Who Is Policing Black Journalism? The Stephen A. Smith Controversy Exposes a Bigger Problem

Black Culture
Black Business
From The Publisher's Desk

DAMON K JONES

August 18, 2026

Who Is Policing Black Journalism? The Stephen A. Smith Controversy Exposes a Bigger Problem

The controversy involving Stephen A. Smith and the National Association of Black Journalists should prompt Black journalists to engage in a broader conversation that extends beyond Smith himself, any specific award, or personal opinions about him. While I do not agree with all of Smith’s’s statements, and at times find his tone unnecessarily aggressive or his arguments flawed, those he criticizes—including Black women—are fully justified in responding to him.

However, disagreement with Stephen A. Smith should not deter us from critically examining deeper issues within our profession. Specifically, has Black journalism developed an implicit political and cultural code that dictates which Black voices may be criticized, which political positions are deemed acceptable, and the standards Black journalists must meet to maintain professional standing among their peers?

This is the conversation Black journalists should approach without hesitation. Ultimately, this controversy may reveal more about the prevailing culture within Black journalism than about Stephen A. Smith himself.

The Stephen A. Smith Contradiction

In her discussion with Don Lemon, Jemele Hill provided substantial criticism of Smith, yet she also recognized factors that complicate the prevailing narrative. Hill highlights Smith’s’s meaningful contributions to Black journalism, such as recruiting Black professionals for his shows, creating opportunities for Black producers and columnists, advancing the careers of Black journalists, and supporting Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) through his platform.

Hill ultimately affirmed that Smith’s’s overall body of work is significant and that his contributions as a Black journalist, as well as his efforts to support others, should not be dismissed because of disagreements with some of his recent commentary. This presents a notable contradiction that warrants further analysis: how does a Black journalist with such a record come to be publicly characterized as detrimental to Black journalism?

Legitimate criticism of Smith may exist, and it is important not to ignore this reality. However, Black journalists should differentiate between critiquing specific statements made by Smith and asserting that his actions are fundamentally harmful to the field of Black journalism.

When Journalism Becomes a Code

Another point raised by Hill directly addresses the culture of Black journalism. She contended that Black journalists bear “ a responsibility” when addressing issues concerning Black individuals and must demonstrate heightened sensitivity when offering criticism within the community.

I recognize the historical context underlying this perspective. For generations, mainstream American media perpetuated stereotypes about Black people, neglected Black communities, criminalized Black existence, and often failed to provide Black Americans with the context and humanity extended to others. Black journalism arose, in part, to ensure that our stories were told by individuals who understood our history and lived experiences.

However, a sense of responsibility to our community should not equate to shielding every Black individual, and especially every Black politician from scrutiny, particularly those who possess political, economic, or institutional power. There is a crucial distinction between serving the interests of Black communities and protecting powerful Black individuals solely based on their identity.

If a Black mayor is failing, investigate the mayor. If a Black police commissioner is failing, investigate the commissioner. If a Black Republican is not serving the community, challenge that Republican. If a Black Democrat is not serving those interests, challenge that Democrat with the same intensity. If a Black man is wrong, say so. If a Black woman is wrong, journalists must be able to say so without being accused of attacking Black women.

The responsibility of Black journalists is not to shield powerful Black individuals from challenging questions. Rather, it is to pursue the truth in service of the communities we represent.

When Did Political Independence Become Suspicious?

The Smith discussion became even more revealing when the conversation moved beyond his treatment of Black women and into his politics. Hill discussed the people Smith has platformed, the political circles he appears to be moving in, and the people with whom he might be attempting to ingratiate himself.

Later, Hill acknowledged some see criticism of Smith as linked to his growing conservatism. However, she rejected that as an overly simplistic explanation. She argued Smith sometimes enters political discussions without being sufficiently informed. That criticism may be fair, but the underlying issue still deserves examination.

Why should a Black journalist’s political orientation dictate whether peers perceive them as loyal to the community? Why should suspicion arise when a Black journalist features individuals outside the dominant political ideology, engages with conservatives, or questions positions that have traditionally been supported within Black journalism?

Journalists are expected to engage with individuals holding diverse viewpoints. We should interview Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, progressives, socialists, and independents; journalism’s role is to expose the public to a range of information and competing ideas, not to establish politically sanctioned boundaries for discourse.

Black America is not politically monolithic, despite historical voting patterns that have favored a single party. The community includes Black Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, progressives, independents, and millions who are skeptical of both major parties. Black journalism should reflect this diversity rather than attempt to construct a political consensus that does not accurately represent the community.

A Black perspective should not be conflated with a single, universally accepted Black opinion.

My Own Experience With the Black Political Code

I don’t make this argument from the sideline. As the publisher of Black Westchester, I have publicly criticized Black women in power when their actions were lacking and required scrutiny. I criticized Mount Vernon Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard over governance and accountability issues and challenged New York State Attorney General Tish James over what I believe was inadequate oversight of policing in New York.

I did not raise those issues because Patterson-Howard and James are Black women. I raised them because they hold governmental power, their decisions affect Black communities, and journalism must scrutinize those who exercise power over the public.

At the same time, I have publicly defended Black women in politics when I believed they were being treated unfairly. I defended Andrea Stewart-Cousins when there was resistance to her becoming leader of the New York State Senate, including opposition and political maneuvering from both Republicans and Democrats.

I didn’t defend Stewart-Cousins simply because she was a Black woman any more than I criticize Patterson-Howard or James. After all, they are Black women. The question for me has always been whether the criticism or treatment is justified and whether the people involved are being held to a fair and consistent standard.

Because I am willing to critique Democrats and challenge Black elected officials, I have been labeled MAGA or identified as a Republican. These labels are often used as convenient substitutes for engaging with the substance of my arguments, and in the current political climate, they serve as shortcuts to discredit voices within Black audiences.

This is particularly concerning given that many who levy such accusations lack the history of advocacy, organizing, and commitment to Black communities that I have established over decades. Political disagreement does not negate individual contributions, and challenging a Democrat does not automatically render someone a Republican.

That is part of the problem I see developing within Black political discourse and Black journalism. We have reached a point where challenging certain people or positions can result in someone immediately assigning you to the other political team instead of addressing your argument.

Rather than engaging with substantive arguments, individuals often attack one’s identity, question loyalty to Black communities, or assign political labels intended to silence dissent. This approach undermines intellectual independence and is not the culture that Black journalism should foster.

My history does not make me immune to criticism either, and nobody’s’s résumé should become a shield against legitimate questions, including mine. But if we are going to questiosomeone’s’s commitment to Black people, then the entire body of work should matter.

The same standard should be applied to Stephen A. Smith. Jemele Hill acknowledged his significant record of supporting Black journalists, creating opportunities for Black professionals, and leveraging his platform to amplify Black voices. It is inconsistent to celebrate aindividual’s’s contributions to Black America only when their views align with our own, and then question their commitment when their politics or opinions diverge from the prevailing consensus.

The Corporate Media Contradiction

Another challenging conversation for Black journalists concerns institutional ownership. Many prominent Black journalists in the United States are employed by corporations that are not Black-owned. Although generations of Black journalists have fought to gain access to these newsrooms, it is important to distinguish between employment and ownership.

Hosting a television show does not equate to owning the network, writing a column does not confer ownership of the newspaper, and possessing a microphone does not mean owning the platform. Black journalists may wield significant influence within corporate media, yet they still operate within institutions where ultimate economic and organizational authority resides elsewhere.

This distinction becomes particularly significant when Black journalists within large corporate structures attempt to dictate what their peers should say, whom they should associate with, or how they should communicate to maintain professional standing. It is necessary to critically examine the contradiction of Black journalists operating within predominantly white-owned corporate media while simultaneously enforcing unwritten cultural or political codes on fellow Black journalists.

Corporate leadership does not need to enforce conformity directly, as professional culture is capable of self-regulation. Individuals quickly learn which opinions are celebrated, which discussions lead to opportunities, which stances grant access, and which viewpoints may render someone controversial.

There is no need for explicit directives from corporate headquarters when the boundaries are already understood by all. This is characteristic of institutional culture, and Black journalists should have the courage to critically assess whether such dynamics exist within their own profession.

Black Women Deserve Respect—and Accountability

Some may interpret this argument as disregarding valid concerns regarding the treatment of Black women in media, but such a reading would be mistaken. Black women have historically faced harmful stereotypes, disrespect, and dehumanization in American media, and Black journalists must remain cognizant of this history when addressing Black women in public discourse.

However, respect for Black women should not entail exempting those in positions of power from journalistic scrutiny. Equality does not equate to immunity from criticism, and upholding the dignity of Black women should not require journalists to forgo their responsibility to hold powerful individuals accountable.

My own record demonstrates that these principles can coexist. I can defend Andrea Stewart-Cousins when I believe she is being unfairly denied an opportunity while criticizing Shawyn Patterson-Howard or Tish James when I believe their performance in government deserves scrutiny.

These positions are not mutually exclusive. They exemplify the core of journalism: evaluating situations based on factual evidence rather than determining whether merits protection based on race, gender, or political affiliation.

It should be possible to critique a Black female elected official without indicting Black women as a group. Similarly, defending a Black woman against unjust treatment should not create a political obligation to support all her subsequent actions.

The same standard must be applied to Black men. While tone, respect, and historical context are important, factual accuracy and accountability are equally essential.

Are We Journalists or Political Gatekeepers?

