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BAKERSFIELD NEWS OBSERVER
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Laying Groundwork for the Long Haul MeToo’s Tarana Burke
FILE - In this April 24, 2018 file photo, social activist Tarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo movement, attends the Time 100 Gala celebrating the 100 most influential people in the world in New York. Burke, who toiled in obscurity for years, has had a head-spinning nine months since the day last October, shortly after the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse accusations, when actress Alyssa Milano encouraged survivors to tweet #MeToo. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
Singer Chris Brown Arrested on Florida Felony Battery Charge ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Singer Chris Brown walked off stage after his concert in Florida and into the hands of waiting deputies, who arrested him on a felony battery charge involving a nightclub photographer last year. Tampa Police released more details about the battery warrant Friday after Brown posted $2,000 bond to be released from the Palm Beach County Jail. The warrant accuses Brown of hitting Bennie Vines Jr., who was hired by a club in Tampa to take pictures during an event hosted by Brown in April 2017. Vines told officers Brown punched him while he was snapping photos. Brown was gone by the time officers arrived that night. Vines refused medical treatment, but he told the officers that he wanted to prosecute over a minor lip cut. Emails to Brown’s agents weren’t immediately returned. The entertainer is in the middle of his Heartbreak On A Full Moon Tour and was scheduled to perform in Tampa Friday night. Brown has been in repeated legal trouble since pleading guilty to the felony assault in 2009 of his then-girlfriend, Rihanna, ahead of the Grammys. He completed his probation in that case in 2015. In 2013, Brown was charged with misdemeanor assault after he was accused of striking a man outside a Washington, D.C., hotel. He was ordered into rehab but was dismissed for violating facility rules. Brown spent 2½ months in custody, with U.S. marshals shuttling him between Los Angeles and the nation’s capital for hearings. After he completed court-ordered anger-management classes, Brown was accused of throwing a brick at his mother’s car following a counseling session. After Brown posted a picture to his 44 million Instagram followers in January showing his 3-year-old daughter, Royalty, cuddling with a pet monkey, California fish and wildlife agents seized the capuchin monkey named Fiji from his home in Los Angeles. Agents said then that Brown could face a misdemeanor charge carrying up to six months in jail for lacking a permit for the primate.
Burke received a $1 million commitment — and plans to raise twice that, annually — from the New York Women’s Foundation. “I think a lot about what would have happened if we had been fully funded 12 years ago,” she told a cheering crowd at the foundation’s breakfast, where the grant was announced. With its new funding, “me too.” is not only launching the membership-based online community — with a planned October start date — but also developing programming, for later in the year, that will include elements like survivor healing circles. The group also plans to spend about half its resources supporting community-based groups across the country fighting sexual violence. Burke herself is constantly traveling and speaking, working to put the focus back on survivors, especially in marginalized communities, and away from figures like Weinstein, whose accusers have largely been white, famous actresses. “That’s what her work has been out in the world right now,” says Joanne Smith, Burke’s colleague and founder of Girls for Gender Equity. “To remind people — or tell people who never knew — why it is that we have to be so specific about girls of color and black girls in particular being impacted by sexual violence. Because those stories don’t get told.” Burke is aware that the celebrity component of the Weinstein story has in some ways fed a perception that #MeToo — the broader cultural movement — has left some communities out. “There’s a lot of black women who don’t feel like they have a place in this #MeToo movement that ironically was started by a black woman,” says Nupol Kiazolu, a student activist