California-Hawaii NAACP Proposed Ballot Measure Positions
By CANAACP
Click link to download California-Hawaii NAACP proposed ballot measure positions. CANAACP
Pot entrepreneurs get business advice in Oakland
By Rachel Swan and Otis R. Taylor Jr.
Business experts shared investment advice with a crowd of mostly African American cannabis
entrepreneurs Monday at a conference in Oakland set up to help people of color succeed as state law forces
California’s multibillion-dollar industry above ground. The conference’s organizers — former San
Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Harborside Health Center dispensary chief Steve DeAngelo, and California
NAACP President Alice Huffman — want to ensure that black and Latino people are not left behind as the
marijuana industry transforms amid expanding regulation and an anticipated boom if voters legalize
recreational marijuana on Nov. 8. San Francisco Chronicle
NAACP members got sick – now they’re suing luxury hotel for millions
By Anita Chabria
Hours after dining on salmon and salad during the 2014 state NAACP conference at a Redwood City
luxury hotel, Sacramento community leaders were among the 127 people who grew seriously ill, with some
vomiting in the lobby and suffering diarrhea, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday. The suit alleges that the
Hotel Sofitel San Francisco Bay was negligent by serving fish contaminated with norovirus toxin that
caused the illness. Mark Harris, attorney for the plaintiffs, said that the hotel failed to use dishwater hot
enough to kill the virus. The suit also alleges the hotel failed to help those so sick they couldn’t leave the
hotel without medical assistance. Sacramento Bee
State/Local
World/National
A call for California pot entrepreneurs of color
By Tammerlin Drummond
Would-be pot entrepreneurs as well as
the simply curious, packed Yoshi’s in
Oakland Monday for a conference
aimed at increasing the number of
nonwhites in the booming cannabis
industry, citing the fact that people of color have been most
impacted by marijuana-related arrests. “The war on drugs was a
war on our community and our young men were populating the
prisons,” said Alice Huffman, president of the California
NAACP, addressing the crowd. “They could not develop this
industry without people of color. It would be a crime.” The
Mercury News
Colin Powell Slams Trump, Endorses Clinton
By Nigel Roberts
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell
might as well switch his party affiliation
from Republican to Democrat. After
endorsing President Barack Obama in
2008 and 2012, Powell announced on Tuesday at a New York
luncheon that he will vote for Democratic presidential nominee
Hillary Clinton, CNN reports. Speaking to an audience of more
than 1,000 political and business leaders in Woodbury, Long
Island, Powell cited Clinton’s experience and stamina as reasons
that she’s better qualified than Trump for the White House,
according to Newsday. NEWSONE
NAACP members sickened by norovirus sue Bay Area
hotel
By Kimberly Veklerov
There was something fishy about the
salmon. Served at a Redwood City
hotel two years ago to several hundred
civic leaders, politicians and children at
an NAACP conference, the fish caused
anyone who ingested it to become
violently ill. A former Oakland mayor
went into a coma, a woman with a rare brain disease couldn’t
This Is What Actual Voter Suppression Looks Like, And It’s
Appalling
By Nico Pitney, Senior Editor
Donald Trump regularly tells his
supporters that the election has been
rigged against him, and on Monday he
accused Hillary Clinton’s campaign of
utilizing a “voter suppression technique”
that involved manipulating polls.
(Politifact rated his claim “pants on fire” false.) But with early
voting now underway in several states, the real-world effects of
actual (and very consequential) voter suppression have begun to
bubble up. Exhibit A is North Carolina, where in recent months
take her medicine, and almost 40 people were rushed to
emergency rooms. Dozens of people who were sickened by the
salmon filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Hotel Sofitel, alleging
that not only did the establishment negligently prepare the fish
for the Oct. 25, 2014, gala banquet, but it also did nothing to
assist those who had food poisoning. San Francisco Chronicle
Kamala Harris taking quiet path to California’s US Senate
seat
By Matthew Artz , Bay Area News Group
After a week of showing up to her new
job in jeans and sneakers, Lateefah
Simon got a surprise gift from her boss,
Kamala Harris — her first business suit
and a monogrammed scarf. Harris, then
San Francisco’s district attorney,
presented the gift box with tenderness,
but the message was clear: Simon had to look more
professional. “Kamala is everybody’s auntie,” Simon said,
recalling her tenure running Harris’ pioneering program for
youth offenders. “She’ll be the one to say ‘Nuh-uh.’” Los
Angeles Daily News
State Senate race features former Assembly members
By McKenzie Jackson, Contributing Writer
Two former state assemblymen are
competing for votes on election day in
the race for the 35th state Senate
District seat. Voters will choose
between Steve Bradford, 56, and
Warren Furutani, 68, on Nov. 8 in the
race to replace Sen. Isadore Hall III.
Hall is running for the 44th
Congressional District seat currently
held by Rep. Janice Hahn. Hahn is
running for a seat on the county Board
of Supervisors. The two Democrats once served in the lower
house of the California State Legislature. Furutani said if he is
elected to serve District 35 voters his main focus will be on
education and career creation for citizens. Wave Newspapers
Insider is sentenced to prison in scam that nearly took down
L.A.'s last black bank
By James Rufus Koren
A loan officer who peddled bad loans
to churches across the country — a
scam that nearly took down L.A.’s last
black-owned bank — was sentenced
this week to federal prison, ending a
lengthy saga for Broadway Federal Bank. Paul Ryan, 49, of
Torrance pleaded guilty two years ago to running a scheme in
which he approved loans to churches that were on shaky
financial footing in exchange for bribes of $354,000. As part of
his 18-month sentence handed down Monday, Ryan will have to
pay that same amount in restitution to Broadway Federal. Los
Angeles Times
reporters discovered that state Republican leaders had sent emails
directing GOP appointees on local elections boards to “make
party line changes” to limit early voting. BLACKVOICES
Civil Rights Groups Ready to Stand Up to Voter
Intimidation
By Allison Keyes
Gabrielle Gray is a little busy these days.
The 26-year-old doctoral student in
political science at Howard University is
coordinating the school’s 2016
Presidential General Election Voter
Protection Project. It involves putting
together teams of students from HBCUs
around the nation to keep voters of color from being intimidated
at the polls on Election Day. “I have a background in education.
It’s one thing to sit in classes to learn about voter suppression,
and it’s another thing to act against it,” says Gray, who is also
president of the Howard University Graduate Political Science
Association. The Root
Black Children Deserve the Stability That Neighborhood
Schools Offer
By Andre Perry Ph.D.
School closure is a tactic we don’t have
to take. Under the new national
education law, the Every Student
Succeeds Act, states have been freed to
employ strategies they deem fit just as
long as they act on the bottom 5 percent.
When we’re talking about improving urban districts, though, we
always seem to land on the “solution” of closing them. Black
communities are constantly losing the anchor institutions we
actually need strengthened. Within those very districts, there are
schools that offer somewhat of a model. The Root