Oregon County Plants Trees to Honor Victims of Killer 2021 Heat Wave
Family members of people killed by record-breaking heat in the Portland area three years ago gathered over the weekend to plant trees across Multnomah County in honor of its 72 victims. Authorities say more people died from the heat in the greater Portland area that June than in the entire state over the past 20 years.
Washington State Bar Association OKs Far Lower Caseloads for Public Defenders
The Washington State Bar Association has approved far lower case limits for public defenders in an effort to stop them from quitting, to help with recruiting and to fairly represent defendants. Skeptics agree the system is breaking down but are concerned about finding more attorneys to hire. Many counties, especially rural ones, already struggle to employ enough public defenders and get almost no state funding, which some say should change.
Portland Establishes Monument Review Process
City Council unanimously votes to create policy for questioning public monuments, now classified as separate from public art.
Lawsuit Accuses Portland Police Officer of Fatally Shooting Unarmed Black Man in the Back
According to the complaint, in 2022, the officer shot Immanueal Clark in the back as he ran away.
Black Girls Do Engineer is a nonprofit dedicated to getting more Black and brown girls into STEM ...
Rose Festival Princess From Grant High School Selected
On March 14, Daniela Gray was named a Princess of this year's court. ...
Portland Rose Festival 2024 Court Member from Cleveland High School Announced
The Rose Festival Princess from Cleveland High School, Zora Forsberg, was selected March 14. ...
Portland Rose Festival 2024 Court Member from Central Catholic High School Announced
The Rose Festival Princess from Central Catholic High School, Jayda Jackson, was selected March 8. ...
Portland Rose Festival 2024 Court Member from Lincoln High School Announced
The Rose Festival Princess from Lincoln High School, Isabelle Muresan, was selected on March 12. ...
Oregon man found guilty of murder in 1980 cold case of college student after DNA link
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A man living in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, has been found guilty in the 1980 cold case murder of a 19-year-old college student. Multnomah County Circuit Judge Amy Baggio on Friday found Robert Plympton, 60, guilty of first-degree murder in the death of...
Oregon county plants trees to honor victims of killer 2021 heat wave
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Family members of some of the people killed by record-breaking heat in the Portland, Oregon, area three years ago gathered over the weekend to plant trees across Multnomah County in honor of its 72 victims. The event, coordinated by county and local officials...
Georgia ends game on 12-0 run to beat Missouri 64-59 in first round of SEC tourney
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Blue Cain had 19 points, Justin Hill scored 17 off the bench and 11th-seeded Georgia finished the game on a 12-0 run to beat No. 14 seed Missouri 64-59 on Wednesday night in the first round of the Southeastern Conference Tournament. Cain hit 6 of 12 shots,...
Georgia faces Missouri in SEC Tournament
Missouri Tigers (8-23, 0-18 SEC) vs. Georgia Bulldogs (16-15, 6-12 SEC) Nashville, Tennessee; Wednesday, 9:30 p.m. EDT FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Bulldogs -3; over/under is 147 BOTTOM LINE: Georgia plays in the SEC Tournament against Missouri. ...
OP-ED: Congress Is Right: Federal Reserve’s Reg II Will Hurt Minority Communities in America
The Fed is taking every effort to promote income equality and workplace diversity and inclusion, but Regulation II would undercut its great work in this respect and cause potential harm to millions of minority families. Now that a congressional coalition has...
OP-ED: A Silent Killer No More
Data from Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City shows that more than 13 percent of African American men between the ages 45 and 79 will develop prostate cancer in their lifetimes. And Black men have a 70 percent higher rate of developing...
Message from Commissioner Jesse Beason: February is 'Black History and Futures Month'
I am honored to join the Office of Sustainability and to co-sponsor a proclamation to mark “Black History and Futures Month” ...
Ending Unfair Contracts Harming Minority Businesses Will Aid Gov. Kotek’s Affordable Housing Goals
Senate Bill 1575 will protect small businesses from state and local government’s unfair contract practices while also allowing the building industry to help the governor meet her affordable housing project goals. ...
6 former Mississippi law officers to be sentenced for torture of 2 Black men
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Six former Mississippi law enforcement officers who pleaded guilty to a long list of state and federal charges for torturing two Black men will be sentenced by a federal judge starting Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Tom Lee will sentence two defendants each day...
Supreme Court appears receptive to NRA free-speech lawsuit against a former New York state official
WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court justices appeared receptive Monday to National Rifle Association claims that a former New York state official violated its free-speech rights by pressuring banks and insurance companies to blacklist the group after the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida. ...
Descendant of judge who wrote infamous Dred Scott decision pens a play about where we are now
NEW YORK (AP) — Writer and actor Kate Taney Billingsley has been thinking a lot about America's racial history and her family's part in it. One of her ancestors had an outsized role. Billingsley's great-great-great-great uncle was Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, who made arguably...
The Lionheart: Dan Wheldon documentary covers grief, loss, love and familial legacy
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — It was 10 years after the death of their father that associates of filmmaker Laura Brownson brought her an article to read about the late Dan Wheldon. Standing below the monument on Dan Wheldon Way along the downtown St. Petersburg race course that honors...
Music Review: Kacey Musgraves’ 'Deeper Well' trades country-pop hooks for deep, folk-y meditation
Just over a decade ago, Kacey Musgraves emerged as a fresh new voice in country music – a mid-tempo storyteller with an incredible acuity both in her lyrics and in her instrumentation, knowing just when to pick up the harmonica, whistle a tune or break out the vocoder. In the years...
