What’s Going On – 11/24

Political researchers, analysts, and numbers crunchers are still in a November 8 Midterm stupor. Many miscalculated the American electorate and their values.

MAYORS: Congress member Karen Bass is Los Angeles Mayor-elect who will be sworn in on 12/12. She makes history as LA’s first woman mayor and the second Black mayor. The first was Tom Bradley. In 2023, America’s four largest cities will be run by Black Democrats: Eric Adams, NYC; Lori Lightfoot, Chicago; Sylvester Turner; Houston; and Karen Bass.

To be sure, chaos will prevail with GOP Kevin McCarthy as HOUSE Speaker. He threatened to remove Dems from House Committees. The Squad is vulnerable. Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi steps down as majority leader, preferring to pass the baton to a younger generation. NY Representative Hakeem Jeffries, 52, is poised to lead the Caucus. No one wants to challenge him.

SOUTH OF THE BORDER
The Barbados government recently announced that November 30 would no longer be known as Independence Day. It will be called Barbados National Day, consistent with its transition from a Constitutional monarchy to a Republic on November 30, 2021. Heretofore, Barbados celebrated its Independence from the United Kingdom on November 30, 1966. Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley navigated the exit from the monarchy.

The Republic of Haiti declared its independence from French colonial rule on January 1, 1804, following the first successful slave revolt, the Haitian revolution, in the New World. It is argued that Haiti was the first republic in the Americas, with no three/fifths of a man. Today, Haiti encounters multiple crises, manmade and natural disasters: earthquakes, poverty, hunger insecurities, cholera, dissolution of the state, rampant gang rule, and interference from its neighbors, the US, Canada, and France. Remember who removed Haiti’s democratically elected President, Jean Bertrand Aristide, from office and relocated him to Africa? Can the US divert some of the Ukraine rescue billions and send them to Haiti? Haitians want and have requested outside help for public safety and a return to democratic elections. Haiti’s 219th Independence anniversary could be a cause to celebrate if the USA earnestly extends an olive branch.

ARTS AND CULTURE
BOOKS: The 73rd Annual National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit was held on 11/17. The NBA acknowledges excellence in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people’s literature. Congratulations to all of the 2022 Awardees, including two African Americans. Princeton Professor Imani Perry’s book “SOUTH TO AMERICA: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand The Soul Of A Nation,” a genre-defying narrative about race, history, immigration, and identity comingle, garnered the best nonfiction honor. In Perry’s acceptance speech, she said. “I write for my people. I write because we, children of the rope-choked, bullet-ridden, desecrated, are still here standing. I write for those sinned against and the sanctified. I write for the ones who clean the toilets and till the soil, and walk the picket lines. I write for you because I love sentences, and I love freedom more.” The NBA Best Poetry winner is MacArthur Fellow John Keene for his work, “PUNKS: New and Selected Poems,” with a range of subjects from love, and cancer, to Blackness and queer life.

EDUCATION: ABC News President Kim Godwin, a FAMU alumna, delivered the news about The Disney Corporation’s $1 million multi-year grant to the FAMU (Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University) School of Journalism and Graphic Communication, part of one of the Disney Storyteller Fund initiatives. Monies will be used for tuition, housing, and stipends at FAMU, a Tallahassee-based HBCU.

Congrats to Harlem resident Dr. Linda Ridley, a St. John’s University School of Education student who successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, “Educating Business and Management Students: Using A Critical Management Lens to Learn From Chattel Slavery” Her research compares and contrasts relationships between American chattel slavery and today’s American workplace.

NEWSMAKERS
Sagittarius, the 9th sign of the zodiac, arrived on November 22. Happy Birthday to these mutable fire people: Jeff Burns, Communications executive; Brian Benjamin, former NYS Lieutenant Governor; filmmaker Grace Blake; NYS Senator Cordell Cleare; retired educator Copper Cunningham; Andrew Cuomo; Darryl T. Downing, I-AM- HARLEM Marketing Consultant; George Faison, producer/choreographer; Jamie Foxx; writer Fern Gillespie; JAY Z; Karlen Grant; Attorney Cicely Harris; NYS elected Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn; Kwaku Horsford and Robert Horsford, Apex Builders Group; Alice LaBrie Jackson; Samuel Jackson, star of Broadway revival of August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson.”

Thornell Jones, Sr., President World Class Graduates, Maryland; Nesta McClymont and Nesta McClymont Jr; Rosalinda McIntosh, bicoastal culturati NY/Cote Ivoire; Eritrea-born Berihu (Mr. B) Mesfin, Freeland Wine/Liquor; Joyce Mullins Jackson, realtor; Joseph Leake; Attorney Ernst Perodin; Joy Reid, MSNBC; Dr. Linda Ridley; Dr. Karl Rodney, NY Carib News Publisher; Sheryl Huggins Salomon, NYU McSilver Institute; Dr. Adelaide Sanford; educator Jane Small; Robert Smith, billionaire; Eric V. Tait, Jr., journalist/documentarian; Tina Turner; Attorney Gail Wright Sirmans.

SEASON’S GREETINGS – HAPPY THANKSGIVING
A Harlem-based business strategist, Victoria, is reachable at victoria.horsford@gmail.com.