in New York City, who took the stage at the Women in the World conference this spring and called on white women to stand with their black counterparts. “I don’t feel like this movement is inclusive enough as it should be. We have a long way to go.” Similar sentiments were explored at Brooklyn’s Billie Holiday Theatre in March, where actresses including Pauletta Washington and Simone Missick performed from the writings of 50 women and girls of color for a theatrical piece entitled “Our Place in the Movement.” “In so many (past) social movements, the voices of black women are almost non-existent,” said Indira Etwaroo, the theater’s executive director. “And so with the #MeToo movement it begs the question, where do we belong, what place do we have?” She noted that when three actresses — and Weinstein accusers — took the Oscars stage to present a segment on MeToo and Time’s Up, a black woman was not among them. Burke says it’s logical that #MeToo exploded into view when high-profile celebrities became involved. “That’s what the media does, cover celebrities,” she says. “That attention has caused people to make this connection that #MeToo is about white women in Hollywood.” But she also points out that when hundreds of thousands of women began using the #MeToo hashtag, “it went viral because of people — everyday people.” Ana Oliveira, president of the New York Women’s Foundation, says she’s been heartened both by Burke’s extensive experience with survivors of sexual violence, and her clearheaded plans. “Tarana is very clear that this is not about demonizing men,” Oliveira says. “And she’s not interested in building an empire, or a big national organization. She is interested in the sustainability of efforts that happen locally.” Burke says she tries to impress on people that this is an opportunity not to be squandered. “I suspect that in a year or two, it won’t be as newsworthy,” she says. “The thing that WILL be newsworthy will be the ways that we’re moving the needle to end sexual violence.” And for that to happen, the focus needs to shift back to where it started, she says — away from the accused, and onto the survivors. “Millions and millions of people literally raised their hands nine months ago to say #MeToo ... and their hands are still raised,” she says. “Because nobody is responding to them.”
Nashville Pastors Swap Pulpits to Bridge Racial Divide This booking photo provided by Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office shows Chris Brown. The singer walked off stage after his concert in Florida and into the hands of waiting sheriff’s deputies, who arrested him on a felony battery charge and booked him into the Palm Beach County Jail. A sheriff’s spokeswoman said the entertainer was released after posting $2,000 bond on the battery charge issued by the sheriff’s office in Hillsborough County. No details about the allegations in the arrest warrant were immediately available. (Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office via AP)
Recipe of the Week
3 Flavors On A Platter So, what do you do when you’re undecided on the flavor you want ,or desire??? You make all three! What you will need: Oil for frying salt, pepper, onion, and garlic powder 4 lb. bag party wings 1 cup Teriyaki sauce 1/2 cup Brown sugar crushed red pepper flakes (optional) 1/4 cup Honey or corn syrup In a hot frying pan season dried off chicken with salt, pepper, and onion and garlic salt. Once chicken is done place on paper towel to drain excess oil. Now divide cooked chicken into three parts. Mix teriyaki sauce, brown sugar, and honey or syrup and whisk together. In a pan pour sauce over each piece of chicken and bake 15 minutes. Remove from oven and assemble all chicken on a plate or platter or onto whatever you like because either way they will be eaten! sprinkle sesame seeds over chicken garnishment.(optional) Lemon pepper chicken: Lemon pepper seasoning 1/2 stick butter
