Author: tourist_yp6g7u

María Magdalena Campos-Pons brought her world-renowned artistic vision to Harlem on September 7, to mark the 20th anniversary of Madison Square Park Conservancy’s public art program.

Campos-Pons invited the public to join her; the founders of Harlem Art Park; and a string of poets, musicians, and fashion stylists in a “Procession of Angels for Radical Love,” a performance piece designed to uphold the promises of what life could and ought to be.

Campos-Pons told the AmNews that when she was asked to participate in this Madison Square Park Conservancy program, she knew she wanted to do a procession: “I grew up witnessing processions — the procession of the celebration of the Orishas in the city of La Vega, in the town of La Vega, in the city of Manguito –– during my early youth, and also witnessing as well processions of Catholic interactions.”

Photos by Karen Juanita Carrillo

The “Procession of Angels” is a recognition of the roles Black, Puerto Rican, and Cuban American communities have played in New York City. The first half of the event was timed to take place on the feast day of Yemayá (who is revered as the “mother of all living things”) and to overlap with the feast day of Osshun (goddess of love, fertility, and abundance) on the following day, September 8. It featured Afro Cuban batá drumming by musicians from Belongó, models dressed as white-gowned “angels,” and native New Yorkers who Campos-Pons had asked to participate by arriving dressed in blue (to honor Yemayá), yellow (for Osshun), or white clothing. As part of the performance piece, all the angels were meant to walk cohesively along the sidewalks of East Harlem.

The performance included poetry readings by National Humanities Medal award-winner Richard Blanco, readings in front of the Dos Alas (Two Wings) mural on E. 105th Street by documentarian Marina Ortiz, and a recitation at the entrance to El Museo del Barrio by 10-year-old Kayden Hern, who served as poet laureate at Gov. Kathy Hochul’s 2023 inauguration.

A line of close to 100 people took part in the procession as it made its way down Third Avenue. Baptized with intermittent bursts of sprinkling rain as they walked, the angels carried signs that read “Radical Love,” “Unity,” “Gratitude,” “Love.” Some onlookers asked participants about the reason for the procession, while others tried to walk straight through it and somehow disrupt its harmony. Then there were people who, when they noticed the procession, held up two-finger peace signs or applauded as the demonstrators strode past.

This performance will be followed on September 20 with a second Campos-Pons procession that will start at the lower end of Central Park, in front of the W. 59th Street and 7th Avenue monument to Cuban revolutionary hero and poet José Martí. Martí spent organizing years in New York City, where he networked with other Cubans and Puerto Ricans who were seeking ways for their islands to gain independence from Spain.

The September 20 procession will focus on traumatic periods in New York City’s history that the artist believes must be confronted and acknowledged. It will travel from the Martí monument to the 55th Street site of the NAACP’s 1917 Silent Protest Parade, to the 43rd Street site of the Colored Orphan Asylum, which was burned down by white protestors during the U.S. Civil War. The day will end with readings and performances at Madison Square Park.

Campos-Pons noted that her “Procession of Angels for Unity and Radical Love” piece incorporates her personal ancestors, as well as several Cuban Americans who produced cultural work in New York City. People like visual artists Ana Mendieta and Félix González-Torres, poet/novelist Reinaldo Arena, salsa queen Celia Cruz, curator/culture promoter Juan Delgado Calzadilla, and Martí are each angels for Campos-Pons.

“All these people have been inspirational figures, cultural guides, [the] epitome [of the] representation of cultural grace and rigor,” she said. “I think that every one of them, in metaphorical ways … has been very present: Every one of them have been angels accompanying me in my journey, walking with me because they are in my heart, in my soul. And I want this project that we did today and will continue on the 20th to be a moment for people to think about the angels that accompany them, the people [who] inspire them, the people [who] allow them to become better makers of themselves, a human in interaction with others.”

To participate in María Magdalena Campos-Pons’s September 20 “Procession of Angels for Unity and Radical Love,” register at https://madisonsquarepark.org/art/exhibitions/procession-of-angels/.

The post María Magdalena Campos-Pons reveals a ‘Procession of Angels’ in Harlem appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

In June of 2017, Ayisha Doyle’s phone rang. A man on the other end of the line was calling to inform her that he was a representative of the ARLO 67 LLC company.

