Page 30 - Florida Sentinel 10-14-22

National
Byron Allen’s $10 Billion Lawsuit Against McDonald’s
CIA Installs Statue To Honor Harriet Tubman As Model Spy
And now, a Black woman sits at the gates of a U. S. gov- ernment agency.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has installed a statue of abolitionist and so- cial activist Harriet Tub- man at the entrance of its headquarters in Langley, McLean, Virginia.
According to NBC News, the bronze statue shows Tub- man holding a lantern and armed with a pistol in her belt. The three other sculp- tures on the property are white men.
CIA officers who studied Tubman in a leadership class posed the idea to install the statue after learning about her time as a Union Army spy during the Civil War.
Tubman is historically recognized for rescuing en- slaved people through her network known as the Under- ground Railroad.
“What she did was an ex- ample of intelligence work, going behind enemy lines,
HARRIET TUBMAN
using safe houses and signals intelligence to get people to freedom,” said Robert Beyer, director of the CIA’s museum.
The gesture is an effort to promote diversity among the CIA’s workforce, one of the goals the agency has been committed to over the past two years.
To Start In May After Attempts To Dismiss Suit Fail
Byron Allen’s $10 billion racial discrimination lawsuit against McDonald’s will go to trial next May after the fast food giant tried and failed to have the suit dismissed three times.
The Chicago Crusader re- ports the trial is set for May 30, 2023, after Judge Fernando Olguin determined last month that McDonald’s failed to meet the bar to prove Allen’s Enter- tainment Studios made no rea- sonable claim for discrimination.
“McDonald’s apparent refusal to even offer terms for advertis- ing on The Weather Channel makes little business sense given that The Weather Channel has higher ratings and wider distri- bution than the two [white- owned] comparator networks,” Olguin wrote in the dismissal.
Allen, the owner of the Allen Media Group, filed the $10 bil- lion lawsuit alleging McDon- ald’s, which has an advertising budget of more than $1 billion, has refused to advertise on his networks and spends just $5 million advertising with Black media.
The suit also claims McDon- ald’s created an “African Ameri-
BYRON ALLEN
can Tier” with a smaller adver- tising budget where Allen’s TV networks have been categorized.
This isn’t the first time Mc- Donald’s has been sued for racial discrimination. In 2020, 52 Black former McDonald’s franchise owners filed a discrim- ination lawsuit claiming they faced “systematic and covert racial discrimination,” with Mc- Donald’s denying them the same opportunities as their white counterparts. A federal judge re- cently dismissed the class-action lawsuit, but the plaintiffs have
until Oct. 21 to file an appeal. Last year, the burger chain bought 13 locations from former MLB player Herb Washing- ton as part of a settlement in a racial discrimination lawsuit. Washington, who once owned more than 20 McDonald’s loca- tions, sued the burger chain claiming it racially discrimi- nated against him by having him purchase low-volume restau- rants in Black neighborhoods and forcing him to downsize his base years later after grading his
locations unfairly.
NAACP Leader Killed In Deadly Ambush While Vacationing In Turks And Caicos
An American who was va- cationing in the Turks and Caicos islands was killed when the vehicle he was trav- eling in was ambushed.
According to Fox 5 DC, a Virginia man named Kent Carter was gunned down this past weekend when men, suspected gang members car- rying automatic weapons at- tacked a vehicle he was riding in. Carter, who is an NAACP leader in Arlington, was an innocent bystander in the at- tack.
The police commissioner in Turks and Caicos, Trevor Botting said that the van that Carter was a passenger in was attacked by gunmen and a staff member of Carter’s was injured in the ambush.
Botting said, “These crim- inals began to indiscrimi- nately shoot into the vehicle.”
The Daily Beast reported that the police commissioner also said another person who lived there was also killed in the ambush.
KENT CARTER
“As a result of this attack, two persons were murdered, one from the local business and another being a tourist from the United States.”
Police officials stated that officers engaged in a shootout with the suspected gunmen and believe one of them was killed during that shootout. There were also five other people reported as injured in the shootout, including a po- lice officer and another Amer- ican.
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