WSSN Stories

Global Entertainer and former honoree La Toya Jackson hosted this year’s Face Forward Gala that took place at The Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills with a special performance by recording artist CeeLo Green.

This annual gala raises funds that directly support patient treatment and recoveries, airfare, accommodations, and all necessary medical expenses for survivors of domestic violence. Founder of Face Forward and domestic violence survivor, Deborah Alessi along with her Co-founder and husband, Dr. David Alessi M.D., Beverly Hills renowned facial reconstructive surgeon, have provided millions of dollars in donating surgical and counseling services to nearly 80 patients from 10 different countries around the globe, some requiring up to ten or more surgeries each, over multiple years of treatment.

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Last years Beacon of Hope winner Caitlyn Jenner was present to pass her award forward and present to this year’s winner.

Celebrities present included Actor John Savage, Actress Christina DeRosa, Australian actress/model Nicky Whelan, and many others. For more information about Face Forward, visit http://www.faceforwardla.org/.

(EMPIRE NEWS NETWORK—ENN)— LOS ANGELES, CA— Many times life can become intensely unpredictable and somewhat trying. With that being said, people are sometimes bound to lose their sense of purpose and identity, and in turn they become broken and feel stagnant on their journey to fulfilling their dreams. Haitian-American writer and entrepreneur, Britney D. Laborde, is giving people a sense of hope, purpose and healing with the release of her book, “I Am Healed”.

“I Am Healed’ was created to give people a sense of hope for their future, strength to keep going and the willingness to fight for their destiny,” Laborde explains. “I want my readers to know that everything you were brought to; you were built to grow through.”

Throughout the pages of the book, Britney incorporates her personal journey as a living testimony that you can find healing, restoration and power from within if you only believe, have a positive mind, and trust that all things are working together for your good.

“I Am Healed” is scheduled for release on Amazon on Wednesday, November 6, 2019. To stay updated on the release of the book and events, follow I Am Healed Movement on Instagram @iamhealedmovement.

By Tanu Henry | California Black Media

“I jumped on the mayor’s desk, I had a few bizarre interviews on CNN, I did a lot of cussing out of our officers,” said Stevante Clark, a Sacramento-based rapper-turned-activist. He was talking about experiencing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after police officers shot his brother, Stephon Clark, eight times, killing him in the backyard of their grandparents’ home in March 2018.

“I did a lot, but that’s not who I am,” Clark continued. “Those are situations that happened because of the death of my brother who I was close to, and I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t have the resources. My mental health was affected by my brothers death.”

Clark was speaking during a panel discussion titled “Bridging the Gap: Creating Policy for Sustainability in Underrepresented Communities,” held September 12, during the 2019 Congressional Black Caucus Legislative Conference. The Black caucus held its annual conference at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC, from September 11-15.

Organized by the Sacramento Black Chamber of Commerce (SBCC), the panel discussion drew guests from all over the country. They came to see officials, leaders and activists from California participate in a lively and thoughtful discussion about African-American life and well-being in Sacramento. The panelists dove into various ways public safety, mental health and public policy all rub against each other and impact the lives of Blacks in California’s capital city.

Even though Sacramento is fairly diverse and there are African Americans residing in different areas of the city, the majority of Blacks live in neighborhoods on the city’s south side.

“I’m Proud to have been a part of the early discussions about how we can share what’s going on in Sacramento – the challenges and successes we’ve had over the years – with our congressional leadership,” said Larry Lee, president and publisher of the Sacramento Observer, the capital city’s largest African-American newspaper. The 50-year-old publication is also the oldest Black newspaper in Sacramento.

The SBCC put on the event, says its president, Azizza Davis Goines, to effect change in the city’s most under-served communities.

“We know what we need. And we are discovering that we know how to convene the resources committed to working with us,” she said.

Lee, who is also the former board chair of the SBCC, joined other Sacramento leaders for the discussion, including Daniel Hahn, the city’s first African-American police chief who is a native and grew up in one of the city’s toughest neighborhoods. Hahn took over the police department in August 2017, only seven months before officers on his squad killed Clark.

“There’s a reason we sat them next to each other,” Lee said, half-joking but explaining that the SBCC deliberately put Clark and Hahn side-by-side on the panel. Their seating easily symbolized the steps Sacramento is taking to build trust and break down the barriers that exist between police officers and residents of the city, particularly in neighborhoods that are predominantly poor and minority.

William Jahmal Miller, director, Corporate Reputation and Thought Leadership at Blue Shield of California and Jamilia B. Land, a human rights activist and children’s mental health advocate, were the two other panelists.

Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, former mayor of Baltimore, moderated the panel discussion. She stressed the importance of leaders and investors finding out what people need instead of imposing solutions on them, even when they mean well.

