Janay Rice, wife of NFL player Ray Rice, has spoken out on the footage of Rice's attack leaked yesterday, sparking a Twitter conversation #WhyIStayed. Also, should LA County opt in to change foster care? Then, we remember Gerald Wilson, composer, musician and educator whose career spanned from the swing era of the 1930s to the jazz sounds of the 21st century.
Ray and Janay Rice affair highlights dynamics of intimate partner violence
Janay Rice, wife of NFL player Ray Rice, has spoken out today after video emerged yesterday showing Ray punching out Janay in an elevator, which led suddenly to the Baltimore Ravens cutting him from the team.
On Instagram, she wrote, "To make us relive a moment in our lives that we regret everyday is a horrible thing. To take something away from the man I love that he has worked his [butt] off for all his life just to gain ratings is horrific."
On Twitter a different conversation has been spurred - stories of #WhyIStayed and #WhyILeft by victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) and experts in the field.
One woman, Beverly Gooden, wrote "I tried to leave the house once after an abusive episode, and he blocked me. He slept in front of the door that entire night. #WhyIStayed."
According to the Centers for Disease Control, IPV resulted in 2,340 deaths in 2007 - accounting for 14% of all homicides. The public health agency also calls IPV a preventable health problem.
How has societal understanding of IPV changed in recent history? Which populations are most vulnerable? What are your experiences with abusive relationships or episodes in an intimate relationship?
Powerful #whyistayed and #whyileft tweets:
because i thought if i loved him enough he would stop being abusive
. because i knew he would kill me eventually
— Allison O'Connor (@yurhuckleberry)
I was told marriage is forever. I didn’t want to be a failure
— Jessica Merrell (@jmillermerrell)
I was told marriage is forever. I didn’t want to be a failure #whyistayed
— Jess Miller-Merrell (@jmillermerrell) September 9, 2014
because he told me he'd kill me if I left.
is when I realized he was going kill me if I stayed.
— Kimberly (@luvsmytwoboys)
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
Guest:
Kathy Moore, MSW, Executive Director, California Partnership to End Domestic Violence
Lakers great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar comes to defense of Hawks owner Bruce Levenson
Atlanta Hawks co-owner Bruce Levenson is selling his share in the NBA team. The decision came after Levenson told the NBA that he had sent an email in 2012 containing racially insensitive remarks.
Levenson self-reported the offense and apologized for his comments. In the email to his co-owners and general manager, Levenson blamed blacks for the team’s low number of season ticket holders. He also stressed the need for the Hawks to bring in more white attendees.
In an op-ed published yesterday in Time magazine, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has come to the embattled Levenson’s defense. “I read Levenson’s email. Here’s what I concluded: Levenson is a businessman asking reasonable questions about how to put customers in seats,” Abdul-Jabbar wrote.
Can the email Levenson wrote could legitimately be understood as motivated by business concerns?
Copy of Bruce Levenson's email:
From: Bruce Levenson
Sent: 8/25/2012 11:47:02 PM
Subject: Re: Business/Game ops
1. from day one i have been impressed with the friendliness and professionalism of the arena staff — food vendors, ushers, ticket takers, etc. in our early years when i would bring folks from dc they were blown away by the contrast between abe pollin’s arena and philips. some of this is attributable to southern hospital and manners but bob and his staff do a good job of training. To this day, I can not get the ushers to call me Bruce yet they insist on me calling them by their first names.
2. the non-premium area food is better than most arenas, though that is not saying much. i think there is room for improvement and creativity. Levy is our food vendor so we don’t have much control but they have been good partners. i have wished we had some inconic offereing like boog’s barbeque at the baseball stadium in balt.
3. our new restaurant, red, just opened so too early for me to give you my thoughts.
