Together, they teach us one crucial thing: You are not a zombie—yet.
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Wednesday, April 29, 2020
NFL Raises Over $100 Million for COVID-19 Relief During This Year’s Draft
With the National Football League‘s schedule still up in the air for the upcoming season, the league held its annual draft in different settings because of the coronavirus pandemic. This year’s draft was held virtually and along with the event, the NFL held an online fundraising campaign, “NFL Draft-A-Thon LIVE,” on NFL.com to raise funds to contribute toward COVID-19 relief. According to the NFL, that effort has resulted in the NFL raising more than $100 million.
The viewership numbers for the “NFL Draft-A-Thon LIVE,” averaged more than 5.4 million total daily viewers across multiple digital and social properties. That audience viewed over 46.7 million total minutes of the online fundraiser.
“I couldn’t be more proud of the efforts and collaboration of our clubs, league personnel, and our partners to conduct an efficient Draft and share an unforgettable experience with millions of fans during these uncertain times,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a written statement. “This Draft is the latest chapter in the NFL’s storied history of lifting the spirit of America and unifying people. In addition to celebrating the accomplishments of so many talented young men, we were pleased that this unique Draft helped shine a light on today’s true heroes—the healthcare workers, first responders, and countless others on the front lines in the battle against COVID-19. We are also grateful to all those who contributed to the NFL family’s fundraising efforts.”
Funds raised during the NFL Draft-A-Thon LIVE will help support six national nonprofit organizations and their respective COVID-19 relief efforts. Fans and anyone who wants to contribute to the fund can continue to donate at NFL.com/Relief.
At NFL.com/auction, fans can bid on autographed NFL items and exclusive packages to support COVID-19 relief as well. The NFL does not retain any profits from the sale of these items or experiences. Charitable contributions are donated to the NFL’s nonprofit partners.
“Draft-A-Thon LIVE was presented all three days of the 2020 NFL Draft and available through NFL digital properties across devices (phone, PC, tablet and connected TVs) as well as a number of digital platforms including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, Reddit, TuneIn, Yahoo! Sports and more than 100 news websites via SendtoNews.”
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Wells Fargo Names Lester Owens as New Head of Operations
Wells Fargo recently announced that Lester Owens will be joining the company in July of 2020 as the head of operations. In his role, he will be responsible for building a more unified, more integrated approach to Wells Fargo’s business operations functions. Additionally, Owens will report to Chief Operating Officer Scott Powell and will serve on the company’s Operating Committee.
Owens will be joining Wells Fargo from Bank of New York Mellon, where he was Global Head of Operations, responsible for a team of 20,000 employees supporting every stage of the client investment lifecycle, including account creation, trading, clearing and settlement, and asset servicing.
Related: 5 Ways Black Men Can Succeed in Corporate America
Prior to joining BNY Mellon, he spent 10 years at JPMorgan Chase, where he was responsible for Global Wholesale Banking Operations, among other roles. Lester previously led significant operations functions for Deutsche Bank, Citibank, and Bankers Trust. Owens is a graduate of Long Island University and the Fairleigh Dickinson Executive MBA program.
In a statement released by Wells Fargo, Chief Operating Officer Scott Powell said, “Lester is a highly regarded operations executive with more than 30 years of experience in the financial services industry and a passion for excellence, customer experience, efficiency, and transformation.”
He went on to add, “While everyone at Wells Fargo shares the responsibility for operational excellence, Lester’s team will enable us to deliver the best experience possible for our customers while driving consistent execution across our business operations functions, including contact center operations, client servicing support, money movements within our businesses, lending operations, and other functions. We will all benefit from having Lester’s deep experience and talent in this critical role,” said Powell.
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Tupac Shakur gets apology after governor accuses him of unemployment fraud
A Kentucky man got a personal apology from the governor of his state, Andy Beshear after being accused of unemployment fraud.
The 46-year-old man whose legal name is Tupac Shakur was previously employed as a food service worker. Shakur had been waiting on his unemployment benefits after being laid off due to the coronavirus pandemic.