“Hey, we own half your house. Just thought I’d let you know,” the man said.

“Excuse you? What are you talking about?” Doyle said she responded. He said, “Oh, yeah, we purchased your uncle’s interest in the house, so we own half the house.”

Doyle immediately asked for some proof of this, since she hadn’t seen her uncle in person or heard from him since March of 2007 when he came to Brooklyn for his mother’s funeral –– he’d been living in Australia for the last 40-plus years.

Her uncle, Walter Giles, had inherited part of the house along with his sister, Phillipa –– Ayisha Doyle’s mother — but Giles had no active role in paying bills or the building’s upkeep, and rarely returned to Brooklyn or contacted family members.

“So, I was shocked when this guy told me that because I was like, first of all, how’d you find him at the bottom of the world? That’s what immediately made me think, oh, this can’t be real. The guy said, ‘Well, we’ll send something in the mail, and I’ll call you back.’ And I said, ‘No, no, no. Who you can speak to next is my lawyer, because you and I will not be conversing.’ And then the next thing I got in the mail was a default judgment from the foreclosure court granting them a partition. That’s when I was like, something’s really wrong.”

Doyle has been fighting to save her family home from deed theft ever since.

Brooklyn’s ‘Little Harlem’

Doyle’s family has lived in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood for nearly a century. In the 1940s, her great-grandparents Mabel and Walter Clement Moore purchased the property at 234 Jefferson Avenue. It’s a three-story single-family Victorian brownstone, originally built in the 1880s. They had to think carefully about how to acquire the stately house. Although they had saved up the funds to buy a home, Bed-Stuy was a predominantly white neighborhood at that time and locals were determined to keep it that way. Many had joined a white supremacist group called the Midtown Civic League to try to stem the growing influx of Black people renting and buying the district homes.

Bed-Stuy was quickly becoming a preferred neighborhood for African Americans because of its site as a nexus for public transportation. The area was nicknamed Brooklyn’s “Little Harlem.” At the time, the Amsterdam News wrote reports about efforts by the Midtown Civic League to keep Blacks out of Bed-Stuy. The Midtown Civic League was the “Ku Klux Klan in the north,” the Rev. Theophilus Joseph Alcantara of the St. Simon African Orthodox Church told the paper.

“The Rev. Alcantara further related that the purpose of the white organization is to co-operate with the banks and merchants in order to prevent Negroes from holding any real property in the Bedford Stuyvesant section,” the paper stated in its September 17, 1938 edition: “‘These bankers,’ he charged, ‘are out to press off the few Negro property owners by insisting on early payment of the interest on the mortgage held by them.’”

The Doyle family survived the race-based turmoil of the time: They were one of the first of three Black families to move to the block. Overt housing discrimination was so strong that they used a proxy –– a white person to stand in as their substitute –– to purchase their home. Even with the paperwork for the property signed, though, they couldn’t get a bank mortgage on the house: Banks would not give Black people mortgages.

Doyle’s grandparents, James and Phyllis Giles, took possession of the house. James died in 1995, then Phyllis passed on March 4, 2007, and the house was left to their children: Walter and Phillipa.

Tending to the building for future generations

Walter had not been interested in the property even before his parents passed. He’d moved to Australia and only rarely surfaced to contact his family. Ayisha said that by 2016, she and her mother, Phillipa, had been able to pay off a mortgage the family had taken out on the building when they needed extra funds. They paid all the bills, tended to the building’s maintenance, and looked after it for future generations of their family.

Giles had reportedly sold 75% of his stake in the house to Theodore Zucker, a property investor and owner of Zucker Asset Management and ARLO 67 LLC, for $300,000. Since Phyllis’s will was never probated or legally transferred over to her heirs after she died in 2007, it was not clear whether the Doyles could keep the house. Zucker was claiming that he paid for his share of the house and was entitled to a portion of it; he allegedly had a deed signed by Giles and notarized in Australia.

To this day, Ayisha Doyle can’t believe that Zucker was able to locate her uncle and purchase shares of the property. She said that she has asked him to provide some kind of payment receipt proving that Walter Giles sold his share, but Zucker has failed to do so.

Zucker’s ARLO 67 LLC has made several attempts to force a partition sale of the Bed-Stuy home and at some point, Doyle even sat down to a mediated settlement conference with Zucker, but no agreement between the two parties could be found. This past June 6, the property was reportedly auctioned off for $1.7 million, with Zucker’s LLC named as the buyer, although the sale has not yet been finalized.