Another significant moment arose when Don Lemon questioned whether Smith needed to “join the chorus” of critics targeting Black people, given the prevalence of such criticism from others. I understand the rationale behind this perspective, as Black Americans have historically faced hostile and distorted coverage from mainstream institutions.

However, journalism cannot function on the premise that legitimate criticism should be withheld solely because the subject shares our racial identity. Adopting such a standard raises complex questions about the definition of “us.”

Does “us” mean Black journalists, Black Democrats, Black elected officials, Black celebrities, Black organizations, or the millions of everyday Black Americans who frequently disagree with all of those groups? The interests of a Black politician, Black media personality or Black professional organization are not automatically identical to the interests of ordinary Black citizens.

The role of Black journalism is not to dictate what Black people should think. Instead, it is to equip Black audiences with information, historical context, investigative reporting, and diverse arguments, enabling them to form their own conclusions.

This distinction is essential, as journalism’s purpose is to empower individuals with information rather than to control their opinions.

Black Journalism Was Supposed to Challenge Gatekeepers

Black journalism exists because mainstream American media repeatedly failed Black America. Our stories were ignored, our communities were misunderstood, our voices were marginalized, and our experiences were frequently interpreted by people with little connection to the communities they were covering.

In response, Black communities established newspapers, magazines, radio stations, and eventually digital media platforms to tell their own stories. This history should make Black journalists especially wary of ideological gatekeeping, as the profession was founded in part to counter external control over Black representation.

It is inconsistent to spend generations resisting white institutions that dictate thought to Black America, only to establish Black institutions that impose similarly restrictive boundaries on acceptable perspectives. Criticizing corporate media for narrative control while fostering a culture where Black journalists are penalized for challenging dominant political views undermines the profession’s foundational principles.

If that happens, we have not eliminated gatekeeping. We have changed the gatekeepers.

A Seat at the Table Is Not Ownership

The Stephen A. controversy also highlights why independent Black-owned media remains so important. Black journalists working inside mainstream organizations can accomplish extraordinary things, but independence ultimately requires more than visibility, representation, or a high-profile television contract.

Ownership matters because the person who owns the institution ultimately controls the institution. Black journalists fought to obtain seats at mainstream media tables, and that battle opened doors that should never be minimized, but having a seat at the table is not the same as having power over the table.

The future of Black journalism should involve building and reinforcing Black-owned independent media that can challenge all political parties, ideologies, and institutions without concern for violating external political expectations. Independent Black journalism should not serve as a public-relations arm for any political party, corporation, activist group, or even Black organizations.

Our primary loyalty must be to the truth and to the communities we represent.

Stephen A. Smith Is Not the Real Story

Stephen A. Smith will be fine regardless of how this controversy ends. He has an enormous platform, considerable financial resources, and ample access to microphones and cameras to defend himself against NABJ or anyone else who criticizes him.

My concern centers on the young Black journalist who observes a prominent peer deviate from prevailing political or cultural norms. Regardless of whether we acknowledge it, that journalist is drawing lessons from this controversy.

Is that young journalist learning to pursue facts impartially, or to identify which opinions are professionally acceptable? Are they being taught to challenge all individuals equally, or to treat certain politicians and public figures differently based on race, gender, or political affiliation?

Are they being taught intellectual independence, or are they internalizing an unwritten professional code?

These questions are far more consequential for the future of Black journalism than the debate over whether Stephen A. Smith merited a negative award.

Black Journalism Must Make Room for Independent Black Thought

This argument is not directed against the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), Black journalists, or organizations established to support Black media professionals. Rather, it asserts that institutions committed to Black journalism should be leading advocates for intellectual independence within the field.

Black journalists should hold corporations, government officials, Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, progressives, Black leaders, and white leaders accountable. We must also be prepared to challenge one another, as accountability loses its significance if it is only applied to those outside our political, racial, or professional communities.

We must not permit disagreement to be equated with betrayal, political independence to be labeled as anti-Blackness, criticism of a Black woman to be interpreted as hostility toward all Black women, or criticism of a Black politician to be seen as opposition to Black political progress. Diverging from the prevailing political consensus should not automatically result in a Black journalist being labeled a sellout, MAGA, or Republican.

Stephen A. Smith is not the central issue. The more significant question is whether Black journalism continues to accommodate journalists who resist unwritten political codes, and whether the profession is willing to scrutinize its own political biases as rigorously as it examines those of others.

Black journalism should engage with our history, affirm our humanity, investigate injustice, challenge those in power, and offer perspectives that mainstream institutions often neglect. However, it should not dictate a singular acceptable viewpoint for Black Americans.

Black journalism should present a Black perspective without prescribing what that perspective must be.

Two Battles, One City: Mayor Shawyn Fought Cancer, But What Is Mount Vernon Fighting Within City Hall?

914 Politics
BW - Mount Vernon

Larnez Kinsey

August 17, 2026

Two Battles, One City: Mayor Shawyn Fought Cancer, But What Is Mount Vernon Fighting Within City Hall?

Her illness deserves compassion. Her leadership still demands accountability.

I watched Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard go live, reveal her cancer journey, and announce being cancer-free for two years today. I watched as Mount Vernon’s mayor removed the armor of public office and allowed residents to see the woman underneath it. She shared that in May 2024, she suffered a massive saddle pulmonary embolism affecting both lungs. During treatment, doctors discovered another blockage that was eventually diagnosed as leiomyosarcoma, or LMS, a rare form of soft-tissue cancer.

In August 2024, she underwent an 18-hour operation, followed by months of recovery. She continues to manage lymphedema resulting from that medical journey. On August 17, 2026, Mayor Shawyn marked two years cancer-free. For a moment, the politics disappeared.

I was not looking at a salary, an appointment, a controversy, or an administration. I was looking at a Black woman who had carried something life-threatening inside her body while continuing to carry the expectations of an entire city. Cancer does not care about titles, meetings, press conferences, or budget deadlines. It comes for the person beneath the position. Before discussing City Hall, we must honor the human being.

Mayor Shawyn survived something that tried to take her away from herself, her family and her community. That deserves compassion. That deserves prayer. That deserves a moment when we say, “We are grateful you are still here.” But when the live ended and the emotion settled, another question remained: While Mayor Shawyn was fighting to stop cancer from destroying her body, who was fighting to stop the dysfunction inside City Hall from destroying Mount Vernon?

Then I Looked at the Numbers

Mount Vernon is approximately four square miles, with more than 70,000 people living inside its borders. Nearly 60% of its residents are Black, and approximately one-third are foreign-born. Only 42.9% of occupied homes are owner-occupied. Their median value is approximately $484,000, while homeowners with mortgages face median monthly costs of $3,596, according to the U.S. Census Bureau⁠. This is not a community with unlimited money to absorb government instability.

Yet Mount Vernon’s adopted budgets report property-tax increases of 7.71% in 2024, 3.60% in 2025 and 5.47% in 2026. The figures appear in the city’s own 2026 adopted budget⁠. In March 2024, the City Council approved an increase in the mayor’s salary from $143,000 to $200,000, a $57,000 raise of nearly 40%. News 12 reported that the comptroller’s salary also increased from $128,000 to $185,000, and council members’ salaries rose from approximately $33,000 to $50,000. ⁠

In 2025, Mount Vernon issued short-term Tax Anticipation Notes to obtain cash needed for immediate obligations. In a public letter, the comptroller said the borrowing would allow the city to meet payroll, pay vendors, and continue essential services, according to the City of Mount Vernon website.⁠ The Police Department has also remained below previously authorized staffing levels, with fewer than 160 officers assigned compared with 208 budgeted positions, according to Syracuse University’s The NewsHouse, which published reporting in June 2026.⁠

In December 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice found reasonable cause to believe that the Mount Vernon Police Department engaged in a pattern or practice of excessive force, arrests without probable cause and unlawful strip and body-cavity searches. The department attributed those violations to deficient policies, training, supervision and accountability systems. ⁠

Then, in August 2026, Deputy Public Safety Commissioner Jennifer Lackard, one of Mount Vernon’s highest-ranking public-safety officials, was terminated after being arrested and charged in connection with an alleged Bronx shooting involving her son. Those charges remain allegations unless proven in court, according to ABC7 New York.⁠

These are not rumors circulating in a barbershop. These are not whispers exchanged after Sunday service. These are documented conditions surrounding the government of Mount Vernon. Mount Vernon has not formally declared bankruptcy. Short-term borrowing also does not, by itself, prove that bankruptcy is imminent. Municipalities use Tax Anticipation Notes to manage cash flow while awaiting expected revenue.

But when repeated tax increases, short-term borrowing, staffing shortages and delayed financial reporting exist at the same time, residents are justified in fearing that their city is moving dangerously close to the edge of financial collapse. That fear represents its own crisis of confidence.

This Is Money Earnin’ Mount Vernon

To understand why this matters so deeply, you must understand Mount Vernon. This is not merely another municipality printed on a Westchester County map. This is Money Earnin’ Mount Vernon. This is the city that helped shape Heavy D, Pete Rock and CL Smooth, a place whose fingerprints are all over Hip-Hop, R&B, fashion, athletics, entrepreneurship and Black culture. This is a city where Sunday morning still means something. Its churches have served as sanctuaries, food pantries, political meeting places and extensions of the family.

Caribbean families brought their food, music, faith and work ethic. Black families came seeking homeownership, safety and something they could pass to their children. Entrepreneurs turned storefronts, kitchens, basements, beauty salons, barbershops and folding tables into businesses.

