Friday, June 19, 2020

Black reporter sues newspaper for prohibiting her coverage of Black Lives Matter protests

Alexis Johnson alleges racial discrimination and illegal retaliation against the outlet


Louise Hall

Alexis Johnson was prohibited from covering the city's Black Lives Matter protests because of a tweet ( AP )

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A reporter in Pittsburgh is suing the newspaper she works for after the company prohibited her from covering the city’s Black Lives Matter protests because of a tweet concerning the issue.

Alexis Johnson, a black reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, filed the lawsuit in federal court in Pennsylvania alleging racial discrimination and illegal retaliation on Tuesday.

The suit claims that Ms Johnson was prevented from pursuing stories on jailed protesters or social-media efforts to raise bail funds after she posted a tweet on 31 May highlighting the different treatment black and white people regarding property damage.

“Horrifying scenes and aftermath from selfish LOOTERS who don’t care about this city!!!!!” the tweet says. “.... oh wait sorry. ”No, these are pictures from a Kenny Chesney concert tailgate. Whoops."

The suit stated that the tweet “was intended to — and did — mock, ridicule and protest discrimination against African Americans by society in general and by whites who equate property damage with human life.”

The filing alleges that the subsequent ban on her coverage “would tend to dissuade a reasonable newspaper reporter from making or supporting claims of race discrimination.”

The lawsuit also alleges that white reporters who have sent similar social media posts did not receive similar treatment in similar circumstances.

“For example, Defendant’s reporters who spoke out publicly against discrimination and hate after the 2018 shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue — which did not involve actions by police directed at African Americans — were not removed from covering that story,” the suit says.

The suit alleges that Ms Johnson has suffered mental anguish, emotional strain, humiliation and diminished career advancement because of her employers.

The reporter and her legal team are seeking for the paper to be forced to allow her to cover the protest and racial issues, to be prevented from retaliating against her and monetary damages to be determined at trial.

Post-Gazette managing editor Karen Kane previously declined comment on the issue when contacted by The Associated Press, stating that editors could not discuss personnel matters.

An email seeking comment on the lawsuit was sent to Ms Johnson’s editors by The AP.

Ms Johnson’s fellow reporters, her union and the city’s mayor have all voiced support for the reporter.

Guild President Michael A Fuoco, who is also a Post-Gazette reporter, said that guild leaders were “appalled” by the paper's move.

— Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

World has six months to avert climate crisis, says energy expert

Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent The Guardian17 June 2020

Photograph: Ina Fassbender/AFP/Getty Images


The world has only six months in which to change the course of the climate crisis and prevent a post-lockdown rebound in greenhouse gas emissions that would overwhelm efforts to stave off climate catastrophe, one of the world’s foremost energy experts has warned.

“This year is the last time we have, if we are not to see a carbon rebound,” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency.

Governments are planning to spend $9tn (£7.2tn) globally in the next few months on rescuing their economies from the coronavirus crisis, the IEA has calculated. The stimulus packages created this year will determine the shape of the global economy for the next three years, according to Birol, and within that time emissions must start to fall sharply and permanently, or climate targets will be out of reach.

“The next three years will determine the course of the next 30 years and beyond,” Birol told the Guardian. “If we do not [take action] we will surely see a rebound in emissions. If emissions rebound, it is very difficult to see how they will be brought down in future. This is why we are urging governments to have sustainable recovery packages.”

Carbon dioxide emissions plunged by a global average of 17% in April, compared with last year, but have since surged again to within about 5% of last year’s levels.

In a report published on Thursday, the IEA – the world’s gold standard for energy analysis - set out the first global blueprint for a green recovery, focusing on reforms to energy generation and consumption. Wind and solar power should be a top focus, the report advised, alongside energy efficiency improvements to buildings and industries, and the modernisation of electricity grids.

Creating jobs must be the priority for countries where millions have been thrown into unemployment by the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns. The IEA’s analysis shows that targeting green jobs – such as retrofitting buildings to make them more energy efficient, putting up solar panels and constructing wind farms – is more effective than pouring money into the high-carbon economy.Revised chart

Sam Fankhauser, executive director of the Grantham Research Institute on climate change at the London School of Economics, who was not involved in the report, said: “Building efficiency ticks all the recovery boxes – shovel-ready, employment intensive, a high economic multiplier, and is absolutely key for zero carbon [as it is] a hard-to-treat sector, and has big social benefits, in the form of lower fuel bills.”

He warned that governments must not try to “preserve existing jobs in formaldehyde” through furlough schemes and other efforts to keep people in employment, but provide retraining and other opportunities for people to “move into the jobs of the future”.

Calls for a green recovery globally have now come from experts, economists, health professionals, educators, climate campaigners and politicians. While some governments are poised to take action – for instance, the EU has pledged to make its European green deal the centrepiece of its recovery – the money spent so far has tended to prop up the high-carbon economy.

At least $33bn has been directed towards airlines, with few or no green strings attached, according to the campaigning group Transport and Environment. According to analyst company Bloomberg New Energy Finance, more than half a trillion dollars worldwide – $509bn – is to be poured into high-carbon industries, with no conditions to ensure they reduce their carbon output.

Only about $12.3bn of the spending announced by late last month was set to go towards low-carbon industries, and a further $18.5bn into high-carbon industries provided they achieve climate targets.

In the first tranches of spending, governments “had an excuse” for failing to funnel money to carbon-cutting industries, said Birol, because they were reacting to a sudden and unexpected crisis. “The first recovery plans were more aimed at creating firewalls round the economy,” he explained.

But governments were still targeting high-carbon investment, Birol warned. He pointed to IEA research showing that by the end of May the amount invested in coal-fired power plants in Asia had accelerated compared with last year. “There are already signs of a rebound [in emissions],” he said.

Climate campaigners called on ministers to heed the IEA report and set out green recovery plans. Jamie Peters, campaigns director at Friends of the Earth, said: “A post-Covid world must be a fair one. It will only be equitable if the government prioritises health, wellbeing and opportunity for all parts of society. As if the case was not compelling enough in a dangerously heating planet, it is even more urgent post-Covid.”