Representative from developer who allegedly purchased Jefferson Avenue brownstone at auction.

“The biggest issue is them being LLCs — they can file anything and then they just bury you in a mountain of paper, and it’s your job, then, as a homeowner if you want to get your house back, to prove that it’s yours –– or that they’re lying, or that they have committed fraud,” Doyle told the Amsterdam News. “It’s just on you.”

Doyle’s attorney, Kanika Sloan Williams, is originally from Brooklyn and now lives down south, but has been helping her former neighbor fight to keep the Jefferson Avenue home for the last seven years. The case has been before five judges — one of whom was in the second circuit appeals appellate court. “The challenge is that you’re facing an investment company,” said Sloan Williams. “At one point, they had sued Aisha and her mom for $300,000 for ‘use and occupancy’ of a home that’s been in their family since the 1940s. Basically, they were saying that Aisha and her mom owed them money because they stayed there. They just come up with lawsuit after lawsuit … The vast majority of homeowners who’ve had their homes forever — they just don’t have tens of thousands of dollars to pay an attorney to fight back.”

Sloan Williams believes the case against the Doyles is fraudulent, but said she understands how frustrating it is for other homeowners who are having to deal with speculators. Unfortunately, it’s not illegal for a real estate investor to buy an interest in a home, and once they own an interest, it’s not illegal for them to ask the courts to force a sale.

“I will tell you, because I do estate law, I tell people all the time … if you’re leaving your house to more than one person, one person is going to want to sell, one person’s going to want to keep it every time, every single time,” she said. “It’s very rare that heirs agree unless the property is in such disrepair that nobody wants to repair it.”

Sloan Williams offered suggestions for protecting a home from deed theft: “It’s absolutely safer for the person who owns the property to determine what they want to have happen,” she said. “[You can] leave it in a trust and the trust basically directs if you want it to be sold and you split any proceeds. Or say you have rental income or something to that effect: That rental income gets split amongst the heirs. Then there’s less of an incentive for heirs to sell anything because the trust instrument is what governs how that property functions. But if you just leave something outright and let’s say you have three kids, they’ll fight over it … It’s a lot safer to, if you want to keep your house in the family, particularly in Black and Brown communities, to leave that house in a trust and have that trust instrument determine that perhaps the heirs get the income from the property, and the property itself does not get sold.”

The post ‘Hey, we own half your house’ –– Bed-Stuy family terrorized by deed theft appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

Crooner-turned-actor Tyrese Gibson was arrested on Sept. 9 for failing to pay ex-wife Samantha Lee child support. According to TMZ, the “Fast & Furious” actor — who shares 5-year-old daughter Soraya with Lee — appeared before Judge Kevin Farmer in a Fulton County, Georgia, courtroom for his ongoing child support battle with his ex. The judge was reportedly fed up with Tyrese’s refusal to pay the $10,000 a month he ordered him to begin paying in April 2024. Gibson was placed in handcuffs and taken out of the courtroom. Judge Farmer said Gibson could avoid jail if he paid $73,000, which included $7,500 for Lee’s attorney fees. Sources say Gibson is making arrangements to pay the debt…

Our condolences go out to the family of James Earl Jones. The beloved EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) award-winning actor died at his home in Dutchess County, New York, on Monday at the age of 93. The legend was known for his deep, commanding voice that brought many a beloved character to life, from “Star Wars” villain Darth Vader to Mufasa in “The Lion King.” The first time Yours Truly saw Jones in person was when I traveled to New York City from Ann Arbor, Michigan, in high school during spring break and saw him portray the great heavyweight champion Jack Johnson in “The Great White Hope,” which was the first time I went to a Broadway play… 

Jay-Z may not be hiring any native New Orleans rappers to perform at the upcoming Super Bowl, but Tommy Hilfiger made sure his New York Fashion Week show, which took place on the retired Staten Island Ferry, the John F. Kennedy, on Sept. 8, was filled with local performers. According to ABC7, a live musical performance during the fashion extravaganza included Method Man, Raekwon, and Ghostface Killah of Staten Island’s own Wu-Tang Clan. Not to be left out was another Staten Island native, Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live,” who along with Pete Davidson, now owns the ferry… 