READ MORE: Iowa Tupac fan, 66, loses government official job but finds love with Thug Life nation
During a press conference on Monday night, Beshear spoke about people who were filing for benefits under fake names— lifting Shakur as an example.
“We had somebody apply for unemployment for Tupac Shakur here in Kentucky,” the governor said, “And that person may have thought they were being funny. Except for the fact that because of them, we had to go through so many other claims.”
The governor suggested that someone from his state tried to cheat the system by using the name of the multi-platinum Death Row artist that was murdered in 1996. He was wrong.
He later learned the truth: one of his law-abiding constituents has a name similar to the rap star, and is currently an unemployed resident of Lexington, Kentucky.
After learning of the error, Beshear called Shakur— who goes by his middle name, Malik — and apologized. But the damage was already done.
Shakur told the Lexington Herald-Leader that he was “hurt,” and “embarrassed” by the governor’s statement.
Previously employed as a cook, Shakur says that he applied for unemployment benefits on March 13. Four days later, he received an approval notice stating the amount of money he could expect. He’s been waiting for those funds ever since. “I’ve been struggling for like the last month trying to figure out how to pay the bills,” Shakur said.
The Herald-Leader gave the governor’s office Shakur’s phone number on Monday night after the press conference and the Democratic governor personally called him on Tuesday morning to apologize. He stated that the unemployment agency is working on his claim and will be releasing his funds.
For his part, Shakur is trying to keep his head up. He said that he forgave the governor for his blunder, “I understand, he’s dealing with a lot,” Shakur said, “Mistakes happen.”
The governor took it a step further and publicly acknowledged his error.
“I owe somebody an apology tonight. Last night, I spent a little bit of time talking about fraudulent claims holding us up. I mentioned an individual who had filed under the name of Tupac Shakur.” Beshear confessed, “I didn’t know (and it is my fault), that we have a Kentuckian who goes by Malik— whose name is Tupac Shakur. I talk to him on the phone today and I apologized.”
“He was gracious. I said I was sorry if I embarrassed him or caused him any attention he didn’t want.”
READ MORE: Will Smith admits he was ‘insecure’ and jealous of wife Jada and Tupac’s friendship
He ended his remarks on the subject with a promise to swiftly resolve Shakur’s claims.
Unemployment claims are high in Kentucky, like the rest of the country, more than 2.4% of the state’s workforce have filed unemployment claims.
Tupac Malik Shakur legally changed his name in 1998 after becoming a practicing Muslim. He chose the surname because it means “thankful to God” in Arabic.
The post Tupac Shakur gets apology after governor accuses him of unemployment fraud appeared first on TheGrio.
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Los Angeles Clippers Player Kawhi Leonard Loses ‘Klaw’ Logo Legal Matter Against Nike
He has won basketball games, and an NBA championship, and a chance to play back home, but, he couldn’t beat a sneaker giant in a logo battle! Los Angeles Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard has lost the lawsuit he filed against Nike, according to The Oregon Live.
Leonard designed a “Klaw” logo several years ago that he claims Nike unlawfully copyrighted. He sued Nike in the middle of the NBA finals last year in June 2019. He said he created the logo while he was in college at San Diego State in 2011, drawing on his large hands, his jersey number and initials.
Nike then filed a countersuit against Leonard, saying that it holds the exclusive rights to a claw logo produced by its “talented team of designers.’’ US District Judge Michael W. Mosman sided with Nike and thereby dismissed Leonard’s lawsuit.
Mosman ruled that the logo that the Nike designers helped create with Leonard marked an “independent piece of intellectual property’’ that was distinct from the original sketch Leonard initially conceived and shared with Nike.
“It’s not merely a derivative work of the sketch itself,’’ the judge ruled after an hour of oral arguments held by phone as well as multiple briefs filed in the case. “I do find it to be new and significantly different from the design.”
One of Leonard’s lawyers, Mitchell C. Stein, asked the judge to view Leonard’s original initial drawing and the final logo as “one and the same.” Leonard isn’t claiming ownership of a derivative work. “We’re claiming ownership of the logo Leonard created,’’ Stein told the court.