Putting the IEA’s recommendations into action would boost the economy, added Rosie Rogers, head of green recovery at Greenpeace UK. “Government putting money behind sustainable solutions really is an economic no-brainer. It can see us build a recovery that both tackles the climate emergency and improves people’s lives through cleaner air and lower bills.”

Investors were also keen to put private sector money into a green recovery, alongside government stimulus spending, said Stephanie Pfeifer, chief executive of the Institutional Investor Group on Climate Change, representing funds and asset managers with $26tn in assets. “The IEA has shown [a green recovery] is not only desirable, but economically astute. Investors are fully committed to playing their part in this process.”

Thursday, June 18, 2020

Amy Klobuchar Withdraws From VP Search, Says Biden Should Select Woman of Color

Kevin Robillard HuffPost 18 June 2020

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) had been an early contender in the 2020 Democratic presidential race but failed to win a primary. (Photo: Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images)


Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) removed herself from the running to be the Democratic vice presidential nominee, an acknowledgment that her chances at the slot had dwindled dramatically since the death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers in her home state late last month.

Announcing her decision on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” on Thursday night, Klobuchar said she informed presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden of her decision on Wednesday and said he should pick a woman of color as his running mate.

“America must seize on the moment, and I truly believe — as I actually told the VP last night when I called him — that I think this is a moment to put a woman of color on that ticket,” Klobuchar said.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and former national security adviser Susan Rice are all seen as top contenders as running mates for Biden, who was Barack Obama’s vice president.
UK
Quarter of staff at chicken factory supplying M&S are self-isolating amid coronavirus outbreak, unions say


Harriet Brewis Evening Standard 17 June 2020

Google streetview

Around a quarter of staff at major chicken processing factory are self-isolating following an outbreak of coronavirus, unions have said.

Thirteen workers have tested positive for Covid-19 at the 2 Sisters plant in Llangefni, North Wales, with 110 self-isolating as a precaution, BBC Wales Today reported.

Its owner 2 Sisters Food Group has not confirmed the number of cases, but efforts to tackle the “cluster” are being treated as a “priority”, union leaders have said.

The company is one of the largest food producers in the UK, owning the Fox’s Biscuits and Holland’s Pies brands, and counting Marks & Spencer among its high profile customers.

According to its website, 2 Sisters produces around a third of all poultry products eaten every day in the UK.

Paddy McNaught, regional officer for the Unite union, told BBC Wales: “It’s very frightening for the staff on site seeing all their colleagues being off work and so many people proving positive for having Covid-19.

“It’s clearly very frightening times and people are concerned, but we’re doing all we can to support those staff through our reps on site and with the company in taking actions to make it a safer environment as possible.”

A statement issued by Isle of Anglesey County Council said: “The North Wales Regional Test, Trace, Protect team is responding to the cluster of coronavirus cases at the 2 Sisters plant in Llangefni as a priority, and supporting the workplace.

“Key agencies including Public Health Wales, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, Health and Safety Executive and both Anglesey and Gwynedd Councils are working together to support and advise the employer and those employees who have tested positive, together with their contacts.”

A spokesperson for 2 Sisters Food Group told the Standard its "key priority" is to "continue to provide the safest possible workplace and support all colleagues at Llangefni, as we have been doing successfully for three months without one single positive case reported at the site."

They added: "The health and safety of every colleague is of paramount importance to us, which is why we have had a series of measures in place for some time including regular and intensive deep cleaning and disinfecting regimes, the wearing of protective visors in production areas and implementing social distancing throughout the factory.

"We continually review and evolve these measures to reassure and protect all colleagues, and have redoubled our efforts since positive cases were confirmed. For instance we have now introduced thermal temperature checks on entry and employed marshalls to ensure social distancing is maintained in high traffic areas.

"As a company policy we will confirm cases but will not provide running commentaries nor disclose employee data.”

Welsh chicken factory closed for two weeks over Covid-19 in staff

Simon Goodley
The Guardian18 June 2020







The UK’s main supplier of supermarket chicken has shut one of its factories for two weeks after an outbreak of coronavirus among the plant’s staff.

Public Health Wales said 58 Covid-19 cases had been confirmed at 2 Sisters Food Group’s facility in Llangefni, Anglesey, which employs around 560 people.

2 Sisters said in a statement: “We will not tolerate any unnecessary risks, however small, for our existing loyal workforce at the facility. We have worked in close collaboration in the past week with Public Health Wales, Anglesey council, the Health and Safety Executive, FSA [Food Standards Agency] and the Unite union, who have all offered great advice, scientific knowledge and support, and we thank them for their help and guidance, which has informed this decision.”

The firm, which has eight other sites in its poultry division and supplies all of the main supermarkets as well as fast-food chains such as KFC, is no stranger to operating under reduced capacity. In 2017, after a Guardian and ITV News undercover investigation raised questions about food standards, the company suspended production at its West Bromwich chicken plant for five weeks in order to deal with the problems. The company said at the time that the closure would cost it up to £500,000 a week.

United welcomed the move to close the Anglesey facility and predicted similar problems could arise throughout the meat processing sector.

Bev Clarkson, Unite’s national officer for food, drink and agriculture, said: “The relaxation of social distancing has been brought in too soon; we predicted a spike in the meat industry. You only have to look at what has happened in America and Germany to know that it would happen here. Measures need to be taken now by the government to stop further spikes within the sector.”

2 Sisters was founded in 1993 with a bank loan taken out by Ranjit Singh Boparan, who left school at 16 with few qualifications and spent his early working life working in a butcher’s shop.

He has built the business into one of the UK’s largest food companies and has also acquired a collection of restaurants including Giraffe and Ed’s Easy Diner. He bought the Carluccio’s chain last month.
Hundreds of armed WHITE counter-protesters confront 
ASSAULT Black Lives Matter rally in Ohio
LOCAL COPS DO NOTHING

Adrian Horton in Cincinnati The Guardian 18 June 2020

Photograph: Amy Harris/Rex/Shutterstock


A small and peaceful demonstration in an Ohio town to support the Black Lives Matter movement at the weekend was overwhelmed when hundreds of counter-protesters – some armed with rifles or baseball bats – harassed the group.

