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Jemele Hill suspended by ESPN for two weeks over tweets

ESPN has suspended sports commentator, Jemele Hill, for two weeks following several posts she made on her Twitter account.

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Jemele Hill Suspended By ESPN For Two Weeks Over Tweets
Jemele Hill, Public Domain Image

ESPN has suspended sports commentator Jemele Hill, for two weeks following several posts she made on her Twitter account.

Jemele Hill suspended

In a statement released Monday afternoon, ESPN stated Hill was suspended due to “a second violation of our social media guidelines”.

Hill “previously acknowledged letting her colleagues and company down with an impulsive tweet,” ESPN said in a statement.

“In the aftermath, all employees were reminded of how individual tweets may reflect negatively on ESPN and that such actions would have consequences. Hence this decision.”

Comments

On Sunday, Hill took to social media to comment on Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones having said that any player who “disrespects the flag” will not play referencing NFL player protests that take place during the national anthem.

Hill said that “Jerry Jones also has created a problem for his players, specifically the black ones. If they don’t kneel, some will see them as sellouts.”

She later said, “If you strongly reject what Jerry Jones said, the key is his advertisers. Don’t place the burden squarely on the players.”

“Just so we’re clear: I’m not advocating a NFL boycott,” Hill tweeted. “But an unfair burden has been put on players in Dallas & Miami w/ anthem directives.”

Though many supported Hill’s freedom of speech, Hill would eventually express remorse for her tweets.

“My comments on Twitter expressed my personal beliefs,” Hill said last month.

“My regret is that my comments and the public way I made them painted ESPN in an unfair light. My respect for the company and my colleagues remains unconditional.”

Jemele Hill suspended ESPN response

Shortly after last month’s controversy, ESPN chief John Skipper sent a memo to staffers in which he said that “ESPN is about sports” and that it is “not a political organization.”

Bob Iger, the CEO of ESPN’s parent company Disney, expressed sympathy for Hill after her “white supremacist” tweet.

“I’ve not ever experienced prejudice, certainly not racism. It’s even hard for me to understand what they’re feeling about this, what it feels like to experience racism,” Iger said at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment summit last week. “So I felt that we need to take into account what Jemele and other people at ESPN were feeling at this time. That resulted in us not taking action on the Tweet that she put out.”

Fellow EPSN staffer Lindsay Czarniak took to Twitter to express her support for Hill:

Photo : (John Salangsang / Invision)


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Unheard Voices is an award-winning news magazine that started in 2004 as a local Black newsletter in the Asbury Park, Neptune, and Long Branch, NJ areas to now broaden into a recognized Black online media outlet. They are the recipient of the NAACP Unsung Hero Award and CV Magazine's Innovator Award for Best Social Justice Communications Company.

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Crime & Justice

Detroit man awarded $10 million after wrongful conviction

Alexandre Ansari was wrongfully serving a life sentence over claims that in 2012 he shot and killed Ileana Cuevas, a 15-year-old girl.

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$10 million wrongfully convicted Alexandre Ansari
Alexandre Ansari (Photo Source: Wolf Mueller Law)

A Detroit man who was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for over six years was awarded $10 million in damages by a jury.

$10 million for man wrongfully convicted

Alexandre Ansari was wrongfully serving a life sentence over claims that in 2012 he shot and killed Ileana Cuevas, a 15-year-old girl, and wounded two others in Detroit, according to a lawsuit filed by Ansari in the United States District Court, Eastern District of Michigan Southern Division.

$10 million wrongfully convicted Alexandre Ansari

Alexandre Ansari (Photo Source: Wolf Mueller Law)

“Once I got the verdict back, my heart dropped. And I’m like, ‘Dang, I got to spend the rest of my life in here for something I didn’t do.’ And you know, I tried to kill myself,” Ansari told Linsey Davis on “ABC News Live Prime.”

“It felt like nobody didn’t put all the evidence together to see that I wasn’t the person in the first place. So things started getting overwhelming for me.”

