March 29, 2023

Wednesday, March 29, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

To read an article excerpted in this Roundup, click on its blue title. Each “blue” article is hyperlinked so you can read the whole article.

Please feel free to share.

It would be great if you invite at least one other person to subscribe today. https://buttondown.email/AnnettesNewsRoundup

____________________

If you saw murder about to happen, and did nothing, what would the world think of you?

If you saw murder about to happen, and did nothing, what would the world think of you?

America, you saw murders happening. America, you saw murders about to happen. You do nothing. What should the world think of you?

What should we think of ourselves?

Read the numbers.👇

Here 👇 are Republican members of the House wearing AR-15 pins. George Santos proposed that the AR-15 be the “National Gun of America.”

____________________

Kamala is always busy.

Kamala Harris, at Former Slave Port in Ghana, Ties Past to Present.

“This continent, of course, has a special significance for me personally, as the first Black vice president,” Ms. Harris said.

_________

The vice president leaned into her heritage during a three-nation trip to Africa to strengthen U.S. relations on the continent.

After walking down a path where enslaved people once marched in chains to waiting ships, Vice President Kamala Harris entered a dungeon in Cape Coast, Ghana, where captive women had sung songs praying for death. If nothing else, her tour guide said on Tuesday, they believed death would bring freedom.

Ms. Harris, wiping her face and visibly emotional, walked outside this former slave port and connected the past to the present.

“The descendants of the people that walked through that door were strong people, proud people, people of deep faith who loved their families, their traditions, their culture,” Ms. Harris said during her visit to the port, called Cape Coast Castle, used for the slave trade in the 17th century. Those people, she added, “went on to fight for civil rights, fight for justice in the United States of America and around the world.”

But on Tuesday, Ms. Harris, the first woman of color to serve as vice president of the United States, spoke of a different way to revitalize the U.S. relationship with Africa: She encouraged Americans to honor and learn the bleak history that links many Black Americans to the continent.

“This continent, of course, has a special significance for me personally, as the first Black vice president,” said Ms. Harris, the daughter of an Indian mother and a Black Jamaican father. “And this is a history, like many of us, that I learned as a young child: stories, cultures and traditions passed down from generations.”

A former prosecutor, Ms. Harris often analyzes each word of the drafts of her speeches, aides say, in an effort to inform audiences about legal precedents and policy implications. On Tuesday at the slave port, however, she delivered rare unscripted remarks, according to officials from her office.

She spoke at the Black Star Gate, the monument signifying Ghana’s independence in the late 1950s. Many in the crowd of thousands waved Ghanaian or American flags and danced to Afrobeats music between speeches, and Ms. Harris traced her family’s connection to Africa.

She spoke of her maternal grandfather, P.V. Gopalan, a senior diplomat for the Indian government who helped Zambia, in southern Africa, manage refugees arriving from Rhodesia, Zimbabwe’s name before independence. He had also served as a special adviser to the first Zambian president, Kenneth Kaunda.

“The values that guided my relatives when they were there, and the legacy of their efforts, remain a source of pride for my entire family and continue to animate my work today,” said Ms. Harris, who was given the task by President Biden of working on the issue of migration to the United States from Central America.

To mark the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans on the American coast in 1619, President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana in 2018 unveiled a campaign to encourage their descendants in the Americas to visit his country as a way to commemorate their family history and honor the diaspora. He called 2019 the “Year of the Return.”

On his trip [to Ghana], Mr. Obama said that Africa needed to take greater responsibility for the corruption and tyranny in the region. “Africa’s future is up to Africans,” he said in a televised address.

Ms. Harris offered a far different message on Tuesday. While she encouraged fostering “democracy and governance” during her speech, she reinforced the Biden administration’s commitment to Africa, saying that the United States would build a future alongside Africans.

“We have an intertwined history, some of which is painful and some of which is prideful,” Ms. Harris said. “And all of which we must acknowledge, teach and never forget.” (New York Times).