Memorial Field is not simply concrete and grass. It is memory. It is pride. Mount Vernon has always produced more cultural influence than four square miles should logically be able to hold. The problem is that its government has too often failed to match the greatness of its people. Residents should not have to survive on nostalgia while City Hall struggles with the present. A city that gave the culture so much deserves a government capable of giving its residents stability, transparency and services they can trust.

Mount Vernon Was Already Wounded

Mount Vernon’s dysfunction did not begin with Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard. The city experienced years of political conflict, financial instability, competing centers of power, questionable appointments and fractured public trust before she entered office. Mayor Shawyn inherited many of those wounds. But she was not elected merely to describe what was broken. She was elected to interrupt the cycle.

After more than six years under her leadership, every failure cannot continue to be placed at the feet of previous administrations. At some point, inherited problems become present-day responsibilities. At some point, the person holding the office owns the condition of the administration operating beneath it. Mount Vernon has been dysfunctional for years. Under Mayor Shawyn’s watch, however, it increasingly appears to be moving from chronic dysfunction toward institutional collapse.

That does not mean every department has stopped functioning or that nothing positive has happened. The administration can point to infrastructure investments, public-safety technology, youth programming, development initiatives and the adoption of the city’s first comprehensive plan in decades. Those accomplishments belong in the record. So do the failures. When several essential systems appear unstable simultaneously, residents have every right to ask whether they are witnessing isolated problems or a government losing its ability to regulate itself.

Cancer Did Not Make These Decisions

The city says Mayor Shawyn continued leading Mount Vernon throughout her treatment and recovery. Unless evidence establishes otherwise, we must accept that she remained the city’s chief executive and retained responsibility for her administration. We cannot blame the city’s continuing problems on her cancer.

But Cancer did not prepare Mount Vernon’s budget. Cancer did not make appointments. Cancer did not decide who was promoted, protected, suspended, or terminated. Cancer did not determine how taxpayer money would be spent. Cancer did not vote to increase elected officials’ salaries. Her illness explains the extraordinary private weight she carried. It does not erase the public decisions made under her leadership. Mayor Shawyn’s medical privacy belongs to her. The exercise of governmental authority belongs to the public.

Residents do not need her medical records. They are entitled, however, to understand how their government maintained continuity during an 18-hour surgery and months of recovery. Who handled daily executive operations? Were responsibilities formally delegated? If so, to whom and for how long? What safeguards governed significant personnel and financial decisions? Those are not accusations. They are reasonable questions about governmental structure. If delegation occurred, it would not automatically eliminate executive accountability. A mayor appoints senior staff, establishes the chain of command, and remains responsible for the systems governing the administration.

Her diagnosis was personal.

Her authority was public.

That is the line.

The Raise Still Happened

The salary increases were approved in March 2024, before the medical emergency described as beginning in May. The City Council approved the compensation resolution. It would therefore be inaccurate to say Mayor Shawyn acted alone or unilaterally gave herself a raise. But the increase benefiting her office took effect, and her annual salary rose to $200,000 while residents faced repeated property-tax increases. This is not about whether a mayor should be compensated fairly for leading more than 70,000 people. It is about timing, proportion and shared sacrifice.

When residents are told the city needs more from them, they should be able to see that their elected officials are carrying the burden with them, not positioning themselves above it. You cannot repeatedly tell the people to tighten their belts while City Hall loosens its own. We can have compassion for what happened inside Mayor Shawyn’s body while questioning what happened inside the city’s budget.

Public Safety Cannot Be Managed Through Messaging

The Justice Department’s findings represented a serious rupture in public trust. That federal finding was followed by another troubling measure of instability: by August 2026, six members of the Mount Vernon Police Department had reportedly been arrested in separate incidents over a period of roughly four months.

Six members. Four months. Different allegations. One department already struggling to rebuild public confidence. And that does not even include what happened last fall, when five members of the Mount Vernon Police Department were suspended on October 23, 2025, in connection with a shooting that had taken place the previous week inside a police prisoner transport van.

To be clear, an arrest, indictment, or suspension is not a conviction. Allegations must still be proven in court, and every individual is entitled to due process. But when that many members of a single police department are arrested within such a compressed period, the optics are troubling, and the public is justified in asking whether Mount Vernon is confronting a series of isolated personal failures—or a deeper breakdown in recruitment, vetting, supervision, discipline, accountability, and institutional culture.

That is the larger issue Mount Vernon cannot afford to ignore. The city has said reforms began before the federal investigation and that the department strengthened certain policies and practices. Any progress should be measured and publicly documented. But reform cannot exist only in press releases. Residents need stable leadership, adequate staffing, constitutional policing, transparent disciplinary systems and consequences when public trust is violated.

Then came the arrest of Jennifer Lackard, one of Mount Vernon’s highest-ranking public-safety officials. Her immediate termination addressed the employment crisis of that moment. It did not answer the larger questions. How did someone holding one of the city’s highest-ranking public-safety positions receive that level of authority?

What vetting occurred before she was entrusted with such a sensitive role? What qualifications were considered? What concerns, if any, were known? Did personal, political, church or organizational relationships influence her appointment or continued employment? Who evaluated her performance? Why did serious examination of her appointment intensify only after an arrest made the situation impossible to ignore?

These are not questions about Mayor Shawyn’s cancer. They concern the judgment, standards and oversight of her administration. Cancer cannot answer them. City Hall must.

Compassion Cannot Become Political Protection

Some residents have questioned why Mayor Shawyn picked this moment in time to disclose her cancer journey while her administration faces intense scrutiny. I understand why the question exists. But timing alone is not evidence of manipulation. Perhaps she needed to reach the two-year milestone before she felt safe speaking. Perhaps she wanted to protect her family. Perhaps she needed to survive the experience before she could find language for it. A cancer survivor does not owe the public a disclosure schedule aligned with the political news cycle. We must not weaponize Mayor Shawyn’s illness to attack her humanity.

But City Hall must not weaponize her illness to silence legitimate criticism either. If every question about taxes, appointments, spending or public safety is met with, “How can you criticize a woman who survived cancer?” compassion has been transformed into political protection. That would dishonor the seriousness of both her medical journey and her public office.

When Dysfunction Begins to Resemble Disease

Mayor Shawyn fought courageously to remove cancer from her body. Now Mount Vernon must ask whether the dysfunction growing inside its government has been treated or merely allowed to spread. Cancer can compromise healthy systems and redirect resources the body needs to survive. It can advance when early symptoms are minimized or treated individually instead of being recognized as signs of a deeper condition.

Mount Vernon’s rising taxes, questionable appointments, unstable public-safety leadership, financial pressure and repeated crises may appear to be separate problems. But what if they are symptoms of the same institutional disease? What if the real danger is a governing culture in which political loyalty appears to outweigh competence, transparency becomes selective and accountability arrives only after a crisis can no longer be contained?

Mount Vernon has been dysfunctional for years. But under Mayor Shawyn’s watch, that dysfunction appears to be metastasizing into something more dangerous: a loss of confidence in whether City Hall can govern effectively, responsibly and transparently. If leadership repeatedly protects, minimizes or fails to remove the conditions allowing that disease to grow, residents must ask the most uncomfortable question:

Mayor Shawyn may have defeated the cancer that threatened her life, but has her administration become the cancer threatening the health of Mount Vernon? That question is not about her body. It is about her record. It is not an attack on her survival. It is a demand that Mount Vernon survive too.

Accountability Is What Love Looks Like When Love Refuses to Lie

In Mount Vernon, accountability is rarely impersonal. People attend the same churches, funerals, ribbon cuttings, fundraisers, political events and community celebrations. Government, faith, business, friendship and family often occupy the same spaces. That closeness can make honest criticism feel like betrayal.

But accountability is not betrayal. Accountability is what love looks like when love refuses to lie. It says: Mayor Shawyn, I watched you. I heard the vulnerability in your testimony. I honor what your body endured. I celebrate your two years cancer-free and pray that healing continues to find every part of you. And Mount Vernon still needs answers.

Residents need answers about taxes, borrowing and the city’s financial condition. Why does the City of Mount Vernon still not currently have an active credit or bond rating? They need answers about public-safety staffing, leadership and accountability. They need answers about appointments to positions of public trust.

They need a measurable plan for healing the systems still wounded inside City Hall. Those questions are not stones being thrown at a cancer survivor. They are responsibilities being presented to a mayor.

Two Battles, One City

Mayor Shawyn fought a battle within her body. Mount Vernon continues fighting a battle within its government. Her battle required medicine, faith, family, courage, and the determination to live. Mount Vernon’s battle requires truth, transparency, competent appointments, fiscal discipline, and leadership willing to confront dysfunction, even when that dysfunction is politically convenient.

One battle should not erase the other. Mayor Shawyn can be courageous and still be questioned. She can be a survivor and still be accountable. She can deserve privacy as a patient and transparency as a mayor. Let us wrap our arms around the woman. Let us pray over her continued healing. Let us celebrate two years cancer-free. Let us thank God that cancer did not get the final word.

Then, with that same love, let us turn toward City Hall and continue calling for accountability. Because grace does not require silence. Compassion does not cancel accountability. Mayor Shawyn fought the disease threatening her body. Now Mount Vernon must determine whether the leadership governing the city is willing or able to confront the disease threatening it from within.

