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Maryland Governor Wes Moore ordered more than 175,000 pardons for people convicted of marijuana possession this week, declaring it “the largest such action in our nation’s history,” at a subsequent press conference. As a result, thousands of Marylanders, the bulk of whom are Black and Hispanic, will have barriers removed to housing, employment, and educational opportunities.

Even so, there is much to be done before those currently incarcerated can be released and have the conviction expunged from their background check.  

As the governor noted, “Legalization does not turn back the clock on decades of harm that was caused by this war on drugs. It doesn’t erase the fact that Black Marylanders were three times more likely to be arrested for cannabis than white Marylanders before legalization. It doesn’t erase the fact that having a conviction on your record means a harder time with everything—everything, from housing to employment to education.”

A year ago, Maryland, along with 23 other states and the District of Columbia, legalized recreational cannabis. It’s to be seen how many other states follow Moore’s decision, an action put in effect on the federal level by President Biden two years ago.  

What remains in question about the legalization of marijuana is how it’s viewed from a state and a federal level, as well as the amount in one’s possession, and if the conviction stems solely from a marijuana charge. 

Moore’s pardons are sure to stimulate additional action from other states, but they should be advised that pardons absolve people from criminal offenses and they don’t have to initiate any action for the pardon to be issued. However, a pardon does not mean a record is wiped clean: A person has to take this matter up with the court to remove these convictions from public view.

Moreover, much more restorative policing is necessary, including prioritizing commercial marijuana licenses for those formerly incarcerated.  

Wes, you’ve picked up the ball from the president. Let’s hope others emulate your commitment and put the issue back on the agenda.

The post EDITORIAL: A pardon is one thing, expungement is another appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

Boxing fans wondered if Gervonta Davis, who had been out of the ring for 14 months, for reasons including spending 44 days in jail stemming from a 2020 hit-and-run accident in which he was driving a vehicle with a revoked license, would have ring rust when he took on opponent Frank Martin on Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas in a lightweight matchup.

Davis, typically a slow starter, found himself down three rounds to none in the beginning of the fight against Martin. Then, the Baltimore native, who handed Ryan Garcia his first defeat in April 2023, heated up. The 29-year-old Davis (30-0, 28 KOs), commonly known as Tank, won rounds four through seven on all three scorecards and then finished Martin (18-1, 12 KOs) in the eighth round with a left uppercut followed by a left cross to defend his WBA lightweight world championship in front of 13,249 at the 100th championship fight at held at the MGM Grand.

“Yeah, there’s a little rust, but it’s OK. I’m back,” Davis said. “A couple rounds, I feel as though I ain’t warm up completely how I wanted to. I did warm up, but I got cold as the fights (were) going on before me. But it’s OK. No excuses.” 

The win kept Davis in the discussion for the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world.

“Frank Martin was a great fighter. He put up a good four to five rounds,” said Davis. “I was finding my range. (Martin) had a decent jab and was moving a lot and I just had to break him down as the fight went on.”

The knockout happened halfway through the eighth round.

“He came in and landed a big shot, and it was a shot I didn’t see,” Martin said. “Really, I just didn’t see the shot.”

Davis ran to his corner and began celebrating before the referee finished counting to 10.

“I knew he wasn’t getting back up because of the way he fell, and I knew he was going to tire himself out, that was the whole gameplan,” Davis said.

“I felt like in the beginning I was in control, then I got a little too comfortable,” Martin said. “I got comfortable chilling on the ropes, trying to find that bigger shot. It wasn’t presenting itself. I stopped doing my movements.” 

In the co-main event, David Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) won the interim WBC light heavyweight championship with a 119-109, 117-111, 116-112 unanimous victory over former world champion Oleksandr Gvozdyk.

On June 29, Brooklyn’s Teofimo Lopez (20-1, 13 KOs) will defend his WBO junior lightweight championship against Steve Claggett (38-7-2, 26 KOs) in Miami. 

“I have always wanted to fight in South Florida, where I grew up and developed as a fighter,” Lopez said. “I never thought it would happen, but now, on June 29, I get the opportunity to do so not just as a world champion but as the lineal world champion of my division. This has been one of my goals since turning pro, and I’m motivated to showcase my talent there in front of my Honduran fans and the entire Latino community.”
On July 6 at the Prudential Center, Newark native and WBC lightweight champion Shakur Stevenson (21-0, 10 KOs) will face German Artem Harutyunyan (12-1, 7 KOs) in a 12-round clash.

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* This article was originally published here

Major League Baseball pennant races, with teams jockeying for first place and a spot in the postseason, are part of the excitement of baseball season after season. The daily changes of teams at the top of the standings keep fans interested in closely following the sport. 

However, heading into yesterday’s (Wednesday) MLB schedule of games, three of the six division leaders were in front by at least eight games. The Yankees (50-24) held the smallest lead at 2.5 games over the Baltimore Orioles in the American League East. Half of the teams were more than nine games out of first place. Most have very little chance to win their respective divisions. 

