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CNN —
A record-breaking 398 people fell victim to homicides in Memphis last year – a noticeable jump from the 190 reported five years ago. And with more than 600 major violent crimes so far in 2024, including at least 40 homicides, Tennessee’s second-most populous city is off to another turbulent start.
The Justice Department underscored these worrying trends recently when it said violent crime in Memphis had reached a 17-year high.
In an effort to curb criminality, Memphis Mayor Paul Young, who took office in January with a focus on public safety, recently met with some of the city’s highest-ranking gang leaders in Memphis and crafted a ceasefire between the groups for seven days.
“My ask for them in that conversation was, ‘Can we get a seven-day ceasefire? Just seven days where there’s no shooting, no killing?’” the mayor said during a youth development panel discussion, CNN affiliate WMC-TV reported. “And they said, ‘Yeah, we would be willing to do that,’ and they gave me a couple of caveats.”
Some of the requested terms included assurances their rival gangs would agree to the ceasefire, as well as help getting well-paying jobs and the training needed to access them, WMC-TV reported.
Only 1% on path toward a living wage
Young told CNN Saturday that what he described as an endemic issue of car break-ins in Memphis has stemmed in part from a lack of job opportunities for gang members. Those break-ins are part of more than 3,500 major property crimes reported in January, according to the Memphis Police Department.
“What they said was … ‘Our young guys just need something to do; they steal cars because it’s fun, because there’s a lack of activities in their communities,’” Young said. “They need ways to earn income.”
More than 45,000 out-of-school and out-of-work young adults ages 16 to 24 live in the greater Memphis area, nearly half of whom live in poverty, according to Memphis nonprofit The Collective Blueprint.
The group says by the time those young adults turn 28, only 1% of them will be on the path toward a living wage.
During the recent panel discussion, Young cited a study that aligns with his hopes for Memphis’s at-risk youth, including young gang members.
The Chicago-based study found violent crime arrests among young adults who received job or internship opportunities went down by 45% over the first year.
When asked if he was able to achieve a seven-day ceasefire, Young said the city did not observe any shootings from the gang groups whose leaders attended the initial meeting.
‘We just want to stop the cycle’
In his weekly update on February 23, Young addressed part of his administration’s plan to tackle gang violence, stating they had begun using data on the origins of criminal behavior “to drive coordinated gang and gun violence intervention programs to neighborhoods of need.”
The city runs a violence intervention program aimed toward those considered at-risk who have been impacted by or are vulnerable to gun violence or retaliatory violence, according to the city.
A record-breaking 398 people fell victim to homicides in Memphis last year – a noticeable jump from the 190 reported five years ago. And with more than 600 major violent crimes so far in 2024, including at least 40 homicides, Tennessee’s second-most populous city is off to another turbulent start.
The Justice Department underscored these worrying trends recently when it said violent crime in Memphis had reached a 17-year high.
In an effort to curb criminality, Memphis Mayor Paul Young, who took office in January with a focus on public safety, recently met with some of the city’s highest-ranking gang leaders in Memphis and crafted a ceasefire between the groups for seven days.
“My ask for them in that conversation was, ‘Can we get a seven-day ceasefire? Just seven days where there’s no shooting, no killing?’” the mayor said during a youth development panel discussion, CNN affiliate WMC-TV reported. “And they said, ‘Yeah, we would be willing to do that,’ and they gave me a couple of caveats.”
Some of the requested terms included assurances their rival gangs would agree to the ceasefire, as well as help getting well-paying jobs and the training needed to access them, WMC-TV reported.
Young told CNN Saturday that what he described as an endemic issue of car break-ins in Memphis has stemmed in part from a lack of job opportunities for gang members. Those break-ins are part of more than 3,500 major property crimes reported in January, according to the Memphis Police Department.
“What they said was … ‘Our young guys just need something to do; they steal cars because it’s fun, because there’s a lack of activities in their communities,’” Young said. “They need ways to earn income.”
More than 45,000 out-of-school and out-of-work young adults ages 16 to 24 live in the greater Memphis area, nearly half of whom live in poverty, according to Memphis nonprofit The Collective Blueprint.
The group says by the time those young adults turn 28, only 1% of them will be on the path toward a living wage.
During the recent panel discussion, Young cited a study that aligns with his hopes for Memphis’s at-risk youth, including young gang members.
The Chicago-based study found violent crime arrests among young adults who received job or internship opportunities went down by 45% over the first year.
When asked if he was able to achieve a seven-day ceasefire, Young said the city did not observe any shootings from the gang groups whose leaders attended the initial meeting.
In his weekly update on February 23, Young addressed part of his administration’s plan to tackle gang violence, stating they had begun using data on the origins of criminal behavior “to drive coordinated gang and gun violence intervention programs to neighborhoods of need.”
The city runs a violence intervention program aimed toward those considered at-risk who have been impacted by or are vulnerable to gun violence or retaliatory violence, according to the city.
One of the program’s methods involves street intervention, where trained interventionists from the community group 901 Bloc Squad help participants change their behaviors through promoting positive choices and offering access to services that can support them.
