NEW YORK (AP) — On air quality maps, purple signifies the worst of it. In reality, it’s a thick, hazardous haze that’s disrupting daily life for millions of people across the U.S. and Canada, blotting out skylines and turning skies orange.

And with weather systems expected to hardly budge, the smoky blanket billowing from wildfires in Quebec and Nova Scotia and sending plumes of fine particulate matter as far away as North Carolina should persist into Thursday and possibly the weekend.

That means at least another day, or more, of a dystopian-style detour that’s chased players from ballfields, actors from Broadway stages, delayed thousands of flights and sparked a resurgence in mask wearing and remote work — all while raising concerns about the health effects of prolonged exposure to such bad air.

The weather system that’s driving the great Canadian-American smoke out — a low-pressure system over Maine and Nova Scotia — “will probably be hanging around at least for the next few days,” U.S. National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Ramsey said.

“Conditions are likely to remain unhealthy, at least until the wind direction changes or the fires get put out,” Ramsey said. “Since the fires are raging — they’re really large — they’re probably going to continue for weeks. But it’s really just going be all about the wind shift.”

Across the eastern U.S., officials warned residents to stay inside and limit or avoid outdoor activities again Thursday, extending “Code Red” air quality alerts in some places for a third-straight day as forecasts showed winds continuing to push smoke-filled air south.

In Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered schools to cancel outdoor recess, sports and field trips Thursday. In suburban Philadelphia, officials set up an emergency shelter so people living outside can take refuge from the haze.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state was making a million N95 masks — the kind prevalent at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — available at state facilities, including 400,000 in New York City. She also urged residents to stay put.

“You don’t need to go out and take a walk. You don’t need to push the baby in the stroller,” Hochul said Wednesday night. “This is not a safe time to do that.”

The message may be getting through. So far, officials said Wednesday, New York City has yet to see an uptick in 911 calls related to respiratory issues and cardiac arrests.

More than 400 blazes burning across Canada have left 20,000 people displaced. The U.S. has sent more than 600 firefighters and equipment to Canada. Other countries are also helping.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke to President Joe Biden by phone on Wednesday. Trudeau’s office said he thanked Biden for his support and that both leaders “acknowledged the need to work together to address the devastating impacts of climate change.”

Canadian officials say this is shaping up to be the country’s worst wildfire season ever. It started early on drier-than-usual ground and accelerated quickly. Smoke from the blazes has been lapping into the U.S. since last month but intensified with recent fires in Quebec, where about 100 were considered out of control Wednesday.

“I can taste the air,” Dr. Ken Strumpf said in a Facebook post from Syracuse, New York, where the sky took on the colorful nickname of the local university: Orange.

The smoke was so thick in Canada’s capital, Ottawa, that office towers just across the Ottawa River were barely visible. In Toronto, Yili Ma said her hiking group canceled a planned hike this week, and she was forgoing the restaurant patios that are a beloved summer tradition in a nation known for hard winters.

“I put my mask away for over a year, and now I’m putting on my mask since yesterday,” Ma lamented.

Eastern Quebec got some rain Wednesday, but Montreal-based Environment Canada meteorologist Simon Legault said no significant rain is expected for days in the remote areas of central Quebec where the wildfires are more intense.

In the U.S., federal officials paused some flights bound Wednesday for New York’s LaGuardia Airport and slowed planes to Newark and Philadelphia because smoke was limiting visibility.

Major League Baseball’s Yankees and Phillies had their games postponed. On Broadway, “Hamilton” and “Camelot” canceled Wednesday performances and “Prima Facie” star Jodie Comer left a matinee after 10 minutes because of difficulty breathing. The show restarted with an understudy, show publicists said.

It was not to be at Central Park’s outdoor stage, either. Shakespeare in the Park canceled its Thursday and Friday performances of “Hamlet,” saying ’tis not nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of wretched air.

___

Gillies reported from Toronto.