4. Regarding game ops, i need to start with some background. for the first couple of years we owned the team, i didn’t much focus on game ops. then one day a light bulb went off. when digging into why our season ticket base is so small, i was told it is because we can’t get 35-55 white males and corporations to buy season tixs and they are the primary demo for season tickets around the league. when i pushed further, folks generally shrugged their shoulders. then i start looking around our arena during games and notice the following:
– it’s 70 pct black
– the cheerleaders are black
– the music is hip hop
– at the bars it’s 90 pct black
– there are few fathers and sons at the games
– we are doing after game concerts to attract more fans and the concerts are either hip hop or gospel.
Then i start looking around at other arenas. It is completely different. Even DC with its affluent black community never has more than 15 pct black audience.
Before we bought the hawks and for those couple years immediately after in an effort to make the arena look full (at the nba’s urging) thousands and thousands of tickets were being giving away, predominantly in the black community, adding to the overwhelming black audience.
My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a signficant season ticket base. Please dont get me wrong. There was nothing threatening going on in the arean back then. i never felt uncomfortable, but i think southern whites simply were not comfortable being in an arena or at a bar where they were in the minority. On fan sites i would read comments about how dangerous it is around philips yet in our 9 years, i don’t know of a mugging or even a pick pocket incident. This was just racist garbage. When I hear some people saying the arena is in the wrong place I think it is code for there are too many blacks at the games.
I have been open with our executive team about these concerns. I have told them I want some white cheerleaders and while i don’t care what the color of the artist is, i want the music to be music familiar to a 40 year old white guy if that’s our season tixs demo. i have also balked when every fan picked out of crowd to shoot shots in some time out contest is black. I have even bitched that the kiss cam is too black.
Gradually things have changed. My unscientific guess is that our crowd is 40 pct black now, still four to five times all other teams. And my further guess is that 40 pct still feels like 70 pet to some whites at our games. Our bars are still overwhelmingly black.
This is obviously a sensitive topic, but sadly i think it is far and way the number one reason our season ticket base is so low.
And many of our black fans don’t have the spendable income which explains why our f&b and merchandise sales are so low. At all white thrasher games sales were nearly triple what they are at hawks games (the extra intermission explains some of that but not all).
Regardless of what time a game starts, we have the latest arriving crowd in the league. It often looks and sounds empty when the team takes the floor.
In the past two years, we have created a section of rowdy college students that has been a big plus. And we do a lot of very clever stuff during time outs to entertain the crowd. Our kiss cam is better done than any in the league.
We have all the same halftime acts that other arenas have but i question whether they make sense. people are on their cell phones during half time. i wonder if flashing on the scoreboard “$2 off on hot dogs during halftime tonight” just as the half ends would be a better use of our halftime dollars and make the fans happier.
We do all the usual giveways and the fans are usually their loudest when our spirit crew takes the floor to give away t-shirts. It pisses me off that they will yell louder for a t-shirt then for our players.
Our player intro is flat. We manufacture a lot of noise but because of the late arriving crowd and the fact that a lot of blacks dont seem to go as crazy cheering (another one of my theories) as whites, it is not great. Even when we have just returned from winnng four straight on the road, i am one of the few people in the arena standing and cheering when our team takes the floor. Bob has kicked around ideas like having the starters coming down aisles rather than off the bench during intros. Sounds cool but may highlight all the empty seats at the start of games.
Not enough of our fans wear hawks jerseys to games. i have just begun to push for ideas like discount food lines for folks wearing jerseys, special entrances, etc. I think we need a committed and perhaps incentivized fan club. We need to realize atl is simply different than every other city. Just adopting nba best practices is not enough. we have to create our own.
I am rambling and could probably go on forever. If you have any specific areas you would like my thoughts on, let me know.
Best,
Bruce
ps — I have cc’d todd and ed so they can chime in with additional or different thoughts.
