April 30, 2020 

LAWT News Service 

 

Senator Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) released the following statements regarding the NCAA Board of Governors’ announcement today on, “supporting rule changes to allow student-athletes to receive compensation for third-party endorsements both related to and separate from athletics.”

 

“I commend the NCAA governing board in their decision to allow college athletes the opportunity to monetize their name, image and likeness through sponsorships and endorsements,” said Senator Steven Bradford (D-Gardena). “This is an issue that has been long debated and its time has come. SB 206, the Fair Pay to Play Act, by no means changes the amateur status of college athletes. Despite being on full scholarship, many of these athletes still suffer from food insecurity and lack the necessary resources to thrive academically.”

 

“Today, after California and states across the country put the ball in their court, the NCAA has taken a step in the right direction. College athletes are on their way to making money off their name, image, and likeness — just like all other Americans can,” said Senator Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley).

 

“The devil will be in the details,” continued Senator Skinner. “Yet no matter how you cut it, this represents a landmark change. A year ago, no one would have expected the NCAA to move definitively toward giving college athletes their NIL rights. California launched a tidal wave, with more than two dozen states joining the cause to give student athletes their NIL rights. I urge states to press forward with their plans and keep the pressure on the NCAA. I also look forward to closely examining the NCAA’s decision and monitoring the steps it takes going forward. Pressure from states and the public will help ensure the NCAA does the right thing — and crosses the finish line to fully give college athletes the same rights that all other Americans enjoy.”

 

Their responses follow an early morning announcement from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The issue of whether student athletes should be able to receive endorsements and have the ability to earn money from sales through items such as jerseys or bobble heads has been a charged debate for years. However, there are some caveats inside the Board’s recommendations, which are weaker than California’s law. One such guideline states that athletes could not use logos or trademarks from their school in endorsements. The board’s recommendations will now move to a rule-making process inside the three divisions of the NCAA. The new rules are expected to be adopted by January 2021 in order to take effect at the start of the next academic year.

 

Last year, Bradford and Skinner jointly authored Senate Bill 206, known as the Fair Pay to Play Act. This groundbreaking legislation becomes operational in 2023 and gives California student athletes the right to their name, image, and likeness, allowing them to earn money from sponsorships, endorsements, and other activities.

April 30, 2020 

By Antonio Ray Harvey 

California Black Media 

 

Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that California was the first state in the nation to secure Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding to place unsheltered people in hotel rooms at no cost to them. The state’s action is providing safe isolation for tens of thousands of homeless Californians during the global COVID-19 pandemic.  

 

Almost 129,000 Californians experienced homelessness in 2019. Nearly 40% of them were African Americans.

 

The state’s effort, dubbed Project Roomkey, set an initial goal of securing up to 15,000 rooms to fast track getting people off the street since Gov. Newsom instituted a stay-at-home order on March 19.

After about a week, county partners had moved 869 homeless individuals off the street, or out of shelters, and into isolation.

 

“Homeless Californians are incredibly vulnerable to COVID-19 and often have no option to self-isolate or social distance,” Gov. Newsom said. “By helping the most vulnerable homeless individuals get off the street, California can slow the spread of COVID-19 through homeless populations, lower the number of people infected and protect critical health care resources.”

 

As of April 3, the state reports that local governments had secured 6,867 emergency hotel rooms for shelter. Some homeless advocates say that number is a commendable achievement that begins to move the Newsom administration closer to its goal of mitigating what was perhaps the state’s most pressing problem before the COVID-19 crisis.

 

In Los Angeles County, the state’s homelessness crisis is most acute. It is also where the COVID-19 pandemic has caused the most hospitalizations and deaths. Officials there want to take the work of Project Roomkey further.

 

LA County Board of Supervisors’ Mark Ridley Thomas and Janice Hahn have developed a plan to house the homeless after the coronavirus crisis has been contained.

 

“We need to be thinking two steps ahead in order to mount a crisis response that is not only comprehensive but sustained,” Ridley-Thomas said in a statement on his website. “Now is the time to be having these conversations. Not when the disaster funding runs out.”

 

L.A. County’s Chief Executive Office Homeless Initiative is working hand-in-hand with the state, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, and several public and private partners to facilitate Project Roomkey.

 

As of April 13, over 1,946 beds at 23 sites in the county had been secured; of which 515 are already in use in an effort to protect unsheltered individuals and seniors with underlying medical conditions from contracting COVID-19.

 

Ridley-Thomas said that LA County has also put procedures in place to prioritize existing resources such as housing vouchers and resources for veterans.

 

Before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, state government attempts to speed up housing the homeless – including incentives provided to local governments to increase their housing inventory and efforts to penalize those that didn’t — met stiff resistance from lobbying groups, the state legislature, county boards, and city councils. Most recently, state senators killed SB 50, a bill that would have lifted local zoning restrictions statewide to allow denser and more multi-unit housing construction.

