On The Vine: This month women are celebrating women

Hi everyone! Welcome to this week’s On The Vine. It’s now Women’s History Month. I’m excited to say that this month this newsletter will be written by many of the women across our newsroom. This week, you get myself and our veteran education reporter Mará Rose Willams.

One quick point I’d like to make: Even though Black History Month is over, The Star remains committed to sharing Black stories. Black history, after all, is the history of this country, and should never be limited to just one (also the shortest) month.

As we move through Women’s History Month, let’s not forget the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had and is continuing to have on women. More women than men work in sectors that have been hit the hardest by the virus, according to a new report released this week. Not to mention the unequal domestic burden that women carry, which leads more women to exit the workforce.

In December, the U.S. lost 140,000 jobs. All of them were from women. And communities of color continue to be hit hard as well.

Support the women, especially the women of color, around you — not just this month, but every month.

In other news, it’s nearly spring! Thank goodness. And it certainly feels like it already with this week’s high temperatures nearing 70 some days.

So at least when the tornado sirens and the unfortunately mislabeled text message, part of Severe Weather Preparedness Week, went out Tuesday morning sparking a brief moment of panic in many of us, we could look outside and see the clear blue skies.

Got a question, recommendation or just want to say hey? Email Trey Williams, race and equity editor, at cewilliams@kcstar.com

Around the block

Family of Donnie Sanders still seeking answers after decision not to charge officer

This week, the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office said the Kansas City police officer who shot and killed Donnie Sanders last March would not be charged.

His name was one of four — including Ryan Stokes, Cameron Lamb and Terrance Bridges — that was chanted during protests last summer.

Donnie Sanders was killed on March 12 by an officer who said he believed he was armed. The next day, police said Donnie Sanders was not carrying a weapon.

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said there was insufficient evidence to file charges

His family told The Star the outcome was “gut-wrenching.” They still want justice.

“But now that they have come up with a decision to not file charges against the officer, like where’s our justice in that?” Donnie Sanders’ sister Reshonda Sanders continued. “We’ve lost our brother for nothing. No citation, no ticket, like what did he do? He didn’t cause no harm to that officer. That officer’s life was in no type of harm or danger, none whatsoever but now Donnie’s life is gone now.”

President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Kansas City Rev. Vernon P. Howard Jr. said the decision was proof that “a Black man’s life has no value.”

“This is why we’re angry, why we’re in inconsolable grief, why we protest in the streets and why we peacefully shut down Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners’ meetings,” he said. “This department, this Board of Commissioners, this State and this city government has failed to protect us. Rather, this system kills us in ways it does to no other people in this community.”

How this Kansas City researcher is putting her faith in Black churches during COVID

When white people catch a cold, Black people get pneumonia, the saying goes.

So Jannette Berkley-Patton, a professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, knew who COVID-19 would hurt the most. Across the country, Black people have died from the virus at 1.4 times the rate of white people.

But she’s also studied the health of KC’s church-going Black community for more than 10 years so she knows how local Black churches work to keep their congregations and communities healthy.

And now she’s helping them tackle COVID-19.

“I really see myself as a researcher amplifying what the community is already doing, trying to prove that the things that they are already doing, because they already know the solutions, are effective,” Berkley-Patton said.

‘An abomination’: Group offers $10,000 to remove Kansas City-area Confederate statue

One group of people is trying to remove a 20-foot tall statue of a Confederate soldier in the Fairview & New Hope Cemeteries and they’re willing to give the city $10,000 to make that happen.

Theresa Byrd, who has at least 50 relatives buried in what was once the segregated portion of the cemetery, intends to be buried there one day. She does not want that statue looming over her when she is.

“I pray, I ask God, before that day comes, for that monument to be gone, that it will not be lording over that cemetery when I am laid to rest there. … It is painful. It is an abomination,” Byrd said.

The statue’s defenders with the local chapter of Sons of Confederate Veterans insist it’s not going anywhere. It’s surrounded by the unmarked graves of as many as 40 Confederate veterans.

Until last year, once there was a push to remove it, the monument did not identify one Confederate veteran buried in the area.

Byrd said the purpose of the statue, erected around four decades after the Civil War, was to intimidate Black people.

In case you missed it...

• Kansas voters will decide whether abortion rights are in the state constitution

• Kansas State opened a multicultural center. Someone then wrote racist messages inside

• Kansas lawmakers consider measure to bar transgender youth from girls sport

Beyond the block

Black women leaders candidly talk power, progress and the future of politics

There’s a crack in the ceiling of the political arena and it appears women of color are busting right up through it. Along with the election of the first woman and the first woman of color to the second-most powerful office in U.S. government, a record number of Black women are currently serving in Congress and leading major American cities.

“We understood that we had a power within us to make a change in this country, and we’ve done it,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told The 19th during a recent conversation about the role of Black women in U.S. politics. The 19th is an independent, non-profit newsroom that reports on issues of gender in politics.

At the ballot box, on the front lines of activism and at the head of the table in corporate boardrooms, Black woman are making their mark in leadership positions across the country.

Until Kamala Harris’ ascendance to the vice presidency, she was the sole Black woman senator, representing 1% of all members of the Senate. Twenty-four women (16 Democrats, 8 Republicans) serve in the U. S. Senate in the 117th Congress. Three are women of color. Women of color constitute 9.5% of the total 535 members of Congress.

There are five women governors and two of them are Black two Latina and one American Indian.