Alicia Gee, a 36-year-old substitute school teacher, expected about 50 people to attend a demonstration – the first protest she had ever organized, she told the Cincinnati Enquirer, but almost twice as many turned out.

The rally was intended to show solidarity with the minority black community in Bethel, Ohio, a mostly white town of about 2,800 people 30 miles east of Cincinnati, she added.

But instead the small group of protesters was overwhelmed when roughly 700 counter-protesters turned up to show their opposition to the kind of rallies and marches against racism and police brutality sweeping the nation since the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis in May.

Gee’s gathering demonstrated the renewed reach of the Black Lives Matter movement to small, majority-white towns in the midwest that haven’t seen protests in years, spurred by recent, high-profile examples of killings of black people by white police officers or armed individuals acting as vigilantes.

Some small towns holding rallies now did not see such events after the killing of Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.

Gee referenced violent tragedies such as the alleged murder of Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, the shooting death of Breonna Taylor by Louisville police, and the killing of Ahmaud Arbery by two armed white men in Georgia.

She noted in her Facebook post ahead of the rally she organized in Bethel on Sunday afternoon that such brutality made it “perfectly clear to me it’s time for my comfort to be put by the wayside, it is time for me to use my body, my voice, and my privlege to show my town that it is not ‘fine,’ that it’s not just ‘city folks’ that have the right to peacefully assemble, and that Black Lives Matter even if there are just a few in our town.”
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But instead of simply ending up as a passionate show of solidarity against prejudice, the demonstration was engulfed by a combination of armed second amendment gun rights defenders, “back the blue” pro-police groups and about 250 people on motorcycles, which forced the group to move two blocks from its original location and led to tumult.

Videos from what turned into a two-hour clash, several of which circulated on Twitter and Facebook, show the counter-protesters shouting racial slurs and “all lives matter” and accosting demonstrators.

“They were grabbing me and grabbing my mom and they just seemed to have no respect for the law,” Andrea Dennis, a Bethel resident whose Facebook live from the demonstration shows a man ripping a fellow demonstrator’s sign from her hands, told the Enquirer. Bethel police said they were investigating 10 “incidents” from Sunday afternoon.

In another Facebook live video, Heather Bratton, also from Bethel, asserts “this is my hometown too!” to a white women who repeatedly calls her “nigger”.

A few counter-demonstrators “started coming over and ripping signs out of our hands, ripping the hats and masks off of our faces, ripping things out of our pockets,” wrote demonstrator Abbi Remers on Facebook, along with a photo of a man’s bloody cheek, a bloodied mask, and video of men shouting “This ain’t Seattle!” and “This is a Republican state!”

Another widely-circulated video shows a man wearing what appears to be a Confederate flag bandana sucker-punching a protester in the back of the head in front of a police officer, who makes no arrest attempt, drawing condemnation from Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown.

“These officers’ inaction is shameful,” Brown tweeted. “This is why we need the Justice in Policing Act – to hold police accountable,” he added, referring to legislation introduced by House Democrats earlier this month.

A #BlackLivesMatter protestor in #Bethel #Ohio got sucker punched DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF A COP & nothing was done by the officer to protect and serve the protestor.
🤦🏻‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/BPeKhOjxb3— Josh Martinez (@YoJoshMartinez) June 15, 2020

In a virtual village council meeting on Tuesday, Bethel police chief Steve Teague said the officer present had not witnessed the incident because his attention was pulled to the side (all six of Bethel’s officers were present on Sunday, Teague said, as well as some county deputies). On Wednesday, Bethel police issued an arrest warrant for assault citing the video as evidence.

Because of tension and intimidation on Sunday, Gee said in a Facebook live video posted Monday that she did not plan to schedule another demonstration. “I want us to heal, I want our community to heal, I want peace and love to be spread,” she said. “And I’m worried that what we saw yesterday with more counter-protesters coming out – I’m worried that’s going to happen again.”

By Monday evening, Bethel mayor Jay Noble imposed a 9pm curfew citing “the threat of continued and escalating violence.”

Gee urged supporters to “not come to Bethel right now” – a chilling echo of so-called “sundown towns,” majority-white towns where black people were evicted, barred from buying property, and banned after dark by threat of violence earlier in the 20th century.

“It is not a time for any type of Black Lives Matter supporters to be in Bethel right now,” Gee said. “It’s not safe.”

“Our purpose was to show our community that it cares,” she said. “That it loves the people within our community, and right now, that cannot happen.”


George Floyd protests lead to reckoning as Black employees speak out on racism and discrimination in the workplace

Jessica Guynn, USA TODAY June 17, 2020




Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook posted a video on Twitter announcing a $100-million initiative to fight racism and break down barriers to opportunity, including inside his own company.

Tanya Faison, who is Black and for five years worked in technical support at Apple, says she’s skeptical of these expressions of solidarity from corporations that for years stayed silent on systemic racism while perpetuating racial inequality by failing to hire, promote or fairly pay Black people and people of color.

“It’s very nice that he’s decided to take this moment to start focusing on Black folks, when he is in a company with Black employees who are not being taken care of,” Faison said of Cook.

From Silicon Valley to Wall Street, corporations from nearly every sector of the American economy have taken to social media proclaiming their support for the Black Lives Matter movement and condemning police killings as protests over the death of George Floyd still flood American streets.

Seizing an opportunity to be heard, Black employees are responding on social media with painful stories of workplace racism that they say they were too fearful to discuss before. The wave of firsthand accounts and activism has led to resignations, drawing parallels to the #MeToo movement.

“We need more than performative, symbolic or superficial statements. We need action,” says Aerica Shimizu Banks, one of two former Black employees who went public this week with charges of racial discrimination against social media service Pinterest. Pinterest denies the charges.

“I hope companies are recognizing that your employees will not stay silent to racism, sexism and discrimination anymore."

