Author: tourist_yp6g7u

Kyia Williams moved from Baltimore to New York City in July 2014. “I just needed something different,” she said. “I needed a fresh perspective. Baltimore, my hometown, is lovely but it’s very slow, and I wanted to be able to put myself out there and see what would stick. I felt like there was no other place to do that other than New York.”

Williams first began her New York sojourn working as a teacher. She assisted other educators at places like the Montessori Educational Play Space and at the Brooklyn-based Little Sun People Childcare Daycare center in Bedford-Stuyvesant. 

Those were interesting gigs, but ultimately Williams progressed toward her calling. Since childhood, she’s loved cooking. Her grandmother, Alice Holland, taught her how to cook and by age nine, Williams was preparing dishes with her—pot roasts, pound cakes, fried fish, fried potatoes, oxtail soup, roasted cabbage, fried cabbage, steamed cabbage, collard greens, pig’s feet, black-eyed peas, potato salad. 

Her grandmother taught Williams how to cook the kind of food that satisfied the community the family grew up in. Her family lived in the historically Black Baltimore neighborhood of Turner Station, an area that had been created just after the Civil War and one of the few places in Baltimore where African Americans could build and live in homes without facing discrimination. It was where all the musicians and politicians would come to eat, relax, and take part in local Black culture, and, incidentally, where Henrietta Lacks – whose cancer cells were stolen by John Hopkins University doctors and formed into scientifically important HeLa cells – once lived. From 2007 to around 2010, Williams attended culinary school at the now-defunct Baltimore International College, but she did not walk away with her degree. “I didn’t finish. I ended up helping my mom take care of my grandmother,” she explained. Her extended family still resides in Turner Station, but Williams, her sister, mother, and their half-brother moved out of state.

Once Williams moved to New York, she was able to start cooking professionally. “I knew my passion was cooking, but New York was such a different space for me,” she said. “It’s so fast. And there were so many people [and] there were all these things. I was like, I don’t even know if I’m going to be good at this; it seems like there’s a lot you have to put in. But I had a lot of support in the community.”

Williams set up her company, Wildflower Kitchen, and became a personal chef and culinary consultant. Through advertising assistance from her sister, Khalilah Beavers, and word-of-mouth among those she has worked with, she began getting jobs advising local restaurants about the best practices for managing their businesses. “Most times they’re already doing well. But some businesses, they’re just starting out. One business I’m currently working with, they’re doing well, but they’re expanding. I think they’re looking for a team of individuals who can help with their special services and special events.”

As a personal chef, Williams has catered private events for the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, the Richard Beavers Gallery, Third Crown Jewelry, and the Farragut Stakeholders Group. She’s cooked for contemporary recording artists, visual artists, even celebrities like former NBA player Carmelo Anthony, the photographer Brittani Sensabaugh, NYC Council Member Chi Ossé, and the celebrated fashion stylist Mobolaji Dawodu. 

Williams is currently developing a new updated website, KyiaW.com, so that restaurant spaces and cafes that need consultation and individuals who want to contact her for dining and catering experiences can do so.

“That’s really where I come in, especially when it comes to reading menus, giving advice, and trying to figure out a better system—or just an easier system so that everybody can follow it,” she said.

The post Kyia Williams: personal chef and culinary consultant appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

Herbalist Amanda David bet the farm on Rootwork Herbals in 2021 after achieving a lifelong dream of buying her own plot of land and sharing it with others. From the dirt grew the Jane Minor BIPOC Community Garden, a sanctuary for Black, Brown, and queer people to tend and harvest their own crops. Goats and chickens call the property home, as do David and her three children. 

But now, just a few years later, friends are fundraising to relocate the New York native, who is Black, from her Tompkins County homestead due to continued alleged threats and racial harassment by her neighbor, who is white.

“I have been working hard for many years, never able to afford a home,” David said in a virtual call with the AmNews in June. “I was finally able to afford a home and as soon as I purchased it, I wanted this to be a place where Black and Brown folks can have access to this little piece of nature, [for it] to be a sanctuary, a place where people can build community and reconnect to the land and all of those beautiful healing things that have been systematically taken away from us.

