21 Savage: Young undocumented immigrants should be ‘exempt’

By JONATHAN LANDRUM Jr. AP Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rapper 21 Savage believes undocumented immigrants like him who lived in America as children should automatically become U.S. citizens.

The Grammy-nominated artist who earlier this year was held in federal immigration detention told The Associated Press on Thursday night that undocumented immigrants also shouldn’t have to endure the lengthy process to obtain visas. He spoke in an exclusive interview before receiving an award from the National Immigration Law Center.

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“When you’re a child, you don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “Now, you grow up and got to figure it out. Can’t get a job. Can’t get a license. I’m one of the lucky ones who became successful. It’s a lot of people who can’t.”

NILC honored 21 Savage for being an advocate for immigrant justice. He was arrested in February in what U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said was a targeted operation over his expired visa.

He spent 10 days in a detention center in south Georgia before being released.
The Atlanta-based rapper, whose given name is She’yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph, is a British citizen who moved to the U.S. when he was 7. His visa expired in 2006, but his lawyers had said that wasn’t his fault.

“When you ain’t got no choice, you should be exempt,” 21 Savage said. “It’s not like I was 30, woke up and moved over here. I’ve been here since I was like 7 or 8, probably younger than that. I didn’t know anything about visas and all that. I just knew we were moving to a new place.”

He said people in his shoes should be made citizens.

“I feel like we should be exempt,” he reiterated. “I feel like we should automatically become citizens.”

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Federal immigration officials have known 21 Savage’s status since at least 2017, when he applied for a new visa.

The 26-year-old rapper’s immigration case still remains pending a hearing before a new judge, according to his lawyer.

21 Savage said the process to apply for a visa discourages a lot of other immigrants who don’t have documents because it “hangs over your head forever.”

“They just lose hope,” he said. “I feel like kids who were brought here at young ages, they should automatically be like ‘Yeah, you good to stay here, work and go to college.’ It should be nipped in the bud before it gets to a point before you come of age.”

Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors applauded 21 Savage for becoming an advocate for social justice and also shedding light on immigrant issues for black people.
“Up until the moment when he was arrested, there wasn’t a nationally or public conversation about black immigrants,” said Cullors, who introduced 21 Savage and handed him the Courageous Luminaries award. Her activist organization led a coalition to facilitate his release from ICE custody.

“The conversation primarily revolved around Latin immigrants,” she continued. “His detention really pushed a national conversation and it made us talk about what’s happening with black people who are undocumented. All the black people in America aren’t just citizens.”

21 Savage was thankful for the award, but said there are countless immigrants who are battling to stay in the U.S.

“We got a fight that we need to continue in this country,” he said. “It ain’t over yet. Even after everything is cool with me, we still have to fight and help people who can’t fight for themselves.”
___
Follow AP Entertainment Writer Jonathan Landrum Jr. on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MrLandrum31

The post 21 Savage: Young undocumented immigrants should be ‘exempt’ appeared first on theGrio.

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A new way to corrosion-proof thin atomic sheets

A variety of two-dimensional materials that have promising properties for optical, electronic, or optoelectronic applications have been held back by the fact that they quickly degrade when exposed to oxygen and water vapor. The protective coatings developed thus far have proven to be expensive and toxic, and cannot be taken off.

Now, a team of researchers at MIT and elsewhere has developed an ultrathin coating that is inexpensive, simple to apply, and can be removed by applying certain acids.

The new coating could open up a wide variety of potential applications for these “fascinating” 2D materials, the researchers say. Their findings are reported this week in the journal PNAS, in a paper by MIT graduate student Cong Su; professors Ju Li, Jing Kong, Mircea Dinca, and Juejun Hu; and 13 others at MIT and in Australia, China, Denmark, Japan, and the U.K.

Research on 2D materials, which form thin sheets just one or a few atoms thick, is “a very active field,” Li says. Because of their unusual electronic and optical properties, these materials have promising applications, such as highly sensitive light detectors. But many of them, including black phosphorus and a whole category of materials known as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), corrode when exposed to humid air or to various chemicals. Many of them degrade significantly in just hours, precluding their usefulness for real-world applications.

