For a year BBC Africa Eye has been investigating the million-dollar trade in trafficked rosewood.
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Monday, March 9, 2020
Sunday, March 8, 2020
The elephant in the server room
Suppose you would like to know mortality rates for women during childbirth, by country, around the world. Where would you look? One option is the WomanStats Project, the website of an academic research effort investigating the links between the security and activities of nation-states, and the security of the women who live in them.
The project, founded in 2001, meets a need by patching together data from around the world. Many countries are indifferent to collecting statistics about women’s lives. But even where countries try harder to gather data, there are clear challenges to arriving at useful numbers — whether it comes to women’s physical security, property rights, and government participation, among many other issues.
For instance: In some countries, violations of women’s rights may be reported more regularly than in other places. That means a more responsive legal system may create the appearance of greater problems, when it provides relatively more support for women. The WomanStats Project notes many such complications.
Thus the WomanStats Project offers some answers — for example, Australia, Canada, and much of Western Europe have low childbirth mortality rates — while also showing what the challenges are to taking numbers at face value. This, according to MIT professor Catherine D’Ignazio, makes the site unusual, and valuable.
“The data never speak for themselves,” says D’Ignazio, referring to the general problem of finding reliable numbers about women’s lives. “There are always humans and institutions speaking for the data, and different people have their own agendas. The data are never innocent.”
Now D’Ignazio, an assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, has taken a deeper look at this issue in a new book, co-authored with Lauren Klein, an associate professor of English and quantitative theory and methods at Emory University. In the book, “Data Feminism,” published this month by the MIT Press, the authors use the lens of intersectional feminism to scrutinize how data science reflects the social structures it emerges from.
“Intersectional feminism examines unequal power,” write D’Ignazio and Klein, in the book’s introduction. “And in our contemporary world, data is power too. Because the power of data is wielded unjustly, it must be challenged and changed.”
The 4 percent problem
To see a clear case of power relations generating biased data, D’Ignazio and Klein note, consider research led by MIT’s own Joy Buolamwini, who as a graduate student in a class studying facial-recognition programs, observed that the software in question could not “see” her face. Buolamwini found that for the facial-recognition system in question, the software was based on a set of faces which were 78 percent male and 84 percent white; only 4 percent were female and dark-skinned, like herself.
Subsequent media coverage of Buolamwini’s work, D’Ignazio and Klein write, contained “a hint of shock.” But the results were probably less surprising to those who are not white males, they think.
“If the past is racist, oppressive, sexist, and biased, and that’s your training data, that is what you are tuning for,” D’Ignazio says.
Or consider another example, from tech giant Amazon, which tested an automated system that used AI to sort through promising CVs sent in by job applicants. One problem: Because a high percentage of company employees were men, the algorithm favored men’s names, other things being equal.
“They thought this would help [the] process, but of course what it does is train the AI [system] to be biased toward women, because they themselves have not hired that many women,” D’Ignazio observes.
To Amazon’s credit, it did recognize the problem. Moreover, D’Ignazio notes, this kind of issue is a problem that can be addressed. “Some of the technologies can be reformed with a more participatory process, or better training data. … If we agree that’s a good goal, one path forward is to adjust your training set and include more people of color, more women.”
“Who’s on the team? Who had the idea? Who’s benefiting?”
Still, the question of who participates in data science is, as the authors write, “the elephant in the server room.” As of 2011, only 26 percent of all undergraduates receiving computer science degrees in the U.S. were women. That is not only a low figure, but actually a decline from past levels: In 1985, 37 percent of computer science graduates were women, the highest mark on record.
As a result of the lack of diversity in the field, D’Ignazio and Klein believe, many data projects are radically limited in their ability to see all facets of the complex social situations they purport to measure.
“We want to try to tune people in to these kinds of power relationships and why they matter deeply,” D’Ignazio says. “Who’s on the team? Who had the idea? Who’s benefiting from the project? Who’s potentially harmed by the project?”
In all, D’Ignazio and Klein outline seven principles of data feminism, from examining and challenging power, to rethinking binary systems and hierarchies, and embracing pluralism. (Those statistics about gender and computer science graduates are limited, they note, by only using the “male” and “female” categories, thus excluding people who identify in different terms.)
People interested in data feminism, the authors state, should also “value multiple forms of knowledge,” including firsthand knowledge that may lead us to question seemingly official data. Also, they should always consider the context in which data are generated, and “make labor visible” when it comes to data science. This last principle, the researchers note, speaks to the problem that even when women and other excluded people contribute to data projects, they often receive less credit for their work.
For all the book’s critique of existing systems, programs, and practices, D’Ignazio and Klein are also careful to include examples of positive, successful efforts, such as the WomanStats project, which has grown and thrived over two decades.