“The KL, the No. 2 and the hand as expressed by Mr. Leonard in his sketch and as modified is the protectable element that appears in the Nike Klaw,” Stein argued.
But Tamar Duvdevani, a lawyer for Nike had stated that there are many differences between the rough sketch that Leonard presented to Nike with his ideas and the actual final logo agreed upon in his contract.
“One is not the same as the other,” she said.
“Authorship is more than mere directions and ideas,” Duvdevani said. “It’s clear here it was Nike’s designers who put pen to paper to fix the work in a tangible medium of expression.”
“Kawhi put his heart and soul into that design so we are obviously disappointed the judge ruled the logo belongs to Nike and not Kawhi,” Leonard’s attorney, Peter R. Ginsberg, told Oregon Live following the judge’s ruling. “We’re considering our options to protect Kawhi’s interests.”
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Tuesday, April 28, 2020
How growth of the scientific enterprise influenced a century of quantum physics
Austrian quantum theorist Erwin Schrödinger first used the term “entanglement,” in 1935, to describe the mind-bending phenomenon in which the actions of two distant particles are bound up with each other. Entanglement was the kind of thing that could keep Schrödinger awake at night; like his friend Albert Einstein, he thought it cast doubt on quantum mechanics as a viable description of the world. How could it be real?
And yet, evidence keeps accumulating that entanglement exists. Two years ago MIT Professor David Kaiser and an international team used lasers, single-photon detectors, atomic clocks, and huge telescopes collecting light that had been released by distant quasars 8 billion years ago to further refine tests of quantum entanglement. The researchers thus effectively ruled out a potential objection, that the appearance of entanglement might derive from some correlation between the selection of measurements to perform and the behavior of the particles being tested.
Yes, entanglement defies our intuition, but at least scientists can keep learning about it, Kaiser notes.
“Schrödinger could only stay up all night,” says Kaiser, meaning that theorists in the 1930s just had “pencil and paper and very hard-thought calculations and compelling analogies” to guide them, but little physical evidence. Today, by contrast, “we have instruments to study these questions in ways that weren’t even possible experimentally or empirically until recently.”
Now Kaiser, a professor of physics at MIT and the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society, has written a new history of the subject, “Quantum Legacies: Dispatches from an Uncertain World,” published this month by the University of Chicago Press. Moving between vignettes of key physicists, original research about the growth of the field, and accounts of his own work in cosmology, Kaiser emphasizes the vast changes in the field over time.
“There have been really quite dramatic shifts in the fortunes of the discipline,” says Kaiser, who says he aimed to present readers with “a different kind of story, with different through-lines, over a very turbulent century.”
The physics boom and the crash
Indeed, many histories of quantum physics have been telescopic in form, focusing on the field’s most well-known stars: the foundational quantum theorists Niels Bohr, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, and Schrödinger, with Einstein usually featured as a famous quantum skeptic. Before the physics community was thrown into turmoil by world war, these scientists developed quantum mechanics and identified its most baffling features — including entanglement and the uncertainty principle (the trade-off in accuracy when measuring things like the position and momentum of a particle).
We still struggle to interpret these concepts, but much else has changed. In particular, Kaiser emphasizes, physics witnessed a quarter-century of unprecedented growth starting in the 1940s, especially when students flooded back into America’s universities after World War II.
“We trained more people in physics in that quarter-century after the war than had previously been trained, cumulatively, since the dawn of time,” Kaiser says of this growth phase.
Meanwhile, massive particle colliders changed the methods of physics and yielded new knowledge about subatomic structures. Huge teams collaborated on experiments, strictly intent on grinding out empirical advances. More people than ever were becoming physicists, but seemingly fewer than ever pondered the “philosophical” problems raised by quantum physics, which became unfashionable.
“It was more than a pendulum swing,” Kaiser says. “Physics saw these quite dramatic shifts in what even counted as a real question.”
