News — Chicago

Chicago-based entrepreneur Jeff Badu, a former gang member, became a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and a millionaire by 26. Now, he’s giving back to inner-city youth through his summer financial literacy program.

“I didn’t have someone to teach me about money and finances and prepare me to live the best abundant life possible,” Badu told the Chicago Sun-Times. “With all of the violence going on in Chicago with our youth, I guarantee you that if they had more financial education and empowerment, they would be able to stay out of trouble. They just want to sustain themselves and get out of poverty.”

Former Gang Member Becomes Millionaire Accountant

Born in Ghana, Badu came to Chicago’s Uptown community when he was 8 years old. He fell into Chicago’s gang life, seeking protection and guidance from the streets. After visiting family in Ghana, he was determined to get his life back on track.

“Between 8 to 16, those were the toughest times of my life. I was surrounded by so much negativity,” Badu shared with WGN TV during an interview. “I was literally trapped, I couldn’t walk certain places.”

Badu’s comeback was nothing short of impressive. In 2014, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in accountancy from the University of Illinois. In 2015, he went on to earn his Master of Accounting Science degree. Then, he started his career at Big Four accounting firm, PwC.

After a year of work experience, Badu obtained his CPA license and started Badu Enterprises. He reached a million-dollar net worth at age 26. Now, he leads a successful multinational tax practice and is a real estate investor. He owns a portfolio of 118 housing units on Chicago’s south side, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. 

From Gang Member to Millionaire Financial Literacy Advocate

Badu doesn’t want other youth to experience what he did growing up in Chicago. That’s why he’s offering a four-week financial literacy summer program to youth ages 6-18 years old.

“If you don’t have the resources to create abundance, then life is likely going to be tough. I want Chicago’s youth to think more abundantly,” Badu shared on his website.

His Badu Foundation will be a key ingredient to transforming the opportunities available to underserved youth in Chicago. The foundation aims to provide valuable financial literacy education, scholarship training,  and a $500 scholarship to jumpstart their educational goals.

Badu aims to raise $100,000 to fund scholarships. According to Block Club Chicago, he plans to use $20,000 of his own money for this initiative. He is raising additional funds through a GoFundMe Financial Literacy Scholarship Fundraiser. You can check out the Youth Financial Empowerment Program and application on Badu’s website.

On March 18 of this year, the popular Chicago-based dominatrix Mistress Velvet took to her Twitter account to announce that she was “getting a divorce and going through mourning” for which reason she was suspending virtual and in-person work for the time being. The next tweet from her account, however, was the announcement of Mistress Velvet’s death.

She was followed by more than 11 thousand people on the social media platform many of whom commiserated with her family and fans. Her connection to Ghana is not clear although she has an emoticon of the country’s flag in her Twitter name.

To say Velvet was eccentric is, to say the least, boring. In a world dominated by male egos and achievements, dominatrices have to be eccentric to survive. In Velvet’s own words in an interview earlier this year with the Huffington Post, a dominatrix must provide an avenue for men to go to as a “safe space to explore the parts of them that may not be seen as masculine, or they might have a lot of shame around.” She viewed her work beyond the physical performance and exertions but also a manifestation of a mental state that should not be overlooked.

Masculine performativity – the fact of acting and responding to the world as males are usually raised to do – constrains our imaginations, according to Velvet. Men are not expected to show “softness” and even if they did, they are not expected to continually retain that feature. It is as though material achievement is the only ought and nothing should stand in a man’s way in pursuance of this. When this happens women become the objects of male oppression as men try in any way possible to show themselves powerful and with little to no emotional weakness.

As a result of this, Velvet introduced into her sessions, a part where the men who submitted themselves to her read Black feminist theory. This was novel. She had started off as a sex worker purely for the purpose of sustenance and to pay the bills but here she was, teaching mostly straight white men about the Combahee River Collective and such.

“Just allowing them to be submissive doesn’t allow for the more drastic shift in the framework and thinking that I want. So I have to bring in my girls, like Audre Lorde and Patricia Hill Collins, and make these men actually read about black feminism,” Velvet said.

