political power if somebody hadn’t identified the fact that they would all be potential voters who weren’t voting, and got them to vote.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in 2019 that Georgia could become a majority-minority state by 2028, with much of the growth coming from Black Americans moving back to the South. Then there is the growing immigrant population, a demographic Stacey Abrams targeted aggressively in 2018. Xan-Rhea Bilal, a field organizer for Georgia Muslim Voter Project said her organization has been engaging Muslim communities in Atlanta and the surrounding counties since 2015. She educates people in mosques, schools, or any place she can target Muslims. Seniors and kids soon-to-be 18-years-old are especially critical in her outreach.
Dec. 21, 2020 (GIN) – Shopping for an anti-coronavirus drug?
Too late. A handful of rich countries have ‘cleared the shelves’ – buying up more supply than their populations actually need.
Canada, with a population of 37.6 million, leads the pack, ordering enough vaccine for its population times six. The U.S., with a population of 328 million, has secured 100 million doses from Pfizer, 200 million from Moderna and 810 million doses from AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Novavax and Sanofi combined, for a combined total of 1.5 billion.
Other wealthy nations have joined the U.S. in placing large preorders, often with options to expand the deals and acquire even more — undermining many countries’ ability to make timely purchases.
“We are dealing with an incredibly competitive global environment,” said Canada’s minister of procurement, Anita Anand. “It’s very much the long game here.”
To protect the rights of vulnerable groups in 190 economies, COVAX, an international body, was launched by the World Health Organization, the European Commission and France to ensure that people worldwide would get access to COVID-19 vaccines once they are approved.
The aim is to have 2 billion doses available by the end of 2021 to protect high risk and vulnerable people as well as frontline healthcare workers. Some experts predict it will be 2024 before there is enough vaccine.
As stark disparities in vaccine access become more visible, pressure will be mounting on wealthy countries to alter their plans. Lois Chingandu, a member of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said she lived in fear of contracting Covid-19 if her country, Zimbabwe, could not obtain enough vaccine.
In the late 1990s, Ms. Chingandu worked in HIV prevention and watched thousands of people die from AIDS each day. Medicine was available to stop it – but only to those who could afford it.
Ms. Chingandu and the People’s Vaccine want drug companies to share the intellectual property so that generic forms of the vaccine can be made.
The World Trade Organization is undecided whether to waive intellectual property rules for Covid vaccines. The proposal has won support from some countries but is opposed by many Western countries.
“People are going to die of Covid,” says Ms Chingandu in frustration, “while people in other countries are living a normal life… Eventually when the privileged decide that it’s time to save the poor people, then we will get the vaccine,” she told the BBC.
By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
Mellody Hobson, a Princeton graduate who in 2019 earned the Woodrow Wilson Award, the university’s highest honor, was named Chairwoman of the Board of Starbucks. With the promotion, Hobson becomes the only African American woman to chair a Fortune 500 company. “I am thrilled and honored to take on the role of chair,” Hobson exclaimed. “Over nearly two decades, I have seen the company continue to elevate and transform its business – adapting to various market environments and evolving consumer trends. “I look forward to working with the Board and talented leadership team on accelerating our strategy, supporting our valued partners, and continuing to create significant value for all of our stakeholders.” Hobson, 51, also serves as chairman of After School Matters, a Chicago non-profit that provides area teens with high-quality after-school and summer programs. Additionally, the Chicago-born businesswoman is vice-chair of World Business Chicago, co-chair of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, and a board member of the George Lucas Education Foundation and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). She is a member of The Rockefeller Foundation Board of Trustees and serves on the Investment Company Institute’s executive committee. Besides serving over 15 years on the Starbucks board of directors, Hobson is the co-CEO of Ariel Investments, LLC, a global value-based asset management firm. In that role, she is responsible for the management, strategic planning, and growth for all areas of Ariel Investments outside of research and portfolio management. Hobson also serves as Chairman of the Board of the company’s publicly traded mutual funds. Before being named Co-CEO, Hobson spent nearly two decades as the firm’s President. “Beyond Starbucks, she has brought invaluable experience to boardrooms across the nation. She currently serves as a director of JPMorgan Chase,” the company wrote in a news release, noting that Hobson is also a past director of Estée Lauder Companies and served as Chairman of the Board of DreamWorks Animation until the company’s sale. In addition to graduating from Princeton, Hobson also received honorary doctorate degrees from Howard University, Johns Hopkins University, St. Mary’s College, and the University of Southern California. In 2015, Time Magazine named her one of the “100 Most Influential People” worldwide. “From the very beginning, I set out to build a different kind of company- one in which all decisions were to be made through the lens of humanity,” said Howard Schultz, Starbucks’ modern day founder and chairman emeritus. “Mellody has been a trusted advisor to me and the company for more than 20 years. She is a fearless leader defined by her grace and wisdom. She has long embraced Starbucks’ purpose and, along with the leadership team, will continue to reimagine Starbucks’ future through the foundation of its past. My heart is full and thankful that Starbucks will have Mellody’s leadership as chair.”
