Bringing Parental Incarceration Out of the Shadows for @nbcuacademy
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Three years ago, at the height of the pandemic, Ashley Jackson finally saw her father in clothes that weren’t a prison uniform. She walked toward him, her grandmother at her side, as he was escorted toward the prison entrance. The tears didn’t come, though, until she watched her grandmother hold him tight. At that moment, she realized her father was coming home.
Jackson, now 34, was only 6 months old when her father was sentenced to life in prison on drug and weapons charges. For much of her adult life, she has been advocating for his release, most recently with the help of the youth-led nonprofit organization We Got Us Now.
“At the time, his case was so old and was falling through the cracks, but We Got Us Now helped bring more light and visibility to who he was and is as a human being,” Jackson said. “I always had hope, and now I feel like I got a second childhood.”
More than 5 million children in the United States have experienced parental incarceration in their lifetime, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count Data Center. We Got Us Now is trying to change that. The organization’s mission is to bring awareness to children of incarcerated parents and the stresses they face by empowering them to educate leaders, schools and policymakers through their personal stories. Success is the reunification of families impacted by incarceration, but the organization’s ultimate goal is to create fair sentencing and end mass incarceration.
The Cancer Survivor Educating Black Women Through Beauty Kits for @nbcuacademy
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Tiah Tomlin-Harris still remembers the feeling of not being able to breathe when her doctor told her she had triple-negative breast cancer, a rare and aggressive form of the disease, at age 38. She was shocked and terrified of what she didn’t know.
When she brought a list of questions to her doctor, she was met with pushback. The former pharmaceuticals manager wanted to know if there was anything she could change about her lifestyle to prevent the cancer from spreading. But the doctor told her those kinds of adjustments wouldn’t change things, and she needed to focus on seeking treatment.
Still, she continued to research and speak with others in various stages of cancer. She found cancer education was hard to come by — especially for Black women.
“As I had more and more conversations, I noticed there was a gap in cancer treatment,” said Tomlin-Harris, who is now 47. “I had questions, and I needed to connect with people that look like me.”
The word ‘negrita’ stirs debate: term of endearment or veiled racism? for @nbclatino
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Generations of Latinos have grown up hearing a family member call a relative or friend “negrita” or “negrito” — which translates to a diminutive of Black.
While many Latinos use the Spanish word as a term of endearment — with some even referring to white family members as “negrita” or “negrito” — in the U.S. there’s an ongoing debate over who gets to use the term and to whom, and whether defending its use obscures Latin America’s racist past.
Many in the Black and Afro Latino community feel offended when the term is used to describe them.
Tally Joyce, a 27-year-old content creator on TikTok, first began making videos to share her Afro Latina experience and make others feel seen. Since moving from Honduras seven years ago, she has gained over 100,000 followers and recently went to the platform to talk about why she has a problem with other people using “negrita” and “morena” (which means brown) to replace “negra,” or Black.
She believes it isn’t always necessary to make the word “cuter” or dumb down the word because the word “negra” describes a part of who she is — Black.
Flatbush African Burial Ground Coalition fights to protect historical burial ground
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A chain link fence on Church Ave in Flatbush, Brooklyn is covered in art, trespassing warnings and homemade signs. The fence surrounds a block of dirt and grass that sits parallel to a gas station and caddy corner to a church. According to historians, beneath this block of dirt is a historic African burial ground.
Facing years of proposed development on the site, a group of community activists, the Flatbush African Burial Ground Coalition, has been fighting every step of the way to make sure the site is preserved and honored.
Lifelong Flatbush resident Allyson Martinez is the secretary of the coalition. She remembers walking past the lot as a child. Once she learned about the lot’s history, Martinez knew it was necessary to view it as a cultural space of heritage and shortly after joined the coalition.
“The coalition was created by a bunch of artists, activists and people,” Martinez said. “Just general residents coming together upon hearing about what was happening on these grounds here. And then after, we all realized there was a lot more work to do than just listening to workshops and looking at how things were going, and we needed to band together.