Kaiser carefully documents this shift through close readings of physics textbooks, showing how an ethos of pragmatic calculation became dominant. Textbook authors, he adds, are “always making a range of value judgements: What’s an appropriate topic, what’s an appropriate method? What should we be asking questions about? What is ‘merely’ philosophical?”
And then the physics bubble burst: Funding, enrollment numbers, and jobs in the field all dropped precipitously in the early 1970s, due to a slowing economy and decreased federal funding.
“Those numbers crashed for virtually every field of study across the academy, but none fell faster than physics,” Kaiser says.
The Tao of large colliders
Perhaps surprisingly, that 1970s job-market crunch helped revive interest in the quantum curiosities of the 1930s. As Kaiser detailed in his 2011 book “How the Hippies Saved Physics” — which grew out of this book project — some key advances toward understanding entanglement came from then-marginal physicists who, lacking fast-track research opportunities, had relative freedom to explore neglected issues.
Such unconventional thinking soon began to influence teaching as well, Kaiser notes in “Quantum Legacies.” Fritjof Capra’s period bestseller “The Tao of Physics,” linking Eastern religion and quantum mysteries, is known today as a New Age staple — but it landed on academic syllabi in the 1970s, thanks to physics professors eager to lure students back to their classrooms.
Since the 1970s, quantum physics has seen multiple mini-eras zip by. Defense spending spurred a 1980s recovery in physics, but when U.S. Congress killed the Superconducting Supercollider project in 1993, physicists in some branches of the discipline could not generate many new experimental results — until the Large Hadron Collider came online in 2008. Multiple recent academic generations have thus experienced physics as a turbulent discipline, with its fortunes tied to distant politics.
“Sometimes people got caught out of sync, they entered physics during boom times and, through no fault of their own, the opportunities vanished before they got their degrees,” Kaiser says. “And we’ve seen that happen twice in this country in the last half-century.”
So while the likes of Schrödinger could make progress with a pencil and paper, the material conditions of physics matter immensely as far as contemporary progress in the discipline goes.
“The ideas matter a great deal,” Kaiser says. “But the ideas are embedded in a changing world.”
“Quantum Legacies” has drawn praise from scholars; Nobel-winning physicist Kip Thorne of Caltech praises the book’s “remarkable set of vignettes about major developments in physics and cosmology of the past century,” which “beautifully integrate science with human history.” Award-winning novelist Nell Freudenberger notes Kaiser’s “talent for uncovering connections between otherworldly ideas and the social and political worlds in which they take shape,” which, she continues, makes for “a simply spellbinding guide to the mysteries of the universe."
For his part, Kaiser hopes readers will ponder the “doubleness” of scientists — they hope to find eternal answers, despite being bound by their era’s tools and assumptions. And while “Quantum Legacies” explores the lives of some individual physicists, such as Dirac, Kaiser also hopes readers will appreciate how thoroughly quantum physics has been a collaborative enterprise.
“In science there is a tradition of writing about the single genius, but quantum mechanics from day one has required an ensemble cast,” Kaiser says, adding, “When we study institutions, generations, and cohorts, I find that more valuable than thinking about these unattainable geniuses on the mountaintop — which is always a fable, but it’s an especially poor-fitting fable for this set of developments.”
Consider, he says, that more than 15,000 physicists published papers relating to the Higgs Boson — exploring how subatomic particles acquire mass — over a 50-year span. But only after the Large Hadron Collider started running could scientists find evidence for it.
“It makes me think about my own [work] in a different way,” Kaiser says. “What have I not been able to think of, that the next generation will open up? I find that much more exciting, as a human story, as a conceptual story, than focusing on a single lone genius.”
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Studying the brain and supporting the mind
“I’ve always been interested in science from a very young age, and my grandmother was actually a really big influence in that regard,” says Tarun Kamath, when asked about his academic inspirations. “She was a big believer in being very passionate and very good at what you might want to do.”