“It’s a key issue” for the development of such materials, Li says. “If you cannot stabilize them in air, their processability and usefulness is limited.” One reason silicon has become such a ubiquitous material for electronic devices, he says, is because it naturally forms a protective layer of silicon dioxide on its surface when exposed to air, preventing further degradation of the surface. But that’s more difficult with these atomically thin materials, whose total thickness could be even less than the silicon dioxide protective layer.

There have been attempts to coat various 2D materials with a protective barrier, but so far they have had serious limitations. Most coatings are much thicker than the 2D materials themselves. Most are also very brittle, easily forming cracks that let through the corroding liquid or vapor, and many are also quite toxic, creating problems with handling and disposal.

The new coating, based on a family of compounds known as linear alkylamines, improves on these drawbacks, the researchers say. The material can be applied in ultrathin layers, as little as 1 nanometer (a billionth of a meter) thick, and further heating of the material after application heals tiny cracks to form a contiguous barrier. The coating is not only impervious to a variety of liquids and solvents but also significantly blocks the penetration of oxygen. And, it can be removed later if needed by certain organic acids.

“This is a unique approach” to protecting thin atomic sheets, Li says, that produces an extra layer just a single molecule thick, known as a monolayer, that provides remarkably durable protection. “This gives the material a factor of 100 longer lifetime,” he says, extending the processability and usability of some of these materials from a few hours up to months. And the coating compound is “very cheap and easy to apply,” he adds.

In addition to theoretical modeling of the molecular behavior of these coatings, the team made a working photodetector from flakes of TMD material protected with the new coating, as a proof of concept. The coating material is hydrophobic, meaning that it strongly repels water, which otherwise would diffuse into the coating and dissolve away a naturally formed protective oxide layer within the coating, leading to rapid corrosion.

The application of the coating is a very simple process, Su explains. The 2D material is simply placed into bath of liquid hexylamine, a form of the linear alkylamine, which builds up the protective coating after about 20 minutes, at a temperature of 130 degrees Celsius at normal pressure. Then, to produce a smooth, crack-free surface, the material is immersed for another 20 minutes in vapor of the same hexylamine.

“You just put the wafer into this liquid chemical and let it be heated,” Su says. “Basically, that’s it.” The coating “is pretty stable, but it can be removed by certain very specific organic acids.”

The use of such coatings could open up new areas of research on promising 2D materials, including the TMDs and black phosphorous, but potentially also silicene, stanine, and other related materials. Since black phosphorous is the most vulnerable and easily degraded of all these materials, that’s what the team used for their initial proof of concept.

The new coating could provide a way of overcoming “the first hurdle to using these fascinating 2D materials,” Su says. “Practically speaking, you need to deal with the degradation during processing before you can use these for any applications,” and that step has now been accomplished, he says.

The team included researchers in MIT’s departments of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Chemistry, Materials Science and Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and the Research Laboratory of Electronics, as well as others at the Australian National University, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Aarhus University in Denmark, Oxford University, and Shinshu University in Japan. The work was supported by the Center for Excitonics and the Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, and by the National Science Foundation, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society, the U.S. Army Research Office through the MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, and Tohoku University.

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Deploying drones to prepare for climate change

While doing field research for her graduate thesis in her hometown of Cairo, Norhan Magdy Bayomi observed firsthand the impact of climate change on her local community.

The residents of the low-income neighborhood she was studying were living in small, poorly insulated apartments that were ill-equipped for dealing with the region’s rising temperatures. Sharing cramped quarters — with families in studios less than 500 square feet — and generally lacking air conditioning or even fans, many people avoided staying in their homes altogether on the hottest days.

It was a powerful illustration of one of the most terrible aspects of climate change: Those who are facing its most extreme impacts also tend to have the fewest resources for adapting.

This understanding has guided Bayomi’s research as a PhD student in the Department of Architecture’s Building Technology Program. Currently in her third year of the program, she has mainly looked at countries in the developing world, studying how low-income communities there adapt to changing heat patterns and documenting global heatwaves and populations’ adaptive capacity to heat. A key focus of her research is how building construction and neighborhoods’ design affect residents’ vulnerability to hotter temperatures.

She uses drones with infrared cameras to document the surface temperatures of urban buildings, including structures with a variety of designs and building materials, and outdoor conditions in the urban canyons between buildings.