“It frustrated me when I was in public office. It seemed the people with the resources to do a lot of things hadn’t had one conversation with the community,” she said. “They just had big ideas. I welcome investment in our communities, but I always encourage people to make it about the people you serve – and not about yourself.”

For Miller, creating sustainability in Sacramento’s communities of color requires a shift in thinking from managing problems “downstream” to preventing them “upstream.”

“Sustainable communities that are built to last are socially strong, economically strong, geographically strong, politically strong and engaged, and their amenities are conducive to healthy living,” he said. “Community trauma results in structural inequities such as violence, such as failing schools.”

In many ways, Sacramento is ahead of the nation when it comes to innovative policing that focuses less on force and punishment and more on intervention and building relationships with communities. Since Hahn took the helm of the police department, he has taken a number of steps when it comes to recruiting, training, policy and equipment to make his officers less biased and the department more accountable. The Sacramento police department has now increased the use of less lethal Bean Bag rounds and PepperBall launchers as well as Tasers and body cams for all officers.

Every cop in the city now has to take implicit bias training at UC Berkeley, and a program called “Walk in My Shoes” pairs officers with members of the community who spend time on duty with cops. There are also community service programs, neighborhood “Peace Walks” and other relationship-building and recruitment programs in the city’s African-American neighborhoods.

Clark, for instance, attended a class Hahn introduced called the Transformational Police Model. In it, police officers and community members sit in a room together, learn the course material and exchange perspectives.

Several companies in Sacramento have stepped up to support the prevention work Hahn and the SBCC is doing, including Blue Shield of California and SMUD, the city’s main power company. The community-owned, not-for-profit utility also sponsored the panel discussion.

“We are excited to be a partner of the Black chamber,” said Jose Bodipo-Memba, Director of Sustainable Communities at SMUD. “We don’t want one-time hits. We are trying to find ways communities can thrive overall. We’re focusing on social well-being, health and environment.”

In Sacramento County, where Sacramento is the largest city and county seat, the African-American population is about 14 percent (a little over 68,000 people). Blacks in the county have the highest unemployment rate of all races at 15.9 percent and a poverty rate of 26.5 percent, according to “The State of Blacks in California,” a report commissioned by California Black Media. Only 21 percent of African-American adults have bachelors degrees.

All the panelists praised the progress Sacramento is making but acknowledged that more work needs to be done.“As African Americans, we have to take responsibility for ourselves,” said Land, who stresses that, for her, racism is a mental health disease that impacts everyone and stacks up systemic odds against minorities. “While we, often times, want to challenge others to be transparent and to be accountable, we often times fall short of doing that ourselves.”

This year’s John Ross III Celebrity Charity Basketball Game returned to Long Beach City College Hall Of Champions gym with some of the best athletes, celebrities, and rappers taking the court. John Ross, a Jordan High School Alumni, went on to the University of Washington in 2013 to become one of the best receivers their college has ever seen. Drafted 9th overall by the Cincinnati Bengals in 2017, John has gone to play in the NFL for two seasons now but has not forgotten his home. 

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This is Ross first time hosting his first-ever Charity Celebrity Basketball game. A change of pace from last year as he hosted a celebrity flag football game. The game was created to help support his foundation the John Ross Foundation. The foundation looks to give back to underprivileged youth in both Long Beach and Cincinnati. For more info about John Ross Foundation, visit http://jross3foundation.com/

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By Christina Laster | NAACP Education Chair | #BlackEdChat

Black teacher presence in the classroom may be showing some signs of progress, but not nearly enough

EMPIRE NEWS NETWORK (ENN)— The historic Brown vs Board of Education (1954) case not only “desegregated” the nation’s public schools, but it also opened up desegregation of lunch counters in North Carolina, public transportation in Alabama, and public spaces across the entire nation. 

Still, desegregation had its costs – especially within the public education system.  While the doors to Whites-only schools were opening for Black students, the doors to classrooms and offices were being closed to Black teachers and principals. 

In the period immediately following Brown, for example, then number of Black principals in Alabama decreased from 210 to 57. In Virginia that number plummeted from 170 to 16.  Recent studies show that, currently, only 20 percent of principals across the country are non-White, and of those only 10 percent are Black.

Black teachers didn’t fare much better back then and, unfortunately, they’re not faring much better now. 

In segregated schools, Black teachers served as more than gatekeepers to information and degrees.  They were culturally relevant advocates, allies, friends, and family. They were sharing a common purpose in prevalent conditions of struggle, using shared cultural knowledge and forms of interaction to navigate.  In White schools, Black teachers were seen as invaders and access was only granted to those that could show the highest levels of proficiency in the performance of “Whiteness.”  Most frequently, these measures of performance took the form of graduate school programs, degrees and certifications that Black educators were unable to access or not allowed to complete. 