Also on Sept. 8, Spirit in Sunset Productions presented Soul Jam Spreadin’ Sweet – Are & Be Ready for a Brand New Beat! – a multimedia marathon celebration of 1960s and 1970s soul music, which combined poetry, prose, and performances by artists of color and the creative community. The event was held at Denny Farrell Riverbank State Park in Harlem, and was conceived and produced by author and artist Nikki Williams…

The post Go With The Flo: Tyrese Gibson in hot water; Remembering James Earl Jones; Soul Jam celebrated appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

With four regular season games left to play, the New York Liberty sit atop the WNBA standings. While a spot in the playoffs and a high seed are guaranteed, the Liberty players continue to work on keeping the top spot to ensure home court advantage.

On Tuesday night, the Liberty scored a 105–91 win over the Dallas Wings, which have already been eliminated from playoff contention and are trying to finish off the 2024 WNBA season with their heads held high. Breanna Stewart led all scorers with 27 points. Sabrina Ionescu had 14 points and 11 assists and Jonquel Jones contributed 19 points and five rebounds. Of course, the ultimate goal is winning a championship.

“I think we’ve grown in our experience, but we have really experienced players,” said Liberty coach Sandy Brondello. “The ones who went through it last year, we know what we want and how hard it is to get there, so it’s a focus and a mentality. My job as the leader is to make sure we keep the eye on what our goal is.”

On Sunday, the Liberty defeated the two-time defending WNBA Champion Las Vegas Aces that were playing without star A’ja Wilson, who missed the game due to an ankle injury. That makes three wins over the Aces this season.

The teams nipping at the Liberty’s heels are Minnesota Lynx and the Connecticut Sun. On Tuesday, the Lynx defeated the Atlanta Dream 76–64 and the Sun played the Los Angeles Sparks. Seven of the eight playoff spots have been filled. The eighth spot likely won’t be determined for another week as the Chicago Sky, Atlanta Dream and Washington Mystics fight it out. The Sky’s chances are diminished by a wrist injury that has ended Angel Reese’s season.

Tonight, the Liberty have a rematch with the Wings in Dallas and then head back to Brooklyn to take on the Lynx on Sunday at Barclays Center, a key game to establish dominance heading into the playoffs. The Liberty split regular season games with the Lynx this year but lost to them in the Commissioner’s Cup championship game. Minnesota is looking to return its previous dominance of four WNBA titles in seven years (2011, ’13, ’15 and ’17), as New York seeks its first title in franchise history.

The post As the WNBA regular season winds down, the Liberty maintain the best record appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

Congressmember Yvette Clarke recently hosted educational seminars on the cost benefits of the federal Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA’s) programs, which offer taxpayers significant grants and rebates for clean energy-efficiency in their homes, businesses, and vehicles.

“From lowering prescription drug prices and energy costs to delivering vital resources to combat the climate crisis to creating millions of well-paying union jobs, this law is a once-in-a-generation investment in our economy and our communities,” Clarke said at the seminar. “I was proud to cast a decisive vote for the [IRA] because I knew the immense benefits of the legislation and that they would not only benefit communities across our nation but families just across the street right here in Brooklyn.”

The IRA was signed into law by President Biden in 2022. It allowed for significant investments in improving the country’s infrastructure, energy security, and efforts to combat climate change. It also created more than 20 tax incentives for clean energy and manufacturing, such as the energy-efficient home improvement and residential clean energy credits, credits for electric cars recently bought or used, and credits for alternative fuels.

According to Julie Tighe, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters (NYLCV), credits can range up to thousands of dollars in tax refunds. For example, a tax credit for electric vehicles (EV) that are at least two years old with a sale price of less than $25,000 provides up to $4,000 for the car and up to $1,000 for EV charger installation and hardware at home if eligible, said Tighe.

Under the IRA, New York State has received two grant programs: Home Efficiency Rebates (HER), with $159 million through 2031 for energy savings, and Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates (HEAR), with $18.4 million for rebates through 2031 for electrification of households below 150% of the area median income (AMI).

“We are expecting to receive a total of $37.4 million to deploy between now and September 30 of 2031, and both of these grants have funds that are dedicated to low-income households,” said NYSERDA Chief Program Officer Anthony J. Fiore. “I am thrilled to report that New York is the first state in the nation to get this money into the market.”

