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MLK’s family says new abstract statue looks like a phallus – University of Alabama basketball player charged with murder – Home Depot to change how it pays employees – Water cut off to 700 homes in Arizona suburb due to drought
A massive bronze abstract art statue was unveiled in Boston just ahead of Martin Luther King Jr’s 94th birthday entitled “Embrace.” The 20-foot tall, 40-foot-wide statue “symbolizes the hug Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shared with his wife, Coretta, after he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and celebrates their time in Boston when they met as students,” according to the statue’s creators, CNN reported.
However, some of the relatives of Coretta Scott King hate the new statue, which had a price tag of $10 million, the New York Post reported.
“The mainstream media … was reporting on it like it was all beautiful, ’cause they were told they had to say that,” said Seneca Scott, Coretta’s cousin. “But then when it came out, a little boy pointed out — ‘That’s a penis!’ and everyone was like, ‘Yo, that’s a big old dong, man.'”
“If you had showed that statute to anyone in the ’hood, they’d have been like, ‘No, absolutely not,'” Scott told CNN. “It’s a stump that looked like a penis. That’s a joke.”
“Ten million dollars were wasted to create a masturbatory metal homage to my legendary family members — one of the all-time greatest American families,” Scott told Compact magazine. “It’s doubly insulting to the black community, who still on average … too many of us are below the poverty line.”
“You’re spending $10 million on a bronze statue without heads on it? Man, it’s a joke.,” Scott added, saying the best way to celebrate MLK day is through action. “No performative, no photo ops, put your phone down and go do [an act of service] that no one knows about.”
University of Alabama basketball star Darius Miles, 21, allegedly opened fire on another vehicle and ‘shot dead’ a mother-of-one, Jamea Jonae Harris, 23, after a ‘minor altercation’ between two cars, according to the Tuscaloosa Violent Crimes Unit, the New York Post reported.
The victim’s mother claims it was because Jamea refused to talk to Miles, the Daily Mail reported. Another passenger in the suspect’s car, Michael Lynn Davis, 20, was also charged in the shooting, CNN reported. Harris had been visiting her boyfriend at the University when she was shot dead inside the car. Miles and Davis were arrested, and the charges carry the possibility of the death penalty in Alabama.
Home Depot, like companies and many industries, will typically “round” an employee’s shift time either up or down to the nearest 15 minutes. But now, with improvements in technology, Home Depot says it will “pay hourly associates to the nearest minute based on exact time punches,” Fox Business first reported, as reported by the New York Post. The change aims to pay employees for all the time they have actually worked.
The community of the Rio Verde foothills had its water taps turned off by its supplier, the neighboring city of Scottsdale, Arizona, which blamed the drought, saying it could no longer sell water to the roughly 500-700 homes, or about 1000 people. The suburb contains $500,000 houses, mansions, and horse ranches, which will now have to fend for themselves in trying to find water from other suppliers, if possible, and likely for much higher prices, Yahoo reported. Some fear the community could become a ghost town and ponder what the future may hold for the 40 million people across the West who rely on the Colorado River for water.