____________________

Mike Pence must testify.

Judge rules Pence must testify before grand jury.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that former Vice President Mike Pence will have to testify before a grand jury in the Justice Department’s investigation into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

That’s according to two people familiar with the decision, who spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity because the ruling remains under seal.

The ruling says Pence will not have to answer questions about his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol building as Republican Pence was presiding over a joint session of Congress to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory, according to one of the people.

However, he would have to testify about any potential illegal acts committed by the former president, the person said.

Pence and his attorneys had cited constitutional grounds in challenging a grand jury subpoena issued weeks ago. They argued that, because he was serving in his capacity as president of the Senate that day, he was protected from being forced to testify under the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause, which is intended to protect members of Congress from questioning about official legislative acts. (Associated Press).
____________________

Rebecca Traister’s Overview on how abortion affects elections. A must read.

Abortion Wins Elections.

The fight to make reproductive rights the centerpiece of the Democratic Party’s 2024 agenda.

When the Supreme Court, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturned Roe last year, it not only inflicted grievous harm but ensured that the job of protecting abortion rights and access must once again be undertaken legislatively. It’s different work than it was in 1972: Medication abortion, data-tracking technology, and hyperpolarization have all altered the terrain.

But even if that were not the case, Democrats would have no useful road map for this moment, no muscle memory. Because, in fact, the party has simply not applied much legislative muscle to this task before.

But Dobbs also catalyzed a revolution in the politics of abortion. And now it’s not just some loud activists and marginalized lady pols telling Democrats to move quickly and assertively to figure out how to make abortion available again across the country: It’s voters.

Voters who just saved the Democratic Party during a midterm year in which inflation and gas prices should have meant a drubbing for the incumbent president’s party but instead resulted in a historic success for Democrats, who retained control of all their state legislatures, flipped Republican chambers in Michigan and Pennsylvania, and, at the federal level, gained a Senate seat and kept House losses to the single digits.

Multiple factors, including a slate of ghoulish right-wing candidates, helped Democrats, but there is no question that abortion was the preeminent issue for voters. “Democrats should have gotten wiped out,” said the pollster Tom Bonier. “But they overperformed. When you look at where they overperformed, it’s in places where choice was most present in the election, either literally on the ballot, like Michigan and Kentucky, or effectively in terms of the perceived stakes and the extent to which the candidates were talking about abortion, like Pennsylvania.”

“I don’t think Democrats have fully processed that this country is now 10 to 15 percent more pro-choice than it was before Dobbs in state after state and national data,” said pollster Celinda Lake.

The Democrats, in other words, are the bewildered dog that has caught the bus. A motivated base has turned to them for leadership on abortion while they are staring down a Republican House majority, a Senate filibuster, and an obdurate Supreme Court. Upon hearing that I was writing about their party’s plan to tackle abortion post-Dobbs, more than one Democratic staffer, and at least one elected official, silently mouthed to me, “There is no plan.”

What Democrats have is incentive: One of their most urgent policy issues has just shown itself to be their most politically effective. And they are undergoing a generational turnover that has already started to reshape the party and its approach to the battle — a dawning, in the midst of cataclysm, of a new era of political possibility.

Above 👆 is a brief excerpt of Rebecca Traister’s article. To read the whole article, click here. (New York mag).

____________________

Rainbows are too controversial for some.

Wisconsin officials deem Miley Cyrus, Dolly Parton song too potentially controversial for class concert.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Administrators at a Wisconsin elementary school stopped a first-grade class from performing a Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton duet promoting LGBTQ acceptance because the song “could be perceived as controversial.”

Students at Heyer Elementary School in Waukesha had prepared a rendition of “Rainbowland” for their spring concert, but school officials struck the song from the lineup last week. Parents in the district say the decision was made because the song encourages LGBTQ acceptance and references rainbows.

