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After Emmanuel AME shooting, fear of white supremacists spread again

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After Emmanuel AME shooting, fear of white supremacists spread again

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Making Our Voices Heard: Teen Organizers

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Making Our Voices Heard: Teen Organizers

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Why Beyoncé's singing of the "black national anthem" is so significant

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Why Beyoncé's singing of the "black national anthem" is so significant

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Newsela | Beyoncé's performance breathes new life into "black national anthem"

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The song "Lift Every Voice and Sing" has renewed significance in the Black Lives Matter era.

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Amanda Gorman, inaugural poet, 'tailed' by security guard on her walk home

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Amanda Gorman, inaugural poet, 'tailed' by security guard on her walk home

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Amanda Gorman, inaugural poet, 'tailed' by security guard on her walk home

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Amanda Gorman, the nation's first youth poet laureate, said she was "tailed" and told "you look suspicious" by a security guard as she walked home Friday night.

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NFL Commissioner Says The League Was Wrong To Not Listen To Players About Racism

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NFL Commissioner Says The League Was Wrong To Not Listen To Players About Racism

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NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has issued a statement Friday, condemning racism and saying the football league was wrong for not listening to its players' concerns about racism and police brutality.

SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:

There was a startling admission late today from the commissioner of the National Football League. Roger Goodell says the NFL was wrong not to listen to its players' concerns about racism. And he says the league now encourages the kind of peaceful protests that many say cost former quarterback Colin Kaepernick his job. The statement, though, made no mention of Kaepernick. This all comes amidst a nationwide protest against police brutality against black people. Joining me now is NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman.

Hey, Tom.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Hi, Sarah.

MCCAMMON: Tom, today's video statement from the commissioner appears to be a direct response to another video by players released yesterday. What was in that?

GOLDMAN: Yeah. Nearly 20 players, all African American - some of the league's biggest stars - they made a powerful video entitled Stronger Together. And in it, some of them named black victims, many who've been killed by police, victims whose names have become rallying cries against police brutality. And here's an excerpt of that.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: I am George Floyd.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: I am Breonna Taylor.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: I am Ahmaud Arbery.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: I am Laquan McDonald.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: I am Eric Gardner.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: I am Tamir Rice.

GOLDMAN: And, Sarah, the video ended with the players calling on the NFL to publicly condemn racism, to admit it was wrong in silencing players from peaceful protesting in the past and to say that black lives matter.

MCCAMMON: And what was the response from the NFL?

GOLDMAN: Well, late today, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell released this video a little over a minute long, basically answering everything the players asked for. And here's some of that.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ROGER GOODELL: We, the National Football League, condemn racism and the systematic oppression of black people. We, the National Football League, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. We, the National Football League, believe black lives matter.

MCCAMMON: And, Tom, this feels like a real change in tone and focus from the NFL. What is the significance of the statement today?

GOLDMAN: Well, there are a couple reasons. Even though around 70% of the NFL's players are African American, the league has a race problem. Twenty-eight of the 32 head coaches are white. Of the general managers - another very important job - only 2 out of 32 are people of color. Now, another reason it's significant - the NFL has had a peaceful protest problem, highlighted by the treatment of former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. You will remember back in 2016, he began to kneel during the playing of the national anthem before games. A handful of players joined him in the protests against police treatment of minorities and social inequality.

And the NFL didn't handle it well. It allowed the issue to be framed in the context of patriotism, and the players, the argument went, were unpatriotic for protesting during the anthem. Kaepernick's career essentially ended the next year. He's still without a job. And the others who protested often did so in a very hostile environment. President Trump infamously used an expletive to refer to them. So for Goodell to come out and say the league was wrong for not listening to these players and their protests - that is a significant admission, although, as you mentioned, he didn't mention Kaepernick. And some critics out there are saying Kaepernick still doesn't have a job, so they don't think this is that big of a deal.

MCCAMMON: Yeah, so does this really change the landscape with so many players speaking their minds now?