“To then almost immediately be subjected to this kind of racial harassment—the exact thing that I was trying to create safety around is now happening daily to us. Despite that, we have built a beautiful community. We have classes and events that really bring people together [who] are really healing and it’s gotten to the point where it doesn’t feel safe to do that anymore.”

In 2020, David and her children moved to Brooktondale, a small town outside of Ithaca, initially renting the property. Early on, the neighbor’s alleged racist remarks to David were directed toward the previous owner, who was Asian American. She purchased the home a year later, which is when the neighbor, named as Robert Whittaker in a lawsuit filed in June by the herbalist, “began making racially and/or sexually derogatory remarks” toward her. 

The filing alleges he called David and her children anti-Black slurs and remarks, some of which were captured on video and obtained by the AmNews. When she built a fence on the property line in response, Whittaker’s harassment persisted. He allegedly threatened to beat her son with a stick while referring to him with the N-word in one instance. Another incident in the lawsuit filing alleged Whittaker fired a gun from his porch when David hosted an event for Black teens. All the while, he allegedly continued to tamper with the fence she installed.

The Tompkins County Sheriff’s Department arrested and charged Whittaker multiple times throughout the past three overs due to harassment against David, which led to two guilty pleas. She said multiple orders of protection, temporary and permanent, have not prevented him from engaging with her, and that he even referred to her by the N-word and an anti-gay slur to an officer, who noted the interaction on the arrest report. In February, a judge mandated that Whittaker surrender his firearms—both guns and pellet guns—but they have since been returned, according to David. 

While Whittaker faces both civil and criminal actions, David’s options remain limited. Sally Santangelo, executive director of CNY Fair Housing, which represents David, said most injunctive relief obtained by the organization in past harassment cases comes from landlord-tenant disputes rather than neighbor versus neighbor. 

“It’s possible that the monetary damages could be significant enough to force him to sell his property or allow her to move, or the threat of that might be enough,” Santangelo said. “Even if a court couldn’t act directly to force him to sell his property, it’s possible that it could happen as a result of monetary damages.” 

While David weighed her options the first time she spoke to the AmNews in June, she now believes moving would be the safest option. 

Mutual aid efforts defending David sprang up following the harassment, with a Signal group formed by sympathetic fellow farmers and herbalists. Some are in her immediate vicinity while others offer broader support from a distance. One member, Erica Frenay, said Whittaker seems to behave more pleasantly when white people like her are present. 

“We’ve tried to step in to do things, like put up the security cameras along that border, that she really doesn’t feel comfortable going to,” Frenay said. “The batteries in those cameras seem to die frequently and so we replace the batteries whenever that’s needed. Some people in the network have helped take care of her animals when she doesn’t feel comfortable going outside to take care of the goats and the chickens. 

“We’ve also done other things that are not physical support, but more mental [and] emotional, because this history was going on for a while before the Signal rapid response group started. We’ve helped her to organize a spreadsheet and folder of documentation so whenever she has filed a police report or talked to a lawyer or the D.A., we try to document all of that.”

Her town, which is included in the township of Caroline, is overwhelmingly white—more than 85%, according to the 2020 Census. Just 2.2% of the population is Black. With Rootwork Herbals’ potential relocation, the local community stands to lose a significant resource.

“This [is] not just straight-up farming, but Amanda has a whole medicine school where her students can go up there and directly understand how to create herbal medicines that have been ancestral and passed down,” said Onyx Ramírez, senior communications manager for the Black Farmer Fund. “She has the garden beds, which are accessible for people in the community to be able to grow their own stuff. And beyond that, Amanda hosts so many healing community events…it’s been withheld for the purpose of keeping people safe.”

Whittaker’s lawyer did not respond to AmNews’ requests for comment by press time.
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.

The post Uprooted: Black Tompkins County herbalist forced to move beloved farm after neighbor’s racial harassment appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

Harlem Week held its Senior Citizens Day at the State Office Building on Friday while celebrating its 50th anniversary. Throughout the day, longtime Harlem Week attendees gathered for the annual event designed to celebrate and provide information to seniors.

“Harlem Week continues to be something that we all look forward to each and every summer,” Adleasia Lonesome-Gomez, 63, told the AmNews.  