By:Juliet Eilperin, Dino Grandoni and Brady Dennis, Washington Post
Congresswoman Deb Haaland and Michael s. Regan
President-elect Joe Biden chose Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) last Thursday to serve as the first Native American Cabinet secretary and head the Interior Department, a historic pick that marks a turning point for the U.S. government’s relationship with the nation’s Indigenous peoples. With that selection and others this week, Biden sent a clear message that top officials charged with confronting the nation’s environmental problems will have a shared experience with the Americans who have disproportionately been affected by toxic air and polluted land. “A voice like mine has never been a Cabinet secretary or at the head of the Department of Interior,” Haaland tweeted Thursday night. “ … I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land.” In addition to Haaland, Biden has turned to North Carolina environmental regulator Michael S. Regan to become the first Black man to head the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as Obama administration veteran Brenda Mallory to serve as the first Black chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
While the picks represent a concession to progressives in Biden’s party, who publicly campaigned for an American Indian at the helm of Interior, they were also chosen to personify Biden’s plans to address the long-standing burdens low-income and minority communities have shouldered when it comes to dirty air and water. All three nominees will play a central role in realizing his promises to combat climate change, embrace green energy and address environmental racism.
“We have individuals coming to these positions who have seen what it’s like on the other side, in terms of communities that have suffered,” environmental justice pioneer Bob Bullard said in an interview Thursday. “They have been fighting for justice. Now they are in a position to make change and make policy. That, to me, has the potential to be transformative.”
Earlier this week, Biden chose former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm (D), a proponent of zero-emission vehicles, as his energy secretary nominee. He also established the first White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy and designated former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to head it. Former Obama budget official Ali Zaidi will serve as her deputy.
“This brilliant, tested, trailblazing team will be ready on day one to confront the existential threat of climate change with a unified national response rooted in science and equity,” Biden said in a statement Thursday. “They share my belief that we have no time to waste to confront the climate crisis, protect our air and drinking water, and deliver justice to communities that have long shouldered the burdens of environmental harms.”
If confirmed, Regan, 44, who heads the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, would be responsible for crafting fuel-efficiency standards for the nation’s cars and trucks, overseeing emissions from power plants and oil and gas facilities and cleaning up the country’s most polluted sites.
Regan has served as the state’s top environmental official since early 2017, when Gov. Roy Cooper (D) named him to his current role. While union leaders have criticized his approach at times, he has shown a capacity to work with community activists and the corporate world.
Regan forged a multibillion-dollar settlement over cleanups of coal waste with Duke Energy, established an environmental justice advisory board, and reached across the political divide to work with the state’s Republican legislature. In another high-profile case, the state ordered the chemical company Chemours to virtually eliminate a group of man-made chemicals from seeping into the Cape Fear River.
Before entering state government, Regan worked on climate change and pollution issues as southeast regional director for the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group. “Michael knows how to make progress even when that isn’t easy — that’s a necessary skill in North Carolina,” the group’s president, Fred Krupp, said in an email.
In selecting 60-year-old Haaland, a member of Pueblo of Laguna, Biden has placed the descendant of the original people to populate North America atop a 171-year-old institution that has often had a fraught relationship with the nation’s 574 federally recognized tribes.
Three divisions of Interior have a tremendous impact on Indian Country, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Indian Education and the Bureau of Trust Funds Administration, which manages billions held in trust by the U.S. government.
