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Harlem’s WE ACT Rallied For Legislative Action And Mayoral Accountability On NYC’s Extreme Heat

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WE ACT for Environmental Justice held a rally in City Hall Park today to demand action from the New York City Council on extreme heat. Fellow advocates including GOLES, New Yorkers for Parks, NRDC, El Puente, NYLCV, South Bronx Unite, and the Waterfront Alliance were joined by New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, Councilmember Shaun Abreu,…

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* This article was originally published here

Biden-Harris Administration Launches $2.2 Billion Relief Initiative to Support Black Farmers

Farming/John Deere (297435)

The Biden-Harris Administration has unveiled a $2.2 billion relief initiative aimed at providing support to Black farmers and other individuals who have faced discrimination within federal government lending programs.

The Inflation Reduction Act, part of Biden’s commitment to addressing historical injustices, includes a total of $5.3 billion dedicated to offering relief to tens of thousands of farmers across the country.

Of the allocated funds, $3.1 billion reportedly will be used to assist distressed borrowers in paying off their farm debts without losing their land or becoming ineligible for future assistance.

An additional $2.2 billion will be allocated specifically to farmers who have suffered discrimination through USDA farm programs.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that applications are now being accepted for the Discrimination Financial Assistance Program, which aims to provide financial aid to farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners who have experienced discrimination in USDA farm lending prior to 2021.

“The opening of the application process is an important step in delivering on our commitment to providing financial assistance to those who faced discrimination in USDA farm lending, as swiftly and efficiently as possible,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack emphasized.

The initiative comes after decades of Black farmers accusing the USDA of discrimination and being denied loans crucial for their livelihoods and land preservation.

A study conducted in May 2022 revealed that Black farmers had lost over $326 billion in land value throughout the 20th century.
T

he Washington Informer reported in 2022 that researchers considered that figure to be a conservative estimate of the actual financial impact racist practices have had on Black American farmers since 1920.

Biden issued an executive order last year, instructing the USDA to establish a 15-member independent equity commission aimed at rectifying discrimination within its policies and practices concerning Black farmers.

Under the initial Build Back Better plan, the Biden administration said it wanted to allocate significant funds to support Black farmers.

However, the plan was scuttled after white farmers filed lawsuits claiming that the earmarking of funds specifically for Black farmers amounted to discrimination.

The legal action has resulted in the tying up of $4 billion as the administration continues to defend the action in court.

Further, a 2021 report from ProPublica also shed light on the systematic discrimination faced by Black farmers at the hands of various federal agencies, including the USDA.

The report detailed how the USDA impeded Black farmers’ access to critical federal funds through discriminatory loan denials and deliberate delays in financial aid.

“If you are Black and you’re born south of the Mason-Dixon Line and you tried to farm, you’ve been discriminated against,” Lloyd Wright, the director of the USDA Office of Civil Rights under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and a Black Virginia farmer, stated in the report.

In an earlier interview with the Informer, John Wesley Boyd Jr., founder, and president of the National Black Farmers Association in Bakersville, Virginia, added, “The oldest occupation in this country for Black people is farming. But from slavery through Jim Crow, the USDA, and the banks – all these things put together means we are facing extinction.”
Boyd added:

What’s troubling is when the brown bear, the black bear, and the bald eagle were facing extinction, Congress put harsh laws in place until their numbers came back up. So why can’t they do the same thing for the oldest occupation in history for Black people, which is farming?”

The White House said the launch of the $2.2 billion relief initiative represents a significant step towards rectifying the historical injustices faced by Black farmers and marks the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to addressing systemic discrimination in federal lending programs.

With the Discrimination Financial Assistance Program now accepting applications, eligible farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners should now have access to needed financial assistance.

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* This article was originally published here

OP-ED: Safeguarding charitable medicines programs in America

OP-ED: Safeguarding charitable medicines programs in America

Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis (261739)
Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis (261739)

All Americans should have equal access to high quality healthcare.  As our nation steadily emerges out of the awful debilitating aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of communities of color, and in particular the African American community, are all facing lingering challenges and prolonged difficulties in having access to affordable and quality healthcare.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has many important and life-saving public health related programs that are structured and funded to ensure access to the best of healthcare offerings including the provision of affordable pharmaceuticals with respect to the most vulnerable and underserved communities across the nation.

One of those important governmental healthcare programs is known as the Charitable Medicines Program (340B). The 340B program began in the early 1990s when Congress wanted to require pharmaceutical manufacturers, as a condition of benefiting from government programs, to donate at low or no cost prescription drugs to charitable hospitals. These hospitals, overwhelmingly located in underserved urban and rural communities with patients of all races and ethnicities, were in turn expected to use these discount price medicines to serve patients who otherwise could not afford these drugs.

Today, Americans are facing unprecedented times. We are rebuilding our economy from a global pandemic. But there is another epidemic in this country (Entities putting profits over people) which must be addressed, and it must be addressed now. It’s one of the few things reasonable Americans on all sides of the political spectrum can agree on these days. Where it happens, there ought to be robust, bipartisan reform efforts to fix it. When it happens inside the context of a government program meant to help the poorest among us, it should mean robust oversight from the Congress and the Administration. That’s exactly what’s going on now with the charitable medicines program known as “340B.”

