Rookie trader kills himself after seeing a negative balance of more than $700,000 in his Robinhood account


Published: June 18, 2020 By Shawn Langlois

It's a scary time to be a rookie trader. GETTY

The stock market, particularly in its current state, is no place for amateurs.

Sullimar Capital analyst Bill Brewster delivered that message to followers in a heartbreaking Twitter TWTR, -0.90% thread in which he shared a family member’s tragic foray into trading.

Here’s the full story

Alex Kearns, just 20 years old, left this note, which Forbes posted on Wednesday: “How was a 20 year old with no income able to get assigned almost a million dollars worth of leverage?”

Robinhood declined to share any details of the trading account and how such outsized losses piled up but did say that the company was aware of the situation.

“All of us at Robinhood are deeply saddened to hear this terrible news and we reached out to share our condolences with the family,” the spokesperson told MarketWatch on Sunday.

Here’s a screenshot of his account:

The balance displayed in red, as Forbes explained, may not have represented uncollateralized indebtedness at all, but rather a temporary balance until his option trades settled.

The death serves as a reminder that trading stocks can have devastating real-life consequences. This has perhaps never been more true than when it comes to using borrowed cash to leverage positions in a stock market where the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.15% can be down almost 2,000 points one session, like last week, then rebound nearly 500 points the next.

Inexperienced traders have been cited as a driving factor in the big bounce of the market’s late-March lows and the recent volatility. Deutsche Bank analyst Parag Thatte suggests that Wall Street professionals are being forced to chase amateurs who continue to bid up equities.

Read:It’s like the Wild West with ‘get-rich-quick crowd’ vs. Wall Street pros, but it’s too easy to blame retail investors for ‘rampant speculation’

CNBC’s Jim Cramer last week also addressed the dangers of the current climate.

“It got too easy, and now we all have to suffer as the get-rich-quick crowd gets blown out,” he said on his “Mad Money” show, describing the current environment as one of “rampant speculation.”

20-Year-Old Robinhood Customer Dies By Suicide After Seeing A $730,000 Negative Balance

Sergei Klebnikov Forbes Staff 6/18/2020 Antoine Gara Forbes Staff


Alexander E. Kearns. KEARNS FAMILY

With additional reporting by John Dobosz and Jeff Kauflin

The note found on his computer by his parents on June 12, 2020, asked a simple question. “How was a 20 year old with no income able to get assigned almost a million dollars worth of leverage?” The tragic message was written by Alexander E. Kearns, a 20-year-old student at the University of Nebraska, home from college and living with his parents in Naperville, Illinois. Earlier that day, Kearns took his own life.

Like so many others, Kearns took up stock investing during the pandemic, signing up with Millennial-focused brokerage firm Robinhood, which offers commission-free trading, a fun and easy-to-use mobile app and even awards new customers free shares of stock. During the first quarter of 2020, Robinhood added a record 3 million new accounts to its platform. As the Covid-19 stock market swung wildly, Kearns had begun experimenting, trading options. His final note, filled with anger toward Robinhood, says that he had “no clue” what he was doing.

In fact, a screenshot from Kearns’ mobile phone reveals that while his account had a negative $730,165 cash balance displayed in red, it may not have represented uncollateralized indebtedness at all, but rather his temporary balance until the stocks underlying his assigned options actually settled into his account.

Silicon Valley-based Robinhood is not sharing details of Kearns’ account, citing privacy concerns: “All of us at Robinhood are deeply saddened to hear this terrible news and we reached out to share our condolences with the family over the weekend.”

It’s impossible to know all of the factors contributing to suicide, especially in young people. Still, the tragic demise of Alexander Kearns is a cautionary tale of the serious risks associated with the race to the bottom in the brokerage business. Robinhood, E-Trade, TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, Interactive Brokers, Fidelity and even Merrill Lynch have all embraced commission-free trading and zero-minimum balances in an effort to attract younger customers, many of whom have little understanding of the securities and markets they are dabbling in.

“I thought everything was going fine,” says Bill Brewster, Kearns’ cousin-in-law and a research analyst at Chicago-based Sullimar Capital Group. His father said he was loving the markets and really enjoying investing, Brewster told Forbes, “and then on Friday night, we got this call from his mom, and he had died.”

