We’re happy to report that charges against Shanesha Taylor, the mother who left her children in the car during a job interview, have been dropped.
The gripping mugshot featuring Taylor and her tear-stained face spread quickly and garnered worldwide support for her case. According to the Maricopa County Attorney, a judge ruled that Taylor will have the charges dismissed if she completes a diversion program.
Taylor was arrested back in March after police say she left two children in her Dodge Durango for 45 minutes while she was in a Farmers Insurance office in Scottsdale. Taylor told authorities that she was unemployed, didn’t have child care and had been occasionally homeless.
This morning, after the deal was reached, Taylor attended a settlement conference this morning, where she told reporters:
“This is a beautiful resolution to a very long, very hard journey.”
The program will require Taylor to complete parenting and substance abuse classes and establish education and child care trusts for her three children. Each education trust must have $10,000 in it.
If you’re wondering where that money will come from, you may remember that fundraisers were set up on Taylor’s behalf to help with legal fees and other expenses. The effort raised $144,775 from over four thousand donors.
In reference to the resolution, Bill Montgomery, the county attorney, said: “Where we can focus on an opportunity for rehabilitation without having to use punitive consequences we’re always willing to take a look at that. And our resolution today shouldn’t be taken as a policy shift, this is just how we were able to resolve this one particular case.”
They also took into account the fact that Taylor was searching for employment and had no other criminal history.
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Friday is Nelson Mandela Day, a day to celebrate the great humanitarian and former president of South Africa. And if you’re in the area, you totally ought to stop by Times Square in New York City and get in on the activist action taking place!
That’s because Global Citizen, Nelson Mandela’s grandson Kweku Mandela and tons of activists will be there to help put an end to extreme poverty. The get-together starts at 4, and at 4:15 they’ll start playing footage of Mandela on the giant billboards. You’ll also be able to watch the “Zero Poverty 2030” movie and you might even get a photo with Kweku Mandela. Plus, if you attend and are able to get 10 people to sign the Zero Poverty 2030 petition, you’ll receive 8 points on Global Citizen, which could help you get to the Global Citizen Festival this fall.
If you don’t live nearby or can’t make it for any other reasons, there are still ways you can take part. You could share a special #DayofAction video on Facebook (which, again, could help you get tickets to the Global Citizen Festival). You can also share on Twitter to help raise awareness.
What Global Citizen is doing on Nelson Mandela Day is a part of something bigger. They’re serious about ending extreme poverty by 2030, and we can all join in and help them. And creating a world without extreme poverty would be a great way to honor Nelson Mandela and continue his humanitarian mission. After all, Mandela himself said, “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”
article by Danica Davidson via act.mtv.com
Thinking she’d never become a mom, single nurse Sara Gibbs decided to adopt the newborn girl abandoned on the doorstep of a Corinth, Mississippi, doctor’s office. Eighteen years later, Gibbs is sending her adoptive daughter, Janessa, to college.
“I was single. I worked night shift. I worked 12-hour-nights,” says Gibbs. “There was nothing in my life that had prepared me for a baby.”
Gibbs says she wasn’t even on the schedule for work that day, but she was called in and among one of the first responders. “I feel like it was divine intervention, it had to be, because I wasn’t even supposed to be there,” she says.
But with help from her pastor and her hospital friends, she found the courage to adopt Janessa. “She always tells me that whoever my mother is did it for her,” Janessa says. “She’s the best mom ever,” she adds of Gibbs. “She’s always been my mom.”
Janessa heads to college in the fall.
To see video of this story, click here.
article by Teronda Seymore via clutchmagonline.com
Six days a week, Liz Ferro packs up her car and drives throughout Cleveland to teach young women yoga, swimming and other fitness-based activities. But it isn’t all about breaking a sweat. “It washes away all the cobwebs,” Ferro told TODAY. “Not just out of my brain, but off my heart.”
