An Open Letter to Women Making Black History

By Senator Kamala D. Harris

February 1, 2018, PopSugar

Growing up, one of the songs that defined my childhood was Aretha Franklin belting out how lucky I was to be "young, gifted, and black."

As a daughter of the civil rights movement — with Aretha echoing in my ears — I was inspired to become a lawyer, like my heroes: Thurgood Marshall, Charles Hamilton Houston, and Constance Baker Motley.

After years of prosecuting everything from low-level offenses to homicides, I decided to run to be the San Francisco district attorney. There was a two-term incumbent who was nicknamed "KO" because he'd been a boxer known for knocking out his opponents. Meanwhile, I was at six percent in the polls (which is six in 100).

As you can imagine, I heard a whole lot of skeptics. People told me, "It's not your time." They would tell me, "You know, nobody like you has done this before."

Young, Gifted And Black

But I also remembered those empowering words: "You are young, gifted, and black . . . and that's a fact."

So I ignored the doubters. And long story short, I was elected the first woman district attorney in San Francisco and the first woman of color to be a DA in the state of California.

After two terms, I ran to become the attorney general of California, believing that the innovation we were able to accomplish in San Francisco could be implemented statewide.

Again I heard the doubts. Again I didn't listen. And again we won.

In 2015, I decided to run for the United States Senate. And today I have the profound honor of serving as only the second black woman in the history of the United States Senate and the first woman of South-Asian descent to be a United States senator.

Defy Skeptics

My story — of defying the skeptics to break new ground — is the story of so many women in this POPSUGAR project.

It's Jesmyn Ward transforming the trauma of Hurricane Katrina into her masterful and haunting novels of the American South.

It's Ros Gold-Onwude overcoming lingering knee injuries to become a decorated point guard and then a pioneering sports broadcaster.

It's Patrisse Cullors and Tamika Mallory channeling their indignation into activism and galvanizing the Black Lives Matter movement and the Women's March.

It's Christina Ham, bringing to the stage the life of Nina Simone — the artist who first wrote that song Aretha covered.

Each of these extraordinary women is a member of what I have named the Role Model Club. They're leaders who we look up to and strive to emulate.

And the great thing about the Role Model Club is that it's always accepting new members. You can be in it at any stage of life. You don't have to be famous to be a role model; you can be a role model in the context of your family, your neighborhood, or your school.

So identify issues you're passionate about, whether that's fighting the impact of climate change or reforming education.

Seek out your own role models — a teacher, a coach, a family friend — who will encourage you.

The Eloquence Of Being Fearless

Then, take a deep breath and take the plunge.

If you want to run for office — run. Get involved in student government, like I did as a freshman at Howard University. Or run for a local office, like Jennifer Carroll Foy, one of the newest members of Virginia's House of Delegates.

If you want to direct the next Oscar-nominated film like Dee Rees — direct it. Go to film school. Get on a set. Learn the ropes.

If you want to lead a company — lead. Take a leadership role within an organization and develop the skills to move up. Become the next Karen Okonkwo or Angela Davis.

And whenever someone tells you your dreams aren't achievable, whenever you feel alone or under pressure, whenever you find yourself in a room where there aren't a lot of people who look like you — be it a classroom, or a boardroom, or a courtroom — remember that you have an entire community in that room with you, all of us encouraging you and cheering you on.

Like the incredible women featured here, there is nothing you cannot do. And that's a fact.

This article appeared in PopSugar on February 1, 2018

Help! Chicago Wife Fights To Free Husband Who Was Shot By Police 28 Times

By Lynette Holloway

40 years.
 
That is the sentence Howard Morgan (pictured) received on April 5 from Cook County Circuit Court Judge Clayton J. Crane, after the former Chicago police officer was convicted of the attempted murder of four Chicago police officers.

The paradox is that Morgan, 61, survived after receiving 28 gunshot wounds, including 21 to the back and 7 to the front, following a much-disputed encounter in 2005, where he awakened shackled to a hospital bed.

Since then, his wife, Rosalind, has worked tirelessly for his freedom as if it was her full-time job. She doesn’t mind, though, because, she says, he’s the victim. She hopes to accumulate 100,000 signatures on a Change.org petition calling for his freedom. She says she plans to present it to President Barack Obama.

“Forty years is a wrongful conviction, especially when you are innocent,” she told NewsOne. “We are reaching out to everyone to help overturn the conviction, including, the Illinois Secretary of State and the Illinois Governor.”

She said that if people ignore her husband’s plight, the nation might as well turn its back on Trayvon Martin’s case.

Read more at NewsOne:

Can Mayor Dave Bing Fix a Broken Detroit?

He tells Lynette Holloway, The Root's Midwest bureau chief, there's no one plan to save the beleaguered city, but he has a blueprint for change.

By Lynette Holloway

(The Root) -- In the face of a crushing $265 million deficit and $13.2 billion in long-term structural debt, it was either sign a consent agreement, file for bankruptcy or accept the fate of a state-appointed emergency manager, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing told The Root about two weeks ago in an exclusive interview.

The former NBA star and business owner, who was elected in May 2009, chose to sign the consent agreement under which he is required to create positions of a new chief financial officer, a project management director and nine-member financial advisory board to help run the city. He has also developed a spending plan to trim more than 2,500 of the city's 10,800 jobs and cut $250 million in annual expenses. And last week he announced the appointment of Jack Martin, a former emergency manager of a public school system outside of Detroit, as chief financial officer.