Kearns apparently fell into despair late Thursday night after looking at his Robinhood account, which appeared to have $16,000 in it but also showed a cash balance of negative $730,165. In his final note, seen by Forbes, Kearns insisted that he never authorized margin trading and was shocked to find his small account could rack up such an apparent loss.

“When he saw that $730,000 number as a negative, he thought that he had blown up his entire future,” says Brewster. “I mean this is a kid that when he was younger was so conscious about savings.”

Although Robinhood won’t release the details of his account, it‘s possible that Kearns was trading what’s known as a “bull put spread.” Put options give buyers the right to sell the stock at the strike price anytime until expiration, while put-sellers are on the hook to buy the underlying stock at the strike price, if assigned. This happens automatically at expiration if the price of the underlying stock closes that day at a price one penny or more below the strike price.

In Kearns’ note, he says that the puts he bought and sold “should have cancelled out,” because normally a bull put spread involves selling put options at a higher strike price, and buying puts at a lower strike price, both with the same expiration. The trade generates a net credit, which the options trader keeps if the stock price stays above the higher strike price through expiration. It’s generally considered a limited risk strategy because the simultaneous purchase and sale of put options means the maximum loss on a per-share basis is the difference between the strike prices, less the amount earned when the puts are sold initiating the trade.

There can be wrinkles, however, when the price of the underlying stock at expiration is between the two strike prices, or in the case of early assignment, which may have occurred in Kearns’ account.

Here’s an example of how a bull put spread could produce an unexpectedly large stock position in your portfolio. On June 16, Amazon (AMZN) trades at $2,615 per share. If you’re neutral to bullish on Amazon, you could sell put options that expire on July 17 with a $2,615 strike price for $28 per option. To limit your risk, the other leg of the trade is to purchase puts at a lower strike price, $2,610, for a cost of $26. That two-dollar differential (multiplied by 100) generates $200 for every contract you sell. Do three contracts and you generate $600. If Amazon closes on July 17 above $2,615, you’re in the clear and keep all of the proceeds, as both puts expire worthless. If the stock closes below $2610, you will encounter your maximum loss of $900: $5.00 (difference between strike prices) minus $2.00 (proceeds earned up front) times three contracts.

When the stock closes between the two strike prices, the put you bought at the lower strike price expires worthless, but the one you sold is in the money and legally binds you to buy the stock at the strike price. In the case of three contracts of $2,615 Amazon puts, that would be $784,500 to purchase 300 shares. Over a weekend, say, you may see a –$784,500 debit to buy the stock, but you would not see the stock among your holdings until Monday.

Kearns may not have realized that his negative cash balance displaying on his Robinhood home screen was only temporary and would be corrected once the underlying stock was credited to his account. Indeed it’s not uncommon for cash and buying power to display negative after the first half of options are processed but before the second options are exercised—even if the portfolio remains positive.

“Tragically, I don’t even think he made that big of a mistake. This is an interface issue, they have slick interfaces. Confetti popping everywhere,” says Brewster referring to the shower of colorful confetti Robinhood routinely deploys after customers make trades. “They try to gamify trading and couch it as investment.”

Says Robinhood: “We are committed to continuously improving our platform and are reviewing our options offering to determine if any changes may be appropriate.”

If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741.


Sergei Klebnikov
I am a New York—based reporter for Forbes covering breaking news, with a focus on financial topics. Previously, I wrote about investing for Money Magazine  

Antoine Gara
I’m a staff writer and associate editor at Forbes, where I cover finance and investing. My beat includes hedge funds, private equity, fintech, mutual funds, mergers, 

'Robinhood is not behind the rally,’ Barclays says as retail demand surges

Ethan Wolff-Mann Senior Writer Yahoo Finance June 12, 2020

Unemployment may be at 13.3% — and maybe even up to 5 percentage points higher — but retail investors, the regular folks of the investing world, are jumping into the market, channelling their inner Warren Buffett to be greedy when others are fearful.

Many narratives have emerged both on Wall Street and in the financial media that these new investors, using zero-cost brokerages like Robinhood to trade stocks, could be joining the Federal Reserve and the government’s coronavirus response in pushing the stock market up.