After using fitness to recover from her own difficult childhood, Ferro now runs Girls With Sole, a non-profit organization committed to helping young women learn to overcome life’s challenges through exercise. “It’s so much easier for them to feel down on themselves,” she told TODAY.
Ferro hits the road throughout the week to work out with pre-teen and teenage girls in schools, juvenile detention centers, social services and other organizations throughout the Cleveland area. “My car looks like a sporting goods store exploded in it,” she said. “It’s almost like Meals on Wheels, but we’re fitness and wellness on wheels.”
Girls With Sole, which she founded in 2009, is largely inspired by Ferro’s own past. She lived in four different foster homes as a child. By the time she was adopted, she had been sexually abused and experienced other traumas while bouncing from home to home.
“Sports and fitness was the thing that made me find the empowerment to be able to handle it and resilience to move on and keep moving forward,” she explained. “Even in the darkest times, it literally saved my life.”
Ferro is now turning to the next generation of young women to show them how to use healthy coping mechanisms, including running, swimming, biking and yoga, in the face of hard situations, whatever they may be.
“School has stressed me out so much, and I could always look forward to Wednesdays, when I would see Liz and I would see her smile and her energy,” eighth-grader Gina said. “People feed off that.”
When Girls With Sole participant Jada finished her first 5K, it meant more than crossing a finish line. “It makes me feel like I can achieve something in my life,” she said. “Coming here brings the happiness out of me instead of sadness.”
Click here to see video of this story.
article by Amy Eley via www.today.com
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Organizers say a $75 million International African American Museum will be built beside the Charleston harbor where tens of thousands of slaves first set foot in the United States.
Charleston Mayor Joe Riley announced Tuesday that the museum will be built near where a wharf once stood in the South Carolina city where the Civil War began. During the late 1770s and early 1800s, tens of thousands of slaves crossed the wharf entering the nation. Riley says there is no better site for the museum. The location is on the waterfront, just down and across the street from the original site planned for the museum.
The project was first announced 13 years ago. Riley says construction on the 42,000-square-foot museum could begin in early 2016 with completion in 2018.
article via newsone.com
Danae Mines is an 11-year veteran with the FDNY and is one of New York City’s few female firefighters. Next March, Mines will also be the first woman the first woman featured in the FDNY Calendar of Heroes, even though she was initially told the calendar honor was only for men.
“I was told that it was all guys,” Mines, who is assigned to Engine Co. 60 in the South Bronx, told the Daily News. “They said if I made it in the calendar, I would look like a pinup girl.”
But that didn’t stop her from attending an open call and breaking the gender barriers. “I wasn’t going to let anyone tell me I couldn’t do what I wanted to do,” she said. “I was determined.”
Mines was surrounded by 100 men at the audition, and admits to feeling intimidated. “I was a little scared,” said Mines. “I was the only female.”
Mines’ dreams of becoming a firefighter began when she was just 10 years old after one of the city’s Bravest visited her school to talk about the job. But her family told her that she should consider another career, because only men joined the FDNY. “I had absolutely no support from my family when I wanted to come on the job,” she said.
Mines became an EMT and, despite her family’s requests, accepted a promotion to become a firefighter in 2003. And she hasn’t been able to stop her relatives from gloating about her ever since. “Once I graduated (from the Fire Academy), it was the complete opposite,” she said. “They could not stop bragging.”
Despite being one of 41 women firefighters in the department, Mines said she’s faced with no more challenges than any other man on the job. Mines didn’t end up looking like a pin-up model, as you can tell from the photo. The proceeds from the calendar goes directly to the FDNY Foundation to promote fire safety education for city residents, as well as new equipment for the firehouses. But Mines said she had a bigger reason in doing the calendar.
“I wanted my picture in the calendar so that young girls and young women can see me and know that they can do this job,” she said.
article via clutchmagonline.com
Unlocking the Truth, a heavy metal band comprised of three 8th-graders from Brooklyn, has been signed to a two-album recording contract with Sony. The deal comes with a $60,000 up-front advance and an option for four additional LPs.