Sent from my iPad
Guests:
Jason Walker, managing editor, Peachtree Hoops, the Altanta Hawks blog for the sports site SB Nation
Wayne McDonnell, academic chair of the sports management program at NYU
Ruling grants first-ever asylum on grounds of domestic violence
The nation's highest immigration court has ruled in favor of granting political asylum to a Guatemalan woman seeking refuge from her abusive husband - and a government that failed to protect her.
The recent decision rests on a long-debated concept that asylum seekers legitimately can fear persecution based on their “membership in a particular social group” - and that abuse victims belong to a social group.
Advocates also argue that the law allows victims to seek refuge not just from a country that is persecuting them, but also from groups or individuals the government is unable or unwilling to control. Ms. Aminta Cifuentes fled from Guatemala in 2005 after she “suffered repugnant abuse by her husband" - including weekly beatings, a broke, nose, rape, injuries from burning paint thinner, and stalking. The local police would not get involved in the domestic abuse case.
The case seems to be precedent setting. Moreover, the court made the rare decision to issue a written ruling to give guidance to other adjudicators. Analysts say its application will be limited to women from Guatemala.
Critics say a plethora of asylum applications are fraudulent and this will inspire more bogus claims. They also argue it will flood the system, preventing bona fide victims of political persecution from gaining refugee status.
Are victims of domestic abuse similar to other victims who seek asylum in the U.S.? Could the protection be extended to other countries and other social groups?
Guests:
Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies, Center for Immigration Studies
Blaine Bookey, Associate Director and Staff Attorney at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies; she is also co-counsel on the first test case since the highest immigration court in the United States issued a ruling recognizing domestic violence as a basis for granting asylum.
Should California counties opt in to change foster care?
California’s foster care system is under near-constant criticism, but the state budget may offer one fix: more money for caregivers who take in a relative.
Currently, caregivers who foster a relative receive poverty-level subsidies -- a small fraction of the aid given to non-relative foster parents. A budget change that will take effect in 2015 will allow California counties to opt in to and aid match, giving caretaker-relatives the same subsidies as non-relative foster parents.
Proponents say that the program will allow children in the foster care system to stay with their families, and will incentivize caregiving for relatives who may not have been able to take on the financial burden in the past. Still, many counties have held off on opting in, concerned about how to fund the subsidies once state money runs out.
Is a financial fix for California’s foster care program sustainable? How would it change the landscape of foster care in Los Angeles County and other California counties? What are the potential benefits and drawbacks for children and families?
Guest:
Angie Schwartz, policy director at the Alliance for Children’s Rights
Daniel Heimpel, executive director with Fostering Media Connections
Wine, art, and fancy startups -- places where the super-rich are investing
Quantitative easing and low interest rates might be what the US needs to get its economic engine running again after the recession. But that combination has been detrimental for investors looking for returns on their investments.
So what are people investing in these days? For regular folks, index funds are still the best bet. But those with ultra high net-worth--say over US $30 million or more--are finding new, niche, and ever-riskier places to invest their money. Here to explain is Marketplace’s Paddy Hirsch.
Guest:
Paddy Hirsch, senior editor at American Public Media’s Marketplace and author of Man vs. Markets: Economics Explained (HarperBusiness, 2012)
Remembering Jazz great Gerald Wilson
Yesterday, Los Angeles lost a piece of its living history. The terrific musician Gerald Wilson passed away at the age of 96. Wilson was a successful trumpeter, bandleader, and arranger. He played, composed, and arranged music with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, and Ray Charles, among many others.
Wilson remained an established composer and arrange throughout his career, working in L.A.’s music scene and even composing for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Later in his career, he taught jazz at CSU: Northridge and CSULA, as well as UCLA.
At 96, he was still making music. We remember Wilson, whose career spanned the from the swing era of the 1930s to the jazz sounds of the 21st century.
Guest:
Anthony Wilson, jazz guitarist and son of Gerald Wilson
John Clayton, Co-leader, conductor, and co-founder, Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. Mr. Clayton is also a bassist, composer, and arranger