Lonesome-Gomez has been coming to Harlem Week since she was a child, and has fond memories of listening to Jazz at Grant National Memorial. Now as an attendee of seniors’ day, she says she loves the community coming together to celebrate Harlem, while continuing to pass down Harlem Week tradition to her children as well. 

“Hopefully when I’m no longer here, it’ll be another 100 years, another 150—something that we need to keep going for generations,” Lonesome-Gomez said.

As they walked in, attendees learned about various service programs available to them from groups like Black Health Matters and Visiting Nurse Services, and screened for blood pressure and vision from the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine. 

The first half of the day featured the premiere screening of “The First,” a film about Welsey Augustus Williams, the first Black firefighter to be promoted to an officer for the New York Fire Department. First Deputy Fire Commissioner Joseph W. Pfeifer and Assistant Fire Commissioner Jim Harding also presented a poster of the film in celebration of Harlem Week. 

Voza Rivers, Harlem Week Board member and one of the original founders along with Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce CEO Lloyd Williams, spoke about the significance of Senior Citizens Day.

“This is one of the most important activities that we do because it is on the backs of the seniors who created the foundation that takes us into the future,” Rivers said. 

E. Ronald Guy, 79, is the chair of Ryan Health and remembers Harlem Day in 1974. As Guy was a member of the Harlem Youth (Haryou) organization in 1964, a community organization that worked to uplift Harlem residents in education and civic engagement, he is delighted to see how Harlem Week has grown over the last five decades and carried on that critical work.

“It has elevated our sense of community and commitment,” Guy said. “On a personal level, It made me want to be more engaged.”

Guy emphasized the importance of building connections between older and younger generations of Harlem.

“The two things we have to remember are the seniors who got us where we are and the young people to get us further,” Guy said. “We need to make sure that we connect the seniors and the young people together.”

New York State Senator Cordell Cleare, who represents District 30 (which includes Harlem), made an appearance to share information about benefits and recent legislation with seniors. Other speakers provided voter registration and banking information while trainers from NY Road Runners also led an energetic workout session. 

Stephanie Francis, 75, is an original Harlem Week Board Member who also helped develop the first Harlem Day. She likes reflecting on her support of seniors in the early days of Harlem Week to now being a “super senior,” herself.

Francis says that when Harlem Day and eventually Harlem Week was developed, it was built on the focus of supporting small businesses and vendors and bringing the community together as Harlem had been struggling in the early 1970’s financially. 

“We got together – Lloyd (Williams), Marvin Kelly, Anthony Rodgers, Grace Williams,” Francis shared. “Names that you may not hear as much because some of them have transitioned but the thing that’s most important, we stood together.”

Francis is proud of how Harlem Week and its leadership continues to pass through the multiple generations of its leaders like her grandson, Taj.

“It’s not going to live if it doesn’t live,” Francis said. “Hopefully more people will come and support because the love is there, the energy is there.”

The post Senior citizens reflect on 50 years of Harlem Week appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson and Councilmember Eric Dinowitz announced a $30,000 combined investment in Health Bucks, food access initiatives, and fresh food markets last week in an effort to address the high rates of food insecurity in the Bronx.

The announcement comes as the city’s health department reported that the Bronx is the most food-insecure county statewide, at 39%, with the second highest in Queens and the lowest, at 22.1%, in Richmond County, according to the BP’s office. 

“As the cost of food increases, and access to fresh, affordable produce decreases, we are seeing firsthand the effect it is having on our communities,” Gibson said in a statement. “Many of our residents reside in food deserts without access to nutritious food options.” This lack, she said, “contribute[s] to poor health outcomes and health-related illnesses.”

Launched in 2005, Health Bucks acts as an incentive for New Yorkers to incorporate fresh fruit and vegetables into their daily diets. For every $2 spent at a city farmers’ market or green stand using SNAP on an EBT card, participants can get $2 in Health Bucks, up to $10 per day. 

Gibson’s office contributed $10,000 to invest in Health Bucks. Dinowitz contributed a $20,000 allocation for the Norwood Farmstand (East Gun Hill Road and Dekalb Avenue). 