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Heeding the call for a quickly announced rally, a group of protestors came from as far as DC and New Jersey to support the demand for reparations for people of African descent at the African Burial Ground in Downtown Manhattan on Monday, 5th June, 2023.

With the current legislative session in Albany ending on Thursday, June 8th, , speakers Attorney Roger Wareham, December 12th Movement chair Viola Plummer; and City Councilman Charles Barron, encouraged the crowd to call on every elected official they knew, especially; Governor Kathy Hochul, speaker of the Assembly Carl Heastie, and the Senate Majority Leader  Andrea Stewart-Cousins, to demand that three prominent reparation advocate groups be included in the upstate commission on reparations.

Kenniss Henry from the N’COBRA Washington D.C. chapter noted how the deluded white supremacist who shot and killed 10 Black people out shopping in Buffalo, May 14, 2022, had scrawled on his  assault rifle “here’s your reparations.” 

She contended, “The people in Buffalo are really struggling psychologically. What we can do to ease some of that pain is to send a message to our elected officials: You will not leave us the great people in the great State of New York with a reparations legacy that is not our legacy.”

“We want a commission that is represented by the community, and not by the state,” boomed Barron.

Reparations is a top-of-mind topic, with California’s news that they are considering giving reparations for descendants of enslaved Africans; and Missouri Rep. Cori Bush’s H.R. 414,  Reparations Now Resolution, calling on the nation’s “moral and legal obligation” to redress the centuries’s long-term trauma, economic, social, and political damages with $14 trillion price tag.

Reparations remains a hot-button and under-reported issue for many New York State’s citizens of African Descent, Monday’s press conference  speakers determined.

The question is whether the watered down “mechanism proposed to address the issue, The New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies, will be actually community controlled or another Albany controlled façade,” said Attorney Wareham.

The December 12th Movement International Secretariat continued that the State Senate version, S2416, sponsored by Sen. Jabari Brisport, replicates the bill originally introduced by then Assemblyman Charles Barron, which was passed by the Assembly in two separate sessions.”

Barron and Wareham stated that what makes this version of the Reparations legislation unique from those anywhere else in the United States – is the provision for a Commission which has a majority community-selected membership.

“Three community organizations, of which we are one, will select 6 of the 11 Commission members. The legislature will have the final determination and execution on the Commission’s findings and recommendations,”

The other version was the only one considered by both houses on Monday, S1163-tA places the selection of all commission members in the hands of the government – three by the Governor Hochul, three by the speaker of the Assembly Heastie, three by the Temporary President of the Senate Stewart-Cousins.

Barron wants The December 12th Movement, N‘Cobra, and Ron Daniels and the Institute of the Black World to pick at least two members of the commission each – totalling six members of the Commission.”

This way they would have the “opportunity to bring our experience to help develop a comprehensive program that will improve the quality of life for the state’s Black residents.”

“We are working in tandem with our Senate counterparts on a historic piece of legislation,” said Speaker Carl E. Heastie, in response to an Amsterdam News request for comment. “Throughout history, here in New York and across the country, African Americans have been subjected to racial, economic, and institutional injustices that have plagued communities for decades – a reality we must still acknowledge. To grow towards a better and more inclusive future, we must know our past. This bill, which is being championed by Assemblywoman Solages, would establish a New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies to continue to examine the institution of slavery and the impact slavery and discriminatory practices have had on living African Americans. We can be the change agents needed to create a better New York.”

In response to the AmNews, Stewart-Cousins’ Press Secretary Amanda Stout, said that the senator “will be advancing a different bill sponsored by Sen. Sanders and Assemblywoman Solages S.1163A.” instead of S2416.

The bill, The New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies, is being supported by State Senator James Sanders, and other state senate colleagues; Cordell Cleare, Leroy Comrie, Brad Hoylman-Sigal, and Robert Jackson, and Assemblywoman Michaelle C. Solanges.

