Two pilots behind a project to get teenagers flying a plane across Africa die in the Tanzania crash.
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Sunday, August 4, 2019
Saturday, August 3, 2019
Throwing lifelines to job seekers after incarceration
It’s Wednesday morning and Brooke Wages is standing in front of a whiteboard, bouncing ideas off her startup partner Sarika Ram, a rising junior at Boston University, and writing out a game plan for the rest of the day. It’s early, but Wages is focused and energetic about the work ahead of her. You can tell that she is, to use one of her favorite phrases, killing the game.
Wages and her team have just finished interviewing formerly incarcerated individuals who are now seeking job training and placement through the team’s startup, Surge Employment Solutions, which aims to place people in well-paid, high-skilled trade jobs after they have served time in prison. Today Wages and Ram are planning out the next few months of their pilot program, during which they will start training their selected candidates for their future jobs. By November, the selected candidates will be working their new positions.
Wages is in the dual-degree master’s of business administration and master’s of public administration program at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She founded Surge last year, along with Ram and rising Harvard University sophomore Amisha Kambath. The team has partnered with the Boston Mayor’s Office of Returning Citizens, the Massachusetts Parole Board, Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation, and Strive Boston in their outreach to formerly incarcerated citizens.
Her interest in this area began when she was an undergraduate at North Carolina State University. A mechanical engineering major, she also began to study inequality and the discrimination faced by citizens returning to the workforce after incarceration. Wages was particularly influenced by the late sociologist Devah Pager, especially her book “Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration.” Pager’s research documents discrimination against ex-offenders in the job market and how this bias contributes to recidivism, particularly among black men.
Upon learning about these injustices, “I felt moved,” Wages recalls. “I felt like there was a fire inside to do this work.”
Taking action
After graduating, Wages started working as an engineer in the oil and gas industry, but she still found time to work with former inmates seeking employment. She volunteered with the National Alliance for the Empowerment of the Formerly Incarcerated (NAEFI) and attended reentry circles, which welcome a returning citizen back into a community and establish a support system. Through this work, she got to know people coming out of the prison system.
“[Discrimination against the formerly incarcerated] became more than just this appalling thing that I read about. It became someone’s life story. I really recognized how we had equal value, but I just, by the luck of the draw, happened to be born in a different place” than many of the former inmates she had been meeting through NAEFI, Wages says.
In her engineering work, Wages was finding it difficult to find contractors for highly skilled trade jobs. Meanwhile, she was getting to know people having a hard time finding employment after their release. Taking these two contrasting experiences to heart, Wages founded Surge.
Wages emphasizes that Surge should not be characterized as solely a staffing company or a workforce development company. Rather, the startup assesses a client’s staffing needs, trains returning citizens, and places them in specific roles in the client’s company. The organization does not start training people unless they have a job secured for them first.
“We talk to the client, understand their needs and then develop a unique, personalized training program for that specific position,” she says. “That’s a business model that is not currently being used for the formerly incarcerated population.”
The team currently works out of the Boston University BUild Lab IDG Capital Student Innovation Center as part of the university’s Summer Accelerator Program. Surge also recently won $10,000 from the IDEAS Global Challenge from MIT’s PKG Center, which has also been crucial in funding the startup.
Among the classes in her Sloan program that have been particularly formative, Wages cites 15.S03 (Leading the Way: Perspectives on Advancing Equity and Inclusion), for giving her tools to create systems within her own business to promote equity and inclusion.
“The course provided me with a startup reference guide. We read and discussed the leading evidence-based diversity and inclusion research on topics such as hiring, pay, performance evaluation, identity bias, and harassment, to name a few,” she says. “Just as we acknowledge and address the bias reentering people face in the job market, we need to acknowledge our brain’s proclivity toward bias and build systems that help eliminate that.”
Forging relationships
Wages says much of her success has resulted from connections she has made through her extracurricular activities, such as The Educational Justice Institute (TEJI) at MIT, where she is a graduate fellow. TEJI has provided significant mentorship and support to Wages and her team.