The wild card provides an opportunity for some of those teams to reach the postseason. The Mets, which had won eight of their previous nine games before facing the Texas Rangers on the road last night, were still two games below .500 at 35-37 and 13.5 games behind the first place Philadelphia Phillies in the NL East. But they were just one-half game out of a wild card spot. 

One of the key decisions for the Mets owner Steve Cohen and general manager David Stearns, as well as the leaders of other teams, is whether they will obtain players to make a run for the wild card or trade assets such as Mets All-Star first baseman Pete Alonso, who will be free-agent after the season ends, to build for future seasons mitigate potential free agent losses. The pressure is on the Mets to get value for Alonso if he won’t re-sign with them. With influential agent Scott Boras representing the star, it’s expected he’ll be seeking the most money for his client, setting a number the Mets may be unwilling to meet. 

Injuries always play a part in division races. The Phillies lost catcher J.T. Realmuto to knee surgery on June 1. He’ll be out for a month. On Father’s Day Sunday, Los Angeles Dodgers infielder Mookie Betts, one of the NL’s top MVP candidates, suffered a broken hand after being hit by a pitch. His loss could impact the Dodgers (46-29) maintaining what was a comfortable nine game midweek advantage over the second place Arizona Diamondbacks (36-37) in the NL West. 

The Yankees also lost first baseman Anthony Rizzo on Sunday. A broken arm will sideline him for four to six weeks. On the plus side, the Yankees were scheduled to have ace Gerrit Cole make his season debut last night after recovering from forearm inflammation. While pitching hasn’t been a problem for the team as they led MLB in ERA at 3.02 when they went up against the Orioles last night, getting the reigning Cy Young award winner back should make them even better. 

Not having close division races across the league could cause fans to focus on other summer activities instead of spending time at stadiums watching games live, on TV or through streaming apps. Unless there are drastic changes, there will be few close races in September in the final weeks of the regular season to keep fans of many teams engaged. 

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* This article was originally published here

This past weekend, the National Association of Each One Teach One Inc, and its partners, Rucker Pro Legends Inc, You-B-U Internet Radio and the Urban Assembly Basketball League, held their 13th Annual Unsigned HS Senior Basketball Showcase at Urban Assembly School for Global Commerce (UASGC) in Harlem in front of coaches from several institutions of higher learning including Ulster County Community College, Hostos Community College, Lackawanna College and Lehman College. 

The event was not only an opportunity for the high school seniors to continue their hoop dreams at the next level, but also a vehicle for them to achieve their academic goals and forge career pathways. 

“It gives players an opportunity not only after PSL (post secondary learning) and before PSL, [but also] it gives our players an opportunity to be seen as well. We do this all here with limited funds, and limited exposure,” said Roony Vizcaino, principal of UASGC, who added that the showcase is presented with leadership and community in mind.

 “I’m not getting paid for it,” he said.  “A lot of the referees here are volunteering their time, there’s cameramen volunteering their time. If I had to pay every single person, I couldn’t do it. So they’re seeing us be leaders, us as Black and Brown men being leaders, first and foremost. 

“The second piece,” Vizcaino continued, “is it gives them a safe space to play, to have fun, to build camaraderie, and then definitely the third piece is post-secondary. It gives them the opportunity to either go to college, be seen by somebody and play sports.”

Harlem native and Lackawanna assistant coach Derrick Haynes also weighed in on the importance of the showcase. 

“There are a lot of high school players that are overlooked or because of various reasons aren’t being recruited by many schools,” Haynes said. “There’s always diamonds in the rough.

“Once you watch them play and speak with them, learn about their athletic and academic aspirations, you may find they are a perfect fit for your basketball program and school.” 

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* This article was originally published here

The venerated Willie Mays, iconically nicknamed “The Say Hey Kid,” widely viewed as the best baseball player in the long and storied history of the sport, has transitioned to rest in power with the ancestors.

Mays passed away at the age of 93 on Tuesday “peacefully and among loved ones,” as shared by his son Michael Mays through the San Francisco Giants, for which the elder Mays played most of his career.

Last week, in a press release by the Giants, Mays, who was born on May 6, 1931, in Westfield, Alabama, said he would not attend tonight’s Major League Baseball game between the Giants and St. Louis Cardinals at historic Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, just a 15 minute drive from Westfield.

Rickwood Field is the oldest ballpark in the country. It was built in 1910 and was the home to the Negro Leagues Black Barons, a team for which Mays manned the outfield as a high school teenager for 13 games in the 1948 season. Tonight’s game at Rickwood is a tribute to the Negro Leagues in observance of Juneteenth.

RELATED: Willie Mays’s legacy expands across cultural generations

“Rickwood Field? I knew about it as a kid,” said Mays. ”It was always there. As common as a church or a school or a movie theater. I grew up with Rickwood around the corner…  The majors? I didn’t dream about the impossible. I was taught to see your goal in your mind and work toward it. I could work toward getting to Rickwood Field and the Birmingham Black Barons. I didn’t need to dream for that. For that, I needed to work hard. So, I did.