Two Battles, One City: Mayor Shawyn Fought Cancer, But What Is Mount Vernon Fighting Within City Hall? 1

“That’s Not a Feeling” Why the Word Disrespected Deserves a Second Look in Restorative Practice

Health & Wellness

Derek H. Suite, M.D.

August 15, 2026

“That’s Not a Feeling” Why the Word Disrespected Deserves a Second Look in Restorative Practice

Students across this county head back to school in a few weeks, and the restorative circles will start up not long after. So, picture an eleven-year-old boy sitting in a circle of fifteen chairs with no desks. Call him John, though John is a composite drawn from many children rather than any one child. A restorative counselor is in the circle too, holding a small wooden object that gets passed from hand to hand so everyone knows whose turn it is to talk. John is there because of something that happened in a hallway on Tuesday. When the object reaches him, he says he felt disrespected. The counselor, who means well, tells him that disrespect is not a feeling, then asks him what he was really feeling underneath. John looks down. Shrugs his shoulders. He says he doesn’t know. After a moment of awkward silence, the object passes to the next person.

Districts across Westchester and beyond have brought restorative practice into their buildings as an alternative to suspension, and much of it works well. I have watched it change outcomes for young people who would otherwise have been suspended and sent home for three days with nothing to think about except how much they hated school. There is meaningful research behind it, even if implementation and outcomes vary, and the restorative facilitators I have met over the years have been remarkably sensitive.

So, what follows is offered from inside a practice I believe in, by someone who has spent years on the clinical side of restorative circles in professional sport, where grown men, especially men of color, are often trying to put difficult experiences into words while also figuring out how those words will be heard.

This is where the language around what people are feeling starts to matter.

Some of the ideas behind restorative practice come from the work of the psychologist Silvan Tomkins and, later, the psychiatrist Donald Nathanson. Tomkins listed nine basic affects that he believed show up very early in life: anger, fear, distress, disgust, dissmell, shame, interest, enjoyment, and surprise. Dissmell is the instinctive urge to turn away from an offensive smell. In his view, many of the more complex feelings we have arise from these basic emotional responses and the meanings we make of what happens to us.

That matters because disrespect is not one of the nine.

In some restorative-practice training, particularly material influenced by Nonviolent Communication, facilitators are taught to understand “I felt disrespected” as a person’s interpretation of what happened, rather than the underlying emotion. From there, the facilitator may ask what the person felt in that moment. It could be anger, shame, hurt, fear, humiliation, or something else.

Tomkins was an influential thinker, and his model was built to describe a handful of basic affective responses that appear early in life, the ones that show on a child’s face before they have the words. That is a description of what the body does. His model was not developed as an account of what racism does to a person. And back in John’s circle, Tomkins’ list is doing something he never asked it to do, which is deciding which words count.

I ran into it from the wrong side of the chair a few weeks ago.

We were doing a restorative training exercise on affective language, the kind where you build a sentence out loud so the group can hear it. I said, “I feel disrespected when…” and got no further. The example I had in mind involved nobody in that room. The facilitator stopped me and said they wanted to teach me something about the difference between an emotion and respect.

I had picked that word on purpose. This is work I do for a living.

An article on the subject turned up in the group chat a few minutes later, posted in the same teaching spirit. I got very quiet. Three people found me during the break to ask if I was all right, and I told them I was fine. I drove home on the Saw Mill River Parkway looking for a better word and, like John, not finding one.

If a more precise word exists, I would use it. But weeks of turning this over have not produced one that does the same work.

I went back to the restorative literature to see what I was missing.

In 2002, the criminologist Bas van Stokkom wrote about indignation in restorative conferences. Indignation turns up when someone feels wronged and cannot get the size of the wrong into words. It comes out as irritation, or bitterness, or something the room files as sarcasm. Van Stokkom, drawing on Retzinger and Scheff, calls this a kind of helpless anger. The person is struggling to convey the enormity of what happened.

That felt familiar.

The literature describes a familiar restorative move, which is to help the person get underneath the indignation to the more vulnerable feelings, the sorrow and anxiety and hurt that make it easier for a room to hear one another. In a footnote, the paper sets out the instruction: mediators should reinterpret repeated expressions of indignation, and the accusations that come with them, into wishes or interests so those softer feelings can surface.

But van Stokkom does not leave it there.

He argues that indignation is doing something else at the same time, which is putting a question of responsibility in front of the room. Somebody is saying that something happened here and somebody has to answer for it. I have read that footnote maybe a dozen times now, and it still does not sit easily with me. Something in it goes missing.

My facilitator was not working from van Stokkom. The distinction they were following has its own name. In some restorative training, words like disrespected are called pseudo-feelings and grouped with threatened, bullied, and misunderstood, on the reasoning that they describe what somebody else did rather than what you felt.

That thinking is familiar from Nonviolent Communication, and the concern behind it is valid. Saying you feel disrespected does put the cause of your feeling in another person’s hands.

What surprised me, when I went looking, is that the restorative literature does not appear to speak with one voice about this. A paper presented at the 2012 IIRP World Conference and published on the institute’s own website offers “I feel really disrespected by you” as an example of a disapproving affective statement. So, the word turns up in the field’s own published material as a model of the very thing it is elsewhere said to violate. I do not read that as a contradiction. I read it as a sign that the question is still open.

I do not think the facilitator who stopped me stepped outside their training. I think they did what they were taught to do. That stays with me, because the facilitator may simply have been doing what the training asked them to do.

Because when a Black person says, “I felt disrespected,” the word is already saying more than one thing.

Something physical happens first, and the body is on alert. You start tracking how you are being seen, how you are being spoken to, whether this is one event or one of many. History lives in the word too, and a question about dignity and standing that anger does not account for.

One study of mostly African American teenagers found that those reporting more racial discrimination at sixteen were more sensitive to disrespect two years later, and that the same sensitivity was tied to aggression. It is a small study, and the authors were careful with it, but the direction is worth noticing: the sensitivity tracks what young people are living through.

I have sat with young men on both sides of that, the ones whose sensitivity kept them out of trouble and the ones whose sensitivity walked them into it.

Translating disrespected into angry leaves the job half done. Anger is in there. So is hurt, and sometimes fear, and often shame. The word “disrespected” is also telling us what the person believes happened between him and somebody else.

Take that away, and we keep the emotion while losing the claim.

The cost of the correction itself is the part I would ask facilitators to think about. For some Black participants, saying out loud that they felt disrespected may come after deciding several times over not to say it.

One study found prospective teachers wrongly reading Black children’s faces as angry more often than white children’s, and the most biased among them were not harsher on Black children so much as more generous with the white ones. In my own practice, I have watched Black children learn to keep their faces still in mixed settings, and I have rarely had to explain to them why.

So, when someone finally says, “I felt disrespected,” and the first response from the authority in the room is to correct the word, the subject changes. He came in trying to explain what happened to him. Now part of his attention has gone to whether he said it the right way.

There is a more appropriate sequence in my view, and it yields more useful information when it is handled with care. I am still working it out myself.

Honor it. Take the word as given. “You felt disrespected. Tell me more about what that was like.” Eleven words that keep a person in the room.

Explore it. Ask what it felt like in his body. Ask what it told him about how he was being seen. Ask whether it reminded him of other times. Ask what respect would have looked like instead. These questions get you further than pressing for anger does, because they surface the pattern and the repair at the same time.

Expand it only if the protocol requires it. “It sounds like what you felt carried a lot in it. Maybe some anger, maybe some hurt, maybe something about how you were treated. What else was in there?” The word stays as the container and other feelings live inside it. They do not replace it.

One more thing, for anyone facilitating with Black boys and Black men.

He may be choosing the word disrespected precisely because it feels safer than angry. Disrespect names the violation while leaving him unmarked. Anger is the word that has followed Black men into disciplinary hearings, traffic stops, and personnel files for generations.

When a facilitator presses past disrespect to anger, they are asking a young man to hand over the one word he has been taught, sometimes through real consequences, will be used against him. He may well hand it over, and from the outside it will be hard to tell whether he was persuaded, strategic, or simply outranked.

Somewhere, a boy like John is sitting in a circle. The object has moved on without him, and someone else is talking now.

Consider what it costs him.

Sleep Deprivation in Black Communities: When Exhaustion Becomes a Measure of Worth by Derek H. Suite, M.D., M.S. 5

Dr. Derek H. Suite is a board-certified psychiatrist, a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and the founder of Full Circle Health, PLLC. He consults to professional sports organizations, where his work includes restorative practice. He contributes monthly to Black Westchester Magazine and writes here in his personal capacity.

This article is for educational purposes and does not constitute individual medical advice.

Sources. The disrespect-sensitivity study is Espinoza, Goering, and Mrug, International Journal of Developmental Science (2021), which followed 75 adolescents, nearly all of them African American. The face-reading study is Halberstadt and colleagues, Emotion (2020). On indignation, Bas van Stokkom, Theoretical Criminology (2002). The pseudo-feelings distinction is set out by Joe Brummer at joebrummer.com (2015). The affective-statement example is from Miller and Olstad, 15th IIRP World Conference (2012), published at iirp.edu.

ELOC Celebrates the Next Generation of Environmental Leaders at 2026 Student Summer Program Showcase & Graduation

Education

DAMON K JONES

August 15, 2026

ELOC Celebrates the Next Generation of Environmental Leaders at 2026 Student Summer Program Showcase & Graduation

YONKERS, NY — Environmental Leaders of Color (ELOC) celebrated education, innovation, and youth leadership at its 2026 Student Summer Program Showcase & Graduation, bringing students, families, community leaders, and environmental advocates together at the Yonkers Riverfront Library on Thursday, August 13.