Existing state programs like EmPower+ will continue to offer low- to moderate-income homeowners substantial funding and help with installing heat pumps, heat pump water heaters and clothes dryers, electronic cooking appliances, updated insulation and ventilation systems, air sealing, and electrical wiring upgrades, said Fiore.

“New York is an old state — we look good, but we’re an old state with old buildings [that] really need to be retrofitted,” said Senator Kevin Parker, who chairs the energy and telecommunications committee. “Weatherization, changing windows, insulating buildings is going to be a big part of keeping cool air in in the summer and warm air in in the winter. The second part is demand response, [which] talks about knowing the best times and the best ways to use electricity and power generally.”

Assemblywoman Latrice Walker, who grew up in Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood, attested to “demand response” or power usage as an environmental justice issue that takes a toll on low-income communities of color.

“Brownsville and other parts of central Brooklyn were in sort of brownout stages and the [power] load, based on the lifestyles of so many people in central Brooklyn pulling so heavily on the Brownsville substation that Con Edison would have to turn down the power in many of our communities,” Walker said. “[That] prevented the elevators from working. It had gotten so bad once that at Brookdale Hospital, they had to almost evacuate the hospital because when the load was reduced so low, the chillers no longer worked in the building.”

Part of the IRA dedicates $57 billion to help address these issues in historically disadvantaged communities. Walker said one of the more important tax credits available in her district has been the solar initiative, which helps families and low-income communities to put solar panels on the roofs of their homes and reduce their energy bills long-term.

“I always remember the excitement of a homeowner who came in with an energy bill with zero dollars, and there was also a church that had that, and they couldn’t believe it,” Walker said. “They thought it was an error.”

For more information about tax rebates and energy grants, check out the cost-savings calculator to determine eligibility. New Yorkers can find EmPower+ applications and information about state tax and energy rebate programs at www.nyserda.ny.gov or energyadvisor.ny.gov/.

The post How much money can you get for combating the climate crisis? Rep. Clarke reviews state and federal green energy tax rebates appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

In June of 2017, Ayisha Doyle’s phone rang. A man on the other end of the line was calling to inform her that he was a representative of the ARLO 67 LLC company.

“Hey, we own half your house. Just thought I’d let you know,” the man said.

“Excuse you? What are you talking about?” Doyle said she responded. He said, “Oh, yeah, we purchased your uncle’s interest in the house, so we own half the house.”

Doyle immediately asked for some proof of this, since she hadn’t seen her uncle in person or heard from him since March of 2007 when he came to Brooklyn for his mother’s funeral –– he’d been living in Australia for the last 40-plus years.

Her uncle, Walter Giles, had inherited part of the house along with his sister, Phillipa –– Ayisha Doyle’s mother — but Giles had no active role in paying bills or the building’s upkeep, and rarely returned to Brooklyn or contacted family members.

“So, I was shocked when this guy told me that because I was like, first of all, how’d you find him at the bottom of the world? That’s what immediately made me think, oh, this can’t be real. The guy said, ‘Well, we’ll send something in the mail, and I’ll call you back.’ And I said, ‘No, no, no. Who you can speak to next is my lawyer, because you and I will not be conversing.’ And then the next thing I got in the mail was a default judgment from the foreclosure court granting them a partition. That’s when I was like, something’s really wrong.”

Doyle has been fighting to save her family home from deed theft ever since.

Brooklyn’s ‘Little Harlem’

Doyle’s family has lived in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood for nearly a century. In the 1940s, her great-grandparents Mabel and Walter Clement Moore purchased the property at 234 Jefferson Avenue. It’s a three-story single-family Victorian brownstone, originally built in the 1880s. They had to think carefully about how to acquire the stately house. Although they had saved up the funds to buy a home, Bed-Stuy was a predominantly white neighborhood at that time and locals were determined to keep it that way. Many had joined a white supremacist group called the Midtown Civic League to try to stem the growing influx of Black people renting and buying the district homes.

Bed-Stuy was quickly becoming a preferred neighborhood for African Americans because of its site as a nexus for public transportation. The area was nicknamed Brooklyn’s “Little Harlem.” At the time, the Amsterdam News wrote reports about efforts by the Midtown Civic League to keep Blacks out of Bed-Stuy. The Midtown Civic League was the “Ku Klux Klan in the north,” the Rev. Theophilus Joseph Alcantara of the St. Simon African Orthodox Church told the paper.