The 901 Bloc Squad and another Memphis-based community nonprofit, Heal 901, organized the meeting between Young and gang leaders last month.
“You can’t change anything without bringing the individuals to the table that are causing the issue,” Heal 901 founder K. Durell Cowan told CNN.
“This is one of the poorest cities in the area. We have to change the narrative if we want to stop crime, we have to get jobs paying living wages,” Cowan said. “This was a request of some of those gang leaders – ‘We need something to do.’”
He said the city has seen an increase in violent firearm-related incidents due to the state’s open carry law enacted in July 2021, which has made firearms more readily accessible.
Tennessee ranks 29th in the United States for gun law strength and has one of the highest rates of gun-related deaths in the country, according to Everytown for Gun Safety. Despite the open carry law, some establishments prohibit guns from being brought inside, leaving patrons to keep them in their cars, according to Cowan.
“Now, they’re going into vehicles stealing nothing else out of the vehicles, just looking for firearms most of the time,” Cowan said. The gang lifestyle has drawn in children as young as 8 in the city and has reached “epidemic levels,” he said.
“We just want to stop the cycle,” he said. “We must do something.”
Like Young, leaders in other cities including San Diego and Baltimore have previously taken similar approaches of calling for gang-related ceasefire to curb gun violence.
Cowan says he believes a ceasefire among Memphis gangs is possible, but with at least 30 hybrid gangs existing in the city that have spawned from around five gangs that once dominated the streets, it will take more than one meeting to achieve the goal.
“Because of those different nuances, he can’t (have) one meeting with leaders and see effective change citywide. There will be a series of these meetings going forward,” Cowan said.
During a Friday budget meeting, Memphis city council members expressed a commitment to finding ways to allocate resources toward supporting organizations that help change the lives of young people, Young said.
“We’re going to find those resources and make the investments necessary,” he said.
“The things that our community needs aren’t new … it’s just something that we have to lean into and make happen,” Young said. “This is going to be a living dialogue.”
WashingtonCNN —
A federal judge in Texas said Tuesday that a US Commerce Department agency intended to help minority-owned businesses must offer assistance to all individuals, regardless of race, agreeing with White business owners who claimed that its policies were unconstitutional.
The ruling from US District Judge Mark Pittman, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, stems from a lawsuit brought by several White business owners against the Minority Business Development Agency, which is “dedicated to the growth and global competitiveness of minority business enterprises,” according to its website.
Pittman said that the agency had violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment through its reliance on a statutory presumption that members of certain minority groups are “‘socially or economically disadvantaged’ and … thus entitled to services.” The list of groups includes African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans and Native Americans, among others
The judge permanently barred the agency from “considering or using an applicant’s race or ethnicity in determining whether they can receive” assistance from one of the agency’s dozens of business centers, which help businesses with things like securing funding and competing for contracts.
“Plaintiffs all encountered the same obstacle when they sought MBDA programming. Because they aren’t on the Agency’s magic list, the Agency presumes they aren’t disadvantaged,” Pittman wrote.
“If courts mean what they say when they ascribe supreme importance to constitutional rights, the federal government may not flagrantly violate such rights with impunity,” the judge wrote. “The MBDA has done so for years. Time’s up.”
The MBDA is one of the only federal agencies focused exclusively on developing and advocating for minority-owned businesses. The Nixon administration established it in 1969 as a division of the US Department of Commerce and it was later enshrined into federal law in 2021.
In recent years, conservatives have increasingly turned to federal courts in Texas to challenge certain federal programs and actions. The Fort Worth division of the Northern District of Texas, where Pittman is one of just a few sitting judges, has become an especially favored venue given its conservative tilt. In the past, Pittman has issued controversial rulings on the Biden administration’s student debt relief policy and a state law that banned people ages 18 to 20 from carrying handguns in public.
“To the extent the MBDA offers services pursuant to an unconstitutional presumption, that’s fifty-five years too many,” Pittman said in his latest ruling. “Today the clock runs out. ‘Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.’”
Tuesday’s ruling underscores the impact of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision last year that said colleges and universities could no longer take race into consideration as a specific basis for granting admissions. Pittman cited the court’s majority opinion in that case, writing that although it “concerned college admissions, nothing in the decision indicates the Court’s holding should be constrained to that context.”
“Like Harvard’s program in SFFA, the MBDA sees ‘an inherent benefit in race qua race – race for race’s sake,’” he wrote. “Such disregard for the necessity of race or for race-neutral alternatives is unconstitutional.”
The plaintiffs at the center of the case were three White business owners who were denied MBDA services. They sued the agency in March 2023 and Pittman last year temporarily blocked their local business centers from denying them assistance as the lawsuit played out. His new order applies to the agency nationwide.
In court papers, Justice Department attorneys representing MBDA pushed back against the plaintiffs’ claims, saying, “Any member of a group not presumed socially or economically disadvantaged may petition for a presumption of disadvantage, regardless of race.”