“When you look at technologies like drones, they are not really designed or commonly used to tackle problems like this. We’re trying to incorporate this kind of technology to understand what kind of adaptation strategies are suitable for addressing climate change, especially for underserved populations,” she says.

Eyes in the sky

Bayomi is currently developing a computational tool to model heat risk in urban areas that incorporates building performance, available urban resources for adaptation, and population adaptive capacity into its data.

“Most of the tools that are available right now are mostly using statistical data about the population, the income, and the temperature. I’m trying to incorporate how the building affects indoor conditions, what resources are available to urban residents, and how they adapt to heat exposure — for instance, if they have a cooling space they could go to, or if there is a problem with the power supplies and they don’t have access to ceiling fans,” she says. “I’m trying to add these details to the equation to see how they would affect risk in the future.”

She recently began looking at similar changes in communities in the Bronx, New York, in order to see how building construction, population adaptation, and the effects of climate change differ based on region. Bayomi says that her advisor, Professor John Fernández, motivated her to think about how she could apply different technologies into her field of research.

Bayomi’s interest in drones and urban development isn’t limited to thermal mapping. As a participant in the School of Architecture and Planning’s DesignX entrepreneurship program, she and her team founded Airworks, a company that uses aerial data collected by the drones to provide developers with automated site plans and building models. Bayomi worked on thermal imaging for the company, and she hopes to continue this work after she finishes her studies.

Bayomi is also working with Fernández’s Urban Metabolism Group on an aerial thermography project in collaboration with Tarek Rakha PhD ’15, an assistant professor at Georgia Tech. The project is developing a cyber-physical platform to calibrate building energy models, using drones equipped with infrared sensors that autonomously detect heat transfer anomalies and envelope material conditions. Bayomi’s group is currently working on a drone that will be able to capture these data and process them in real-time.

Second home

Bayomi says the personal connections that she has developed at MIT, both within her program and across the Institute, have profoundly shaped her graduate experience.

“MIT is a place where I felt home and welcome. Even as an Arabic muslim woman, I always felt home,” she says. “My relationship with my advisor was one of the main unique things that kept me centered and focused, as I was blessed with an advisor who understands and respects my ideas and gives me freedom to explore new areas.”

She also appreciates the Building Technology program’s “unique family vibe,” with its multiple academic and nonacademic events including lunch seminars and social events.

When she’s not working on climate technologies, Bayomi enjoys playing and producing music. She has played the guitar for 20 years now and was part of a band during her undergraduate years. Music serves an important role in Bayomi’s life and is a crucial creative outlet for her. She currently produces rock-influenced trance music, a genre categorized by melodic, electronic sounds. She released her first single under the moniker Nourey last year and is working on an upcoming track. She likes incorporating guitar into her songs, an element not typically heard in trance tunes.

“'I’m trying to do  something using guitars with ambient influences in trance music, which is not very common,” she says.

Bayomi has been a member of the MIT Egyptian Students Association since she arrived at MIT in 2015, and now serves as vice president. The club works to connect Egyptian students at MIT and students in Egypt, to encourage prospective students to apply and provide guidance based on the members’ own experiences.

“We currently have an amazing mix of students in engineering, Sloan [School of Management], Media Lab, and architecture, including graduate and undergraduate members. Also, with this club we try to create a little piece of home here at MIT for those who feel homesick and disconnected due to culture challenges,” she says.

In 2017 she participated in MIT’s Vacation Week for Massachusetts Public Schools at the MIT Museum, and in 2018 she participated in the Climate Changed ideas competition, where her team’s entry was selected as one of the top three finalists.

“I am keen to participate whenever possible in these kind of activities, which enhance my academic experience here,” she says. “MIT is a rich place for such events.”

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Delvin Joyce: Financial Planner Promotes Prosperity In The Community

BE Modern Man: Delvin Joyce

Financial planner; 40; Founder, Prosperity Wealth Group (affiliation: Prudential Advisors)

Twitter: @delvinjoyce33; Instagram: @delvinj33

In my role as a financial planner, I have the awesome opportunity to help first-generation wealth builders, a lot of whom are black Americans, create generational wealth and legacies for their families. I truly feel that the work I’m doing is helping to close the racial wealth gap. A big part of the mission of my practice as a financial planner is promoting prosperity in the community through financial literacy and education, so we spend a lot of time doing seminars for various community organizations, removing the stigma around money talk and empowering people to take control of their financial futures.