Through TEJI, Wages was a teaching assistant for an “inside-out” class on nonviolent philosophy. The class, ES.114 (Non-violence as a Way of Life), taught by humanities lecturer Lee Perlman of the MIT Experimental Study Group, was based in a prison and comprised half undergraduate students and half incarcerated students. Because it was a discussion-based course, Wages says, all of the students in the class had the opportunity to share life experiences and understand different perspectives. She enjoyed facilitating that process and seeing the strong relationships it helped create among the students.
Wages also serves as the events chair for MIT’s Black Business Students Association and is a fellow at the Forté Foundation, an organization that empowers women in business. She has also gone on the FoundHers retreat for female entrepreneurs, where she connected with other women who have founded startups.
“[Brooke] is a great mentor,” Ram says. “She has lots of undergrads that she takes under her wing.”
Wages has also formed a strong bond with her team and stresses that Surge would not be possible without Ram and Kambath. The trio’s personal relationship is important to Wages, and the group often spends time together outside of work. They take art and dance classes together, for example, and they are prepping for an upcoming Indian movie marathon.
Wages can also be found at the dog park virtually every day, with her dog Grace. “She is the best. She is a chihuahua-heeler mix and all-black — all-black everything, that’s how we operate!” Wages jokes.
Above all of the personal and professional relationships that Wages has created in Boston, her connection to her Christian faith remains as one of the most important things in her life. She is particularly driven by one piece of scripture, in Hebrew 13:3: “Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.”
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Play in the works to celebrate the life and legacy of Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes
Fans are getting to know more about the life of the members of popular R&B group TLC.
While member Chilli is starring in a new reality show along with her musical co-star, Lil’ Kim and Mya, Girls Cruise, a play on rapper on Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes is currently being shown at Synchronicity Theatre in Atlanta.
The play, called 2 the Left: A Tribute to the Life of Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes, stars actress Kerisse Hutchinson as the legendary artist in the one-woman show, according to WABE.
Read More: T-Boz connects with Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes on ‘Hollywood Medium’
The play was also written by Hutchinson and was directed by Tom W. Jones II, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
2 The Left… focuses on the life and spiritual journey of Lopes spanning from the 90s as a member of TLC to last days on earth before her death in Honduras back in 2002.
The play, which took many years for Hutchinson to research before writing showcases “controversial moments” in her life such as the arson incident of her former boyfriend and Atlanta Falcon’s player, Andre Rison’s house being burned down.
Read More: TLC plans new album 10 years after loss of ‘Left Eye’
“I feel like if Lisa was still here, she would love to show her life through theater, Hutchinson This play really allowed me to delve into who she was, not just being a member of TLC, but really as a person,” Hutchinson said according to WABE. “Through my ten years of research, I became more intrigued with her as an artist and as a woman, than just with her music.”
Hutchinson makes it clear that the play is not biopic. It instead focuses on her who she was as a person and her legacy, while also focusing on her spiritual journey.
“She was very layered,” Hutchinson told AJC. “I could probably research her forever and find new things. I think she would be proud of this play. I think it is continuing her legacy. I want people to have a better understanding of who Lisa was, not just externally, but internally and spiritually.”
Read More: The death of Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes 10 years later: She was our voice to the world
The play made its debut on stage on Aug. 1. It will be showing at the Synchronicity Theater for two weeks until Aug. 11.
The post Play in the works to celebrate the life and legacy of Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes appeared first on theGrio.
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Credit Counselor Will Roundtree: How to Get Your Credit In Order
There are so many things that school didn’t teach us, credit being one of them. Ironically, it is one of the single most important lessons that you’ll need in order to survive in the world today.
In an interview with Black Enterprise, credit and financial counselor, Will Roundtree, shares why credit is so important; the difference between business and personal credit; and what you need to do in order to get your credit in order.
Black Enterprise: Why is credit so important?
Will Roundtree: Understanding the meaning of credit is the first hurdle to get over. Credit is simply a tool, in layman’s terms. Once that has been established, the principles on why it is so important can, then, be discussed. Credit is essential to our lives. We need it to purchase homes, automobiles, apply for apartments and many more day-to-day requirements that allow us to move around in every aspect of our lives. Credit is vital to the lifeline of our personal lives and our business lives.
Will Roundtree
What is the difference between personal credit and business credit?
