Guest column: It won’t change until we act

American grocery stores, houses of worship, schools and entertainment venues all have one thing in common: they are no longer safe.

Since 2020, there have been roughly 1,509 mass shootings in the United States, including 202 so far in 2022 according to the Gun Violence Archive. Across the country, nearly 1,400 people have been killed in mass shootings over the past two years, with many more injured.

Advertisement

There are many elements at play here; easy access to guns and an inadequate mental health care system among them. But for many African Americans and people of color, white supremacy — one of the oldest American evils — poses a significant threat to our lives.

The May 14 mass shooting at Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, New York, is just one example of how white supremacy and unbridled access to guns can turn deadly. At roughly 2:30 p.m., an 18-year-old white supremacist entered a grocery store parking lot armed with body armor and a semi-automatic rifle emblazoned with the n-word and killed 10 people, all of whom were Black. Three other shoppers were injured. The shooter, who published a racist manifesto before the shooting, livestreamed the attack online.

Advertisement

Like many modern-day white supremacists, the Buffalo shooter claims he was radicalized on the internet. The ease with which young people can access unchecked hate speech online coupled with a lack of education of American history and the role of systemic racism in our country paves the way for hate crimes. The Buffalo shooter was motivated, in part, by the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which warns whites that they are being “replaced” in droves by people of color and immigrants. Given a platform by pundits such as Tucker Carlson, this “theory” serves as a call to action for white supremacists. And they are answering those calls.

According to FBI crime data, hate crimes in Indiana spiked in 2020, with 186 hate crimes reported that year. Thirty-four percent of those crimes targeted Black Hoosiers. Unfortunately, we have no legislation that would sufficiently sentence those who commit a hate crime in Indiana. Our state is one of just four in the nation without a comprehensive hate crime law on the books. Senate Enrolled Act No. 198, passed in 2019, makes no direct reference to crimes targeting individuals of specific races or national origins. The law simply states sentencing can be based on whether the perpetrator “committed the offense with bias due to the victim’s or the group’s real or perceived characteristic, trait, belief, practice, association or other attribute the court chooses to consider.”

Without a law distinctly protecting citizens from race-based violence, our General Assembly spent much of last session trying to block American history from being taught in public schools under the guise of protecting students from Critical Race Theory — something that isn’t even taught in K-12 schools.

Fortunately, House Bill 1134 failed to pass through the Senate. However, Gov. Eric Holcomb signed House Bill 1369 — which eliminates the permit requirement to own a handgun — into law. Despite pushback from Indiana State Police, the law is set to take effect next month.

With an average of 23 school shootings per year in America, the Indiana state legislature is worried about teachers’ lesson plans while simultaneously easing restrictions on firearms? If we truly cared about protecting our children — all of our children — we would do everything in our power to pass commonsense gun reform and to ensure our history is being taught properly to prevent the atrocities of our past from ever happening again.

Unfortunately, we are failing to act. In order to protect our most vulnerable citizens, I’m calling on the Indiana General Assembly to pass a comprehensive hate crimes law that explicitly lays out harsher penalties for those who commit violence targeting people specifically for their race, national origin, gender, sexual orientation or religion. With racist violence on the rise in our state and around the nation, the Indiana legislature has an obligation to our citizens to loudly declare that hate has no home here, and follow through with adequate sentencing when someone commits an act of hate.

Rep. Cherrish Pryor (D-Indianapolis) is the Democratic Party Floor Leader in the Indiana House of Representatives. She has served in the State Legislature since 2008.

OP-ED: The need for a change to Pennsylvania’s Compassionate Release Program 

By Barbara Chavous-Pennock

In April, David Ohl of Spotlight PA wrote about the plight of the incarcerated ill in Pennsylvania’s prison system and the fallacy of Pennsylvania’s Compassionate Release legislation that would cause an inmate to choose death in order to be able to be released and go home.  

This was the plight of Bradford Gamble, who at age 65, was notified by a slip of paper a guard placed in his cell that he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  He was provided with no other information.  In time, after much pain and confusion, he learned that he had metastatic colon cancer that had already spread to his liver.  His choice was to receive treatment or to use a little known law allowing him to be released based on his age and diagnosis of a year or less to live.  He chose to go home and die.

Bradford Gamble is not the only person who has gone home to die.  The Prison Society shared information about Howard White, who like Gamble, only became aware of his condition when he had reached a stage 4 diagnosis of cancer.  To make matters worse, while he lay dying in the prison infirmary, it was reported that he was not receiving his medication and was not being properly cared for to prevent bedsores. 

The family of Howard White petitioned for his compassionate release. On March 17, 2022, the hospital doctor gave White two weeks to live.  This diagnosis automatically qualified White for hospice care.  However, he was not discharged to hospice but to a facility that lacked adequate support and needed care for a patient in such dire medical need.  

Image

Hospice, the service provided for the terminally ill, is dependent upon medical health insurance approval. As a result, the service is not likely to be approved for someone who has spent 35 years in prison.

Pennsylvania’s Compassionate Release legislation, as reported, is narrowly written. To compound matters, as in the case of White, Gamble, and others, they have to be at death’s door before they can be released, and even then, in some instances prisoners have been denied. In Pennsylvania’s prison system, when it comes to persons who have spent their lives in prison only 31 have been released in the past 13 years, despite their age or terminal illness diagnosis.  Since 2016, eight people have died waiting for a medical transfer.