The event marked the culmination of a summer of learning for participating students, who presented innovative projects exploring ecosystems, environmental stewardship, climate change, and solutions to environmental challenges affecting local communities.

But the showcase represented more than the completion of a summer program. It demonstrated what can happen when young people are given access to education, mentorship, resources, and opportunities to turn what they learn into real-world ideas.

Preparing Students to Become Leaders

At the heart of ELOC’s summer program is a simple principle: young people should not only learn about the challenges facing their communities—they should be equipped to help solve them.

Throughout the program, students were encouraged to think critically about the relationship between people, communities, and the environment. Their projects allowed them to take what they learned and apply it to issues involving sustainability, ecosystems, climate change, and environmental responsibility.

The showcase gave students an opportunity to present those ideas publicly, develop confidence in their work, and demonstrate that environmental education can also be a pathway to leadership.

ELOC’s mission goes beyond teaching environmental concepts. The organization seeks to create opportunities for young people, particularly those from historically underrepresented communities in environmental fields, to see themselves as scientists, innovators, advocates, entrepreneurs, and leaders.

ELOC Celebrates the Next Generation of Environmental Leaders at 2026 Student Summer Program Showcase & Graduation 2

ELOC Celebrates the Next Generation of Environmental Leaders at 2026 Student Summer Program Showcase & Graduation 3

Dr. Aaron Mair Brings a Powerful Message of Environmental Leadership

The program featured Dr. Aaron Mair, the 57th National President of the Sierra Club and a longtime environmental justice advocate, as guest speaker.

Mair’s participation brought decades of environmental leadership and advocacy experience directly to the students. His presence also reinforced an important message behind ELOC’s work: environmental leadership must include the voices and experiences of the communities most directly affected by environmental challenges.

For young people considering their own futures, seeing experienced environmental leaders can help transform an abstract career possibility into something tangible.

Student Voices Take Center Stage

The program also featured student speaker Kylie Robinson, representing the very generation ELOC is working to prepare and empower.

Giving students a platform is an important part of leadership development. Young people need opportunities not only to learn but also to communicate their ideas, speak publicly, demonstrate what they have accomplished, and recognize the value of their own voices.

The graduation celebrated those accomplishments while challenging students to view the end of the summer program not as a finish line, but as the beginning of a larger journey.

Education, Innovation and Opportunity

Environmental challenges will increasingly intersect with science, technology, public health, artificial intelligence, energy, infrastructure, and economic development. Preparing young people for that future requires educational experiences that connect classroom knowledge with practical applications.

That is where programs like ELOC can make a difference.

When students receive exposure to environmental science, technology, sustainability, leadership, and problem-solving, they begin to understand that the green economy is not something happening somewhere else. It represents potential careers, businesses, innovations, and leadership opportunities available to them.

The 2026 Student Summer Program Showcase & Graduation demonstrated what becomes possible when education is connected to exposure and opportunity.

ELOC is not simply preparing students to inherit the future.

It is helping prepare them to lead it.

Schools, community organizations, businesses, and potential partners interested in learning more about Environmental Leaders of Color and its educational programs can visit ELOC.

The Long Island Underground Legends of Hip Hop Documentary Hits the Big Screen in Dobbs Ferry

Entertainment News
BW News

AJ Woodson

August 14, 2026

The Long Island Underground Legends of Hip Hop Documentary Hits the Big Screen in Dobbs Ferry

The Long Island Underground Legends of Hip-Hop, directed by Archie Snowden, aka MC Amazin’ A, is coming to Westchester County as an official selection of the 11th Annual Hip Hop Film Festival. The feature documentary will screen Sunday, August 23, 2026, at 2:30 p.m. at LOOK Dine-In Cinemas, 1 Hamilton Street in Dobbs Ferry. The Film Fest, presented by Harlem Film House, runs August 19–23, 2026.

Multimedia journalist, award-winning video producer, musician, and filmmaker Archie Snowden recently sat down with AJ “AJ ROK” Woodson to talk about his new documentary and why the story of Long Island’s Hip-Hop pioneers needed to be told. Check out our conversation with Archie Snowden about The Long Island Underground Legends of Hip-Hop, the artists who built the Long Island scene, and why it is important that Strong Island gets its proper place in the history of Hip-Hop.

The Long Island Underground Legends of Hip-Hop digs into the early suburban roots of Hip-Hop on Long Island, focusing on the teenagers, DJs, MCs and crews who were building their own scene just outside New York City’s five boroughs. The documentary challenges the traditional telling of Hip-Hop history by examining how artists growing up among the grass and suburban streets of Long Island, rather than the concrete landscape usually associated with the culture’s beginnings, helped create a movement of their own.

At the heart of the film is a larger question: Who gets remembered when Hip-Hop history is told—and who gets left out?

Snowden gives the people who were there an opportunity to tell the story themselves, documenting a Long Island scene whose influence was often overlooked or omitted by the mainstream gatekeepers responsible for defining Hip-Hop’s historical narrative.

Among the pioneers featured are B Luv and me- AJ ROK of JVC FORCE, the Long Island group responsible for the iconic 1980s anthem “Strong Island,” a record that helped give Long Island one of Hip-Hop’s most enduring identities.

The film is listed by the Hip Hop Film Festival as a feature documentary with a running time of 1 hour and 24 minutes.

Screening Details

Sunday, August 23, 2026
2:30 PM
LOOK Dine-In Cinemas
1 Hamilton Street
Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522

Tickets for the 2:30 p.m. screening are currently listed at $20, plus a service fee. Seating is first come, first served, and festival organizers recommend arriving approximately 20 minutes before the screening for check-in.

For more information about the 11th Annual Hip Hop Film Festival and to purchase tickets, visit: https://www.harlemfilmhouse.org/hhff2026

The Long Island Underground Legends of Hip Hop Documentary Hits the Big Screen in Dobbs Ferry 7

Black Civic Leadership Has Always Been Central to Progressive Change by Dr. Haley Pilgrim

Editorials

Black Westchester

August 13, 2026

Black Civic Leadership Has Always Been Central to Progressive Change by Dr. Haley Pilgrim

Many of the issues now associated with progressive politics have long been central to Black civic life: strong public schools, affordable housing, fair wages, voting rights, healthcare access, environmental justice and accountable government.

Black communities have not simply participated in movements for social progress. Black organizers, faith leaders, educators, workers and community advocates have repeatedly helped define what progress should look like in America.

Yet much of today’s political conversation happens at the national level, even as decisions with immediate consequences are being made much closer to home.

Local governments determine where development happens, how public resources are distributed and which communities receive investment. School boards, city councils, county legislatures and state governments make decisions that shape daily life long before an issue becomes part of a presidential campaign.

That makes sustained local civic participation especially important.

Across Westchester, organizations are working to create more opportunities for residents to move beyond simply voting and become active participants in local public life. That is why Westchester Progressives reignited. It is one of the many groups rebuilding year-round organizing and developing pathways for residents interested in advocacy, community leadership, and public service.

The work is particularly focused on building a deeper bench of people who understand their communities and are prepared to lead.

Communities should not wait until an election to begin developing their next generation of leaders.

Black civic institutions have historically demonstrated the power of that approach. Churches, neighborhood associations, civil rights organizations and community groups created places where people could learn, organize and develop leadership long before their names ever appeared on a ballot.

A single election rarely creates lasting political power. It is built through institutions, relationships, and communities that continue developing leaders year after year.

Dr. Haley Pilgrim is a strategist, sociologist, and co-president of Westchester Progressives. Haley Pilgrim is a Mt. Vernon resident and passionate about building the power of Black and Brown communities.

FREEDOM: I Volunteered to Wear One Hat, Then Found Myself Wearing a Thousand

914 Politics
Editorials

Larnez Kinsey

August 13, 2026

FREEDOM: I Volunteered to Wear One Hat, Then Found Myself Wearing a Thousand

What Working on a Westchester County Political Campaign Taught Me About Unpaid Labor, Leadership, Power, Accountability, Boundaries, and Having the Strength to Close a Cycle By Larnez Kinsey

On August 4, 2026, I received written confirmation from the New York State Board of Elections that my resignation as treasurer of a political campaign in Westchester County had finally been approved.

I stared at one word:

Approved.

Almost immediately, a song started playing in my mind.

“Freedom,” the theme from the 1995 film Panther.

That powerful collective of women’s voices came rushing back into my consciousness. I didn’t choose the song. It chose the moment. Although that letter arrived in August, I had verbally resigned on March 29, 2026. My last involvement in campaign activity was April 2. The paperwork was finally catching up with a decision I had made months earlier. But sitting with that letter, I realized this experience wasn’t only about leaving a political campaign.

It was about leadership. Power. Integrity. Boundaries. And, perhaps most uncomfortably, my own familiar patterns.

I volunteered to wear one hat. Somewhere along the way, I found myself wearing what felt like a thousand. This time, instead of figuring out how to carry them better, I finally put them down.

It Started With Yes

It started simply. Can you help? We need someone we trust. Would you be treasurer? When you’re accustomed to service, you don’t necessarily hear risk. You hear need. And when you’re somebody who knows how to get things done, need can sound a lot like responsibility. So I said yes. Treasurer. One title. One lane. At least, that’s what I thought.

