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

AJ Woodson
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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

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

Black Westchester
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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

Larnez Kinsey
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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.

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

DAMON K JONES
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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

AJ Woodson
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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.

Why Socialism and Communism Can’t Build Black Generational Wealth

DAMON K JONES
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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.

Blacks in Law Enforcement: Mount Vernon Mayor’s Office Lied About Who Hired Jennifer Lackard — It Wasn’t Glenn Scott

DAMON K JONES
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Blacks in Law Enforcement: Mount Vernon Mayor’s Office Lied About Who Hired Jennifer Lackard — It Wasn’t Glenn Scott

BLEA says City Hall’s handling of the Lackard controversy is damaging the reputation of hardworking Mount Vernon police officers and undermining an opportunity to demonstrate strong Black leadership in law enforcement.

By Black Westchester Magazine

MOUNT VERNON, NY — Blacks in Law Enforcement of America is accusing the Mount Vernon Mayor’s Office of providing false information about who hired former Deputy Police Commissioner Jennifer Lackard, saying former Police Commissioner Glenn Scott was wrongly blamed for an appointment the organization says he did not make.

The accusation follows a New York Post article in which the Mayor’s Office reportedly identified Scott as the person who hired Lackard when questioned about how she came to serve in a high-ranking position within the Mount Vernon Police Department.

BLEA says the administration’s account is false.

“That statement is false. Commissioner Glenn Scott did not hire Jennifer Lackard,” the organization said in a statement released by Damon K. Jones, its New York Representative.

The dispute adds another layer to the controversy surrounding Lackard and raises a fundamental question that City Hall should be able to answer with documentation: Who actually hired Jennifer Lackard?

“Mount Vernon operates under a strong-mayor form of government. Commissioners serve under the authority of the Mayor—they do not hire and fire one another. The responsibility for appointing a Deputy Police Commissioner cannot be shifted to another commissioner. City Hall must answer the fundamental question: Who authorized Jennifer Lackard’s appointment?”

“Glenn Scott Was a Policeman’s Policeman”

BLEA’s response is particularly strong because the organization says it knew Scott both personally and professionally.

“Former Commissioner Glenn Scott was a policeman’s policeman,” BLEA stated. “He understood policing, police leadership, command responsibility, and the importance of having qualified and experienced law enforcement professionals in positions of authority.”

Scott also had a direct connection to the organization.

According to BLEA, Scott was a former member of the organization during the period when it operated under the National Black Police Association. That history, BLEA says, gave its members firsthand knowledge of Scott’s standards and approach to police leadership.

“Glenn Scott would never have recommended placing an individual with no policing background or police experience into the position of Deputy Police Commissioner,” the organization stated.

BLEA rejected any suggestion that its defense of Scott was simply speculation about what the former commissioner might have done.

“That is not speculation. We knew Glenn Scott, we knew his professional standards, and we knew what he expected from those entrusted with police leadership.”

“Do Not Use a Dead Man as a Shield”

There is another reason BLEA says the Mayor’s Office’s reported explanation is particularly disturbing: Glenn Scott is no longer alive to defend himself.

Scott cannot respond to City Hall, provide his version of events, produce documents or publicly challenge statements about decisions supposedly made during his tenure.

BLEA called that unacceptable.

“Commissioner Scott has passed away. He cannot hold a press conference. He cannot issue a statement. He cannot call the New York Post and correct the record. He cannot defend his name,” the organization stated.

Then came one of the strongest accusations in the statement:

“The Mayor’s Office should not use a dead man as a shield from accountability.”

If Scott did not hire Lackard, the issue should be relatively simple to resolve.

Produce the records.

Who Hired Jennifer Lackard?

The controversy should not become a battle of competing political narratives.

Employment records, appointment documents, personnel actions, and other official city records should establish how Lackard entered city government and how she ultimately obtained a senior position within the Mount Vernon Police Department.

BLEA is demanding answers to several questions: Who initially brought Lackard into city government? Who recommended her? Who approved her appointment? Who reviewed her qualifications? Who authorized her elevation into police leadership? And who was responsible for supervising her?

Those questions have become more significant following Lackard’s arrest and the serious criminal allegations against her.

Lackard, like every person accused of a crime, is entitled to the presumption of innocence, and the charges against her must be proven in court. But her legal rights do not prevent residents, journalists or law enforcement organizations from examining the government decisions that placed her in a senior public safety position.