This is a travesty and must change. It is unjust, inhumane, and the financial and emotional toll on the commonwealth, families, and individuals is staggering.  Does a prison life sentence mean that one should have to die there from an illness which a person, if properly treated in a timely professional manner with adequate health care and service, could be healed and recover? Does our prison system need to take months, allowing older, infirmed individuals to waste away inside, when they have loving families willing and waiting to care for them at home?

As a society, we can and must do better.  Our prison system is broken.  Compassionate Care legislation in Pennsylvania is desperately in need of change. Howard White returned home on April 6, 2022 with bedsores on his body and the heels of his feet.  He died on April 14, 2022.  

In Pennsylvania and across the nation some might say that our animals in shelters receive better humane treatment and care than that of incarcerated individuals who have spent unimaginable years behind bars. AP News reports that in a state where the overall population of African Americans is approximately 12%, African Americans make up 47% of the prison population.  The disparity is alarming.

Even during COVID-19, the worse health crisis in modern time, 878 individuals 65 years of age or older remained in prison and contracted coronavirus. The Department of Corrections dashboard further reports 166 deaths from COVID, of which 83 were African American and 93 were 65 years of age or older. 

Let us not forget –we are not talking about numbers.  These are human beings…someone’s husband, father, son, brother, or loved one.  Why should someone who at the age of 19 or 20 may have committed a horrible crime, but now at the age of 68 or 70 with a myriad of health problems and costly medical needs is deathly ill behind bars, languish  in the infirmary, when he could be living his last days with compassion and loved ones?

Disclaimer: The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the writer do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the management of the Philadelphia Sunday SUN or its advertisers.

Telling George Floyd’s story gave us a deeper…

In their new book, “His Name Is George Floyd,” Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa examine the conditions of Black life in America. Here, they share how their reporting transformed their understanding.

ROBERT: I could hardly stomach reading about that white supremacist last weekend who drove to a grocery store in Buffalo to kill Black people – people who look like us.

A familiar feeling set in. We had spent a year exploring the underbelly of the American promise, making sense of the version that George Floyd knew. We had ducked gunshots doing on-the-street reporting and calmed down depressed witnesses who hit themselves while being interviewed. We had to watch the horrific video of death under the knee of a Minneapolis cop again and again.

Our book, “His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice,” focuses on how Floyd’s life was shaped by the structures of systemic racism and whether his death did anything to dismantle them. Occasionally, people we knew worried about the impact that this traumatic reporting would have on our psyche. They’d look us in the eyes, earnestly, and ask, “Are you okay?”

It wasn’t an easy question to answer.

TOLUSE: There was, of course, an easy – if not fully forthright – answer. We’re journalists, we’re fine. As reporters, we have a professional duty to remain a step removed from the news, staying firmly on the right side of the line between covering a story and becoming consumed by it.

We also had the privilege of professional distance – after all, we had not known Floyd before he was murdered, did not share in the nightmares that haunted his family members, did not suffer from the crying spells and post-traumatic stress that troubled his friends.

ROBERT: But nothing I’ve ever worked on has ever left me feeling so human, so raw. Honestly, there were times I did not feel fine. I had embedded with some of George Floyd’s closest friends and family during the trial of the former police officer who kept his knee on Floyd’s neck, and we were living in a city on edge.

I felt like I was on a parallel journey. As a journalist, you try not to center stories on yourself – the work, after all, is not about you. But as a Black man in America, it kind of was.

TOLUSE: In some ways, the fact that we shared his skin color was considered an asset as we were tasked with unlocking the answers to two critical questions: Who was George Floyd? And what was it like to grow up in his America?

Living our own American journeys as Black men helped us understand Floyd – his insecurities over his size and skin, his nervousness during police encounters, his feeling that, as he once articulated, “people quick to count you out, man, but just so strict on counting you in.”

That comment encapsulates the operating principle of systemic racism, which Floyd experienced in housing, education, policing, criminal justice and health care.

As we sought to tell Floyd’s story with all its nuance and fullness – never shading over his flaws or mistakes – we were challenged by the journalistic mission of explaining, through one man’s life, how injustice operates in the 21st century.

As we dove into the mission, the hundreds of hours of interviews and research we conducted brought the power of racism to life for us.

ROBERT: The defining moment for me was one Sunday evening in April 2021. Photojournalist Joshua Lott and I were covering a rally in St. Paul, Minn., organized by Toshira Garraway, whose boyfriend, Justin Tiegen, died in dubious circumstances after a police chase in 2009.

When she asked those who had loved ones killed by police to share their stories, she begged them to be brief. Her request was about the constraints of time: There were so many families whose voices needed to be heard. Some of the victims had mental illnesses; some did not. Some came from middle-class families; some did not. Some had arrest records; others did not. What the families had in common was that they believed the police covered up the fatal encounters to justify their actions – and that almost very victim was Black.

One mother who spoke that day looked like my own mom, and I began imagining her at such an event. The sadnesses were piling up. I had started that day watching one of George Floyd’s brothers, Philonise, break down in the middle of a church service. And a little before the rally started, Joshua and I met up with Courteney Ross, George Floyd’s girlfriend, who was having a panic attack.

