Saturday, October 2, 2021
Something to think about
Something to think about
”Every minute someone leaves this world behind. We are all in “the line” without knowing it. We never know how many people are before us.
We can not move to the back of the line.
We can not step out of the line.
We can not avoid the line.
So while we wait in line -
Make moments count.
Make priorities.
Make the time.
Make your gifts known.
Make a nobody feel like a somebody.
Make your voice heard.
Make the small things big.
Make someone smile.
Make the change.
Make love.
Make up.
Make peace.
Make sure to tell your people they are loved.
Make sure to have no regrets.
Make sure you are ready.”
Something passed on: From my bro
Friday, October 1, 2021
Something 2 Share
Something 2 Share
California takes step to return land to Black couple’s heirs
By STEFANIE DAZIOtoday
MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. (AP) — Nearly a century ago, white leaders of a Southern California city robbed a Black family of their prime beachfront land and legacy.
Descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce — including the couple’s great-great grandson — returned to the scene of the crime in Manhattan Beach on Thursday to watch Gov. Gavin Newsom sign the law that allows ownership of the property to be transferred back to the family.
The move was hailed as a major milestone in the fight for reparations and the return of lands stolen from people of color.
“There are other families waiting for this very day, to have their land returned to them,” Patricia Bruce, a cousin of Willa and Charles Bruce, told The Associated Press.
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Amid rampant forced segregation in 1912, the Bruces built the first West Coast resort for Black people. Situated along what became one of Southern California’s signature beaches fronted by rows of multimillion-dollar homes, it included a lodge, café, dance hall and dressing tents.
The Bruces and their patrons faced constant racism and harassment. There even was an attempt to burn the resort down. The Manhattan Beach City Council eventually used eminent domain to take the land from the Bruces in the 1920s, purportedly for use as a park.
Yet the land lay unused for years until was transferred to the state in 1948. In 1995, it was transferred to Los Angeles County for beach operations. It came with restrictions limiting the ability to sell or transfer the property, which could only be lifted through a new state law.
The legislation unanimously approved by state lawmakers was necessary to allow the start of the complex legal process of transferring ownership of what was once known as Bruce’s Beach.
“The journey here was far from easy,” said Kavon Ward, a Black resident who learned of the property’s history and founded Justice for Bruce’s Beach.
Ward also cofounded Where Is My Land, an organization that aims to return land taken from Black Americans and get restitution. The organization is looking at several other unspecified projects, including one in California, to see if its goals are possible.
With a half-dozen descendants of the couple present Thursday, Newsom apologized for how the land was taken before signing the bill during a ceremony at the property.
“The Bruces have found mercy in the unfailing love of Jesus Christ,” said Anthony Bruce, the family’s great-great grandson, as he read a prayer during the ceremony.
Newsom suggested the move could be the start of broader reparations.
“This can be catalytic,” he said. “What we’re doing here today can be done and replicated anywhere else.”
County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who led a government push to transfer the land, said the heirs would almost certainly be millionaires now if the property had not been taken.
“The law was used to steal this property 100 years ago, and the law today will give it back,” Hahn said.
Newsom said the Bruces could have become like other leading Southern California entrepreneurs, like the Getty family that garnered fame for its oil wealth and art collection.
The Bruces’ property along the south shore of Santa Monica Bay encompasses two parcels. The county’s lifeguard training headquarters building sits there now, along a scenic beach walkway called The Strand that is lined with luxury homes overlooking the beach.
In Manhattan Beach, an upscale Los Angeles seaside suburb, the population of 35,000 is more than 84% white and 0.8% Black, the city website says. This year, the City Council formally condemned the efforts of their early 20th century predecessors to displace the Bruces and several other Black families.
The county, meanwhile, has outlined steps needed to move forward with the transfer, including assessing the value of the parcels and trying to find a means to lessen the tax burden on the heirs.
The county also needs to vet the legal heirs of the Bruces and possibly find a new site for the lifeguard training headquarters. One option would have the heirs lease the land back to the county for continued use.
Patricia Bruce, 65, of Hawthorne, said the family has not yet decided what it will do with the property.
___
Associated Press writer John Antczak contributed to this report.
Something 2 Share
Princess Mako wedding announcement stirs up media frenzy in Japan
Marriage with non-royal Kei Komuro to take place against backdrop of scandal, tabloid intrusion and public disapproval
Justin McCurry in Tokyo
When they announced their unofficial engagement four years ago, they were cast as a perfect match: the young princess and the clean-cut trainee lawyer, for whom she was prepared to sacrifice her imperial status.