GOLDMAN: It does. I mean, you know, the - well, let's just say the landscape has changed - you know, the sheer numbers speaking out right now in the aftermath of George Floyd's death. But there is still resistance, and it's coming from the top again. Today President Trump weighed in. It came after New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees said in an interview this week that players should not kneel during the national anthem; the same argument against protesters that we heard four years ago. Now, there was swift and angry backlash to that. And Brees made a pretty sincere apology. But today Trump tweeted that Brees should not have apologized, saying there are other things you can protest but not our great American flag. No kneeling, the president said.

MCCAMMON: Thanks, Tom.

GOLDMAN: You're welcome.

Copyright © 2020 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

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NFL Commissioner Says The League Was Wrong To Not Listen To Players About Racism

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NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has issued a statement Friday, condemning racism and saying the football league was wrong for not listening to its players' concerns about racism and police brutality. SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST: There was a startling admission late today from the commissioner of the National Football League.

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NFL Commissioner Says The League Was Wrong To Not Listen To Players About Racism - video

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NFL Commissioner Says The League Was Wrong To Not Listen To Players About Racism - video

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nfl commissioner roger goodell says league was wrong for not listening to players earlier about racism - cnn

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NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says league was wrong for not listening to players earlier about racism

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NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said Friday the league should have listened to players earlier about racism concerns in response to NFL players calling on the league to condemn racism and support its black players.

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Black businesses get creative to survive

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Black businesses get creative to survive

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Entrepreneur Keitra Bates stands in a gleaming glass-front retail shop in a new development on the south side of Atlanta.

"We're looking at almost 2,000-sq-ft. of raw space," she says, pointing out the floor-to-ceiling windows that face onto Atlanta's popular Beltline, railways converted to trails and parks encircling the city.

This will soon be the second location for a business she started called Marddy's - short for Market Buddies, a shared kitchen where home cooks can prepare their goods, and collectively market them.

Her dream began at a far less glamorous spot in a long-neglected neighborhood west of downtown.

"When I was first standing outside with no keys on Fair Street and a boarded-up door, I would not have guessed this," Bates says.

"This place is proof that you can save yourself," she says.

Like many Black-owned businesses, the pandemic had the Atlanta food entrepreneur wondering if her fledgling shared commercial kitchen would survive. Looking back a year later, she says it meant getting creative and doubling-down on her mission of connecting with other Black entrepreneurs in order to thrive, and grow her business.
Creating affordable environment for Black businesses
She acknowledges it's a big step opening this second location at the new Pittsburgh Yards development.

"There's no hiding," she says. "Everything that we say that we are, people can kind of peek in and see, like, are they really making those pies? Yeah, we're really making the pies."

Black-owned small businesses have long faced difficult odds whether it's access to financial capital, or discrimination in contracting. Now, the pandemic has hit them the hardest, according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which found that Black businesses closed at more than twice the rate of white-owned businesses in early 2020.

Pittsburgh Yards is specifically designed to address the obstacles facing Black entrepreneurs. The public-private project converted an old transportation hub into shared working space.

The idea is to create an affordable environment for African American businesses to nurture one another, says Erika Smith with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, (which also sponsors NPR). Smith says Atlanta's Beltline is an economic generator, but has also fueled gentrification.

"We are realizing in communities where the Beltline is developed, it's increased the cost of rents for residents and commercial businesses," Smith says. "So part of the strategy is how can we leverage a physical space like Pittsburgh Yards to also satisfy that business displacement issue."
"They have a right to survive"
That's Keitra Bates story. She ran a pizzeria in west Atlanta until revitalization attracted a new landlord who raised her rent. She couldn't afford to stay open. And she saw other Black-owned businesses priced out as well, closing what had been venues where local home cooks could sell their breads, sauces and pies. She calls them hidden entrepreneurs in danger of being ghosted, along with the traditional flavors of the neighborhood.

Bates is one of the Americans NPR has been following as part of our Kitchen Table Conversations, which started four years ago.

"These people have created a business with their talent and they have a right to survive," Bates told NPR in 2019 after she got Marddy's up and running. "Just because there's new money coming in doesn't mean that their business should get snuffed out."