“I don’t know if I can handle any more,” I told Joshua as the rally concluded.

The crowd had not fully dispersed, though, when people learned that another police officer had shot and killed a young Black man, 20-year-old Daunte Wright. The encounter started with a minor offense – Wright was driving a car with expired tags – and ended with his death. This was the type of fatal escalation that my mother warned about, the type of thing that is much more likely to happen if you are Black.

For everyone at the rally, the threat of police violence felt like it was encircling us.

Before reporting this book, I considered systemic racism to be an unmoving, dark cloud that hung over us. As I watched life unfurl for these families, I understood that the residue of America’s original sin was something more terrifying. Racism is a pervasive, insidious force threatening to corrupt the spirit of every American if it is not acknowledged and confronted. I realized why so many of the families felt they had little choice but to fight racial injustice. You could not simply run away.

TOLUSE: I had tried to run away – from the video. For more than a year, I managed to avoid it.

In the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s death, I would turn away when TV news started to show the shaky footage and speed-scroll when the imagery automatically began to play in my social media feeds.

Yes, I was covering the protests and the political movement sparked by Floyd’s heinous death, but I had no intention of viewing the video that had helped ignite the flame. The prospect of watching another Black person be killed by an agent of the state – during a pandemic that had disproportionately decimated Black communities, in the middle of an election season that had revealed the growing political power of blatant racism – just seemed like too much.

But when it came time to write this book – tracing Floyd’s family history back to the abusive eras of slavery and sharecropping, documenting his struggles to navigate prejudiced housing and education systems, and re-creating the scene of his death – I could no longer turn away.

Sitting alone in the quiet of predawn writing sessions, I opened my laptop to a bookmarked YouTube page that advertised “RAW” imagery with “graphic content and language some may find offensive.” My hand hovered over the space bar as I hit play and pause over and over again to document every frame. When that became too cumbersome, I slowed down the speed of the video until the footage proceeded at a haunting crawl, allowing me to capture every word, every movement, every split-second decision, every breath.

The harrowing video left an indelible imprint in my brain.It played and paused in my subconscious, Floyd’s dying words echoing while I slept.

“They’re going to kill me.”

(Pause. Play.)

“I can’t breathe.”

(Pause. Play.)

“I. Can’t. Breathe.”

I ended up watching Floyd die more than 100 times, from a half-dozen vantage points.

And as difficult as it was to spend so much time engaging with a death, I understood that for the people who knew and loved Floyd, it was grievously painful.

So I was not surprised at their answers when I asked many of them when they had first seen the video.

“I still haven’t watched it,” several of Floyd’s friends and family members told me. “And I never will.”

ROBERT: It took me months to even feel comfortable asking that question. I knew how easy it can be for news organizations to reduce being Black in America to a life of pain and pity, as if that were the full story. And I wanted to make sure the people I spent time with knew I meant it when I said: “I don’t want to talk to you about his death. I want to talk about his life.”

They told me about Floyd’s sense of humor and humility. They pulled up text messages and rummaged through storage units to find old photos; they showed us old poems and song lyrics that he wrote as a way to get his mind off his mistakes.

Even though those friends had encountered so much pain and prejudice, they hardly wavered in their belief that a better tomorrow was achievable. They joined us in believing in the power of journalism. And they did what I do when I worry that things in this country won’t get better: They cried with friends, talked with therapists. They prayed. And then they kept going.

But as the two-year anniversary of Floyd’s death approaches, the public has largely moved on. The efforts in 2020 to read more books discussing racism have shifted to a push to ban those same kinds of books in 2022. And although there have been more convictions of police officers in cases in which they murdered Black civilians, African Americans have continued to be shot and killed at disproportionately higher rates.

After Buffalo, President Joe Biden referred to white supremacy as a “poison.” It is. In reporting the book, I asked Biden how the country could find its cure and eradicate its racist past. He told us that hate will never fully go away – it will find ways to hide – and the key is to find ways to contain it.

When I sat down with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, he lamented that momentum to make significant legislative changes to reduce racial inequality waned so quickly that he had probably missed his chance. “We may not get another shot at this,” he told me.

TOLUSE: Walz’s pessimism stood in stark contrast to the message of perseverance we heard when we sat down with the Rev. Jesse Jackson last year. Jackson used a football analogy to describe his sense of the status of the fight for racial justice after Chauvin’s conviction: “This is a first down, not a touchdown.” He emphasized the importance of acknowledging victories large and small within the movement while staying focused on the ultimate goal of equality – a goal he had been pursuing longer than either of us had been alive.

ROBERT: One of my earliest childhood memories is of sitting atop my father’s shoulders at a West Indian Day parade because he wanted me to see that a Black man could run for president. I remember Jackson running across the stage, telling the crowd to keep hope alive.

After spending nearly two years diving into the history of race in America, I imagined how many times Jackson must have felt that the country was on the precipice of achieving racial equality, only to see a debilitating backlash. I thought about how disappointing it must be that racism continues to have such resonance.

Toward the end of the interview, I asked, “Rev. Jackson, how do you actually keep hope alive?”