A new generation of readers embraces bell hooks' 'All About Love'
NEW YORK (AP) — In the summer of 2022, Emma Goodwin was getting over a breakup and thinking hard about her life and how to better herself. She decided to try a book she had heard about often, bell hooks’ “All About Love: New Visions." “I loved it. It takes seriously a subject...
Housing Secretary Fudge Resigning. Biden Hails Her Dedication to Boosting Supply of Affordable Homes
The average bonus on Wall Street last year was 6,500. That's down slightly from 2022
NEW YORK (AP) — The average Wall Street bonus fell slightly last year to 6,500 as the industry added...
US defense chief vows continued aid to Ukraine, even as Congress is stalled on funding bill
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany (AP) — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin vowed Tuesday that the U.S. will continue to...
Tuesday's primaries include a key Senate race in Ohio and clues for the Biden-Trump rematch
NEW YORK (AP) — Five states will hold presidential primaries on Tuesday as President Joe Biden and former...
The UK's contentious plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda is close to clearing Parliament
LONDON (AP) — The British government hopes one last push can revive its stalled plan to send some asylum-seekers...
South Korea will suspend licenses of 2 senior doctors in first punishment for doctors' walkouts
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean authorities will suspend the licenses of two senior doctors for allegedly...
Notre Dame Cathedral's restoration has been a 5-year journey of dedication and recovery
PARIS (AP) — The restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris following a tragic blaze in April 2019 is a story...
The revolutionary and iconic stance of the great Muhammad Ali rang in my mind this morning as I woke up and thought about writing a new sports column for The Black Athlete. With a bonanza weekend of American sports that includes the NFL Draft, The NBA Playoffs, The Kentucky Derby, the Yankees and Red Sox baseball game, and the Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao fight, all I could think about is downtown Baltimore burning down with reports of 100 Black American men killed by police in the past year, while we still have our first African-American president in office at the White House.
Excuse me for being political in a sports column, but athletes are people first. They come from families with mothers and fathers. They come from communities in cities and towns. They come from fanbases of loyal people who have supported them. But once they make it to the highest professional level of sports, where they voices, wallets and social/political impact becomes the greatest, they are then advised to leave politics alone and keep their personal views private, or else suffer the consequences of repulsion from those American citizens who would rather not hear it.
Typically, in America, the mainstream white community has been the main culprits of wildly supporting athletes, while rejecting where they come from, what they stand for, or what their families and communities are still having to deal with in their lives daily.
“Hey pal, don’t push that stuff on me. I have anything to do with all that. I’m only here to watch the game.”
Nevertheless, American sports leagues have been allowed to support cancer awareness and wear pink every year, support military veterans who return home to their families from active duty overseas, and a half dozen other mainstream campaigns. But only if the professional sports leagues—controlled by billionaire white men—allow it.
Surely, I understand that to bring certain injustices to light before, during and after each and every game would be a bit overkill and undesirable, even for me. But these athletes should at least be able to speak about it as they see fit in interviews, particularly when they are often forced to answer questions about the game. Allow them to also address a few questions about what’s going on their lives, in their families and in their communities, if they choose to do so.
But why are so many professional athletes punished for that? Is it to control the social/political impact that they would have? Is it fear of moving the status quo of America into spaces that it still refuses to discuss or transition from? Is it to continue the stereotype that athletes are brainless and physically gifted brutes who are better off seen than heard?
The sports world has now become grossly hypocritical. Do we not now witness these same sports league authorities coming out strongly against domestic violence, abuse of children, cheating through performance enhancing drugs, driving while under the influence, smoking marijuana, and many other societal infractions of its athletes? These stronger league stances and rules of discipline for professional athletes are mainly in play because buying public now demands it. Thousands and millions of supported will no longer accept such transgressions, and the leagues’ owners are forced to feel it in their bank accounts from negative public relations. However, no such fear happens from the desires and demands of economic freedom, justice, equality and certain protective rights of black people, who now make up the majority of professional football and basketball players.
So I watched a 20-minute interview on YouTube this morning of Muhammad Ali and “Why I Refuse To Go To Vietnam” on the Malcolm X channel and was blown away by how astutely this uneducated black man and boxer from poverty in Louisville, Kentucky, could speak about the obvious politics of a black people, who were being forced to fight a war for America abroad, while not being allowed to fight a war at home to for the safety, education, dreams, aspirations and hope of their people at home in America. You need to watch it too for an historical perspective and update on how America continues to avoid the elephant in the room, even in year 2015.
Muhammad Ali was willing to go to jail and give up everything for a message of defiance and justice for his people, and he surely suffered for it as he quickly became Public Enemy Number #1 of mainstream white America, simply for voicing his honest opinions that were all based on the facts of our country’s treatment to millions of black people, a people who Muhammad Ali—previously named Cassius Clay—happened to be an extremely popular and respected member.
And I will say more. Go online and watch the tape and be proud of a man who deserved our respect FOREVER. The brother is indeed a special man, not just for blacks, but for all people.
Omar Tyree is a New York Times bestselling author, an NAACP Image Award winner for Outstanding Fiction, and a professional journalist, who has published 27 books, including co-authoring Mayor For Life; The Incredible Story of Marion Barry Jr. View more of his career and work @ www.OmarTyree.com