“For people who are data people but are new to feminism, we want to provide them with a very accessible introduction, and give them concepts and tools they can use in their practice,” D’Ignazio says. “We’re not imagining that people already have feminism in their toolkit. On the other hand, we are trying to speak to folks who are very tuned in to feminism or social justice principles, and highlight for them the ways data science is both problematic, but can be marshalled in the service of justice.”
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2020 MacVicar Faculty Fellows named
The Office of the Vice Chancellor and the Registrar’s Office have announced this year’s Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellows: materials science and engineering Professor Polina Anikeeva, literature Professor Mary Fuller, chemical engineering Professor William Tisdale, and electrical engineering and computer science Professor Jacob White.
Role models both in and out of the classroom, the new fellows have tirelessly sought to improve themselves, their students, and the Institute writ large. They have reimagined curricula, crossed disciplines, and pushed the boundaries of what education can be. They join a matchless academy of scholars committed to exceptional instruction and innovation.
Vice Chancellor Ian Waitz will honor the fellows at this year’s MacVicar Day symposium, “Learning through Experience: Education for a Fulfilling and Engaged Life.” In a series of lightning talks, student and faculty speakers will examine how MIT — through its many opportunities for experiential learning — supports students’ aspirations and encourages them to become engaged citizens and thoughtful leaders.
The event will be held on March 13 from 2:30-4 p.m. in Room 6-120. A reception will follow in Room 2-290. All in the MIT community are welcome to attend.
For nearly three decades, the MacVicar Faculty Fellows Program has been recognizing exemplary undergraduate teaching and advising around the Institute. The program was named after Margaret MacVicar, the first dean for undergraduate education and founder of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). Nominations are made by departments and include letters of support from colleagues, students, and alumni. Fellows are appointed to 10-year terms in which they receive $10,000 per year of discretionary funds.
Polina Anikeeva
“I’m speechless,” Polina Anikeeva, associate professor of materials science and engineering and brain and cognitive sciences, says of becoming a MacVicar Fellow. “In my opinion, this is the greatest honor one could have at MIT.”
Anikeeva received her PhD from MIT in 2009 and became a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering two years later. She attended St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University for her undergraduate education. Through her research — which combines materials science, electronics, and neurobiology — she works to better understand and treat brain disorders.
Anikeeva’s colleague Christopher Schuh says, “Her ability and willingness to work with students however and whenever they need help, her engaging classroom persona, and her creative solutions to real-time challenges all culminate in one of MIT’s most talented and beloved undergraduate professors.”
As an instructor, advisor, and marathon runner, Anikeeva has learned the importance of finding balance. Her colleague Lionel Kimerling reflects on this delicate equilibrium: “As a teacher, Professor Anikeeva is among the elite who instruct, inspire, and nurture at the same time. It is a difficult task to demand rigor with a gentle mentoring hand.”
Students call her classes “incredibly hard” but fun and exciting at the same time. She is “the consummate scientist, splitting her time evenly between honing her craft, sharing knowledge with students and colleagues, and mentoring aspiring researchers,” wrote one.
Her passion for her work and her devotion to her students are evident in the nomination letters. One student recounted their first conversation: “We spoke for 15 minutes, and after talking to her about her research and materials science, I had never been so viscerally excited about anything.” This same student described the guidance and support Anikeeva provided her throughout her time at MIT. After working with Anikeeva to apply what she learned in the classroom to a real-world problem, this student recalled, “I honestly felt like an engineer and a scientist for the first time ever. I have never felt so fulfilled and capable. And I realize that’s what I want for the rest of my life — to feel the highs and lows of discovery.”
Anikeeva champions her students in faculty and committee meetings as well. She is a “reliable advocate for student issues,” says Caroline Ross, associate department head and professor in DMSE. “Professor Anikeeva is always engaged with students, committed to student well-being, and passionate about education.”
“Undergraduate teaching has always been a crucial part of my MIT career and life,” Anikeeva reflects. “I derive my enthusiasm and energy from the incredibly talented MIT students — every year they surprise me with their ability to rise to ever-expanding intellectual challenges. Watching them grow as scientists, engineers, and — most importantly — people is like nothing else.”
Mary Fuller
Experimentation is synonymous with education at MIT and it is a crucial part of literature Professor Mary Fuller’s classes. As her colleague Arthur Bahr notes, “Mary’s habit of starting with a discrete practical challenge can yield insights into much broader questions.”