NEW YORK (AP) — Not long ago, Tarana Burke took the podium in a hotel ballroom full of admirers — a scenario that’s become somewhat familiar this past year — and told a favorite childhood tale about the time she was forced to run a three-legged race with a cousin who wasn’t, like her, competitive or athletic. She wanted a different partner, because she didn’t want to lose. But her grandfather told her sternly: “We don’t leave anybody behind.” And so she ran the race with that cousin, and lost, but learned a memorable lesson about taking care of those less powerful. Burke took that lesson into her career as an activist and organizer, especially her work with survivors of sexual violence — work that led her to coin the phrase “Me Too,” more than a decade before it exploded as a global hashtag and a slogan for a sweeping social movement. Now, with more visibility than she ever dreamed possible, Burke finds herself in another race — to get the next phase of her own #MeToo work up and running before the spotlight dims. And an important part of that, she says, is to put the focus back where it started — before Harvey Weinstein and the movie stars and red carpets — on survivors, especially women and girls of color, who she says have always been disproportionately impacted by sexual violence. “The #MeToo movement is a survivor’s movement,” Burke says. “And it’s for everybody. I just want to make that point extra clear.” In other words, the movement doesn’t leave anybody behind, just like her grandfather told her. But beyond that, how do you take a cultural moment with a powerful mantra, and turn it into a sustainable, working movement? That’s what Burke, 44, is concentrating on now, nine months into the #MeToo era. She’s spending the summer working on final plans for programming at “me too.,” her organization that’s housed at the Brooklyn-based Girls for Gender Equity , the nonprofit where she’s a senior director. The immediate goal: Launching a new online community in the fall, full of resources for survivors across the country. In a recent interview, Burke decried what she called a persistent false narrative about #MeToo. “After all this time, I still run into people every day who say, ’You’re anti-men,” Burke said from France, where she was speaking at the Cannes Lions Festival. “They say, ‘All you want to do is make people lose their jobs.’ And it just takes the focus away from what we’re doing.” “These misconceptions are out there, no matter how much visibility I have, and they’re super harmful, because people believe them,” she added. “So the work I am doing with the visibility I have is to try to give people a broader perspective.” Burke has been on a head-spinning ride since the day last October, shortly after the Weinstein story erupted, when actress Alyssa Milano encouraged survivors of sexual assault or harassment to tweet #MeToo. The hashtag spread like wildfire, and it was quickly pointed out that the phrase had originated with Burke. Since then, she’s been balancing her work at Girls For Gender Equity with countless high-profile appearances, where she’s been hailed as a standard-bearer for the movement: the Golden Globes, the Oscars, the Time 100 gala where she was honored as one of the year’s most influential people, and many others. “Part of the challenge is trying to balance all these things,” she says, “managing this level of visibility and also knowing that we have to do a lot of groundwork.” Essential to that groundwork is fundraising. Whereas the legal defense fund of Time’s Up, the Hollywood-based group advocating for gender equity in the workplace, has raised upward of $20 million, Burke’s own group has nowhere near that kind of money. Tennis legend Billie Jean King and TV host Robin Roberts each gave $100,000, and Google has given a $250,000 “Google Rising” grant. But the biggest boost came in May, when
Heat butter in microwave until melted. Once melted add a liberal but not too much lemon seasoning to the chicken. Place chicken in a bowl and coat chicken with the melted butter sauce. Place foil or lid over chicken and toss together until all pieces has been coated with sauce and place in the oven for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and garnish with a couple slices of lemon on top. For extra flavor squeeze lemon juice over chicken. Hot wing sauce; 1 cup vinegar 1/2 stick butter salt & pepper onion salt garlic powder 1 cup hot sauce ( I like the Louisiana brand. In a small saucepan mix all ingredients together until everything has become incorporated. Pour sauce over chicken and place in a 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes. Garnish with parsley flakes. Enjoy with Ranch dressing and celery sticks for flavor and crunch! Enjoy! Like me on Facebook, follow me on Instagram or watch me on my YouTube channel. I am the Creative Kitchen!
