Election Day is less than two months away, and the Eagle Academy for Young Men of Harlem is taking it upon themselves to make sure the youth meet the moment by hosting an on-campus voter registration drive on Thursday, September 26.

This Central Harlem school is encouraging its senior students — many of whom are 18 years old, or will be by Nov. 5 — to vote in this election. Another mission of this drive will be to encourage local Harlem residents to register to vote on Nov. 5. This push to the polls has been driven by Athletic Director and physical education teacher Jermel Collins-Day.

The 48-year-old Brooklyn native believes there is a major benefit to having young men in the K-12 space exposed to this initiative. “I think it’s imperative for them to have their right to vote… having the opportunity to be an asset to society is crucial,” he said.

This is the first time the school has had any event of this kind. Collins-Day added that many of the students were unfamiliar with a voter-registration event, much less the voting process.

“They said they didn’t know anything about how to vote or to go about voting. So this is a perfect segway for them to become productive members of society,” he said.

Collins-Day, who is also a doctoral candidate at Columbia University, has been coaching and teaching at Eagle Academy for nine years, and says he is encouraged by the questions his students have asked about the factors of this election. “The interests stem from: what are some of the politics, to policies on how to become a president.”

Seeing a Black woman with an opportunity to become the next president of the United States has been incredibly motivational for the kids, he added.

The students are well aware of the potential history that could be made if Vice President Kamala Harris — potentially the first woman, and only the second Black person — is elected, which Collins-Day says has been “huge” for the kids.

“If we can support her, it gives us hope for our future,” the coach said of the main response from the kids.

There will be a tent at the event on Thursday, which was planned to coincide with the annual parent engagement day, where students will be able speak to Harlem residents who come by. In the event of rain, Collins-Day said students will likely be moved to phone banking as a contingency plan for them to still reach the parents that aren’t able to attend.

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New York City Department of Education (DOE) Schools Chancellor David Banks announced his intended “retirement” from office by the end of the year. This comes after a flurry of resignations from Mayor Eric Adam’s administration and amid federal investigations into city agencies.

“After nearly 40 years of dedicated service to New York City’s public schools, I have made the decision to retire at the end of this year,” said Banks in a statement. “I want to thank Mayor Adams for giving me the opportunity to serve as chancellor, and I am immensely proud of the progress we’ve made together — ensuring every child can read, expanding special education and gifted and talented programs, and creating innovative pathways for our students to secure rewarding careers and long-term success.”

Banks and his brothers — Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks III and political consultant Terence Banks — were thrust into the hot seat in the last two weeks. The ongoing, almost yearlong FBI probe into City Hall and city agencies led to several raids on their homes and seizure of their devices.

None of the Banks’ nor Adams were charged with any wrongdoing as of Tuesday, Sept. 24. However, former NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban and the mayor’s legal counsel Lisa Zornberg opted to resign shortly after the raids. Banks’ retirement is yet another resignation ripple on the surface of supposed calm in the Adams administration.

“Additionally, I want to thank the hundreds of thousands of families who entrust us with their children and the 140,000 employees who show up every day for our students — you make our public schools possible,” said Banks. “I grew up in our public schools and spent most of my adult life serving the students and families of our city, and I have every confidence that the work we’ve started will continue to thrive and benefit generations to come.”

Prior to being appointed the Chancellor, Banks was a nationally recognized education leader as the president and CEO of the Eagle Academy Foundation and the principal of the all-boys public school Eagle Academy for Young Men. Banks and the 100 Black Men organization established the first Eagle Academy back in 2004 in the Bronx, which achieved monumental success.

Banks was ushered into the Adams administration in 2021 as one of his first appointees. Adams said at the initial press conference that it took him eight years to interview a suitable candidate for his appointment of chancellor — conceivably because he had planned on being mayor while Bill de Blasio was in office. After that lengthy process, Adams settled on Banks.
“I am immensely grateful and proud of the work accomplished in New York City Public Schools under Chancellor David Banks,” said Adams in a statement. “In less than three years, our city’s public schools have transformed — from ensuring schools were safe and open coming out of the pandemic to a space that has increased our students’ reading scores, math scores, and graduation rates. We’ve implemented critical initiatives like ‘NYC Reads,’ ‘NYC Solves,’ and universal dyslexia screenings, while also ensuring a seamless and timely coordination with partners to welcome, enroll, and support thousands of newly-arriving students and their families on a citywide scale. We’ve done all this and more on behalf of nearly 1 million public school students, and Chancellor Banks was crucial to getting that done everyday. On behalf of all New Yorkers, we thank Chancellor Banks for his service, and wish him well in his retirement at the end of the calendar year.”