Rickwood became my training ground. My start. My first job. When things changed in ‘47 with Jackie (Robinson) coming in? Well, then I started to dream big. You never forget your firsts. Rickwood Field is where I played my first home game. Rickwood Field is still here. So am I. How about that?”

The most apt word to characterize Mays as a player is breathtaking. At 5’10,” his combination of speed, power, skills, innate sense of angles, distance and trajectory of the ball, and flair for the dramatic were unparalleled. His statistics are mesmerizing: A 24-time All-Star. Two-time NL MVP. Twelve Gold Gloves. Four Time NL home run leader. Four-time NL stolen base king. The 1954 NL batting champion, the same season he won his only World Series.

Playing for the New York Giants in the Polo Grounds in Harlem prior to the franchise moving to Seals Stadium in San Francisco in 1958 before settling into windy and cavernous Candlestick Park in San Francisco beginning in the 1960 season, Mays, along with the Yankees’ Mickey Mantle and the then Brooklyn Dodgers’ Duke Snyder, formed the most famous trio of center fielders to compete in the same city, in the same era, in the annals of baseball.    

Many Harlemites growing up and living in America’s most prominent Black community in the 1960s recall seeing Mays playing stickball with youth or frequenting local establishments, as humble and unassuming as one of the nation’s most recognizable people could be.  

He was a central figure in defining the Black experience of overcoming the oppressive demonization of African descendants  in the Jim Crow South and the rejection of systemic racism by embodying and reflecting Black excellence as he grew into manhood.

If Sirius is the brightest star in the Earth’s night sky, Willie Mays is its human equivalent.  

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* This article was originally published here

(GIN) – In the country’s worst economic crisis in decades, an imminent revolt could be inevitable in Nigeria should government officials continue to increase prices while holding down wages.

The federal government insists on capping wages at $42 a month while organized labor advocates are demanding nearly four times that amount.

“More than 60 years after independence, we are still running an apartheid society,” Father George Ehusani of Lokoja Parish in Abuja said in a June 9 homily. “This time, it’s not racial apartheid, it’s economic apartheid.

“We are running an apartheid society of people of conspicuous consumption, flying around in private jets at government expense; people who are riding four, five, six, seven SUVs with pilot vehicles chasing the poor out of the road; and the same people are debating and discussing what the poor should earn.” 

Nigeria today is facing skyrocketing inflation, a national currency in free-fall, and millions of people struggling to buy food. Only two years ago, it was Africa’s biggest economy, but it is projected to drop to fourth place this year.

The pain is widespread, according to various media reports. Unions strike to protest salaries of around $20 a month. People die in stampedes, desperate for free sacks of rice. Hospitals are overrun with women racked by spasms from calcium deficiencies.

The crisis is largely believed to be rooted in two major changes implemented by President Bola Tinubu, who was elected 15 months ago: the partial removal of fuel subsidies and the floating of the currency. Together, these have caused major price increases.

In previous years, the Emergency Room at Murtala Muhammed Specialist Hospital in Kano, Nigeria’s second-largest city, would receive one or two cases of hypocalcemia caused by malnutrition, said Salisu Garba, a health worker as he hurried from bed to bed, ward to ward.

Now, with many unable to afford food, the hospital sees multiple cases every day.

More than 87 million people in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, live below the poverty line—the world’s second-largest poor population after India, a country seven times the size of Nigeria. Punishing inflation means poverty rates are expected to rise still further this year and next, according to the World Bank.

Last week, unions shut down hospitals, courts, schools, airports, and even the country’s Parliament, striking in an attempt to force the government to increase the monthly salary of $20 it pays its lowest workers.

Over 92% of working-age Nigerians are in the informal sector, where there are no official wages and no unions to fight for them.

The two major unions—the Trade Union Congress and the Nigeria Labor Congress—called off the strike for a week, to the frustration and disappointment of many union members. While union leaders sang “Solidarity Forever,” union members interviewed on the street wanted a return to the negotiating table.

Many people think of Nigeria as an oil-rich country, but after years of underinvestment and mismanagement, its state refineries produce hardly any gasoline. Until recently, the government subsidized that petroleum to the tune of billions of dollars a year. Successive presidents pledged to remove the subsidy, which drains a hefty chunk of government revenue—and later backtracked, fearing mass unrest.

Tinubu, to the working people’s dismay, carried out the subsidy removal, calling it a “necessary action for my country not to go bankrupt.”

Now, many Nigerians are going bankrupt—or working multiple jobs to stay afloat.

Life under the previous government was very expensive, Garba said, but nothing like today.

“It’s very, very bad,” Garba said to a reporter.

The International Monetary Fund said last month the state has started subsidizing fuel and electricity again, although the government has not acknowledged this.

Meanwhile, on June 4, “there’s very little clarity—if any—on where the economy is headed, what the priorities are,” said Zainab Usman, a political economist and director of the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

For now, Nigeria’s resourcefulness is being stretched to the limit.

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* This article was originally published here