The bill reads in part “Relates to acknowledging the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery in the city of New York and the state of New York; establishes the New York state community commission on reparations remedies to examine the institution of slavery, subsequently de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, the impact of these forces on living African-Americans and to make recommendations on appropriate remedies…make determinations regarding compensation.”

Wareham reminded the folks gathered, and those peering out of windows surrounding the historic African Burial Ground National Monument on Duane Street, “If we talk about reparations we have to talk about how Africans get to this country. We have to talk about the labor that was exploited. That we were actually capital.That different from probably from everybody else in the world we’ve never received repair for the damage that was done, and continues to be done to this very day. Even this burial ground came out of struggle.

“If it were not for Sonny (Abubadika) Carson this burial ground would be another federal building. And it was a struggle – people putting themselves in front of the bulldozers that brought us here. That’s why we’re here today to struggle around the repairs.”

”The New York State reparations bill – as you know around the country, different people, states, townships have been moving to address the issue of reparations.New York State is way, way, way behind.”

Wareham noted that when he was in the Assembly, (current) City Councimember Barron put forth a bill that is different from any one that has been put forward.

Barron took the mic, “In this state, where there are 3 million people of African ancestry: whether you come from Africa, the Caribbean, South America, Central America, North America, African people deserve reparations in this state for our labor. We built this city. We built this country.”’

“That’s right,” the crowd responded.

“Right here in New York City, in the Burial Ground are African people, 427 of our remains are buried there, and thank God for Abubadika Sonny Carson who stopped the excavation and made sure they were respected. Throughout downtown New York 20,000 of our remains right now are down here.

New York City was the second largest slave holding city in the country, and was 2nd only to Charleston, South Carolina. It was your brothers and sisters who rose up in 1712, right here in New York City and said ‘We don’t want to be enslaved anymore and burnt down the governor’s mansion. The white community said to the the white power structure then ‘You’re gonna do something because these Africans are angry?’  So they said all right we’ll have a gradual emancipation.

Africans from Africa,  from the Caribbean, and from here “fought to end slavery in New York City, and every last one of us deserves reparations.”

Always with the historical facts and stats, Barron told the people gathered at the African Burial Ground, that in 1799 they had the Gradual Emancipation Act. “They said ‘Your males, we’ll only hold them for 27 years. Your females, we’ll only hold for 25 years.’ They didn’t accept that. They said ‘We are going to keep organizing until we are free.’ 

“They said they didn’t want these folk  to keep attacking us, so in 1827 New York City abolished slavery because of the struggle of our people. So we put that all in our bill to tell the history of New York City. The Big Apple – ain’t never gave you a bite. So we put our bill together and we said that we wanted it to be different from any other bill in the country.”

Barron said in the California reparations bill, five of the appointees of their commission are picked by their governor, four by the state assembly, and so their proposals will be from the “handpicked Blacks,” not community-involved reparation advocacy organizations, which is what they are demanding for New York.

N’COBRA, The December 12th Movement, and Ron Daniels’ Institute of the Black World are “Brothers and sisters who have been in this reparations movement for over 30 years to pick at least 2 members of the commission each. So we would have six members of the commission

The Brooklyn elected reiterated that they got 100 assembly members to support that concept in 2021 when he was in the assembly. It passed  the assembly. In 2022 when he left the assembly and went to the City Council, Michaelle Solage, assemblymember and Senator Jabari Brisport,   pushed it again, and it got another 100 votes and was passed.

Now in 2023, Barron said, “It had already passed the assembly, Jabari successfully got 25 senators to say if it comes their way they will vote for it in the Senate. We were only 7 votes short in the senate and here comes the sabotage. Now all of a sudden, the leader of the assembly Carl Heastie, and the leader of the senate Andrea stuart-Cousins  and some other Blacks up there decided they wanted another type of bill. They wanted a bill that would give the governor – a white woman 3 votes [on the commission],  and our groups no votes.”