I didn’t realize it, but I was essentially asking a version of, “Are you okay?”

Jackson asked Tolu and me to consider the progress the country had made. He ticked off cities where he once protested discriminatory laws, cities that were now being run by Black mayors and police chiefs. He talked about the days when Black people could not publicly question a corrupt police officer, much less expect a jury to send that officer to prison. He looked at us – two Black journalists writing a book on a defining moment in American history – and reminded us that there was a time when mainstream publishers wouldn’t even think about giving us the chance.

“We’re winning,” Jackson told us. “No matter, what, remember: We’re still winning.”

This past week, I thought about the pain I saw in Minneapolis and the new pain felt in Buffalo. I closed my eyes and thought about what Jackson had told us. Then, I found myself uttering, “We’re winning, we’re still winning,” wishing that it were true.

With “Night of Ideas,” French diplomacy delivers an evening of pure Atlanta innovation

With “Night of Ideas,” French diplomacy delivers an evening of pure Atlanta innovation
Mayor Andre Dickens speaks on a panel with six recent graduates during the Night of Ideas.

Photograph by Connie Cross

The most famous icon of France’s influence in America stands at 305 feet tall, weighs 225 tons, and was shipped from Paris in hundreds of pieces before being reconstructed in New York harbor in 1886. The Statue of Liberty still enchants her visitors, but these days, French diplomacy packs a little lighter. In fact, last weekend’s Night of Ideas festival at the Woodruff Arts Center—which featured conversations about Atlanta’s future between local creatives, entrepreneurs, and intellectuals—was so distinctly Atlanta that one might hardly have realized it was co-sponsored by the French Consulate.

That was intentional, said Gaëtan Bruel, ahead of Saturday’s event. Bruel is the cultural counselor of the French Embassy in the U.S. and director of Villa Albertine, a French cultural institution that facilitates artists’ residencies in 10 American cities and around the world. “We’re not here to first and foremost to raise the French flag,” he said. “We believe that . . . it’s less important to promote French artists than to create a global frame for debates.”

The French Embassy introduced the Night of Ideas festival in the U.S. in 2015 and now hosts the event annually in dozens of cities, from New York to Kathmandu. The “marathon of ideas” runs late into the night, held on the same day all over the world. This was Atlanta’s first year in the program—“We should have been here earlier!” Bruel quipped—and to pull it off, Villa Albertine partnered with the Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs to curate a roster of speakers with deep ties to Atlanta’s cultural life. The list was dizzying, including Bem Joiner, creator of Atlanta Influences Everything, Mayor Andre Dickens, contemporary artist and muralist Fabian Williams, and Ryan Gravel, the original designer of the BeltLine. Panel discussions ranged from inclusivity in art and technology to the future of urban development, all guided by a central question: “Where do we go from here?”

“We were very intentional on making sure that we covered the aspects of Atlanta life that will affect creatives,” said Camille Russell Love, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs. “It was very intentionally Atlanta.

The evening’s wide-ranging conversations illustrated both the city’s storied history, and its anxious, contemporary self-analysis. Perhaps no city in America is more eager to establish where it goes from here.

The night kicked off with a panel discussion between Dickens and six recent graduates, who each posed a question to the mayor drawing on their field of study, ranging from the use of public space in city architecture to the importance of bioethics in genomic research. Mayor Dickens offered thoughtful responses to students’ questions, and even won over the crowd’s francophones by attempting a few halting words in French, adding, “Thank you Ms. Anderson at Mays High School for that!”

With “Night of Ideas,” French diplomacy delivers an evening of pure Atlanta innovation
Rose Scott, Ryan Gravel, Maurice Hobson, and Wanona Satcher speak on a panel during the Night of Ideas.

Photograph by Connie Cross

Rose Scott, host of “Closer Look” on WABE, led a panel on the future of Atlanta’s urban development and the politics of inclusion, which featured Gravel, along with Atlanta historian and Georgia State professor Maurice Hobson and Wanona Satcher, CEO and Founder of Mākhers Studio. All four criticized the city’s private and public sectors for failing to effectively address Atlanta’s rapid population growth and attendant issues of social inequality.

“Change is coming,” Gravel warned. “We have to be intentional about how we change, and who we’re changing for.”

The evening’s new approach to diplomacy was perhaps best illustrated in a panel titled “African Art and the Black Perspective.” Cheryl Finley, director of the Atlanta University Center Art Collective, drew from her forthcoming book Black Venice to trace the history of the storied Venice Biennale and its inclusion of Black artists. She juxtaposed an illustration of the Berlin Conference—that apex of imperial diplomacy, in which European nations divvied up the African continent for themselves—with the sculpture “Scramble for Africa” by Nigerian-British artist Yinka Shonibare, who has shown work at the Biennale. This year, Finley noted, the American pavilion at the Biennale was helmed for the first time by a Black woman artist, sculptor Simone Leigh, whose designs reckon intently with the legacies of colonialism. All over the world, Finley seemed to be saying, a new kind of diplomacy is at work.