Superintendent James Sebert, who did not immediately return a call on Monday, confirmed to Fox6 that administrators had removed “Rainbowland” from the first-grade concert because it might not be “appropriate for the age and maturity level of the students.” He also cited a school board policy against raising controversial issues in classrooms.

Sebert has previously prohibited rainbows and pride flags from being displayed in Waukesha classrooms and suspended the school district’s equity and diversity work in 2021.

“Let’s all dig down deep inside, brush the judgment and fear aside,” the song from Cyrus’ 2017 album “Younger Now” goes. “Living in a Rainbowland, where you and I go hand in hand. Oh, I’d be lying if I said this was fine, all the hurt and the hate going on here.”

First-grade teacher Melissa Tempel said she chose the song because its message seemed universal and sweet. The class concert’s theme was “The World” and included other songs such as “Here Comes the Sun,” by The Beatles and “What a Wonderful World,” by Louis Armstrong.

“My students were just devastated. They really liked this song and we had already begun singing it,” Tempel said Monday.

Administrators also initially banned the song “Rainbow Connection” from The Muppets but later reversed that decision, according to Tempel. (Associated Press).

____________________

Breaking Through.

Sally Susman, Pfizer chief corporate affairs officer.

_________

Breaking through. I am not a yogi, but I do enjoy an occasional class, if only to be in sweaty proximity to the lithe and enlightened. Though an infrequent practitioner, I was saddened when, in late February 2020, my yoga studio closed due to COVID fears. On Sunday, March 1, I was on my living room floor, cross-legged on my mat, streaming a class on my smartphone. Instead of meditating, I was more engaged with the real world. My house was quiet, but my head was noisy.

I had been unnerved by a call early that morning. “The streets of Beijing are empty,” Pfizer’s senior leader in our China division reported when we talked during the early hours. “I’m so grateful you called to check on me,” he continued. I heard desperation in the voice of a man I knew to be steady and stoic. The virus was recently identified as something I’d never heard of: SARS-CoV-2. It had just begun to demonstrate to scientists and researchers its ability to spread quickly from person to person at an alarming rate.

Something was in the air aside from the chill, and I could feel it. I saw it when I stopped in at my bodega. The shelves were thinned out. No toilet paper. Bread and milk—the survival talismans of any crisis—were depleted. I thought about buying cigarettes, though I had quit 25 years ago. I felt the fight-or-flight impulse kick in. But where would I go?

Home. I had to get home. But, with my wife away and my young adult daughter locked down in California, my house would be dark. I left the store empty-handed and scared.

Mostly, I was contemplating the mission my company was pursuing. My boss, Pfizer’s chairman and CEO Albert Bourla, had just made a powerful pledge: to find a vaccine. I believed we would find the vaccine. I had to. The alternative was unthinkable.

This mission—to develop and distribute a vaccine in record time—presented me with a rare opportunity to be part of a moonshot that could potentially save millions of lives.

For me it presented the added possibility to repair the abysmal reputation of Big Pharma. This was urgent, not only for business reasons but because it was essential that we earn the trust of a skeptical public if we were to be recognized as legitimate contributors to the war against a virus that was not yet well understood.

Imagine the compounded tragedy if we developed a safe and effective vaccine that no one had the confidence to take.

We had to build back much of the trust the industry had lost. This was a communications challenge. And one I had prepared for my entire career. It wasn’t only the vaccine science that would be groundbreaking, but the intense engagement with the public as well. It is thanks to Albert’s singular vision and sturdy backbone that Pfizer found a highly effective and safe mRNA vaccine.

This moment did not lend itself to the tried-and-true crisis communications exercises. I couldn’t rely on the basic playbook that every entry-level professional has been taught—the campaign plan that begins with an ambitious goal, a smart strategy of reliable and noncontroversial techniques along with an accompanying set of detailed supporting tactics.

The COVID crisis was undermining public confidence, and consumers were already wary of pharmaceutical company communications. Too many advertisements showing happy people running through grass fields while a voiceover gives a long list of potential side effects had eroded our credibility. People wouldn’t accept a hackneyed approach when it came to injecting a new vaccine into their bodies and those of their loved ones. At least not without asking a lot of complex and valid questions.