Kamath is a senior majoring in brain and cognitive sciences as well as a master’s student in biological engineering. As a child, he did sudoku puzzles with his grandmother in the mornings. He received a big sudoku book from her for his eighth birthday, along with encouragement to watch videos of sudoku champions in order to learn from the very best.
But when Kamath was in high school, his grandmother was diagnosed with atypical Parkinson’s disorder, and the “harrowing experience” of caring for a formerly vigorous and passionate woman became inspiration of a different sort, he says.
“My family and I struggled to get access to the care she needed, spending months navigating the Medicaid system to afford her medications. Her doctors prescribed her more pills and patches, and yet when I talked to her she still confused me with my brother, her brother, even her neighbor,” Kamath wrote in a recent scholarship essay. “Maddeningly, from a glance, she seemed healthy, but internally, her mind, her independence, even her personality, was slipping away. I was shocked and frustrated by the inadequacy of available medical options and the difficulty we had accessing them. What was the point of medicine if it couldn’t help the people I loved?”
At MIT, Kamath’s research has focused on neurogenerative disease biology in Bradley Hyman’s Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital, looking at toxic aggregations of the tau protein in Alzheimer’s disease. He has been working in the lab since the end of his first year. The 20-minute bike ride up the river to Mass General has been worth it, he says. “There’s a ton of amazing biomedical research happening around Boston, but what’s really special about a lab is the culture. It’s not just about what work you’re doing but it’s about the people that you do it with.”
The lab has provided him with mentorship, the independence to start new projects, and most importantly, the ability to fail. “Especially as a student, it’s important to be in a place that not only encourages results but is accepting of failure, because 99 percent of science is failure,” Kamath explains. “I got lucky with this lab, and with what I’ve been able to learn about a field that is very personally relevant to me.”
Since leaving campus in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Kamath has been writing his master’s thesis and wrapping up some of his research projects, along with trying to keep his mind and body active. “I've been trying to watch videos to learn about topics I've been interested in but never had time to fully explore. I’m also video-calling and messaging many of my friends who are now scattered, to check in and see how they are all doing,” he says.
Kamath is considering an MD/PhD program after graduation, in part because he wants to continue in research and because working closely with the neuropathology department at Mass General has helped him realize the “importance of the interplay between science and medicine.”
His experiences with his grandmother, along with a key first-year class at MIT, also opened his eyes to the important role of health policy alongside the lab and the clinic. In the class 17.309 (Science, Technology and Public Policy), “we talked about a lot of case studies, and in lots of them people are not communicating effectively,” Kamath explains. “What was really fascinating was learning that yes, there is science, but science doesn’t translate into tangible things that can help people until the policy aspect happens.”
“That’s sort of been a continuing theme of my MIT education, that you come into college with this preconceived notion of how systems work,” he adds, “and that can be small-scale, like how cells work, or it could be macroscale, like how countries work. And then you take classes and you realize that things are just way more complicated.”
Over the summer of 2018, Kamath was an intern in the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means, as part of the MIT Washington, D.C. Summer Internship Program. He helped analyze bills and draft memos on methods to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicare, among other tasks.
“There’s the old joke, that the opposite of progress is Congress, but there are a ton of things happening there. It was very encouraging, the constant back and forth and refining of ideas,” he says. “And from that I’m more willing to hear multiple sides of an argument in general, after that.”
From 2017 to 2019, Kamath served as president of the MIT chapter of Active Minds, a national mental health organization. There had been a chapter of the group at his high school, and he sought it out when he came to MIT “because I resonated a lot with their goal,” he says. Other peer support groups on campus “are sort of first aid for mental health. Somebody has a really stressful day and the peer supporter is there to help them through or to help them find a counselor if the stress is chronic,” he explains. “Active Minds is trying to prevent that day from happening in the first place. We try to encourage an environment in which people are less stressed or if they are stressed, to go talk to somebody.”
College-age students have high rates of mental health disorders but one of the lowest rates of seeking help for those disorders, he adds. “There’s this huge disparity between what people are experiencing and what they tell other people they are experiencing, and so Active Minds tries to bridge that gap.”