With “Night of Ideas,” French diplomacy delivers an evening of pure Atlanta innovation
Accidental Queens co-founders Diane Landais and Miryam Houali speak on a panel with Atlanta artist Fabian Williams

Photograph by Connie Cross

The thoughtful selection of panelists allowed for fresh conversations, amplifying perspectives long relegated to the margins. A panel on inclusion in technology and art, led by Fulton County Public Art Manager Alex Frankcombe, delved into Atlanta’s art and technology sectors, pondering the Metaverse, NFTs, and how to build better virtual worlds. Frankcombe was joined by Williams, whose murals are found all over the city, and Diane Landais and Miryam Houali, co-founders of the French video game design studio Accidental Queens, currently in Atlanta as part of a Villa Albertine residency. Their conversation traced the thorny ouroboros of art, society, and culture, and evoked a new flavor of globalism, one that centers the historically marginalized rather than traditional inheritors of power. “It is our responsibility to make worlds that are better than the worlds that we come from,” Houali said.

Just before this conversation, however, news arrived that an avowed white supremacist had just gunned down Black shoppers and workers in a Buffalo grocery store. From the stage, Williams acknowledged the shooting with an exhausted shake of his head. “I’m trying to bring all of this real life into the digital space,” he said of his work. “There are issues we need to resolve here. We have history we need to listen to.”

The news was a grim reminder that, for all the world has changed, it remains gripped by old hatreds and fears. But it also heightened the feeling of critical primacy that stoked these conversations: perhaps at no other time has America been more desperate to know where we go from here. The discussions continued, the night grew long, and a note of hope rippled quietly through the halls. It is through ideas like these that we will find our way.

Advertisement

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

Northern Quest adds last three artists to summer concert lineup

Dwight Yoakum & Emmylou Harris, I Love the 90s, and Bret Michaels & Jimmie Allen will be joining the Northern Quest 11th Annual Pepsi Outdoor Summer lineup.

AIRWAY HEIGHTS, Wash. — Northern Quest Resort & Casino announced Friday the last bands joining the 11th Annual Pepsi Outdoor Summer lineup. The final three shows include some rock ‘n’ roll, a little bit of country and music from the 90s.

The bands added to the concert’s list are Dwight Yoakum & Emmylou Harris, I Love the 90s, and Bret Michaels & Jimmie Allen.

Fans of country music will enjoy Dwight Yoakam & Emmylou Harris’ hit song “GoldenRing,”  on Aug. 5, 2022. Yoakam has recorded more than 20 albums, charted more than 30 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, and sold more than 30 million records. Yoakam’s hit songs include “Guitars, Cadillacs”, “Streets of Bakersfield”, “I Sang Dixie”, “Little Sister” and “Fast as You” 

American singer and songwriter Emmylou Harris has released dozens of albums and singles over the course of her career. She has won 14 Grammy Awards and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Harris’ big hits include “Together Again”, “Sweet Dreams”, “Two More Bottles of Wine”, “Beneath Still Waters” and “Boulder to Birmingham”

Tickets for Dwight Yoakam & Emmylou Harris will cost $59-$109 and go on sale on Friday, May 27 at 10 a.m. 

I love the 90s will bring the most iconic hip-hop singers, R&B artists, and rockstars of the nineties to the Northern Quest on August 31, including Vanilla Ice, Mark McGrath, Montell Jordan, All-4-One, Color Me Badd, Coolio, and Rob Base. Tickets go on sale Friday, May 27 and prices range from $49-$99.

Bret Michaels & Jimmie Allen will be sharing the stage on Sept. 9, 2022. 

Bret Michaels gained fame as the frontman of the glam metal rock band Poison. He has several solo albums and starred in several films and TV shows, including as a judge on Nashville Star, which led to his country-influenced rock album Freedom of Sound in 2005.  Michaels’ hit songs include “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”, “I Won’t Forget You”, “Talk Dirty to Me”, “Something to Believe In”, “All I Ever Needed”, and “Fallen”

Jimmie Allen, a multi-platinum recording artist and songwriter, was nominated for Best New Artist at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards, his first-ever Grammy nomination. Allen made history as the first Black artist to launch a career with two consecutive No. 1 hits off his 2018 debut album Mercury Lane. His big hits include “Best Shot”, “Make Me Want To”, “Big In a Small Town”, “Freedom was a Highway”, and “Down Home”.

Tickets for Bret Michaels & Jimmie Allen go on sale on Friday, May 27 at 10 a.m. Ticket prices range from $49-$99.

Tickets for all announced shows are on sale now and can be purchased at the Northern Quest website or by calling (509) 481-2800.

Here’s the completed 11th Annual Northern Quest Pepsi Outdoor Summer Concert lineup (2022):