We needed something more powerful and less predictable if we were to succeed in creating confidence and trust in our work at a time of such justifiably profound anxiety. My communications, government relations, patient advocacy, and public affairs planning needed ambitions of equal magnitude to those our company was setting: a first-time vaccine technology to save the world. Nothing less would do, but there were few if any lessons from the past to serve as our guide.

That is the moment it came to me.

Between deep ujjayi breaths in yoga class, the idea of what was required of me was clear. “My intention is to break through,” I said.

To cut through the noise and fear, we needed to shatter everything the public believed about Big Pharma. We had to challenge every assumption and respond respectfully to every criticism. We had to rethink the very essence of our public profile. We had to reintroduce ourselves.

Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Adapted from Breaking Through: Communicating to Open Minds, Move Hearts, and Change the World by Sally Susman. Copyright 2023 Sally Susman. All rights reserved. (Source. Broadsheet)

____________________

4 of the 16 teams in the sweet 16 of the NCAA championship had black coaches. Was that important?

Black female athletes: Having Black female coach is crucial.

South Carolina senior guard Brea Beal knew she could trust Dawn Staley before she even suited up for the Gamecocks.

It wasn't just Staley's coaching accolades, which include fueling South Carolina’s meteoric rise in women’s basketball, that sold Beal. Beal knew that Staley — a Black woman like her — would best understand how to guide her as she navigated both life and playing basketball on a big stage.

“People that were telling me what this community was about, I know it’s somewhere I wanted to be,” Beal said. “As soon as I got here, she definitely led me down a journey so I could find out who I am.”

Black female representation in the coaching and sports administrative ranks has existed on a minute scale — even in a sport like basketball, which along with track and field has the highest concentration of Black female college athletes. Black female players who have been coached by a Black woman told The Associated Press that it was crucial to their development.

While the number of women coaching women's sports has increased in the past decade, Black women continue to lag behind most other groups. During the 2021-22 school year, 399 Black women coached women’s NCAA sports teams in Divisions I, II and III, compared with 3,760 white women and 5,236 white men.

In women's NCAA basketball, a sport made up of 30% Black athletes, Black women made up 12% of head coaches across all divisions during the 2021-22 season, according to the NCAA's demographics database.

Fourteen Black women led women's basketball teams across 65 Power Five programs this past season — up one from 2021. That's less than 22% of the total in a sport that was played by more Black athletes (40.7%) than any other race in Division I, according to a report with data from the 2020-21 season.

For the first time in a decade, four Black coaches advanced to the Sweet 16 of the women's basketball tournament, including Staley, who said she believes it's more popular to hire a woman at “this stage of the game.”

"And it’s not to say that I’m going to sit here and male bash, because we have a lot of male coaches who have been in our game for decades upon decades,” said Staley, who will lead her team into the Final Four this weekend. “But I will say that giving women an opportunity to coach women and helping women navigate through life like they have navigated through life will allow your student-athletes a different experience than having a male coach.” (Associated Press).

One more thing. On Friday at 9 pm EDT, Dawn Staley’s South Carolina team will play Iowa, with their 3 point shooter, Caitlin Clark, in a semi-final matchup. South Carolina is the defending NCAA champion.

___________________

The 5 time Olivier Winning “Life of Pi” opens on Broadway on Thursday. The video below 👇 offers a behind the scenes look at the show.

Disclosure. The creative team behind “Life of Pi” - playwright Lolita Chakrabarti and director Max Webster - will unite again for “The Elephant Whisperer,” which together with great partners, I am producing, with an eye to the West End and Broadway.

But ignore my conflict and watch this terrific segment from the Tuesday’s Today show 👇 and go see “Life of Pi” on Broadway if you are in NYC. Or come to NYC to see “Pi.”

____________________