Activism

Holiday Travel Season: California Black Churches Offering COVID Testing, Vaccinations

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that Black people in the United States are being hospitalized for the virus 2.6 times more than whites. According to the agency’s website, Black people are also dying of COVID-19 at nearly twice the rate of whites.

Published

1 month ago

December 22, 2021

Oakland Post

The Rev. Dr. Lawrence E. Van Hook, pastor of Community Church in Oakland, says when vaccination began at his church earlier this year on Resurrection Sunday, he drew a parallel. “Vaccinations equal resurrection. Both of them give life as opposed to the death that this invisible, deadly virus has ministered all over the world,” he said.

By Aldon Thomas Stiles | California Black Media

The Rev. Dr. Lawrence E. Van Hook, pastor of Community Church in Oakland, says when COVID-19 vaccinations were first released late last year he did not want to get the shot.

“As African Americans, we have a healthy distrust of the government based on our history,” said Van Hook.

But after some soul searching, there was a shift in his spirit, says Van Hook. It led to a change of his heart.

“It came to me through God’s visitation of the holy spirit that not only do I need to get vaccinated, but I need to become an ambassador in the community where we live, work and worship. So that’s how my journey began.”

A little over a year ago, Van Hook joined hands with 38 other Black pastors from around California and formed the African American Community Empowerment Council (AACEC). With help from the state, members began setting up testing and vaccination sites at their churches.

“It is an initiative led by African American pastors, realizing that we need to pay special attention to our community – an affirmative action plan, if you please — for Black Californians who are understandably skeptical and don’t want to get vaccinated,” Van Hook said.

“Our healing, our hope, comes through vaccination,” he continued. “That is how we will push past this pandemic in a healthy way to get to our new normal.”

Now, ahead of the holidays, Van Hook and other pastors are encouraging Black Californians to get vaccinated and tested before traveling and getting together with relatives.

“A majority of the cases and deaths are among those who are unvaccinated,” said Van Hook. “For those of us who have been waiting to see what was in it, what it was all about, we now have over a year of vaccinations and nobody’s eyes have fallen out. No bug has been placed in us where we can be tracked. There are so many stories we have heard in social media.”

During the thick of the pandemic, the AACEC website says the pastors “stepped up,” responding to a call to action by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who asked all Californians to deploy every resource available to them to confront and defeat the deadly virus.

“Through this effort, testing of at-risk, underrepresented, and under-resourced African Americans, and all community members appearing for a test, will be phased across the state beginning in Alameda County and extending in regular intervals to encompass San Francisco, Sacramento, Solano, Contra Costa, San Joaquin, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Gabriel, and San Diego counties,” the AACEC website reads.

There are now also testing sites in San Bernardino County. Vaccination sites are located in Oakland, Pasadena, Sacramento and San Francisco.

Across the country, another organization called Choose Healthy Life (CHL) has similarly united Black religious leaders to battle COVID-19, opting to focus on tackling misinformation and increasing vaccination rates.

Black clergy members and civil rights leaders such as the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York, are leading the charge for this program.

“COVID-19 has exposed health disparities, and more disturbingly, the impact of misinformation among our own people. But I have looked beyond the horizon of today’s headlines. After 750,000 deaths in America and more than 5 million worldwide, the pendulum is beginning to swing —and Choose Healthy Life is at the vanguard of that change,” Sharpton said.

CHL spokesperson Judy Klym detailed the program’s scope.

“After launching CHL in 50 churches in five major cities in January 2021, the program’s expansion has led to more than 50,000 members of the public being educated and empowered,” she said. “Through this collaborative effort, more than 6 million people have been impacted. Choose Healthy Life now has 120 participating churches in 13 states.”

Klym cited the new Omicron variant as part of the reason for the urgency of this program’s implementation.

“As the threat from COVID continues with the emergence of the Omicron variant, the ongoing nature of the pandemic seems inevitable. CHL is rising to meet the challenge by building a sustainable infrastructure to help Black communities throughout the pandemic and future health crises,” Klym stated.

Debra Fraser-Howze, founder of CHL, says the Black church’s involvement in the COVID-19 fight is critical.