But in a research note circulated to clients Friday, Barclays said no, “Robinhood is not behind the rally.” Using the popular Robintrack database that offers insight on most popular positions and changes, analysts from Barclays Investment Sciences wrote that since March 2020, when the market bottomed out, stocks have generally done worse when Robinhood users get interested.

“We have seen the opposite of the conventional wisdom—all else equal, more Robinhood customers moving into a stock has corresponded to lower returns, rather than higher,” the analysts wrote.

Though the Robinhood user holdings of S&P 500 ETF jumped in-line with the market’s gains, spikes in holdings of those ETFs didn’t correspond with spikes in the market.

If there isn’t a relationship between Robinhood activity and the overall market, what about individual stocks?

“It is undeniable that there are many examples of big stock gains coming along with big increases in Robinhood customer holdings. For example, Amazon has been a strong performer, gaining 45% since mid-March 2020 vs roughly flat for the S&P 500,” the Barclays note said. “But just because two things happen at the same time doesn’t mean one causes the other.”

Furthermore, they wrote, low-performing stocks have also seen big bumps.

“COTY has been the worst performing name in the S&P 500 since mid-March 2020. But the number of Robinhood accounts that hold COTY has increased sixfold, a much bigger gain than that for Amazon,” the note said.

UKRAINE - 2020/05/02: In this photo illustration a Robinhood logo seen displayed on a smartphone. (Photo Illustration by Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Still, many disagree

Influential investor and billionaire Jeffrey Gundlach, speaking in an online presentation this week, said there was "something unnerving that's going on in this rally," and it "seems to be driven by a lot of rampant speculation." 

Yes, Gundlach was talking about Robinhood. The “bond king” brought up a chart from Robintrack data and pointed to the rise of accounts and activity to the coronavirus lockdown, with a particular acceleration when the stimulus checks hit.

To Gundlach, this is an explanation, or at least part of one, to what’s driving the market, especially in the big tech stocks, because money just isn't flowing from institutional investors.

Other market watchers, like analysts at Goldman Sachs, have highlighted surges in new accounts, noting the "continued surge in retail investor trading activity has helped boost the growth stocks most popular with hedge funds."

Deutsche Bank’s Parag Thatte, who also looked at Robintrack data, mused that there seems to be a lot of evidence that retail investors are getting in on this rally and, like, Gundlach, saw flows markedly different for retail investors than other groups. In particular, Thistle noted that Robinhood accounts holding mega cap stocks (at least $200 billion market cap) rose by 50% during the lockdown.
Robinhood is not Vanguard

The focus on Robinhood activity makes some sense given the company’s role as a disruptor. It established free trades — making others do the same — and is pretty, modern, and millennial- and mobile-friendly. But does it deserve the constant callouts in analyst notes? 


Maybe, since its data is available via Robintrack, which might be useful to someone. And anecdotally, its 3 million accounts added so far this year (as of May 4) and its adoption of fractional shares mean that a lot of people may end up using the app.

But is Robinhood activity enough to move the market? Judging from the popularity of the ability to buy less than a share at a time — the volumes just might not be that big. Although Robinhood’s assets under management is not public, it likely is miniscule compared to the big players of retail money: BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity, and Schwab. 
However, what if Robinhood’s popularity is a proxy for something else? 

Nicholas Colas, a former hedge fund manager who writes the DataTrek newsletter, said Google Trends will tell you what the retail market is thinking. “It’s certainly a thing,” he wrote. “If you use Google Trends, look at search volumes for ‘buy stocks’ over the last year. Huge interest pickup.”

One likely scenario is the internalized message of “buy low, sell high,” something that my colleague Myles Udland has also wondered. That, combined with everybody knowing the Buffett aphorism about when to be greedy might have affected some people’s behavior.

It sure worked for 401(k) shops like Fidelity, Vanguard, and T. Rowe Price, who told their investors to “stay the course”: Most of them followed the advice.

Just like how people didn’t panic and sell their 401(k)s holdings, perhaps they saw stocks with prices that seemed really low and decided to jump in.

