Atlanta Hawks Arena to transform into massive voting site for elections

The Atlanta Hawks will flip State Farm Arena into an early voting site for Georgia’s upcoming elections. 

According to a press release issued on Monday (June 29), the Fulton County Registration and Elections Board is partnering with the basketball team to transform the state-of-the-art facility into the largest-ever voting precinct. Hundreds of State Farm Arena staffers will also be trained as volunteer poll workers.

Starting with early voting on July 20 for the primary runoff election on August 11, as well as the general election on November 3, voters will be able to park around the area for free and cast their ballots while maintaining the CDC’s social distancing requirements. 

READ MORE: Stacey Abrams slams GOP over voter suppression in Georgia

“We aim to be a community asset, and in order to fulfill that goal, we need to be more than just a basketball team,” Hawks CEO Steve Koonin said. “We’ll utilize our arena for all aspects of voting.”

Starting on July 20, we will become Georgia's largest-ever voting precinct.

We are proud to partner with Fulton County to give all registered Fulton County residents the ability to vote early at our arena.

Read more: https://t.co/RhFbkgq7y3 pic.twitter.com/P8zFeFEics

— State Farm Arena (@StateFarmArena) June 29, 2020

The primary voting on June 9 was plagued by long wait times, primarily in urban neighborhoods, and most complaints were about malfunctioning voting machines.

Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, called the problems “unacceptable.”

In a statement, he said “My office has opened an investigation to determine what these counties need to do to resolve these issues before November’s election.”

The partnership comes after several Georgia residents (and lawmakers) took to social media to complain about their chaotic voting experience this month, especially in Fulton County, theGrio previously reported.

Stacey Abrams believes the GOP purposefully made the process difficult for Blacks as an act of voter suppression. 

 “People sacrifice a day’s wage to try to cast a vote. These are largely communities that are working class, working poor. They’re not making a lot to begin with to cast a ballot. It’s a poll tax. But we know even more that you raise the question of incompetence versus malice. In Georgia it’s both,” she said while speaking to MSNBC host Chris Hayes earlier this month.

“But let’s be clear,” Abrams added.

READ MORE: Georgia secretary of state vows to investigate voting delays in minority areas

We have been saying it for some time, and a spate of national news in recent days has demonstrated: Georgia is the premier battleground state. Here’s why… #gapol

(THREAD) https://t.co/X5bAEtM7ws

— Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) June 29, 2020

“This didn’t just happen in Georgia. It also happened in South Carolina and Nevada to a lesser extent and certainly without the clownish behavior of the Secretary of State. But across the country, we are seeing this combination of incompetence and malfeasance putting voters of color at risk of not being heard in our democracy,” she continued.

The election administration in Georgia has been catching major heat following the disastrous June 9 primary. Which is partly the reason why Fulton County Commissioner Robb Pitts co-signed the partnership with the Hawks. 

“It took me about a nanosecond to understand what a big deal that would be for us here in Fulton County running this upcoming election, given the challenges that we had,” Pitts said.

Meanwhile, the Hawks have challenged the rest of the NBA to get involved ahead of the November election.

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Protesters injured by police before Trump photo-op testify: ‘It hurts’

When U.S. Park Police forcefully pushed peaceful protesters away from the White House and Lafayette Square on June 1, they performed a “violent and senseless operation,” said Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, D-Ariz, chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, during a Congressional hearing about the incident on Monday. 

Around 6:30 p.m. — a half-hour before Washington D.C.’s curfew — videos show U.S. Park Police using projectiles, batons, and gas to move protesters away from the park. Soon thereafter, President Donald Trump left the White House and staged a photo-op with a Bible in front of St. John’s Church.

READ MORE: Twitter rips Trump’s Bible photo-op in front of church after protest remarks

Trump administration officials, including Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, have since distanced themselves from the evening’s events.

WASHINGTON DC: Minutes before Trump’s Lafayette Square photo-op starts, police rush into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators, beating them and knocking them to the ground.

Police fire tear gas and pepper spray into the crowd as the demonstrators panic.pic.twitter.com/5j4pJQvbM9

— Chad Loder (@chadloder) June 2, 2020

“Astonishingly, instead of honoring this collective outcry for justice, this administration responded to the calls to end police brutality with more police brutality,” said Rep. Grijalva.

Among the hearing’s witnesses was Washington D.C. resident Kishon McDonald, who is a plaintiff in an ACLU lawsuit over the force used to move Lafayette Square protesters. 

“It hurts as a Black man to see that it’s 2020 and we still have a government who would do this to us again over something that seems so right to protest about,” said McDonald. “The damage was done the minute the president decided to violate our First Amendment rights.”

Civil rights demonstrator Kishon McDonald testifies at a U.S. House Natural Resources Committee hearing examining Park Police response to Lafayette Square protests on June 29, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images)

READ MORE: Protesters sue Trump over tear-gassing at Lafayette Park

Referring to the use of tear gas and flashbangs, McDonald compared the force to a boot camp drill. “It’s unacceptable to treat protesters like that in our own city and nation,” said the U.S. Navy veteran. 

Amelia Brace, a journalist and fellow witness, stated that she and her cameraman identified themselves as members of the media but were smacked by batons and hit by “pepper ball” projectiles.