Fuller attended Dartmouth College as an undergraduate, then received both her MA and PhD in English and American literature from The Johns Hopkins University. She began teaching at MIT in 1989. From 2013 to 2019, Fuller was head of the Literature Section. Her successor in the role, Shankar Raman, says that her nominators “found [themselves] repeatedly surprised by the different ways Mary has pushed the limits of her teaching here, going beyond her own comfort zones to experiment with new texts and techniques.”
“Probably the most significant thing I’ve learned in 30 years of teaching here is how to ask more and better questions,” says Fuller. As part of a series of discussions on ethics and computing, she has explored the possibilities of artificial intelligence from a literary perspective. She is also developing a tool for the edX platform called PoetryViz, which would allow MIT students and students around the world to practice close reading through poetry annotation in an entirely new way.
“We all innovate in our teaching. Every year. But, some of us innovate more than others,” Krishna Rajagopal, dean for digital learning, observes. “In addition to being an outstanding innovator, Mary is one of those colleagues who weaves the fabric of undergraduate education across the Institute.”
Lessons learned in Fuller’s class also underline the importance of a well-rounded education. As one alumna reflected, “Mary’s teaching carried a compassion and ethic which enabled non-humanities students to appreciate literature as a diverse, valuable, and rewarding resource for personal and social reflection.”
Professor Fuller, another student remarked, has created “an environment where learning is not merely the digestion of rote knowledge, but instead the broad-based exploration of ideas and the works connected to them.”
“Her imagination is capacious, her knowledge is deep, and students trust her — so that they follow her eagerly into new and exploratory territory,” says Professor of Literature Stephen Tapscott.
Fuller praises her students’ willingness to take that journey with her, saying, “None of my classes are required, and none are technical, so I feel that students have already shown a kind of intellectual generosity by putting themselves in the room to do the work.”
For students, the hard work is worth it. Mary Fuller, one nominator declared, is exactly “the type of deeply impactful professor that I attended MIT hoping to learn from.”
William Tisdale
William Tisdale is the ARCO Career Development Professor of chemical engineering and, according to his colleagues, a “true star” in the department.
A member of the faculty since 2012, he received his undergraduate degree from the University of Delaware and his PhD from the University of Minnesota. After a year as a postdoc at MIT, Tisdale became an assistant professor. His research interests include nanotechnology and energy transport.
Tisdale’s colleague Kristala Prather calls him a “curriculum fixer.” During an internal review of Course 10 subjects, the department discovered that 10.213 (Chemical and Biological Engineering) was the least popular subject in the major and needed to be revised. After carefully evaluating the coursework, and despite having never taught 10.213 himself, Tisdale envisioned a novel way of teaching it. With his suggestions, the class went from being “despised” to loved, with subject evaluations improving by 70 percent from one spring to the next. “I knew Will could make a difference, but I had no idea he could make that big of a difference in just one year,” remarks Prather. One student nominator even went so far as to call 10.213, as taught by Tisdale, “one of my best experiences at MIT.”
Always patient, kind, and adaptable, Tisdale’s willingness to tackle difficult problems is reflected in his teaching. “While the class would occasionally start to mutiny when faced with a particularly confusing section, Prof. Tisdale would take our groans on with excitement,” wrote one student. “His attitude made us feel like we could all get through the class together.” Regardless of how they performed on a test, wrote another, Tisdale “clearly sent the message that we all always have so much more to learn, but that first and foremost he respected you as a person.”
“I don’t think I could teach the way I teach at many other universities,” Tisdale says. “MIT students show up on the first day of class with an innate desire to understand the world around them; all I have to do is pull back the curtain!”
“Professor Tisdale remains the best teacher, mentor, and role model that I have encountered,” one student remarked. “He has truly changed the course of my life.”
“I am extremely thankful to be at a university that values undergraduate education so highly,” Tisdale says. “Those of us who devote ourselves to undergraduate teaching and mentoring do so out of a strong sense of responsibility to the students as well as a genuine love of learning. There are few things more validating than being rewarded for doing something that already brings you joy.”
Jacob White
Jacob White is the Cecil H. Green Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and chair of the Committee on Curricula. After completing his undergraduate degree at MIT, he received a master’s degree and doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley. He has been a member of the Course 6 faculty since 1987.
Colleagues and students alike observed White’s dedication not just to teaching, but to improving teaching throughout the Institute. As Luca Daniel and Asu Ozdaglar of the EECS department noted in their nomination letter, “Jacob completely understands that the most efficient way to make his passion and ideas for undergraduate education have a real lasting impact is to ‘teach it to the teachers!’”
One student wrote that White “has spent significant time and effort educating the lab assistants” of 6.302 (Feedback System Design). As one of these teaching assistants confirmed, White’s “enthusiastic spirit” inspired them to spend hours discussing how to best teach the subject. “Many people might think this is not how they want to spend their Thursday nights,” the student wrote. “I can speak for myself and the other TAs when I say that it was an incredibly fun and educational experience.”