Researchers say the lot currently occupies land originally inhabited by the Canarsie and Munsee Lenape indigenous people. After the Flatbush Reformed Church occupied the lot from 1654 until the early 1840s, excavations then started uncovering bodies. An 1855 map of the area discovered in 2020 shows that the northeast portion of the lot was part of an African Burial Ground.
Despite the longstanding knowledge that the lot was a burial site for enslaved Africans, the now vacant site has yet to be memorialized.
“Flatbush has changed a lot over the years because of gentrification, but what it means to me and a lot of us, is it’s home,” Martinez said. “This is one of those spaces that creates that extra value and that we need to appreciate.”
Emmy’s Recap 🏆: I am honored to have been nominated for three Emmy’s during my first year with the Social Newsgathering team at NBC News. We were nominated for our verification work, geo-location and newsgathering during various breaking news events.
The Uvalde school shooting on May 24 was the first big story I worked on as an associate reporter and it’s one that I will always remember. I still remember seeing the first Dataminr alert regarding reports of an active shooter in Uvalde, TX and immediately looking into it. We started to sweep for footage of the shooting and monitored for eye-witnesses. Once the names of the 21 victims started to spread, we gathered photos of the teachers and students to show the lives lost that day.
When we first heard about Hurricane Ian, we began to gather videos of Florida residents evacuating and then followed the footage of destruction. As victim names started to pour in, we focused on verifying social media profiles to gather photos to memorialize everyone who fell victim to the hurricane. Days after, coverage continued as we looked for survivor stories and spoke to residents in the community.
Our team also frequently works with Nightly News in providing user-generated content and in verifying social media profiles of victims, suspects and everyday people involved in the news of the day.
So grateful to be part of such an amazing team that contributes to NBC News as a whole!
NYCHA’s mishandling of funds has created consistent poor living conditions for residents
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When Bernard Smith first spotted mildew and black spots growing on the bathroom walls in his apartment, he became worried and immediately called it in. The 73-year-old didn’t think it would be the start of an endless chase to get rid of it.
New York City Public Housing Authority (NYCHA) sent painters to paint over the mold spots believing the mold was remediated and the more than 50-year resident of Morris Houses in the Bronx spotted more of it two months later. His worry then turned into fear. Smith couldn’t stop thinking about the air his kids and grandchildren would breathe in when they visited him – a toxic air that would send him into coughing fits.
After months of believing the mold was remediated, Smith was woken up in the middle of the night by water dripping onto him from the ceiling as he slept. He then saw more mold on the walls and knew it was finally time to start advocating for himself and other residents so that repairs could be quickly taken care of.
“I didn’t know how dangerous it was,” Smith said. “I let my kids and grandkids use the bathroom and they even started sneezing and coughing. I knew it was part of it.”
Smith is just one of the thousands of residents in NYCHA apartments dealing with uninhabitable poor living conditions.
An investigation into NYCHA’s handling of funds has shown years of neglect leading to extremely poor living conditions for its more than 450,000 residents. NYCHA has been ignoring complaints about living conditions in almost 200,000 apartments and instead has been focusing on more long-term projects including the privatization of public housing.
Flatbush African Burial Ground Coalition fights to protect historical burial ground
Read the full article and watch the video at the link in my bio:
A chain link fence on Church Ave in Flatbush, Brooklyn is covered in art, trespassing warnings and homemade signs. The fence surrounds a block of dirt and grass that sits parallel to a gas station and caddy corner to a church. According to historians, beneath this block of dirt is a historic African burial ground.
Facing years of proposed development on the site, a group of community activists, the Flatbush African Burial Ground Coalition, has been fighting every step of the way to make sure the site is preserved and honored.