Colas also pointed out that while it’s hard to know the effects of fractional share ownership — you can own less than a share on SoFi, Robinhood, Schwab, and others — it might have an outsized effect, especially given people aren’t always shy about using margin on these platforms.

This, he added, “probably” has contributed to the market run-up.

“The system isn’t really tuned to accommodate lots of small orders,” he wrote. “Market making algos only know the recent past, so seeing higher order volumes and fewer limit orders suddenly appear may have had an impact.”

Robinhood users have increasingly become interested in struggling stocks that are even going bankrupt, like J.C. Penney and Hertz, wading past day-trading into outright speculation given the volatility of these companies’ prices.

In addition to trading with bankrupt companies, a Sundial Capital Research note that examined Robinhood user behavior found a 13.1% rise in accounts with short ETF positions versus a 1.2% drop in accounts that had their long counterpart and a 13.1% rise in short ETFs, the largest net difference in two years.

“Maybe Robinhood will stick around and this can develop into a reliable indicator of retail sentiment,” wrote Sundial Capital’s CEO Jason Goepfert. “More likely, volatility will pick up, users will move on to their regular jobs and sports betting, and interest in the platform will wane.”

--

Rio Tinto to review policy amid furor over caves

By David Winning WSJ 6/18/2020

SYDNEY--Rio Tinto PLC said it will review how its iron-ore division tackles issues related to the heritage of indigenous people, after blasting ancient rock shelters during an expansion of its operations in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

On Friday, Rio Tinto said the board-led review would focus on the destruction of the 46,000-year-old caves at Juukan Gorge and appraise its internal heritage standards. It aims to publish a final report in October, and would seek input from employees and indigenous group.

Rio Tinto is facing mounting pressure over the destruction of the caves that are sacred to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people.

On June 11, lawmakers in Western Australia state said they would investigate the destruction of the caves, including decisions made by Rio Tinto's management and the extent to which it consulted with indigenous people beforehand. The inquiry's terms of reference also takes in how approvals for mining activities are provided under the nearly 50-year-old Aboriginal Heritage Act.


Rio Tinto has apologised to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people and said it would fully cooperate with the inquiry in Western Australia.

"The decision to conduct a board-led review of events at Juukan Gorge reflects our determination to learn lessons from what happened and to make any necessary improvements to our heritage processes and governance," Rio Tinto Chairman Simon Thompson said on Friday.

Twitter again slaps ‘manipulated media’ label on a Trump tweet

Tweet was shoddily manipulated to resemble a CNN video


Published: June 18, 2020 at 10:38 p.m. ET By Mike Murphy

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Twitter Inc. flagged a tweet by President Donald Trump that featured doctored video as “manipulated media” Thursday night.

Trump posted the minute-long video, which was shoddily manipulated to resemble a CNN video, with the headline “Terrified todler [sic] runs from racist baby.”



“You may not deceptively promote synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm,” Twitter TWTR, -0.90% said in the link from its warning label. “In addition, we may label Tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media to help people understand their authenticity and to provide additional context.”

Twitter has been more forceful recently in challenging Trump’s tweets, first flagging one of his tweets featuring a doctored video of Joe Biden as “manipulated media” in March.

Thursday’s move by Twitter came the same day that Facebook Inc. FB, +0.17% removed a Trump-Pence campaign ad that prominently displayed a symbol used by Nazi Germany.

Some on social media speculated that Trump is looking to provoke another headline-grabbing showdown with social-media companies amid a flurry of bad news for his campaign, including sinking poll numbers, disturbing allegations from former adviser John Bolton, rising coronavirus cases and continued tension over racial injustice.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department proposed rolling back legal protections that internet companies such as Twitter and Facebook have had for more than two decades, though such a change would have to be approved by Congress

AMERIKA
From Columbus to Confederates, Anger About Statues Boils Over

Sarah Mervosh, Simon Romero and Lucy Tompkins,

The New York Times•June 17, 2020

Workers remove the statue of Juan de Oñate from outside the Albuquerque Museum in Albuquerque, N.M., on Tuesday, June 16, 2020. (Adria Malcolm/The New York Times)The boiling anger that exploded in the days after George Floyd gasped his final breaths is now fueling a national movement to topple perceived symbols of racism and oppression in the United States, as protests over police brutality against African Americans expand to include demands for a more honest accounting of all American history.