  • June 17:
    • John Fogerty with Hearty Har 
    • Ticket prices are $49/$59/$79/$99
  • June 18: 
    • Barenaked Ladies, Gin Blossoms and Toad the Wet Sprocket
    •  Ticket prices are $49/$59/$79/$99 
  • June 20:
    • Tenacious D with Puddles Pity Party
    • Ticket prices are $49/$69/$89/$100
  • June 23:
    •  Flo Rida and T.I.
    • Ticket prices are $59/$69/$79/$99
  • June 26:
    •  Brad Paisley with Chance McKinney 
    • Ticket prices are $89/$99/$109/$129
  • July 15: 
    •   The Avett Brothers with Calder Allen 
    • Ticket prices are $59/$69/$79/$99
  • July 17:
    •  Stone Temple Pilots and Daughtry
    • Ticket prices are $49/$69/$89/$109
  • July 22
    • Goo Goo Dolls with Blue October
    • Ticket prices are $59/$69/$79/$99
  • July 24: 
    • Jon Pardi with Lainey Wilson and Hailey Whitters
    • Ticket prices are $59/$69/$89/$109
  • August 5:
    • Dwight Yoakam & Emmylou Harris 
    • Ticket prices are $59/$69/$89/$109 and go on sale on May 27
  • August 6:
    • Bretty Young 
    • Ticket prices are $39/$49/$59/$79
  • August 14: 
    • The Australian Pink Floyd Show
    • Ticket prices are $39/$49/$59/$79
  • August 18:
    • Larry the Cable Guy with special guest Josh Blue 
    • Ticket prices are $39/$49/$69/$89
  • August 20:
    •  Rockzilla Tour: Papa Roach, Falling in Reverse, Hollywood Undead with Bad Wolves 
    • Ticket prices are $49/$59/$79/$99
  • August 21: 
    • Tesla, Buckcherry & Great White 
    • Ticket prices are $49/$59/$79/$99
  • August 31:
    • I love the 90s
    •  Ticket prices are $49/$59/$79/$99 on go on sale on May 27
  • September 9: 
    • Bret Michaels & Jimmie Allen 
    • Ticket prices are $49/$59/$79/$99 and go on sale on May 27
  • September 17: 
    • Sam Hunt with Travis Denning 
    • Ticket prices are $79/$99/$129/$149
  • September 26:
    • Lynyrd Skynyrd.
    •  Ticket prices are $89/$99/$109/$129

[embedded content]

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

Viola Davis On Director Calling Her By Maid’s Name

… of Hollywood's persistent racism and mistreatment of Black female … Fences (about a working class African-American father trying to raise his … where she experienced colourism or racism. Davis' earlier roles included … RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News

American Black Film Festival Reveals 2022 Spotlight Screenings Lineup

The American Black Film Festival (ABFF) announced its lineup of 12 spotlight screenings from its studio and network partners. The screenings include premieres and previews of feature films, documentaries and episodic series. Regarded as the preeminent showcase for quality Black content, the festival will take place live in Miami Beach June 15-19 and continues virtually June 20–30 on ABFF PLAY, https://abffplay.com/, the festival’s custom-designed online platform.

This year’s collection of live spotlight screenings include, Rap Sh!t, the new series created by award-winning actress/director/writer/producer and 2022 Festival Ambassador Issa Rae presented by HBO Max; Down With the King, starring rapper Freddie Gibbs from Sony Pictures Entertainment; a sneak peak of Prime Video’s A League of Their Own starring Chanté Adams; Onyx Collective and ABC News Studio’s Aftershock, a film that explores America’s maternal health care crisis; Disney+’s TheProud Family: Louder and Prouder, the critically acclaimed revival of Disney Channel’s groundbreaking original series “The Proud Family;” TV One’s upcoming Stranger Next Door from Emmy Award® winning director Victoria Rowell; A&E’s Right to Offend: The Black Comedy Revolution, an exploration documenting how Black comedians used laughter to push social boundaries and cultural change; a first look at The SpringHill Company’s After Jackie documentary from Emmy Award® winning and Academy Award® nominated filmmaker Stanley Nelson and critically-acclaimed director Andre Gaines premiering on the HISTORY Channel®; a new episode of Black Love, entitled There Isn’t One Way, featuring couples Remy Ma and Papoose and Kenric and Sonequa Martin Green from Confluential Films, and; a compilation of shorts from BET Her, focusing on issues affecting the mental and physical health in the Black community, Behind the Smile! directed by Naturi Naughton and The Pink Fight directed by LisaRaye McCoy. Previously announced, the festival will open with the Netflix documentary CIVIL, an intimate verité look at the life of maverick civil rights attorney Ben Crump directed and produced by award-winning filmmaker Nadia Hallgren and produced by Kenya Barris, Roger Ross Williams and Lauren Cioffi. 

(Image: Courtesy of American Black Film Festival)

“ABFF continues to be an unparalleled resource for studios, networks and streamers to promote and publicize their upcoming releases to Black audiences. We are excited to share these films and series with this year’s attendees,” said Jeff Friday, founder and chief executive officer of ABFF Ventures LLC.

Virtual spotlight screenings to be featured on ABFF PLAY include Color Of Change’s eye-opening documentary What’s Costing Hollywood?, a mini-documentary that explores how data is often used to inform executive-level decision-making in Hollywood with a talkback moderated by Kendrick Sampson and A Beautiful Resistance from The Boston Globe. Right to Offend: The Black Comedy Revolution will have an encore presentation on the platform.

For more details on the spotlight-screenings see below and visit www.abff.com for the full schedule.