His work to improve instruction has even expanded to other departments. A colleague describes White’s efforts to revamp 8.02 (Physics II) as “Herculean.” Working with a group of students and postdocs to develop experiments for this subject, “he seemed to be everywhere at once … while simultaneously teaching his own class.” Iterations took place over a year and a half, after which White trained the subject’s TAs as well. Hundreds of students are benefitting from these improved experiments.
White is, according to Daniel and Ozdaglar, “a colleague who sincerely, genuinely, and enormously cares about our undergraduate students and their education, not just in our EECS department, but also in our entire MIT home.”
When he’s not fine-tuning pedagogy or conducting teacher training, he is personally supporting his students. A visiting student described White’s attention: “He would regularly meet with us in groups of two to make sure we were learning. In a class of about 80 students in a huge lecture hall, it really felt like he cared for each of us.”
And his zeal has rubbed off: “He made me feel like being excited about the material was the most important thing,” one student wrote.
The significance of such a spark is not lost on White. "As an MIT freshman in the late 1970s, I joined an undergraduate research program being pioneered by Professor Margaret MacVicar," he says. "It was Professor MacVicar and UROP that put me on the academic's path of looking for interesting problems with instructive solutions. It is a path I have walked for decades, with extraordinary colleagues and incredible students. So, being selected as a MacVicar Fellow? No honor could mean more to me."
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A mobile tool for global change
Frontline health workers represent the lifeblood of many health care systems in low- and middle-income countries around the world. Often overworked and underpaid, these workers operate outside hospital settings to meet the community’s poorest people where they live and work, ensuring health care initiatives impact the families that need them most.
The global growth in cell phone ownership has increased the potential for mobile solutions to help these workers, and perhaps no company has unlocked that potential with more success than the social enterprise Dimagi.
Dimagi’s flagship product, CommCare, lets users with no coding experience build apps featuring things like registration forms, decision support for users, and multimedia that can be accessed offline by cell phones of all types. With the backing of nonprofit organizations and governments, those capabilities have been put into the pockets of frontline workers in the most remote, impoverished regions of the world, transforming the way they collect information and provide care for hundreds of millions of people across 80 countries.
Multiple studies have documented CommCare’s transformative effect. Randomized control trials have shown it helped frontline workers improve child nutrition in India, increase the percentage of in-facility births in Tanzania, and reduce errors in screenings for cardiovascular diseases in South Africa. Other studies have shown CommCare helped increase the frequency of HIV tests for pregnant women in Nigeria and reduced infant and maternal mortality rates in Guatemala.
Beyond health care, Dimagi’s mobile tools are also being used in education, agricultural, and financial initiatives around the world. For founders Jonathan Jackson ’03, SM ’05 and Vikram Kumar, the company’s impact has come one successful project at a time through a user-centered approach to creating the most empowering and scalable solutions possible.
“Our motto at Dimagi is ‘impact, team, profit,’ in that order,” Jackson says. “It’s not just what’s the most impactful thing we could make in theory, it’s what’s the most impactful thing we could make in practice that will scale with the market.”
An idea scales
In 2002, Kumar was a graduate research assistant in MIT’s Media Lab and on his way to earning his MD in the MIT-Harvard Division of Health Sciences and Technology. Jackson was building a personal digital assistant for nurses in Zambia as part of his master’s work at MIT.
The two students met through a teacher’s assistant in one of Jackon’s classes and immediately decided to start a venture together. They initially planned to use health informatics to improve public health but realized the developing world wasn’t quite ready for that approach.
“As soon as we got into the sector we realized there’s no good data to begin with, so we had to build the underlying data management systems,” Jackson says. “We rapidly shifted the company from public health informatics to more of a global health software focus.”
In early consulting projects around Africa and India, the founders built a drag-and-drop system for building forms that clinicians could use in hospitals, using the Nokia phones that were quickly becoming common.
“The writing was on the wall for massive mobile adoption in general, with dumb phones, and then you could see smartphones were going to take off,” Jackson says. “But we always focused on building for the phone technology that users had today as opposed to the technology that might be available tomorrow, and I think that was one of the reasons we were so successful.”
One of Dimagi’s early projects was working with partners to create a national medical record system for Zambia. The system is still in use today, and because Dimagi’s solutions have been open source from the beginning, the system has since been adopted by other countries around Africa.
Around 2008, with SMS-based solutions and a case management app built out, Dimagi began focusing on helping frontline, or community, workers. Such workers have traditionally relied on paper-based data management systems in the field that offer little on-site guidance and require data entry into a central system later on.