Exonerated

Ansari, 39, was exonerated in 2019 by the Wayne County Circuit Court after it determined that Moises Jimenez, a former Detroit police detective withheld evidence for Ansari’s trial that would have implicated someone else as the shooter, according to the County of Wayne Office of the Prosecuting Attorney.

Jimenez received an anonymous tip that linked the shooter to the Mexican Drug Cartel, according to the complaint that released Ansari.

The officer withheld the evidence from Ansari’s 2013 trial, according to the lawsuit.

Jimenez’s attorneys told ABC News that the former detective claims that he provided all evidence he uncovered during his investigation and plans to appeal the $10 million lawsuit verdict.

There have been no reported arrests connected to the shooting since Ansari’s exoneration. Ansari was wrongfully arrested for the crime when he was 27 years old.


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Black Excellence

Regina King stars as Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman in Congress

Shirley is will be released on Netflix March 22.

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Regina King Shirley
Regina King as Shirley Chisholm (Netflix)

In the first trailer for the upcoming Netflix movie Shirley, Regina King stars as the first Black woman to be elected to Congress.

Regina King as Shirley Chisholm

Chisholm’s story will be chronicled, showing her uphill battle and obstacles to win a seat in Congress as the daughter of a Barbados-born maid and a Guyanese laborer, her struggles to navigate Congress alongside her White male colleagues, and her groundbreaking 1972 presidential campaign.

Movie production

Produced by Regina King and her sister Reina King, Shirley also stars the late Lance Reddick, Lucas Hedges, Terrence Howard, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Christina Jackson and more.

King, who spent 15 years producing the film, said the project was an incredible feat.

“It was always a little disheartening for Reina and I to have so many people over the years of our lives not know who Shirley Chisholm was,” King told Harper’s Bazaar.

“What she did was so pioneering. She was a true maverick and, you know, we use this term all the time, but she was a true first.”

King said they decided to release the film during an election year as they thought it would make for a more “impactful” release.

“As a team, we felt that is probably the best way we could possibly honor Shirley: to release her in a space that she created for herself.”

Regina King as Shirley Chisholm trailer

Shirley is will be released on Netflix March 22.


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Police

Family of Black girls handcuffed by Colorado police, held at gunpoint reach $1.9 million settlement

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Black girls held gunpoint Aurora
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The family of four Black girls who were wrongfully detained and held at gunpoint by Aurora, CO police have reached a settlement with the city.

Family of Black girls held at gunpoint reach settlement

Finalized on Monday, the families will collectively receive $1.9 million.

The settlement marks the latest payout the City of Aurora has been forced to make over officers’ excessive use of force.

In 2021, the city paid a $15 million settlement to Elijah McClain’s family, a 23-year-old Black man who died in 2019 after officers put him in a chokehold and paramedics injected him with ketamine.

The incident

In August 2020, four Black girls, ages 6, 12, 14 and 17, were held face down on the ground and put in handcuffs in a nail salon parking lot, crying and screaming, as officers towered over them.

Brittney Gilliam, the mother of the 6-year-old, was driving that Sunday morning with her relatives, because they were going to get their nails done together.

Wrongfully detained

But before they made it in the salon, Gilliam was detained after officers mistakenly thought she was driving a stolen S.U.V.

Police had mistakenly believed Gilliam was driving a stolen car.

And a simple second step police failed to take, resulted in the family being wrongfully detained.

Officers didn’t type in the plate number in a second database to show them the make of the vehicle. If they had, authorities said, the officers would have realized that the plate number was registered to a motorcycle in Montana.

Black girls and mother held at gunpoint traumatized

Dozens of bystanders watched the ordeal unfold, and video footage of the incident went viral, sparking protests over racial injustice, citing excessive force on Black Americans.

After the video went viral, Aurora police had apologized for their grave mistake, but the emotional trauma had already happened.

The Aurora Police Department said its officers are trained to draw their weapons before telling passengers to exit the vehicle and ordering them to lie on the ground, The Post reported.

Officers who held Black girls at gunpoint

One of the two officers who drew their guns and handcuffed members of the family was initially suspended.

However, he and the other officer that pulled his firearm remain on the police force, the New York Times reports.

To date, no officers were fired or charged in connection with the incident.


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