But work doesn’t disappear because nobody has been assigned to do it. It starts looking for somewhere to land. And work has an incredible ability to find the hands already moving. Mine were moving. So I organized. I followed up. I supported events. I managed relationships. I solved problems. I filled gaps. Until one day, I realized the role I had accepted no longer resembled the role I was performing. One hat had become a thousand.

Behind the Curtain

The Wizard of Oz became an unexpected metaphor for what I experienced. Campaigns have a public-facing life. Pictures. Events. Meetings. Community appearances. Announcements. Social media. From the outside, movement can look like infrastructure. It isn’t.

During my time with the campaign, I watched volunteers come and go. Some stayed briefly. Others moved on. I don’t know each person’s reasons for leaving, and I won’t assign motives to decisions that weren’t mine. But eventually, I stopped treating every departure as an isolated event. At some point, turnover stops being an inconvenience and starts becoming information. I spent too much time asking how I could fill the spaces people left behind and not enough time asking why there was always another space to fill.

And strangely, that didn’t initially make me leave. It made me help harder. Something wasn’t getting done? I handled it. Another gap? I filled it. Another problem? I solved it. I didn’t understand yet that every empty space wasn’t necessarily an invitation for me to step into it. It was information I hadn’t learned to read. Because a photograph tells you who showed up. Infrastructure tells you who stayed.

I Was a Volunteer

That distinction matters. My actual employment is with New York State in a maximum-security forensic psychiatric facility. There are weeks when I work 60 to 80 hours. My professional environment requires me to read behavior, recognize escalation, maintain boundaries, make decisions under pressure, and remain composed during crisis.

That’s my paid work. But my life doesn’t end when my shift does. I’m also a wife, a mother of five daughters and a grandmother. I have a family, a home, relationships and people I love who deserve my presence too. So when I say I volunteered for this campaign, I need that word to mean something. I wasn’t giving from an empty calendar. I was giving from an already full life. And still, I showed up. I gave my time. My relationships. My organizational ability. My problem-solving capacity. My energy. Unpaid. I volunteered because I wanted to contribute.

But somewhere along the way, appreciated help began feeling like expected performance. And when expectations exceeded capacity, the conversation could become less about everything being carried and more about what hadn’t been accomplished. That’s when I started hearing about dropping the ball. There is a difference between appreciating someone’s capacity and becoming entitled to it. I had to learn that difference too.

How Many Balls Can One Person Hold?

The phrase “dropping the ball” stayed with me. Because telling somebody they dropped the ball assumes something: That ball belonged in their hands. Treasurer. Catch. Events. Catch. Outreach. Catch. Communications. Catch. Relationships. Catch. Another problem nobody clearly owned. Catch.

Eventually something hits the floor. And everybody looks at the person juggling. You dropped the ball. Well… I’m human. Not Cirque du Soleil. Eventually, I stopped asking how I could become a better juggler. I started asking a better question: Which of these balls were actually mine?

Accountability Requires Context

I can handle accountability. If I make a mistake, tell me. If I agreed to something and didn’t deliver, let’s discuss it. But accountability requires context. Did the person have the information? The resources? The access? The authority? Was the responsibility actually theirs?

There were moments when I felt talked down to. There were interactions I experienced as more diminishing than constructive. And there were expectations around outcomes that I did not believe one volunteer could reasonably control. There is something deeply backwards about quietly compensating for what an organization lacks and then being questioned about what that organization hasn’t accomplished.

Before criticizing the person holding the ball, perhaps leadership should ask: Who threw it? Why was it theirs to catch? And why were so many responsibilities traveling toward the same pair of hands? Sometimes you don’t discover how much invisible labor somebody was providing until they stop providing it.

When Power Starts Outrunning Purpose

Somewhere in all of this, another question started bothering me: What happens when power starts outrunning purpose? Most people enter public service talking about change. Community. Service. Making things better.

But there is a difference between: I want to make a difference, and I need this to go my way. Those are not the same sentence.

I started paying closer attention to leadership under disappointment. Because everybody can look like a leader when the room says yes. Show me what happens when the room says no. How are people spoken to when expectations aren’t met? Is disagreement treated as part of healthy leadership or experienced as disloyalty? Can somebody make a mistake without being made to feel small? Can another person make a decision you dislike without suddenly becoming the problem? Those questions became important to me because of my own experience.

But eventually, the question turned back toward me. What am I willing to normalize because I want somebody to succeed? When does loyalty begin asking me to ignore my own discernment? If I become uncomfortable with a process, how long should commitment to an outcome require me to remain inside it? That question had my name on it.

And my answer became simple: Winning is an outcome. Integrity is a practice. I can lose an outcome and still recognize myself afterward. What I’m no longer willing to do is become so invested in an outcome that I stop listening to myself along the way.

Then I Recognized the Pattern

And this is where I had to stop examining everybody else. Because I knew this pattern. Different room. Different people. Different circumstances. Same pattern. Someone needs something? I step in. There’s a gap? I fill it. Something is falling apart? I stabilize it. More is needed? I give more.

I operate naturally in what I describe as masculine, action-oriented energy. Give me a problem and my instinct is movement. What’s wrong? What needs to happen? What’s the solution? Let’s go.

That quality has served me extraordinarily well. But every strength has a shadow. Sometimes my ability to fix things has prevented me from asking whether they were mine to fix. Sometimes being needed has made it harder for me to recognize when I wasn’t being supported. And sometimes my capacity has kept me in situations longer than I should have stayed.

That was the mirror. Because there is something dangerous about being able to carry enormous amounts while looking completely composed. Competence can hide exhaustion. Efficiency can hide imbalance. And being exceptionally good at functioning inside chaos can make chaos feel normal.

You organize it. You solve it. You make the calls. You fill the gaps. You keep everything moving. Then everybody assumes the system worked. But sometimes the system didn’t work. You did. And when capable people continually compensate for what is missing, their competence can make an unsustainable situation look sustainable.

For a while, I was doing exactly that. I was supplying fuel to something that might otherwise have slowed down and mistaking its continued movement for evidence that the structure itself was working. That realization hurt. Because I couldn’t control how somebody else led. But I could control whether my labor continued making that leadership easier to sustain. That may have been the hardest lesson.

Sometimes the strongest boundary isn’t explaining to someone what they’re doing wrong. Sometimes it is simply removing what you’ve been providing and allowing the structure to reveal what it can actually support without you.

The Universe Will Ask If You Mean It

The universe has a funny way of asking whether you really mean what you’ve been saying. You say you want boundaries? Here comes a situation requiring one. You say you’re done overextending yourself? Here comes another opportunity to overextend. You say you’re finished carrying what doesn’t belong to you? Another ball lands at your feet. Are you going to pick this one up too?

Not every lesson returns because there is something new to learn. Sometimes the lesson returns to see whether you’ll choose differently.

I’ve always known I have the strength to endure. I know how to push through. I know how to survive difficult environments. But endurance wasn’t the assignment this time. Closure was.

Could I say enough and mean enough? Could I allow somebody to be disappointed with me? Could I allow something to remain undone without automatically volunteering myself as the solution? Could I close the door without standing in the doorway giving a PowerPoint presentation about why I was allowed to leave?

This time, I needed a different kind of strength. The strength to close the cycle.

My Name Is Not a Favor

When I stepped away, I learned another lesson. Campaign finance isn’t based on friendship, loyalty, or good intentions. It’s based on records. And my name was attached to those records. So I worked from what I could substantiate. Where my knowledge stopped, I stopped.

I became comfortable saying: I don’t know, and I cannot honestly confirm what I cannot verify. That isn’t incompetence. That’s integrity. The experience permanently changed how I think about attaching my name to anything. My signature isn’t community service. If my name carries responsibility, I need access. If my signature carries consequences, I need information. If I’m expected to provide accountability, I need corresponding authority. My name is not a favor.

For the Person Who Is Always “The Strong One”

Maybe you know this story too. You agreed to one thing and somehow became responsible for everything.

You’re the person everybody calls because: She’ll figure it out. And you do. You organize. You remember. You fix. You stabilize. You carry. You do it so smoothly that people eventually stop noticing the weight. Then something falls.

And instead of someone asking: Why was she carrying all of this? They ask: How did she drop the ball?

Maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe the real question is: Why did I believe all of this was mine to carry?

Being strong can become an identity. Being needed can feel like validation. And being the person who saves the day can become so familiar that you don’t realize you’re volunteering for your own exhaustion. That was mine to confront.

Before You Volunteer

If you are ever asked to volunteer for a campaign, board, nonprofit, community organization, or anything that will attach your name, reputation, time, or signature to someone else’s vision, ask questions before you say yes.

What exactly am I responsible for? What am I not responsible for? What authority and access come with my responsibility? Who else is actually doing the work? How is disagreement handled?

And one question I wish more volunteers asked: What is the process for leaving?

Don’t be so inspired by the mission that you neglect to examine the infrastructure. And once you’re inside, pay attention. Pay attention to how people communicate when they’re disappointed. Pay attention to whether responsibilities have names attached to them or whether they simply migrate toward whoever is competent enough to catch them. Pay attention to who comes. And pay very close attention to who stays.

Because volunteering means offering your service. It does not mean surrendering your boundaries. Your time is not automatically available because you offered some of it. Your competence is not permission to continuously increase your responsibilities. Your signature is not a favor. And believing deeply in someone’s mission does not require attaching your name to the way they execute it.