The U.S. correspondent for Seven News Australia said she told anchors and the network’s audience, “They chased us down that street as you see. They were firing these rubber bullets at everyone. There’s tear gas.”

Seven News Australia correspondent Amelia Brace testifies at a U.S. House Natural Resources Committee hearing examining Park Police response to Lafayette Square protests on June 29, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images)

In contrast to testimony from the witnesses, House Republicans echoed the June 2 statement by the U.S. Park Police, referring to protesters as “violent” and alluding to “the destruction of public property.”

Two committee members, Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif, and Rep. Russ Fulcher, R-Idaho, shared videos depicting violent protests and damaged property from various parts of the country as early as May 28 and as late as June 26. The two men pointed to this as evidence that the Lafayette Square protesters were violent on June 1. 

Later in the hearing Rep. TJ Cox, D-Calif., asked witness Jonathan Turley, a law professor at the George Washington University Law School, if these videos were “at all relevant to the peaceful protests going on on June 1.”

Turley responded that the court “would focus on what was actually happening at that moment, whether the level of force deployed was lawful and reasonable.” 

Turley also said that in order to determine if the force was warranted the committee needed to review a critical period of time after warnings were given to protesters to disperse.

Both McDonald and Brace stated they did not recall hearing any warning messages on the evening of June 1. 

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Lawmakers press FBI to release report on white supremacists inside police departments

A heavily redacted FBI report in 2006 confirmed that white supremacist groups were asking their members to join law enforcement agencies in order to continue to spread hatred. But as of this date, the report has barely been reviewed.

READ MORE: Van Jones secretly helped develop Trump police reform order

In the wake of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Elijah McClain at the hands of police, there are renewed calls to make the entire report public.

Neo-Nazi protestors organized by the National Socialist Movement demonstrate near where the grand opening ceremonies were held for the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Democratic California congresswoman Norma Torres, along with 27 lawmakers has asked for the FBI to allow to release an unredacted version of the report

On her official site, she states:

As we work to end systemic racism in law enforcement, we need to know how pervasive white supremacist ideology is among our officers. The FBI raised an alarm about this fourteen years ago – the public has yet to hear exactly what they found, and what, if anything, was done about it. We must ensure appropriate action was taken for any threats this report identified, and revisit the inquiry to bring its findings up to date immediately.”

In February, FBI Director Christopher Wray identified domestic terrorism as problem on par with that of religious extremism and foreign terrorists, according to an NPR report. 

The arrests and firings of the police officers involved in the Floyd killing and the firing of one of the officers in the Taylor case are small steps in seeking justice for families who lose a loved one because of police brutality, but the overall culture of most police departments remains the same.

“I think that with the advancements in technology, many of these organizations have become more powerful,”  law professor Samuel Jones from the John Marshall School of Law in Chicago told The Daily Beast. “They have been allowed to gain employment within our criminal justice system as prosecutors, as police officers, as investigators, as medical examiners, as judges, according to their own literature.”

READ MORE: Detroit police officer drives SUV into crowd of protesters

Officers around the country have been exposed as members of white supremacist groups like The Proud Boys and the Ku Klux Klan as well as militias who want to keep the races separate, the Daily Beast reports.

In Philadelphia in 2019, 72 Philadelphia police were pulled off the streets by then Philadephia police commissioner Richard Ross when racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim posts were discovered on their personal social media pages after an investigation by the Plain View Project, NPR reports.

Officers in Phoenix, Dallas, and St. Louis were also exposed. Though Ross moved to fire 17 officers, he then resigned in a scandal when a previous affair with another police officer was revealed.

“My position nowadays,” Jones said, “is that we do not have a white supremacist infiltration problem much as a white supremacist culture problem with respect to our law enforcement agencies.”

While Torres and the other lawmakers believe the 2006 report is more important than ever, they expect resistance to its complete release.

“Republicans have been very aggressive at denying that white supremacists are a growing problem in our country,” Torres said.

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Producing a gaseous messenger molecule inside the body, on demand

Nitric oxide is an important signaling molecule in the body, with a role in building nervous system connections that contribute to learning and memory. It also functions as a messenger in the cardiovascular and immune systems.

But it has been difficult for researchers to study exactly what its role is in these systems and how it functions. Because it is a gas, there has been no practical way to direct it to specific individual cells in order to observe its effects. Now, a team of scientists and engineers at MIT and elsewhere has found a way of generating the gas at precisely targeted locations inside the body, potentially opening new lines of research on this essential molecule’s effects.

The findings are reported today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, in a paper by MIT professors Polina Anikeeva, Karthish Manthiram, and Yoel Fink; graduate student Jimin Park; postdoc Kyoungsuk Jin; and 10 others at MIT and in Taiwan, Japan, and Israel.

“It’s a very important compound,” Anikeeva says. But figuring out the relationships between the delivery of nitric oxide to particular cells and synapses, and the resulting higher-level effects on the learning process has been difficult. So far, most studies have resorted to looking at systemic effects, by knocking out genes responsible for the production of enzymes the body uses to produce nitric oxide where it’s needed as a messenger.

But that approach, she says, is “very brute force. This is a hammer to the system because you’re knocking it out not just from one specific region, let’s say in the brain, but you essentially knock it out from the entire organism, and this can have other side effects.”

Others have tried introducing compounds into the body that release nitric oxide as they decompose, which can produce somewhat more localized effects, but these still spread out, and it is a very slow and uncontrolled process.

