The operation is meant to recover illegal firearms and confiscate drugs, authorities say.
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Friday, July 12, 2019
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REPORTS: R. Kelly arrested on federal charges of sex trafficking
It looks like R. Kelly is back behind bars.
According to reports, the 52-year-old singer was arrested in Chicago on Thursday evening on federal charges of sex trafficking. NBC4 New York reported that he was picked up by Homeland Security NYPD Investigation agents and NYPD Public Safety Task Force, and he is expected to be taken to New York.
R. Kelly charged with criminal sexual abuse; no-bond warrant set by judge
U.S. attorney spokesman Joseph Fitzpatrick told the Associated Press that the 13-count indictment includes charges of child pornography, enticement of a minor and obstruction of justice. More details should come out on Friday from the Eastern District of New York.
BREAKING: R. Kelly charged with 11 brand NEW counts of sexual abuse
R. Kelly has been accused of multiple crimes against women over the past 20 years and this arrest is not even his first this year. In February, he was booked on charges of aggravated sexual abuse of four women. He plead not guilty and posted bail, prompting his release from Cook County Jail in Chicago. He was arrested in March for failure to pay $161,000 in child support. In May, a grand jury indicted him on 11 more counts of sexual abuse including aggravated sexual assault and criminal sexual assault. Up until Thursday’s arrest, he was free on $1 million bond set in February.
Chicago woman claims she was gang raped at R. Kelly’s music studio
Last year, Lifetime premiered its heartbreaking docs-series, Surviving R. Kelly, featuring commentary from several of his alleged victims.
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White tenant claims racist landlord called her ‘n*gger lover’ and evicted him because she had Black guests
Victoria Sutton filed a federal lawsuit against her white landlords who she said evicted her because she allowed a Black family to come over to her place for a playdate.
Sutton, who is white, has enlisted the help of the ACLU of Georgia and filed a housing discrimination claim on Wednesday alleging that Allen and Patricia McCoy kicked her out of her rental home for having “n*ggers” on their property, a claim the McCoys deny.
Sutton said last fall, she invited a coworker and his family over. After the meet-up she said she hugged him as his family left her Adairsville home. Allen McCoy apparently saw the exchange and, in the complaint, Sutton alleges that he called her a “n*gger lover.”
McCoy then allegedly told Sutton she should be ashamed of herself for having “n*ggers on their property.”
McCoy also allegedly threatened to call Child Protective Services on her. Sutton said she called his wife Patricia to complain that her husband threatened eviction and told her she would have to suffer the consequences of bringing the “n*ggers” around, WSBTV reports.
When WSBTV sat down with the McCoys’ and asked if there was any truth to the claims, Allen McCoy responded, “Nope.”
“Some of the best friends I got is colored,” McCoy said in his defense, yet using another term considered racist by Black people.
“Your best friends are colored?” the reported asks.
“Yes, sir,” McCoy replies.
McCoy and his wife then claimed that Sutton was being evicted because she damaged the property.
“I wasn’t shocked at all because racism is alive and well today,” said Sean J. Young, legal director for the ACLU of Georgia told WSB.
“Racial discrimination is wrong, and whether it manifests in the form of this kind of blatant commentary or whether it happens more insidiously behind the scenes, it’s wrong in every instance,” Young said.
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White woman tells Puerto Rican woman Trump needs to deport her in racist video ‘Go back to your own country’
A belligerent Trump supporter was caught on camera going off on in a verbal racist attack against customers in a Pennsylvania grocery store.
Johanny Santana said she witnessed a white woman spewing hateful rhetoric because a customer started speaking Spanish to a cashier and she got angry about it.
The woman cursed out the boy and his grandfather because they spoke a different language and things seemed to escalate when another lady jumps in and starts cursing them out too.
That’s when Santana whipped out her cell phone and started recording the confrontation, NBC Philadelphia reports.
“The boy comes back and asks another question [to the cashier] and that’s when the woman, who was next to me, started cursing,” Santana recalled.
The woman, she said then blasted her and told her, “You shouldn’t be in this country. I hope Trump deports you.” However, Santana is a US citizen from Puerto Rico with the same rights and privileges as the lady who is confronting her.
In a clip Santana shared on Facebook June 30, the woman made the assumption that Santana was paying for her purchases with “drug money.”
“Adios b*tch,” the woman shaking money and saying, “I’m paying cash with legal money, not drug money.”
Santana says when she asked the woman if there was a problem with her speaking Spanish, she responded: “Can you stop talking to me?”
The woman also cursed at Santana in Spanish called her a b*tch by saying, “You’re a p*ta.”
