The 44 Percent: environmental racism, Damar Hamlin & Afro Nation Miami

Let’s begin this tour around our newsroom Miami Herald Local Investigative Reporter Alyssa Johnson. Take it away, Alyssa:

As I reflect on the past six months that I’ve lived in Miami, I’ve realized that there are already many people and places that have become special to me.

Shenandoah Park, the volleyball courts on South Beach, the animated crowds along Calle Ocho during the weekends and my favorite ice cream shop, Salt and Straw. As my list of places that I find special in Miami keeps growing, one common thread showed up in some of these different locations: There is limited shade.

When I moved to Miami this past summer from Chicago, the heat was one of the things that made me question if I could live here for a long time. I knew that it was going to be hot in Miami, but what surprised me is that for a place that is so hot, why did shade seem to be present in some places and not others?

I found out that the county had conducted an assessment in 2021 that showed communities of color and low-income communities throughout Miami-Dade tend to have fewer trees. This pushed us to conduct an investigation to look into why and how this has happened and what is the county doing to address the issue.

The investigation is currently ongoing and we want to hear from the people who are being impacted the most by this issue. As an example, two of the places with the fewest trees as of 2021 are Hialeah and Opa-locka. If you look around your neighborhood and see that few trees line the streets or it feels hotter on your side of town than other parts of the county, please fill out our callout to have a reporter get in touch with you. We’ve also created a resource guide on how to get free trees.

Before becoming a member of the investigative team at the Miami Herald, I previously worked at ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative newsroom, where I had the opportunity to work on an investigation about toxic air pollution throughout the country. Our investigation cited that people of color, and specifically Black citizens, were being disproportionately impacted by toxic air pollution compared to white citizens.

I hope that for this project we can amplify the voices of Black and brown folks across the county and that we can inform the public more about the impacts of climate change, environmental racism and ultimately help improve the quality of living for those in need.

INSIDE THE 305

MLK DAY BREAKFAST

Congresswoman Frederica Wilson’s 5000 Role Models will host their 30th annual Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Unity Scholarship Breakfast-Fundraiser Monday at the Miami Beach Convention Center. The event will raise scholarship money for its students as well as induct new mentors into the program.

I, for one, am excited: ya boy is finally being inducted as a mentor!

‘They aren’t supermen.’ After Damar Hamlin hit, players and coaches in Miami concerned:

The Damar Hamlin hit was heard around the world.

For a brief moment, the sports world stopped, with everyone – except Skip Bayless – expressing their remorse and well wishes toward a player who suffered something not so common on the football field: cardiac arrest.

Having briefly played college ball myself, it also got me thinking: how do Miamians, a city that knows a thing or two about football, feel about the future of the game?

“When you see a guy collapse on the field and need CPR and stuff like that, it’s very nerve-wracking, especially in the magnitude that it happened in that way,” Miami Dolphins running back Raheem Mostert said last Wednesday. “It’s definitely eye-opening. That play is going to live with me for the rest of my life.”

In other Hamlin news, the Bills safety is back at home after being discharged Wednesday from a Buffalo hospital, nine days after collapsing on the field.

OUTSIDE THE 305

An 18-year-old mayor has big plans for a small Arkansas city:

Let’s talk about Black excellence.

Matters of Black achievement are so important because, for most of American history, they’ve been hidden, swept under the rugs like ice kicked under the fridge.

Which is why something like the election of Jaylen Smith, an 18-year-old from Earle, Ark., matters so much: it only takes seeing one person do the seemingly impossible for someone else to believe that they can one day do the same.

So what exactly does Smith have planned? Little things like bringing a supermarket to the city and repairing streets but also substantial changes like improving the city’s drainage system that “leaves neighborhoods swamped after rain.”

“There’s this Bible verse that I always use,” Mr. Smith said, paraphrasing a line from the Book of Habakkuk that had propelled his campaign and drove him now as he mapped out a future for himself and his city: “Write a vision, make it plain.”

Why aren’t we talking about Dana White?:

Dana White, for those who don’t know, is the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Early last week, TMZ released a video showing White and his wife engaged in heated argument before she slapped him and he slapped back (twice). In Jemele Hill’s recent piece in The Atlantic, she called out news outlets like her former employer ESPN for their disparate coverage of White’s incident in comparison to Black athletes.

In many analogous situations, athletes—especially Black athletes—have not been offered the same grace and support that White is receiving. (The UFC president is white.) They usually face harsher responses. The Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice never played in the NFL again after TMZ released video of him knocking out his then-fiancée in an elevator in 2014. Like White, Rice insisted that he had never hit his fiancée prior to that night and that alcohol was a major factor, but hardly anyone was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt or reserve judgment.

As far as a punishment goes, White issued a statement Wednesday clarifying his repercussions:

“What is my punishment?” White asked. “Here is my punishment: I gotta walk around… and this is how I’m labeled.”

*Childish Gambino voice*

This is America.

HIGH CULTURE

The ‘world’s biggest Afrobeats festival’ is coming to Miami. Here are some of the acts:

Burna Boy. Wizkid. Uncle Waffles. Asake. Major League DJz.

I’d be good if Afro Nation’s inaugural Miami festival was just them. But it’s not! The bill also includes Rema, Beenie Man and Focalistic, just to name a few. The festival will be held the Saturday and Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend (May 27-28).

Although the lineup looks super promising, many fans expressed their hesitancy about the star-studded bill considering Afro Nation’s Puerto Rico 2022 iteration had Tems, Koffee, Burna Boy and Beenie Man pull out last minute.

Where does “The 44 Percent” name come from? Click here to find out how Miami history influenced the newsletter’s title.