Bates, who is 47, has worked to grow a catering business, aggregating the products her vendors make. About a dozen now use Marddy's shared kitchen, making products including spices, flavored nuts, and vegan cheese sauce.
"A big help"
One of them is Georgette Reynolds, who has a company called Juiced Up.

"Everyone calls me Gigi or the Juice Lady," she says.

She and a couple of helpers are pressing pineapple chunks through a commercial juicing machine. Bottles are set up in an assembly line on a stainless-steel work table.

Reynolds started making healthy juices to help her ailing father and autistic son but soon her gym partners were placing orders. As word of mouth spread, she couldn't keep up with demand. Now Marddy's gives her that capacity.

"Being able to have the space when I need to fill these orders is a big help," Reynolds says.

It also allows for the flexibility she needs to care for her 7-year-old son who is learning to press juice.

"He loves the juicing and the sound and the cause and the effect of the process, she says.
Local entrepreneurs need one another
He's also a great salesman, asking people, "Have you been juiced up?"

Like Reynolds, Bates is also a mother. She and her husband, Kevin, a graphic artist and music producer, have five kids. She says she wants to show them what's possible.

Reflecting on the ups and downs of the last year, she says it made her realize how much local entrepreneurs need one another.

"This whole period from the spring [2020] to now has made people a lot more collaborative and a lot more creative with approaching business," Bates says.

During shelter-in-place, she says, things were tense.

"All of our business stopped, like everything," Bates says. "We had cancellations for catering."

Then, opportunity came when an urban farmer who works with local schools called, concerned that students were going hungry in the shut-down. Initially, she says, there was interest in one of the vendors who produces a boxed lunch.

"But the more we talked, we realized like, 'hey, you have a whole field of collard greens and kale that the children have been growing. So how about we cook it?' "

With the help of donors, Marddy's vendors prepared free family meals using the students' harvest, and surplus bought from area farmers who had lost restaurant business.

"That's been the most exciting, full-circle moment of running this business is being able to connect to farmers, to be a part of children knowing that they are feeding themselves and their community," Bates says. "Because that is empowering in ways that no free lunch could ever be."

Marddy's narrow storefront has a rich history as the location of Leila's Dinette, run by another noted Black food entrepreneur in Atlanta - Leila Williams, who fed leaders of the civil rights movement.
Create a bridge to economic inclusion
Bates says her ultimate mission is to build on that legacy, and create a bridge to economic inclusion for people from marginalized communities. And she's found that with both the pandemic, and the broader push for racial justice, people are being more deliberate about how they spend their money.

"People who are changing their habits in their decision making," Bates says. "That's real change to me."

She's been able to tap institutional and corporate resources as well, including technical assistance for her website from Home Depot, and support from nearby HBCU Morehouse College. In addition to opening a second location at Pittsburgh Yards, she's working to place Marddy's fresh food vending machines around town - a contactless mini-market concept.

The past year has also seen Bates, and her co-worker, Timothy Dobbins, survive an attempted carjacking as they were heading out on a catering job. A man shot at the car, shattering a window. It was traumatic, she says. Yet after they filed the police report, they didn't go home.

"We still had an order to deliver," she says.

It's something she's been analyzing ever since.

"This is what it's like to be Black in America," Bates says. "Where I felt compelled to finish the job because I had already started it. And what's going to happen if I go home and cry? I think so many of us think this way. I know for sure my grandmother thought this way - that we don't have the luxury to fall apart."

Bates says she's trying to grant herself a little more grace these days even as she works to grow her small business.

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'We Don't Have The Luxury To Fall Apart': Black Businesses Get Creative To Survive

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Entrepreneur Keitra Bates stands in a gleaming glass-front retail shop in a new development on the south side of Atlanta. "We're looking at almost 2,000-sq-ft. of raw space," she says, pointing out the floor-to-ceiling windows that face onto Atlanta's popular Beltline, railways converted to trails and parks encircling the city.

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A surge in anti-Asian attacks reported since the start of the pandemic has left Asian Americans across the country scared and concerned, but a Los Angeles-based civil rights group says the actual number of hate incidents could be even higher.

"There are far more people who have not reported incidents than those who have," Connie Chung Joe, CEO of Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Los Angeles, told NPR.