The team’s solution uses an electric voltage to drive the reaction that produces nitric oxide. This is similar to what is happening on a much larger scale with some industrial electrochemical production processes, which are relatively modular and controllable, enabling local and on-demand chemical synthesis. “We've taken that concept and said, you know what? You can be so local and so modular with an electrochemical process that you can even do this at the level of the cell,” Manthiram says. “And I think what’s even more exciting about this is that if you use electric potential, you have the ability to start production and stop production in a heartbeat.”

The team’s key achievement was finding a way for this kind of electrochemically controlled reaction to be operated efficiently and selectively at the nanoscale. That required finding a suitable catalyst material that could generate nitric oxide from a benign precursor material. They found that nitrite offered a promising precursor for electrochemical nitric oxide generation.

“We came up with the idea of making a tailored nanoparticle to catalyze the reaction,” Jin says. They found that the enzymes that catalyze nitric oxide generation in nature contain iron-sulfur centers. Drawing inspiration from these enzymes, they devised a catalyst that consisted of nanoparticles of iron sulfide, which activates the nitric oxide-producing reaction in the presence of an electric field and nitrite. By further doping these nanoparticles with platinum, the team was able to enhance their electrocatalytic efficiency.

To miniaturize the electrocatalytic cell to the scale of biological cells, the team has created custom fibers containing the positive and negative microelectrodes, which are coated with the iron sulfide nanoparticles, and a microfluidic channel for the delivery of sodium nitrite, the precursor material. When implanted in the brain, these fibers direct the precursor to the specific neurons. Then the reaction can be activated at will electrochemically, through the electrodes in the same fiber, producing an instant burst of nitric oxide right at that spot so that its effects can be recorded in real-time.

As a test, they used the system in a rodent model to activate a brain region that is known to be a reward center for motivation and social interaction, and that plays a role in addiction. They showed that it did indeed provoke the expected signaling responses, demonstrating its effectiveness.

Anikeeva says this “would be a very useful biological research platform, because finally, people will have a way to study the role of nitric oxide at the level of single cells, in whole organisms that are performing tasks.” She points out that there are certain disorders that are associated with disruptions of the nitric oxide signaling pathway, so more detailed studies of how this pathway operates could help lead to treatments.

The method could be generalizable, Park says, as a way of producing other molecules of biological interest within an organism. “Essentially we can now have this really scalable and miniaturized way to generate many molecules, as long as we find the appropriate catalyst, and as long as we find an appropriate starting compound that is also safe.” This approach to generating signaling molecules in situ could have wide applications in biomedicine, he says.

“One of our reviewers for this manuscript pointed out that this has never been done — electrolysis in a biological system has never been leveraged to control biological function,” Anikeeva says. “So, this is essentially the beginning of a field that could potentially be very useful” to study molecules that can be delivered at precise locations and times, for studies in neurobiology or any other biological functions. That ability to make molecules on demand inside the body could be useful in fields such as immunology or cancer research, she says.

The project got started as a result of a chance conversation between Park and Jin, who were friends working in different fields — neurobiology and electrochemistry. Their initial casual discussions ended up leading to a full-blown collaboration between several departments. But in today’s locked-down world, Jin says, such chance encounters and conversations have become less likely. “In the context of how much the world has changed, if this were in this era in which we’re all apart from each other, and not in 2018, there is some chance that this collaboration may just not ever have happened.”

“This work is a milestone in bioelectronics,” says Bozhi Tian, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago, who was not connected to this work. “It integrates nanoenabled catalysis, microfluidics, and traditional bioelectronics … and it solves a longstanding challenge of precise neuromodulation in the brain, by in situ generation of signaling molecules. This approach can be widely adopted by the neuroscience community and can be generalized to other signaling systems, too.”

Besides MIT, the team included researchers at National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, NEC Corporation in Japan, and the Weizman Institute of Science in Israel. The work was supported by the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering.

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Supreme Court strikes down Louisiana abortion clinic law

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a Louisiana law regulating abortion clinics, reasserting a commitment to abortion rights over fierce opposition from dissenting conservative justices in the first big abortion case of the Trump era.

Chief Justice John Roberts joined with his four more liberal colleagues in ruling that the law requiring doctors who perform abortions have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals violates the abortion right the court first announced in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.

In two previous abortion cases, Roberts had favored restrictions.

The Louisiana law is virtually identical to one in Texas that the court struck down in 2016.

RELATED: Supreme Court rejects end to protections for young immigrants

“The result in this case is controlled by our decision four years ago invalidating a nearly identical Texas law,” Roberts wrote, although he did not join the opinion written by Justice Stephen Breyer for the other liberals.

In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote, “Today a majority of the Court perpetuates its ill-founded abortion jurisprudence by enjoining a perfectly legitimate state law and doing so without jurisdiction.”

Justices of the US Supreme Court pose for their official photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC on November 30, 2018. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

President Donald Trump’s two appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, were in dissent, along with Justice Samuel Alito. The presence of the new justices is what fueled hopes among abortion opponents, and fears on the other side, that the Supreme Court would be more likely to uphold restrictions.

A trial judge had said the law would not provide health benefits to women and would leave only one clinic open in Louisiana, in New Orleans. That would make it too hard for women to get an abortion, in violation of the Constitution, the judge ruled.