“The Black church and clergy have been a steadfast center of strength and leadership during so many of our crises and struggles in the past. Now, through the Choose Healthy Life Action Plan, they are once again leading the way by ensuring that Black communities are better informed and safer throughout the pandemic,” she said.

Van Hook says when vaccination began at his church earlier this year on Resurrection Sunday, he drew a parallel.

“Vaccinations equal resurrection. Both of them give life as opposed to the death that this invisible, deadly virus has ministered all over the world,” he said.

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Activism

Collaboration Key to Anti-Trafficking Efforts

According to District Attorney Lori Frugoli, community education is paramount in the work of the coalition. Student, parent, and teacher education is also something that MCCEHT strongly supports through the PROTECT program, coordinated with the Marin County Office of Education (MCOE). MCCEHT member Marlene Capra has worked with MCOE and the 3 Strands Global Foundation to keep efforts to stop human trafficking in the spotlight and teach residents and school educators about the realities of human trafficking.

Published

8 hours ago

January 27, 2022

Oakland Post

Many human trafficking victims are reluctant to report the crime as they are genuinely in fear for their life or that of their family.

Local work t stop human exploitation coordinated through DA’s Office

Courtesy of Marin County

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the North Bay region and San Francisco are among the top sex trafficking areas in the United States. As the co-chair organization of the Marin County Coalition to End Human Trafficking (MCCEHT), the Marin County District Attorney’s Office is addressing the problem and working with partnering nonprofits and agencies to increase public awareness, prosecute those who commit the crimes, and put a halt to all types of slavery.

On Jan. 11, the Marin County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution to proclaim the month of January as National Slavery & Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Jan. 11 happened to be Human Trafficking Awareness Day as well. Video of the presentation is on the County website (skip ahead to agenda item #4, Consent Calendar A).

The DA’s staff has worked closely with key stakeholders to make sure the red-flag warnings of human trafficking are widely known, even using advertisements at bus stops to urge people to speak up and report potential exploitation.

A new nonprofit created by Capra arose from her community work. SpeakSAFE, with SAFE meaning Save Adolescents from Exploitation, assists with local fundraising for educational efforts and has provided online learning opportunities during the pandemic.

“With our coalition, the DA’s Office [has] been extremely supportive and helpful in partnering on our work and connecting us with law enforcement, service providers and community members,” Capra said. “It really is all hands on deck, and their involvement has been pivotal. Our work has always been a priority with them in supporting our youth.”

Frugoli said human trafficking is difficult to detect and rarely reported. Many victims are moved from county to county or state to state, making the trafficker harder to follow and the victim feel isolated and unfamiliar with surroundings.

“Many victims are reluctant to report the crime as they are genuinely in fear for their life or that of their family,” Frugoli said. “Our coalition’s mission is to develop our regional collaborative approach to end all forms of human trafficking. We’ve focused our efforts on education and outreach advocacy. We have turned several cases over to state and federal authorities because the conduct occurred over multiple jurisdictions.”

Cecilia Zamora, Executive Director of the Latino Council and Co-Chair of MCCEHT, emphasized the need to have the coalition’s work be grounded in multicultural best practices, ensuring that the messaging and resources are shared with our thriving Latino communities across the county.

“We do this,” she said, “by successfully utilizing our nonprofit members as partners in the education and outreach to their own constituents.”

The Human Trafficking Prevention Education and Training Act (AB 1227) became California law in 2017 and provides a basis for localized anti-trafficking work. The MCCEHT Steering Committee meets monthly. MCCEHT’s quarterly online meeting on Jan. 19 will feature guest speaker Antonia Lavine of the San Francisco Collaborative Against Human Trafficking and County Supervisor Judy Arnold. The videoconference begins at 11 a.m., Spanish translation will be provided. Participation details are on the MCCEHT website.

Learn more about local anti-trafficking efforts via the PROTECT website or call the DA’s Office at (415) 473-6450.