Today, while approximately half of students in the public school system are Black, Latino, Indigenous, or otherwise not White, over 80 percent of teachers identify as Caucasian. Furthermore, only 7 percent of public teachers are Black while 16 percent of the student population is Black.  Black teacher presence in the classroom may be showing some signs of progress, but it’s not proportional to the overall national Black student population and it’s not growing at a rate that’s fast enough to keep up with current demographic trends.

Lack of access to certification, discrimination on the part of many White administrators, and a lack of culturally relevant representatives to bridge the gap between students and teachers are among the primary reasons Black teachers are having trouble accessing Black classrooms.  Non-traditional and tailored public schools, however, have become a unique bubble of protection for Black educators and administrators to reenter the public education system. The results have been promising. 

Non-traditional, non-profit public schools are bucking the trend of lost Black educators.

A recent study examining non-profit public schools in North Carolina showed that while the proportion of Black students in those non-traditional and traditional public schools are similar, the non-traditional alternatives have approximately 35 percent more Black teachers.  Further, Black students in tailored public schools are 50 percent more likely to have at least one Black teacher than their peers attending traditional public schools.

Having Black teachers in classrooms with Black students is paying off.

Studies, such as one recently from Johns Hopkins University, have shown that Black elementary school students perform better in math and reading when they have a Black teacher.  Just one Black teacher “reduced their probability of dropping out by 29 percent for low-income black students – and 39 percent for very low-income Black boys.” They are more likely to find themselves placed in gifted programs, and Black students are also more likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college with exposure to just one Black teacher in their schools.  

Reinserting Black representation into the classroom also serves to protect students form the harsh and asymmetrical punishments they experience, on average, at the hands of mostly White instructors. That’s not saying or proving all White teachers are bad for Black students; but there are major disparities needing more analysis, policy redress and improvement. But, in the meantime, we do see success when Black students are either with Black teachers or interfacing in the same spaces with them: they are less likely to face expulsion, suspension or detention.  They are also less likely to face the low expectations often set for them by many White teachers stemming from implicit and explicit bias.

This can be fixed. There is a way to achieve balance, proportionality and, ultimately, high-achievement outcomes by recognizing the need for more Black teachers. By offering Black students the types of teachers they can look up to as culturally relevant representatives, non-profit public schools – such as the highly successful network of Learn4Life personalized or tailored learning public schools in California – are not only undoing the damage left in the wake of the desegregation movement, but they are rebuilding the bonds of confidence and support that reach full equity in society as a whole.

Rather than taking resources away from public schools, they are actually expanding the original spirit of public education while restoring hope to non-traditional students. These uniquely designed and transformative educational institutions are providing a vital space of universal inclusion for teachers and principals, as well.  And they are better serving Black students in the process.

By Lou Yeboah

Listen, only God can satisfy our inner hunger. God put a longing in our hearts that was intended to lead us back to Him. The problem is that instead of turning to God and letting Him fill our souls, we turn to other things — alcohol, drugs, sex, money, pleasure, work; knowing doggone well that the satisfaction they bring is ony temporary. Now I know some of you may say, well something is better than nothing. But why settle for sometime love when you can have everlasting love. The love of God. A love that is eternal, unconditional, incomprehensible, and immeasurable! Trying to fill a void that only God can!  Until God’s love and acceptance is enough, NOTHING EVER will satisfy. You better know that you know! God is the source of our satisfation.

Think about King Solomon and his quest to find satisfaction for the deep longings of his heart. King Solomon had eveything.  He wrote in [Ecclesiastes 2:10], “And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure.” He had it all.  But listen to what he eventually confessed—”Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.” [Ecclesiastes 2:11]. Meaningless! Meaningless!  Utterly meaningless! Everything  was meaningless!  “So I hated life.” Kiing Solomon, the guy who had everything, ends up hating life. Why? Because nothing in this life can satsify our inner hunger but God. The deepest thirst of our souls can only be quenched by Him.

“Nothing can satisfy but Jesus. “For He satsifies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.” [Psalms 107:9].

What was true for King Solomon is true for us. When we try to make things in this life fill the void we sense, we end up hating those things that we poured all our hopes into, because they ultimately fall short of satisfying us. Why? Because only God can fill the void.

Just like the woman at the well, God put a longing in our hearts that was intended to lead us back to Him. Only His unconditional acceptance, approval, and affirmation can fill the empty places in our hearts-the deepest thirst of our souls.

Run to Jesus and ask Him to fill the void with His saving love and eternal life. That’s the only thing that will satisfy your greatest need. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels – everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him.”  [Colossians 1:16-17]

You are invited to the Banquet…. Will you go?

Hollywood Power Broker Koshie Mills is the creator and executive producer of “The Diaspora Dialogues” talk show and docuseries. A live taping is scheduled to take place on Friday, November 1, 2019 at the California African American Museum, 600 State Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90037 at 6:30 pm.