“Food insecurity continues to be a major issue in our communities,” Dinowitz said in a statement. “With nearly 600,000 Bronx adults at risk of food insecurity in 2022 alone, we must double-down on our efforts to meet our community’s needs. I am grateful for the work of organizations like GrowNYC, [which], through the Norwood Farmstand, have distributed thousands of pounds of fresh fruit and produce in Council District 11. Through discretionary funding, I have been able to support GrowNYC’s work and over the next few months, will be distributing thousands of dollars in Health Bucks to members of our community. I want to thank the Bronx Borough president for partnering with our community in this critical endeavor.”

The Norwood farmers market has been a staple in the community since 2013 and is part of the larger GrowNYC Farmstand network.

“By accepting nutrition benefits and offering Health Bucks incentives to customers using SNAP, we’re ensuring more New Yorkers can access fresh, local food while fostering an equitable regional food system,” said Tutu Badaru, assistant director of GrowNYC Food Access Initiatives. “Health Bucks provide a match of up to $10 a day for fresh fruits and vegetables, increasing shoppers’ purchasing power.” 

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* This article was originally published here

Black Philanthropy Month (BPM) is a global movement centered around funding equity across the Black diaspora. This year’s theme is “Afro-Futures of Giving,” a call for a focus on giving towards afrofuturistic and green initiatives, which NYCHA’s The Inner City Green Team (ICGT) embodies.

After a groundswell of support for racial equity on the heels of the global protest movements of 2020, that fervor – particularly among funders – has waned. However, there are still organizations pre- and post-COVID committed to funding and advancing racial justice.  

BPM was founded by Dr. Jackie Bouvier Copeland in 2011. It officially launches on August 1 each year and includes year-round initiatives by its backbone organization, the Women Invested to Save Earth Fund (The WISE Fund). Copeland is a cultural anthropologist, diplomat, impact designer, and creative at Georgetown University and University of Pennsylvania. She has also been a dedicated environmentalist for decades.

“I have always been a steward of the planet since the day my mother took me to upstate New York to see the foliage when I was eight years old,” said Brigitte Charlton-Vicenty, founder of ICGT. “The magnificence of all the beautiful colors and witnessing the power of nature made me want to care for Mother the way She cares for us, which became my first moment of obligation.”

A native New Yorker, Charlton-Vicenty grew up in the South Bronx with her mother and in Harlem with her father and grandmother. She thought she was doing the right thing by placing recyclables in the designated bins at her development as a kid, but realized that all of her individual efforts to help the planet from her building had been fruitless. Although the city did declare residential recycling as law, over 500,000 residents in the city’s public housing communities did not have access to these programs to safely dispose of their recyclable materials, electronics, textiles, or food scraps, she said. 

“Until 2006, when I witnessed [recyclables] being thrown in with the garbage, I was flabbergasted to learn that all my neighbors’ and my efforts over many years were in vain because NYCHA was not in compliance with the [city’s] recycling laws,” Charlton-Vicenty said. “I envisioned a perfect opportunity to help establish a viable recycling program in my development when I came across a posting urging residents to get involved with the community’s ‘Green Agenda.’”

Inspired by her mother being a powerhouse for the community as a teen, Charlton-Vicenty dedicated her life to promoting a real recycling program in the city’s various public housing buildings. She entered and won $20,000 in the NYCx Co-Lab Challenge: Zero Waste in Shared Space contest in 2017, allowing her to pilot her recycling idea. The international competition sought solutions to improve recycling capture rates, increase resident engagement in a meaningful way, mitigate litter, and reduce the amount of time employees spend dealing with waste. Her program launched at a NYCHA development in Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood. 

ICGT now employs Black and Brown residents in green and recycling jobs. Charlton-Vicenty explained that NYCHA residents have some of the highest unemployment rates in the city and are in critical need of jobs. “Our workforce development model focuses on scaling the service to provide green-collar jobs, environmental leadership, and skill-building for NYCHA residents. We train and hire residents to engage fellow residents,” Charlton-Vicenty said.

She added that NYCHA developments were considered impossible to recycle because of their density and limited space, and haphazard attempts were made to start programs in the past. ICGT filed a lawsuit against NYCHA, forcing the entity to roll out NYCHA Recycles! at all of its 338 developments in 2016.