Activism

How the Black Press Told the World About Emmet Till

Reporter Simeon Booker and photographer David Jackson covered the story for Jet. Other Black news outlets, including the Defender, also later published the photos, though not a single mainstream white outlet did, according to the New York Times. The photos turned Till’s story into “the first great [national] media event of the civil rights movement,” according to historian David Halberstam, who chronicles the murder in his book “The Fifties.”

Published

9 hours ago

January 27, 2022

Oakland Post

Mamie Till speaks to the press after her son was lynched in Mississippi in 1955. Wikipedia.org photo.

By Brandon Patterson

The story of Emmet Till has made its way back into the news in recent weeks on the heels of a new TV miniseries and new developments at the federal level.

Earlier this month, the historical docuseries “Mothers of the Movement” premiered on ABC. And last week, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill to posthumously award Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, the Congressional Gold Medal.

Emmett Till’s story remains with us to this day, but lesser known is the role of the Black press in bringing his story to light — and in so doing, helping to catalyze the modern Civil Rights Movement.

One of the earliest news outlets to cover the Till story was the Chicago Defender, at the time one of the most influential Black weekly newspapers in the country, with two-thirds of its readership located outside the city, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The account of reporter Mattie Smith Colin, who covered the arrival of Till’s body at a local train station, captured the anguish of his mother as she received her son. Then, Jet Magazine became the first news outlet to publish the gruesome photos of Till’s body at his funeral, which his mother insisted be open casket.

Later, Booker’s coverage of the Till murder trial for Jet helped bring the trial to a Black and national audience. Other significant Black newspapers that covered the Till story included the Amsterdam News in New York City, which, by the 1960s, was the largest weekly community newspaper in the nation, the Pittsburgh Courier, and the Atlanta Constitution.

Coverage of Till’s story was notably different in Black news outlets compared to mainstream white papers. In the South, coverage was often sympathetic to Till’s murderers, notes researcher Michael Oby in a 2007 paper on the Till case.

Black papers, however, framed the story as an obvious and horrid injustice. At the same time, they began encouraging their Black readers to get involved in civil rights organizing, and to donate to the NAACP, which was central to the Till case.

Booker, who worked for Jet for nearly five decades, went on to receive an award from the National Press Club for his lifelong coverage of civil rights in America in the 1980s. At the award ceremony, according to the Chicago Tribune, he said of his work: “I wanted to fight segregation on the front lines. I wanted to dedicate my writing skills to the cause. Segregation was beating down my people. I volunteered for every assignment and suggested more. I stayed on the road, covering civil rights day and night. The names, the places and the events became history.”

Because of his work and other Black journalists and news outlets, we know the story of Emmet Till, and so many other critical stories.

This story was written using reporting from the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, and academic research by Michael Oby at Georgia State University.

Activism

Foster Care and Sex Trafficking

On the program, experts will share their knowledge about coming into foster care, training for foster parents, and the struggles, successes and triumphs of the children who have experience with the foster care system. For information, contact Laurel Botsford, of Wisdom International: Help2Others at:laurel@wisdominternational.org

Published

16 hours ago

January 26, 2022

Oakland Post

The program is supported by the District Attorney of Marin County and the FBI Citizens Academy Alumni Association.

“The Nexus Between Foster Care and Sex Trafficking” a Zoom program, will be presented on Thursday, Jan. 27, 2022, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. by the Rotary Club of Terra Linda and Wisdom International: Help2Others.

Lori Frugoli, Marin County district attorney, will give the opening remarks.

The featured speakers are Cari Herthel, a tribal leader and survivor; Doris Gentry, a foster mother; Carly Devlin of the Huckleberry Youth HART Program; John Long of the United States Institute Against Human Trafficking; Carletta Jackson-Lane, JD, executive director of the Sojourner Truth Foster Family Service Agency. A representative of the FBI will also be there.

This event is free. Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-nexus-between-foster-care-and-sex-trafficking-tickets-248412557647Please join at 2:50 p.m. for a prompt start at 3 p.m.

For information, contact Laurel Botsford, of Wisdom International: Help2Others at:laurel@wisdominternational.org

The program is supported by the District Attorney of Marin County and the FBI Citizens Academy Alumni Association.