Ask the questions.

Read the room.

Watch the patterns.

And remember: You are allowed to believe in the mission and still decide that the way the mission is being carried out is not something you are willing to carry.

Freedom

On August 4th, the letter arrived. Approved. And there was that song again in my mind. Freedom.

Suddenly, the letter wasn’t paperwork. It was release.

Not revenge. Not vindication.

Not I told you so. Release.

Because I wasn’t only being released from a campaign position. I was releasing a pattern.

The woman who automatically says: I’ll handle it. The woman who catches every ball because she knows she can. The woman who can be exhausted and still look completely composed. The woman who has sometimes confused being needed with being valued. I spent years becoming the woman who could hold a thousand balls. I thought that was the gift. Now I understand the gift is knowing which ones are mine.

March 29, I said enough. April 2, I stopped participating. August 4, the paperwork finally caught up. But the real freedom wasn’t written in that letter. The real freedom was that when the familiar pattern returned, I chose differently.

I didn’t pick everything back up. I didn’t stay simply because I knew I could endure it. I learned that closure didn’t require me to publicly litigate every experience. And I didn’t need everybody to understand my decision before permitting myself to make it. Sometimes leaving isn’t the statement. What becomes visible after you stop compensating is.

Some balls aren’t mine to catch. Some systems aren’t mine to hold together. Some outcomes aren’t worth compromising myself to achieve. And some cycles aren’t mine to repeat.

I volunteered to wear one hat. I found myself wearing a thousand. But when I finally put them down, I didn’t lose myself. I got myself back.

And somewhere in the background of my mind, that song was still playing.

Freedom.

City & State Magazine Confirms It: NYC-DSA Is 60% White — So Who Is Really Speaking for Black New Yorkers?

NY Politics
Black Politics
From The Publisher's Desk

DAMON K JONES

August 11, 2026

City & State Magazine Confirms It: NYC-DSA Is 60% White — So Who Is Really Speaking for Black New Yorkers?

For months, New York City’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America has faced a familiar accusation: that behind the rhetoric of solidarity and multiracial working-class power sits an organization overwhelmingly white and disconnected from the Black and Latino communities it claims to represent. DSA and its allies dismissed the charge as bad-faith attack politics — an attempt by threatened incumbents to smear a movement instead of answering for their records. Now there is no need to argue. NYC-DSA released the numbers itself.

Sixty percent of the chapter’s active members identify as white. This is not an outside estimate or opposition research — it is the organization’s own internal survey data, compiled from years of sign-up forms and given directly to City & State Magazine. This is in a city where white residents make up roughly 34% of the population, while Black and Latino New Yorkers together make up more than half. NYC-DSA is not slightly out of step with the city it operates in. It is nearly twice as white as New York City itself and whiter than the national Democratic Party, which is about 56% white.

For many Black voters, this is not news — it is confirmation. Anyone who has canvassed a district or attended a candidate forum already had a sense of who fills the room. The report puts a hard number on what people already knew and removes the ability to dismiss the complaint as anecdote or grievance. When an organization’s own data validates what a community has said for years, that is not a coincidence to explain away. It is an organization caught telling on itself.

The timing makes it sting more, not less. This report did not come from routine transparency. It surfaced in the middle of a real political fight — six weeks after DSA-backed candidates Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier beat established Black and Latino politicians, including Rep. Adriano Espaillat, in Democratic primaries. Critics, including Black elected officials who lost those races, had already started calling out the pattern publicly. NYC-DSA’s response was to release a report confirming that nearly two-thirds of its members are white. That is not exoneration. That is the receipts arriving after the accusation, not before it.

Perhaps the most telling moment came when Mamdani was asked directly, on Clay Cane’s show, whether DSA is “a white movement.” He didn’t answer the question. He pivoted to crediting DSA as “one of the engines behind the creation of a new generation of Black and Brown leadership” — as if Black political power in New York needed a majority-white organization to manufacture it. That framing erases a long, independent tradition of Black leadership in this city, built through Harlem’s political institutions, the Black church, and generations of elected officials who answered to their communities directly, not through a 60%-white organization’s endorsement machine. Asked to account for DSA’s racial imbalance, Mamdani instead claimed credit for producing Black leadership — a subtle but real suggestion that Black political power is something DSA confers, not something Black New Yorkers have always built for themselves.

Nowhere is this more politically disturbing than in the case of Adriano Espaillat. After initially backing Cuomo, Espaillat endorsed Mamdani in the general election, lending his standing among Latino voters to help put him in office. Mamdani responded by endorsing Espaillat’s DSA-backed primary challenger — a Black and Latino congressman who had extended his hand, only to be discarded for the movement’s own candidate. For many Black and Latino voters watching, that sequence is a warning: loyalty to Mamdani and his coalition runs one direction only. It leaves those voters boxed in with nowhere to go. They built their political home inside the Democratic Party, and most do not have — or will not use — the political logic of threatening to withhold their vote or backing an independent or Republican to force the party to respect it. So the pattern repeats without consequence: Black and Latino voters keep the party in power, and the party keeps deciding, on its own terms, which of their leaders are expendable.

DSA’s defenders will point out, correctly, that the candidates who won those primaries are women of color — Avila Chevalier is Afro-Latina, Valdez is Latina and a citizen of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Nation. They will cite Mamdani’s line about a “new generation of Black and Brown leadership.” These points are real but do not answer the question Black voters are actually asking. An organization can run non-white candidates and still be shaped by a majority-white base whose priorities and instincts set what gets fought for and who gets targeted. Descriptive diversity in a candidate slate is not the same as a membership that reflects — and is accountable to — the communities it claims to organize. If 60% of the people deciding strategy and funding primary challenges are white, two or three non-white faces at the front of a campaign do not settle the imbalance. They can just as easily obscure it.

There is also the matter of what gets built versus what gets torn down. DSA’s theory of change is class-first: universal policies — rent stabilization, public housing investment, Medicare for All — meant to help Black and Latino working people by helping the working class broadly. That is a defensible theory. It is also exactly the one generations of Black organizers have pushed back on because “race-neutral” policy has a long, documented history of leaving Black communities behind even when it is supposed to help them proportionally. When that framework is run by an organization that is 60% white, the skepticism is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and it is earned.

None of this means DSA has built nothing. The newest members are somewhat less white than the base overall — 57% versus 60% chapter-wide — which suggests the imbalance is easing slowly. That is worth saying. But slow improvement from a lopsided baseline does not erase the baseline, and it does not explain why an organization this demographically unrepresentative of New York City has positioned itself as the vehicle for unseating sitting Black and Latino officials rather than building coalition with them.

What the City & State report actually did was not reveal something hidden. It removed plausible deniability. Black voters who have said for years that DSA does not look like the city it claims to represent no longer need to rely on impression. The organization confirmed it, in its own words, with its own numbers. Malcolm X warned Black Americans about this decades ago — the difference between the fox and the wolf, he said, is that the wolf’s teeth are visible, while the fox smiles as it closes in. The question now is not whether the imbalance exists. It is whether an organization that is 60% white, deciding which Black incumbents are expendable, gets to call that solidarity, or whether it is something else wearing solidarity’s language.

When Silence Is Mistaken for Guilt: An Editorial on Truth, Grace, and the Whole Story by Kathie Brewington

Editorials

AJ Woodson

August 9, 2026

When Silence Is Mistaken for Guilt: An Editorial on Truth, Grace, and the Whole Story by Kathie Brewington

For more than ten years, my family has lived with the weight of a serious allegation made against my son, Justin. For most of those years, we chose not to fight the matter publicly. We did not take our pain to social media or attempt to destroy another person to defend our own family. But silence can be misunderstood. Quietness is not an admission of guilt, and restraint does not mean there is not another side to a story.

This story began with something very different: an effort to help a family. We believed in second chances. A mother who had experienced incarceration was trying to reconnect with her children, and our family wanted to help. During a difficult transition involving the children, Justin became involved in helping them maintain some stability and continue their education.

As a praying mother, I remember becoming deeply uneasy. I told my son that I felt in my spirit that he was going to be set up. Justin eventually decided he needed to remove himself from the situation. Around that period, a dispute arose involving an order of protection. According to Justin, he was asked to support a claim that the order had been violated, but he believed that was not true and refused to give testimony he could not stand behind.

What followed changed his young life. A serious allegation was made against him, and he was arrested in New York City. Ultimately, rather than take the original and more serious allegations to trial, Justin accepted a plea to a lesser charge. As our family understands the disposition, that charge was acting in a manner injurious to a child. I do not omit that fact because telling the whole story means acknowledging the difficult parts as well. But a plea to a lesser charge should not be presented as an admission to every allegation originally made against him.

During that period, Justin experienced the darkest time of his young life. One person I will always remember with gratitude is his pastor. His pastor walked with him, talked with him, prayed with him, and reminded him that his life still had meaning. As his mother, I believe that kindness may have saved his life. Sometimes ministry is not delivered from a pulpit. Sometimes it is simply refusing to abandon a young person when he believes his future is gone.

Years later, Justin challenged the separate indicated child-abuse and maltreatment report maintained through the New York State system. In a March 23, 2023 administrative decision, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services recorded that the Westchester County Department of Social Services would not submit evidence in support of the indicated report. The decision stated that the agency did not meet its burden of proving by a fair preponderance of the evidence that Justin committed the alleged maltreatment and/or abuse. His request was granted, and the report was ordered amended to unfounded and sealed.

