Governor Hochul has signed a significant package of bills aimed at addressing the growing concerns around illegal motorbikes and the safety risks posed by lithium-ion batteries in NY. The legislation, which includes S.7703B/A8450B, marks a crucial step in regulating the use of limited-use motorcycles such as mopeds, motorbikes, and e-scooters. Point-of-Sale Registration: A Game-Changer for…
The Wendy Hilliard Gymnastics Foundation (WHGF) is thrilled to announce the dates of its annual summer camp, just in time for the 2024 Olympics. WHGF holds a summer camp at their Harlem location every year for girls and boys ages 7 to 17. The camp began July 8 and continues through August 2, Monday through Friday, from…
Harlem is famous for its barbershops that buzz with community spirit and culture. These shops aren’t just about haircuts; they’re about history, connection, and style. If you run a barbershop in Harlem or are thinking of opening one, maintaining hygiene is essential to your success. Customers expect clean tools and fresh spaces. Ready to up…
Tongues are wagging that Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” shot to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, marking his first No. 1 to date, according to Billboard. The song also rebounded for a fourth week to No. 1 on top of the Hot Country Songs chart. Previously, no song by a Black man, or one known to be biracial, had previously topped both charts. Shaboozey is now the second Black artist overall to achieve the feat, following Beyoncé with “Texas Hold ‘Em” earlier this year. He also appeared on the Hot 100 on “Cowboy Carter” with “Spaghettii” and “Sweet Honey Buckiin”……
Simone Biles is standing up for her teammates. The decorated gymnast will soon represent Team USA at the 2024 Paris Olympics. But former teammate Mykayla Skinner recently made controversial comments about the current team, “Besides Simone, I feel like the talent and the depth just isn’t like what it used to be.” While Biles didn’t mention Mykayla by name, she posted on Threads last Wednesday: “Not everyone needs a mic and a platform.” The 2024 Women’s Gymnastics team, competing in Paris at the end of July, includes Biles, Suni Lee, Jade Carey, Jordan Chiles and Hezly Rivera……
Kevin Hart celebrated his 45th birthday in grand style July 6 on the fabulous island of Mykonos, Greece. A source told Go With The Flo that the actor/comedian danced on top of a table. The funnyman posted a video of himself on Instagram dancing on a dock with the water gleaming behind him, holding a bottle of champagne in one hand and a miniature boombox in the other……..
Okay. Beyoncé enjoyed the fireworks at billionaire Michael Rubin’s white party at his $50 million estate in Bridgehampton, New York, just like any regular person. The superstar songstress, who on June 30, became the most decorated BET Awards winner when she won her 36th BET Award for “Texas Hold Em’” in the Viewers Choice category, held up her cellphone and filmed the fireworks as they lit up the skies to the sounds of New York, New York. Beyoncé’s husband, Jay-Z, who was spotted taking a walk with a group of men in East Hampton, New York, on July 3, was also in the house, along with Bey’s mother, Tina Knowles, whose white dress was designed by Coperni. Entertainment for the night included Shaboozey, Mary J. Blige, GloRilla, Lil Wayne, Drake and a twerking Megan Thee Stallion. Of the many sports stars attending the soiree, it was nice to see New York Giant Hall of Famer Michael Strahan out enjoying himself after all he’s been through as his daughter Isabella continues a brave fight against a malignant brain tumor. Our prayers go out to all of their family……
Mayor Eric Adams’s city Charter Revision Commission public hearings are still underway, set to conclude with a final report on July 25. The commission aims to collect feedback on how to improve New York City’s constitution, but has been slammed by the City Council and advocates as little more than a “power grab” by the mayor.
The charter revision process usually leads to ballot referendums that will go before voters during the year’s general November election.
The current commission chair is Carlo Scissura, who has participated in two charter revision commissions in the past. Scissura also serves as president and CEO of the New York Building Congress, a position he’s held since January 2017. Other charter commissioners include Dr. Hazel N. Dukes, vice chair; Ken Ngai, secretary; and retired 32BJ President Kyle Bragg, Reverend Herbert Daughtry Sr., activist Jackie Rowe-Adams, and We All Really Matter (WARM) founder and CEO Stephanie McGraw.
“From public safety to sanitation and everything in between—that is why it’s so important to hear from members of the public, elected officials, representatives of city agencies, as we consider what recommendations to present to the voters at the general election on November 5,” said Ngai at the July 9 charter revision committee meeting at the Staten Island University Hospital.
Adams tasked charter commissioners with reviewing the city charter in its entirety, with a particular emphasis on public safety and “fiscal responsibility.”