“It’s called plenary power,” said University of Colorado Boulder law professor Charles Wilkinson. “Native people jokingly call it, ‘plenty power.’ ”
Born in Arizona to a Native American mother who served in the Navy and a Norwegian American father who was an active-duty Marine, Haaland bounced between 13 public schools as the family changed military bases. At 15, she worked at a bakery, and later attended law school with the help of student loans and food stamps, occasionally experiencing homelessness as a single mother.
Now, after serving a single term in Congress, she will oversee a department that manages roughly one-fifth of land in the U.S. While she hails from a top oil-and gas-producing state, Haaland has pledged to transform the department from a champion of fossil fuel development into a promoter of renewable energy and policies to mitigate climate change.
By Khalil Abdullah Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Ethnic Media Services
Latasha Brown of Black Voters Matter is one of the plaintiffs in the Georgia purged voters case
(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Arguments in federal court continue this week on whether Georgia’s secretary of state’s office, the defendant in a lawsuit, illegally purged an estimated 198,000 Georgia residents from the state’s voting rolls. U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones has promised a ruling in short order on whether those eligible voters could be restored to the rolls in time to participate in the January 5 run-off elections for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats. “The urgency is there is an election and these people should be allowed to vote,” said CK Hoffler, board chair of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, CEO of the CK Hoffler Firm and president of the National Bar Association. Rainbow PUSH Coalition is a plaintiff, as are the Black Voters Matter’s Fund, Transformative Justice Coalition, and the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project. The deadline for registering to vote in the January election was December 7, but reinstatement on the rolls conveys the right to vote. On September 1, the ACLU issued a report by journalist Greg Palast and The Palast Investigative Fund on the purge and brought that report to the attention of Secretary of State’s office. Once served notice, Georgia had 90 days to take action to investigate, remedy, or respond to the allegation before a lawsuit could be filed. Raffensperger’s office “did nothing,” said Palast. On day 91, December 2, the plaintiffs filed the suit, contending that purges occurred in the runups to the 2018 and 2020 elections. The lawsuit argues the purge was illegal under the National Voter Registration Act, because, for one, Raffensperger’s office used an unqualified vendor rather than one approved by the U.S. Postal Service which maintains the National Change of Address data set, NCOALink. The Palast investigative team found that “When a USPS full-service licensee was used to check these same names, more than half of the 108,306 Georgians removed from the rolls by this flawed process, or fully 68,930 Georgia voters were found not to have filed NCOA notices and …. still have mailable addresses from where they initially registered.” The lawsuit also challenges the constitutionality Georgia’s “use it or lose it law” which was in effect at the time of the purge. The suit states, “Under ‘use it or lose it’ law … the Secretary of State presumes people have moved if they have had (a) no contact with any election official for three years, (b) failed to return a confirmation postcard, and (c) then failed to vote in the next two federal elections, justifying their purge from the rolls. According to the experts in list hygiene, however, fully 79,193 of the 120,561 voters whose registrations were cancelled in 2019 continued to have a verified address to receive mail at their original address of registration.” Thus, from the figures provided by the Secretary of State’s office, “Plaintiffs allege that 199,908 wrongfully lost their right to vote based on an incorrect assumption that they had changed their residence.” Though some purged voters have moved outside the state and some have died, the remaining majority are likely to be predominantly Latino and African American. The latter tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Exit polls showed Latinos in Georgia favoring Biden over Trump, but by narrower margins than African Americans and by even smaller percentages for Democratic candidates over Republicans in down-ballot races. Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats will determine which party controls the Senate in President-elect Biden’s first term. Republicans hold a 52 to 48 margin. Should both of their candidates lose, the balance would shift to 50-50, with Democratic Vice President-elect Kamala Harris wielding the tie-breaking vote. But, as the vice president only votes in the Senate when there is a tie, Republicans will still have a 51-49 edge should only one of their candidates win. “No one expected a run-off election,” Palast said. He conjectured that the Secretary of State’s office decided, from September 1, to run out the clock on the 90-day period to respond, thinking that a definitive election victory in November would move the lawsuit to the backburner of consideration. Palast also noted that Georgia had legally purged 125,000 voters. “Many of these moved in Atlanta, but failed to re-register when they moved across a county line.” Hollywood celebrities have been engaged to encourage Georgia residents to check their voter registration status. The image of actress Rosario Dawson with that message now looms over downtown Atlanta on a 20 by 60-foot electronic billboard. She is also featured in a public service message while Zoe Saldana has ones circulating in Spanish. Leonard DiCaprio has tweeted about the purge. “Live in #Georgia? Go to http://SaveMyVote2020.org to see if you have been removed from the electoral roll.” Star-power aside, Palast has a message of personal responsibility for Georgia residents and those in other states. “We have great lawyers, but you need to take care of your own vote.”