The criminal case and the administrative accountability question are two separate matters.

A court will determine Lackard’s criminal culpability.

City Hall must answer for City Hall’s decisions.

BLEA: The Rank-and-File Officers Deserve Better

BLEA’s statement goes beyond the dispute over who hired Lackard.

The organization says years of controversies involving Mount Vernon police leadership are unfairly damaging the reputation of the rank-and-file officers who continue to report to work and serve the community.

“The men and women of the Mount Vernon Police Department deserve better than the leadership they have received from City Hall,” BLEA stated.

That distinction is important.

Police officers on patrol do not make appointments to Deputy Police Commissioner. They do not determine the qualifications required for executive positions. They do not select police commissioners or deputy commissioners. They do not make the political and administrative decisions coming from City Hall.

Yet when those decisions result in controversy, the reputation of the entire department can suffer.

Every day, Mount Vernon officers respond to emergency calls, domestic disputes, violent crimes, traffic incidents, mental health crises and countless other situations. Many perform that work professionally without ever becoming the subject of a newspaper headline.

BLEA argues those officers should not have to carry the burden of management failures made above their pay grade.

“That is a failure of leadership—not a failure of the hardworking police officers of Mount Vernon,” the organization said.

A Predominantly Black City Should Be Setting the Standard

BLEA also raised an uncomfortable but important issue about Mount Vernon’s significance as a predominantly Black city with a majority-Black Police Department.

That combination should present an extraordinary opportunity.

Mount Vernon could be demonstrating nationally what professional Black political leadership, Black police leadership and accountable community policing can accomplish when they work together.

Instead, BLEA argues that repeated controversies have overshadowed that opportunity.

For generations, Black law enforcement professionals fought to enter a profession from which they were once excluded. They fought for promotions, command positions and executive leadership opportunities while confronting stereotypes suggesting Black officers lacked the intelligence, temperament or qualifications necessary to lead major law enforcement organizations.

Those racist assumptions were wrong then, and they are wrong today.

But BLEA warns that leadership failures in a predominantly Black municipality can nevertheless provide ammunition to people already looking for reasons to attack Black leadership more broadly.

“We reject those racist stereotypes completely,” BLEA stated.

The organization then made an important distinction:

“The problem is not that Black people cannot lead. The problem is that bad leadership, regardless of race, has consequences.”

That may be one of the most significant points raised in the entire statement.

Black representation alone cannot be the final measurement of progress.

Representation must be accompanied by competence, professionalism, accountability and results.

Holding Black leadership accountable is not an attack on Black leadership. In many respects, accountability is necessary to protect everything previous generations fought to achieve.

Black Leadership Cannot Mean Lower Standards.

There can be a temptation within Black communities to view criticism of Black elected officials or Black public-sector leadership as somehow harmful to the larger community.

But accountability cannot work that way.

If anything, predominantly Black municipalities should demonstrate that Black leadership means maintaining standards, not lowering them.

“Black leadership does not mean lowering standards. It does not mean protecting incompetence. It does not mean refusing to hold Black officials accountable because they are Black,” BLEA stated.

That principle applies directly to policing.

Executive police positions carry enormous responsibility. The individuals occupying them influence policy, training, discipline, supervision, officer safety and public trust.

Those positions cannot simply be political appointments on an organizational chart. The people occupying them must be capable of performing the responsibilities attached to them.

For BLEA, this is why the question of Lackard’s appointment cannot simply disappear now that criminal charges have become the bigger headline.

The public still deserves to know how the appointment happened.

The Officers Should Not Pay for City Hall’s Decisions

One of the dangers of continuing controversy is that the public can begin viewing an entire Police Department through the actions of a few people at the top.

That would be unfair to Mount Vernon’s officers.

Many of those officers have spent years serving the city. They have families, careers and professional reputations of their own. They should not be treated as responsible for political appointments they did not make or administrative structures they did not create.

BLEA argues City Hall has an obligation to provide those officers with competent leadership, organizational stability and professional management.

“They deserve competent leadership. They deserve stability. They deserve professionalism. And most importantly, they deserve a City Hall that does not make their jobs harder through poor management and failed leadership,” the organization stated.

The goal should be bigger than simply surviving the latest controversy.

Mount Vernon should have a Police Department that other predominantly Black communities can look toward as a model of effective policing, accountability and professional Black leadership.