That administrative decision does not erase every event that came before it, and I do not present it as a criminal acquittal. The criminal proceeding and the later administrative proceeding were different matters. But if Justin’s history is going to be discussed publicly, the later administrative outcome should not be erased either.

Today, more than a decade after these events began, my son’s photograph and painful history are again being circulated publicly. That is why I have decided to speak. I will not answer a photograph with another photograph. I will not answer an accusation with personal retaliation. If my concern is that my son’s humanity has been forgotten, I cannot defend his humanity by forgetting someone else’s.

Instead, I choose the record. I choose context. I choose to distinguish what I personally witnessed, what my son told me, and what official documents establish. Truth does not need exaggeration to make it powerful.

There is also a larger issue here. Advocacy, particularly advocacy involving children and families, carries a responsibility to be accurate and fair. An organization’s mission should never become a vehicle for settling personal grievances. Protecting children and strengthening families should produce healing, not provide a stage for reopening old wounds or reducing a human being to the worst allegation ever made against him.

Our family entered this relationship because we believed in second chances, and after everything that happened, I still believe in them. Second chances cannot be reserved only for people we like or understand. Grace cannot be demanded for ourselves and denied to someone else.

My faith has also taught me that forgiveness and silence are not the same thing. I can forgive without surrendering the truth. I can pray for someone while establishing boundaries. I can refuse revenge while still saying that my son’s complete story deserves to be heard.

When people see a photograph on social media, they may see only a face attached to an allegation. I see my child. I remember the fear, the prayers, the uncertainty, and the pastor who helped him believe there was still a tomorrow. I see a young man who survived.

That, ultimately, is the part of this story that matters most to me. My son is still here. He continued living. He grew. The worst chapter of his young life did not become the end of his story.

I am not asking anyone to ignore the past. I am asking that if the past is going to be told, it be told completely and responsibly. Tell the accusation. Tell the difficult decisions. Tell the plea accurately. But also tell what happened when the indicated report was challenged administratively. Tell the whole story.

For years, our response was silence. Today, my response is truth – not vengeance, humiliation, or hatred. I still believe in redemption, restoration, and the possibility of another chapter.

God did not bring him through the darkest chapter of his life for someone else to continually turn back the pages and pretend that chapter is where his story ended.

It wasn’t the ending. By the grace of God, it was only a chapter. It was not easy for him to plead guilty. All he could think about was Mother. Do you remember what happened with the Central Park 5? They were guilty without any proof.

That was a heartbreaking moment for me: “Guilty without proof.” Until he confessed to something, he wasn’t even allowed to make a phone call to his family, and that’s a sad statement about the New York City Police.

When Silence Is Mistaken for Guilt: An Editorial on Truth, Grace, and the Whole Story by Kathie Brewington 9

Why Socialism and Communism Can’t Build Black Generational Wealth

Black Economics
Black Culture
Black Politics
From The Publisher's Desk

DAMON K JONES

August 9, 2026

Why Socialism and Communism Can’t Build Black Generational Wealth

For over a century, Black Americans have debated how to close the racial wealth gap. One answer keeps resurfacing on the political left: collectivize the economy. Abolish private property, socialize the means of production, redistribute from the top down. It sounds like justice. But look closely at both the historical record and the internal logic of these systems, and a hard truth emerges: socialism and communism are structurally incapable of producing what “generational wealth” actually means — durable, inheritable, private assets that a family can build on for the next generation.

Generational Wealth Requires Private Property. Full Stop.

Generational wealth isn’t just income. It’s a house that appreciates and gets willed to your children. It’s a business that gets passed down and grown. It’s stock, land, and savings that outlive you and compound in someone else’s hands after you’re gone. Every mechanism by which wealth actually transfers across generations — inheritance, equity, ownership — depends on one thing: secure, enforceable private property rights.

Communism, by definition, targets exactly that. Marx wasn’t ambiguous about it — the abolition of private property in the means of production is the stated goal, not a side effect. Socialism, in its fuller forms, moves in the same direction: state or collective control over capital, housing, and enterprise. You cannot bequeath what you do not privately own. A system built to dissolve private accumulation cannot, at the same time, be the engine that builds it for any one community — Black, white, or otherwise.

This isn’t a hypothetical critique. It’s borne out everywhere the model has actually been tried.

The Historical Record Is Not Kind

The 20th century gave us large-scale experiments in socialism and communism — the USSR, Maoist China, Castro’s Cuba, and others. None of them produced durable individual or family wealth for their citizens, Black or otherwise, because that was never the design. These systems were explicitly built to prevent the kind of private accumulation that generational wealth requires. Housing was state-allocated, not owned. Enterprises were state-run, not inheritable. Personal savings had little to attach to, because there was no growing private asset base to hold them.

Cuba is instructive here specifically because of its racial dimension. The Cuban Revolution promised to end racial inequality through state ownership. Decades later, Afro-Cubans remain disproportionately locked out of the most lucrative parts of the economy — tourism, remittances, private enterprise — precisely because those who had assets, connections, and family money before the revolution (disproportionately white Cubans with ties abroad) were better positioned to navigate the limited private openings that emerged later. Collectivizing the economy didn’t erase the head start; it just froze it in place and pushed most new wealth-building underground or out of reach entirely.

What Actually Built the Strongest Black Economy in U.S. History

Compare that record to the era Black Americans point to as the high-water mark of Black economic power: Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Durham’s Hayti district, and dozens of similar communities in the early-to-mid 20th century. These were not socialist experiments. They were capitalist enclaves — private banks, insurance companies, hotels, and retail businesses, owned outright by Black entrepreneurs, operated for profit, and passed down within families.

O.W. Gurley didn’t build Greenwood by seizing the means of production. He bought land, then sold and leased it to other Black entrepreneurs who built stores, banks, and theaters. John Merrick built North Carolina Mutual — one of the largest Black-owned businesses in American history — through conventional insurance underwriting, savings, and reinvestment. These were men working within a market system, accumulating private capital, and building institutions their families and communities could inherit.

Segregation forced Black dollars to circulate almost entirely within Black-owned businesses, and that captive market accelerated wealth-building in a real, measurable way. But the mechanism was still private ownership and market exchange — the same mechanism socialism sets out to abolish. Greenwood wasn’t a collective; it was dozens of individual property owners building equity, side by side, in the same neighborhood.

What Actually Destroyed It

It’s worth being precise here, because this is the detail socialist arguments often lean on and get backward. Greenwood and Rosewood didn’t fail because capitalism failed them. They were burned to the ground by white mobs — in Tulsa’s case, an estimated wealth destruction in the tens of millions of today’s dollars, in a matter of hours. That’s not a market failure. That’s a property-rights failure: the state refused to protect Black-owned private property from violent seizure and destruction.

That distinction matters enormously for this argument. The lesson of Greenwood is not “capitalism eventually fails Black communities.” The lesson is “capitalism plus unprotected property rights fails Black communities.” The fix implied by that history isn’t fewer property rights — it’s stronger enforcement of the ones that already exist, plus restitution for the ones that were stolen. Socialism doesn’t address that failure; it removes the very asset class (private property) that was under attack in the first place.

The “Public Ownership” Substitute Doesn’t Hold Up

A common socialist-adjacent counterargument is that public and cooperative ownership — worker co-ops, land trusts, universal programs — can substitute for private wealth-building without the downsides of capitalism. Worker cooperatives are a legitimate, useful tool, and Black communities have used them historically (the Freedom Farm Cooperative is a real example). But cooperative equity functions very differently from generational wealth: it’s typically tied to active membership or participation, not freely inheritable the way a house, a stock portfolio, or a family business is. When a co-op member dies or leaves, their stake usually doesn’t pass to their children the way a home does. It’s an income and stability tool, not a wealth-transfer tool.

Universal public programs — healthcare, childcare, education — genuinely help working families keep more of what they earn. But keeping more income is not the same as building an appreciating, inheritable asset base. A family that spends less on healthcare has more disposable income; a family that owns a home that appreciates $200,000 over 20 years has wealth. These are different economic phenomena, and conflating them is where a lot of this debate goes wrong.

The Actual Levers That Work

None of this means the status quo is fine or that market capitalism alone has closed the gap — it clearly hasn’t. But the policies most credibly tied to narrowing the Black-white wealth gap expand access to private ownership, not ones that abolish it: down-payment assistance and homeownership programs, reparations for documented theft of Black-owned land and property (including Greenwood itself), fair lending enforcement, capital access for Black-owned banks and businesses, and estate/inheritance policy that doesn’t punish first-generation wealth accumulators. Every one of these works inside a private-property system, by giving more Black families a fair shot at the same wealth-building mechanism — ownership — that built Greenwood and that socialism sets out to dismantle.

The historical record, from the USSR to Cuba to Greenwood itself, points in one consistent direction: generational wealth is a private-property phenomenon. Socialism and communism don’t fail to deliver it by accident — they fail to deliver it because eliminating private accumulation is the point of the system. If the goal is Black generational wealth specifically, the evidence says the answer is more secure, more accessible, better-protected private ownership — not less.

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Freedom

Generational Wealth Requires Private Property. Full Stop.

The Historical Record Is Not Kind

What Actually Built the Strongest Black Economy in U.S. History

What Actually Destroyed It

The “Public Ownership” Substitute Doesn’t Hold Up

The Actual Levers That Work