With health care workers in low- and middle-income countries, “you have a workforce with amazing potential, and they are often the only option for health care provision in rural settings,” Jackson says. “These workers are often not able to be trained sufficiently, not able to be paid well, and they’re often overburdened. We thought the inclusion of mobile phones and the value that could be delivered by community health care workers and frontline providers was a great synergy.”
The pivot made Dimagi’s users more dispersed and numerous, but Jackson says his team never wavered in its philosophy of working closely with the people they are trying to help and learning from them as they design solutions.
“We feel incredibly strongly about getting field experience and being humble,” Jackson says. “We have a methodology called ‘Design Under the Mango Tree’ based on how we did a lot of our early work with CommCare. We were out there with the users, getting feedback, staying up late and overnight so it looked how they recommended the next day. That experience, of seeing the frontline workers, them being able to tell us they want something different, going in and changing it, and then asking if they like the change, that was an adrenaline boost for us.”
Designing under the mango tree
Dimagi’s approach has led the company to a scale the founders never could have imagined when they first started out. It has also guided them as they’ve built out features.
Today, Dimagi boasts that CommCare allows users to “collect data on everything, in any language.” The data can include text, images, GPS coordinates, barcodes, audio, and more. Customers designing a data collection app on CommCare can monitor field workers in real time and include notifications or progress updates. Incorporating multimedia components into the app, like pictures and video instructions, allows illiterate field workers and patients to interact with CommCare and gives credibility to the workers.
Dimagi also offers extensive support services to go with some of its subscription options. The company of about 150 people includes experts specializing in programs around women’s health and empowerment, agriculture, financial literacy, and more.
Some of Dimagi’s biggest customers are governments. India, for example, has equipped more than half a million workers with a CommCare solution to help with state childcare and nutrition services.
Unfortunately, scale has not brought simplicity. In fact, Jackson says things have gotten as Dimagi has grown, noting the donor-centered social enterprise space is great at launching new projects, but not good at incentivizing mature companies to continue innovating in areas where they’re already deployed.
That’s one of the reasons Dimagi restructured its company last year. Jackson says Dimagi is now divided into three parts: its software division, its professional services team, and what he calls the impact team, which has been instructed to break even while making as much impact as possible and not worrying about profit.
“We’re built to make an impact,” Jackson says. “That’s why everyone works at this company. It’s why we’re here. A lot of that just requires going that extra mile for the end users and that’s something that is infused in our DNA as an organization.”
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Rapper DaBaby gets booed off stage in Tampa after slapping an eager fan
DaBaby’s Tampa concert was over before it started after he was booed out of the venue for assaulting a fan as he made his way to the stage.
The “Suge” rapper was scheduled to perform at Whiskey North for Tampa stop of his Up Close N Personal tour. As he worked through the crowd a woman seemingly attempted to get a picture of the rapper but would be on the receiving end of a slap.
The crowd began to boo the rapper, which resulted in DaBaby and his entourage exiting without doing the performance, TMZ reports.
Read More: Rapper DaBaby arrested in Miami and questioned in robbery investigation
DaBaby would later address the incident in an Instagram post.
“I got $10,000 for whoever got a good angle of shawty hitting me in the eye with her phone,” DaBaby said in the video.
He would also share the video and write “who know shawty government name so my lawyer can get active.”
Police showed up to the venue in response to an assault call but no arrests were made.
Read More: NFL to reportedly suspend Tampa Bay Buccaneer Jameis Winston 3 games for Uber driver incident
This past January, DaBaby was arrested and booked into a Miami-Date County jail for assault and robbery of a local concert promoter Kenneth Carey, The Miami Herald reports.
DaBaby, born Jonathan Kirk, agreed to perform at the Broward nightclub for $30,000 but he was only paid $20,000. DaBaby and his crew were said to have attacked the promoter and another man taking his iPhone, credit cards and $80 in cash. The attack ended with a member of DaBaby’s crew pouring juice on the promoter. The rapper and his team then left the scene. They would later return to the Novatel Hotel where DaBaby was identified and taken into custody.
The battery charges were dropped on Wednesday but he is still facing robbery charges, TMZ reports. Carey also has a lawsuit out against DaBaby for more than $6 million.
The post Rapper DaBaby gets booed off stage in Tampa after slapping an eager fan appeared first on TheGrio.
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DeKalb County police wrongfully detain 11-year-old Black girl for ‘looking’ like a 16-year-old
An 11-year-old DeKalb County girl was mistakenly identified in car theft, leading to being handcuffed and being held in a police car her mother stated.