Among the books the subs read were Sisters Outside by Audre Lourde, The Black Body in Ecstasy by Jennifer Nash and The Color of Kink by Ariane Cruz. It is imaginable to see Velvet treating these texts as if she was in an academic setting since she held a master’s degree herself. That too was part of her eccentricities because we do not hear of many sex workers who are that educated.

Velvet described herself as a Black Liberation practitioner, a pro-sex work activist and a communist. Her activism was recognized by various sex work rights advocates as well as members of the LGBTQ+ community. She was 33.

A Black man has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department alleging he was violently arrested for no reason whatsoever during an incident that left him with facial injuries last year.

In an interview with KABC-TV, the plaintiff – Leroy Kennedy IV – reiterated his innocence, saying the incident has left him traumatized. Kennedy said he ended up spending four days in jail and an aggravated battery of a police officer charge against him was later dropped.

“It left me feeling traumatized. Man, I ain’t gonna lie. You get nervous. You get even more nervous once you see the police,” he said.

Kennedy said the incident occurred when he was on his way to a store in Humboldt Park. He alleged he was confronted by two Chicago Police officers who roughed him up and slammed him to a brick wall, adding that his head was also hit against a sidewalk more than once. The incident was reportedly witnessed by angry bystanders who called the officers out for their actions. Kennedy told the news outlet he suffered a concussion and injuries to his wrist and hand. The arrest also left him with visible grazes on his face.

“I told him like ‘Sir, I’m not resisting. I just want to get my glasses,” he told the news outlet. “He slammed me again thinking I’m resisting.” The video camera footage of the incident also shows Kennedy walking unsteadily as the officers escort him into a patrol car in handcuffs.

Per the police report, the officers wrote they confronted Kennedy as he had “a shocked look on his face” when he saw them, adding that they suspected he was “attempting to conceal a firearm,” KABC-TV reported. Kennedy was, however, not armed and he did not also have any drugs on him. The officers could not also fully explain the motive behind the arrest to supervisors when they arrived.

“The police couldn’t even pretend he did anything,” Kennedy’s attorney said. “So you have a police report which gives no description of a crime and no reason for approaching him, other than his bulging eyes.”

The lawsuit states Kennedy is seeking “compensatory damages and because defendants acted maliciously, wantonly, or oppressively, punitive damages against the individual (officers) in their individual capacities,” CNN reported. Additionally, the plaintiff also seeks court as well as attorney fees.

In September of 1994, members of the Black Disciples street gang in Chicago decided 11-year-old Robert Sandifer was a little too much even for young men who were putting down rivals, as they would say, on the regular.

Sandifer, who was also called Yummy because he liked cookies, had proven exuberant and conspicuous. The Disciples feared that if they did not rein him in, the prepubescent could become an informant.

Yummy’s tendency to be showy and reckless means the police could grab him. And if they did, they would use the boy to get to the Disciples.

And so on September 1, the Disciples took out Yummy on the railroad underpass at East 108th Street and South Dauphin Avenue.

He was shot in the back of his head by Cragg and Derrick Hardaway, who were 14 and 16 respectively. The pair had ordered Yummy to go down on his knees.

Indeed, there had been a police manhunt for Yummy due to what Chicago’s head of police at the time, Sgt Ronald Palmer said was an initiation gone wrong.

On August 28 of that year, Yummy opened fire on a group of people, presumably from a rival gang, with a 9mm semiautomatic. He immediately fled the scene.

But Yummy also hit 14-year-old Shavon Dean, an innocent young girl who had been around the scene. Dean later died from the bullet wounds.

When rumors spread nationally that the perpetrator of the crime had been an 11-year-old, the shock of the crime was tripled.

Recent debates about what Chicago means to young black men have their foundations from about this time. The frequency of the terrors left so many with questions.

The Hardaway brothers had been sent by the Disciples on August 31 to deal with the problem Yummy had brought the gang. The brothers were later convicted.

Interestingly, the Black Disciples were founded in 1966 as part of efforts to advance civil rights. Along the way, that noble vision was lost.

Over the past few months, the third wealthiest woman in the world, MacKenzie Scott, has donated a staggering $4.2 billion of her fortune to various entities across the country including some HBCUs.

In a recent post on her Medium titled “384 Ways to Help”, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos touched on how a food donation drive of a then 19-year-old lady in Chicago during the COVID-19 pandemic, inspired her to also launch her own.

