The last couple of weeks of WNBA regular season play have been jam-packed for the New York Liberty. The team headed into Sunday afternoon’s Fan Appreciation Day game against the Washington Mystics on an eight-game winning streak. Having just secured a playoff spot after an up-and-down 19–21 season, the Mystics were determined to reassert the presence that brought them the 2019 WNBA title.

The game was incredibly tight, with the Mystics prevailing 90–88. The Liberty will get another chance to assert their dominance because the Mystics are the Liberty’s first-round opponent in the playoffs. Game one is at Barclays Center on Friday night and game two is at Barclays on Tuesday. New York and Washington are 2–2 this season.

“Our fans have been great the entire season, so being able to play here in front of them and have them support us and push us through is going to be amazing,” said Jonquel Jones, who had 19 points and nine rebounds in Sunday’s game. “Any time we get them involved and engaged in a game and we play the right style of basketball, it definitely shows and you can feel it out there.”

Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello said every bench is important, and this team’s bench has continued to show its skills this season. Marine Johannès has been outstanding all season, and put up 11 points off the bench against the Mystics.

“We want them to come out and continue to bring the energy. We don’t know how the game is going, so they’re vital for our success,” said Brondello. “It’s going to be important for us. We want them to be confident when they’re out there and bring what they do best.”

Jones noted that the Liberty’s toughness and togetherness are hallmarks of this team. “We have a very special group and I’m very excited about what we’re going to do in the playoffs,” she said. 

The Liberty are the only remaining original franchise in the WNBA not to have won a championship. The team hasn’t been to the Finals since 2002.

Round one of the WNBA playoffs begins on Wednesday as the four-time WNBA Champion Minnesota Lynx take on the Connecticut Sun and the defending WNBA Champion Las Vegas Aces play the 2021 Champion Chicago Sky. On Friday, after the New York versus Washington game, the Atlanta Dream will take on the Dallas Wings.

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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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