The city has the officers and the community to make that possible.

What it requires is leadership willing to establish standards and accept responsibility when those standards are not met.

The Mayor’s Office Can Settle This Question

The immediate dispute remains remarkably straightforward.

Who hired Jennifer Lackard?

BLEA says it was not Glenn Scott.

The Mayor’s Office reportedly told the New York Post otherwise.

That disagreement does not need to remain unresolved.

City Hall can release the appropriate records showing who recruited Lackard, who authorized her appointment, when she was appointed, what position she was initially appointed to, and who approved her subsequent advancement.

Transparency would end the speculation.

If the Mayor’s Office provided inaccurate information, it should correct it.

If there is documentation supporting its version of events, it should produce it.

What should not happen is for the name of a deceased police commissioner to remain at the center of a controversy he can no longer personally address.

BLEA closed its statement by demanding that City Hall correct the record, provide documentation surrounding Lackard’s appointment and accept responsibility for decisions made under the administration.

“Mount Vernon deserves leadership that accepts responsibility—not leadership that rewrites history,” BLEA stated.

And for an organization that personally knew the former commissioner, there is one final point it says cannot be negotiated:

“Commissioner Glenn Scott’s name and legacy should never be used to protect anyone from accountability.”

Mount Vernon Owes the Public More Than a Press Release By Kenneth Chamberlain Jr.

Black Westchester
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Mount Vernon Owes the Public More Than a Press Release By Kenneth Chamberlain Jr.

There are certain incidents that immediately take me back to another place and another time and the recent officer involved shooting in Mount Vernon is one of them.

Nearly fifteen years ago, police responded to my father’s apartment after his medical alert device was accidentally activated. What began as a welfare check for a man with medical conditions ended with my father, Kenneth Chamberlain Sr., being killed by police.

The circumstances in Mount Vernon are different. The police were reportedly serving a mental health commitment order but one similarity is impossible for me to ignore, both encounters involved a person in crisis an effort to protect life but ultimately escalated to the use of deadly force.

I’m not writing this because I have already decided whether the officers were right or wrong, I’m writing because my father’s case taught me something that I will never forget and that is never allow a press release to become the final word.

When I learned that officers reportedly spent hours negotiating before deciding to enter the apartment, I immediately began asking the questions that every member of the public should be asking and that is who authorized the decision to breach the apartment?

What specific circumstances caused commanders to conclude that negotiations had reached their end, what changed after several hours that made immediate entry necessary and what department policies governed that decision? Were all available crisis intervention strategies exhausted before officers entered?

Since 2021, Westchester County has recognized that responding to people in crisis requires more than a traditional law enforcement response. That commitment led to the creation of Project Alliance, an initiative announced by then County Executive George Latimer following recommendations from the County’s Police Reform and Reimagining Task Force. Project Alliance was built on a simple but important principle that when someone is experiencing a behavioral health crisis, the goal should be to bring together law enforcement, mental health professionals, peer specialists, hospitals, and community partners to maximize every opportunity for de-escalation and safely resolve the crisis whenever possible.

That raises additional questions.

What role, if any, did those resources play in this incident?

Were behavioral health specialists consulted?

Was a Mobile Crisis Response Team requested?

If those resources were available, how were they incorporated into the response and if they were not involved why not. These are the questions that every community should ask whenever deadly force is used during a mental health intervention.

I’ve heard the reports that the individual was armed with two knives. If that’s what the evidence shows, then the public deserves to know that. But here’s the question no one seems to be asking. If officers had hours to negotiate, why was there suddenly no time left? What changed, who made the decision to breach the apartment, and what policy authorized that decision? This is an effort to understand the decisions that took this incident from a mental health intervention to the use of deadly force. What happened between the beginning of that mental health intervention and the moment an officer fired a weapon.

This incident did not begin with a robbery or officers chasing a fugitive, It began with a person experiencing a mental health crisis and that distinction matters because the objective was crisis intervention and when a response intended to protect life ends with the use of deadly force, every decision that led to that outcome deserves careful examination.

If this investigation reveals deficiencies in policy, training, tactics, supervision, or crisis intervention, then have the courage to acknowledge them and make the necessary changes.

Because at the end of the day, justice is not built on assumptions. It is built on transparency, accountability, and a willingness to examine every decision that led to that moment.

We owe the public more than a press release.

What Have Westchester Police Departments Learned Since the Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr.?