Big change: Aunt Jemima brand is changing its name and removing the namesake Black character

GM on Juneteenth: GM to go silent for 8 minutes, 46 seconds on Juneteenth in support of Black community

The voices of Black workers are being amplified by colleagues of all races, turning up the pressure on employers to make real change in hopes this moment could mark a turning point for racial equity in the American workplace.

At Adidas, dozens stopped working to attend protests outside the company’s North American headquarters in Portland, Oregon. Hundreds of Facebook employees staged a virtual walkout to protest CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision not to take down inflammatory posts by President Donald Trump.
Black Lives Matter pledges under scrutiny

Driving this wellspring of employee activism: pledges by businesses large and small that in the past have done little to balance the economic scales for Black workers or to eradicate toxic work environments.


Protesters march on June 15 in New York City after the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis.More

In recent weeks, Facebook and Citibank chimed in, as did Nike and the NFL. Bank of America said it would spend $1 billion over four years to address racial and economic inequality. Randall Stephenson, chairman and CEO of AT&T, called for racial equality in the U.S. in an open letter to federal, state and local officials, saying he would work on equitable justice as part of a new Business Roundtable, a committee of large-company CEOs.

Google's YouTube video service said it will funnel $100 million into a fund for Black content creators. Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square, made Juneteenth, which celebrates the end of slavery in America, an official paid holiday at both companies. L'Oreal SA on June 9 rehired Munroe Bergdorf, a Black transgender model it fired in 2017.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, even took a knee for a photograph with staff from one of the bank’s branches, a nod to former quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who was blacklisted from the NFL for protesting the police killings of African Americans.



Yet African Americans are woefully underrepresented in the echelons of corporate America, where the Fortune 500 has just four Black CEOs and senior leadership teams are still made up entirely of white men. And the coronavirus pandemic has only deepened inequalities in the business world, disproportionately claiming the lives and livelihoods of African Americans.

The statistics are sobering. Black workers are paid less than white workers, even in high-wage positions. Research shows that the black-white wage gap has been widening for decades, even during periods of economic expansion. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the overall average wage for black workers in 2019 was $21.05. For white workers, it was $28.66. As a result, in the U.S., Black households have one-tenth the wealth of a typical white household, according to Federal Reserve data.

Being called out are companies publicly throwing their support behind the Black Lives Matter movement while continuing the status quo.

On Twitter, Amazon called for an end to “the inequitable and brutal treatment of Black people” in the U.S. Its CEO Jeff Bezos posted on Instagram an email from a customer criticizing the Black Lives Matter banner on Amazon’s home page, and responded that this was the kind of customer he was “happy to lose.”


A protester kneels and holds up a fist as he and others demonstrate the death of George Floyd by closing down and blocking traffic on I-395 in Washington, DC on June 15.More

At the same time, the company has been criticized for relegating workers, many of them African American, to low pay and harsh working conditions. In March, it fired a Black warehouse employee who was advocating for safer conditions during the pandemic. Amazon said the worker violated its social distancing policy.
Push for accountability led by employees, activists

The Plug, an online news service created by journalist and entrepreneur Sherrell Dorsey to cover Black innovation in the tech world, is pushing for accountability with a spreadsheet that tracks the recent statements by tech companies and pairs it with information on the demographics of these companies, including the dearth of Black people in leadership and technical roles.

Online racial justice organization Color of Change has launched a campaign to urge corporations including Amazon, Adidas, Nike and Target to move #BeyondTheStatement.

“I have seen an outpouring of companies saying Black lives matter,” Color of Change President Rashad Robinson told USA TODAY. “I want them to actually make Black lives matter through their policies and their practices.”

He says all of these gestures are hollow unless corporations back up statements with concrete plans to close racial pay gaps, hire and promote more Black employees and ensure more wealth flows into Black communities.


Rashad Robinson, president of online racial justice organization Color of ChangeMore

“What I am seeing across the board is not a full recognition from corporate America about all the ways they have written the rules and all the ways they benefit from the rules that fuel racial discrimination and racial injustice in this country,” Robinson says. “Now is not the time simply for statements of support that don’t actually come with real structural change. Now is the time to actually change rules and change behavior.”
Tech industry confronting its race problem

The race problem in the tech industry was thrust into the national conversation in 2014 when companies from Facebook to Google disclosed for the first time how few women and people of color they employ. The companies pledged to make their workforces less homogeneous.

The paucity of underrepresented minorities in an industry increasingly dominating the U.S. economy drew sharp scrutiny from company shareholders and Washington lawmakers. Yet hundreds of millions, if not billions, in diversity spending later, very little has changed.

After the 2016 presidential election, corporations pulled back on their commitments to diversify their workforces, says Karla Monterroso, CEO of Code2040, an organization that advocates for proportional representation of Black and Latinx leaders in the tech industry as a way of diversifying high-wage work in America.

Facebook while black: Users call it getting 'Zucked,' say talking about racism is censored as hate speech

Corporate America roiled: Black Facebook employees complain racism, discrimination have gotten worse

“A lot of different corporations were making real deal investments in this stuff. Once the election happened, and the president won, you saw a huge backtrack from those investments,” Monterroso says.

“The social capital around this disappeared and the capital capital around this disappeared. There was a lot of fear. I had people, directly and indirectly, tell me that they were afraid to make these investments and be public about their beliefs because it would put them in the crosshairs of a president with an itchy Twitter finger.”

Undeterred, employees at companies from Facebook to Google have come forward with personal stories of racism and discrimination inside their companies.
Black employees speak out on discrimination

On June 2, Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann wrote a public post about the changes the company planned to make to elevate racial justice content on the social media service and increase the diversity at the company, where 3.7% of employees are Black, 2.8% of managers are Black and none of the senior leadership is Black, according to the company’s 2018 federal filing.

“With everything we do, we will make it clear that our Black employees matter, Black Pinners and creators matter, and Black Lives Matter,” Silbermann wrote on June 2.

Quietly, less than a week earlier, Banks and Ifeoma Ozoma, two Black employees in prominent public policy positions, left the company. On Monday, they went public about the racial discrimination they said they faced at Pinterest.

