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Prominent Black women leaders gathered this week to discuss the persistent issue of the gender and race wage gap for women of color. This year’s Black Women’s Equal Pay Day is on July 27, 2023. 

Studies from the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) indicate that Black women who work full time, year round currently make “67 cents for every dollar” made by white men and “93 cents for every dollar” paid to Black men. 

This pay disparity is mirrored locally in New York City. Last year, a pay equity report put out by the city council, showed that over half of the city’s workforce consists of women and most of them are Black and brown women. In the city’s “non-adjusted pay gap,” which compares the average median salaries across different categories, Black women earn “71 cents to every dollar” white employees make.

“It is not a holiday or celebration. It is a reminder of how far Black women have to go into the new year in order to simply catch up to what white men earned in the previous year,” said National Partnership for Women & Families President Jocelyn Frye on the conference call. “We have to start with an understanding that racism and sexism continue to define and devalue the work that women do, particularly the work that Black women do.”

Frye attributes the pay gap to occupational segregation, the over- or under-representation of certain demographics in a particular job, caregiver discrimination, and sexual harassment in the workplace. 

“We find ourselves in the midst of an earthquake and Black women are at the fault line,” said Melanie L. Campbell, president and CEO for National Coalition on Black Civic Participation.  

Campbell and others advocated for the passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill aimed at addressing wage discrimination, in Congress and other pay parity laws that promote transparency. New York City Council passed the Pay Equity Law in 2019, which demands more data on pay gaps and analyses hiring practices. In 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul passed a Pay Transparency Law in New York State that requires jobs to list salary ranges.

Cassandra Welchlin, executive director at Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, pointed out that even employers asking for salary history in interviews can lead to discriminatory treatment. 

“We know that salary history is one of the tenants that continue to make the wage gap wider because we’re not paid what we ought to be,” said Welchlin.

Along with salary history, said Welchlin, salary negotiations are tricky for Black women regardless of education level. Vice President for Education and Workplace Justice for NWLC Emily Martin confirmed that despite the “rapid increase” of Black women with degrees in the past few decades, many are typically still paid less than white men with the same level of education and they are paid less than white men with less education than them.

“You can’t just educate yourself out of the wage gap,” said Martin.

Martin added that one driver behind the wage gap is that the lion’s share of women and Black women are working in the lowest paying jobs nationwide. They are child care workers, home health aides and personal care aides, food service workers, and other “underpaid and undervalued jobs,” according to the NWLC.

Some believe strongly that funneling more Black women into union jobs will help counteract the wage gap. 

Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) President Elise Bryant said that Black women in unions unequivocally make more money and have better access to benefits, though she does acknowledge that unions have their own history with being racist and sexist as well. She worries that policies meant to close the pay gap aren’t always enforced and laws are often circumvented. Bryant remembers the indignation from friends who attended Ivy League schools and became lawyers at separate places, and then discovered through slip ups at work that they were being paid less than their white counterparts. 

“Sexism. It is manifested all over the place, across the board, across financial and social status,” said Bryant, “but those of us who are in the most disenfranchised and lowest paying jobs, the ones without benefits, are the women of color, specifically African American women.”

In addition to more union jobs, Bryant said higher minimum wages , vocational training and negotiation skills for high school girls would also help to close the wage gap for Black women.

George Gresham, president of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, had a similar standpoint. He said that New York should make it easier for workers to exercise their rights to form and join unions to advance pay equity.

“Closing racial and gender pay gaps requires building a mass movement of working people to build power and advance collective bargaining,” said Gresham. “Black women who belong to unions earn nearly a quarter more than they do in non-union settings and experience dramatically reduced pay disparities, a result of negotiated standards and wage transparency.”

Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.

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Dr. Jean Kennedy is in Cuba this week, taking part in the 33rd IFCO/Pastors for Peace Friendshipment Caravan to the island nation. 

“Actually, coming here in person is so much more enlightening for me,” Dr. Kennedy, a Fresno, California resident, said in a video message to the Amsterdam News. “For me, I want this to be a legacy––not just for myself, as an educator, or for my students, but even for my own grandchildren. As a grandmother, I’m hoping that I’m creating a pathway so that my son will be able to come, and my daughter will be able to come, and my grandchildren will be able to come. I leave them that legacy.”