 

Now, across California, both the state and local governments are teaming up to solve the state’s homelessness problem like they never have before, sharing up to 75% of FEMA reimbursements for hotel rooms and wraparound support services like meals, security, and custodial maintenance. Local governments and community partners cover behavioral health and medical care costs.

 

California’s effort to provide emergency shelter for homeless families and individuals takes an innovative approach, homeless advocates say. It brings hotel units online at a rapid pace while providing business to the hospitality industry, a sector among those hardest hit by the Coronavirus crisis.

 

Kevin Carter, a homeless advocate and member of Northern California’s branch of the Poor People’s Campaign (PPC), has been canvassing parts of Sacramento aiding unsheltered individuals. He said PPC members have identified at least 30 homeless people in Sacramento’s Oak Park neighborhood.

 

“They are mostly Black people living and gathering in various homeless encampments,” Carter told California Black Media. “We supply them with water, food, hand sanitizers. And we see if anyone is sick or needs to be hospitalized for COVID-19.”

 

The National Poor People’s Campaign, started by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, confronts systemic racism, poverty, and social injustices, according to the organization’s website. Under the PPC banner, Carter and his colleagues put together a program called “Sacramento Housing Services, Not Suites Coalition.”

 

“One of the things we are focused on right now is getting hotel or motel rooms for the homeless through the city and county,” Carter said. “As far as what the governor is doing — he’s moving in the right direction.”

 

In 2019, an estimated 128,777 individuals in California experienced homelessness, based on the Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress. Over 108,000 people were tabulated as unsheltered and more than 41,000 suffered chronic homelessness, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

 

HUD’s annual report shows that 56,257 individuals were unsheltered in Los Angeles County in 2019, accounting for almost half of all unsheltered persons across the state of California.

 

Across the country, HUD reports that there were 568, 000 homeless people in 2019. African Americans, who only make up about 14% of the United States’ population accounted for 39.8%  (225,735 people) of that total. That included Black individuals both sleeping on the streets and living in shelters.

 

California accounted for one-third, 33%, of all people experiencing homelessness in the United States and more than half, about 53%, of all unsheltered individuals.

 

The state has also deployed 1,305 housing trailers to local governments that will complement the efforts of Project Roomkey.

 

“California has taken the lead in protecting homeless residents from COVID-19,” said Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “This initiative sets a strong national example of how state leaders can leverage their dollars with FEMA, HUD and other federal funds to address the needs of the most vulnerable homeless populations.”

April 30, 2020 

By Charlene Muhammad 

California Black Media 

 

Census Day 2020 came April 1. The global coronavirus pandemic was worsening. It had already forced social and economic shutdowns across America.

 

Since then, all the major African-American community-based organizations, political leaders and other advocates in California — concerned that there may be an undercount of Black Californians during the 2020 census count — have found themselves grappling.

 

Under a statewide shelter in place order, those groups have been working overtime, rejiggering outreach strategies from a boots-on-the-ground game to expanding online get-the-word-out campaigns — most of their social media content identifiable by the hashtag #MakeBlackCount.

 

Their goal, leaders say, is to ensure every Black household in California accurately completes its 2020 Census form.

 

Their hard work is paying off.

 

So far, California has a 53.8% response rate, which is higher than the national response rate of 52.4%. The state is on good footing at this point, considering that this is still the first phase of the national count, and census workers have not yet even begun to conduct in-person, door-to-door data collection campaigns. About 47.8% of participants in the state have responded online, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

 

“Up and down the state, most of the groups we’ve reached out to told us that they have had to step back and reimagine how they can best get their message to those African-American families and individuals who live in our hardest-to-count communities,” said Regina Wilson, Executive Director of California Black Media and a member of the California Complete Count committee.

 

“It is not business as usual,” Wilson continued.  “To be successful during this crisis, they have had to switch up their plans in real time. Its remarkable, but to achieve a full count of Blacks in the state, we have to keep that momentum up.”

 

During Census Week, responses jumped 9.1 percentage points — an estimated 1.36 million households self-responded to the Census form, the California Census 2020 Campaign announced April 9.

 

“We understand there is still more work to be done to make sure all Californians, especially those who are hard to count, fill out their questionnaire. We are proud of the work our partners are doing to push these self-response rates,” said Ditas Katague, Director of the California Complete Count – Census 2020 Office. “We’d like to remind everyone that filling out the Census form will help bring needed representation and resources to California’s diverse communities.”

 

The state’s success to date stems from the California Census Campaign’s work with more than 120 partners including local governments, tribal governments, K-12 schools, county offices of education, community-based organizations, state agencies and departments, faith-based organizations, labor unions, small businesses, ethnic and mainstream media outlets, and others.