Ozoma told USA TODAY that she wanted people to know that “in this moment when Pinterest is claiming to care about Black employees and Black lives, that just a few weeks ago, when I was still there, that was not the case for me at all.”

Despite driving high-profile initiatives for Pinterest such as the decision to stop promoting former Southern slave plantations as wedding venues or to steer searches for vaccine-related information to public health groups, Ozoma says she was not paid fairly. When a white male colleague, upset with her work on policy issues, shared sensitive personal information about her in "just about every dark corner of the internet," she says she was forced to hire a company to monitor online information and threats.

Banks told USA TODAY that she almost immediately regretted the decision to join Pinterest to head up its Washington, D.C., office, in May 2019 and barely lasted a year in the role.

Banks, who is African American and Japanese, says she faced disparaging remarks about her ethnicity from her manager. Even after she left the company, she says her sponsorship of Black organizations and businesses was scrutinized.

In a statement to USA TODAY, Pinterest said it conducted a “thorough investigation” into the allegations.

“We’re confident both employees were treated fairly,” the company said.

Color of Change is launching a petition to secure back pay for Ozoma and Banks.

"The retaliation these women experienced underscores the risk Black workers in Silicon Valley endure every day for speaking out against racism and discrimination," Color of Change campaign director Jade Magnus Ogunnaike said in a statement. "To show a serious commitment to racial justice, the company should use this opportunity to change their hostile culture for Black workers and set an example for the tech industry."

Robinson says he's thrilled to see employees "speaking out and pushing back."

“We are hearing from employees in very powerful ways," he says, "and that’s important."
Former Apple employee, Black Lives Matter activist speaks out

One of those employees is Faison, the Black Lives Matter activist. The job at Apple in Elk Grove, California, paid well, came with good benefits and gave her time to devote to her Black Lives Matter activism in the Sacramento area.

But there was only one Black supervisor and no managers of color in her office, she says. And even as coworkers were encouraged to openly embrace gay rights, Faison says it was made clear to her that, if she wanted to get promoted, she would have to keep quiet about her fight against police killings.


Tanya Faison, of Black Lives Matter, addresses a demonstration outside the Sacramento Police Department to protest the decision to not prosecute the two officers involved in the 2018 fatal shooting of Stephon Clark.More

Faison says she held her tongue, even when customers she was helping with their iPhone or Mac problems made racist comments or used the N-word, presuming she was white. But holding in her feelings for a paycheck left Faison angry and depleted by the end of the day.

“I couldn’t even go into diversity and inclusion meetings and talk about the work or what’s going on and how it is impacting us,” she says.

Then, in February 2018, Apple announced that Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors had been invited to speak at Apple’s Cupertino, California, headquarters. Faison pushed her ergonomically adjusted chair from her desk and, in the middle of her shift, stood next to her car trying to make sense of it.

“It really upset me because, for years, I was holding my breath. For years, I was tiptoeing around Apple about my work,” she says. “I had been hiding everything, and that wasn't acceptable.”

A month later, when 22-year-old Stephon Clark was killed by two police officers in his grandmother’s backyard, drawing national scrutiny of police shootings and discriminatory policing of Black neighborhoods, Faison took a leave of absence and then another to organize a wave of protests in Sacramento. Then she quit. She says Apple tried to convince her to stay on, but she couldn’t.

“I couldn’t hold the weight of the work and also the weight of what was happening in the streets anymore,” Faison says. “I had to go.”

And, even though she needs a job, Faison says she’d never go back.

Apple’s $100 million pledge, its first directed to the Black community, pales next to its investments in clean energy, manufacturing jobs and housing. It’s also a drop in an overflowing financial bucket. Apple, the world’s most valuable company, made a profit of $55 billion on revenue of $260 billion last year.

And Apple has made slow and halting progress in diversifying the company. According to a 2018 filing with the federal government, Apple has one Black executive out of a total of 123, less than 1%, and 284 Black managers out of a total of 9,878, less than 3%. Nine percent of its U.S. workforce is Black.

“Black employees are not being treated with dignity. They’re not being treated fairly. They’re not being promoted fairly. There’s not a lot of Black leadership within the company,” Faison says. “And there were not a lot of places for us to go to express that we were not being treated the way that we should be.”

Reached for comment, Apple said it believes in treating everyone with dignity and respect and that it applies those values in all aspects of its business.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Racism in corporate America: Black employees speak out amid protests
BLACK AMERIKA
Why Juneteenth is so important and why so few people know about it


Jeanette Marantos,LA Times•June 18, 2020
Abraham Lincoln and his Emancipation Proclamation printed by the Strobridge Lithographing Co. of Cincinnati. (Library of Congress)

Juneteenth is Friday, June 19, a holiday that is arguably as important to our nation as the Fourth of July, since it commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved people of Texas, then the most remote region of the Confederacy, finally learned slavery had been abolished and that they were free.

Juneteenth — a mashup of "June 19" — became a day of celebration for Black people in Texas, a tradition that slowly spread as they migrated to other states such as Louisiana and California.

Texas declared Juneteenth a legal state holiday in 1980, the first state to do so, but national awareness has been spotty, even among Black people, said Brenda E. Stevenson, professor of history and African American studies at UCLA, whose most recent books include "What is Slavery" and "The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender and the Origin of the LA Riots."

"Growing up in Virginia, I didn't hear about it until I went to college," Stevenson said.

But the recent demonstrations against police killings of Black Americans and growing recognition of systemic racism in our nation's businesses and institutions has brought Juneteenth to the forefront of public awareness.
Brenda E. Stevenson has been a professor of history and African American studies at UCLA for nearly 30 years. (Annette Hornischer / American Academy in Berlin)

On Wednesday, New York’s governor signed an executive order recognizing Juneteenth as a paid holiday for state employees to commemorate the emancipation of slaves in the U.S. Efforts to make America's other Independence Day a national holiday have long stalled in Congress, although all but three states — Hawaii, North Dakota and South Dakota — have followed Texas' lead in some way, declaring Juneteenth a state holiday or observance, according to the Congressional Research Service. (In 2003, California declared the third Saturday of June to be a state observance known as Juneteenth National Freedom Day.)