“The Rev. Alcantara further related that the purpose of the white organization is to co-operate with the banks and merchants in order to prevent Negroes from holding any real property in the Bedford Stuyvesant section,” the paper stated in its September 17, 1938 edition: “‘These bankers,’ he charged, ‘are out to press off the few Negro property owners by insisting on early payment of the interest on the mortgage held by them.’”

The Doyle family survived the race-based turmoil of the time: They were one of the first of three Black families to move to the block. Overt housing discrimination was so strong that they used a proxy –– a white person to stand in as their substitute –– to purchase their home. Even with the paperwork for the property signed, though, they couldn’t get a bank mortgage on the house: Banks would not give Black people mortgages.

Doyle’s grandparents, James and Phyllis Giles, took possession of the house. James died in 1995, then Phyllis passed on March 4, 2007, and the house was left to their children: Walter and Phillipa.

Tending to the building for future generations

Walter had not been interested in the property even before his parents passed. He’d moved to Australia and only rarely surfaced to contact his family. Ayisha said that by 2016, she and her mother, Phillipa, had been able to pay off a mortgage the family had taken out on the building when they needed extra funds. They paid all the bills, tended to the building’s maintenance, and looked after it for future generations of their family.

Giles had reportedly sold 75% of his stake in the house to Theodore Zucker, a property investor and owner of Zucker Asset Management and ARLO 67 LLC, for $300,000. Since Phyllis’s will was never probated or legally transferred over to her heirs after she died in 2007, it was not clear whether the Doyles could keep the house. Zucker was claiming that he paid for his share of the house and was entitled to a portion of it; he allegedly had a deed signed by Giles and notarized in Australia.

To this day, Ayisha Doyle can’t believe that Zucker was able to locate her uncle and purchase shares of the property. She said that she has asked him to provide some kind of payment receipt proving that Walter Giles sold his share, but Zucker has failed to do so.

Zucker’s ARLO 67 LLC has made several attempts to force a partition sale of the Bed-Stuy home and at some point, Doyle even sat down to a mediated settlement conference with Zucker, but no agreement between the two parties could be found. This past June 6, the property was reportedly auctioned off for $1.7 million, with Zucker’s LLC named as the buyer, although the sale has not yet been finalized.

Representative from developer who allegedly purchased Jefferson Avenue brownstone at auction.

“The biggest issue is them being LLCs — they can file anything and then they just bury you in a mountain of paper, and it’s your job, then, as a homeowner if you want to get your house back, to prove that it’s yours –– or that they’re lying, or that they have committed fraud,” Doyle told the Amsterdam News. “It’s just on you.”

Doyle’s attorney, Kanika Sloan Williams, is originally from Brooklyn and now lives down south, but has been helping her former neighbor fight to keep the Jefferson Avenue home for the last seven years. The case has been before five judges — one of whom was in the second circuit appeals appellate court. “The challenge is that you’re facing an investment company,” said Sloan Williams. “At one point, they had sued Aisha and her mom for $300,000 for ‘use and occupancy’ of a home that’s been in their family since the 1940s. Basically, they were saying that Aisha and her mom owed them money because they stayed there. They just come up with lawsuit after lawsuit … The vast majority of homeowners who’ve had their homes forever — they just don’t have tens of thousands of dollars to pay an attorney to fight back.”

Sloan Williams believes the case against the Doyles is fraudulent, but said she understands how frustrating it is for other homeowners who are having to deal with speculators. Unfortunately, it’s not illegal for a real estate investor to buy an interest in a home, and once they own an interest, it’s not illegal for them to ask the courts to force a sale.

“I will tell you, because I do estate law, I tell people all the time … if you’re leaving your house to more than one person, one person is going to want to sell, one person’s going to want to keep it every time, every single time,” she said. “It’s very rare that heirs agree unless the property is in such disrepair that nobody wants to repair it.”

