Black History In-The-Making at the Pier. New opportunities have opened for additional vendors to participate in this “Collective” of Black Entrepreneurs.
If you have a good or service and are interested in joining the 1 Pier One Community Collective at the Pier Marketplace please complete the below application.
Kamala Harris isn’t the only Black woman making history in 2021.
The January 20 swearing-in of the nation’s first woman, Black and southeast Asian vice president came at a pivotal moment for Black women in the business world, which up until recently has failed miserably to increase the number of Black executives — male and female — in its ranks.
In 2018, only 3.3% of all US corporate executive and senior leadership positions were filled by Black people. Not much has changed since then, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Claudette Colvin did a revolutionary act nearly 10 months before Rosa Parks.
In March 1955, the 15-year-old was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a White person on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
The teenager and others challenged the law in court. But civil rights leaders, pointing to circumstances in Colvin’s personal life, thought that Parks would be the better representative of the movement.
“People said I was crazy,” Colvin recently told CNN’s Abby Phillip. “Because I was 15 years old and defiant and shouting, ‘It’s my constitutional right!’ “
Along the St. Petersburg Pier, you’ll find several kiosks where entrepreneurs sell their products. But then there’s 1Pier, a kiosk of nine entrepreneurs, all African-American women with different businesses, banding together.
“1Pier is the initiative of One Community that the city of St. Petersburg was able to partner with through our Urban Affairs Department. We really wanted to focus on making the Pier a welcoming place that really reflected the demographic of the city and what better way to do that than through a women’s collective like this that shows the true diversity of our community,” said Nikki Gaskin-Capehart, the urban affairs director for the city of St. Petersburg.
Safrone Presley of Glow Up Body Oils says the city’s support makes a big difference.
“Being able to work with the city of St. Petersburg, we get a lot of support from them, they’ve helped us make sure that we try to have our businesses together so that we can succeed and we also work with each other to succeed,” Presley explained.
One Community is teaming up with Grow Smarter St. Petersburg to provide trainings on marketing topics by the Florida SBDC and Greenhouse, coupled with cash coverage of up to $1,000 for the services you need to get your branding house in order. This is open to accept 50 entrepreneurs who’ve taken advantage of business dev programs in the past by One Community, Urban League, BBIC, Grow Smarter, Deuces Live, St Petersburg Business League, or Green Book of Tampa Bay. The link below offers info for 2 groups:
1. businesses that want to receive training and cost coverage of services, and
2. businesses that can provide marketing services to participants.
Apply Today https://growsmarterstpete.com/branding-house-program/
A metal recycling plant is due to open on the polluted Southeast Side months after the same firm shut a metal scrapyard in a white, affluent part of town
Trinity Colón grew up believing everyone had asthma.
Raised among heavy industry on the Southeast Side of Chicago, Colón had no reason to believe otherwise: her entire family and neighbors shared the same respiratory issues. The rituals that came with them – like keeping windows shut to ward off billowing clouds of petroleum coke – seemed ordinary.
1st annual Manufacturing and Supply Chain Job Fair is just around the corner! Join us this Wednesday, March 23 to meet with employers who have job openings in Tampa Bay!
Manufacturing and Supply Chain Job Fair
Wednesday, March 23
Noon to 3 PM
13805 58th Street N.
Clearwater, FL 33760
Please click HERE to pre-register for the event (if you have not yet done so).
Please review our latest blog post to find out the Best Way to Prepare for a Job Fair. In addition, we’re attaching the listing of companies in attendance as well as some of the open positions. We are also attaching research that one of your classmates has done in preparation for the job fair. Again, please remember to do your research, bring extra copies of your resume, and dress to impress!
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri speaks at a press conference on Monday, February 8, about the attempted hacking of the city of Oldsmar’s water treatment system.
A hacker gained access into the water treatment system of Oldsmar, Florida, on Friday and tried to increase the levels of sodium hydroxide — commonly referred to as lye — in the city’s water, officials said, putting thousands at risk of being poisoned.