Mother Cynthia Hendricks is “livid” after the detainment of her daughter London. Police arrived at her door at 7:15 pm, with details of attempted car theft by a teen girl suspected to be 16-years-old and two teen boys, 11 Alive reports.
The crime was on the street Cynthia and London lived on. London’s name was said to have been given to the officers by a neighbor after she fit the description, even though there is a five-year age difference.
Read More: DeKalb County Sheriff, NAACP hold voter registration drive in county jail
Hendricks told the officers her mother was at home since 4 pm and even gave camera evidence from her Ring doorbell camera and other surveillance equipment but the officers detained London anyway despite having the proof.
“(The officer) placed handcuffs on my daughter, placed her in back of police vehicle with intent to transport her to juvenile detention,” Hendricks said.
Once London was in the police car, officers asked about her age and the clothing she was wearing. The officers were surprised to find out she wasn’t 16, eventually letting London go. London was held inside the police car for at least ten minutes, WAGA-TV reports.
Read More: Former Georgia cop found guilty of kicking handcuffed man in the head
“I am beyond livid and disgusted at DeKalb County Police for, one, not bothering to ask my daughter’s age before traumatizing her, two, blatantly ignoring the fact that our surveillance cameras show that London did not exit the house whatsoever, and, three, not doing their due diligence before coming to my home to attempt to arrest my child,” Hendricks said.
DeKalb County Police Department told 11Alive they were “not made aware of any concerns.” Hendricks stated she will be filing a complaint against the police department and hopes that a policy change will follow.
The post DeKalb County police wrongfully detain 11-year-old Black girl for ‘looking’ like a 16-year-old appeared first on TheGrio.
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Osundairo Brothers tease an odd comedy sketch in hopes of restarting acting career
Abel and Ola Osundairo, the alleged attackers of Jussie Smollett, are looking to make you laugh, evident by their appearance in a newly recorded comedy sketch.
The Nigerian brothers were in the sketch to show that they have the ability to act and are attempting to get back into the industry, shared exclusively with TMZ.
The sketch is title 50 shades of Black, which details a night with some interesting ladies. Snapshots from the shoot show women wearing the bare minimum or completely naked in body paint. The plot details state after the two main characters were aiming for a night out with new wild ladies but ended up getting drugged instead.
Read more: Nigerian brothers prepared to testify at Jussie Smollett trial
Since the alleged attack went down in Chicago, which is believed by local law enforcement to be staged, work has been scarce for Abel and Ola. The two were extras on Empire, which is where they met Smollett.
Abel is currently winning boxing competitions in Chicago and training with Floyd Mayweather’s trainer. He also starred in a low-budget film however his brother Ola has not made it to any productions since the Jussie Smollett incident.
The Osundairo brothers are currently eating at a food pantry after they have not been able to secure work, The New York Post reports.
“It’s been really hard for them, they’ve tried to kind of jump back into the life they had [and] they couldn’t,” Chicago defense attorney Gloria Schmidt revealed.
Read More: Jussie Smollett indicted by special prosecutor over alleged hate crime
Schmidt states the brothers were getting between four to five auditions a month but now are not getting any and lost their talent agent.
The bad luck after the attack incident also stretches to Jussie Smollett who allegedly paid the brothers $3,500. Last month, Smollett was indicted for a second time for allegedly staging a hate-crime against himself. He received six new counts of disorderly conduct, The Chicago Tribune reports.
The comedy sketch featuring the Osundairo brothers is set to release this spring on YouTube and Instagram.
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Mother of boy involved in assault of Brooklyn girl wanted to ‘kill him with my bare hands’
One Brooklyn mother of a teenage boy who was part of a group that beatdown and robbed a 15-year-old girl is taking responsibility for her son’s participation after seeing the horrific scenes play out on video, forcing him to turn himself in.
“When I saw the video I literally wanted to kill him with my own hands,” said Donna Howell, 42 “I was very, very pissed off.”
Howell was present at the Brooklyn Criminal Court for her son’s arraignment. He was one of five teens between the ages of 14 and 17 that received charges of robbery and gang assault, according to the New York Daily News.
Read More: Missing Brooklyn teenager found safe and reunited with her family
Howell stated that her son originally did not want to turn himself in despite suggesting he should. After leaving home to run an errand her son was gone when she returned.
In the video, the female victim was seen walking Thursday on Utica Avenue in Crown Heights, when she was ambushed by over a dozen teens, the New York Post reports.
The group of boys is seen kicking and stomping the girl in the head and body as she lay curled on the ground. The Air Jordan Retro 1 sneakers she wore were pulled off her feet at the end of the beating.
“When I saw the video, I wanted to kill him with my bare hands,” said Howell.