Sloan Williams offered suggestions for protecting a home from deed theft: “It’s absolutely safer for the person who owns the property to determine what they want to have happen,” she said. “[You can] leave it in a trust and the trust basically directs if you want it to be sold and you split any proceeds. Or say you have rental income or something to that effect: That rental income gets split amongst the heirs. Then there’s less of an incentive for heirs to sell anything because the trust instrument is what governs how that property functions. But if you just leave something outright and let’s say you have three kids, they’ll fight over it … It’s a lot safer to, if you want to keep your house in the family, particularly in Black and Brown communities, to leave that house in a trust and have that trust instrument determine that perhaps the heirs get the income from the property, and the property itself does not get sold.”

The post Hey, we own half your house’ –– Bed-Stuy family terrorized by deed theft appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

An August jobs report showed the U.S. adding 142,000 jobs last month, and the national unemployment rate falling slightly to 4.2% as 91,000 people left the labor force. Black unemployment was reported at 6.1%; little changed from last month. African Americans have continued relatively high participation rates after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report also offers large previous month revisions totaling 86,000 jobs as the economy continued to grow slower over the past three months, all while the financial community awaits an important decision by the Federal Reserve on interest rates.

As the nation heads into an important national election, the mediocre jobs report will not help either side. As neutral as the report was, the 142,000 figure is still a respectable number, showing that the nation’s economy is still growing steadily — though at a slower rate. Consumers, the key driver of the economy, are continuing to spend money, even as they complain about inflation. And corporate profits remain near record levels. A recession does not appear to be close.

The AmNews was granted an exclusive interview with the Acting Secretary of Labor, Julie Su, in the wake of the August report. She spoke about the labor numbers, Black unemployment, union jobs, non-traditional work opportunities, and apprenticeships.

Su said the Biden-Harris administration’s pro-union efforts remain essential and will positively impact employment opportunities for Black Americans.

“Unions are such a powerful force in decreasing racial and gender wage gaps,” she said. “When we see that unions do better, we also see that Black Americans do better.”

The labor secretary said the Biden-Harris administration’s economic policies have focused on workers and racial equity. One thing they’ve done is use grants like Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (WANTO) to buttress targeted apprenticeship programs that are helping Black people — and Black women in particular — to be able to get good union jobs.

In the construction industry, organizations like Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW) in New York and the Chicago Women in Trades have received funds to help train Black women for construction industry jobs, where workers are traditionally paid well. In the August jobs report, construction added 34,000 new employment positions.

Construction and manufacturing jobs offer great opportunities for skilled workers. But being in the position to get those jobs means not being passed over because of your skin color, ethnic background, or gender. President Biden traveled to Michigan on Sept. 6 to sign the Good Jobs Executive Order, which his administration says will ensure that when the federal government puts funds toward infrastructure projects, the companies that win those contracts will be mandated to create good union jobs with “project labor agreements (PLAs), community benefits agreements, voluntary union recognition, and neutrality with respect to union organizing.”

“We know that there’s really nothing more important we can do to make sure that the jobs that are being created are leading to widely shared opportunity and that communities that have been left behind in the past are not left behind this time,” Su insisted.

“One sign that we’re moving in the right direction –– and again, we’re nowhere near done with this effort –– but one sign is that there’s been a long and very persistent Black-white unemployment gap. That gap still exists, but it has been closing; it’s the smallest that it has ever been. Again, we’re not going to reverse the decades of inequity and frankly systemic racism in the economy overnight, but we need to do everything we can to reverse that, and that’s what a lot of our economic policies and our focus on workers and our focus on racial equity has been about.”

When asked if this was similar to ensuring the continuation of what former President Donald Trump deemed “Black jobs,” Labor Secretary Su said: “Let me be clear: We want to be sure there are no ‘Black jobs’ or ‘white jobs,’ especially because by characterizing them that way, it often reinforces the discrimination and occupational segregation that has really hurt Black communities, and also our economy overall. There’s one study done by the McKinsey Institute a few years ago that found that if we just eliminated the Black-white wealth gap in this country, it would increase the overall GDP by 4 to 6 percent by 2028. That proves something that I’ve long believed, which is that combating systemic racism –– it’s not just the right thing to do, it’s good economic policy. So we want to make sure that there are no ‘Black jobs’ and ‘white jobs.’ There’s only good jobs and good jobs in all communities. That’s why the federal investments that are being made in not just construction, but also in manufacturing, and in clean energy are so important. That has helped to fuel the job growth that we’ve seen and the job reports that I announce every month.”

The post August unemployment report shows little change for Black workers appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here