 

COVID-19 prompted the Census Bureau to prioritize an online count; and caused the California governor to issue a statewide stay-at-home order for everyone except essential workers — or people going out to pick up medicines, shop for groceries or fill up their cars with gas.  Having to adhere to a 6-foot physical distancing mandate between people, per Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines, has also influenced how census informational campaigns are being executed.

 

But advocates say they are now more determined than ever to work for a complete count.

 

Many rely on social media and web-conferencing events and they emphasize that the confidential, simple 9-question Census questionnaire can be completed quickly online at my2020census.gov, and by phone in English and other languages at 844-330-2020. 

 

The U.S. Census Bureau has been sending paper forms to households that haven’t responded to the Census.

 

“Just think about Head Start and Meals on Wheels, and after-school programs.  That’s all dependent on getting everybody counted,” said Cassandra Jennings, president and CEO of the Greater Sacramento Urban League. She held a Celebrate Census Day Facebook live stream with Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg on April 1.

 

The Census Day celebration in Sacramento is just one example of many others that happened in regions of the state with the highest African-American populations, including the Los Angeles area, the Inland Empire, the Bay Area, the San Joaquin Valley, the Central Coast and greater San Diego.

 

Jennings’ virtual event featured an interactive social media challenge. Participants tweeted about completing census forms on Instagram or Facebook, then tagged 10 of their friends.  “Let’s challenge each other to complete the census, not tomorrow, not the next day, but on Census day April 1,” Jennings invited people online to participate.

 

Earlier this month, California Black Media (CBM) released “Counting Black California - Counting the Hard to Count.” The Sacramento-based organization updated its comprehensive report identifying areas in the state where African Americans are least likely to be counted by the 2020 Census. The study includes an easy-to-use, online interactive map scalable down to the street level with those hard-to-count tracts highlighted.

 

Although the coronavirus crisis has forced community-based organizations doing census outreach work to adjust, they are coping, said California community leaders and advocates across the state like Janette Robinson Flint, founder and executive director of Black Women for Wellness (BWW) in Los Angeles.

 

Its civic engagement program hired workers before the March 3 general primary elections. They went door-to-door and set up tables at grocery stores and public spaces to educate canvassers about including census awareness in their get-out-the-vote campaigns.

 

“My fear is that it’s going to be a serious undercount as a result of the coronavirus. At a community level, we just simply can’t afford to be undercounted,” she said.

 

Robinson Flint said the key is for organizations to be nimble enough to switch up their ground games in communities to reach people online and by other means.

 

Her organization is now relying on texting and social media and, in the process, studying the technological capacity of their community.

 

Black Women Organized for Political Action (BWOPA), a statewide social and political action organization — comprised of African-American elected and appointed officials; community leaders; activists; artists; scholars, and more — also pivoted its outreach strategy. The group recently released a video online featuring Black women across the state encouraging the community to respond and sharing how the Census directly benefits them.

 

Robinson-Flint says adjusting to a digital strategy has its challenges too, like unpredicted costs.

 

“A lot of people have smartphones, but if you ask them to text a thousand people, then that’s difficult for them in terms of how much it would cost,” Robinson Flint said.

 

Because of the COVID-19 crisis, the U.S. Census Bureau has adjusted its enumeration timeline. Field activities, which were scheduled to begin March 1, will not start until June 1. The bureau also warned that those dates and the processes associated with them might change, too.

 

“In-person activities, including enumeration, office work, and processing activities, will incorporate the most current guidance from authorities to ensure the health and safety of staff and the public” the bureau announced on its website.

 

Track response rates of every state here.

April 30, 2020 

By Jasmyne A. Cannick 

Special to the LAWT 

 

It’s been nearly two years since mother of two, Cherie Townsend, was accosted at gunpoint by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and arrested for the May 3, 2018 murder of Susan Leeds.  At the time, Leed’s death led the local news and made national headlines because she was a white woman who was murdered in a wealthy Los Angeles County suburb. 

Then Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell wasted no time in trying to pacify the residents of two cities that contracted his department for law enforcement services.  But two years later, Cherie

 

Townsend is still fighting to get the car she was in when she was arrested returned to her and to officially clear her name.

 

It was May 3, 2018, and Susan Leeds, a retired nurse, was found dead in the front seat of her Mercedes Benz SUV in the parking lot of the Promenade on the Peninsula shopping center in Rolling Hills Estates.  Investigators described the murder as a robbery gone wrong.

 

Initially, a homeless man was arrested and questioned but then released.

 

Days later, then 39-year-old Cherie Townsend a Black single mother of two, was out driving her gold 2008 Chevrolet Malibu when she was pulled over at gunpoint by the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and arrested for the murder of Leeds.