Now the sound of wedding bells is within earshot, after the Imperial Household Agency announced on Friday that Princess Mako, the niece of Japan’s emperor, would marry her non-royal fiance, Kei Komuro, on 26 October.
But rather than bringing the country together in celebration, their nuptials will take place against a backdrop of scandal, tabloid intrusion and public disapproval of the kind usually associated with British royals.
Japan celebrated when, in May 2017, Mako and Komuro, contemporaries at the International Christian University in Tokyo, said they planned to get engaged later in the year and marry in November 2018.
But in February 2018, the household agency said the wedding had been put off for two years after reports that Komuro’s mother was embroiled in a financial dispute linked to ¥4m (£26,700) she had received from her former fiance, some of which was used to pay for her son’s education.
The revelation triggered a media feeding frenzy and waves of public opprobrium that will pursue the couple, who are both 29, all the way to their wedding day and beyond.
“Weekly magazines and daytime TV shows are reporting frantically on this because it helps their sales and viewing figures,” said Kaori Hayashi, a professor at Tokyo University who specialises in media and journalism studies, adding that the tabloid media had declared open season on Komuro and his mother. “They are particularly critical of the Komuros because they are not fully protected by imperial household agency.”
An attempt by Komuro to publicly explain the dispute – amid disagreement over whether the money was a gift or a loan – did not impress a skeptical public, while his offer to return the sum to his mother’s former fiance reportedly came to nothing.
Komuro, who recently returned to Japan with a law degree from Fordham University in New York, has become easy prey for the tabloids and conservative commentators.
Aside from triggering speculation about an impending announcement about the timing of their wedding, his arrival at Tokyo’s Narita airport, where he was greeted by more than 150 reporters, triggered sniffy tabloid and social media commentary over everything from his body language to his choice of coiffure, a ponytail he had grown during his time in the US.
Even the usually hands-off broadsheets have felt compelled to devote space to the scandal that refuses to lift from the couple’s relationship.
After confirming that they planned to start a new life in the US, the couple drew inevitable comparisons with Harry and Meghan, although the Japanese media’s treatment of Mako and Komuro pales beside the vitriol regularly heaped on the Sussexes by their British counterparts.
The scandal surrounding their relationship means this will be a royal wedding like no other. Mako, who, like other princesses who marry commoners will have to leave the imperial family, has said she will forgo a $1m (£742,000) payment traditionally given to women who give up their royal status.
The decision, unprecedented in the postwar period, is being seen as an attempt to ward off yet more public criticism, since the payment is funded by the taxpayer.
The wedding itself will be shorn of the ritual usually on display when a member of the imperial family ties the knot.
The couple will not have an official engagement ceremony and will forgo a formal meeting with Mako’s uncle, Emperor Naruhito, before the wedding. Instead, they will register their marriage at a government office before moving to New York, where Komuro has lined up a job with a leading law firm.
But the couple is expected to continue to attract media attention on the other side of the Pacific. Just before his recent visit to Japan, his first trip home for three years, Komuro was reportedly chased through the streets of New York by Japanese reporters.
Komuro and Mako, who can never be a reigning empress due to Japan’s male-only succession law, will leave behind a deeply divided Japanese public. In a poll by the Mainichi newspaper, 38% of respondents supported the marriage, while 35% opposed it and 26% expressed no interest. Aera, a weekly magazine, found that just 5% of respondents felt like celebrating the marriage, while 91% said they were in no mood to share in the couple’s joy.
“Even the most minuscule details – like his hair – have became fodder for daytime television,” said Akinori Takamori, an expert on the imperial family who is a lecturer at Kokugakuin University in Tokyo, and suggested that media scrutiny of Komuro’s family amounted to a human rights violation.
“It’s not desirable to have the people split over this matter when the imperial family should be a symbol of unity for the country.”
Mako’s parents have hardly been effusive in their support. Earlier this month her mother, Crown Princess Kiko, said she would respect her daughter’s feelings “as much as possible”, adding: “While there have been matters that I could empathise with, there were also areas where our opinions differed.”
Akishino, who is first in line to the throne, said last December that he “approved” of the marriage, “if marriage is what they truly want”.
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Tuesday, September 28, 2021
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