Born in Ghana, West Africa and curated in Los Angeles, California, Koshie Mills initial experience in the entertainment industry came from managing the careers of her three successful sons who are all actors. Kwame Boateng (Everybody Hates Chris, The Plug), Kofi Siriboe (Queen Sugar, Girls Trip) Kwesi Boakye (Claws, Colony).

An African woman at the core, Koshie says “I created the Diaspora Dialogues movement and platform to mend the divide between Africans from the continent and African Descendents within the Diaspora. The Dialogues will ignite the long overdue conversations needed to create a better understanding of our different experiences but shared identity”.

2019 has been declared “The Year Of Return”, In commemoration and celebration of the resilience of the African people 400 years post transatlantic slavery. Ghana’s President Nana Akufo Addo has decreed an official welcome to African Americans to come back home to Africa.

This season, The Diaspora Dialogues will lend its important cultural voice, by coming into the community Live and curate conversations addressing our internal racism, identity crisis and cultural disconnect. The focus will be on “the journey to healing” and what the 21st century African Renaissance has the potential to look like for all its descendants.

Celebrity and influential who have shown support of the movement and have joined this important and powerful platform include Kofi Siriboe, Tiffany Haddish, Rosario Dawson, Isaiah Washington, Ryan Destiny, Estelle, Monique Coleman, Jodie Smith, Suede, Chike Okonkwo and many more.

Tickets for this event are available now at Eventbrite – https://www.eventbrite.com/e/koshie-mills-presents-the-diaspora-dialogues-live-tour-los-angeles-tickets-74738156839?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

SACRAMENTO, CA— Governor Newsom signed Assemblymember Chris Holden’s legislation, Assembly Bill 30, that ensures dual enrollment opportunities remain available to students. 

“With the rising cost of higher education that widens the achievement gap, we need to find more ways to make college more affordable and accessible,” said Assemblymember Chris Holden.

“Dual enrollment is a proven strategy that creates pathways to college and gives opportunities to students who might never have thought it would be possible to go to college.” 

Assembly Bill 30 extends the College and Career Access Pathways (CCAP), first established by Assemblymember Holden’s legislation in 2015, past its current expiration at the end of 2021, and ensures dual enrollment opportunities remain available to students who are not already college bound or are underrepresented in higher education. The new legislation also streamlines the process for developing CCAP agreements between community colleges and K-12 districts. 

Dual and concurrent enrollment provides high school students access to college-level coursework. In some cases, students earn both high school and college credit for the same course depending on approval from local school and community college governing boards. 

“Dual enrollment helps increase the number of college graduates, reduce time and money spent for college, and help close the achievement gap,” said Holden. “Today’s signature is a win for students and their families.” 

(EMPIRE NEWS NETWORK—ENN)— SACRAMENTO, CA— Recently, Assemblymember Chris Holden joined Governor Gavin Newsom’s signing ceremony for legislation aimed at improving California’s wildfire prevention, mitigation and response efforts. As chair of the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Energy, Holden had a significant role in developing a comprehensive legislative package this year to address the threat of wildfires and the resulting impact on communities and ratepayers.

“It’s been a privilege and a great responsibility to work with Governor Newsom and my colleagues in the Legislature to find the right response to the devastating wildfires that have ravaged our state,” said Holden. “Our work is not done yet but we’re in a much better place this year than we were only a year ago.”

The bills signed by Governor Newsom today included Holden’s Assembly Bill 1513 which refined provisions of legislation signed earlier this year to prevent and respond to fires caused by electric utility infrastructure.  The Governor also signed several bills for which Holden played a key role in crafting as Chair of the Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee.  The bills will result in the refinement of programs impacting the deenergization of electric lines (Public Safety Power Shutoffs) to prevent ignition of fires during extreme weather events and enhance vegetation management to prevent fire ignition by electric lines.  The full list of bills signed by Governor Newsom can be found here.

Climate change has created a new wildfire reality for California. The state’s fire season is now almost year round. More than 25 million acres of California wildlands are classified as under very high or extreme fire threat with approximately 25 percent of the state’s population – 11 million people – living in those high-risk areas.  At the same time the state is experiencing an increase in weather patterns with high wind and temperature coupled with low humidity.  The events, along with deficiencies in utility vegetation management practices, have caused the ignition of several fires as a result of contact between the electric lines and vegetation.

“Our goal in the last year has remained constant – protect ratepayers and wildfire victims, improve the safety of electric infrastructure, and ensure that we have fiscally stable electric utilities to serve customers,” said Holden.

Holden’s legislation was a follow up bill to Assembly Bill 1054 signed earlier this summer, that increased safety requirements for utilities and protected customers and taxpayers from wholly bearing the costs of devastating wildfires.