Page 20 - Florida Sentinel 9-4-18

National
Where’s The Outrage? These Detroit Students Don’t Have Clean Drinking Water In Their Schools
San Francisco Waives $32
A lead contamination cri- sis has forced Detroit schools to shut off water across the district. Students will not have access to water this week, according to statements released by dis- trict officials Wednesday (Aug. 29).
“Although we have no ev- idence that there are ele- vated levels of copper or lead in our other schools where we are awaiting test results, out of an abundance of cau- tion and concern for the safety of our students and employees, I am turning off all drinking water in our schools until a deeper and broader analysis can be con- ducted to determine the long-term solutions for all schools,” said Nikolai Vitti, superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools Com- munity District, according to the Detroit Free Press.
There was no indication that students’ health had been compromised because of the contaminated water, officials also announced. “Dr. Vitti said ... he has no evidence at all that children have been impacted from a health standpoint,” Chrys- tal Wilson, spokeswoman
for the district, told the Free Press.
The district move comes at a time when nearby Flint, Michigan residents are still fearful about lead contami- nated water. Detroit, a ma- jority-Black city like Flint, has had an ongoing problem with poor building condi- tions and unclean water. Sixteen out of 24 of Detroit’s schools that were recently tested had water with ele- vated levels of lead and cop- per. Water was immediately shut off at those 16 schools, and students received water bottles. District officials have now taken precautions in shutting off the water
across the district’s more than 100 schools.
Detroit officials cited that infrastructure and plumbing played a role in the contam- ination. The district admit- ted that mismanagement, similar to what happened in Flint, also contributed to the problem. Officials “didn’t make the right investments in facilities” while it was run by state-appointed emer- gency managers from 2009 to 2016, said Vitti, who be- came superintendent last May.
Schools would need to spend $500 million now to fix the poor conditions in its schools, a facilities review showed. The price would balloon to $1.4 billion in five years if officials do nothing, but a district task force will bring in engineers and water quality experts to work on solutions.
While the district bat- tens down the hatches, the city turned to damage con- trol. Detroit officials and representatives from The Great Lakes Water Author- ity tried to assure residents that water provided by the utility company was safe to drink.
San Francisco’s new Mayor London Breed is starting off her term on a progressive note—she just announced that San Fransisco is waiving $32 million worth of adminis- trative court fees for 21,000 people.
When Breed was on the Board of Supervisors, she led an effort to push through legis- lation that prohibited the city and county court systems from demanding charges such as booking fees and probation costs from people going through the system. That legis- lation passed, but it was not retroactive, which meant that thousands of people were still on the hook for millions of dol- lars worth of administrative fees.
A new order by the San Francisco Superior Court an- nounced last week has lifted that burden, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The San Francisco Public De- fender’s Office successfully pe- titioned the court on behalf of 21,000 people to get the fees waived.
“We should be actively help- ing people to get their lives back on track after they have paid their debt to society,”
MAYOR LONDON BREED
Mayor London Breed said in a statement. “Garnishing the wages of people facing the chal- lenging task of securing em- ployment and housing can make that impossible.”
The city of San Francisco will lose that stream of rev- enue, but Global Citizen notes that approximately 80% of those fees were never paid any- way. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Anne Stuhldreher, director of San Francisco’s Financial Justice Project, explained why the sys- tem was broken. “These fees are designed to recoup costs, and they don’t do that. We need to fund our criminal jus- tice system in a more fair and just way than on the backs of poor people,” said Stuhldreher.
Million In Administrative
Court Fees For 21,000 People
Pebbles Settles TLC Biopic Lawsuit With VH1
Cheerleaders Who Knelt
TLC’s former manager Perri “Pebbles” Reid filed a defamation lawsuit against Viacom in 2014, claiming VH1’s 2013 TLC biopic “CrazySexyCool” portrayed her as a “conniving and dis- honest businesswoman” who exploited the group for her own personal gain.
According to The Holly- wood Reporter, the case was set to go to trial September 24, but now is closed, as both parties have reached a settle- ment in the $40 million defamation case.
The exact terms of the settlement were not revealed. As noted by The Muse, Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozanda “Chilli” Thomas cooperated with the filmmakers in the drama- tized portrayal of their rise to fame; this helped convince the judge of the possibility of bias, as alleged by Pebbles’s complaint.
Viacom attempted to get the case dismissed but the court did allow the former singer to sue over “scenes
from TLC,” according to THR.
TLC was formed by Peb- bles in 1991, and details of their deal with her produc- tion company, Pebbitone, were detailed in an episode of VH1’s Behind the Music which alleged that the group owed the label approx- imately $500,000 when it filed for bankruptcy in 1995.”The deal that we signed with Pebbles, it wasn’t a good or a bad deal,” Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes explained in the doc. “It’s the type of deal that new artists get.
The bad thing about the deal was that Pebbles had us signed to so many deals. She just had her fingers in the pot all across the board.”
In a 2013 interview on The
Wendy Williams Show, Peb- bles was asked if she made TLC buy their name back from her for $1 million per letter, she refused to go into detail, citing a confidentiality agreement, but stated: “It was my name, not theirs. I created that name.”
Didn’t Make Squad
Four Of Five Kennesaw State
During The National Anthem
PEBBLES
where she was shown pres- suring the group’s members to sign contracts without suf- ficient time, for scenes show- ing Reid exerting control over lawyers for the group’s members, for scenes that conveyed the idea that Reid improperly deducted ex- penses and only paid TLC $25 a week, and for a scene conveying that it was Reid’s decision to remove Chilli
According to the outlet, the cuts were made in May, but news of it only surfaced re- cently with the start of the school’s 2018-19 football sea- son. KSU told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that 95 people tried out for the 52- member squad this year. Only 61 people tried out last year.
“While they are disap- pointed, they’ve accepted it and went on with their academic lives,” Davante Lewis, the spokesman for the cheerlead- ers who knelt, told the AJC.
Even so, “Kennesaw Five” member Toomia Dean told WXIA her protest “played a role” in the decision and this is “what happens when you take a stand.”
“I know the people who made it. I know their skills and I know my skills. But I don’t think it was a skills-based thing. Not to say I’m amazing or anything, but I know my skills and what I had,” Dean told the TV station.
The cheerleaders who knelt, all of them black women, did so in support of a national move-
KENNESAW CHEERLEADERS
ment sparked by former NFL quarterback Colin Kaeper- nick in 2016. His goal was to raise awareness of police bru- tality affecting African Ameri- cans in the United States.
Like Kaepernick, the cheerleaders faced backlash. The university responded to their first protest by changing its rules and keeping all cheer- leaders in the tunnel during the anthem.
The school later reversed that policy.
In a series of text messages, Cobb County Sheriff Neil Warren bragged about pres- suring KSU’s president into keeping the cheerleaders off the field, according to the AJC. That led to student protests on campus.
PAGE 20 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2018