“I call my work my ‘green ministry’ and I have been privileged to learn my purpose on this planet,” Charlton-Vicenty said. “It is to serve and deliver the message that everything that impacts our environment impacts us all. In my work, Afrofuturism expands the consciousness of our connectedness in marginalized communities to our planet and each other.”

Charlton-Vicenty became an Echoing Green (EG) fellow in 2020. EG is a diverse investment company that supports entrepreneurs that was founded in 1987. In honor of BPM this August, the company is highlighting Charlton-Vicenty.

“The Echoing Green Fellowship was the first organization to support my environmental activist vision. Becoming part of the EG family is incredibly validating and is a social entrepreneur’s dream,” she said. “The global nonprofit provides funding and resources to social innovators with the brightest ideas and talent to make great changes in their communities. We are a tribe of leaders who started at the grassroots level and are committed to solving social issues on every platform.”

ICGT hopes to continue addressing the city’s environmental issues, green leadership, youth development, and the creation of approximately 1,200 sustainable green-collar jobs for NYCHA residents. 

“My idea was visualized out of frustration to find an easy and convenient way for my neighbors and me to recycle. My literal soul was ignited to uncover the truth, and I was compelled to think of a better solution,” Charlton-Vicenty said. “Getting to the bottom of this injustice was deep-rooted because I come from a disenfranchised group that no one in the mainstream environmental community wanted to help. I am determined to pick up the mantle to lead the charge and disprove the stereotype that POC in marginalized communities are not interested in issues like recycling, climate change, and environmental justice.”

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* This article was originally published here

The second annual Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) All-Star Dream Classic was held on August 10 at  Holcombe Rucker Park in Harlem. The event featured 40 of the best men’s and women’s HBCU basketball players from close to 30 different schools representing the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA), Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC), Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC), Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), the HBCU Athletic Conference (formerly known as the Gulf Coast Conference), National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), and independent college conferences. Sponsors included Champion, M&T Bank, Charles Pan-Fried Chicken, Wilson, Tri-State Sports, SLAM, Pure, HBCU Only, Cirkul, Citywide CCS, Aloft Hotels, and Rucker Pro Legends. Among those in attendance were basketball icon and Harlem native Richard “Pee Wee” Kirkland, who was a prolific scorer for HBCU Norfolk State in the late 1960s, and New York City Councilman Yusef Salaam, who represents the 9th council district of Harlem.
In the women’s game, Althea’s Aces bested Harris’ Hoopers 84-79, and ML Kings defeated Dinkins’ Dunkers 124-119. The teams were named after HBCU alums and luminaries: tennis great Althea Gibson (FAMU), United States Vice President Kamala Harris (Howard), former New York City Mayor David Dinkins (Howard), and civil and human rights activist Martin Luther King (Morehouse). 
The HBCU Dream Classic founder and organizer Darryl K. Roberts expressed that he conceptualized and implemented the event as a means to expose youth to pathways toward higher education at HBCUs, as well as various career options.   
“There are opportunities and there are resources for you to receive access to certain things, whether it’s higher education, whether it’s a trade or a job,” said Roberts, who also serves as the CEO of Bridging Structural Holes, a non-profit organization focused on fostering strategic partnerships with corporate, community, and philanthropic institutions to address economic, educational, and social inequities. “So we’re hoping by doing events like this, they’re able to see the sponsors that we have, and they’re also able to see how we get organizations involved and provide us with volunteers, and then they’ll see the educational components and think that, well, why not? Maybe I should go to an HBCU. I see all these great things, all these great athletes.”Roberts, a graduate of Lincoln University and member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, detailed integral aspects of HBCU history and culture. 
“Fraternities and sororities were created because of the same reasons that HBCUs were created: because of racism, discrimination, and segregation. Predominantly white institutions did not want people of color to become organized and members of [their] fraternities and sororities,” he elaborated, “because they always thought that, okay, I could deal with one black person, but if I had to deal with a whole army of them, that’s a problem. So they did not want us to become part of those organizations.”
For more information on Bridging Structural Holes and its initiatives, contact Roberts at 212-658-1913 or dkr@bridgingstructuralholes.com.

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* This article was originally published here