“In March, a 19-year-old girl in Chicago sent a group text to her friends suggesting they buy supplies for people in their neighborhood who had lost their jobs,” she wrote. “She posted two Google forms — one for people who needed help and another for people with help to give — and by two days later they’d raised $7,000. ‘We’re really excited,’ she said.”

The lady in question was Alycia Kamil. Speaking to media, activist, poet and educator, said she was surprised when she heard the billionaire mentioned her program in her post.

“I was like, oh, that’s me. I had no clue that she even donated that amount of money, or that she saw an article from somewhere about the work that I did that inspired her. It was pretty cool,” Kamil said.

Kamil told the news outlet she wanted to extend a helping hand to residents who lived in areas that lacked affordable and healthy food options and were in need of groceries around the period COVID-19 hit the city. Together with her friends and volunteers, they were able to raise $7,000 and arranged for groceries worth $200 to $300 to be delivered to 30 families.

“I wanted to do a more hands-on thing to be considerate of the people who, even if they get the money, they have to take the bus and then bring all these groceries on the bus,” she said. “It’s about the importance of understanding communal living. We should all be able to resource and depend on each other.”

The food initiative wasn’t Kamil’s first, as she had also previously assisted with hosting a number of “Feed the Block” events where they gave hot meals to residents through GoodKids MadCity. The youth-led non-profit organization fights to end violence in Chicago and lobbies for more resources to be made available to underserved communities, according to reports.

The 20-year-old said she’s following that up with a similar project – “Resource the Block” – to hand out PPE, water, packaged food and other supplies to needy families. She said she’ll also roll out her grocery initiative again during the winter season.

In a unanimous decision by the clergy and lay faithful of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, Rev. Canon Paula E. Clark is now the Bishop-elect of the diocese. This makes her the first Black bishop and the first woman to head the diocese and the 13th elected bishop.

On December 12, the Electing Convention was held on Zoom and Clark was one of four candidates slated for the position. Her win came as a surprise to her and she is happy to lead the diocese of Chicago while breaking glass ceilings along the way.

“I’m just honored to be among those who are breaking the glass ceiling and providing opportunities and examples for younger women,” Clark said.

“I am overwhelmed. I’m humbled and filled with so much joy, people of the diocese of Chicago. I can hardly believe it,” Clark told the convention.

The Washington, DC native was baptized at the age of 10 into the Episcopal Church after her family could not integrate into the Baptist church. According to a press release, she was baptized by Bishop John Walker, the first Black dean of Washington National Cathedral and first Black bishop of the Diocese of Washington.

The 1960s was riddled with social unrest and as a Black family in a predominantly White neighborhood, Clark encountered racism and racial inequality firsthand as a child. She hopes to use her position as Bishop to tackle racial division.

“All of the major world religions believe in unity and peace and love…So this is an opportunity for us to have a counter-narrative to some of what we are seeing in our wider society,” said Clark.

“We Episcopalians are strong people who can model for the rest of this country and the world what it looks like to walk the way of love. God is calling us to a new day and a new way of being.”

Currently, she is canon to the ordinary and chief of staff in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. Clark first felt the call to priesthood in seventh grade at the National Cathedral School but did not pursue it till after her mother’s passing. Her mother did not approve of women’s ordination.

Clark obtained her bachelor’s from Brown University and earned her master’s in Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley.

For nine years she worked as a public information officer for the Office of the Mayor and the District of Columbia’s Board of Parole. Thereafter, Clark served as the director of human resources and administration for an engineering and consulting firm in Washington for five years.

Then in 2004, she earned a Master of Divinity degree from Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. It is from this point that the journey to fulfill her childhood priestly dreams began.

The wife of Andrew McLean and mother of five with seven grandchildren worked at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Washington and St. John’s Episcopal Church in Beltsville, Maryland. She later joined the staff of Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde. 

Her predecessor, Bishop Jeffrey D. Lee, retires on December 31. Bishop-elect Clark, who will oversee 122 congregations and more than 31,000 members in northern, central and southwestern Illinois, will be sworn in on April 24. The ecclesiastical authority will oversee the activities of the diocese during the transition.