Hate Crimes Against Asian Americans Are on the Rise.

News outlets across the country in recent months have reported a concerning increase in violence towards members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. This comes after a year of xenophobic rhetoric, heightened by former President Donald Trump and some other politicians’ insistence on blaming the coronavirus pandemic on China.

Time online news magazine, last month reported that “since the start of the pandemic last spring, Asian Americans have faced racist violence at a much higher rate than previous years. The country has seen such Incidents of violence, as a 64-year-old Vietnamese grandmother who was assaulted and robbed in San Jose, Calif., and the attack on a 61-year-old Filipino man whose face was slashed with a box cutter on a New York City subway, and more.

It’s prompted an outcry from some activists calling for the incidents to be investigated as hate crimes.

“There’s a clear correlation between President Trump’s incendiary comments, his insistence on using the term ‘Chinese virus’ and the subsequent hate speech spread on social media and the hate violence directed towards us,” Russell Jeung, a co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and a professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, told Time. “It gives people license to attack us. The current spate of attacks on our elderly is part of how that rhetoric has impacted the broader population.”

Vernon Jordan, activist, former Clinton adviser, dies at 85

Another great gone. Vernon E. Jordan Jr., the civil rights leader and Washington power broker whose counsel was sought in the highest echelons of government and the corporate world, died on Monday at his home in Washington. He was 85.

Jordan rose from humble beginnings in the segregated South. The man just had a presence in the room. He was one of those warriors you might not read much about in your history books, but who fought for the rights of all men and women on the front lines, in the board room and behind the doors of the nation’s capitol. A light beneath the bushel. You know the ones, paving a path for young Black change makers.

Former President Bill Clinton remembered Jordan as someone who “never gave up on his friends or his country.”

While he never held any official title in the Clinton administration, as an unofficial aide to Clinton, Jordan was highly influential and was given the label “first friend.”

An icon of the Civil Rights Movement, after serving as field secretary for the Georgia NAACP and executive director of the United Negro College Fund, Jordan led the National Urban League, and became a fixture in the in struggle for jobs and justice for Black America for more than a decade.

He was nearly killed by a racist’s bullet in 1980 before transitioning to business and politics. Rest easy old guard.

And this happened...

• Missouri man threatened to murder Rep. Emanuel Cleaver a day after Capitol riot: DOJ
• Haskell University student journalist sues university, for ‘flagrantly violating’ his rights
• Biden vows enough vaccine for all US adults by end of May

For the Culture

Six Dr. Seuss books won’t be published for racist images

You might remember his “Cat in the Hat,” and his “Green Eggs and Ham,” as fun children’s books written in rhyme. But apparently there was another side to some of Dr. Seuss’s kooky books. The side that portrayed people of color as stereotypical caricatures. And not in a good way. Well that’s over. Times they are a changing.

Six Dr. Seuss books — including “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” and “If I Ran the Zoo” — will stop being published because of racist and insensitive imagery, the business that preserves and protects the author’s legacy said Tuesday.

“These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” Dr. Seuss Enterprises told The Associated Press in a statement that coincided with the late author and illustrator’s birthday.

“Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ catalog represents and supports all communities and families,” it said.

The other books affected are “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!,” “Scrambled Eggs Super!,” and “The Cat’s Quizzer.”

Andra Day Becomes First Black Best Actress Winner at the Golden Globes in 35 Years

We know Andra Day can sing, but she stunned Hollywood when she coupled her amazing vocal chops with her hidden acting skills in an effort that led her to break a 35-year dry spell for Black women at the Golden Globes..

Who knew?

At last week’s virtual ceremony, Day in the “United States vs. Billie Holiday” became only the second Black woman in history to win the Golden Globe for Best Actress — Drama, the first was Whoopi Goldberg who claimed the prize in 1986 for her staring role in “The Color Purple.”

Critics called her win an upset over predicted winner Carey Mulligan (“Promising Young Woman”) and other contenders, Vanessa Kirby (“Pieces of a Woman”), Viola Davis (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”), and Frances McDormand (“Nomadland”).

But wait, “Nomadland,” directed by Chloé Zhao made history too. It won big for best picture drama, the first time a film directed by a woman has ever won the top prize in the Globes’ 78 ceremonies. Let’s not forget that Zhao also won for directing. Again, women killing it.

Speaking of getting the job done, in her debut film performance, Day, an R&B singer, impeccably transforms her voice into Billie Holiday’s unique sounding sultry jazz vocal. The Lee Daniels-directed film, follows Holiday as the federal government attempts to censor and frame her during the height of her career, in an effort to stop her from singing her iconic song “Strange Fruit,” about the lynching of Black People in the deep south.

Day told the Hollywood Reporter, “The thing I take from Billie more than anything is the strength of a black woman.”

Born Cassandra Monique Batie, Day’s 2015 debut album, “Cheers to the Fall,” was nominated for Best R&B Album at the 2016 Grammy Awards, and the album’s main single, “Rise Up”, was nominated for Best R&B Performance.

Of course, as is usual during such Star-studded, red carpet events there was also some controversy when celebs pointed out embarrassing revelations about the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and the fact that there are no Black members in the 87-person body.

And then there were these winning reports ...

• Kansas City’s Jason Sudeikis wins first Golden Globe. His reaction? ‘That’s nuts’
• Disney’s ‘Raya and the Last Dragon’ dazzles and delights the senses
• Buckingham Palace launches investigation into Meghan bullying complaint

That’s all she wrote.

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