The city’s top education leaders thanked Banks for his service.

“Now more than ever, we need to focus on doing the work that our students, educators, and public schools need,” said United Federation of Teachers (UFT) President Michael Mulgrew. “Chancellor David Banks is an educator who sought to improve public education for all students. We thank him for his partnership, passion, and collaboration and wish him well.”

Councilmember Rita Joseph, who chairs the education committee, posted on social media that she was eternally grateful for Banks’ service as an educator. “Our shared vision for a brighter, more equitable future for New York City’s students is something I carry with me in every endeavor,” said Joseph. “As we continue this work, Chancellor Banks’ leadership will forever hold a special place in my heart and in the ongoing mission to deliver the best for our youngest New Yorkers.”

Meanwhile, Adams’ competition in next year’s mayoral race took the opportunity to take jabs at his unstable leadership.

“It’s beginning to feel like Groundhog Day,” said Senator Zellnor Myrie, who’s running for mayor. “The NYPD, Department of Health, and NYC Public Schools are three of the city’s most critical agencies, responsible for ensuring the safety, health, and future of our children — and in less than a month, our city is facing openings for all three commissioners.”

Senator Jessica Ramos said in a statement, “New Yorkers see City Hall as a cesspool of incompetence, corruption, and failure. That should embarrass us all. As the best city in the world, we should be elevating talented leaders, not managing a mass exodus from an administration marred by scandal. The DOE Chancellor announced his resignation cloaked as retirement on the foot of a federal investigation and just 20 days into our kids’ school year.”

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Now that students at four colleges in New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are back on campus this fall, they will have access to a new resource for learning how to dismantle false beliefs about racial hierarchies.

Seven years after launching its Truth, Racial Healing, & Transformation program in colleges, the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU) has expanded the program, opening centers at Antioch University, Bard College, Cuyahoga Community College, and Elizabethtown College.

The new centers give professors, administrators, faculty members, and students a dedicated space to learn and guide discussions around race, gender, age, class, and spiritual beliefs as part of a concerted effort to bring healing dialogues throughout the United States in higher education institutions.

“We don’t dictate to any institution how they are implementing, how they will implement and realize the goals of TRHT, or how they would implement the TRHT areas within their institutional context,” said Tia McNair, a senior consultant with AACU. “They look at their strategic priorities, their student population, their community relationships, and partnerships to develop what we call an action plan, so each institution does it differently.”

The campus centers began in 2017 as a concept that was part strategic, part organic. The 10 initial host institutions — a mix of public and private schools — introduced various approaches for dismantling racial bias on campus, including racial healing circles and special dinners intended to create safe spaces for sensitive dialogue.

Since then, schools have continued to embrace virtual and in-person conversations that provide gentle reassurance — and sometimes uncomfortable exposure — to past and present-day events that have shaped views of race in society.

The host institutions range from liberal arts colleges and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to faith-based institutions and community colleges. The selection process for colleges includes training about how to speak the language of racial healing based on the Institute on Truth, Racial Healing, & Transformation’s framework.

McNair, the former executive director of the TRHT Campus Centers, said the TRHT program is essential now more than ever.

“There are attacks happening on the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and our institutions within our communities, within our states, across the board,” said McNair. “I think that knowing that the growing majority of undergraduate students in this country are from racially minoritized groups … is critical for us to maintain and expand resources to help the success of all students.”

In tracking of 196 campuses in 29 states, the Chronicle of Higher Education found that colleges throughout the United States have eliminated their DEI programs due to political pressure, establishing an “inconsistent and confusing landscape.”