This is Dr. Kennedy’s second time joining a Friendshipment Caravan to Cuba. She’s one of 30 U.S. citizens taking part in a trip sponsored by the Harlem-based nonprofit IFCO (Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization), which has been leading groups to the island nation since 1992. 

This year’s caravan takes place from July 15 through July 29. IFCO promoted participation in the caravan as an opportunity for U.S. citizens to have “the impact of seeing Cuba for yourself.” With a home-base in the city of Santiago de Cuba, caravan participants are making visits to the Santa Ifigenia Cemetery, site of the graves of famed Cubans like Fidel Castro; 19th-century nationalist and independence hero José Martí; Mambi Army of Liberation General Antonio Maceo and his revolution-oriented mother, Mariana Grajales; and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, the nation’s first president. Caravanners have been able to retrace the paths taken by Fidel Castro and his rebel army in the Sierra Maestra mountains as they strategized methods to overthrow the dictator, Fulgencio Batista. They are taking day trips to visit locations like the small fishing village of Caimanera which sits outside the U.S. naval base and prison on Guantánamo Bay. They volunteered to help clean at a hospital, went to the Bayamo Wax Museum, and visited Oscar Lambert’s “Las Elenas” farm. 

Caravan participant Kelly Camacho, from Buffalo, N.Y., said she has felt inspired by the caravan tour. “Yesterday we got to go to a community garden, and it was really beautiful to see the way community love exists here in Cuba,” she said. “Back home, we’re really taught to be individualistic. We’re taught a scarcity mindset: that there’s not enough for everybody. But here in Cuba, where there are a lot less resources because of the blockade of the United States, they’re doing so much more with so much less. They take care of each other: it is what it truly means to be a community, and that is extremely revolutionary. 

“The blockade was put in place to keep those revolutionary ideas confined to here because they are afraid of the power that it would generate in places like Puerto Rico, the rest of the Caribbean, even in the United States. … More people need to come here to Cuba and see what is out here because there is so much more to offer.”

Mariam Osman from Denver, Colorado, was also encouraged by her time with the IFCO caravan. She said the trip gives her the chance to “see what it means to live in a place where people seem committed to the struggle and seem committed to each other’s needs being met and seem committed to what it means to exist in community and care for one another.”

Importantly, the 33rd Friendshipment Caravan brought with it a shipment of antibiotics, painkillers, and other priority medicines for residents on the island. Cuba has had pharmaceutical drug shortages in recent years and there are reports of people becoming reliant on herbal medicines and drug swap markets.

A paucity of food and lack of access to international markets have continued in Cuba ever since the United States imposed an economic embargo on the socialist nation in the wake of its 1959 revolution. Cuba’s revolution transitioned its national economy from functioning based on a deeply corrupt capitalism and evolved into a mostly state-run socialist system. Cubans were granted free education; healthcare for all; agrarian reform; and social supports. But, to this day, thousands of Cubans who flee the island say political freedoms are lacking, and the instability of the island’s economy makes it difficult to live there.

It was the U.S. embargo that led the late Rev. Lucius Walker, IFCO’s founding director, to create Pastors for Peace which brought caravans of supplies to Latin American nations suffering from U.S.-enforced embargos. Rev. Walker deemed the embargoes a form of U.S. imperialism. 

IFCO is now led by Gail Walker, Rev. Walker’s daughter. Her many years of contact with Cuban government representatives has helped maintain IFCO’s open-arms welcome on the island. Gail Walker’s birthday took place during the caravan and Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, notably tweeted a special birthday message to Walker to congratulate her.

As part of their trip, the 33rd IFCO caravan participants will get to witness the 70th anniversary celebrations of Castro’s rebel army assault on the Moncada Barracks. It will be a commemoration of the rebel army’s unsuccessful attempt to steal weapons from the military barracks on July 26, 1953. The assault on the barracks failed, but it made Fidel Castro a national figure and it led to his famous speech in court where he claimed that “history would absolve” him, because it would point to the purpose behind his actions. 

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The Major League Baseball trade deadline is next Tuesday. The Mets and Yankees are in the market but perhaps for different reasons. The Mets are likely to be sellers and the Yankees buyers. 

After meeting yesterday in the second game of their second Subway Series of this season, the Mets and Yankees find themselves in disparate situations. Both teams were at the lower end of their respective divisions. The Mets were in fourth place in the National League East and the Yankees last in the American League East. 