Over the past two weeks, corporations such as Twitter, Square, Nike, Target and the National Football League declared Juneteenth a paid company holiday. And others, such as historian and Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs professor Peniel Joseph, are publicly lobbying for Juneteenth to become a national holiday.

"A national holiday commemorating Juneteenth would spur not only conversation about the origins of our current racial and political conflicts, but would also prompt vitally necessary education about white supremacy and its manifestations in policies and political actions that are anti-Black, anti-democratic and anti-human," Joseph wrote in a June 13 op-ed for CNN.



To add to the recognition, a critically acclaimed movie, "Miss Juneteenth," becomes available for streaming Friday on FandangoNow. The movie, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January, is about a former beauty queen-turned-single mom trying to groom her reluctant daughter to win the Miss Juneteenth pageant, earn a full-ride scholarship and avoid the life mistakes she made.

An additional spotlight was cast on Juneteenth last week when President Donald Trump announced he would have his first major, post-COVID-19 reelection rally on June 19 in Tulsa, Okla., the site of "the single worst incident of racial violence in American history," according to the Oklahoma Historical Society. After a public outcry, the president said he would change the rally date to June 20 out of respect for the holiday. (He also took credit for raising awareness about Juneteenth, telling the Wall Street Journal "Nobody had ever heard of" it and adding, "I made Juneteenth very famous.")

As for Stevenson, the UCLA professor, she plans a small family gathering for June 19. "I'll be throwing some fish on the grill for myself and some jackfruit for my daughter, who's a vegan," she said, laughing.

But the most important part for her will be having some serious meal-time conversations about racism then and now. "We've really got to take advantage of this moment," she said.

"I do appreciate emancipation, and I want to take a moment to thank God for it and talk about our own legacy. ... But clearly, we are a deeply racialized society. When [President Barack] Obama was elected, people said, 'Oh, now we're in the post-racial era,' but that era never arrived and certainly isn't here now."

An examination of Juneteenth illustrates how deep those racist roots go, said Stevenson, who has taught at UCLA for nearly 30 years, specializing in the history of American slavery.
Celebration of the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, 1866. (Library of Congress)

The lessons begin in 1862, when the Union was losing the Civil War against the Southern Confederate states. President Abraham Lincoln was looking for a way to cripple the Confederacy's funding, Stevenson said, so he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation to free the slaves in the Confederate states, starting Jan. 1, 1863.

"The thinking was, by freeing the slaves, the Confederacy wouldn't have enough workers to produce the cotton crops sold to England and the Confederacy wouldn't have enough money to continue the war," Stevenson said.

But the proclamation was more strategic than liberating, Stevenson said, since it applied only to the Confederate states. Slavery was still permitted in the border states of Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri.

"Lincoln did not want to push the border states into the Confederacy by freeing those people's slaves," Stevenson said. "He had promised if they remained loyal to the United States, they could retain their slave property."

Eventually that changed when Congress approved the 13th Amendment on Jan. 31, 1865, abolishing slavery throughout the United States. A few months later, on April 9, 1865, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his troops to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, marking the beginning of the end of the Civil War, which continued to be fought in remote parts of the country until its formal conclusion in 1866.

There was no internet or telephones then to spread the news, so when Union Major-Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas — the most remote outpost of the Southern slave states — on June 19, 1865, there were only unconfirmed rumors about the Emancipation Proclamation that had freed enslaved peoples more than two years earlier, Stevenson said.

But Granger's reading of General Order No. 3 finally made it official:

"The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere."

One has to wonder how much was heard by the crowd after "all slaves are free," but that's how Juneteenth was born, Stevenson said.

"There was a lot of celebration, a lot of singing of songs and giving out prayers of thanks to God" among the newly freed slaves, Stevenson said, but liberty brought nothing else.
Artist W.E. Winner painted this portrait of President Abraham Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. (Library of Congress)

Yes slaves were freed, Stevenson said, "but a lot of people stayed on the plantations because they had nowhere else to go. They had no land, no housing, no work tools, seeds or work animals."

Plantation owners had little desire to pay for the labor they had once gotten for free, Stevenson said. "That's when you see sharecropping developing and renters having to give up what they earned to the landowner."

The result being that while people were set free, they remained in economic bondage to their former owners.

And then there was the deeply entrenched belief of white supremacy, a mindset carefully nurtured for generations, to justify the enslavement of Black people and other people of color, Stevenson said.

"The whole mythology about Black incompetence and inferiority was very ingrained. They [slave-holder society] saw this as a rule of natural law, and it wasn't about to flip because of a proclamation," Stevenson said.

Slaveholders forced these beliefs onto their children at an early age, Stevenson said, "to the extent that they sent them away to school to remove them from the companionship of Black (slave) children. They had to teach them their 'friends' on the plantation were inferior, and someday you're going to be their master. It was a real indoctrination. This was very seriously enforced, and you could not, as a white person, act otherwise if you did not want to be ostracized."

One wonders how different our history — and race relations — might have been if the entire nation came together to celebrate our second Independence Day, the end of legal human bondage in the United States.

Now, 155 years later, we have a lot of catching up to do, Stevenson says, which makes national conversations about racial injustice and inequality so important.

"Racism is deeply rooted in American culture and ideology," she said, "and we just have to keep digging deeper and deeper until those roots are out."

Bridget Foley’s Diary: Make Juneteenth a Non-Shopping Holiday

As retail brands embrace the Juneteenth holiday, may it be a day of reflection for all — in-store employees included.