The white woman she says kept referring to her as the derogatory term even when she asked her to stop.
“You’re a p*ta,” she said the lady repeated.
The white woman also continued her racist rant saying, “I was born here, you don’t belong here” and “go back to your own country.”
—American Airlines issues apology to Black woman for forcing her to cover up on flight—
“I don’t care” Santana says to the woman who retorts, “We’re not you’re f*cking piggy bank.”
That’s when the white woman spewed racist tropes much like Trump.
“You don’t belong here, you came here illegally. You should be deported,” and “I hope Trump deports you.”
Santana said the woman continued with her racist insults so she said she too shot back with insults of her own.
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‘Orange is the New Black’ leaves legacy for women of color
From corrupt, brutal overseers to the fraught world of inmate hierarchy to unlikely friendships and romances, “Orange is the New Black” told deeply rich and complex stories about life for women behind bars that resonated far beyond prison walls.
While it was originally centered around the privileged white character of Piper Chapman (played by Taylor Schilling), the supporting characters — some quirky, some volatile, some comic, some tragic — became the show’s breakout stars.
The award-winning Netflix series also became a showcase for actresses of color, thanks to nuanced story lines with depth that have often proved elusive.
It’s no surprise that some of them went on to become the show’s biggest draws.
Uzo Aduba won the dramedy’s only acting Emmys, while Emmy-nominee Laverne Cox, Danielle Brooks, Samira Wiley and Dascha Polanco all gave masterful performances that lifted their careers far beyond life in Litchfield federal penitentiary.
As the hit dramedy winds down with the seventh and final season on July 26, those actresses take a look back at the profound impact the series had on their lives.
ADUBA (Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren)
A not-so-funny thing happened to Uzoamaka Nwanneka Aduba on her way to audition for a different part on the show: She was late.
She thought maybe the faux pas was the universe trying to tell her that acting wasn’t her destiny. Aduba, 38, had been trying professionally for about 10 years, with small victories, but she quit after her tardiness, thinking maybe a law career was the way to go as her parents, of Nigerian descent, preferred.
That’s when the life-changing phone call came. There was bad news: She didn’t get the part of track star-inmate Janae Watson. But there was also good: She was offered Crazy Eyes instead, though only for a couple of guest appearances. She wore the bantu knots that became the signature style of the character to the audition.
Thank goodness she didn’t listen to the universe. Aduba’s role was extended and she won two Emmys, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and a Golden Globe.
Like Crazy Eyes sometimes does, she let the muses rule.
“My phone wasn’t ringing, with regards to film and television anyway, before our show came out,” she told The Associated Press. “It just felt surreal, I think, for a lot of us to even be having this sort of experience.”
Now, with her higher profile, she has a goal: “I am trying to tell the stories of the missing, the people and the voices that are missing in the tapestry.”
For so many in the cast, the Medfield, Massachusetts-raised Aduba said, “We had been living on the Island of Misfit Toys and being made to feel as though there was no place for us when the truth of the matter is space just needed to be made.”
LGBTQ activist Laverne Cox didn’t quit her day job at the drag spot Lucky Cheng’s in Manhattan until after the first season of Orange wrapped. But it wasn’t long until she made history as the first trans person on the cover of Time magazine.
“I just cried,” she said.
The magazine’s story accompanying the cover on the transgender tipping point had her describing her childhood in Mobile, Alabama, growing up bullied and harassed for presenting as feminine. She came out as trans years later while working in New York City, where she took up acting.
Thanks to OINTB, where her character rode out cycles of acceptance, hatred and violence, Cox has used her star platform to educate the world and push for just treatment of LGBTQ people everywhere.
So much has changed for Cox in the show’s seven-year run.
“Seven years ago I turned 40 and I had not had the big breakthrough in my acting career that I had wanted. I was in tons of debt. I thought it was time for me to do something else,” she told the AP. “I was like, ‘I should go back to graduate school’ and I bought some GRE study materials from a friend of mine.”
Then she auditioned for Orange, “and here we are.”
Cox was the first openly trans person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category and the first to be nominated for any Emmy since composer Angela Morley in 1990.
For years at Lucky Cheng’s she’d tell co-workers she wanted to be an actor and win awards, “and they’d be like, yeah, right whatever,” Cox recalled. “A black trans woman in 2010 saying she wants to be a big star was like, ‘Yeah right, yeah cool.’ Who knew?”
WHAT’S NEXT: She has several projects pending, including the film “Promise Young Woman.”
BROOKS (Tasha “Taystee” Jefferson)
As the brash Taystee, Brooks showed the way not just for other actors of color, but for women of size.
“Cornbread fed, baby, cornbread fed,” she laughed.
