Alonzo Mourning shared a wild Prince house party story, Black farmers get relief, and more news in The Daily Rundown.
LAPD is under investigation.
A series of reports were filed against the Los Angeles Police Department regarding how they handled the 2020 protests sparked by the death of George Floyd. The reports allege that the infamous police department was not only ill-equipped to handle the protests but officers were "were reactive, rather than proactive."
At the time of the uprisings, a major concern was how officers handled (or didn't) looters in comparison to the peaceful protesters. Activists noted that there was a clear distinction between both, yet law enforcement often unfairly lumped everyone together.
"What's not talked about is really what's core to what LACAN and Black Lives Matter and the National Lawyers Guild are suing about, which is that we should not be criminalizing protests," Melina Abdullah, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles told ABC 7.
Alonzo Mourning, too, has a wild Prince story.
"Like a movie" is probably the best way to describe a Prince party — according to those lucky enough to have attended one when the icon was alive. In a recent interview with Legends Live, former Miami Heat player Alonzo Mourning opened up about one epic Prince party hosted at Paisley Park. "It was probably the livest party I've ever been to in my whole career," Mourning said. "Prince came down from the ceiling, he was in a cage," adding that the singer also "had a chic with a lease on her neck ... It was over the top. It was something out of a movie."
While we would have liked more of the juicy details it may pale in comparison to Questlove and Carlos Boozer's iconic Prince stories.
Black farmers get relief.
While most headlines talk about the $1,400 stimulus checks in the works, there's another huge part of the American Rescue Plan Act that will help Black, brown, and Indigenous people.
Part of the $1.9 trillion bill will relieve the financial burdens of “socially disadvantaged” farmers who have been “subjected to racial or ethnic prejudices because of their identity as a member of a group without regard to their individual qualities.”
As reported by Mother Jones, the bill on the table gives $4 billion in debt relief to farmers of color with outstanding USDA loans. Based on the amount Congress allocated to Black farmers, the current COVID-relief bill amounts to the “most significant legislation for Black people since the Voting Rights Act,” said Virginia farmer John Boyd, founder of the National Black Farmers Association.
This is a big deal, so knock on wood this bill fully goes through.