But the appeals court in New Orleans rejected the judge’s findings and upheld the law in 2018, doubting that any clinics would have to close and saying the doctors had not tried hard enough to establish relationships with local hospitals.

The clinics filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court, asking that the law be blocked while the justices evaluated the case.

RELATED: Supreme Court will not review doctrine that allows police ‘qualified immunity

Early last year, Roberts joined with the four liberal members of the court to grant that request and keep the law on hold.

Roberts’ vote was a bit of a surprise because he voted in the Texas case to uphold the clinic restrictions. It may have reflected his new role since Kennedy’s retirement as the court’s swing justice, his concern about the court being perceived as a partisan institution and respect for a prior decision of the court, even one he disagreed with. Roberts didn’t write anything explaining his position at the time, but he had never before cast a vote on the side of abortion rights.

The regulations at issue in Louisiana are distinct from other state laws making their way through court challenges that would ban abortions early in a pregnancy.

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St. Louis couple point multiple guns at protesters in viral video

Husband and wife, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, aimed guns at protesters who walked by their mansion in Forest Park, Mo.

The protesters were headed to St. Louis mayor, Lyda Krewson’s home to demand her resignation after she read the names of and addresses of people who had submitted a letter demanding that she defund the city’s police department.

READ MORE: Missouri Mayor doxxed those in favor of defunding the police

In the viral video, the couple is seen screaming “keep moving!” Mark McCloskey is seen holding a large assault rifle, while his wife is pointing a handgun at protesters walking by.

A couple in St. Louis defend their home with a firearm after protesters enter their neighborhood
pic.twitter.com/idmZO0nIpS

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 29, 2020

Ironically, the couple’s law firm is representing a victim of police brutality.

According to The Daily Mail, the couple owns the McCloskey Law Center which they run from their palatial home.

Mr. McCloskey is currently representing a man, identified by the initials I.F., who was kicked and struck by police officer David Maas. The shocking incident was captured on dashcam footage that appeared to show him surrendering.

Maas was charged in March 2020 with one count of deprivation of rights in relation to the case. According to the report, in a previous statement, McCloskey said, “I’m glad that the law enforcement agencies are subject to the same standard as everybody else.”

The McCloskeys lived in the same community as Mayor Krewson.

In a now-deleted Facebook Live video posted Friday, June 26, Krewson read the names and addresses of people who support defunding the St. Louis police department. An online petition demanding her resignation has garnered over 40,000 signatures. Protesters painted the word “RESIGN,” outside of her home.

READ MORE: St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner: Racist interests try to force her out

A spokesperson from Krewson’s office has stated that she has no intention of resigning.

She did issue an apology on Friday night, “Tonight, I would like to apologize for identifying individuals who presented letters to me at City Hall as I was answering a routine question during one of my updates earlier today.”

She added, “While this is public information, I did not intend to cause distress or harm to anyone. The post has been removed.”

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An Infrastructure Arms Race Is Fueling the Future of Gaming

As videogame companies increasingly shift to the cloud, data centers have taken on outsized importance.

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Singer Kelis Partners With The Spice Suite For New Collaboration Box

Many Black professionals how found success in the food industry as they continue to thrive and create innovative brands. Five years ago, Howard University alum Angel Gregorio was inspired to open her own spice company after leaving her job as an assistant principal. Today, her company, The Spice Suite, has over 104 spice blends for cooking in addition to her own cookbook, The Little Black SpiceBook,  and now she is teaming up with singer Kelis for a new food collaboration.

Gregorio and Kelis, who owns a sauce line called Bounty & Full and also hosts the Netflix show Cooking With Cannabis, announced the partnership on their Instagram Together, they curated the new collaboration box. “Kelis found me on Instagram, we were DMing, and then we got on the call and just vibed,” Gregorio said in an interview with ESSENCE. “We talked through a collaboration box together, what we were going to put in it, we were going to do an Instagram live to announce it late June.”

“My tribe of customers have been relentless in their support of me and The Spice Suite,” Gregorio said. “Its been absolutely amazing. And fortunately, this is a time where everybody’s at home having to cook way more than they wanted to. They’re tired of making salmon the same old way. A lot of first-time customers tell me, ‘I’m really bored with this chicken and I need something to do, so what do you have?’”

Gregorio went on IG Live to talk about The CollabBox with Kelis while sharing their stories about growing their businesses, and how Black women can support one another. “You had a block full of Black women riding for you,” Kelis said of in the video. “That is the most beautiful, most empowering thing. The fact that we do support each other, we can support each other and we show up.”

 

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A post shared by Angel| SpiceGirl+ Curator (@thespicesuite) on Jun 23, 2020 at 2:45pm PDT

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Virginia Pastor Arrested After Calling Cops On White ‘Mob’ Threatening To Kill Him

Virginia Pastor Leon McCray, 61, called the police for protection after being threatened by a white “mob” in front of property he owned and instead of arresting them, the police arrested McCray.

McCray said he was visiting an apartment property he owns in Edinburg when he saw a man and a woman who did not live there dragging a refrigerator to his dumpster, the pastor told his congregation. When he confronted them, they left and returned with three others. The five allegedly assaulted and threatened to kill the pastor.