This underreporting is due to a combination of several factors, ranging from language and cultural barriers to a lack of trust in law enforcement, Chung Joe said an interview with Morning Edition host Rachel Martin.

"If the community feels that the police aren't going to do anything, then chances are that word gets around and the community feels next time I'm not going to report it then. What's the point?" Chung Joe said.

Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition aimed at addressing anti-Asian discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic, received more than 2,800 firsthand reports of anti-Asian hate, including physical and verbal assaults, between March 19 and Dec. 31, 2020.

By now, the number of reported incidents has surpassed 3,000, according to Russell Jeung, a co-founder of the coalition and a professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University.

"What we've discovered isn't that we've just had a spike, but we've had a surge over the entire year last year with COVID-19 and with the president's political rhetoric in the last administration," Jeung told NPR's Michel Martin.

The reported incidents range from verbal harassments to physical altercations. Last month, Denny Kim, a 27-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran, was reportedly attacked by two men in LA's Koreatown neighborhood.

The altercation, which left Kim with a black eye and injuries to his nose, was witnessed by his friend, Joseph Cha, local TV station KTLA said.

The two assailants, who ran off after the attack, allegedly said that "all f-ing Asians gotta die," according to Cha.

As a man in his late 20s, Kim is not the typical victim of anti-Asian attacks. Chung Joesaid thatmost attacks target the more vulnerable members of the Asian American community.

"Women are targeted more than twice as often as men," she said, and "we are seeing a spate of hate and violence targeted at our seniors."

The rise in racially motivated attacks has put an entire community on edge.

"Many of the folks that I speak to are scared to go out or they're encouraging their elderly parents not to go out of the house, even for things like daily walks or trips to the grocery store," Chung Joe said. "We do feel like there's sort of a bullet on our backs in our community. And so folks are really worried about this."

Jeung described the situation as a "nationally traumatizing moment" for Asian Americans.

Nearly 44% of all incidents reported to Stop AAPI Hate have come from California.Asian Americans account for roughly 15% of California's estimated 40 million people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. No other state in the continental United States has a larger Asian population.

NPR's Eric Westervelt reported last month that business and civil rights groups across California are demanding action in light of the surge in violence in the San Francisco Bay Area, which left one man dead and others badly injured.

In January, Vicha Ratanapakdee, 84, was going for a morning walk in his San Francisco neighborhood. Surveillance cameras captured a man running at him full speed and smashing his frail body to the pavement. Ratanapakdee died of his injuries two days later. A 19-year-old man has been charged with murder and elder abuse.

The issue has also caught the attention of President Biden, who signed a memorandum pledging to combat anti-Asian and Pacific Islander discrimination, shortly after taking office.

"The Federal Government must recognize that it has played a role in furthering these xenophobic sentiments through the actions of political leaders, including references to the COVID-19 pandemic by the geographic location of its origin," Biden said. "Such statements have stoked unfounded fears and perpetuated stigma about Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and have contributed to increasing rates of bullying, harassment, and hate crimes against AAPI persons."

It was part of a series of racial equity-focused executive orders.
Taylor Haney and H.J. Mai produced and edited the audio version of this story.

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Asian Americans Experience 'Far More' Hate Incidents Than Numbers Indicate

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A surge in anti-Asian attacks reported since the start of the pandemic has left Asian Americans across the country scared and concerned, but a Los Angeles-based civil rights group says the actual number of hate incidents could be even higher.

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Amazon met with ICE officials to sell its facial recognition system

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Amazon met with ICE officials to sell its facial recognition system

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(by Drew Harwell, The Washington Post) - Amazon pitched its facial-recognition system in the summer to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials as a way for the agency to target or identify illegal immigrants....

At the June meeting in Silicon Valley, revealed in emails as part of a Freedom of Information Act request by the advocacy group Project on Government Oversight, officials from ICE and Amazon Web Services talked about implementing the tech giant's Rekognition face-scanning platform to assist with Homeland Security investigations.