The effects of these changes are unclear, which is why McNair, who is also a partner at SOVA, a higher education consulting firm in Washington, D.C., would like campus centers to create opportunities for personal and professional development for marginalized students.

“Whether you are the student who is coming into the environment (and) may not be fully prepared — not at a fault of your own, but just because of circumstances – and may not be fully prepared to succeed in the same way as others, then how do we help you? How do we make sure that we actually live our commitment? That we fulfill our commitment to you as being part of this educational journey so that everyone has the opportunity to thrive?”

When education reform takes place at the federal, state, or local level, it can have predictable consequences, undoing decades of important work. This is why McNair hopes that the campus centers will serve as a springboard for repairing old wounds and sustaining supportive principles for community-building beyond campus.

The vision is to encourage ways of thinking that transcend the present political uncertainty, inviting ongoing dialogue and action.

“I think we as educators within higher education play a critical role in preparing the next generation of leaders to build more just and equitable communities,” said McNair. “This work is not about trying to get anyone to think in the same way we think, but to actually value each and every person’s human dignity, their contributions, their lived experiences in a way where we can transcend what has been causing division and conflict within our communities.”

For more information about the TRHT campus centers and their activities, click here.

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This weekend’s Empire State Rare Book & Print Fair will take place Sept. 27–29 at City College of New York and bring more than 40 rare book exhibitors to City College’s Great Hall (160 Convent Avenue and W. 135th Street) to display and sell rare books, photo prints and documents. 

In an email interview with the AmNews, Pom Harrington, owner of the England-based Peter Harrington Rare Books, talked about what all the excitement is about.

AmNews: Does the Peter Harrington collection have a lot of items related to Black history in the U.S.? In England? In the Americas? (Around how many items do you have related to each location?)

Harrington: We have a significant amount of material relating to Black history in both the Americas and Britain, which is constantly being refreshed. Broadly speaking, we have more than 100 items pertaining to Black history, including portraits, posters, pamphlets, and books pertaining to the Civil Rights Movement (detailed notes on a few examples are available here (127599, 145489, 149163), music and sporting heroes (130770, 134416, 149210, 101426, 150557), and literary titans (161915, 166022, 171697, 175408, 173592).

AmNews: What are some of the oldest documents you have related to Black history?

Harrington: Many of our oldest documents pertain to slavery and abolition in England, including The Law of Retribution (1773–77) by Granville Sharp, one of the earliest campaigners for the abolition of the slave trade in Britain, and Thomas Clarkson’s An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1786), which was instrumental in recruiting William Wilberforce to the abolitionist movement. 

Two notably early items that will be on display at the fair include a first edition of the monumentally influential “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (1852) and a striking image of a group of itinerant musicians in Cuba from around 1895.

AmNews: How much of this collection will be available for viewing this weekend?

Harrington: We will have a significant selection of material relating to Black history displayed at the fair, from an extremely rare antislavery poem, published in London in 1797 (John Gorton’s “The Negro Suicide”), to the first U.S. edition of Chinua Achebe’s “Anthills of the Savannah” (1988), inscribed to Yvette Le Roy, the founder of Liberty House in Harlem, whose store promoted books by Black authors and sold handcrafts produced by the Mississippi Poor People’s Corporation. 

Our showing at the fair spans literature (Toni Morrison, James Baldwin), music (a signed publicity photograph of Sister Rosetta Tharpe), and abolitionist and anti-apartheid writing (Alan Paton’s “Cry, the Beloved Country,” 1948).

Of particular note are two standout items by Langston Hughes, inscribed to a photographer who documented the Harlem Renaissance. 

HUGHES, Langston. “Fields of Wonder.” 174409 £2500

HUGHES, Langston. “One-Way Ticket.” 174410 £1500

AmNews: Are other objects searchable, at least by title, on your website?

Harrington: All our catalogued stock that is currently available for sale is available on our website (www.peterharrington.co.uk). Some available items may temporarily be taken offline if held in reserve for customers who have expressed an interest in purchasing them, but in general, visiting our website would give you the most up to date access to our stock of rare and antiquarian books.

AmNews: Besides the historic and even monetary value of these items, what is a major reason you find customers come to rare book fairs? What could visitors to this weekend’s event expect?