By  on June 18, 2020 

Juneteenth, tomorrow, has long been celebrated by Black people and across communities of color. The holiday references June 19, 1865, two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, when a document declaring the end of slavery was read publicly in Galveston, Tex., by a U.S. Army general. Now the day is getting broader recognition, as numerous American companies, including some in fashion, are making it a paid holiday. Congress will likely take up the issue as well, and Juneteenth could, and should, become a national holiday.
How great and long overdue for our country to formally celebrate the end of slavery, and by doing so, come face-to-face with the horrific devastation it wrought and that is ongoing. Not so great that this reckoning comes only after the killings by police of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and too many others, acts that have shaken American society to its core. In response, millions of people have joined voices in condemning and demanding an end to systemic racism and inequality, and their countless granular manifestations, including those across the employment sphere.
Over the past three weeks, U.S. and global companies have unveiled broad-stroke social-justice initiatives. Typically, these involve pledging to do more to diversify the workforce across its breadth and up through the management ranks; ensuring that those newly diverse work environments are genuinely inclusive, and check-writing, lots and lots of check-writing, mostly to organizations aimed at ending racism and its resulting injustices that so profoundly impact people of color in general, and Black people most dramatically.
In the U.S., newly instituted Juneteenth observations are part of these moves. Among the fashion retail-involved companies instituting the paid holiday are Target Corp., J.C. Penney Co. Inc., Nike Inc. and Ralph Lauren Corp. (PMC, WWD’s parent company, is also observing Juneteenth.) At Nike, the holiday is of the sort that we once perceived holidays to be — a day off company-wide, all-inclusive. This year at least, Nike is closing all U.S., EMEA and Canadian Nike and Converse stores, as well as distribution centers and Air MI facilities. Yet righteousness and commerce don’t always intersect seamlessly. While published numbers and anecdotal evidence suggest that people of color comprise huge portions of the in-store workforce, Target, J.C. Penney and Ralph Lauren are keeping stores open, with those working receiving extra pay. At Ralph Lauren, hourly employees will receive time-and-a-half and salaried workers, comp time. At Penney’s, those working will get non-specified holiday pay.
Target announced its implementation of the holiday simultaneously with the fabulous news that, starting July 5, it is making permanent its increase of minimum pay to $15 an hour (up from $13) that it instituted as hero pay early in the coronavirus pandemic. Retail associates who work on Juneteenth will receive time-and-a-half, and if in-store employees choose not to work, they will be paid for the day. So on one level, no one loses out, and some employees will gain financially.
But what are the optics? And optics be damned, the deeper messaging?
Target employs more than 350,000 people. According to the company web site, 48 percent belong to a “racial/ethnic minority.” While specific percentages for in-store and corporate employees are not given, it’s safe to deduce that a huge number of that 48 percent work in-store, and that many of those employees are Black.
Regardless of a company’s scale, there’s a philosophical gap — and a common sense gap, to boot — in the segment of employees who work in-store not having equal access to the holiday. If a cashier must request the day off when her colleagues in the corporate office get it automatically, she doesn’t have equal access to the benefit.
People in service industries — U.S. retail workers in particular, a large percentage of whom are people of color — get the shaft during holidays, and have for years. They just do. Because stores are always open. Once upon a time, stores closed for major holidays (in the U.S. we have 10 national holidays, but only a few merit major work closures) and even on Sundays. And do you know what happened? Life went on. People knew to stock up on their toilet paper, fresh veggies, beer and Thanksgiving canned cranberry sauce the day before. But somehow, we developed an insatiable societal need for 24-hour access to everything. Now, many stores are open on most holidays, including Thanksgiving and Christmas and — irony of ironies — Labor Day. (Target is open 363 days a year, closing for Easter Sunday and Christmas.)
The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted for all of us exactly what are essential businesses, and who are essential workers. Target — absolutely, an essential business. Its retail-store and distribution-center employees are essential, and among the heroes of the COVID-19 crisis. Target’s sales associates sell us the things we need; its stockroom workers, store managers, distribution staff and truck drivers facilitate those purchases. But “essential” does not necessarily mean 24/7 access required. Short of pharmacies — there is genuine emergency need for pharmaceuticals — no store really has to be open on a specific day. We know we need toilet paper; we know we need food. If my cupboard is wanting of such items on Juneteenth, Labor Day or Christmas, that’s my fault.
The steps being taken now by the mostly white corporate world to acknowledge and deal with racial discrimination and inequities within their organizations, and efforts to affect the larger society, are crucial and long overdue. But lest self-righteousness come knocking even faintly, it’s important to acknowledge that this awakening is not born of pure principle. It is a pragmatic awakening forced by public outrage over the shocking killings by police of innocent Black people.
That’s not to say that corporate hearts and minds aren’t in the right place, and that their moves and proclamations are showboating. But one test of strength of conviction is what happens when principle swerves afield from immediate financial interest. Imagine the statement if more retailers professing to make Juneteenth a paid holiday really make Juneteenth a paid holiday, as Nike is doing. If the lords of commerce say by their actions that, in our world now and going forward, June 19, Juneteenth, is a day for community. For reflection. For reconciliation. Not for shopping. It would also be a fine day to arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor.
Corporate America observes Juneteenth: What to know in markets Friday

On Friday, a number of public corporations across a variety of industries will observe Juneteenth as a company holiday.

Emily McCormick Reporter Yahoo Finance June 18, 2020

The date – a portmanteau of “June” and “nineteenth” – commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S. June 19, 1865 represents the day following the end of the Civil War when Union General Gordon Granger informed those in Galveston, Texas, of the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the final remaining slaves in the state and country. The holiday was first celebrated by freed slaves in Texas in 1866, and this year is set to be the 155th anniversary of the original date.

Juneteenth, which is not recognized as a federal holiday, will be commemorated this year by a host of public companies, either as a paid holiday or a day during which normal business operations will be changed. These decisions come as the country and corporate America face a reckoning over racial injustice, with nationwide protests over police brutality and other issues contributing to and reflecting the impacts of systemic racism continuing since late May.

In tech, Alphabet-owned Google (GOOG, GOOGL) recently added Juneteenth as a U.S. holiday in its Google Calendar, and the company instructed its employees to cancel meetings on the date in observation.

Jeff Bezos, CEO of peer tech giant Amazon (AMZN) also sent a memo to employees this week to encourage workers to cancel meetings Friday. Twitter (TWTR) and Square (SQ) – each co-founded and led by CEO Jack Dorsey – will both observe Juneteenth as a paid company holiday starting this year. And music streaming company Spotify (SPOT) is also offering workers a paid holiday, and said it would feature black artists on its “New Music Friday” playlist.