Rap Sh!t

Rap Sh!t follows two estranged high school friends from Miami, Shawna and Mia, who reunite to form a rap group.Cast: Aida Osman (Shawna), KaMillion (Mia), Jonica Booth (Chastity), Devon Terrell (Cliff,) RJ Cyler (Lamont)Executive Producer/Writer: Issa Rae (for HOORAE); Executive Producer/Showrunner: Syreeta Singleton; Executive Producer: Montrel McKay (for HOORAE); Executive Producers: Dave Becky and Jonathan Berry (for 3 Arts Entertainment); Executive Producer: Deniese Davis

Hip hop duo Yung Miami and JT of City Girls serve as co-executive producers, along with Kevin “Coach K” Lee and Pierre “P” Thomas for Quality Control Films and Sara Rastogi for HOORAE. Sadé Clacken Joseph directed the pilot. Rae’s audio content company Raedio will handle music supervision for the series.

Courtesy of Warner Brothers Discovery and HBO Max

Down With the King

Rap star Money Merc (Freddie Gibbs) has been sent by his manager, Paul, to a rural house in the Berkshires to focus on his next album. Disenchanted with his music career and the 24/7 upkeep that such fame entails, Merc has no desire to write or record music. Instead, he spends most of his time at his neighbor’s farm learning about farming and enjoying the simplicity of country life. After Merc abruptly announces his retirement on Twitter, Paul rushes to the countryside to lure him back into the music industry.

Director: Diego Ongaro

Producers: Rob Cristiano, Zach LeBeau and Kim Jackson

Cast: Freddie Gibbs, Jamie Neumann, David Krumholtz, Sharon Washington and Bob Tarasuk

Courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment

A League of Their Own

A League of Their Own evokes the joyful spirit of Penny Marshall‘s beloved classic, while widening the lens to tell the story of an entire generation of women who dreamed of playing professional baseball. The show takes a deeper look at race and sexuality, following the journey of a whole new ensemble of characters as they carve their own paths towards the field, both in the League and outside of it.

Cast: Chanté Adams

Co-creator: Will Graham

Executive Producers:  Will Graham, Desta Tedros Reff

Head of DEI, Prime Video: Latasha Gillespie

Courtesy of Prime Video

Aftershock 

Shamony Gibson and Amber Rose Isaac were excited mothers-to-be whose deaths due to childbirth complications were preventable. Directors Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee follow Gibson’s and Isaac’s bereaved partners as they fight for justice and build communities of support with other surviving Black fathers. Aftershock shines a light on the world of gynecology—one that has a long-standing history of exploiting and neglecting Black women in America—while simultaneously uplifting the families, activists and birth workers who are striving to bring change.

Directed and Produced by: Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee

Executive Producers: Dawn Porter, Jenny Raskin, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Patty Quillin, Jennifer and Jonathan Allan Soros, Tegan Acton, Emma Pompetti, Janet Tittiger, Davis Guggenheim and Rahdi Taylor

Co-Executive Producers:  Lauren HaberKelsey KoenigNina and David FialkowBarbara and Eric DobkinDonna and Kevin GruneichBill and Eva Price

Courtesy of Onyx Collective and ABC News Studios

The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder 

A continuation of the acclaimed series, The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder follows the adventures and misadventures of newly 14-year-old Penny Proud and her Proud Family as they navigate modern life with hilarity and heart. The 2020s brings new career highs for mom Trudy, wilder dreams for dad Oscar and new challenges for Penny, including a socially woke neighbor who thinks she has a lot to teach her, bullying social media influencers who want to cancel her and her own teenage hormones.

Cast: Kyla Pratt, Tommy Davidson, Paula Jai Parker, JoMarie Payton, Cedric the Entertainer 

Executive Producers:  Bruce W. Smith and Ralph Farquhar 

Courtesy of Disney+

Stranger Next Door

Former police detective Rochelle Sellers (Vicky Jeudy) has had a year for the ages. After being shot by an unknown assailant and forced to retire, she divorces her husband and has to testify against him as the key witness in a high-profile police corruption trial. To ensure she is protected, she decided to live in seclusion and take on the role of caretaker for her ill father. However, when Jesse Holmes (Skyh Black) moves in next door, Rochelle is smitten. The perceived fairy tale takes a turn for the worst when it appears that Jesse is not the man he professes to be.

Director: Victoria Rowell

Cast: Tim Reid (Ernest Sellers), Vicky Jeudy (Rochelle Sellers) and Skyh Black (Jesse Holmes)

Produced for TV One by Je’Caryous Johnson (Je’Caryous Productions) and Jami McCoy-Lankford (Hillionaire Productions)

Courtesy of TV One

Right to Offend: The Black Comedy Revolution

This new two-part documentary event explores the progression of Black comedy and the comedians who have used pointed humor to expose, challenge and ridicule society’s injustices and to articulate the Black experience in America. The series examines Black comedy through a unique lens, tracing the evolution and social awakening of the courageous comedians who dared to push against the constraints of their time and spoke truth to power.

Directors:  Mario Diaz and Jessica Sherif

Executive Producers: Alexa Conway, Mario Diaz, Loren Hammonds, Lance Nichols, Ian Orefice, Jessica Sherif, Brad Abramson and Elaine Frontain Bryant

Courtesy of A&E Network

After Jackie

During the 75th anniversary year of Jackie Robinson becoming the first Black player allowed to play modern Major League Baseball, this new two-hour documentary from The SpringHill Company After Jackie tells the often-overlooked story of the second wave of talented Black baseball players after Jackie Robinson, including Bill White, Curt Flood and Bob Gibson, who fought battles on and off the field to demand a fairer and more inclusive America for African Americans, and athletes around the world.