“If I was that girl’s father, I would want to kill all of them. This is unacceptable on all levels. You don’t ever put your feet on someone, and you definitely do not treat a female like that.”
Read More: Family mourns 14-year-old killed over a pair of Air Jordans
Four additional teenage boys turned themselves in and were charged. The boys were described as “strangers” to the victim by assistant district attorney Jordan Rossman.
The victim is described as a “quiet” basketball player. She is now suffering from a concussion, bruises and has fears of living her home.
“She goes to school, and she is a basketball player — that’s all she does. She doesn’t have problems with anyone,” said the victim’s friend, 13-year-old Jacob Black.
“My heart breaks for the victim’s family. I’m just very, very sorry,” Howell added. “I feel very, very bad for her.”
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Halle Berry says her distant relative Sarah Palin “A’int Invited to the Cookout”
Did you know that Halle Berry and Sarah Palin are related? A twitter post highlighted the connection between the once vice-presidential candidate and the Academy Award winner during a social media session, which she replied to with a joke.
“This pair shares roots that may seem like they’re from different trees, but @halleberry and former VP candidate @SarahPalinUSA are distant relatives — though the actual connection is unclear,” the tweet read, according to Page Six.
In response, Berry tweeted “She may be on the tree but she ‘AINT invited to the cookout.” She completed the tweet with a laughing emoji.
She may be on the tree but she ‘AINT invited to the cookout. https://t.co/aSqgYBZJNK
— Halle Berry (@halleberry) March 7, 2020
The tweet also highlighted family ties between actress Kerry Washington and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton and Madonna, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Larry David, along with others.
Read More: Halle Berry shares NSFW birthday pic
In case you haven’t caught on to the phrase “invited to the cookout” it’s a hypothetical pass to participate in some events in the Black community.
The reveal of the two coming from the same family tree happened back in 2012. While on a press run for the film Cloud Atlas, Berry told Extra she found out the two were related in “some twisted way.”
“You want to know who I’m related to? Sarah Palin!” Berry said at the time. She was being interviewed by Jerry Penacoli who shouted “No!” Berry’s response was “That’s what I said, ‘Nooo!'”
Aside from rejecting Sarah Palin to pull up to her house functions this summer, Halle Berry also celebrated International Women’s Day by releasing a workout playlist. Titled “Ultimate Warrior,” the playlist is described as “a companion to her ever-evolving workout routine.”
The “female-focused” playlist will be updated by Berry herself and “designed to empower, uplift, and unleash, celebrating the artists from who the Academy Award-winning actress draws inspiration on and off the mat. Because those who grind know it doesn’t end after the cool-down,” Apple Music suggests.
The playlist features Lizzo, Megan Thee Stallion, Nicki Minaj, Cardi B, Missy Elliott and more. You can check it out here.
The post Halle Berry says her distant relative Sarah Palin “A’int Invited to the Cookout” appeared first on TheGrio.
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Sen. Kamala Harris endorses Biden for president
WASHINGTON (AP) — Kamala Harris endorsed Joe Biden on Sunday and said she would “do everything in my power” to help elect him, becoming the latest dropout from the Democratic race for president to line up behind the former vice president in his battle with Bernie Sanders for the nomination.
The decision by the California senator who was one of three black candidates seeking to challenge President Donald Trump further solidifies the Democratic establishment’s move to close circles around Biden after his Super Tuesday success. Her endorsements comes before the next round of primaries, with six states voting Tuesday, including Michigan.
READ MORE: Biden addresses Kamala Harris slamming him at first debate: ‘I hope we’re still friends’
“There is no one better prepared than Joe to steer our nation through these turbulent times, and restore truth, honor, and decency to the Oval Office,” Harris said in a statement. “He is kind and endlessly caring, and he truly listens to the American people.”
Harris said the United States “is at an inflection point. And the decision voters make this November will shape the country and the world our children and grandchildren will grow up in. I believe in Joe Biden.”
Among Biden’s former rivals, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, Mike Bloomberg, Tim Ryan, Deval Patrick and John Delaney have endorsed him. Sanders has gotten the endorsement of Marianne Williamson and Bill de Blasio.
.@JoeBiden has served our country with dignity and we need him now more than ever. I will do everything in my power to help elect him the next President of the United States. pic.twitter.com/DbB2fGWpaa
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) March 8, 2020
Harris withdrew from the race in December, ending a candidacy with the historic potential of becoming the first black woman elected president. The former California attorney general was seen as a candidate poised to attract the multiracial coalition of voters that sent Barack Obama to the White House. But she ultimately could not craft a message that resonated with voters or secure the money to continue her run.