The Augusta, Georgia-born Brooks was well on her way doing theater when “Orange” happened after she graduated with a bachelor’s from the Juilliard School.
Brooks is also a singer, earning a Tony nomination for Sofia (Oprah’s film part) in the 2015 Broadway production of “The Color Purple.” She dropped a music video in February for Black History Month featuring herself all glammed up and wet in a bathtub singing “Black Woman,” which includes the lyrics: “The world tells me there is space for me, if I cinch it up and I sew it in, the world tells me it’ll all be mine, with some lashes on and some lighter eyes.”
The song, Brooks told the AP, was “my way of healing myself” while encouraging others to accept who they are.
Brooks’ mom is a minister and her dad a church deacon. Church taught her a lot about how to present herself to the world and the importance of prioritizing self-love. Now, she wants to “show the industry, look what happens when you give people opportunity.”
The 29-year-old Brooks was working as a waitress in New York City (“I was a horrible waitress”) when her agent got her an audition for “Orange,” though initially only two episodes were promised.
“I almost said no to it because I didn’t get to read the script and when I saw the scene that
I was going to be in I had to be topless. I was like, oh no. I’m from South Carolina. I grew up in a very religious household. I was nervous also about playing a stereotype, of the black woman who the world might consider sassy and loud and angry. To put that on TV, I was not sure about it.”
She’s obviously glad she did.
“It has completely changed my life,” Brooks said. She believes it also opened doors for nontraditional shows featuring full casts of color on TV.
“How much has the world changed, how much has Hollywood changed where you can have shows like ‘Pose,’ you can have ‘Insecure’ and ‘Atlanta’ and a plethora of other shows out there where the lead can look different from what we’ve seen before?”
WHAT’S NEXT: She appears in the film “Clemency” and is working on an EP. She is also expecting her first child.
WILEY (Poussey Washington)
Wiley was a bartender for two and a half years after she, too, graduated Julliard when she auditioned for Orange. There were no promises that lesbian character Poussey would be a recurring role. After she got the job, she stayed at Fred’s Restaurant in Manhattan for the first couple of seasons.
“I didn’t want to be stupid about it and quit my job and then end up nowhere,” she told the AP.
Like her character, Wiley is gay. Raised in Washington, D.C., Wiley’s sexuality was embraced by her liberal pastor parents, which she considers key to her success. She’s now an advocate for LGBTQ, immigration and prison reform causes.
Wiley, 32, was not publicly out in those early seasons of Orange. She credits Poussey with giving her the strength and confidence to come into her own, both as an actor and a gay black woman. Wiley appeared on the cover of Out magazine for its 20th anniversary to seal the deal.
“I think deep down, the both of us, Poussey and I, are just like really open and honest people with our hearts,” Wiley said. “There are real Pousseys out there, in prison, not in prison, being thrown away because people think they don’t matter.”
Wiley won three Screen Actors Guild Awards for Poussey. She went on to receive an Emmy nomination in 2017 for her portrayal of Moira in the Hulu series “The Handmaid’s Tale” and won an Emmy for that part the following year.
WHAT’S NEXT: Wiley appears in the film “BIOS” and is working in a comedy, “Breaking News in Yuba County.”
POLANCO (Dayanara “Daya” Diaz)
She had dreamed of becoming an actor as a child but thought her weight might hold her back, so she put herself through Hunter College instead, going to school as a teen mother raising a young daughter.
The Dominican Republic-born Polanco went on to earn a bachelor’s in psychology and worked in a hospital as she studied to be a nurse (and eventually had a second child, a son). But over time, she decided to pursue acting.
After minor roles in two TV series, she was cast in OITNB in 2012.
“I had three jobs at the time and I was also finishing my nursing clinicals,” she told the AP of life before “Orange.”
“We are the reality.” she added. “Hollywood has been very exclusive in who they consider an actor, who they want to depict on screens.”
Polanco, who is also a songwriter, now values her versatility as an actor who doesn’t fit the Hollywood mold, though the early years were nerve-wracking.
“We can all relate to that, not feeling enough. I was very fearful of going out to auditions and being told, well you have to lose weight, well your hair is curly,” she said. “You come across this discrimination and this prejudice and you don’t realize how much they affect you. … It’s learning how to embrace those scars and how we use it as foundation and not as identity.”
It’s not always easy. While acting and music are passions, “I’m still out here not getting roles,” Polanco said.
WHAT’S NEXT: She plays Cuca in the film version of the stage musical “In the Heights” and worked in the film “iGilbert.”
The post ‘Orange is the New Black’ leaves legacy for women of color appeared first on theGrio.
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