“People have to vote and they have to get engaged and they have to recognize when there are power grabs happening at the local level,” said Racial Justice Attorney Lurie Daniel Favors. “The mayor right now has a charter commission that has practically put a report [out about] hearings that no one either knew about or attended. I’m curious that they already have a report out, and it’s essentially to go around the City Council.”
Favors added that it’s time to understand, as a community, that Black representation in government is only part of the solution. “I think when you have skinfolk who are acting in ways and initiating policies that wouldn’t be done under a mayor that wasn’t part of the community, we would be in the streets protesting,” said Favors. Others disagree with the power grab notion and believe the Charter Revision Commission is being conducted in good faith, especially by some of the commissioners themselves, who have dedicated time and resources to carrying out the hearings.
Last week, award-winning actress Taraji P. Henson spotlighted the Republican playbook in an impassioned speech at the BET awards, and suddenly everyone wants to know what Project 2025 is all about and how it affects them.
In short, Project 2025—now being rebranded as Project 47—is a collection of far-right, racist policies aimed at overhauling the presidency and governmental infrastructure that has been in place for years.
“Project 2025 will spell the end of America as we know it and make this nation a hostile state for Black people,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, founder and president of the National Action Network (NAN), in a statement.
What is it?
The 2025 Presidential Transition Project, also known as the “Mandate For Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” is a 922-page document compiled by the Heritage Foundation, established in 1973 under then-President Richard Nixon. The first version of this document had 20 volumes and 3,000 pages, and was given to former President Ronald Reagan in 1980, featuring more than 2,000 conservative policies.
“The Heritage Foundation, which is a far-right extreme think tank—they have long put out presidential policy platforms,” said Colin Seeberger, senior advisor for communications at the Center for American Progress (CAP). “The difference about Project 2025 is this is incredibly sweeping in scope, backed by a coalition of more than 100 far-right groups. It includes this more than 900-page authoritarian playbook to basically dismantle U.S. democracy in order to usher in an array of far-right policies that would affect every aspect of American life.”
Recently, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, called the current phase of their operation a “bloodless second American Revolution” but alluded to the possibility of more violent insurrection to carry it out if there is resistance.
The conservative document includes recruitment tactics to identify far-right Republican loyalists to replace civil servants in the federal government, a training program to prepare them to flout government procedures, and a “secret” 180-day playbook for future Republican presidents, said Seeberger.
The murders of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Malcolm X in 1965, and former President John F. Kennedy in 1963 slowed the Civil Rights Movement into the late 1970s—“a historic low point for America”—and conservatives, according to the document. Project 2025 pleads for a callback to bygone eras, and centers on white nationalism, pro-Christian nuclear familial ideals, dismantling the administrative state, and beefing up America’s military defenses on borders and overseas, among other things.
Anything to do with “federal spending,” climate change, religious freedoms, voter protections, civil rights for Black and Brown citizens, LGBTQIA+ rights, women’s rights, reproductive healthcare and abortion, gender equality or sexual identity protections, and discussions of race and Black history are seen as wholly leftist and therefore dangerous.
“The effectiveness of any policy designed to empower workers, prohibit discrimination, and guarantee equal rights and bodily autonomy is directly related to the government’s capacity to enforce those policies,” said Valerie Wilson, a labor economist and director of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) Action. “Project 2025 not only threatens to undo decades of hard-fought battles to pass laws protecting the civil and economic rights of all American citizens; it is a plan to severely restrict or totally eliminate any avenues for recourse against the violation of those rights, with Black and Brown people, the working class, women, and the LGBTQ community facing the greatest risk of suffering the consequences.”
Maya Wiley, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, used similar language to Roberts to say, on a CAP panel, that Project 2025 “calls us to a second civil war.”
“Either we’re going to stand on the victory of ending slavery, of freeing people’s ability to have their own identity, and of understanding the role of a federal government in ensuring that we all have civil rights, [or] we will not have a democracy, and this is a blueprint for ending it,” Wiley said.
What does that look like in the real world?
Project 2025 has many fraught ideas, but here is a summary of the most important economic proposals.
The project would roll back overtime protections for employees, cut Social Security benefits by raising the retirement age, break up union contracts with employers and undermine negotiations, make it harder to form unions by installing an anti-worker council at the National Labor Relations Board, and allow minors to work in dangerous jobs, Seeberger said.