The incident took place Friday when an operator noticed the intrusion and watched the hacker access the system remotely. The hacker adjusted the level of sodium hydroxide to more than 100 times its normal levels, according to Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri.
The operator immediately reduced the level back. At no time was there a significant adverse effect to the city’s water supply, and the public was never in danger, Gualtieri said. It is unknown if the breach happened from someone locally, nationally or even outside of the United States.
Dear NFL Owners,
I’m writing to you today because I have a great love for the National Football League, just as you do, and want to see it be the best it can be. And I believe our league has a problem that only you can fix. We are not putting the best product possible out on the field. We have an exciting game and great competition. We will have a fantastic Super Bowl that will cap off a season where we overcame great adversity due to this pandemic. The NFL has a lot of things to be proud of, but we are not giving our fans, or our players, the best possible game. We are cheating our fans and we are cheating ourselves. And you are the only people who can change this.
The problem is we are not utilizing all of our resources because we aren’t truly embracing minority hiring in every aspect of our game. Now I know there are many people who disagree with this statement. They would say, “Every owner is trying to win and therefore you will always hire the best people.” But if you take a look at the hiring landscape of the last four years you will certainly come to the conclusion that is not true. And please understand this is not about one individual (Eric Bieniemy). It’s not about whether we have two Black general managers or four. It is about the mindset of finding quality leadership and utilizing ALL the talent available to the NFL. This is not a new problem and it’s one that you have fixed before. It has just taken a little work on your parts.
– Feature Your Accomplishments
– Feature Your Organization
– Feature Your Business
Don’t Miss This Opportunity!
Be a part of the Women’s History Month Special Magazine coming in March 2021
Give us a Call and Reserve Your Spot Today!
For more information (386)334-0040
Application Deadline March 31st
The City of Tampa and the Tampa-Hillsborough Action Plan, Inc. (THAPgroup) have partnered to provide microbusinesses with hours of training through the 5508 Business Accelerator. The goal of the project is to accelerate revenue growth for microbusinesses and entrepreneurs living in and operating businesses in East Tampa. Business owners can submit their applications to the 5508 Business Accelerator through March 31, 2021.
The development-centered program, which begins in January 2021, is complimentary and allows entrepreneurs to attend virtual and in-person sessions covering growth topics with training by expert facilitators. “We’re making the investment into small businesses to help them develop a competitive advantage that will allow them to be successful in today’s environment and beyond,” says THAPgroup’s CEO Derrick Blue.
Training sessions continue through September 30, 2021 and will cover such topics as corporate and government procurement, capital access requirements, growth and operations planning, and virtual work solutions.
“The business environment is shifting and transforming,” says Blue. “We want to help our small businesses be able to effectively respond to these changes.”
Small business programs at 5508 are dedicated to revitalizing and sustaining business growth in East Tampa. Entrepreneurs and microbusinesses can apply online to the 5508 Business Accelerator by visiting www.thapgroup.org/5508accelerator. They may also call the business office at 813.626.4926 or visit 5508 North 50th Street, Suite #7, 33610 weekdays from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM.
St. Pete Police Chief Anthony Holloway and Dr. Sandra Braham, CEO of Gulf Coast JFCS host a Community Conversation about CALL next Tuesday, Feb 9th. The public is welcome.
Last month’s unanimous City Council vote to approve the new CALL Program cemented an innovation in policing strategy for the City of St. Petersburg. It also represented the first major win for Black Lives Matter activists, after months of protests last year.
CALL stands for Community Assistance Life Liaison, an $850,000 Pilot Program approved by City Council in a 7-0 vote on January 7th, making St. Pete the only city in Pinellas County (and one of the few in the nation) to move to a 100% clinical response to 911 calls for help for mental and behavioral health incidents.
Over the next 8 months, the CALL Program will send social workers to handle the roughly 12,000 non-violent, non-criminal calls received by the St. Petersburg Police Department each year, to cope with mental and behavioral health crises.
