Five MLBbros were recently nominated for one of the most prestigious honors in baseball—the Roberto Clemente Award.

Aaron Judge, Tony Kemp, Josiah Gray, Marcus Stroman, and Hunter Greene are among the players under consideration.
The award annually recognizes “the player who best represents the game through extraordinary character, community involvement, philanthropy, and positive contributions, both on and off the field,” according to MLB.com.
Clemente, an Afro Latino from Carolina, Puerto Rico, is widely viewed by baseball historians as one of the greatest players of all-time, spending his entire Major League Baseball career, spanning from 1955 to 1972, with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was also a revered humanitarian who died at the age of 38 in a plane crash on December 31, 1972, on a mission to deliver aid to Nicaragua after a massive earthquake shook the country.  
While the five Black candidates for Roberto Clemente Award have had success on the field, the work the players have carried out off the field has also been lauded. The last Black player to earn the accolade was Curtis Granderson in 2016 when he was a member of the New York Mets. Andrew McCutchen won the award the prior year while playing for the Pirates.

Aaron Judge, New York Yankees

The 2022 AL MVP’s ALL RISE Foundation was created in 2018 and has helped more than 2,000 children in New York and his hometown of Linden, California. The organization has a mini-grant program that helps pay for registration and transportation to leadership conferences. The New York Yankees outfielder holds baseball camps as well.

Tony Kemp, Oakland Athletics

Kemp is on the player committee of Players Alliance, a collective of current and retired baseball and softball players, endeavoring to increase opportunities for Black communities in every aspect of baseball.

One of the initiatives in which Kemp is involved is the +1 Effect campaign, which aims to combat social injustice. He also is a avid supporter of the non-profit HCP Cureblindness

 Josiah Gray, Washington Nationals

Gray is a player ambassador to the Washington Nationals Youth Baseball Academy. In that role he helps with fundraising efforts and serves as a mentor to the participants of the program.

Marcus Stroman, Chicago Cubs 

Stroman’s Height Doesn’t Measure Heart Foundation provides opportunities for young people facing adversity in various aspects of their life. At only 5 foot 8 inches tall, the Long Island native and former New York Met beat the odds as his physical stature did not deter him from becoming a star pitcher for Duke University, two-time MLB All-Star, and 2017 World Baseball Classic MVP.

Hunter Greene, Cincinnati Reds

In his young MLB career, Greene has already become a prominent presence in communities across Cincinnati. One of his signature initiatives is an annual camp named the Hunter Greene Baseball Camp.

Fans can vote for the nominees until October 1 using the link http://mlbtogether.com/clemente21,

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Radical Elders (RE) will have a contingent marching at the March to End Fossil Fuels on September 17th in front of the United Nations. 

RE members who spoke with the Amsterdam News say they are excited to take part in the march––and looking forward to, for the first time, physically meeting some of their fellow organizational members.

Following several discussions and ideas about forming some sort of activist group for people over the age of 55, the RE established itself as a national organization and held its first official meeting virtually, on Oct. 27, 2021. 

Writer Maritza Arrastia, a Puerto Rican independence and socialism movement activist, is one of  RE’s founders. “When I was a young activist, I intended to be a lifelong activist,” she said. “And it seemed like there were so many radical elders, and that it would be great if [we] could come together, bring all of our experience, and try to be part of using the opportunity of the current period to maybe change everything.

“I think not only are we elders, but that the planet has been forcefully turned into a kind of elder planet by climate change. So, it seemed like getting active at this period in our lives was key and I wanted to be part of that.”

The initial Radical Elders meeting kicked off with a pre-recorded welcome from the activist-journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal. Then the groups’ discussion turned to the plight of today’s elders––and how they are treated as a group in the U.S.

Writer Alfredo Lopez, a former leader of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, told those in the meeting that the way elders are treated is in many ways a signal of how all people will soon be dealt with in our society. “As capitalism continues to collapse, it’s not only that we are threatened, but our knowledge is lost,” he said. “One of the reasons societies keep older people around is because we have knowledge, we have experience. All that gets lost, it gets lost in society; the perspectives that we bring to life, that’s obliterated. Because on the one hand, we’re dying more early than we could. We’re incapacitated more early, and, in many cases, for a substantial amount of our lives. We’re so freaked about having to survive, [that] we don’t think about being able to contribute.”

When society misses out on what elders can provide it’s not just a shame, it can be detrimental, said Zakiya Alake, a community activist from Boston. She said the importance of passing on historical knowledge, as an elder, is vital. 

Alake’s oldest son is 49 and she says she wants him to understand that “Social Security didn’t just magically appear because President Franklin Delano Roosevelt waved his pen. No, it was really [the] radical, militant, largely working-class action in the street that brought us the minimum safety-net programs that we have. And this is important because if we don’t inoculate them…talk about a vaccine! We’ve got to inoculate the successive generations with the spirit to fight for what they need: intelligently, with critical thinking and base-building skills.”

As part of the March to End Fossil Fuels, the Radical Elders––the majority of whom are older than 65––will see many of its members travel to New York and march for a mile and a half to demonstrate their anger with how the U.S. government is tackling climate instability. The goal is to push President Biden to permanently end the use of fossil fuels.

RE members want to have a large presence on September 17th to show they’re concerned about climate change. 

And RE members say they want to remain active and pass on important, activist information to others. The organization remains open to new members who want to be part of a group that is designed to be led by people from the global majority: Black, Indigenous, and other people of color.

“It’s funny, you know, I would get on to the Radical Elders webinars and interact with folks, and it’s not so much that I would hear very left-wing politics espoused,” Alake said. “But it’s in the work that we’re doing. 

“We’re saying, it’s not our official tagline, but many of us say, either ‘We’re not done yet,’ or ‘We ain’t finished yet.’ ‘We still have miles to go before we sleep.’”
For more information on  the Radical Elders, see their website https://radicalelders.net/ or email them at: info@radicalelders.net

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Folks walking by Rockefeller Center in the next few weeks will be treated to the sight of an additional landmark right in front of the legendary building: the famous “LOVE” sculpture by the late artist Robert Indiana, now on display on location through October 23. 

Following an early summer announcement regarding the imminent return of the work after a four-year-long retirement, the city unveiled the iconic monument earlier this morning right by Rockefeller Center’s Channel Gardens.

The midtown campus is now also home to a slew of other projects by Indiana, including his sculptures “ONE Through ZERO (The Ten Numbers),” intended to “represent the cycle of human life from birth to death,” according to an official press release. Made of steel and each eight feet high, the monuments can be found around Rockefeller Center’s outdoor rink alongside 193 flags featuring the artist’s “Peace Paintings” series. 

The latter project was Indiana’s direct response to the 9/11 attacks. At the time, he lived in New York, a town he called home for 24 years, and used his medium to reflect on the atrocity that fell upon the city, specifically commenting on the importance of love and unity throughout the world. 

The history of “LOVE,” a 12-foot-high polychrome aluminum work of public art, started in 1971, when the first version of it was installed at the Fifth Avenue and 60th Street entrance to Central Park. It was then moved to Sixth Avenue and 55th Street, where it stood tall for decades until 2019, when it was removed for conservation. On display for a little over a month at Rockefeller Plaza, the piece will then be moved to a yet-to-be-disclosed location next.

“We live in New York City, where there is so much concrete and you can get into this space of just seeing the same few blocks over and over again,” said Laurie Cumbo, the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, during the presentation. “But as you walk and look up and see a beautiful work of art like the ‘LOVE’ sculpture, it gives you a sense of excitement, a chance of having some light and adding a bit of humor to your day. And that’s what public art is all about.”

* This article was originally published here