However, the Mets were 47-53 after beating the Yankees 9-3 in the Bronx on Tuesday night, 17.5 games behind the NL East Atlanta Braves. Even more reflective of their dire playoff circumstances was the Mets being seven games out of third wildcard spot and looking up at five teams to supplant. Elevating above five teams with 61 games remaining is unlikely. 

Conversely, although the Yankees were at the bottom of the AL East prior to facing the Mets last night, they were just 2.5 games behind the Toronto Blue Jays for the last American League wildcard spot. The Yankees have remained in the playoff hunt without having their best player since June 3. Reigning AL MVP Aaron Judge strained ligaments in his right big toe nearly eight weeks ago. At the time of his injury the Yankees were 10 games over .500 at 35-25. They are 30-19 with him in the lineup. 

The outfielder faced live pitching in a simulated game on Sunday for the first time since sustaining the injury and the Yankees are hopeful his return is imminent. It’s why they will be looking to bolster their everyday lineup which has struggled since Judge’s departure. Reports of the Yankees acquiring the Los Angeles transcendent star Shohei Ohtani make for lively discussion but are ostensibly far fetched. 

More realistic targets are the Mets’ outfielder Tommy Pham and reliever David Robertson, a former Yankee, and or Chicago Cubs’ outfielder Coy Bellinger. The San Diego Padres outfielder Juan Soto, an impending free-agent, could also be in play. 

As for the Mets, along with Pham and Robertson, aging starters Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander could be appealing for playoff and World Series contenders. Today is Scherzer’s 39th birthday and Verlander is 40, but both future Hall of Famers are still quality pitchers that can help stabilize rotations. 

The Mets open a four-game series versus the Washington Nationals today at Citi Field while the Yankees begin a three-game in Baltimore against the Orioles tomorrow.

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The federal energy assistance program that helps New Yorkers with low incomes stay cool in the summer has run out of funds, just 24 days into what’s projected to be a record-breaking summer season.

The program, known as the Low-income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), is administered by the state and city and provides emergency and non-emergency cooling services for years to tens of thousands of seniors and households with low incomes. However, on July 14, the New York State Office of Temporary Disability Assistance (OTDA) stated that it would not be accepting new applications for assistance this summer due to the exhaustion of cooling assistance funds.

“We’re frustrated because we’ve been saying that the cooling assistance program has needed more money for a very long time, and the cooling assistance funding has run out before,” says Sonal Jessel, director of Policy for WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a nonprofit advocacy organization. “And so, how come we’re not learning from mistakes?”

The funding for LIHEAP had been instrumental in providing eligible New Yorkers and seniors earning low incomes with documented medical conditions, who are particularly vulnerable to extreme heat, with a one-time installation of an air conditioner or fan. Many community organizations and city agencies have advocated for the program to go further by providing additional support for paying energy bills during the summer.

“One A/C often isn’t enough for a family of four, for example,” Jessel says. “You’re picking the room to be cool in.” New Jersey, by comparison, provides a $300 subsidy for LIHEAP participants to pay utility bills, “so we know it can be done,” she adds.

Extreme heat poses a significant health risk, particularly to people in marginalized communities. Heat-related illnesses are deadlier than extreme floods, hurricanes, and storms combined — with mortality rates more than twice as high among Black New Yorkers and an estimated 350 New Yorkers dying prematurely because of hot weather each year. Neighborhoods that are predominantly Black, brown or poor tend to experience higher temperatures and the least shielding from heat. 

To stay safe during the summer, it is important to recognize the symptoms of heat-related illnesses and take prompt action. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends staying hydrated, wearing lightweight, loose-fitting and breathable clothing, and avoiding direct sun exposure during peak hours in the early afternoons. Taking frequent breaks in shaded or air-conditioned areas and being mindful of the signs of heat-related illness symptoms is essential for everyone’s well-being during hot weather. 

In the last fiscal year, $23 million was allocated to assist 23,936 New York households with cooling, with 8,860 of those households in NYC. This year’s allocation of just $15 million has so far reached 9,722 households, including 3,293 in the city. The decrease in funding has raised concerns among some advocates who argue that more financial support is needed to ensure that vulnerable communities are adequately protected from the dangers of extreme heat.