 

“I was driving on the freeway talking on the phone and noticed that a car was following me,” she explained. “I told my friend on the phone that I thought I was being followed.”

 

Not soon after Townsend says that she was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol and almost immediately she was surrounded by police cars and officers with their guns drawn and pointed at her.

 

“The next thing I know, I look up at my rearview mirror and there are about seven or eight police cars and they ask me to throw my keys out of the window and to slowly open my door and step out of the car.”

 

Townsend says detectives told her that a woman was killed in a shopping center and that they found her phone — a phone she says she had lost on May 3.

 

“They asked me did I see anything and I said no,” explained Townsend. “They asked me why I was there so I told them. Then they started asking me questions like do I have trouble with my finances and how do you pay your bills.”

 

Townsend said the detectives told her the woman killed had been robbed and that they believed that she knew something.

 

The soccer mom of two who split her time between driving her son to football practice and her daughter to acting auditions, gymnastics and cheerleading events, says she’s never even been in a fight and completely broke down crying and hyperventilating while the detectives took turns playing good cop bad cop.

 

Crying, Townsend recounted the detectives telling her that she wasn’t going home and that they were sure they were going to find her fingerprints and DNA.

 

Barely audible she says, “I told them I was innocent and they weren’t going to find anything.”

 

But even more troubling than that the single mother says is what the detectives told about why they targeted her for the crime.

 

“They told me that I didn’t belong at that mall,” a reference she understood to mean because she was Black.

 

“They had to blame somebody, and I was it.

 

Because like they explained to me in interrogation, they told me I didn’t have any business over there,” she says. “I’m not rich enough to be there, or I didn’t have the right car, or I didn’t look the part.”

 

Ms. Townsend was jailed for five days during which time Sheriff McDonnell used the opportunity to get some free pre-election media coverage by putting on a dog and pony show to announce a suspect had been caught. At the time of Ms. Townsend’s arrest, McDonnell was fighting to show voters why he should keep his job as sheriff.

 

But without any physical or circumstantial evidence, Ms. Townsend was eventually released from jail and to this day, has not been charged with any crime connected to Leeds’ murder.

 

Asked if the announcement had been a mistake, McDonnell said, “No, I thought it was what we needed to do to be able to let the community know where we were on the case. There was a lot of interest in that case, certainly, and a lot of anxiety, and to the degree that we were able to provide some closure, some comfort to that community, we wanted to do that.”

 

Two years later Cherie Townsend still doesn’t have her Chevrolet Malibu back and the sheriffs have not cleared her of being a suspect in the Leeds murder.

 

To make matters worse, despite the County of Los Angeles’ strict coronavirus quarantine orders for non-essential business, Ms. Townsend was ordered to attend a deposition in her civil rights lawsuit against the County for her wrongful arrest.

 

While former Sheriff Jim McDonnell and sheriff detectives were given the courtesy to attend the deposition virtually, Townsend and her attorney Nazareth Haysbert were ordered to appear in person under the threat of her case being dismissed if they did not.

 

“We should all be appalled and frightened that the County and the obviously biased Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Chooljian are ordering citizens of Los Angeles County into closed-door depositions at the height of a global pandemic and in spite of executive orders issued by local, state, and national governments warning citizens to stay at home or face fines and arrest if they do not comply,” said attorney Nazareth Haysbert. “How many other in-person depositions were ordered during this pandemic? Courts across the country are delaying trials and depositions and continuing discovery and trial deadlines but L.A. County has refused to do so with the support of the Courts putting many lives at risk for non-essential business.  We asked the County for an extension until May 1 for her deposition. They refused.”

 

On March 27, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order allowing the Judicial Branch to allow for remote depositions in every case (the law had previously required that parties be deposed in person) and electronic service of process.

 

Townsend is currently suing the County for defamation, emotional distress, negligence, false arrest/imprisonment and violation of her civil rights.

 

Almost two years later, the murder is still unsolved and the Sheriff’s Department still claims that Ms. Townsend is the lead suspect in the murder, although the County Board of Supervisors has issued a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the suspect.

 

Ms. Townsend says she is still dealing with the aftermath of being publicly accused of murder by the sheriff. She says that her entire life has changed and the lives of her two children. She lives in hiding and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome or PTSD. Townsend says that she was an active parent involved in all of her children’s activities but that has stopped. She’s scared to be in public because she thinks that everyone looks at her like she’s a murderer and when she sees the police she gets nervous with fear.

 

“I’m going to keep fighting. I am fighting to get my name back but also for my children who have also been harmed in all of this,” added Ms. Townsend. “I want my name and dignity back and I want my car back. This is far from over.”