WHAT PRACTICES, TOOLS, BOOKS, ETC. DO YOU RELY ON FOR YOUR SUCCESS?

Every morning I do 100 push-ups first thing—before I get dressed, before I brush my teeth or anything. Of course, I also go to the gym but so does everyone else and the 100 push-ups is my way of feeling like I gained a slight advantage. This daily ritual serves as a reminder for me to always go the extra mile in my business and that for me to be successful I have to constantly challenge myself to outwork everyone else. Success is never owned, it is rented and the rent is due every day. The push-ups remind me to pay the rent.

HOW HAVE YOU TURNED STRUGGLE INTO SUCCESS?

In my pre-financial planner life, my path to becoming an NFL player was all about struggle. As someone who had always been considered too small to be taken seriously as a football player, I struggled to gain validity after being snubbed by every college in the country and joining the James Madison University football program as an un-recruited, non-scholarship walk-on. That struggle resulted in an All-American college career. The struggle didn’t end there, as every NFL team passed on me in the draft, which forced me to go to work after college and start my career working toward becoming a financial adviser. With a little nudge from my father-in-law, I decided to take another crack at football and together we created a package with my highlight tape and a résumé with all of my awards and accolades that we sent to every NFL team. I knew it was a long shot and I felt like a rapper sending my mixtape to record labels trying to get a deal. Out of the 32 NFL teams that received my package only one team responded, and after a year of being removed from football altogether, I found myself on the 53 man roster for the New York Football Giants in 2002.

Although I didn’t see it this way at the time, my convoluted journey to the NFL was providential as it allowed me to find my passion and purpose in the financial industry. So when my career came to an abrupt end after three seasons, I knew exactly what I was supposed to do next.

WHO WAS YOUR GREATEST MALE ROLE MODEL AND WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM HIM?

My dad was my greatest male role model. He was the person who gave me the inspiration at a very young age to pursue my athletic aspirations despite my diminutive stature. That was important to him because he was only 4’10” tall as an adult and he always told me that as a kid he let people talk him out of playing sports because of his size and he was determined not to let that happen to me. I like to say that my Dad taught me sticktoitiveness and I grew up with a chip on my shoulder, believing that I could do or accomplish anything with hard work and perseverance.

HOW DO YOU DEFINE MANHOOD?

I define manhood as having the courage to make tough decisions, the confidence to get it right, and the humility to admit when you’re wrong.

WHAT’S THE BEST ADVICE YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED?

The best advice I ever got was from my grandmother who used to say “give people their flowers while they can still smell them.” In 2015, I was inducted into the JMU Sports Hall of Fame and during my acceptance speech, I proceeded to thank virtually everyone who played a role in not just my athletic success but life in general. It was an awesome moment where I got to tell my parents how much they meant to me. Less than a year later, my Dad would be dead at age 64 after suffering a stroke and I’m so happy that I took my Grandma’s advice and gave him his flowers while he could smell them.

WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT BEING A BLACK MAN?

What I like best about being a black male is understanding that I get to drink from a well that I didn’t dig myself. I believe that when you are operating in that awareness it forces you to not take anything for granted and to always strive to be the very best version of yourself.

---

BE Modern Man is an online and social media campaign designed to celebrate black men making valuable contributions in every profession, industry, community, and area of endeavor. Each year, we solicit nominations in order to select men of color for inclusion in the 100 Black Enterprise Modern Men of Distinction. Our goal is to recognize men who epitomize the BEMM credo “Extraordinary is our normal” in their day-to-day lives, presenting authentic examples of the typical black man rarely seen in mainstream media. The BE Modern Men of Distinction are celebrated annually at Black Men XCEL (www.blackenterprise.com/blackmenxcel/). Click this link to submit a nomination for BE Modern Man: https://www.blackenterprise.com/nominate/. Follow BE Modern Man on Twitter: @bemodernman and Instagram: @be_modernman.

 

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