In typical “no-holds-barred” Barron fashion, he asked the lively assembled, “How do you have a Black leader of the assembly, a Black leader of the senate, Black electeds in the assembly and the senate say we want this white woman governor to have three votes, and three from the assembly, and three from the senate, and none from our community groups?”

Fired up, Barron declared, “I said ‘Hell no that’s not going down.’ We say we will determine the compensation for reparations, not the state that enslaved us in the first place. Those who oppressed us, those who enslaved us and representing that, cannot determine the compensation. That’s gonna be determined by those of us who have been working at [reparations advocacy] hard.”

Barron told those gathered to call up every elected reachable to push the bill with the community-involved reparations compensation discussions at the state level before January 8th.

Posting up behind the ‘They stole us, they sold us, they owe us – Reparations Now,’ banner, “Ready to go to war?” international activist Viola Plummer, asked the very participatory crowd. “Here in New York State –  because here was the epicenter of slavery. We must face them head on. We’ve got to let them know we’re mad as hell. The war against us is now going to be two-fold, us against them…and we are prepared after all of these centuries and promises to go to war for our ancestors.” 

N’COBRA’s Kenniss Henry said it is about making sure that the Commission is so situated, “To determine what the remedies need to be to repair 400 plus years of pernicious history and current day vestiges and we must be the ones to decide what those remedies are. No one else can do that. Not the appointees from the governor, not the appointees from anyone else.”“If their sellout bill passes we will still take our victory lap because they will still have to deal with our community. Our bill and our movement has forced this state to deal with reparations in the first place. We are going to continue our struggle,” Barron told the Amsterdam News on the eve of the vote. “Whatever commission comes through they are going to have to deal with the masses as we intensify our struggle. Our demand for just reparations will not be co-opted.”

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* This article was originally published here

Rideshare workers took over the sidewalk and streets in front of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s New York City offices (633 3rd Ave. in Manhattan) to urge the governor and the MTA to refrain from imposing what they deem as a double tax on them and their jobs.

The Independent Drivers Guild (IDG) said the city’s proposed Central Business District (CBD) Tolling Program already assessed a congestion tax of $2.75 per trip on rideshare drivers in its first phase back in 2019. Now, an additional congestion tax as high as $23 per trip is on the table. 

Cars that enter or remain in the CBD during peak hours would be electronically tolled and charged via E-ZPass or have toll bills mailed directly to the home address of a car’s registered owner. 

This could come at a high cost to rideshare drivers––the IDG said this new tax would lead to a decrease of nearly 15,000 rideshare driver jobs.

“Today and ever since this congestion pricing conversation started, we started a petition,” Aziz Bah, a rideshare driver who serves as the IDG organizing director, told hundreds of drivers who took the day off to rally in front of the governor’s offices on Friday, June 2. 

“Everyone can see the petition right here. To date, we’ve collected 10,596 signatures and growing, and we want to deliver this to the governor today because she needs to be aware of how this proposal is impacting drivers.”

With more protestors arriving even as he spoke, and other rideshare drivers honking in support of the strike as they drove past the site, Bah told the striking workers that congestion pricing in the proposed CBD program hit rideshare workers first because they were the most vulnerable. 

“Please recognize the fact that we were the only, the only group that has been paying this tax since 2019,” he said. “And there is something important about our drivers, there is something actually very obvious when you look at the demographics here: We are all minorities. Is it by coincidence? Is it by coincidence that they picked that group—the minority group—to say you guys are going to pay an additional tax?

“That’s totally unfair, totally unfair, and that’s why we’re here.”

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* This article was originally published here

With summer almost upon us, we know that the live entertainment is about to ramp up. Couple that with celebrations being planned for the landmark anniversary of what could be the most exciting musical movement of the past century and it’s only up from here.  