“And while the application process may vary for individuals not included in the MBDA presumptions, there is a pathway for them to access the services of the MBDA Business Centers through an assertion of individual social or economic disadvantage,” they told the court last year.
The Justice Department has declined to comment on the ruling.
The board of supervisors for the city in a unanimous vote approved a resolution offering the apology.
“This historic resolution apologizes on behalf of San Francisco to the African American community and their descendants for decades of systemic and structural discrimination, targeted acts of violence, atrocities as well as committing to the rectification and redress of past policies and misdeeds,” supervisor Shamann Walton said.
The resolution identified actions including redlining, the razing of the Fillmore neighborhood and policies and practices enacted by the city that stalled Black residents’ opportunities to build generational wealth.
Several of the 11 board members indicated the resolution could be the first step toward reparations for the city’s Black residents.
Walton, the only Black member of the board, said there is “much more work to do but this apology most certainly is an important step.”
The apology follows a list of recommendations issued by the city’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee last year.
In addition to a formal apology, the recommendations also included providing a lump-sum of a $5 million payment to every eligible adult and a guaranteed income of nearly $100,000 each year.
At the federal level, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) in May 2023 unveiled a resolution urging the federal government to provide reparations to descendants of enslaved Africans and people of African descent.
Just over a year after acquiring a hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, making them the only Black hotel owners in Memphis, power couple Norland and Dr. Amina James are set to do it again. This time the serial entrepreneurs and founders of Duke Ventures are leveling up to a stunning 120-room hotel set on the picturesque backdrop of the Louisiana Bayou. And they’re bringing a whole community with them.
With their acquisition in Memphis, the James couple created 30 Black first-time hotel investors. The impact of this monumental occasion was felt as the investors traveled to Memphis to tour the hotel and connect with local leaders. “We wanted to give our investors a behind-the-scenes look into the hotel industry. We’re happy to report that one of our investors is currently in the process of buying her own hotel and we couldn’t be more excited,” said Norland James. When reflecting on the statistic that less than 2% of hotels in the U.S. are Black-owned, Dr. Amina James added, “this dream is bigger than us. It’s about increasing the number of Black hotel owners and investors through education and opportunity.”
With the success of their first hotel investment, the James couple couldn’t help but feel there was more to be done. This turned into the goal of welcoming three new Black hotel owners and another vast community of investors — at the same time! The James and partners are on their way to closing their biggest deal yet and they want you to join them in making history…again. General partners, Acquania Escarne, Janelle Howard, and Richard Howard share what their participation in the Louisiana hotel acquisition means for them and the Black community at large, “hotel ownership doesn’t just build wealth for the investors it changes the lives of the hotel staff and local community too.” Even more, the partners have hired a Black-owned hotel management company to oversee the operations of the hotel. Reflecting on this decision, Norland James stated, “Building Black generational wealth includes circulating the dollar within in the community and Synergy Hospitality Group is the perfect company to help us achieve just that.”
Knowing that raising the capital needed for their upscale hotel project would be a major undertaking, the group has partnered with well-known hotel consultant, Davonne Reaves, to raise money on her crowdfunding platform Vesterr. In speaking on the power of collective investing, Davonne mentioned, “Crowdfunding turns aspirations of hotel ownership into tangible opportunities. It empowers a diverse range of individuals to become stakeholders in the dynamic hospitality industry, transforming dreams into reality.”
Herbert Wigwe, his wife, son, and a former president of the Nigerian stock exchange were all killed in the crash.
President Bola Tinubu described the death of Mr Wigwe as an "overwhelming tragedy".
Investigators are scouring the site in southern Californian desert to determine the cause of the crash.
The chartered helicopter was on its way from from Palm Springs to Boulder City in Nevada when it went down about 96km (60 miles) from Las Vegas.
According to Nigerian media, the 57-year-old banker was on his way to Las Vegas to attend Sunday's Super Bowl.
The San Bernardino county sheriff's department said the crash site was near Nipton, on the edge of the Mojave Desert Preserve. The weather was poor, with reports of rain and snow showers in the area.
Mr Wigwe founded Access Bank in 1989. It became the largest bank in Nigeria in 2018 after it acquired its main competitor, Diamond Bank.
In recent years, Mr Wigwe had been working to expand across the continent, acquiring banks in countries including Kenya, South Africa and Botswana.
He was planning to open a new banking service in Asia in the first quarter of 2024.
Tributes have been pouring in following the news of his death. President Tinubu said it was "shocking beyond comprehension". The president's office described his death as "a terrible blow" for Nigeria and Africa's banking industry.
In a newspaper article in January this year, Mr Wigwe said investing in higher education was key to controlling mass migration, which "is destabilising countries across the world".
With that in mind, he was in the process of starting his own educational institute, Wigwe University. It was set to launch in September in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta region, where he was from.
"We need to take a holistic approach to address global migration, starting with our traditional framework for international development. The best place to limit migration is not in the middle of the Mediterranean or the English Channel or the Rio Grande. It is in the home countries that so many migrants are so desperate to leave," he wrote, saying his university was an opportunity for him "to give back to society".
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