In Portland, Oregon, demonstrators protesting against police killings turned their ire to Thomas Jefferson, toppling a statue of the Founding Father who also enslaved more than 600 people.

In Richmond, Virginia, a statue of Italian navigator and colonizer Christopher Columbus was spray-painted, set on fire and thrown into a lake.

And in Albuquerque, New Mexico, tensions over a statue of Juan de Oñate, a 16th-century colonial governor exiled from New Mexico over cruel treatment of Native Americans, erupted in street skirmishes and a blast of gunfire before the monument was removed Tuesday.

Across the country, monuments criticized as symbols of historical oppression have been defaced and brought down at warp speed in recent days. The movement initially set its sights on Confederate symbols and examples of racism against African Americans but has since exploded into a broader cultural moment, forcing a reckoning over such issues as European colonization and the oppression of Native Americans.

In New Mexico, it has surfaced generations-old tensions among indigenous, Hispanic and Anglo residents and brought 400 years of turbulent history bubbling to the surface.

“We’re at this inflection point,” said Keegan King, a member of Acoma Pueblo, which endured a massacre of 800 or more people directed by Oñate, the brutal Spanish conquistador. The Black Lives Matter movement, he said, had encouraged people to examine the history around them, and not all of it was merely written in books.

“These pieces of systemic racism took the form of monuments and statues and parks,” King said.

The debate over how to represent the uncomfortable parts of American history has been going on for decades, but the traction for knocking down monuments seen in recent days raises new questions about whether it will result in a fundamental shift in how history is taught to new generations.

“It is a turning point insofar as there are a lot of people now who are invested in telling the story that historians have been laying down for decades,” said Julian Maxwell Hayter, a historian and associate professor at the University of Richmond.

He said that statues removed from parks and street corners could be teaching points if they are placed in museums, side-by-side with documents and first-person accounts from the era.

“Let’s say you put a Columbus statue in a museum and you show students the way Columbus was lionized in a history textbook and you have them read ‘Devastation of the Indies’ by de Las Casas,” he said. “Then you have to ask, why were people invested in telling this particular version of Christopher Columbus’ history?”

The calls to bring down monuments have spanned far and wide, in large cities like Philadelphia and rural places like Columbus, Mississippi, touching both relatively obscure historical figures and deeply revered cultural symbols.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, the statue of a former newspaper publisher who was also a white supremacist was removed on Tuesday. In Sacramento, a tribute to John Sutter, a settler famous for his role in the California gold rush who enslaved and exploited Native Americans, was taken down this week. And in Dallas, construction crews recently removed a statue of a Texas Ranger, long seen as a mythical figure in Texas folklore, amid concerns over historical episodes of police brutality and racism within the law enforcement agency.

The push has largely been welcomed by activists from the Black Lives Matter movement who see Confederate and other monuments as reminders of the oppressive history that created the reality they are battling today. But some of them worried that the focus on historic symbols would do little to keep attention on the more pressing issue of ending the brutal treatment of many African Americans by the police.

“I don’t know if I would say a distraction, because I think people definitely have the ability to be nuanced,” said Alisha Sonnier, a 24-year-old mental health advocate from St. Louis who is concerned that taking down statues could be an “easy appeasement.”

“The statue being removed is not going to keep anyone from dying,” she said. “It’s not going to save a life.”

Cleon Jones, a 77-year-old activist in Africatown, Alabama, formed on Mobile Bay by the last known shipment of slaves to the United States from Africa, said he felt frustrated by the notion that progress toward equality could be stalled by rancor over Confederate monuments.

“We’ve got to move forward, not look back,” he said. “As long as we are dealing with these statues, we’re not moving forward.”

The focus on removing statues has revealed deep civil divisions far outside the Black Lives Matter movement that are hundreds of years in the making. It has spurred a backlash among Italian Americans who have long regarded Columbus as a point of pride, and also among some Hispanics in New Mexico, who celebrate an era when Anglos did not dominate public life in New Mexico.

“We need to have a broader discussion about our history,” said Christine Flowers, a 58-year-old Italian American immigration lawyer, who was among a group that gathered to protect a statue of Columbus in Philadelphia.