As of December 15, 2020 at 10:00 AM (according to Alabama Political Reporter) Alabama had 301,533 confirmed cases of coronavirus, (21,346) more than last week) with 4,124 deaths (139 more than last week) Greene County had 552 confirmed cases, (53 more cases than last week), with 20 deaths Sumter Co. had 686 cases with 22 deaths Hale Co. had 1,159 cases with 33 deaths
Nov. 31, 2020 (GIN) – Amidst a swirl of silver-wrapped bite-size chocolate drops, the Pennsylvania-based Hershey Company webpage tells you to make Hershey’s Kisses a part of your life.
Because the more chocaholics in the world, the better for shareholders of Hershey’s, Mars, and Nestle and other famed chocolatiers. The global chocolate industry is worth $100 billion, according to national research figures, but hardly any of those profits make it back to the two top growers in the Ivory Coast and Ghana.
This year, the chocolate giants agreed to share profits with African farmers – returning $400 a ton in what was called “a living income differential (LID).” But African cocoa regulators in Ivory Coast and Ghana soon discovered that Hershey was buying cacao on the futures market, thereby avoiding the differential they were supposed to pay.
The two West African countries now say they have withdrawn from membership in a U.S. cocoa industry association, accusing it of helping companies including Hershey avoid paying the LID.
The Cocoa Merchants Association of America (CMAA) is “condoning and conniving with American companies against poor West African cocoa farmers”, they declared in an angry letter.
Hershey and Mars strenuously denied the charge. “While we do not discuss details of our specific buying and hedging activities, we buy cocoa from a variety of suppliers and sources to meet our ongoing business needs,” they said.
But their actions were profiled last month in a Bloomberg news article headlined “Hershey Is Behind Big Cocoa Trade That Upended N.Y. Markets.”
Payment of the income differential certifies cocoa, which is sustainably sourced, free of environmental and human rights abuses such as using child labor or being grown in a protected forest. This allows companies to market their chocolate as ethical and charge a premium for it.
But decades after the chocolate industry pledged to cut child labor, a report sponsored by the U.S. government shows the problem has actually gotten worse and the odds are substantial that a chocolate bar bought in the United States is the product of child labor.
About 43% of children in growing areas were carrying out hazardous activities in the 2018-19 season, according to the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago. That’s up from 30% a decade earlier.
Some 1.48 million children are engaged in hazardous child labor in Ghana and Ivory Coast, NORC found. Fairtrade International estimates the number is likely higher. “We’re shocked but not surprised,” they were quoted to say. “It is legitimate to ask why child labor is still rife in the industry.” w/pix of Ivorian child laborer
By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
OneTen, a coalition of leading executives, said it would work to hire 1 million African Americans into family-sustaining jobs with advancement opportunities over the next decade. The coalition joined forces to upskill, employ, and advance the hires as a method to chip away at the economic barriers plaguing African Americans. “This is a moment in time for Americans to move past our divisions to come together and reach our full potential as a nation,” Ken Frazier, the chairman and CEO of Merck and a OneTen founder stated. “Our country’s workforce of the future will be an increasingly diverse one,” Frazier proclaimed. “Through the creation of one million jobs for Black Americans over the next ten years, OneTen has the potential to address persistent inter-generational gaps in opportunity and wealth,” Frazier remarked further. In addition to Frazier, other OneTen founders include Ken Chenault, chairman and managing director of General Catalyst and former chairman and CEO of American Express; Charles Phillips, the managing partner of Recognize and chairman of the Black Economic Alliance; Ginni Rometty, executive chairman and former CEO of IBM; Kevin Sharer, a former chairman and CEO of Amgen and former faculty member at Harvard Business School. Each of the founders serves on the Board of OneTen – Frazier and Rometty serve as co-chairs. “In this moment when all Americans share an aspiration for greater economic opportunity, leading executives and employers across industries are taking action to make a meaningful, measurable and lasting systemic impact on racial and economic justice and to create a more equitable society,” the founders noted in a news release. OneTen connects employers with talent partners, leading non-profits, and other skill-credentialing organizations that support diverse talent development. “OneTen links our companies with the critical work