The band, made up of guitarist Malcolm Brickhouse, 13, bassist Alec Atkins, 13, and drummer Jarad Dawkins, 12, was founded in 2007 and has been riding the lightning to metal fame thanks to a steady run of heavy-beyond-their-years busking in Times Square and Washington Square Park. Now the Daily News reports that the boys have finalized a deal with Sony that could net them as much as $1.7 million over a possible six albums.
“What started out as play dates went to Times Square and now this. It’s been one great thing after another,” Dawkins’s mother, Tabatha, told the News. The boys competed in the Apollo Theater’s amateur night (under the name Tears of Blood, no less) and have unleashed their middle-school riffage at venues like Webster Hall and the Coachella music festival. Unlocking the Truth is currently touring the country as a part of the Vans Warped Tour and recently took time off from pre-algebra class to open for Gun N Roses in Las Vegas.
Having scored the deal as minors, the 8th graders’ Sony contract had to be approved and filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. The deal is remarkable on account of more than just the band’s age, band manager Alan Sacks affirmed. “Sacks says the boys have a chance of becoming the new face of rock because they are unique — black artists excelling in heavy metal, a genre typically dominated by white musicians,” the Post writes.
Watch Brickhouse, Atkins, and Dawkins shred Times Square below:
article via gothamist.com
An 83-year-old Houston woman fought off an intruder this weekend with a stick and a pot full of boiling water after giving him a piece of her mind. “I told him, I said, ‘What kind of momma you got that raised you up like this? You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’” Lillie McClendon, who celebrated her 83rd birthday two days before on Independence Day, told ABC station KTRK-TV.
McClendon had just come out of the shower and put a load of laundry in Sunday when she noticed a wide-open window and some things out of place, according KTRK in Houston. “I couldn’t see his face, just his eyes like that. All he was asking about was, ‘Where’s the money at? Where’s the money at?” McClendon said.
Related Post: 82 Year-Old Grandfather George Bradford Fights off Intruder with Hammer
The intruder proceeded to choke her while demanding to know where she kept her money, she added. That’s when McClendon says she fought back.
“Oh, shoot yeah. I got a stick and tried to hit him,” she said. “I had sausage on the stove. I put hot water on him.”
The intruder left without getting what he had come for, but not before receiving some minor injuries from McClendon, she said. McClendon’s family is relieved that the woman was able to emerge from the situation with only a few scrapes herself.
article by Sarah Figalora via abcnews.go.com
Rhonda A. Lee (pictured), the woman who was fired from her meteorologist job in Shreveport, La. after defending her natural hair on the station’s Facebook page, has just accepted a job with a national weather channel in Colorado.
Lee announced on her Twitter and Facebook pages that she has accepted a meteorology position with WeatherNation in Denver. “By all accounts, it is my dream job and I am thrilled to be a part of the WeatherNation family,” she said Thursday night on Facebook. Lee told NewsOne that she accepted the position a week ago but wanted to fine tune some particulars before making an announcement.
The offer came soon after the veteran weather woman had lost hope of ever working in television again.
“A month ago, I told my husband that I’m pretty sure I would never work in weather again,” she said. “I had completely lost faith, but in a matter of a week or so, all of a sudden, three people showed interest in me. It was an awakening is what it was. I really had given up.”
Lee had several offers in other markets, including a chief meteorologist position, but went with WeatherNation because it’s a national network that reaches millions of homes. Lee doesn’t know when she will be on-air, but says she will be on Channel 361 on DIRECTV. She, her husband, and their 10-month-old son will be moving to Denver in a few weeks.
More than a year and a half has past since Lee was fired from KTBS 3 News, an ABC affiliate in Shreveport, after she responded to users on Facebook who complained about her natural hairstyle. The station said Lee was fired for violating its social media policy. She has filed an EEOC complaint against the station and is in mediation to resolve her dismissal. Lee said she has no regrets about defending her natural hair and says her dispute with the Shreveport station hasn’t been an issue with her new employer.