But she added, “It is indefensible to try to erase that history by pulling down something that is very dear and very symbolic for the culture of Italian Americans in Philadelphia.”

In Columbus, Mississippi, a largely African American town, county officials voted Monday to keep a towering monument to Confederate soldiers — “our heroes,” it calls them — on the courthouse lawn despite mounting calls for its removal.

“It’s a good time to learn some history,” said Trip Hairston, a white county supervisor who opposed removing the monument. “I don’t agree with all that history, of course, but it is what it is — it’s history.”

It was an argument that left many of those pushing to remove the statue perplexed. “It’s commemorating and celebrating a lost battle — I don’t understand,” said David Horton, 28, a lifelong resident of Columbus who first fought against a Confederate monument as a seventh grader at Robert E. Lee Middle School.

“These are things I have to endure all my life as a young African American man living in Mississippi,” he said. “It’s always made me feel inferior, it’s always made me feel like I shouldn’t hold my head up.”

Symbols of the Confederacy and its legacy of slavery have long been at the center of the reckoning over historic racism in the country.

At least 114 Confederate symbols were removed in the years after a white supremacist killed nine people at a historic African American church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, according to a 2019 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The killing of Floyd in Minneapolis reenergized that movement, as demonstrators chipped away at a 52-foot Confederate obelisk in Birmingham, Alabama, and toppled a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, in Richmond.

The statues debate has once again focused attention on Columbus, the voyager who emerged as a symbol of Italians’ contribution to American history in the late 1800s, a time when discrimination against Italians was rampant. But many in recent days are also talking about how his arrival signaled the beginning of a violent European colonization that resulted in a cross-Atlantic slave trade and the genocide and displacement of many indigenous peoples.

Columbus statues from Boston to Miami have been brought down or defaced by protesters. A large Columbus statue was defaced with red graffiti in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York defended a towering monument to the explorer at Columbus Circle in Manhattan.

“I understand the feelings about Christopher Columbus and some of his acts, which nobody would support,” the governor said this week. “But the statue has come to represent and signify appreciation for the Italian American contribution to New York. So for that reason, I support it.”

In Philadelphia, supporters went to court to block the removal of a Columbus statue after another statue, of Frank Rizzo, a former mayor known for discriminatory policies, was removed by the city this month in the middle of the night. “You just can’t let the mob rule,” said George Bochetto, a lawyer who filed the petition.

Tensions over the Oñate monument came to a boil Monday night in Albuquerque, when dozens of protesters engaged in shouting matches, some seeing the brutal Spanish governor as a symbol of repression, while others saw him as a positive symbol of a time before Anglos came to dominate the Southwest. Then a group of white militia members, on a self-appointed mission to protect the statue, showed up with guns.

In the mayhem that ensued, a man pulled out a weapon and shot one of the protesters, critically injuring him.

On Tuesday, the authorities in Bernalillo County filed a charge of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon against the man with the gun, identified as Steven Baca, 31. Baca ran unsuccessfully for the Albuquerque City Council last year.

The authorities promptly removed the Albuquerque statue on Tuesday, a day after another Oñate statue was taken down in northern New Mexico.

In Minneapolis, where the demonstrations over Floyd’s death ignited new protest movements in dozens of cities, many said they never expected them to grow into an international reckoning over racist symbols. Still, they said, it was only a matter of time before the latest police killing of a black man led to something more lasting than previous protests.

“It’s kind of like a wound that has a scab,” said Teron Carter, 49, standing across the street from Cup Foods, the deli near Floyd’s fatal encounter with the police. “A wound that has a scab is still a wound, it’s just that the scab is on top. And if you scrape that scab a certain way, it reopens the wound.”

He attributed the scope of the burgeoning movement to built up grief and to the energy of young people who simply are not willing to put up with walking by Confederate and other statues each day.

“It’s not just an isolated city event,” Carter said. “Now everybody saw the opportunity and said, ‘If we don’t get in there and talk like Minneapolis is talking, then we aren’t going to be heard.’”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2020 The New York Times Company

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 )

The Independent employs reporters around the world to bring you truly independent journalism. To support us, please consider a contribution.

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.”

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

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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."