Lifelong Flatbush resident Allyson Martinez is the secretary of the coalition. She remembers walking past the lot as a child. Once she learned about the lot’s history, Martinez knew it was necessary to view it as a cultural space of heritage and shortly after joined the coalition.
“The coalition was created by a bunch of artists, activists and people,” Martinez said. “Just general residents coming together upon hearing about what was happening on these grounds here. And then after, we all realized there was a lot more work to do than just listening to workshops and looking at how things were going, and we needed to band together.
Researchers say the lot currently occupies land originally inhabited by the Canarsie and Munsee Lenape indigenous people. After the Flatbush Reformed Church occupied the lot from 1654 until the early 1840s, excavations then started uncovering bodies. An 1855 map of the area discovered in 2020 shows that the northeast portion of the lot was part of an African Burial Ground.
Despite the longstanding knowledge that the lot was a burial site for enslaved Africans, the now vacant site has yet to be memorialized.
“Flatbush has changed a lot over the years because of gentrification, but what it means to me and a lot of us, is it’s home,” Martinez said. “This is one of those spaces that creates that extra value and that we need to appreciate.”
Jackson residents continue to face issues with water system amid controversial flood control project and limited funding
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Bathing, cooking, cleaning, washing your hands, brushing your teeth, flushing the toilet and hydrating — these are all tasks in which water is needed. Residents in Jackson, Mississippi have to often live in a reality where they are unable to perform any of these tasks.
Anthony Moore has never trusted the tap water and can’t remember the last time he ever drank the water coming out of his faucet in his home in Jackson.
Growing up, Moore would sometimes turn on the tap water and found it to be discolored or even funny tasting. When the now 29-year-old longtime resident of Jackson would go to school as a child, he even remembered there being a greenish-blue pool of residue at the bottom of the water fountain. These issues have never stopped for him.
“We have a city that has never sought to invest in a neighborhood that is majority Black,” Moore said. “The city has never had an overwhelming interest in providing service to us. We have a failing city because America hasn’t equipped us with enough resources to address these issues.”
Residents like Moore have been facing an ongoing water crisis in Jackson for decades due to a lack of investment in infrastructure, mismanagement and various levels of systemic racism. Many have been reporting dirty water, leaking sewage and low water pressure. This comes after heavy rainfall caused extreme flooding last August and led to boiling water notices and some residents being left without water for months. Just months before, residents also endured a cold snap, similar to the one in 2021, that also caused pipes to freeze and left many without water once again.
New York City’s Little Mexico pays homage to hard-working women who immigrated with a dream
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As Maria Herrerra walks into her family’s restaurant on 116th Street in East Harlem, she beams with pride as she takes customers’ orders and helps the kitchen cook quesadillas.
‘Quesadillas Doña Maty,’ the restaurant, has a wood-paneled ceiling filled with Mexican-style baskets, pots and pans. Doing a complete look around, one would feel as if they were in a Mexican home. Ranchero music plays in the background. The hiss of fresh tortillas being flipped on the griddle can be heard if you’re listening closely. The walls are a vibrant blue, white and pink full of various Mexican vinyl records and a tribute to the Virgin of Guadalupe — an important saint in the Roman Catholic religion. The restaurant resembles a garden with cacti and fresh flowers sitting on each table.
Twenty years ago, Maty Herrera, Maria’s mother, immigrated to New York City from Mexico with her husband and kids with a dream of opening up a boutique. She never imagined that decades later she would have three Mexican restaurants in her name.
When immigrants migrate from their country to the United States, they tend to find people who look, speak and live like them. For Mexicans arriving in New York City in the early 90s, that sense of community was hard to find. Even harder for Herrera, whose family landed in East Harlem, otherwise known as ‘El Barrio,’ a majority Puerto Rican neighborhood.
Although Herrera and her family felt like outcasts as one of the only Mexican families in the area, they opened a small boutique on 116th Street that sold cowboy boots and hats. For Maria, she still remembers helping her parents in the boutique and worrying after only a few customers walked through the door.