The difference between personal and business credit is not far removed from each other. The major difference is that your personal credit is based on your Social Security number and your business credit is based on your EIN, which is your Employee Identification Number. Your personal credit is generated and curated by three major credit bureaus. They are Experian, Transunion, and Equifax. Each bureau has its own way of reporting information.
Your personal credit is used for personal expenditures and has a direct impact on your daily life. If you pay your bills on time and apply a healthy knowledge to your credit responsibilities, you have an unhindered buying power. However, on the flip side of that, if you do not pay your bills on time, you will adversely affect your ability to purchase life’s necessities and therefore, have obstacles in your way when deciding to make major decisions for your life.
For business credit, there is a completely different scoring model and a completely different credit reporting agency. Business credit is used, solely, for the purpose of business creditworthiness. The bureaus for business credit are Experian Credit, Equifax Credit, Dun and Bradstreet, and SBFE, which stands for Small Business Financial Exchange. These agencies monitor the financial responsibilities you adhere to when doing business while using credit.
How do you help people with credit?
I assist my clients in various ways. My No. 1 way is through credit education. My main focus is to generate knowledge on the subject of credit, especially in the black and minority communities. One of the things I have learned over the course of my journey is that we are economically undereducated in relation to credit, and I teach that if you truly understand the power of credit, you can always leverage it to create wealth. Additionally, I teach the understanding of credit strategies. This aspect is useful when I let people know that credit can always be rebuilt, restored, and repaired. Because believe it or not, the biggest misconception about credit is that it cannot be fixed or that people have to live with the bruises that can happen sometimes when dealing with credit. I simply try to make sure that I cover all aspects of credit when I am out in the community and educate them on their options.
What are three things that people should focus on to build up their credit?
Make your payments on time. Payment history makes up 35%of your credit score, and even one late payment can drop your score significantly. To ensure a strong score, make all payments on time.
Make sure your credit usage is below 30%. This strategy is at the top of my list. Credit usage makes up 30% of our score. Credit usage is the amount of credit you have used based on the amount of credit you have available. Anytime you have over 30% credit usage, your score will drop. I like to tell people that having high credit usage is not the end of the day. They just have to lower that particular factor. Lowering it below 30% is ideal in most situations.
If there is anything negative showing on your report, it can be disputed. One of the things people may not be aware of, per the FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) is that they have the right to dispute anything that reports as negative, inaccurate, incomplete, or unverifiable. For example, you have a debt for $513.23. When disputing that debt ethically and legally and the price cannot be proven down to the penny, that company reporting that account has to legally remove or delete it from your credit report.
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Six households set to be evicted because of Crip rap video shoot
Residents in a California apartment complex are set to be evicted from their households for allegedly shooting a rap video in May “with lyrics espousing gang violence.”
The management company, TerraCorp sent tenants of The Del Monte Manor apartment complex eviction notices in July that accused them of being tied to “criminal or wrongful activity” for participating in an unauthorized and un-permitted film project involving what appeared to be a music video on the premises,” the Monterey County Weekly reports. They are also accusing the tenants of being involved with the video by providing electricity for the production of the video and other help.
Read More: The Crips, now making business moves, file to trademark Nipsey Hussle’s slogan
The video the tenants appeared in was shot for a song called “We Crippin” that reportedly promotes gang violence. Although the video was quickly taken down after it was released on July 16, Seaside Police kept it in their records.
The site reports that the video was shot in the complex just days after a man named Tremain Calloway was shot to death near the housing complex. Police have already arrested and charged two men with murder allegedly tied to the crime. Police say they also belong to the Crips gang.
An advocate for the individuals involved, Princess Pope says the decision to evict the tenants is extreme. Two military veterans and individuals receiving Section 8 housing are among those who are must vacate their homes within 90 days, according to Pope.
The apartment complex is a low-income housing complex. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees low-income housing say they “cannot intervene in the situation.”
“Unless there are allegations of unlawful discrimination and a formal complaint has been filed, HUD has no authority to intervene in ongoing evictions, and as such, does not and cannot get involved, as evictions are legal actions to be adjudicated by a judge through the judicial system,” a HUD spokesperson stated in an email.
The post Six households set to be evicted because of Crip rap video shoot appeared first on theGrio.