According to McCray, the group surrounded, jostled, and threatened him, “telling me that my Black life and the Black Lives Matter stuff, they don’t give a darn about that stuff in this county, and they could care less and ‘We would kill you,’” The Washington Post reported.

McCray, in turn, pulled out his legally concealed handgun.

The group was “threatening my life,” he said during a sermon at his Lighthouse Church & Marketplace Ministries International.

“Being threatened and fearing for my life, I took and felt compelled to pull my concealed weapon — my legally concealed weapon — to save my life,” he told congregants in the June 7 sermon, The New York Post reported.

“This act, through the grace of God, saved my life,” the pastor insisted, saying it bought him time to dial 911.

When the police arrived, however, he said they “made a beeline” for him instead, arresting him even as the group continued making threats against him.

“The hate-crime assaulting criminals watched me being handcuffed and carted off like a dog while the deputies stood with them,” he told his congregants, saying he was charged with brandishing a weapon despite his Second Amendment rights.

“This was indeed the most humiliating, dehumanizing, demeaning and violating event of my life,” he said, calling it “a day that changed my life.”

“I felt, literally, like I had been lynched, without being killed,” he added.

The group also allegedly hurled racial slurs at the pastor, telling him, “We will kill you,” McCray told WHSV.

News of the incident did not sit well with social media users on Twitter. “How many more of these stories do we have to hear? How do people still think these are isolated events when almost every POC has a story like this?” Amy Arnold @a81arnold posted on Twitter.

Atraylle @atraylle tweeted: “We call the police and we the ones that get arrested, punched, tackled, or/and killed.”

And Eric Edlund @EdlundEric tweeted, “Fkn!!!! Ridiculous!!!! The Sheriff apology is meaningless. This is exactly why ppl kneel. This is why ppl want a complete overhaul of policing.”

McCray is a retired Alexandria and Baltimore real estate investor, and 24-year Air Force master sergeant with no criminal record who has never been arrested.

Deputies rushed to judgment in “disarming a Black male brandishing a gun against five white individuals, despite my Second Amendment right to defend myself against five attackers that tried to take my life,” he told The Washington Post.

Five days after the sermon, Shenandoah County Sheriff Timothy Carter announced that the charge against the pastor had been dropped. He also added that hate-crime charges were being filed against the alleged attackers.

Donny Salyers, 43, Dennis Salyers, 26, Farrah Salyers, 42, Amanda Salyers, 26, and Christopher Sharp, 57, all face charges for hate crimes and various degrees of assault, The New York Post reported.

Donny and Dennis Salyers are also charged with assault and battery.  Sharp and Amanda Salyers are charged with trespassing.

Two police supervisors involved were put on unpaid administrative leave during an investigation of the case.

“I have apologized to Mr. McCray,” Sheriff Carter said, conceding that the “charge of brandishing was certainly not appropriate.”

“Actually, as I told Mr. McCray, if I were faced with similar circumstances, I would have probably done the same thing,” the sheriff said of the pastor defending himself.

Two sheriff’s office supervisors have been placed on unpaid administrative leave over the incident, which occurred June 1, Carter said.

In a video posted on Facebook, the sheriff said, “I want the people of Shenandoah County to know that I and the sheriff’s office staff appreciate and care about the minority communities, and especially our black community, in Shenandoah County.”

McCray said his arrest “was totally unacceptable; it would not be acceptable if I was white, and I believe all you know it to be true.”

This article was written by Ann Brown for The Moguldom Nation.

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Even Though Less Than 1% of Venture Capital Goes to Black Founders, Here’s How I Raised $11 Million

As an African American entrepreneur, I can tell you that you’ll face tremendous obstacles in building your vision. But there is nothing more personally liberating than seeing your dream come true—and right now, as an African American entrepreneur, your platform for change is growing exponentially as VCs are slowly starting to understand that they need to be more inclusive and that there are vast opportunities outside of their small network.

I encourage all African Americans to pursue their dreams of being an entrepreneur—and if your dream is to change the world, you should raise venture capital. There will always be difficulties—yes, unique to you. My goal in this piece is to encourage you to keep moving in spite of them. So here’s my story on how I raised an $11M Series A.

It begins when my father came home one day and handed me a copy of Black Enterprise’s 1995 edition of the BE 100s. From that day forward, I decided that I would be an entrepreneur. I grew up in a mostly white neighborhood and went to a mostly white private school. On the weekends, I would work at my grandparents’ business in South Central Los Angeles, which was a historically black community in L.A. At a young age I was very aware that African Americans lived in relative poverty compared to most white people. That was compounded by overtly racist experiences I had throughout my childhood that made it clear that society viewed African Americans as inferior. But the individuals on the BE 100s my dad gave me told me there was hope.

I had a burning desire from an early age to prove to the world that I could do something great despite society’s perception of me. I always had this feeling that I would not be treated fairly in a large corporation—and the BE 100s were the perfect catalyst for my imagination to envision a reality where I would be totally liberated to create my own rules and vision for the world.

A few months after receiving that Black Enterprise magazine, I was inspired to start my own web design business in high school. In college, I raised angel investment to build a platform that would allow artisans to sell their products online. And after graduating from UC Berkeley, I went to China where I ended up starting an import/export business. Our customers were large companies that needed supply chain management consulting to help them navigate the myriad process of working with Chinese factories.