The cooling component of LIHEAP’s budget makes up just 4% of the program’s total, compared to 50% allocated for heating assistance in cooler months. Efforts by environmental and community advocacy organizations, along with New York City agencies, have been ongoing to increase funding for cooling assistance programs. They have pushed for expanded benefits during the summer, such as providing a small monthly subsidy of $40 from May to September to help low-income New Yorkers better afford air conditioning bills. The city’s health department, among others, has also pushed for the health condition stipulation for seniors to be dropped, a requirement that was waived during the pandemic. 

Despite efforts to secure additional funding, legislative progress has been slow. Last October, the program received $1 billion in temporary funding, which benefited thousands of New York households. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said at the time that he sought to get an additional $4 billion for the final budget. A bill re-introduced by Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) earlier this year to provide more support for the program remains stalled in the Senate.

“It is unacceptable that New York has already run out of funds for cooling this summer, the hottest on record,” Congressman Bowman told the Amsterdam News. “Funding for LIHEAP is an economic and racial justice issue. Failure to sufficiently fund it will disproportionately impact Black, Latino, and Indigenous households, all of whom already experience higher energy burdens. We hear from constituents in my district every day about their struggle to pay their energy bills, and they deserve relief.”

Jessel says that this isn’t the first time that cooling assistance funds have run out before the end of summer, and the city and state are responsible for stepping in when federal funds aren’t enough to ensure that New Yorkers who need the program are able to stay cool.

“The state has not learned over the years of the money running out that we need more money to support people,” she says. “If it’s running out, that means there’s a need.” 

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On Tuesday, Aug. 1, some 7,400 borrowers will have their student debt forgiven, at an amount totaling $130 million. This has to be good news for many others in debt, and possibly a harbinger of relief for them.

There is, however, a caveat about this action: It applies only to students who attended CollegeAmerica in Colorado, which shut down three years ago and was charged with misleading students about their loans and futures.

CollegeAmerica borrowers, President Biden said in a statement, “were lied to, ripped off, and saddled with mountains of debt.”

Perhaps the same charges can be applied to other institutions that misled students and denied promises, but that’s a long shot. Even so, Biden should be emboldened by this latest move and renew his overall play to forgive the countless others facing debt.

We also thank the president for establishing the Emmett Till/Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument at three locations—in Sumner and Glendora, Mississippi, and Chicago, Illinois—under the protective arms of the National Park Service, which we believe will do a better job of securing the sites than previously, when these important sites were vandalized. The new monuments will enable partnerships between the Department of the Interior, the National Park Service, and local communities and organizations.

It was, though, unfortunate that many of the Till family members and associates were not there at the White House for this announcement, including many who have devoted years of life and resources to keep Till’s legacy alive. Let’s see how things go when the actual monuments are installed.

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Jamie Foxx is back to work. Prior to posting a video of himself on Instagram to thank everyone for their prayers and support while he was recovering from a medical emergency, the Oscar-winning actor was seen in Las Vegas for the first time since he was rushed to the hospital in Atlanta in April, according to OK! Magazine. Foxx was spotted on July 21, filming a commercial for the online sportsbook BetMGM. “Thankful for my @betmgm family and a few nights in Vegas. We got BIG things coming soon,” The actor posted on Instagram next to a photo of himself and an MGM-branded Formula 1-style vehicle…….

Mary J. Blige rolled up to legendary roller rink and cultural hotspot Flipper’s Boogie Palace at Rockefeller Center on July 21 to host a special evening showcasing WanMor, featuring tunes by DJ Funkmaster Flex. The Queen of Hip Hop Soul has been a friend of Flipper’s from the very beginning, from attending their opening party in 2022 to working together on the S.I.S. Sister Love jewelry collaboration in the present. Blige also performed at The Surf Lodge in the Hamptons’ Montauk on July 16…..

Buffalo Bills star Damar Hamlin was in Cincinnati, Ohio, on July 22 for a hands-on CPR training session. This marked the NFL player’s first return to Cincinnati since he went into cardiac arrest on the field during the Bills’ playoff game against the Bengals in January. Hamlin’s organization, The Chasing M’s Foundation, is on a mission to teach people how to perform CPR and make sure automated external defibrillators (AED) are everywhere……..

According to UPI, Peacock is teasing Killing It Season 2. The streaming service shared a trailer for the upcoming season on July 18 that featured actor Craig Robinson. The comedic series revolves around Robinson’s character Craig Foster, a struggling entrepreneur who “enters a python hunting competition in Florida. ” The trailer shows Craig trying to protect his family and failing business from a “creepy swamp family” and officials that want to close his business…..

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