Kamath has never forgotten the support he received as a first-year from his Zeta Beta Tau fraternity class father, when he was having a “meltdown” over a differential equations assignment. “I didn’t even have to think about it, I just went to my class father’s room,” he recalls, “We chatted for a while and walked to the 24/7 Star Market to buy a couple of cold brew coffees. That had a big influence on me.”
“I feel supported and encouraged by everybody here and there’s not a barrier to me asking for help. And that’s a culture that I wanted to continue and cultivate my junior year,” by becoming class father himself, Kamath says.
One of the new things Kamath tried out when he first came to MIT was bhangra, the high-energy and competitive Punjabi folk dance. When he came up to the campus for a preview weekend in high school, a member of Mirchi, MIT’s Bollywood fusion dance team, invited Kamath to one of his workshops. Kamath attended, although he had never danced before, and was hooked. He became a member of the MIT Bhangra Dance team for two years.
“I had been kind of afraid of performing, but it’s super-liberating, because in bhangra, it’s all about those seven minutes,” he says. “Win or lose, you put everything you’ve got into those seven minutes that you have on stage to perform, and you have to leave it all behind there. It’s an adrenaline rush!”
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Rancho Cordova police officer brutalizes unarmed Black teen in viral video
A disturbing video of a Rancho Cordova police officer assaulting a Black teenager has once again gone viral.
In the clip that was shot by a bystander purportedly on Monday, a Rancho Cordova police officer is seen attempting to handcuff the teenager who is believed to be 14. The person who originally uploaded the tweet said the incident happened because of a cigar.
The unarmed teenager is punched repeatedly, has his neck squeezed and thrown from side to side.
“RCPD brutally tackled and hit my best friend’s 14 year old brother today over a swisher sweet! The officer had no reason to brutalize and traumatize this boy like this! He has a pre existing health condition which could be fatal under this kind of stress! Unjustifiable!”
RCPD brutally tackled and hit my best friend’s 14 year old brother today over a swisher sweet! The officer had no reason to brutalize and traumatize this boy like this! He has a pre existing health condition which could be fatal under this kind of stress! Unjustifiable! pic.twitter.com/94fqyu3J28
— De$🔮 (@destiinoo_) April 28, 2020
READ MORE: Charges dropped against Michigan teen in alleged police brutality case
There is no footage as of yet to what occurred before the 15 seconds of filming occurred, but many still felt that the officer did not have to escalate to the violence he did. It was noted that a white teenager would not have been treated in the same manner.
“Yet white school shooters walk out handcuffed practically skipping with authorities after slaughtering the masses…..*not all cops are bad, but some obviously stick to a certain script*,” one commented.
Julián Castro, former Secretary of Housing & Urban Development and Mayor of San Antonio retweeted the disturbing footage. It got over 1 million retweets within a half hour as Castro called for action to be taken against the unidentified cop.
“WARNING: This video of a @RanchoCordovaPD officer beating a 14-year-old is sickening, and demands immediate action. How many of these videos must we see before we do something about police violence in this country?” he tweeted.
April Ryan, White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief of American Urban Radio Network, expressed her outrage. She demanded his firing.
“Fire him! Now!” she simply tweeted.
A woman who alleged to be the teenager’s sister took to Twitter and stated that her brother had been arrested for resisting arrest. She said there was more footage that she wasn’t able to upload and he had a heart condition that could’ve been triggered by the assault.
“And to add on: my brother has a serious heart condition that could be triggered very easily by being hit in his chest/back! He’s a kid and has never been in any kind of trouble with the law! He was very scared and in so much pain!!!,” she tweeted.
And to add on: my brother has a serious heart condition that could be triggered very easily by being hit in his chest/back! He’s a kid and has never been in any kind of trouble with the law! He was very scared and in so much pain!!!
— nana mf bangah💋 (@0hnana__) April 28, 2020
The Rancho Cordova Police Department in Rancho Cordova, Calif., reacted to the video and social media outcry Tuesday afternoon with a statement. They claimed that there was an investigation in its infancy but that a problem-oriented policing officer was responding to complaints from citizens about sales of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs to minors.