An Amazon Web Service official specializing in federal sales contracts, whose name was redacted in the emails, wrote that the conversation involved "predictive analytics" and "Rekognition Video tagging/analysis" that could possibly allow ICE to identify people's faces from afar - a type of technology that immigration officials have voiced interest in for its potential enforcement use on the southern border.

"We are ready and willing to support the vital [Homeland Security Investigations] mission," the Amazon official wrote.

Officials from Amazon and ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment. [NOTE: Amazon's Jeff Bezos personally owns The Washington Post.]

Amazon has marketed the technology to police departments as a way to target and identify criminals, and it is [used by departments] in Oregon and Florida. Civil rights and privacy advocates worry that the unproven technology's expansion could have a chilling effect on public protests or embolden government and police efforts to supercharge mass surveillance.

...Amazon [employees oppose] work that could be used for government surveillance [against illegal immigrants]. Hundreds of anonymous Amazon workers wrote CEO Jeff Bezos a letter roughly one week after the meeting, saying, "We refuse to build the platform that powers ICE, and we refuse to contribute to tools that violate human rights."

...Microsoft, a tech giant building facial-recognition tools that compete with Amazon's, came under fire [from employees] in the summer for the potential work it could do as part of a major ICE contract.

Google has also faced internal resistance over its contributions to Project Maven, a Defense Department initiative that would allow AI to identify objects in battlefield drone video. [No word on whether Google employees oppose its Dragonfly search engine, which was developed secretly for China. It links users' searches to their personal phone numbers, making it easier for the Communist government to track every citizen. Google's Dragonfly also blocks any content Communist rulers don't want their citizens to see.]

Amazon has a number of government contracts and is believed to be the lead contender to win the Pentagon's $10 billion cloud-computing contract, known as JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure). The company also operates a private cloud service for top-secret intelligence used by the CIA. ...

Bezos has donated money to fund college scholarships for "undocumented" students, but he has also publicly supported the tech industry's contributions to national-security efforts and other government work.

"If big tech companies are going to turn their backs on the Department of Defense, we are in big trouble," Bezos said at a Wired magazine event last week. Asked about illegal immigration, he added, "I'd let them in if it were me. I like 'em, I want all of them in. But this is a great country and it does need to be defended."

ICE [wants to use] facial recognition and other artificial-intelligence software as potential...ways to [stop] illegal immigration. (ICE officials told tech-industry contractors last year they wanted an "extreme vetting" system that could automatically mine the social media of foreign visitors to assess whether they might [have criminal records or be linked to terrorists/terrorism].)

Amazon unveiled Rekognition in 2016 as a way to analyze images and detect faces on a massive scale. Its first marketing materials focused on the softer side of the technology, [making it sound fun and innocent], including its ability to look at a dog's face and recognize it's a golden retriever. ...
From washingtonpost .com. Reprinted here for educational purposes only. May not be reproduced on other websites without permission from The Washington Post.

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Amazon met with ICE officials to sell its facial recognition system

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(by Drew Harwell, The Washington Post) - Amazon pitched its facial-recognition system in the summer to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials as a way for the agency to target or identify illegal immigrants....

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The Awakening of Colin Kaepernick (Published 2017)

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In college, Kaepernick began a journey that led him to his position as one of the most prominent, if divisive, social activists in sports.

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The fight for the right to vote in the United States - Nicki Beaman Griffin

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One year after Ahmaud Arbery was killed, Georgia's House passes bill to overhaul citizen's arrest law

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One year after Ahmaud Arbery was killed, Georgia's House passes bill to overhaul citizen's arrest law

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One year after Ahmaud Arbery was killed, Georgia's House passes bill to overhaul citizen's arrest law

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Georgia's House of Representatives has unanimously passed a bill that would roll back citizen's arrest law in the state.

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Racism can negatively affect children's health

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Racism can negatively affect children's health

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Newsela | Kids exposed to racism have higher risk of depression and sickness

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March on Washington 2020: Thousands rally for racial justice | DW News

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Statue of Black hero goes up in Portland

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Statue of Black hero goes up in Portland

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Newsela | Bust of Black hero of Lewis and Clark expedition goes up in Portland

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An unsung hero of one of the most famous American expeditions is receiving his due.