By Holly Meyer The Tennessean NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) _ Christians tend to worship alongside people who look just like them. That is the case for the two First Baptist churches in downtown Nashville _ one mostly black and the other mostly white. So when their pastors exchanged pulpits earlier this spring, the Rev. Kelly Miller Smith Jr. and the Rev. Frank Lewis not only demonstrated their friendship, but they bridged the racial divide prevalent across the Christian landscape. “What we are doing today matters. What we are doing matters in our city,” Lewis said as he stood on his borrowed platform at the historically black First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill. “It matters when God's people join together across different kinds of boundaries that we've grown up in and we say, `You know, it doesn't have to be this way,' “ Lewis said in his sermon. “We're going to be together and we're going to lift high the name of Jesus.” About a half-dozen blocks away, Smith called it a “blessing” and a “privilege” to preach at Nashville First Baptist Church that April 22 morning before launching into his sermon on the treasure in jars of clay from 2 Corinthians. The history of race and religion is long and complicated, says Baylor University professor Kevin D. Dougherty and North Park University professor Michael O. Emerson in their recent study, “The Changing Complexion of American Congregations.” In it, the sociology scholars point to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. lamenting in 1956 about 11 a.m. on Sunday morning being the most segregated hour in Christian America. “The troubled history of American race relations birthed congregations and denominations divided by race,” reads the study published in June in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. “Baptists and Methodists both fractured along racial lines to create separate black and white denominations.” In Nashville, the two First Baptist churches share a long history. Nashville First Baptist allowed its black members, both slave and free, to hold monthly prayer meetings in the 1830s, according to church history. Eventually, they were able to hold separate services at another location. At the end of the Civil War, the black congregation petitioned to become an independent church, which happened in 1865. The church would go on, under the leadership of Smith's father, to play a pivotal role during the civil rights movement, including sit-in demonstrations in Nashville. “I think all of that combined just really knits a story together about the ongoing day-to-day work of racial reconciliation,” Lewis said. “I think you have to constantly work on it. It's a long journey. Every generation is going to face new challenges to that.” Today, it is not uncommon for the two congregations to come together on occasion. In 2015, Lewis delivered a message during the 150th anniversary celebration of First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill. On April 22, a joint choir performance capped the day of the Smith and Lewis pulpit exchange. “The hope is they see a genuine and a mutual friendship between the two pastors,” Lewis said. “If we can be friends, then that friendship should extend member to member in our congregations as well.”
It is easier to find common ground for special fellowship events like a pulpit exchange than on a week in and week out basis, Smith said. “What we did on that Sunday is very important and very good,” Smith said. “The people at Nashville First Baptist were very receptive of me and our people were very receptive of Dr. Lewis coming and sharing with us as well.” But worship is not a sterile experience, Smith said. Believers bring their personal perspectives _ both historic and current-day _ with them to church and many want to worship alongside those who understand and share their worldview, he said. “It would be wonderful if we lived in a world, as sometimes said a colorblind world, where we can always worship and celebrate whatever's going on in the lives of people,” Smith said. “We just don't live in that space right now.” In their research, Dougherty and Emerson found a notable increase in the percentage of multiracial congregations in the U.S. These congregations are defined as having less than 80 percent of its members with the same race or ethnicity. About 1 in 5 Americans worship with a multiracial congregation, they found. At 12 percent in 2012, multiracial congregations have nearly doubled since 1998, the study says. Such congregations are more common among Protestants, including mainline, evangelical and black churches. “The attention given to multiracial congregations over the past two decades provides resources for congregations to better serve diverse constituencies,” the study says. “As U.S. society continues to diversify by race and ethnicity, the ability for organizations to adapt to changing demographics will only grow in importance.” Nearly 50 years ago, Belmont United Methodist Church opened its doors to an English as a second language program, said the Rev. Paul Purdue, senior pastor of the church. Ever since, it has brought people from all over the world across the church's threshold. “It's a beautiful thing,” said Purdue, who said a diverse group of pastors has shared the pulpit at the Belmont church. More than 100 people attend Belmont's Golden Triangle Fellowship. It is a Sunday service held in the community center that serves many refugees and is translated into Thai and Karen, a language spoken in Myanmar. Belmont also helped start a Korean Methodist church years back and it has a current relationship with a Hispanic Methodist congregation, too. On Pentecost Sunday, they worship together in three languages: English, Karen and Spanish. The English and Karen speaking congregations shared Communion on World Communion Day, too. “I think it's just part of our fabric,” Purdue said. In April, the Sunday shared by the First Baptist congregations ended with an intention to come together again. “This wasn't the first time our churches have done something like this, and it certainly will not be the last,” Lewis said. “It's a good friendship between our congregations that continues to grow.”
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