Executive Producers: LeBron James, Maverick Carter, Jamal Henderson, Phil Byron of The Spring Hill Company; Stanley Nelson, Andre Gaines; Eli Lehrer, Jim Pasquarella of the HISTORY® Channel: Nick Trotta, Jon O’Sheal of Major League Baseball

Courtesy of the HISTORY® Channel, The SpringHill Company and Major League Baseball 

Black Love

Black Love, from filmmakers Codie Elaine Oliver and Tommy Oliver and Confluential Films, seeks to answer, “What does it take to make a marriage work?” In the 6th and final season premiere, a diverse set of couples detail the early days of their relationship and how they knew the other was the one. From meeting and marrying in under a year, break ups to make ups, dating a coworker, and a pre-prison proposal, these couples highlight their beginnings and the hurdles they faced along the way.

Couples: Remy Ma and Papoose, Kenric and Sonequa Martin-Green, Ashleigh Blaine Featherson and Darroll Jenkins, Codie and Tommy Oliver

Director: Codie Elaine Oliver

Executive Producers: Tommy Oliver, Codie Elaine Oliver

Courtesy of Confluential Films

A compilation of shorts:

Behind the Smile!

Focuses on a newly promoted anchorwoman who falls into a severe depression when she is forced to choose between her dream job and her Vitiligo support group.

Director: Naturi Naughton

Executive Producer: Tressa “Azarel” Smallwood

Written by: Lori Conway Ray

Courtesy of BET Her

The Pink Fight

Revolves around a female boxer who is diagnosed with breast cancer and follows her battle as she and her wife fight for survival both in and out of the ring.

Director: LisaRaye McCoy

Executive Producer: Tressa “Azarel” Smallwood

Written by: K. Senay

Courtesy of BET Her

CIVIL

CIVIL, directed by award-winning filmmaker Nadia Hallgren, is an intimate vérité look at the life of maverick civil rights attorney Ben Crump. Considered a trailblazer of his field, Crump gives viewers an inside look at his mission to raise the value of Black life. As the civil lawyer for the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Black farmers and banking while Black victims, Crump challenges America to come to terms with what it owes his clients.

Directed and Produced by: Nadia Hallgren

Produced by: Kenya Barris, Roger Ross Williams and Lauren Cioffi

Executive Producers: Erynn Sampson, Matthew Carnahan, Geoff Martz

Courtesy of Netflix

Spotlight screenings that will appear virtually on ABFF PLAY are:

A Beautiful Resistance

The Boston Globe culture columnist Jeneé Osterheldt created A Beautiful Resistance to carry on the tradition of Black arts and Black journalists in reclaiming the truth of Black folk. Like Frederick Douglas taught us, there is power in representation. Too often, we are measured by our suffering. Blackness must not be defined by our brutalization. We are more than death. When we are depicted by our extremes, the truth of us is lost. We live, fully. Our joy, our dreams our everyday stories?  That’s a beautiful resistance. Every season consists of a weekly mixtape:  we deliver a short film, a longform story, a question and answer, and we invite the community to share their own beautiful resistance on Instagram. There is music, there is story, there is love. Joy lives her. Join us Globe.com/abeautiful resistance.

Courtesy of The Boston Globe

What is Costing Hollywood?

“What’s Costing Hollywood?” explores the ways in which more transparency around data collection and use can help the film and entertainment industry address costly racial disparities. The mini-documentary develops the story through the lens of changemakers like Kendrick Sampson (actor, activist, and co-founder of BLD PWR); Tas Plater (head of human resources at Endeavor Content); Fanshen Cox (inclusion rider co-author and development executive at Pearl Street Films); and Alex Simmons (data scientist at Snap Inc.) who provide insight into the underlying root issue of data collection and discriminatory algorithms— depicting a clear path for a new paradigm shift in the entertainment industry.

Moderator: Kendrick Sampson

Panelists: Rashad Robinson; Romola Ratnam; Aerica Shimizu Banks; and Darnell Hunt

Courtesy of Color Of Change’s #ChangeHollywood initiative

All official selections can be found here https://www.abff.com/miami/2022-screenings/.

ABFF 2022 sponsors and partners to date include Warner Bros. Discovery and HBOÒ (Founding); Cadillac, City of Miami Beach, Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau (GMCVB), Sony Pictures Entertainment, Prime Video (Presenting); American Airlines, Comcast NBCUniversal, Meta, Bounce TV, UPS, IMDb (Premier); ALLBLK, Prudential Financial, Variety, TV One, Netflix, Starz, Disney+, Onyx Collective, (Official); Accenture, Motion Pictures Association (MPA), A and E, The SpringHill Company, The Boston Globe, Color Of Change, Confluential Films, BET Her, Morgan Stanley, VCA, (Supporting); Frankfurt Kurnit Klein and Selz, Endeavor Content (Industry).

For festival information and to obtain an ABFF pass, visit www.abff.com. Follow @ABFF on Twitter and @AmericanBlackFilmFestival on Instagram and Facebook.