NEW YORK, UNITED STATES - 2020/06/15: Demonstrators hold placards as they march through the streets during the protest. Protests continue against police brutality and racial injustice in New York City. (Photo by John Lamparski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)More

In retail, Nike (NKE) CEO John Donahoe said in a recent memo to employees that Juneteenth would be a paid holiday this year and going forward. The company added in a LinkedIn post that it will close its retail stores, offices and distribution facilities in the U.S. and use the day “for our employees and teammates to educate and connect on the significance of this moment in Black history.”

Target (TGT) will keep stores and distribution centers open, but gave Target team members the option to take the full day off with full pay, with those still working receiving paid time and a half. Headquarter offices will close, and CEO Brian Cornell said in a statement, “Moving now to recognize [Juneteenth] on an annual basis—as a day to celebrate, further educate ourselves or connect with our communities—is one more important action Target can take as a company to help the country live up to the ideal of moving forward in a new way.”

Best Buy (BBY) said it was giving workers a paid volunteer day for use Friday or later in the year, and would add the date as a formal paid company holiday starting next year. JCPenney (JCP) CEO Jill Soldau also designated the date as a paid holiday in a memo this week, urging employees to “continue to learn, connect with each other, and reflect on how we can move forward and achieve permanent and lasting change.”

Meanwhile, the NFL is also set to recognize the holiday, with the league’s offices closing Friday, according to a memo from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Multiple teams within the NFL, including the Denver Broncos, Detroit Lions, Arizona Cardinals and Green Bay Packers, also said they would permanently recognize Juneteenth.

A number of U.S. banks also plan to shut branches and offices early Friday for Juneteenth.



Trump administration move could add 'significant risks' to retirement accounts
Ben Werschkul DC Producer Yahoo Finance June 18, 2020





When it comes to a 401(k) account, most savers simply choose a target date fund and leave it that.


Now, thanks to a rule change from the Trump administration, those retirement vehicles could soon get a lot more complicated. It’s likely to lead to new risks (and perhaps new rewards) for savers.

Managers of 401(k) plans now have the ability invest in private equity. In other words, your 401(k) could soon take stakes in private companies.

The goal, according to Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia is to allow investors to “gain access to alternative investments” and “ensure that ordinary people investing for retirement have the opportunities they need for a secure retirement.” The Department of Labor laid things out in a letter that says putting 401(k) money into private-equity funds would not “violate the fiduciary’s duties” of certain retirement plan sponsors.

But some experts see a big downside.


Barbara Roper, the Director of Investor Protection at the Consumer Federation of America, said the “significant risks” associated with private equity investments haven’t been adequately addressed.

“By the Department of Labor's own admission, these are investments that are more complex, more opaque, less liquid, more difficult to value, with often higher costs than the investments that are traditionally offered through retirement plans,” Roper said in an interview with Yahoo Finance.

You ‘could do much, much worse’

The DOL letter means that a 401(k) manager could now decide to invest in private-equity funds that previously were not accessible. These funds traditionally have been reserved for the wealthiest traders and institutional investors. They typically come with higher risk since private companies are not required to disclose nearly the same about of data with the SEC as public companies do.

The new rule could be tempting for average savers who may now have a roundabout way to get a piece of a company – like SpaceX or AirBnB – that’s still private. The American Investment Council, which represents the private equity industry, has lauded the change, saying it will strengthen Americans’ retirement security.

One thing that remains up in the air is how quickly the managers of the big retirement plans will embrace their new options. Companies like Vanguard and Fidelity have not yet offered comment on the new guidelines. Another outstanding question is whether these plans would list private-equity funds among the options for savers to choose from, or whether private equity would simply be mixed into existing funds.


Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, right, says the change will allow investors to "gain access to alternative investments”. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)More

Alexis Leondis, an opinion columnist for Bloomberg, recently asked if the move is worth the risks. “Many plan sponsors don't have the sophistication or background in alternatives to fully understand the complicated structures of many private equity funds," she wrote.

Roper said that “the dispersion of returns in the private-equity fund space is huge, much broader than it is in the public markets.” And while the returns for over-performing private equity funds can, indeed, beat the public markets,“if you get in a below average fund, you could do much, much worse," she said.

An example of a big downside in private equity fund is SoftBank’s Vision fund. That fund recently announced losses of $24 billion after failed investments in WeWork and OneWeb.

According to a 2018 study by the Stanford Center on Longevity, about half of American workers are saving money through a retirement plan at work. Access to and participation in 401(k)s is much lower among younger workers. A report from the National Institute on Retirement Security found that two-thirds of working millennials have nothing saved for retirement.

A second rule change, over financial advice

A second change is coming soon and is expected to relax restrictions on the advice financial professionals give about their retirement investments.

The change, passed by the SEC last year with a compliance deadline of June 30, says brokers must act “in the best interest of the retail customer at the time the recommendation is made, without placing your financial or other interest ahead of the retail customer’s interests.”

SEC Chairman Jay Clayton has said that the change is part of "raising the standard of conduct for broker-dealers," while he has discussed in interviews how the best interest standard is different than a fiduciary standard.

According to the Consumer Federation of America, the move could lead to an understanding that investment advisers are not true fiduciaries. A fiduciary is someone legally obligated to act in the best financial interests of the clients they are advising.

Roper says that this potential new rule gives broker-dealers and investment advisers “virtually unlimited ability to act as advisers, while simultaneously failing to regulate them accordingly.” They can now “mislead their customers into believing they are getting trusted, best interest advice when they are actually getting investing recommendations biased by toxic conflicts of interest,” she said.
Roper appeared as part of Yahoo Finance’s ongoing partnership with the Funding our Future campaign, a group of organizations advocating for increased retirement security for Americans.

Consumer Federation of America is an association of non-profit consumer organizations. More than 250 groups – from local agencies like the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs to private groups across the country – participate in the federation.

All of these changes may not be noticed by certain savers who are often encouraged to take a “set it and forget it” approach to their retirement. If their 401(k) provider does end up getting involved in private equity, advocates like Roper say that "the promise of improved performance is not necessarily met by the reality.