The project proposes to close preschools, eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, end affordable student loan repayment plans, and eliminate state school funding for immigrant students. It would also make it more expensive to own a home by increasing mortgage insurance premiums on Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans, which is a good lending option for first-time homebuyers, with terms of longer than 20 years, said Seeberger. It also calls for slashing the corporate tax rate, putting a new tax on health insurance for people covered through employers, rollbacks to financial regulations put in place after the Great Recession in the early 2000s, and restrictions on the Federal Reserve’s “lender-of-last-resort” function that allows troubled banks to borrow money quickly—which helped the country survive severe economic downturns like the COVID-19 crisis.
A CAP analysis found that a similar financial shock and recession now would result in 8.7 million people losing their jobs by 2026 and that employment would not recover to current levels until 2031.
“If far-right extremists are successful in enacting Project 2025, the likelihood of a 2007-scale financial crisis would be greater, and this risks economic losses to workers and households that could exceed those in the Great Recession,” said Marc Jarsulic, senior fellow and chief economist at CAP and co-author of the analysis, in a statement. “The proposals in Project 2025 makes things crystal clear: Far-right extremists care more about bolstering Wall Street’s bottom line than protecting American families.”
Many of the policies concerning civil, women’s, and LGBTQ rights are already playing out on the state level or co-signed by U.S. Supreme Court rulings, namely the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the right to federally legalized abortion, as well as outlawing affirmative action in college admissions and rollbacks to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. There also has been a rash of book bans in libraries and classrooms across the country in the last two or three years.
Rachel Noerdlinger, an equity partner at Actum LLC, said in a statement, “You can count on Black women, who power the federal workforce, to be the first casualties of this realignment of our government. Our access to reproductive and maternal health will be chipped away to nothing, as our rights will be so restricted [that] they’ll make the pre-Civil Rights Era seem like a Golden Age. That’s why we need to channel the collective power of Black women to shine a light on the negative impacts of Project 2025 and fight at the polls to ensure it dies on the vine.”
She added that, on a personal note, Black women like her would be erased from the workforce if Project 2025 were implemented.
“Think about what we have done. Sisters from across the nation banded together to help propel the first Black woman into the vice presidency, saw Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson make history on the Supreme Court, and stood with organizations like the Fearless Fund as they’ve been under relentless attack,” Noerdlinger said. “Yet all of our collective accomplishments, and personal ones like [my] being the first and only Black female equity partner at a global consulting firm, will be erased if Project 2025 comes to fruition.”
The Heritage Foundation and Trump
President Joe Biden and his campaign have publicly denounced Project 2025 from the jump, but Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has had a back-and-forth relationship with the Heritage Foundation since his first run as president in 2016.
“As we’ve been saying for more than two years now, Project 2025 does not speak for any candidate or campaign,” said a Heritage Foundation spokesperson in a statement. “We are a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups advocating policy and personnel recommendations for the next conservative president. But it is ultimately up to that president to decide which recommendations to implement.”
As of late, Trump is attempting to distance himself from Project 2025. He reportedly posted on his social media website, Truth Social, that he knows nothing about the project and disagrees with its policies, even though several of his former administration staff are involved with Project 2025, such as his former housing secretary Ben Carson, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, and director of the Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought.
Major civil rights advocates do not believe Trump’s statements and are wary about the future should he win the presidency again this November.
“Donald Trump is trying to backpedal his allegiance with this agenda, but let’s look at the fact that it was written by several of his former appointees,” Sharpton said. “Let’s also take a wider look and realize it parrots a lot of what we’ve heard him say over nearly a decade. When you look at the control this would give a president over the Justice Department alone, this agenda would wipe hard-won civil rights off the books and effectively out of our history. Every American should be alarmed by these proposals, because the landscape of our country will be forever changed when we grant liberty and justice only for an elite few.”
Seeberger concluded that Project 2025’s agenda to consolidate power in the presidency, coupled with the recent Supreme Court immunity decision for Trump, is a dangerous combination.
“Essentially, what they did was pour gasoline all over American democracy,” Seeberger said. “What the Heritage Foundation has done is light a match.”
Bronx Assemblymember Landon Dais and his team are touting their success in securing an additional $1 million in grants totaling $2 million for STEM programs at 10 local Bronx public schools—the largest technology grant ever awarded to District Nine schools, he said.
The funding will go toward obtaining new equipment, fostering new programs, and enhancing existing STEM facilities.
“The reality is the future of jobs and schools is going to be heavily technology-based, especially [with] the advent of artificial intelligence and other technical skills, so what I wanted to make sure is that the children in my district, District Nine in the Bronx, don’t fall behind,” Dais said. Dais said the grants will aid in a brighter future not only for students but also for the Bronx as a whole. “I want them to be the future of engineers, architects in the Bronx. I want them to build new affordable housing in our boroughs,” he said. The goal is to create a proper basis from the beginning in elementary and middle school so students are better prepared for what comes next in high school, college, and life after school.