The statement goes on to claim that the teenager informed the deputy he was 18 and that the officer was acting within the bounds of his authority.
“Having reasonable suspicion that criminal activity was occurring, the deputy attempted to detain the juvenile so he could conduct further investigation. The juvenile became physically resistive at that time, causing the deputy to lose control of his handcuffs, which landed several feet away,” the statement read. The deputy attempted to maintain control of the juvenile without his handcuffs and while alone waiting for his partners to arrive and assist him.”
The unnamed juvenile was cited and released to his guardians. Despite the investigation into the apparent use of force, the police department also felt that the teenager was responsible for the incident.
“This type of situation is hard on everyone–the young man, who resisted arrest, and the officer, who would much rather have him cooperate,” the statement continued.
The post Rancho Cordova police officer brutalizes unarmed Black teen in viral video appeared first on TheGrio.
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Chicago businessman says his PPE supplies were turned down by officials
The state of Illinois and the city of Chicago have been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, with nearly 42,000 cases and almost 1,900 deaths state-wide. Most of those cases are coming out of Cook County, with many of the dead being African American.
So when Dr. Willie Wilson, founder and CEO of Illinois-based Omar Medical Supplies reached out to the office of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot with tens of millions of pieces of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for sale, it seemed like a no-brainer that the city and the state would strike a deal with him.
Instead, Pritzker paid Federal Express nearly $1.8 million to retrieve PPE from China for the state of Illinois in addition to about $17 million on PPE itself.
READ MORE: Texas nurse creates face masks that protect against COVID-19 better than N-95 mask
theGrio spoke to the philanthropist, entrepreneur, and aspiring politician about his interaction with the governor and Chicago mayor, as well as his Senate run.
Dr. Wilson reached out to both Governor Pritzker and Mayor Lightfoot, only to hit roadblocks in conversations with both offices in trying to get a deal finalized. Both Pritzker and Lightfoot placed the blame on Wilson.
Jordan Abudayyeh, a spokeswoman for Governor Pritzker, claims Wilson wanted “an open purchase order, with no specific pricing set,” adding “the state does not enter into open purchase orders.”
Dr. Wilson vehemently denies this writing in a letter to the governor. “(The Governor and I) had a telephone conversation a few weeks ago and l expressed my desire to assist the State of Illinois through the provision of these necessary supplies,” wrote Wilson.
“After our discussion, a member of your staff called me. My staff explained the process of purchasing PPE from China. If the order from the State of Illinois was a one-time order all we would have needed was one purchase order,” Wilson explained.
“If the state needed more PPE than just the one order, we would have needed an open purchase order to secure additional PPE for several months, otherwise, we would run the risk of not being able to secure the PPE.
READ MORE: Meek Mill and Michael Rubin with Madonna to send masks to prisons
He adds, “I believe it was a misunderstanding in how business is transacted in China at this critical time. As for pricing, we are very clear on pricing per order. However, the price could fluctuate over time due to the emergency nature of the pandemic and availability of materials to make (the) product.”
The mayor’s office also placed the blame on Wilson, saying he requested cash payment upfront, which he also denies.
“That you would misrepresent my statements to you on this issue so blatantly and dishonestly is not only disturbing, it is, in light of our current public health crisis, profoundly disheartening,” Wilson wrote in a letter to Mayor Lightfoot.
“(The Mayor and I) had a telephone conversation approximately six weeks ago and l expressed my desire to assist the city through the provision of these necessary supplies,” Wilson said.
“After our discussion, a member of your staff called me. At no point during either of these discussions was pricing ever discussed. After an initial conversation, I never heard from your administration again. Given the high volume of materials needed, I did state that to cover the cost of manufacturing, payment would be needed upfront. However, I never stated that we would demand or require cash upfront.”
Requests for comment from theGrio to the offices of both Governor Pritzker and Mayor Lightfoot went unanswered.