Around the same time, I realized that there was a growing trend of small businesses that were being empowered by tools like Shopify and Instagram, where literally anyone could start their own business and sell products. But the back-end manufacturing—how products actually got made—was still extremely complicated for these small businesses.

I wanted to create a technology company that would solve this problem, but I didn’t have the necessary connections in venture capital to raise money back then. So I decided to build TheStudio.com and later SuppliedShop.com with my own capital—slow but steady. Our vision was and is to democratize manufacturing for small businesses using software.

After having built the company to eight digits in revenue with over 100 employees in four countries, I decided that it was time to go back to the U.S. and raise venture capital—surely now the story was convincing—and with the numbers to prove it! I had seen companies raise a lot more money with no revenue and a less compelling vision for the future. I was confident that given the fact that we had obtained a relative level of success completely bootstrapped and had a compelling vision and technology that actually worked that we would be able to easily raise money.

I soon found out that it would be much harder than I anticipated.

The big problem with the venture community is that it really operates like the stereotypical good old boys network. Forty percent of VCs went to Harvard or Stanford. It’s a pretty cynical testament to the insular nature of VCs that out of all the brilliant people they could hire in this country, 40% of them hail from just two schools. Seventy percent of VCs are white and only 3% are black; LatinX only represents 1%. Less than 1% of venture capital goes to Black founders.

I’ll be very clear: I think the vast majority of VCs are well-intentioned and are not overtly racist. But because the VC model encourages firms to hire and invest in people that they have previous relationships with, the entire ecosystem ends up looking like a country club. Furthermore, there are extreme but unconscious biases of what a successful entrepreneur should “look” like—and our natural human instinct of pattern recognition thinks a successful CEO looks like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos. When I walked in a room, I didn’t look like a CEO to investors, and that perception hurt me when I was raising money.

Every African American knows that intangible feeling where you know you are unfairly judged by a room full of white people, just because of the color of your skin. I felt that.

I have the data to back up my feeling. I pitched roughly 150 VCs and about 80% of the partners that I pitched were white and 20% were non-white. I received zero term sheets from the white VCs and five-term sheets (out of 30 pitches) from non-white VCs. The data is quite clear that although VCs don’t want to acknowledge biases, these biases do exist.

Raising VC money was the most agonizing thing that I have ever done in my life. I had spent years preparing the company to raise VC money, poured all of my savings into the company, and was literally being told on a daily basis that we weren’t good enough to raise money. It was really a heartbreaking experience. But through hard work and perseverance, we were able to raise an $11 million Series A.

To entrepreneurs in the stage I was a few years back, I say this: raising money is hard for everyone—including white males. But it will be more vastly more difficult if you are Black. If you’re in the middle of doing so, you must continue pushing hard to make your dreams come true. There’s no other way.

To VCs, I say: the entire venture capital community must take a hard look at themselves. Is your mandate to perpetuate inequality and do what is easy? Or is it to further equality and bring real value to your LPs by getting exposure to different types of businesses? If the venture community continues to be insular and ignore that things are changing, history will judge VCs as being part of the problem and maintaining inequality in our country—and being quite shortsighted in missing out on what was the best, most profitable outcome. Now is when the venture community can really step up and do the right thing both for society and for their investors.

The good news: there has never been a better time for black entrepreneurs. Because of the Black Lives Matter movement and other sources of pressure, the venture community is finally starting to pay attention to the problem. I encourage all Black entrepreneurs to take the leap now, not later—start solving complicated problems and light the path forward for others.

 

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Joseph Heller is the CEO & Founder of The/Studio Technologies, which operates TheStudio.com and SuppliedShop.com. TheStudio.com makes it easy for companies to make custom manufactured products and SuppliedShop.com helps small retail stores buy inventory directly from factories. 

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Marsai Martin claps back at trolls over BET Awards hair

Teen actress, Marsai Martin, responded to online trolls who made fun of her during the virtual BET Awards event last night (June 28).

Martin presented the “Best Female Hip Hop Artist” award to Megan thee Stallion, and she won the “Young Stars” Award.

READ MORE: 15-Year-Old Marsai Martin to produce another film with Universal

The event was hosted by Amanda Seales and billed as “Our Culture Can’t Be Canceled.”

The star was serving up a new, blonde look as she enthusiastically presented during the event. However, some Twitter trolls decided the look wasn’t up to their standards. Commenters remarked that the wig looked “mature” and calling it a “Miss Piggie wig.”

Not with Marsai Martin wearing that old lady wig lmfao that shit way too big for her head

— Young OG (@everybodysBOSS) June 29, 2020

Why they put Marsai Martin in this Muppet Baby wig #BETAwards pic.twitter.com/kwsIRXMYLz

— Nicole Chante’ (@nicolespeaaks) June 29, 2020

They also found time to comment on the 15-year-old’s teeth commenting that she was wearing veneers. She was wearing invisible aligner braces.

Martin responded to the online trolls first with a tweet where she remarked that it’s a “good thing I don’t put my effort into trying to please everyone. I like it. Chile I’m 16 this year, let me live.”

Sorry some of y’all don’t like my hair. Or teeth … which are my actual teeth btw. Good thing I don’t put my effort into trying to please everyone. I like it. Chile I’m 16 this year, let me live. I’m trying to stay sane in quarantine. Enjoy the #BETAwards

— Marsai Martin (@marsaimartin) June 29, 2020

The actress later posted a short video on Instagram where she pretended to cry.