Previously, many of the challenges to STEM education in the district were simply a lack of “access to capital” and the fact that the schools weren’t made a priority, Dais said. That is something he hopes to remedy.
“I made it a priority, and I think that made a difference. I think you just got to make sure that the administration of [grant support] isn’t held up by red tape,” Dais said. “I’m going to work with my superintendent and principals to take account of it. I’m going to make sure there’s no funny accounting. This is really necessary—got to make sure that it is not only executed but also executed in an efficient manner.”
Members of the community have expressed their excitement about the funding, including Principal Sharda Flores of P.S. 53 Basheer Quisim. Flores and the teachers at P.S. 53 were in the midst of discussions about creating a STEM lab even before receiving news of the grant, which made the news of the funding they would receive a dream come true.
“Knowing that we now have $200,000 to create a fully functioning lab site versus ‘Hey, let’s put some stuff together’—it means the world to my kids, because my children truly believe in that tactile learning,” Flores said. “Kids will come to school if they know they have technology this day. The idea is to make learning cyclical and to make it enjoyable every day, so our kids are coming to school, our kids are motivated.”
Flores sis also looking forward to reactions from parents and the community at large.
“To know that we’re having this fully funded grant—it means the world to me…I’m getting chills talking about it. We posted it on our social media page, and parents were through the roof, they were so excited. They were more excited…just to know that their kids are going to have access to all these different learning [tools].”
Flores described STEM education as especially important because it provides students with a “new avenue to explore learning”; one that will provide a fuller, more comprehensive way of learning that allows students with different learning styles to remain engaged.
Securing the grant is an impressive feat for Dais within his first three months in office.
“These kids are special. They just need the opportunity and the tools to allow them to be successful, and that’s our job,” Dais said. “That’s what I believe that is my job to do: to give them the opportunity to be successful, be the best version of themselves.”
New York University and Food & Society at the Aspen Institute have launched a new online portal aimed at supporting New York City area BIPOC food entrepreneurs.
The new free website portal, Open Access NYC (https://aspen-open-access-new-york.herokuapp.com/), was created to help people who are looking to open a food-oriented business but may not know all the procedures they need to have in place to get the business up and running, or how to sustain that business and keep it licensed once it is operational.
In a July 9 webinar announcing the launch of the Open Access NYC portal, Corby Kummer, the executive director of Food & Society at the Aspen Institute, spoke about how his organizations’ efforts to promote healthy diets has had to delve into the fact that many communities don’t have access to healthy food.
“We’ve done a very long report gathering together all of the peer-reviewed research into ‘food is medicine’ interventions,” Kummer explained, “the only one of its kind. The National Institutes of Health used it as the basis for a call for Centers of Excellence and Food is Medicine.
“We’ve been terrifically excited to get to work on nutrition interventions. But always the way to make something survive is to allow people to thrive economically while helping others. And so, we wanted to be able to help people of color and BIPOC food entrepreneurs to get healthier food into underserved neighborhoods that need it and to make a profit doing it.”
But when organizations or individuals work to create programs or restaurants where they can provide healthy food, they are too often faced with bureaucratic or financial hurdles that can hinder or even stop their efforts.
That’s where the Open Access portals come in. Open Access NYC is now the fourth citywide program in the nation. It follows portals already operating in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. The portals are intended to help guide anyone looking to open a food-oriented business through all of the local and sometimes national certifications they might need. The site will also feature resources that can help a new business find restaurant suppliers, apply for grants, or give them information on financial institutions that might be able to help with loans.
Caroline Karanja, CEO of Hack the Gap, the organization that helped design the portal, said Open Access NYC “is really a jump-off point for food entrepreneurs: folks from caterers to packaged food specialists. This website really pulls together the most essential starting point and resources for those that are looking to start and grow their food businesses.
“It’s like a digital collaboration of resources from the SBA to local nonprofit organizations to private software services whose products and offerings can help you build your food business,” she added. “The platform has videos, access to templates, checklists, and in some areas just good old-fashioned instructions on how to do things like think about your marketing, how to get the right kind of permit or license, and all the things here are really just the beginning of the platform.”
The Open Access NYC portal is designed to be a “one-stop shop” for food-based entrepreneurs of color. Plans are to keep the site updated with new information, since rules and regulations are constantly changing.