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The only African-American Republican in Congress will not run again
Texas Rep. Will Hurd, the only Black Republican in the House of Representatives, announced on that he will not be running for reelection for the upcoming year.
Read More: Former Texas judge jilts Republican Party, accusing Trump of ‘racist ideology’
“I have made the decision to not seek reelection for the 23rd Congressional District of Texas in order to pursue opportunities outside the halls of Congress to solve problems at the nexus between technology and national security,” he stated via Twitter.
I have made the decision to not seek reelection for the 23rd Congressional District of Texas in order to pursue opportunities outside the halls of Congress to solve problems at the nexus between technology and national security. https://t.co/GeZ4Hh264f
— Rep. Will Hurd (@HurdOnTheHill) August 2, 2019
Hurd, who has been one of the few Republicans to publicly criticize President Donald Trump, said that he will continue to help the country in a different way and will remain in politics to “help make sure the Republican Party looks like America.”
Read More: Charles Barkley: Democrats and Republicans ‘suck’ at addressing needs of Black voters
Before winning a position in the House of Representatives, the Texas politicians served in the CIA in the Middle East and South Asia as an undercover officer, the Salon reports.
Hurd made this announcement soon after another GOP congressman from Texas, Rep. Mike Conaway made the decision to retire this week. Hurd is the sixth person in the GOP to retire within the past two weeks.
He has represented districts between San Antonio and El Paso in his role since 2014. He narrowly defeated Democrat Pete Gallego during his first run by 2,400 votes.
Read More: Republicans run racist Colin Kaepernick ad with darkened skin for Trump 2020 campaign
He also won re-election against Gallego again in 2016 by 3,000 votes and defeated Iraq War veteran, Gina Ortiz Jones last year, winning his seat by less than 1,000 votes.
“I will keep fighting to ensure the country I love excels during what will be a time of unprecedented technological change,” Hurd said in his statement on his site. “I will keep fighting to make certain we successfully meet these generational challenges head on. I will keep fighting to remind people why I love America: that we are neither Republican nor Democrat nor Independent; We are better than the sum of our parts.”
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Jim Crow laws in Mississippi still exist to keep Blacks out of office
A lawsuit has been introduced in the state of Mississippi to overturn rules from the state’s 1890 constitution that prevent African-Americans from getting elected in office.
According to The Press Herald, the lawsuit is being championed by former attorney general Eric Holder, and would dismantle rules that require candidates to win over more than half of the popular vote, noting that more than half of Mississippi’s legislative districts are two-thirds white.
Holder, who is the country’s first Black attorney general, is doing this in an effort to help Black officials (such as U.S. Army colonel and civil rights lawyer, Jennifer Riley Collins) hold statewide positions. Collins would have the chance to become the state’s first Black attorney general. Mississippi hasn’t elected a Black person in a statewide position in over 130 years.
Based on current rules, an African-American candidate needs 55 percent of the popular vote to win a statewide position to overcome the “constitutional hurdle,” the suit says. The suit would also help the issue with voting rights in the sate as well.
“Our system was specifically designed to minimize the chances of an African-American being elected to statewide office in Mississippi,” says David Baria, Democratic House Minority Leader.
Read More: Eric Holder and VP Mike Pence have Twitter war over ‘MAGA’ slogan
Holder filed the lawsuit against Republicans, Delbert Hosemann and Philip Gunn, the site reports. Hosemann is the secretary of state and Gunn is the speaker of the house. Both attorneys do not believe the claims are based off of “racial intent.”
“Neither the Speaker nor the Secretary wish to defend the motivations behind a law allegedly enacted with racial animus,” the response to the lawsuit stated. “However, both the allegations in the complaint and the timing of its filing demonstrate that this lawsuit is not about race, and it is not about vindicating alleged wrongs to plaintiffs’ rights to vote — it’s about partisan politics.”
Read More: Black man in Mississippi accuses police of brutal beating wants $1 million in damages
Collins hopes the state will settle, since she would be one of the officials who would benefit from the decision.
“I think Mississippi is ready to move forward,” Collins said in an interview “We just have to make sure that barriers that were intentionally put in place to exclude or marginalize one community over another are torn down.”
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