Black Westchester
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What Have Westchester Police Departments Learned Since the Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr.?

MOUNT VERNON, NY — Fifteen years after the death of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr. became one of the nation’s most widely discussed police encounters involving a person experiencing a mental health crisis, Blacks in Law Enforcement of America (BLEA) is asking a question the organization believes every police department in Westchester County should be prepared to answer:

What have Westchester Police Departments learned from the killing of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr.?

The question comes following the recent officer-involved shooting in Mount Vernon during what police described as a court-ordered mental health intervention.

According to information released by law enforcement, officers responded to execute a court-authorized mental health commitment involving a 58-year-old man. Police reported that the response lasted approximately four hours and involved crisis negotiators, the department’s Wellness Division, and the deployment of less-lethal options before ultimately ending with an officer discharging a firearm. The New York State Police have assumed responsibility for investigating the shooting.

BLEA emphasized that it is not questioning the integrity of the ongoing investigation and believes the officers involved are entitled to due process.

Instead, the organization says the incident raises broader questions about whether Westchester County’s approach to mental health crisis response has meaningfully evolved since Chamberlain died in 2011.

Looking Beyond One Investigation

“The New York State Police investigation will determine whether this shooting was legally justified,” said Damon K. Jones, New York State Representative for Blacks in Law Enforcement of America.

“Our question is different. What have Westchester Police Departments learned from the killing of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr.?”

Jones noted that Chamberlain’s death prompted nationwide conversations about crisis intervention, de-escalation, and the need for specialized responses when law enforcement encounters individuals experiencing mental illness.

Police agencies across the country introduced Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training, expanded mental health partnerships, increased the availability of less-lethal options, and promoted wellness-based approaches designed to reduce the likelihood of deadly force.

“Fifteen years later,” Jones said, “another mental health response in Westchester County has ended with police gunfire.”

Familiar Questions

BLEA says the circumstances surrounding the Mount Vernon incident naturally invite comparisons with earlier cases—not because the facts are necessarily the same, but because they involve recurring questions about crisis response.

According to publicly released information, officers spent hours attempting to resolve the situation. Crisis negotiators responded. The Wellness Division was present. Less-lethal tools were reportedly used before the encounter ultimately ended with deadly force.

Jones said those facts should prompt a professional examination of current practices.

“If the profession has invested years in crisis intervention training, specialized mental health units, de-escalation strategies, body-worn cameras, and less-lethal technology, the public deserves to understand how those investments are improving outcomes,” he said.

A Question for Every Police Department

BLEA believes this conversation should extend beyond Mount Vernon.

The organization is calling on police leaders throughout Westchester County to explain what changes have been implemented since Chamberlain’s death and how those changes are being measured.

Among the questions BLEA says deserve public answers:

  • What measurable reforms have been implemented since the killing of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr.?
  • How are police departments evaluating the effectiveness of Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training?
  • Are wellness and crisis response personnel given meaningful operational authority during mental health incidents?
  • Have countywide policies changed because of lessons learned from previous encounters?
  • Are agencies tracking whether reforms are reducing the need for deadly force?

Questions for the Chiefs Association

BLEA is also asking the Westchester County Chiefs of Police Association to publicly discuss what role it has played in improving mental health response across the county.

“If Kenneth Chamberlain’s death truly transformed policing in Westchester County, the public deserves to know what countywide recommendations have been made,” Jones said.

“What training has been standardized? What best practices have been shared? How are police departments measuring success? Those are leadership questions.”

The organization stressed that these questions should not be viewed as criticism of individual officers.

“These are professional accountability questions,” Jones said. “Every profession learns from critical incidents. Law enforcement should be no different.”

A Perspective from Corrections

Drawing on his 33-year career in corrections, Jones said officers frequently confronted inmates armed with homemade knives and other dangerous weapons.

He acknowledged that corrections and policing are different professions with different legal standards and operational realities.

“However,” he said, “both professions share the same responsibility whenever possible—to protect life.”

Jones added that every critical incident should be evaluated for lessons that improve training, tactics, leadership, and future responses.

Transparency Builds Trust

BLEA is urging authorities to preserve all evidence and release body-worn camera footage as soon as legally permissible.

The organization believes transparency benefits everyone involved.

“If the officers acted appropriately, transparency helps build public confidence,” Jones said. “If improvements are needed, transparency helps identify them.”

