Princess Francois, a Brooklyn, NY teacher, arrived to work Wednesday to learn she had won a very prestigious and exclusive award and the $25,000 check that comes with it.
For 30 years, the Milken Educator Awards, an initiative of the Milken Family Foundation, have rewarded and inspired excellence in the world of education by honoring top educators around the country with $25,000 unrestricted awards. Watch more on this story below.
The 759 registered messengers to the South Carolina Baptist Convention’s (SCBC) 199th Annual Meeting made history Nov. 12 by electing a Simpsonville pastor as the first African American to serve as president.
In this year’s balloting, Alex Sands, pastor of Kingdom Life Church in Simpsonville, was elected by acclamation as president-elect. The president-elect automatically becomes president following a year of service.
Sands was nominated as president-elect by Charleston First Baptist pastor Marshall Blalock, a past president of the state convention. Sands has been serving as first vice president. His church, which was planted in 2003, joined the SCBC in 2005. He has served on the SCBC Executive Board and was vice chairman of the executive-director search committee.
It’s no secret that Cory Booker has been lagging behind the front runners in recent polls as he seems stuck at 2 to 3% support among would be voters.
But at last night’s Democratic Debate at Tyler Perry Studios Booker showed some sparks of life and definitely was one of the nights winners.
Per Dylan Matthews at Vox.com
For about 1 hour and 40 minutes, Cory Booker had a fairly standard, uneventful debate. He got in a good line about being the other Rhodes Scholar mayor on the stage, a light jab at Pete Buttigieg that didn’t land with much force. He had a confusing and forgettable exchange with Elizabeth Warren critiquing her wealth tax plan on technical grounds — a fair hit, but one better reserved for a policy paper than the debate stage.
Then the topic came to the black vote, and Booker broke through.
One of the many challenges facing his campaign so far — and Sen. Kamala Harris’s — has been his failure to break through with black voters nationwide and in South Carolina (where black voters make up a big part of the Democratic primary electorate). Former Vice President Joe Biden’s name recognition and connection to the Obama presidency have apparently been sufficient to swamp any arguments Booker and Harris have tried to make for themselves as superior champions of black voters’ interests.
So Booker decided to fight the fight directly. He first brushed off Buttigieg’s attempts to cater to black voters by noting he’s “been one since I turned 18,” and didn’t “need a focus group” to tell him what black voters think and value — a nice move that subtly undermined the implicit premise behind the question that there’s a monolithic “black vote” to be won en masse.
But then he turned to Joe Biden, and turned an electability question about race into a concrete policy disagreement, noting Joe Biden’s opposition to nationwide marijuana legalization, underlining how devastating marijuana criminalization has been to black men and black communities, and pushing Biden into an embarrassing, fumbling answer in which he claimed the support of the “the only African American woman who’s been elected to the Senate” — to which Booker simply replied, “No, the other one is here,” pointing to Harris.
To break into Biden’s base of black support, Booker needed to draw out clear policy differences with Biden and also to challenge Biden’s claims to respect and revere the black community. He didn’t even need to do the latter himself — he just put an obstacle in front of Biden and just watched as Biden tripped over it.
Axios political reporter Alexi McCammond made it known via Twitter that during an off the record discussion about politics that NBA great Charles Barkley had made a very inappropriate comment about hitting women to her.
Just FYI Charles Barkley told me tonight “I don’t hit women but if I did I would hit you,” and then when I objected to that he told me I “couldn’t take a joke.”
— Alexi McCammond (@alexi) November 20, 2019
Charles Barkley has issued an apology for his comments to the Axios political reporte through the Turner Sports Pr Department:
Statement on behalf of Charles Barkley in response to tweet by Axios reporter Alexi McCammond:
— TurnerSportsPR (@TurnerSportsPR) November 20, 2019
“My comment was inappropriate and unacceptable. It was an attempted joke that wasn’t funny at all. There’s no excuse for it and I apologize.”
The Westchester Knicks, the official NBA G League affiliate of the New York Knicks, and first-year head coach Derrick Alston, announced the hiring of Lisa C. Willis as an assistant coach. Willis becomes the first female coach in the NY Knicks organization.
“The Westchester Knicks continue to be a vital part of our player development program at the New York Knicks,” said Steve Mills, President, New York Knicks. “Today, we’ve added a talented coach who will improve our players’ skills both on and off the court.”
Willis comes to the Knicks following the completion of the NBA’s Assistant Coaches Program (ACP), a program formed by the NBA G League’s Player Development department, providing an educational conduit for former NBA, WNBA and NBA G League players to coaching and front office opportunities. Current Westchester assistant, Keith Bogans, is also a product of this initiative.
A former fifth overall pick in the 2006 WNBA Draft, Willis played her first two seasons with the Los Angeles Sparks before spending time with the New York Liberty (2007-08). At UCLA (2002-06), the Long Beach, Calif. native was recognized as the nation’s best defender by ESPN’s Nancy Lieberman. She later graduated as the Bruins’ all-time three-point leader and second all-time in then-PAC-10 history and ranked ninth all-time in scoring.
“I am very excited to welcome Lisa to our Westchester Knicks family,” head coach Derrick Alston began. “Lisa has had the benefit of playing professionally and winning at the highest levels. Given Lisa’s acumen for the game, there is no doubt in my mind that her transition to the sideline will be seamless.”