For a while, the program worked as intended. The average discount on a 340B drug is nearly 60%, and for many drugs it’s much more than that. But over time, greed has cropped up and made a mockery of the program resulting in practices which furthers health inequities in our nation.

The definition of a “charitable hospital” was never well-defined in law, and today 57% of all hospitals participate in the drug discount program. They are happy to accept the cheaper medicines, but where do they end up? Out of the nearly 13,000 hospitals and community pharmacies participating in the 340B program today, fully six in ten are in middle class and affluent areas, not the poorer zip codes the program is meant to serve.

How is this possible? How has a program Congress created to get Big PhRMA to give affordable drugs to charitable hospitals gone so far off the rails? The answer is that no one is minding the store in Washington. There are zero requirements for hospitals to use the cost savings from 340B to help needy patients, and there isn’t any rule requiring these hospitals to let patients know they are eligible for these drugs.

In addition, stand-alone hospitals are now the exception compared to the rule of a broad hospital network with facilities in diverse income areas. A hospital or clinic that qualifies for the discounted drugs in this program might be one of dozens of health care centers in a network conglomerate. As a result, the drug price reductions are eagerly gobbled up and the drugs fed into the larger system. To put a fine point on it, medicines intended for poor urban and rural areas are being re-routed and sold at full price to insured patients in more affluent areas. That’s the definition of health inequity.

This is not a mere theoretical concern. Last year, the New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/24/health/bon-secours-mercy-health-profit-poor-neighborhood.html broke a story that Bon Secours, a hospital network in the Richmond, VA area, was accepting 340B discount drugs at Richmond Community Hospital, not telling local patients they were eligible for these free-to-inexpensive medicines, and selling the drugs for full price to patients in more affluent hospitals in their network. This led Richmond mayor Levar Stoney to send a letter to Bon Secours, charging them with using “loopholes [to increase] profit margins for the hospital system while they have reduced services in one of our predominantly Black communities.”

Notably, Mayor Stoney also called on the Biden Administration to increase oversight of the 340B program: “I request for your administration to urgently investigate the effectiveness and unintended consequences of 340B–not only regarding Bon Secours in the City of Richmond, but in other localities across the country.”

Untold stories like this exist in communities across the country. But the fact is the hospital lobbyists have influenced Congressional and Administration oversight officials from both political parties for decades. Every Congressman has a hospital in their district, and the 340b program must be used by the hospitals as Congress mandated.

That’s why I was proud to hear about a panel earlier this year organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton on this topic where he stated, “This affects everybody. If you are having people abuse government funds that should be reinvested, this is not a right-wing or left-wing issue.”

The executive branch runs the 340B program out of the Health Resources and Services Administration, a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services. HRSA, as it’s known, makes determinations of what entities are covered by the program, and they have been very generous over the years. According to the Government Accountability Office, the number of hospitals and clinics HRSA has approved has increased from fewer than 10,000 in 2010 to nearly 13,000 today–an increase of 30 percent in a little over a decade.

And while HRSA is supposed to collect information and conduct audits on 340B covered entities, they simply don’t have the manpower to do so. The little number of questions they do raise are answered and accepted, because there is no real oversight possible. There are only the staff resources to facilitate drug discounts to hospitals.

What’s urgently needed is a combination of Congressional hearings and a more inquisitorial HRSA. Until that happens, low income patients across America will be the excuse giant hospital chains use to get drugs at a discount rate and sell them at full price to more affluent patients.

The post OP-ED: Safeguarding charitable medicines programs in America appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

WE ACT Praises NYC Council For Tackling Childhood Lead Poisoning

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WE ACT for Environmental Justice applauds the New York City Council for passing Introduction 0193-2022 today. Which eliminates an often overlooked source of childhood lead poisoning by making the existence of peeling or chipped lead-based paint in any common area of a multifamily building where a child under the age of six resides a class C immediately hazardous…

The post WE ACT Praises NYC Council For Tackling Childhood Lead Poisoning appeared first on Harlem World Magazine.

* This article was originally published here

Get On Board The National Association Of Women Artists Semi-Annual Membership Drive

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NAWA is pleased to announce that new member applications will be accepted from July 15th to September 15th, 2023.  Established nearly 135 years ago in 1889, NAWA stands strong today as the first professional women’s arts organization in America.  With their long-standing mission of raising the profile of art created by women, NAWA provides extensive…

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* This article was originally published here

Harlem’s Black Public Media Funds Projects Combating Vaccine Hesitancy

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Harlem‘s Black Public Media (BPM) has selected three projects for a total of more than $160,000 in funding for vaccine equity works targeting vaccine hesitancy in Michigan and North Carolina. The projects are scheduled for completion this fall in time for expected spikes in COVID and flu cases. Michigan-based filmmakers Eden Sadolboro and Toni Cunningham,…

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* This article was originally published here

Hiring A Roofing Contractor: Top Tips On Finding The Right Professional For The Job

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Are you a homeowner facing the daunting task of finding the perfect roofing contractor? Look no further! Your roof is one of the most crucial components of your house, and entrusting its care to the right professional is paramount. Whether you’re in need of repairs, a complete replacement, or simply want to enhance your home’s…

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* This article was originally published here

Illinois city begins paying reparations to Black Americans

Reparations have finally arrived for some Black Americans.