The organization also pointed to the U.S. Department of Justice’s recent findings regarding the Mount Vernon Police Department, saying those findings make continued examination of training, supervision, accountability, and crisis intervention practices even more important.

Looking Forward

For BLEA, the central issue is not simply whether one incident complied with the law.

The larger question is whether fifteen years of promised reforms have produced measurable improvements in how law enforcement responds to people experiencing mental health crises.

“Kenneth Chamberlain Sr. should not be remembered only for how he died,” Jones said.

“His death should have transformed policing throughout Westchester County.”

“Fifteen years later, the people of this county deserve to know exactly what has been learned, what has changed, and whether those changes are producing better outcomes—for officers, for families, and for the communities they serve.”

About the Author

Damon K. Jones is a retired law enforcement professional with 33 years of service, publisher of Black Westchester Magazine, and New York State Representative for Blacks in Law Enforcement of America. He has served on local, state, national, and international law enforcement task forces and advisory committees, including the Westchester County Police Reform Task Force, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Thurgood Marshall Institute Advisory Panel, and the Institute of the Black World 21st Century Police Reform and Accountability Task Force. Jones has also contributed criminal justice and policing recommendations to two shadow reports submitted to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. His work focuses on public safety, police accountability, constitutional rights, government transparency, and strengthening Black communities.

Heat Advisory and Air Quality Alert Issued for Westchester County, Thursday, August 6 through Friday, August 7th

AJ Woodson
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Heat Advisory and Air Quality Alert Issued for Westchester County, Thursday, August 6 through Friday, August 7th

Westchester County Health Department Shares Heat and Air Quality Advisories; Advises Vulnerable Residents to Limit Their Time Outdoors and Avoid Strenuous Outdoor Activity

WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NY — Residents are being urged to take precautions as extreme heat, high humidity and unhealthy air quality are expected across Westchester County.

The National Weather Service has issued a Heat Advisory from noon Thursday, August 6th through 8 p.m. Friday, August 7th. During that period, the combination of heat and humidity could make outdoor temperatures feel close to 100 degrees.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has also issued an Air Quality Health Advisory through 11 p.m. Thursday for the Lower Hudson Valley and New York City metropolitan area.

Air quality is expected to reach levels considered unhealthy for sensitive groups, with the Air Quality Index predicted to exceed 100.

Those at greater risk include children, teenagers, adults age 65 and older, pregnant people, individuals with asthma, respiratory illnesses or heart disease, people who work or exercise outdoors and residents of disadvantaged communities.

“When it is this hot and humid, drink lots of water, take frequent breaks from outdoor work or exercise and don’t overdo it,” Westchester County Health Commissioner Dr. Sherlita Amler said. “Take time to cool off and spend time in air-conditioned places.”

Amler advised infants, pregnant women, older adults and people with asthma, heart disease or other respiratory conditions to limit their time outdoors until the temperature drops and air quality improves.

Residents should also watch for symptoms such as coughing, shortness of breath or other breathing difficulties.

When the AQI rises above 100, people in sensitive groups are advised to shorten the amount of time they spend outdoors, take frequent breaks, monitor themselves for symptoms and follow the guidance of their healthcare providers.

Exposure to poor air quality can cause irritation of the eyes, nose and throat, along with coughing, sneezing, a runny nose and shortness of breath. Elevated levels of fine particulate matter can also worsen conditions such as asthma and heart disease.

Residents without access to air conditioning are encouraged to visit a local cooling center if their homes become dangerously warm. Cooling-center locations are available through the New York State Department of Health.

  • Stay in air-conditioned buildings whenever possible.
  • Drink plenty of water and avoid alcohol and sugary beverages.
  • Limit outdoor activities during the hottest part of the day (Noon–8:00 PM).
  • Wear lightweight, light-colored clothing.
  • Never leave children, older adults, or pets unattended in vehicles.
  • Check on elderly neighbors, family members, and those without air conditioning.

Find the nearest City of Mount Vernon Cooling Center and Sprinklers:
https://gis.cmvny.com/portal/apps/instant/nearby/index.html?appid=d9c2e6e1219a42129e9f9a6603c2b8fc&sliderDistance=0.5

You can also check with your local municipality to find out if they are opening temporary cooling centers on hot days. Here you can find links to city, town, and village webpages.

Stay informed by monitoring official weather updates at weather.gov/okx. In an emergency, call 9-1-1.

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