The qualifications of Wilson’s company can’t be disputed, he said. “We are eminently qualified,” Wilson said. “In fact, I provide 100 to 200 million face masks a month to Fortune 500 companies around the world.
READ MORE: Black men told to leave Walmart for wearing masks
“People are dying out here and I am right here, and I have product right here in my warehouse,” Wilson added.
The state of Illinois has reportedly spent nearly $180 million on COVID-19-related purchases, including ventilators and PPE, through April 21, according to the office of the Illinois State Comptroller.
But how much of that money has gone to Black-owned businesses?
“Where is your commitment to the African-American community?” Wilson asked in an interview with theGrio. “More people are dying [in the African American community]. Where is your commitment to contracts and jobs? I bet you they can’t even show that African Americans have gotten a fair portion of the dollars that the federal government has given [the state] and money they are spending today.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Wilson also continues to be active in the community making both PPE and financial donations.
“My company has donated one million masks to Mount Sinai Hospital and 22 other community organizations,” Dr. Wilson said. “I have donated 20,000 masks to Jackson Park Hospital, 10,000 masks to the Westside NAACP, 50,000 to the Chicago Transit Authority, and 10,000 to Cook County Jail for correctional officers.
He added, “I donated masks to 75 senior citizen facilities and to several Aldermen for their residents. In addition, we have provided masks to the Chicago firefighters, and the Fraternal Order of Police.
“Finally, I have personally given away $1 million to people that have lost their jobs and another $1 million to 1,000 churches. The reality is I give away 90 percent of my profits back to the community.”
On Tuesday, April 28, Dr. Wilson donated 20,000 masks each to 50 Chicago aldermen for a total of 1 million, after Gov. Pritzker signed an order making it mandatory for all Illinois citizens to wear face masks starting May 1.
After receiving a shipment of supplies, Omar Medical Supplies has PPE totaling over 10 million, and its goal is to get the equipment to the people in need and help save lives.
When asked why citizens of Illinois should vote for the senate hopeful, Dr. Wilson said he’s “I’m interested in being a US senator to shed some light on all of the communities, without leaving out the Black and Brown communities.”
“I’m not interested in a paycheck,” he said.
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D.C. Landmark Ben’s Chili Bowl approved for PPP loan after public outcry
Ben’s Chili Bowl has been approved for a Paycheck Protection Program loan following a public outcry regarding their extended wait time.
The original restaurant, famously located on U Street, will receive a loan, along with all other Ben’s locations in Washington D.C., WJLA reporter Anna-Lysa Gayle tweeted on Tuesday, April 28.
The D.C. staple, which fed protestors during the Civil Rights Movement, faced financial difficulties after the coronavirus pandemic forced co-owner Sage Ali to shut down all of its locations, with the exception of U-Street.
“We have Ben’s Chili Bowl here, we have Nats Park, FedEx Field, Horseshoe Casino and we have Capital One Arena,” Ali explained to local news outlet WJLA on April 21. “We were looking to really have our best year yet. And all of a sudden this hit and it just took in a very, very different direction.”
READ MORE: Restaurant that fed protesters during civil rights faces financial woes during quarantine
The restaurant owner and his team applied for a PPP loan after Congress passed a historic $2 trillion stimulus package, which included $349 billion allocated to small businesses, on March 27.
The program, marred by technical glitches and red tape, ran out of money by April 16, with thousands of small business owners stranded without any income or assistance. Shortly thereafter, it was reported that large corporations, such as Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and Shake Shack, had received millions of dollars worth of funding from the program.
“The COVID-19 hit us hard, we’ve had to consolidate, we’re just working out of here for carry out and delivery,” Ali said. “We applied for the PPP loan and unfortunately, it did not get through yet.”
READ MORE: Los Angeles Lakers return $4.6 million federal loan
Congress passed another $484 billion stimulus bill on April 21 to replenish the small business loans program.
The legislation includes $310 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program, including $30 billion allocated to community lenders, small banks and credit unions, and $60 billion for the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, which includes $10 billion in emergency grants for businesses.
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