Biden and Sanders, two white men in their 70s, are now the front-runners for the nomination in what was once a field of candidates that includes several woman and much younger politicians.
Harris said in her statement that “like many women, I watched with sadness as women exited the race one by one.” Four years after Hillary Clinton was the party’s nominee, “we find ourselves without any woman on a path to be the Democratic nominee for president.”
READ MORE: Black voters expected to deliver Super Tuesday victory for Joe Biden
“This is something we must reckon with and it is something I will have more to say about in the future,” she said. “But we must rise to unite the party and country behind a candidate who reflects the decency and dignity of the American people and who can ultimately defeat Donald Trump.”
Biden on Friday won the endorsement of former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who was one of the black candidates for the nomination. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker hasn’t made a public endorsement yet.
Black voters have anchored Biden’s comeback since disappointing finishes in overwhelmingly white Iowa and New Hampshire in early contests that put his campaign on the brink of collapse.
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Catch up on the 2020 election campaign with AP experts on our weekly politics podcast, “Ground Game.”
The post Sen. Kamala Harris endorses Biden for president appeared first on TheGrio.
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Working While Black: Winning Against Microaggression On The Job
Microaggression, brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative prejudicial slights and insults toward any group, are an established occupational hazard for black women executives in corporate America. At the 2020 Women of Power Summit now happening in Las Vegas, a panel of black women professionals provided a game plan for overcoming this potential threat to career success, in a session titled “Working While Black: Overcoming Racial Bias, Microagressions, and Burnout.”
In a discussion moderated by Black Enterprise Executive Managing Editor Alisa Gumbs, Dow Chief Chemical Co. Human Resources Officer and Chief Inclusion Officer Karen S. Carter, The Memo LLC CEO/Author Minda Harts and Nielsen SVP of Diversity & Inclusion Sandra Sims-Williams collectively provided a game plan for winning against microaggression to achieve career satisfaction and success.
Challenge acts of microaggression with questions and education
“We have to make sure that we know who we are and walk in that every day… We have to have to educate in the moment,” says Carter.
That often means having the courage and confidence to ask questions that reflect micro-aggressive behavior back at the offender. Carter shared the experience—as the sole black person in a group of executives on a business trip lined up for first-class seats—of a flight attendant walking directly past her white colleagues to suggest that she might be on the wrong line.
Karen S. Carter
Carter’s response, “What is it that makes you think that would be the case?,” forced the flight attendant to confront the implications of that assumption.
However, Harts stresses that while educating others may be necessary, accountability for changed behavior lies not with the targets of microaggression, but with the offenders. “We have to have courageous conversations, but the other part of this is to encourage our would-be allies to be courageous listeners.”
One way of to do that is with some assigned reading, books that will help them to recognize racially offensive and micro-aggressive behavior and its impact. Hart ssays it’s one of the reasons she wrote her book The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table; she instructs those who “didn’t know” that their words or actions were offensive to read it. Sims-Williams says she goes beyond just one book; she’s prepared with a book list.
When you can’t think of what to say in the moment, always circle back
Suppose you are so taken aback by an act of microaggression that you don’t know how to response in the moment?
“Always circle back,” says Carter. Instead of letting it drop (and fester), take the time to go back to that person later for a safe conversation, 1-on-1 conversation about the incident on your terms. “We must have the courage to have the conversation about what was said and how that makes you feel.”
“Before you do, take the time to decide what to say and how to say it,” she adds. “Write it down, and practice what you are going to say.”
Don’t isolate yourself; seek help from your network
“Sometimes, we don’t do enough to build relationships. Your relationships become sources of help when microaggression and bias happens,” says Sims-Williams.
All three women stressed the importance of having a “crew,” and not limiting its members to just black women. “Not every white person is trying to undermine you, and not every sister wants you to win,” says Carter.
It’s important to get to know others, and to allow others to get to know you, and the value you bring to the company. How do you build relationships with people who are not black women? Ask, says the panel. “Ask for mentoring. Set-up the meetings. Get on their calendars.”
You should work to establish relationships with people throughout your organization and at every level, including your CEO. “Whoever has what you need, you need to know,” says Hart.
Know your worth, know your options and never stop exploring them
Too often, Simms-Williams says, black women stay in unhealthy workplace environments and endure microaggression for longer than necessary, because they are unsure of their ability to do better elsewhere, and making changes often entails more risk for black women than for others. “There are other jobs out there,” she asserts. “Know your worth and don’t be afraid to exercise your options.”
Carter says you should always be exploring your options, even when you are happy with your work environment, and microaggression and bias are not issues. “The moment you have to execute your options is not the time to start looking for your options.”
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