The city of Evanston, Illinois, began its historic reparations program by providing compensation to its many of its Black residents.

Checks and vouchers in the amount of $25,000 have been sent this week to eligible residents, a move that backs up the city’s 2019 promise to pay as much as $10 million over the next decade in reparations.

Approved in March 2021, the program targets Black residents who resided in Evanston between 1919 and 1969 or experienced housing discrimination due to the city’s policies.

It’s a similar program which officials in San Francisco currently are grappling with, as that California city also considers reparations by the harms suffered by Black residents denied fair housing, job and educational opportunities, and other hardships that were unfairly inflicted upon African American communities.

One Evanston recipient, Louis Weathers, an 88-year-old retired postal worker and Korean War veteran, shared his personal experience with racial prejudice during his interview with the Wall Street Journal.

He recounted his time at an integrated junior high school, where a white teacher consistently marginalized Black students.

He explained that the teacher would purposely ignore their raised hands to undermine their capabilities.

“We got onto that, though. When we didn’t know the answer, we raised our hands,” Weathers recounted.

Weathers counted among the first to receive a $25,000 check from the city. He told the newspaper that he gave his reparations check to his son to reduce debt and make upgrades on his home.

The payments, which can be received as vouchers or cash, are funded through taxes on marijuana and real-estate transfers.

While Evanston has begun making reparation payments, similar proposals at the national level have faced challenges.

Although a federal bill calling for a national reparations task force has been introduced annually since 1989, it has yet to be voted on in Congress.

Evanston’s mayor, Daniel Biss, said his city remains committed to change.

“Our job here is just to move forward and to continue being that example, to continue illustrating that a small municipality can make real tangible progress,” he stated.

The post Illinois city begins paying reparations to Black Americans appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

Join The New York State Cannabis Control Board Sets Board Meeting In Harlem  

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The New York State Cannabis Control Board is pleased to announce its upcoming public meeting, which will be held at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, July 19, 2023. The meeting will take place at the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy (CUNY SPH), located at 55 West 125th Street,…

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* This article was originally published here

Olympic gymnastics champion Gabby Douglas says she is aiming for the 2024 Paris Games

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Gabby Douglas, the first Black woman to win the Olympic all-around gymnastics title, is taking aim at the 2024 Games in Paris.

Douglas announced on her Instagram page Thursday that she is making a comeback attempt, a dozen years after her triumph in London in 2012 and eight years after her last competition, the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

“I wanted to find the joy again for the sport that I absolutely love doing,” Douglas posted. “I know I have a huge task ahead of me and I am beyond grateful and excited to get back out on the floor.”

The now 27-year-old Douglas also posted video of herself practicing uneven bars, her signature event.

Douglas is the second Olympic champion in recent weeks to say they are pointing toward Paris.

Simone Biles, who won the all-around gold in Rio and was teammates with Douglas on the five-woman U.S. squad that cruised to the team gold in Brazil, is returning to competition at the U.S. Classic in Chicago in early August.

Douglas has yet to outline a timeline for when she might be ready to join what will be a very crowded field to make what could be a loaded American team under the rings next summer. Douglas could petition USA Gymnastics for a spot at the U.S. Classic. She had not done that as of Thursday afternoon but still has ample time to do so. There is no petition deadline for the event, set for Saturday, Aug. 5 at NOW Arena in the Chicago suburbs.

Douglas became one of the faces of the 2012 Olympics after her brilliant performance in the all-around final helped her become the third straight American woman to claim the biggest title in her sport. She became a crossover star in the aftermath, winning AP Female Athlete of the Year in 2012, writing her autobiography and having her life story turned into a TV movie.

She took a couple of years off after London but returned to competition in 2015, eventually finishing second to Biles in the all-around at the 2015 world championships and making a second Olympic team, helping the U.S. claim gold for a second straight Games.

Douglas never formally announced her retirement after Rio de Janeiro, instead dabbling in reality TV and becoming a motivational speaker, among other things.

Her return comes at a time when America’s top female gymnasts are competing into their 20s and sometimes beyond. Biles is 26. Chellsie Memmel, the 2005 world all-around champion and 2008 Olympic silver medalist, was in her early 30s when she made an unexpected comeback in 2021. Memmel is now the technical lead for the U.S. Gymnastics women’s elite program.

Douglas, who is currently training out of World Olympic Gymnastics Academy in the Dallas, Texas area, will have considerable work ahead of her. The relaxation of name, image and likeness rules have allowed several members of the 2020 Olympic team — including all-around champion Suni Lee, floor exercise champion Jade Carey and world and Olympic medalist Jordan Chiles — to extend their elite careers.

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2024 Paris Olympics at https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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* This article was originally published here