Page 20 - Florida Sentinel 12-13-16 Online Edition

National
Rosa Parks Of Canada Will Be Featured On Country’s $10 Bill
Named
24 Employees Of CNN And TBS File Job Discrimination Suit
CANADA --- Canada has named the trailblazing civil rights activist Viola Desmond as the face of its new $10 bill, making her the first Canadian woman in his- tory to be featured on a bank- note. Nine years before police arrested African-American civil rights activist Rosa Parks for refusing to relinquish her seat to a white person on a segre- gated bus, Desmond made history in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, for a similar act of courageous defiance.
Desmond, a beautician and businesswoman, is best re- membered for a prominent in- cident in 1946 that helped shape Canada’s modern civil rights movement. The 32-year- old was ejected from a movie theater and unjustly accused of minor tax evasion after refus- ing to leave the cinema’s whites-only seating area. She spent the night in jail and was later fined after a heated trial that drew angry protests from Nova Scotia’s black commu- nity.
It was not until decades after Desmond’s death in 1965 that the injustice she endured re- ceived official recognition. The
Of Huffington
A new court filing alleges that Turner employees faced racial discrimination that held them back in their ca- reers and led to at least one former assistant being fired, Ronn Blitzer reported Wednesday for lawnewz.com.
“Roughly two dozen cur- rent and former employees of CNN and TBS (both owned by Turner) claim that there is a systematic problem with ‘discriminatory practices being implemented through- out all of Turner’s Networks ,’ according to a complaint filed last Tuesday evening.
“The complaint cites statis- tics showing that Black em- ployees at Turner are promoted at a much lower rate than whites. The lawsuit alleges that this ‘can only be attributed to the fact that Turner, specifically CNN has implemented formal [empha- sis in original] written and unwritten policies and prac- tices regarding promotions.’ The attorney who filed the complaint, Daniel Meachum, told LawNewz.com that the statis- tics were gathered by Turner themselves as part of an in- ternal study.
Viola Desmond was arrested in Canada 9 years before Rosa Park, when she refused to leave the ‘whites-only’ section in a movie theater.
province apologized and granted her a free pardon in 2010, acknowledging the case as an act of racial discrimina- tion.
This is a historic day for the province of Nova Scotia and a chance for us to finally right the wrong done to Mrs. Desmond and her family, said Darrell Dexter, who was pre- mier of Nova Scotia at the time.
Lydia Polgreen Named Edi- tor-in-Chief at Huffington Post.
Lydia Polgreen, a New York Times associate mast- head editor who grew up in West Africa and covered the continent as a foreign corre- spondent, has been named ed- itor-in-chief of the Huffington Post, Michael Calderone reported Tuesday for the Huff- ington Post. “Polgreen, 41, will succeed Arianna Huff- ington, the news site’s name- sake co-founder who left the company in August to launch Thrive Global, a company and website focused on health and wellness,” Calderone wrote. She is editorial director of NYT Global and joins a tiny number of African Americans leading mainstream websites. Carlos Watson is co-founder and CEO of OZY.com.
“In an interview, Polgreen said it was difficult leaving the Times, where she spent nearly 15 years, but that the role at HuffPost was a ‘once-in- a-lifetime opportunity,” Calderone wrote.
Atty. Daniel Meachum filed the suit on behalf of the em- ployees.
“One of the named plain- tiffs, Ernie Colbert Jr., claims that in 19 years of working at TBS, he has only been promoted twice, and was paid less than his white coworkers. The other named plaintiff, Celeslie Henley, alleges that she suffered dis- crimination, and then lost her job after she complained.
The attorney who filed the suit received 45 calls from past and present employees who wanted to join the suit.
Student Posts Racist Video Of
EASTON, Pa. – A teenager cial media, the black student at-
Editor-In-Chief
Post
Charges Pending After
Black Classmate Eating Chicken
D.C. Airport Workers Vote To Go On Strike
Baggage handlers and wheelchair assistants at Dulles and Na- tional airports plan to strike.
accused of producing a racist video of a Black classmate eat- ing chicken and posting it on- line could face criminal charges, a prosecutor said Wednesday.
Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli said he’s considering ethnic in- timidation and harassment charges against a 14-year-old white student at Saucon Valley High School.
The teenager recorded a 16- year-old Black teen eating chicken wings and in narrating the video called the older boy the N-word and made refer- ences to “being broke and on welfare,” said Morganelli, who called the video “reprehensible” and “repulsive.”
After seeing the video on so-
tacked the white student at a football game, Morganelli said. Lower Saucon police charged the black student with assault and other offenses; the charges are pending in juvenile court.
Morganelli opened the probe on Wednesday after an attorney for the black student showed him the video.
The Saucon Valley School Dis- trict investigated the incident and “handled it very appropri- ately,” schools Superintendent Monica McHale-Small told The Morning Call newspaper of Allentown. She called the white student’s behavior “incredibly vile.”
The students’ names haven’t been released.
Contract workers at Dulles International and Reagan Na- tional airports will walk off their jobs sometime this month, joining a growing number of workers across the country staging strikes as part of a national push for better working conditions and a $15-an-hour “living wage.”
Workers voted Thursday to authorize the walkout. No date has been set for the ac- tion and it is not clear how long it would last, but a spokesman for the group said it will likely happen before the end of the month.
The action comes as airlines and airports gear up for
Christmas holiday travel. The workers include wheel- chair attendants and baggage handlers who work for Huntleigh USA. According to union officials, the Texas- based company, which con- tracts directly with the airlines, employs roughly 400
workers at the two airports. Last month, hundreds of contract workers staged a one-day walkout at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. They were joined by fast-food workers and Uber drivers across the country. O’Hare of- ficials said the strike did not have an impact on airport op-
erations.
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