To the untrained eye, American voters under the age of 25 seem destined to adopt an atypical precedent for how the voting process is perceived.
Ultimately, the initiative to remain involved and engaged within the democratic process has been a challenge youth voters are stepping up to in stride. As the 2024 election cycle beckons new voters to navigate the complexities of American democracy, the landscape is marked by a generation challenging the status quo.
From questioning traditional party politics, to advocating for inclusive civic engagement, young adults are forging paths towards a more representative future.
With tools like social media and grassroots initiatives amplifying their voices, the next generation is poised to shape a democracy that reflects their personal values and aspirations. Still, as the 2024 election polls once again invite new voters to join the fray, ‘mixed opinion’ is the prevailing sentiment.
The two-party system, traditionally seen as the bedrock of American politics, is increasingly being questioned by rapidly evolving young voters who rebel against outdated values that no longer resonate with them.
In response to this two-party system, Che Defreitas, a Posse Scholar studying Black Studies at Middlebury College, proposes an entirely new voting infrastructure that would be more attractive to new voters. “[I] feel like a winner-takes-all election is a bigger problem. Ranked choice would be better,” he said.
Similar sentiments are echoed by weary youth who believe the presidential election process “is in place to create division,” said Aidan Wohl, a student at University of Rhode Island, to the AmNews. Chastity McDougald, a student at Lehman College, added that it “highlights the lack of America’s understanding of democracy.”
Reese Williams, an assistant at African Voices Magazine, identifies social media as the culprit behind many sensationalized views held by young people regarding the election process.
“Not only do we get to see these opinionated highlights…but because of algorithms, we as the audience are susceptible to targeted messaging,” Williams said about prospective voters. Critiques of the American election process dovetails with concerns over decreasing youth voter turnout, exacerbated by social media trends promoting voter abstention. For instance, in 2022, “only 23% of youths in New York participated in local elections,” a stark contrast with the “67% turnout among those aged 65 and older nationally,” according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Despite these challenges, there is hope prevailing within the margins. Pointing to optimism in hope of a more representative democracy, the youth turnout has been recovering, with a “4.3% rise between the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections.” This uptick underscores the potential to narrow the generational voting gap over time.
And contrary to common belief, the presidential election year isn’t the alpha and omega of civic engagement. Every year presents new candidates on the local and state levels who directly influence the lives of communities around NYC.
Jermaine Isaac, president of the Brooklyn Young Democrats, seeks to heighten awareness of year-round civic engagement through interactive activities that expose youth to the power of their vote on locally elected officials.
“The youth are not just the leaders of tomorrow; they are the changemakers of today.”, Isaac said. “By voting, young people can take control of their future and ensure that their voices are heard.”
The right to vote isn’t something to take for granted. This power has been advocated as a tool of security, ensuring that all people are equally represented by the government that serves them. It was under this idea that Jahnavi Rao founded and currently serves as president for New Voters, a Gen Z-led organization that prioritizes ‘saving a seat at the table’ for the future protectors of our democracy.
“There’s more than enough people in this country that don’t want you to vote,” Rao says. “All we can do is make sure you have the tools to vote if you want to.”
As a leader of over 30,000 eager advocates from various backgrounds all over the country, New Voters touches on a topic that most don’t consider: the vote of those who speak a language other than English. Recognizing the need to connect to all registered voters, New Voters launches campaigns in NYC and beyond in collaboration with ESOL programs aimed at engaging those with an interpersonal interest that may not traditionally connect with primary candidates.
Rao emphasizes the importance of inclusive civic engagement, saying that, “it takes a village to foster complete civic engagement, so being aware of where you are and who needs representation is always at the top of our priority list.”
In line with this commitment to inclusivity, CUNY Votes is one initiative looking to foster effective voter engagement. Spanning all 25 colleges in the system, CUNY Votes operates as a non-partisan organizer of campus-based activities such as forums, Club Fests, and voter registration drives during freshman orientations. This initiative reaches a student population exceeding 250,000 students.
The goal is to, “promote voter registration, education and turnout through campus-based activities, university-wide campaigns and external partnerships,” a CUNY spokesperson tells AmNews.
However, in the digital age, social media serves as a pivotal tool for connecting populations from all backgrounds. Despite its potential for misinformation and exposure to detrimental ideals, Rao argued that social media unfairly receives criticism. She compared navigating social media to interpreting an abstract painting, highlighting individuals’ ability to discern valuable information from misinformation.
“Our youth are the most informed we have ever been,” Rao says. “We just have to make it a habit to stay connected.”