“A lot of people have been talking about my hair and how it looks like a grandma’s wig,’ she said, “and they are talking about my veneers.” She then pulled out her removable braces.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Marsai Martin (@marsaimartin) on Jun 28, 2020 at 7:01pm PDT

She then remarks that she is “sorry to anyone I offended or haven’t gotten to your expectations of how I’m supposed to be.” Feigning tears, she pulls out a $100 bill and pretends to blow her nose.

“Y’all,” she says, “we are in quarantine and we got more important things to focus on than just my hair. Justice for Breonna Taylor.”

READ MORE: Yes, Marsai Martin and Janelle Monáe are cousins, but how’d they find that out?

Martin garnered a ton of support after her video post, where users reminded the trolls that she is a child.

I’m incredibly disgusted at the grown ass adults who were slandering Marsai Martin’s hair last night. She is a child. A brilliant child at that. Quit sexualizing her. Quit projecting onto her.

— 𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖙 𝕶𝖎𝖒 (@TheCourtKim) June 29, 2020

In 2019, at the age of 13, Martin became the youngest person to ever executive produce a movie, Little. It was the female version of Tom Hanks’ Big.

The post Marsai Martin claps back at trolls over BET Awards hair appeared first on TheGrio.

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Van Jones secretly helped develop Trump police reform order

President Donald Trump was surrounded by uniformed police officers and military officials on June 16 when he signed an executive order on police reform. That was what the public saw.

However, behind the scenes, one of the strongest voices currently speaking out on civil rights for African Americans was a part of the team assisting the president.

READ MORE: Van Jones on racist white liberals: ‘It’s not just the KKK we have to worry about’

According to a new report, CNN analyst, Van Jones, was instrumental in helping to craft the order which was characterized by Democrats as “weak,” and a “photo op.” The NAACP Legal Defense Fund said that the order must not be “a distraction on the path toward achieving veritable, lasting change.”

The order creates a database to track police officers with multiple instances of misconduct and uses federal grants to encourage local police departments to meet certain higher certification standards on the use of force.

According to the report in The Daily Beast, a knowledgeable source inside the White House said that Jones and California attorney Jessica Jackson met with Jared Kushner to help write the order.

Jones praised the order on CNN during both the Inside Politics show and 360 with Anderson Cooper without disclosing that he himself had helped on it.

“The executive order is a good thing,” Jones said, “mainly because you saw the support of law enforcement there … There is movement in the direction of a database for bad cops. We have never had a federal database for bad cops, that’s why all these cops go all over the place doing bad stuff… The chokeholds, that’s common ground now between Nancy Pelosi and Trump. Good stuff there.”

Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter, Michael Novogratz, Robert Kraft, Michael Rubin, Van Jones, Meek Mill, Clara Wu Tsai, Dan Loeb speak onstage during the launch of The Reform Alliance at John Jay College on January 23, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images for The Reform Alliance)

Jones is managed by Jay-Z’s RocNation, and the report notes that he is the chief executive of the REFORM alliance founded by the rapper, and supported by other celebrities and billionaires.

READ MORE: Van Jones on being called a ‘sellout’, ‘I’m more worried about outcomes than outrage’

In the lengthy report, Rev. Al Sharpton warned of the perils of trying to form an alliance with Trump. “I did not think the executive order was worth the paper it was written on,” Sharpton told The Daily Beast.

“Van’s experiment with Trump is a case of him having more faith than I have, but I’m not going to attack him for doing it,” the National Action Network leader said.

“I think he’s well-intentioned, but I think he totally underestimates the kind of guy he’s dealing with. I just disagree that the people he’s dealing with have a sincere bone in their body. But I can’t fault him for trying.”

Have you subscribed to theGrio’s new podcast “Dear Culture”? Download our newest episodes now!

 

The post Van Jones secretly helped develop Trump police reform order appeared first on TheGrio.

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13 Best Google Assistant Speakers (2020): Smart Displays, Portable, and More

From smart displays to portable boomboxes, Google's smart voice assistant comes in all shapes and sizes. Here are our favorites.

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Privacy Isn’t a Right You Can Click Away

Senator Sherrod Brown wants to drastically scale back the permitted uses of your personal data—and ban facial recognition outright.

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Let’s Not Turn Black Lives Matter Into Black Lives Marketing

In the last couple of weeks with the fallout from the brutal and senseless police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others, companies in retail, advertising, technology, media, entertainment, sports, finance, healthcare, and other industries have posted great messages on LinkedIn and other social media platforms about supporting Black Lives Matter and committing to diversity and inclusion. It’s easy to release a PR statement, but where is the action? Now is the time to see them walk their talk. Supporting a race of people is more than a hashtag or a temporary black square on your Facebook page.

We are already seeing how some of these Black Lives Matter statements ring hollow. Many companies have a history of racial discrimination and exploiting people of color and have failed to hire, promote and fairly compensate their Black employees. The comments in their posts tell you a lot—current and former employees sharing stories of being overlooked, overworked, underpaid, and abused. Hypocrites and exploiters are being exposed. Leaders are being fired or forced to resign.

Authenticity matters, even more so in 2020. Companies have to decide NOW which side of history they will be on. It could be the reason they thrive, or the reason they go out of business. The token responses don’t cut it anymore. This is the time for companies to be the leader in changing the status quo, recruiting and promoting Black professionals, and offering inclusive workplaces.