Harrington: Rare book fairs offer a unique opportunity to see, hold, and acquire works that are touchstones of intellectual and cultural heritage. Whether it’s a first edition of a literary classic or a rare manuscript with an extraordinary provenance, there’s something deeply captivating about the tangible link to the past that these books represent.

At this weekend’s Empire State Rare Book and Print Fair, visitors can expect a curated selection of rare works, each with a unique story. Beyond the books, they’ll engage with expert dealers who provide insights into the significance of the items. It’s a chance for collectors to explore, learn, and connect with a community of like-minded bibliophiles.

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* This article was originally published here

The Voices Of Community Activists & Leaders (VOCAL-NY) ​Gala for Healthy & Just Communities celebrated the organization’s 25th anniversary of advocacy last Thursday, September 19. 

At a lively gathering at the Roulette Intermedium in downtown Brooklyn, community advocates and leaders came together to celebrate their collective mission to improve the lives of low-income New Yorkers impacted by HIV/AIDS, the war on drugs, mass incarceration, and homelessness.

“I’m so excited to be here tonight to celebrate VOCAL New York’s 25th anniversary. We are so proud and grateful to be building on the legacy of our community organizing, our services that we’ve created together since 1999,” said VOCAL-NY Co-Executive Director Alyssa Aguilera.

For the last 25 years, the organization’s advocates have been instrumental in pushing criminal justice-focused legislation like the Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act, the Fair Chance Housing Act, the Public Bathroom Reporting bill, the Homeless Sweeps Reporting bill, Daniel’s Law, and City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement (CityFHEPS) voucher reforms. In recent years, it has expanded to include satellite offices in Kentucky in 2022 and Texas in 2023. 

This year they also launched a national chapter called VOCAL-US. “This is just one of the many milestones we’re celebrating here tonight,” Aguilera said. “Some others include celebrating our first year and our new permanent home that we own, which has allowed us to dramatically expand our drop-in center and the life-saving harm reduction services we provide to low income people who use drugs every day.”

The gala’s honorees included New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, former New York Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) Chief Chris Alexander, and longtime HIV/AIDS advocate Tracie Adams with their Justice, Compassion & Love awards. The three awards are tributes to VOCAL founders Joe Bostic, Joe Capestany, and Jennifer Flynn.

Speaker Adams, who received the Compassion award, was praised for standing up to Mayor Eric Adam’s administration and backing advocacy-led initiatives in the face of immense pushback from City Hall. She’s helped pass the CityFHEPS program reforms, affordable housing, and the passage of the How Many Stops Act and the city’s ban on solitary confinement in jails. 

“VOCAL, we’ve come a long way and I’m just going to speak from the heart just to let you know that we do what we do in this first women-led majority in the city council in the history of the City of New York,” Speaker Adams said in her acceptance speech. “We lead very, very differently. We lead from the heart first.”

She briefly discussed the fight for elected officials to legislate from lived experiences as constituents themselves.

“The speaker is still fighting with us,” said Elizabeth Mackey, a leader with VOCAL-NY’s Homelessness Union, “as we’re fighting to ensure that the current Adams administration implements the laws that we pass.”

Alexander, who suddenly resigned ​​as head of the state cannabis agency this May, was given the Justice award and received thunderous applause. Tracie Adams, 58, who has been a leader with VOCAL-NY’s Rochester chapter and has been living with HIV for 20 years, received the Love award.

“I’ve worked with VOCAL for years. I worked closely with the leadership to help secure the new headquarters and have been involved in many [of their] big fights,” said Councilmember Lincoln Restler, who attended the event. “What inspires me about VOCAL is that they represent directly impacted New Yorkers, people who were formerly incarcerated, people who are living in our shelters, people who are struggling with substance use issues. VOCAL is them. And as the people who are directly impacted, they are closest to the issues. They are closest to the problem and they are best positioned to guide us on the right solutions.”

During the gala, organizers also took time to remember VOCAL members who have passed recently like Carl Stubbs, Felipe “Flip” Rodriguez, Curtis Jones, Craig ‘Primo’ Mack, and Greta Allen.

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* This article was originally published here