Bing himself is on the road to recovery. He was beset by health woes in March and April when the consent agreement came up for a vote at the city council. He was hospitalized twice: treated for a perforated intestine and released, and treated for acute pulmonary embolism in his lungs and released. Several weeks after returning to work, Bing checked in with The Root.

The Root: How are you and how is your health?

Mayor Dave Bing: My health is improving daily. I had an unfortunate situation where I had to have surgery, but that was about seven weeks ago … My health is coming along very well.

TR: Why did it take so long to come up with a plan to save the city?

DB: I don't think there is a plan to save the city at this point. I don't think anybody externally and in some cases internally here in the city of Detroit understood the depth and the width of the problems that we have. We're talking about problems that go back 40 years, and there is no way any plan that anybody puts together is going to solve the problems short-term. We've approached some of the issues as a city both from a short-term and long-term standpoint. We're constantly changing things because the economy continues to change.

Read more at The Root.

Health Alert! Breast Cancer Is More Deadly In Men

By Lynette Holloway

Breast cancer has long been viewed as a disease that strikes women, but when it does hit men, the results can be much more fatal because many men fail to recognize symptoms, according to the Associated Press.

Women with breast cancer were found to live two years longer than men, according to Dr. Jon Greif, a California breast surgeon, who last Friday presented his study at a meeting of American Society of Breast Surgeons in Phoenix, Ariz.

Findings also showed that men’s breast tumors were larger at diagnosis, more advanced, and more likely to have spread to other parts of the body. Men were also diagnosed later in life; in the study, they men were 63 years old on average, versus 59 years old for women.

The researchers analyzed 10 years of national data on breast cancer cases, from 1998 to 2007. A total of 13,457 male patients diagnosed during those years were included, versus 1.4 million women. The database contains about 75 percent of all U.S. breast cancer cases, the AP reports.

Read more at Newsone.

Hudson Slayings: The Smoking Gun?

By Lynette Holloway
For years it has been alleged that William Balfour shot and killed three members of Jennifer Hudson's family in a vengeful rage after her sister, Julia, rebuffed his advances to reconcile their marriage.

So when his trial began on April 23, it came as no surprise when prosecutors mapped out their case against him. They alleged that he used a stolen 45-caliber Sig Sauer automatic weapon to gun down the star's mother, Darnell Donerson, 57, and brother, Jason Hudson, 29, in their nine-bedroom home on Chicago's South Side. He then stole the keys to Jason's white SUV and took her nephew, Julian King, 7, who was found dead days later.

But what did come as a surprise was the lack of physical evidence linking Balfour to the crimes. During a dramatic opening argument, Cook County Assistant Public Defender Amy Thompson stated that Balfour's DNA was not found on the gun or inside the white SUV where Julian's body was found. "He was excluded from the SUV DNA test," she said.

She said that the only reason Balfour is on trial is that the Chicago Police Department worked quickly to apprehend a suspect. They knew the case would garner a lot of media attention because of Jennifer Hudson's celebrity status, she said.

"They had to find their man, and they had to find him quickly," she told the racially diverse jury. But they got the wrong man in their haste, she said. She told jurors that they would find Balfour innocent. He has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder in the October 2008 killings.

Read more at The Root.

Black Women Continue Making Job Gains

Digging through the demographic data in the latest job numbers, one of the clear winners of the last few months has been black women. Since December, they’ve knocked more than 3 percentage points off their unemployment rate, from 13.9 percent to 10.8 percent. That’s the biggest drop over the last five months for any single demographic group broken out by race, sex, and age by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Education, health care, and retail appear to be factors. All three sectors were among those that posted the largest job gains last month.
Unemployment among black men dropped from 15.7 percent in December to 13.6 percent in April. For white women, the rate has essentially remained unchanged at 6.8 percent, which is the same rate as white men. Total white unemployment remains well below total black unemployment, though the gap has narrowed over the past year. In April 2011, white unemployment was exactly half that of black unemployment, 8.1 percent compared with 16.2 percent. Now the difference is 6.8 percent compared with 13 percent.

Read more at Bloomberg Businessweek.

Lynette Holloway's Weblog

Lynette Holloway

September 15, 2008 Lynette Holloway began her tenure on the metro desk at the New York Times, covering a range of issues in each of the city’s five boroughs, including politics, crime, immigration and education. She also worked in both the Brooklyn and Queens bureaus, where she captured the challenges of life outside of Manhattan, including the disappearance of Mom-and Pop stores in favor of big-box stores. One of her most notable assignments while at The New York Times was her role as a member of the Portraits of Grief team. The series was a collection of articles written to commemorate 9/11 through biographies of each of the victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks. Ms. Holloway was detached from her primary beat as an education reporter for six months to work on the series. The Vignettes, along with scores of others, were published in Portraits 9/11/01: The Collected “Portraits of Grief” From The New York Times. The Portraits of Grief series was not the first published anthology Lynette Holloway appeared in: her writing is also featured in the collection 36 Days: The Complete Chronicle of the 2000 Presidential Election Crisis. After completing the emotionally taxing Portraits, Lynette Holloway moved to the newly created media beat to cover the music and radio industries, where she interviewed some of the biggest names in the business, from producers to musicians to moguls. She remained on the beat for two years before returning to Chicago in 2003 to care for her mother, who died of cancer. The move occurred against the backdrop of a high-profile correction, which she and the New York Times acknowledge had nothing to do with her decision to leave the paper. In 2004, she began working as an associate editor for Ebony Magazine, where she remained for four years. Now working as an independent writer and editor, Holloway has contributed to several lifestyle websites, including greenrightnow.com and shopperati.com.

Read more at Lynette Holloway's Weblog.