Some of the projected lineups for some of the projected shows, while star-studded, still feel incomplete. In my estimation, it’s because promoters are looking at acts that popped from the late ’80s (earliest). Some fans, however, want more because their memories run deep. They had the JVC Box. They rocked the Lee, Sergio Valente, Talelord, Clyde’s, 69ers, Mock Necks, British, Cortefiel, and AJ Lesters. They frequented the T Connection, 371, or Norman Thomas Boat ride. Their taste buds need a little more.

That crowd will finally get some light, with a lineup that at one time sold out the Harlem World.  We’re talking about the Treacherous Three, Cold Crush Brothers, Fearless Four, Crash Crew, Mel, and Scorpio. Those names are featured acts on the 50th Anniversary of Hip-Hop Mixtape Live concert on June 17 at Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. Curated by DJ Jazzy Jeff, Doug E. Fresh, and Charlie Mack, the show will feature 50 MCs from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, which also includes the Sugar Hill Gang, Roxanne Shanté, Yo-Yo, DJ KOOL, J.J. Fad, Schooly D, and Monie Love, among others. Showtime is set to start for 7:00 p.m. and tickets range from $55 to $175.

Just in…looks like this show will be trumped just by sheer magnitude. It just came down that on August 11, 50 years later to the day, Yankee Stadium will play host to “Hip-Hop 50 Live at Yankee Stadium.”

So far, the headliners will be the possible last reunion of Run DMC in what’s being dubbed the “Bottom of the Ninth…The Walk-Off” performance. Lil Wayne, Snoop Dogg, and Ice Cube are also on deck and the ladies will shine as “Queens of Hip-Hop” spotlight the collective of Eve, Lil Kim, Remy Ma, and Trina. A “Pillars of Hip-Hop” set will feature Kool Herc & Cindy Campbell, Grandmaster Caz, Kurtis Blow, Melle Mel, Roxanne Shante, Scorpio, and the Sugar Hill Gang. A “Legendary DJ” set will have Clark Kent, Marley Marl, Mannie Fresh, and Battlecat.  

Tickets will become available beginning with pre-sales on Thursday, June 8, at 10 a.m. EST until 10 p.m. EST. The general sale starts Friday, June 9, at 10 a.m. EST. Tickets will start as low as $50. Early-bird access to tickets will be granted to the Renaissance Youth Center, New Settlement, SCAN-Harbor, Madison Square Boys & Girls Club, Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club, North East Bronx YMCA, Castle Hill YMCA, New York Urban League, Hispanic Federation, Bronx Chamber of Commerce, Bronx Community Foundation, and CORO New York Leadership Center.

RELATED: 50 years strong: Hip-Hop from the physical, metaphysical, philosophical, and spiritual realms

“Hip-Hop 50 Live at Yankee Stadium” is co-produced by Mass Appeal, Live Nation, and the New York Yankees. Additional acts will be announced in the coming weeks and will be T.I., Fat Joe, Common, A$AP Ferg, EPMD, Ghostface Killah, Lupe Fiasco, and Slick Rick.

“I am honored to hit the stage in the Bronx, the birthplace of hip-hop, and celebrate all of my heroes,” said Run DMC. “August 11 is hip-hop’s 50th birthday! So…‘Up in the Bronx’ where it all started, we will be celebrating this historic moment in history. I am honored to pay tribute to the culture that allowed this little shy kid from Queens to grow up and become the Mighty King of Rock! Thank you, hip-hop!” 

“Hip-Hop 50 Live at Yankee Stadium” is the latest event in Mass Appeal’s Hip-Hop 50 initiative—a massive cross-platform initiative that celebrates hip-hop’s 50th anniversary in the most authentic and globally impactful way possible by acknowledging and recognizing hip-hop as not only a genre, but a movement that has had an impact on the worldwide community.

More on that in a few. Right now, over and out. Holla next week. ’Til then, enjoy the nightlife.

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* This article was originally published here