Initially, social workers will be accompanied by police officers to those calls, but by the 6-month mark, pairs of social workers will be handling roughly 80% of them on their own.
Though the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department has implemented a similar program, a key difference is that – unlike St. Pete – the sheriff will continue to dispatch sworn officers along with social workers to all such calls. At least for now.
St. Petersburg’s CALL program will be administered by Gulf Coast Jewish Family and Community Services (Gulf Coast JFCS), which will use the funds from the City to hire 16 social workers to become “first responders” to calls to the police for issues such as truancy, mental health crises, homelessness, and suicide threats.
Police Chief Anthony Holloway and Gulf Coast JFCS CEO Dr. Sandra Braham will host a Community Conversation next Tuesday, February 9th, to introduce the pilot program, which will run through September, with plans to continue services if results are positive.
The funding is a direct result of the agitation of Black Lives Matters protestors that took to the streets of downtown St. Pete in June of 2020, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd (a black man) at the hands of police in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Hundreds of local advocates held nightly protests in St. Petersburg over the summer months, calling for an end to police brutality and a fundamental shift in police budgeting and strategies. Among their demands was for the City to cease funding to new police officers, and instead allocate resources to trained mental health professionals.
The CALL Program answers that demand. The $850,000 contract is a drop in the bucket relative to the City’s annual expenditure for policing (less than 1% of the City’s $116.3 Million approved budget to the police department for FY2021).
But City officials expect a dramatic reduction in the criminalization tied to policing mental illness, and a significant time savings by the City’s sworn force of 575 police officers – a savings that City leaders say will be reinvested into quality community-centered policing activities.
Gulf Coast JFCS’s executive team will spend the next month hiring and training the team of social workers who will be stationed for rapid response in multiple office locations. The agency will also prioritize community engagement of as many partners as possible, says Gulf Coast’s CEO Dr. Sandra Braham.
She and Chief Holloway held a January 22nd virtual webinar to introduce CALL to non-profit leaders and policy makers.
The upcoming February 9th event will welcome a larger audience of city residents, community leaders, clergy, non-profit leaders and business owners.
Leaders of the protest movement in St. Petersburg are cautiously optimistic about the pilot.
Ashley Green, an organizer for Dream Defenders and Black Lives Matter, says “It’s a promising first step in a larger conversation on how we prioritize ‘care over criminality’ in our community. But it’s going to take a lot of vigilance and determination to make it work and to hopefully see it expanded beyond the pilot.”
Jabaar Edmond agrees. He spent weeks galvanizing protests with the Movement St. Pete group. “We are in a ‘wait and see’ mode to gauge the outcomes of the pilot,” said Edmond. “I hope it doesn’t stop here. Whether the pilot is successful or not, we have deeply rooted problems in the police department that need to be addressed. The CALL Program has to be one of many action steps to permanently shift the paradigm.”
The local police union also voiced support for the move when first announced by city officials in July of 2020. A Tampa Bay Times article quotes Sun Coast Police Benevolent Association president Jonathan Vazquez as saying “Reducing the police response to non-criminal incidents has been a long standing issue…We believe this will lead to decreased strain on our police resources, reduce risks to our member officers, and better outcomes to the most vulnerable citizens that we serve.”
Chief Holloway has attended several community meetings to introduce CALL. In answer to the Power Broker’s request for comment, Holloway says “I am confident that this partnership will benefit both the police department and the community by ensuring we respond with the most appropriate resources for our residents when they are in crisis.”
This conversation is co-hosted by One Community, Pinellas County Urban League, Mt. Zion Progressive, Community Development & Training Center (CDAT), People Empowering & Restoring Communities (PERC), WAS Collaborative, Pinellas Opportunity Council, the Enough is Enough Initiative, the St. Petersburg Branch NAACP, and the Foundation for a Healthy St. Petersburg.