Racist beauty standards leave communities of color more exposed to harmful chemicals
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Every time Aisha Mustapha would look into the mirror all she could think about was how she wanted to have smooth and silky hair.
She walked to the salon and asked to have a relaxer, or in other words, a chemical straightener put in her hair. She was super excited to be able to run her fingers through her hair again and for once, to look like the women she would see on the covers of magazines and on television. She was excited to hear all of the compliments and to smile at herself when she glanced at her reflection.
But when she sat in the salon chair, she began to feel a chemical burn on her scalp.
“I’ve been relaxing for as long as I can remember,” she said. “I got burnt almost every time I did, but just the last experience was the worst. Some areas of my scalp would form something like a scab, which took weeks to flake off like dandruff.”
After the salon, Mustapha noticed swellings beneath her scalp. She knew then that it wasn’t worth it — conforming wasn’t worth it.
The idea of perfection is a disease of this nation — it’s a social construct that has negatively affected women of various communities. The concept of perfection in the United States tends to lean towards Eurocentric beauty standards: fair skin, straight hair and blue eyes. This is causing harm and serious health issues for Black women who feel they have to have those characteristics to be accepted.
New York City’s congestion toll plan could bring negative effects to the South Bronx — a community that is already vulnerable
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Ever since Melissa Barber was a little girl living in the Bronx, she could feel it on her skin and when she breathed that the air wasn’t clean.
The South Bronx native said she could tell the difference when she went to other boroughs and came to realize that it was bringing negative effects on the health of those around her.
“The way they take care of another neighborhood is different than how they take care of my neighborhood,” Barber would say when visiting other communities. “The pollution or garbage that I see on the street is different from what I see here in my neighborhood. You begin to see who is perceived as valuable and who isn’t.”
The author, community organizer and activist also said the congested traffic in the Bronx has always been harmful because of all the trucks passing through releasing toxins into the air. When her daughter was younger, she would often get allergies due to the dust in the air and recalls being scared of a wheezing noise she would often make.
Barber said she knows way too many people who find it hard to breathe the Bronx air or who are living with asthma as a result. An anticipated congestion toll plan would make things worse for her and her daughter, especially living near the Hunts Point waterfront.
New York City’s long-discussed congestion pricing program would charge drivers extra to enter Manhattan’s Central Business District or any area south of 60th Street. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is currently assessing what potential effects would occur.
The 'no sabo kids' are pushing back on Spanish-language shaming for @nbcnews
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Sara Lopez, 24, didn’t learn Spanish from her parents because they didn’t want her to go through the discrimination they faced for speaking the language back in the 1980s.
“Their teachers were mostly white and would punish my parents or other students for speaking Spanish,” Lopez, a Los Angeles resident, said.
For a while, Lopez felt embarrassed for not being able to understand or communicate in Spanish and was frequently teased and bullied for not “speaking Spanish right.”
Eventually, she said, her parents healed from their childhood experiences and started to encourage her to learn more Spanish. Lopez now takes pride in being a “no sabo kid" — and wants people to understand there are many others who've had a similar experience.
In recent years, the phrase "no sabo," which is the incorrect way of saying "I don't know" in Spanish (the correct translation is "no sé") has become synonymous with young Latinos who aren’t fluent in Spanish.
But what used to be a put-down term has now become a cultural hit online and a widespread meme: TikTok alone has more than 644 million video views with the hashtag #nosabo and #nosabokid is close to 400 million.
On social media, teens and young adults will poke fun at no sabo experiences. In one TikTok video, a "no sabo" teen asks her sibling if she's seen the "crayola" their mom is looking for, meaning carriola, or stroller. Another video shows a no sabo "olympics" where teens are quizzed on the correct Spanish word.
While most of the videos are playful and even hilarious, the growing trend of Latinos “clapping back” at the policing of Spanish has opened up an age-old debate on what it means to be Hispanic or Latino in the U.S.