we know we need to do to improve racial equity in America,” Rometty added. “This will not only help our individual companies, but by removing structural barriers that have disproportionately hindered Black Americans from joining the middle-class, it will also help lift all Americans,” Rometty continued. OneTen members include Accenture, ADP, Allstate, American Express, Amgen, Aon, AT&T, Bain & Company, Bank of America, Cargill, Caterpillar, Cisco, Cleveland Clinic, Comcast, Deloitte, Delta Air Lines, Eli Lilly, General Motors, HP Inc., Humana, IBM, Illinois Tool Works, Intermountain Healthcare, Johnson & Johnson, Lowe’s, Medtronic, Merck, Nike, Nordstrom, PepsiCo, Roper Technologies, Stryker, Target, Trane Technologies, Verizon, Walmart and Whirlpool Corporation. The organization noted that it’s looking forward to welcoming additional members, including small and medium-sized businesses, which power the majority of the U.S. economy. In a statement, the founders pledged that OneTen would work with employers, education partners, and upskilling partners to design educational and employment solutions. Together, these partners will better develop, retain, and advance diverse and underrepresented talent, more broadly, but with an explicit commitment to hire or promote Black Americans without four-year degrees, the founders added. OneTen’s role in the talent ecosystem will be local, reflecting the workforce development landscape, and focus on reducing exclusionary hiring practices, identifying robust and new talent sources, and ensuring that adequate and equitable career pathways for advancement exist. In January 2021, the organization will begin working with partner employers to improve workplace inclusivity practices and will connect talent providers to partner employers shortly after that, the founders continued. “By bringing together a coalition of key leaders and asking them to make long-term commitments, we have the ability to change employment practices and help break down systemic barriers opening the door to full participation in our economy,” Rometty said.
BBy Tim Stelloh, NBC News Black Lives Matter signs that apparently were burned and destroyed at historic Black churches in Washington, D.C., during a pro-Trump rally this weekend are being investigated as possible hate crimes, authorities said Sunday. D.C. police said they were seeking information about the incidents, which occurred at Asbury United Methodist Church, founded in 1836, and Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, where Frederick Douglass’ funeral was held in 1895. “This weekend, we saw forces of hate seeking to use destruction and intimidation to tear us apart,” Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, said in a statement Sunday. “We will not let that happen, and continue to stand together strong and United to Love.” She said the police department and religious affairs officials from her office reached out to the churches Sunday. In a statement, Asbury’s senior pastor, the Rev. Ianther Mills, said pro-Trump supporters removed a Black Lives Matter sign from the church and “literally burned it in the street.” “It pained me especially to see our name, Asbury, in flames,” she said. “For me it was reminiscent of cross burnings.” Seeing the incident on video, Mills said, “made me both indignant and determined to fight the evil that has reared its ugly head.” “We had been so confident that no one would ever vandalize the church, but it has happened,” she said. It wasn’t immediately clear what video Mills was referring to. A widely circulated clip on social media purported to show far-right protesters Another widely circulated video appeared to show protesters tearing a Black Lives Matter sign from nearby Metropolitan AME Church. Metropolitan posted a brief statement Sunday on Twitter saying, “Black Lives Matter yesterday, today, and always.” Yolanda Pierce, dean of the Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, called the alleged incidents “acts of both racial terror and religious violence.” “Burning Black Lives Matter signs ripped from churches is an explicit threat to the sanctity of the Black church and to Black lives and freedom, even if the church itself is not historically Black,” she said. Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, said that in addition to Douglass’, the funeral for her cousin, the longtime Washington journalist Gwen Ifill, was also held at Metropolitan in 2016. Several people were stabbed during Saturday’s event, as pro-Trump supporters fought with counterprotesters amid anti-coronavirus restriction protests and a rally held by Trump’s supporters. NBC Washington reported Sunday that their conditions were critical but non-life-threatening. A man identified as Phillip Johnson, 29, was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon in connection with the quadruple stabbing, the station reported. It wasn’t immediately clear what led to the stabbing.