With nearly 50 million Black people in the United States, Black consumers spend more than $1 trillion a year, with one-tenth of the wealth of white Americans. African Americans continue to outpace spending, giving us a large share of the buying power in this country. But we still don’t have the titles or the voice to drive positive and inclusive change in terms of fair and healthy products, services and treatment.

I’ve asked every organization I’ve worked for why they don’t hire more Black people, and the answer is always the same: “We can find Black top talent” or “We tried so hard but didn’t get a return on the investment.” Hearing this consistently for over 20 years is not just frustrating; it’s maddening. This can’t be their excuse anymore, especially when we see the number of Black college and Master’s graduates steadily increase.

Diversity and inclusion consultant Tiffany Hogan

Even the companies who do a decent job at recruiting employees of color have a problem retaining diverse talent. We need to know how companies are making their workplaces more inclusive. What training and development programs do they offer people of color? How are managers held accountable for their Black employees’ success? How are they leveling the playing field?

Some statistics from the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, via the Center for Talent Innovation:

• African Americans make up 10% of all college graduates, yet there are only four Black CEOs in the Fortune 500, which is fewer than the number of Black CEOs 10 years ago.
• Only 3.2% of executives and senior managers are Black.
• 58% of the Black professionals surveyed said they have experienced racial prejudice at work.

We have all figured out that real change comes from the top. Companies need people of color in senior leadership roles. Having Black representation on boards is key. So is replacing white management when they hesitate or make excuses.

Companies need to set specific and measurable recruiting and retention goals. Recruiting leaders and managers should face consequences for not meeting those goals.

They must also share their diversity numbers and pay equity metrics. One company told me they don’t publish diversity numbers because they don’t compare themselves externally. What a load of nonsense! How else will they attract more diverse talent and hold themselves accountable?

I applaud companies who are investing in social impact and education programs that work to close the racial inequality gap, but how are companies addressing these disparities in their own offices?! Are they hiring some of the participants of these initiatives? Are they employing them as vendors and professional service providers? Are they investing in their current employees? Throwing money at things won’t solve the problem if you refuse to take the steps to clean up your own backyard.

If corporate America truly wants to affect change, the formula is way more straightforward than posting Black Lives Matter and chasing likes on social media: hire, train, promote, grow, and repeat.

 

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Tiffany Hogan is a Diversity & Inclusion consultant with over 20 years of experience in the Technology, Higher Education, Retail and Banking sectors. She helps companies create and execute global D&I strategies, develop creative recruiting sources and strategies that support diverse candidate attraction, and manage employer brand communications.  

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NASA’s New Moon-Bound Space Suits Will Get a Boost From AI

Engineers are turning to generative design algorithms to build components for NASA’s next-generation space suit—the first major update in decades.

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Christie's urged to cancel auction of 'looted' Nigerian artefacts

A historian says they were taken from shrines in south-eastern Nigeria during the 1960s civil war.

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Meet The Woman Behind The First Black-Owned Solar Energy Company

Solar energy is promised to be the new source of our power as we move into the future. It is important that as this new sector experiences rapid growth that we also work to make sure it is accessible to everyone and not just a select few. According to a recent PwC Global Power & Utilities Survey, 97% of utility executives across the globe expect a medium to high-level of disruption in their main home markets by 2020. Meet the Black woman making sure Black communities have access to solar power. 

After extensive work in government, entrepreneur and advocate Kristal Hansley launched WeSolar Energy with the goal to provide underserved and underfunded communities access to solar energy. “During my time leading the Community Affairs policy at Congresswoman Eleanor Norton’s office, Maryland passed new laws to increase the use of solar energy across the state. I saw how effectively solar could reduce the cost of electricity for households, and decided to get involved in the emerging world of community solar,” said Hansley in an email interview with BLACK ENTERPRISE. 

“I started a position at Neighborhood Sun, a regional solar company in Maryland, as director of Government and Community Relations. After working with solar energy developers and city leadership in Baltimore helping thousands of low-to-moderate-income families save on their utility bills, I decided to launch my own company dedicated specifically to opening community solar farms in neighborhoods like Baltimore.”

Through her company, Hansley is able to build solar farms for communities to use on a local utility grid. “Customers can either subscribe to blocks of electricity or purchase a portion of the solar panels,” she explained. “Households [can] sign up at [our website] and Renewable Energy Credits are added to their electric bills from their allotted energy production.”

It was important to service communities in major cities where there are high populations of Black Americans who have always faced issues getting their fair share from local governments.

“Baltimore and Camden are neighborhoods that have historically been under-resourced, and certainly left out of the green energy movement,” said Hansley. “Bringing solar farms to these neighborhoods means bringing community solar energy to communities that have not had it before. By signing up for WeSolar, the average household saves $250 a year and $6,000 over the course of 20 years, which is the average term life of solar panels. Especially in this current moment, with a pandemic-induced recession, these farms help to create economic resilience and alleviate economic uncertainty for those who have been historically marginalized.”

“The Community Solar model directly challenges the hundred-year-old monopoly where utility companies dominated the energy industry,” she said. “Community Solar guarantees clean energy to Black families at a steep discount for 20 years. The lifespan of the solar panels.”

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