McDonald’s is bringing its Inspiration Celebration Gospel Tour to the 10th Annual Taste of Soul Family Festival on October 17. Southern California McDonald’s will join local gospel choirs with today’s biggest names in gospel music for a day of fellowship and fun during the community festival.

Hosting the tour is Stellar-nominated artist and radio personality Lonnie Hunter. Joining him on stage will be music director and songwriter Donald Lawrence, vocal powerhouse Yolanda Adams, evangelist and the “Rose of Gospel” Dorinda Clark-Cole, the incomparable choral-master Ricky Dillard, urban inspirational artist DeWayne Woods, Stellar Award nominee and BET’s Sunday Best season six winner Tasha Page-Lockhart and Christian comedienne Small Fire.

“In L.A. McDonald’s has a long history with gospel,” said McDonald’s franchise owner/operator Reggie Webb, former chair of the Southern California Black McDonald’s Owner/Operator Association and currently serves on the Board of Directors.

“We’ve put on a gospel fest for 19 consecutive years. Lindsay Hughes, an operator here ran it for 19 years.  And then, we started the Inspiration Gospel Celebration, [which] has grown every year.”

Back for its ninth year, McDonald’s Inspiration Celebration Gospel Tour focuses on the importance of giving back to the community by supporting Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC). In recognition of the Charity’s 41st anniversary, this year concertgoers will have the opportunity to learn about RMHC and the important role it plays in helping families heal and thrive in their local community and worldwide.

“African Americans use all of the McDonald houses in Metropolitan Los Angeles to a greater percentage than we are a percentage of the population,” Webb explained.

“Our kids are more sick than the general population so more of our families are able to take advantage of the Ronald McDonald houses they can stay close to, to support their children while their children are being treated at children’s hospitals around the area for these very debilitating diseases…”

Attendees will also be encouraged to support Ronald McDonald House Charities® of Southern California by donating to help local families served by the Charity.

Southern California McDonald’s is overjoyed to bring a little lovin’ to the Crenshaw community through the 2015 Inspiration Celebration Gospel Tour,” said Clay Paschen III, McDonald’s owner/operator and president of the McDonald’s Operators’ Association of Southern California (MOASC).

“The tour is just one way we are able to build on the support we provide to our local communities, as well as give back a little more lovin’ to our local Ronald McDonald House chapter.”

Locally, BMOA collectively and individually supports RMHCSC and its six Ronald McDonald Houses, the RMHC/African American Future Achievers Scholarship Program, and the community grants board – which has awarded funding to organizations like Sabriya’s Castle of Fun Foundation, Challenger’s Boys and Girls Club, and the Brotherhood Crusade get funding from RMHCSC’s community grants board.

“Our local owner/operators are passionate about being an integral part of the communities we serve,” said Kiana Webb-Severlough, president of Southern California’s Black McDonald’s Owner/Operator Association. “Being able to bring the Inspiration Celebration Gospel Tour to the community is just one example of the commitment we have to impacting our customers 365 days of the year.”

Taste of Soul founder and creator Danny J. Bakewell Sr., said he is appreciative of that fact.

“We are pleased, proud and thankful to Reggie Webb and the McDonald’s Black Operators that they have recognized the magnitude and value of partnering with Taste of Soul to bring [in] the McDonald’s Gospel Tour,” he said.

“McDonald’s Black Operators are they lynchpin to ensuring the Black community receives all the benefits of McDonald’s Corporation that reflect the kind of patronage that we give to [them].  Clearly, they are a force to be reckoned with and they are a force for us that can be relied on. I think their participation in this year’s Taste of Soul’s tenth anniversary is going to make it bigger and better than ever…”

This week, Reggie Webb met with Danny J. Bakewell, Sr. at the Bakewell Company office to discuss and celebrate the historic collaboration and partnership. 

“It’s a partnership that not only includes us but it includes Pastor [Kelvin] Sauls and now Pastor Manny Brody from the Inland Empire as leading all of us from a spiritual sense,” said Webb. “And so, all three of us, our first objective is to praise God and to do things in such a way that would be pleasing in His sight.

“The thing that I love about it [Taste of Soul], its not just that it’s a community celebration and a big one and a well organized and a well run one, and that’s very important, but that it brings the business element within the African American community together and allows all of us in our community to focus on the businesses that can and should be providing for our needs,” said Webb.

“Because really, the more we get each dollar to turn over in our community, the stronger our community can become. And so, we think linking the faith-based community, which has the greatest long-term success in our community, with the businesses in our community, is nothing that can be described as anything but positive. And the more the dollar turns over in our community, the more families are going to be in the middle class.

“What we know is the children of middle class African American families compete with anybody. It’s the children of lower class and very poor African Americans that are not doing well. So, if we can get more families into the middle class, we can get more of their children to compete with others. 

To learn more about the tour and the 365Black initiative, visit www.365Black.com. For more information on local gospel acts gracing the stage and details, follow @McDonalds_SoCal on Twitter and join the conversation at #365BlackGospel.

This past summer saw the deaths of five Black women in police custody across the U.S.  The deaths were a jolt to the collective Black community already reeling from the seemingly rampant (and unending) police shootings of unarmed Black men nationwide.  Here in Los Angeles, the deaths of those five Black women preceded an anniversary in another young Black woman’s death after being in the custody of law enforcement:  Mitrice Richardson.

Six years after Richardson’s mysterious disappearance from the custody of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD), there are still those who believe that law enforcement had a direct hand in Richardson’s death which, to date, remains unsolved.

Skeletal remains found in a Malibu Canyon on Aug. 9, 2010, were identified as those of Mitrice Richardson. The L.A. Times reported at the time that Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) investigators said the remains could have been at that location for six months, or the entire time that Richardson had been missing – Sept. 17, 2009.

According to the website Bring Mitrice Justice dot Org, Richardson went to Geoffrey’s Restaurant in Malibu for dinner the evening of Sept. 16, 2009.  The restaurant placed a call to 911 stating that Richardson was unable to pay her bill and that she was acting erratically.

Deputies from the Malibu-Lost Hills Sheriff’s Department responded and took Richardson into custody after a search of her car turned up a small amount of marijuana. Richardson was arrested on that charge, along with Defrauding an Innkeeper. She was booked into the jail facility around 10 p.m. the night of Sept. 16, and released at 12:38 the morning of Sept. 17.  She was never seen again by her family.

In November of 2009, then-Sheriff Lee Baca stated to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors that his deputies had followed procedures in releasing Richardson early that morning.  According to a memo sent to the supervisors, Baca quoted sections of the Sheriff’s Department Manual of Policy (as well as the state’s penal code) which mandate that sheriff’s “release misdemeanor prisoners in a manner prescribed by law as soon as such persons may be reasonably and safely released.”

Deputies made no notations regarding Richardson’s behavior in the official record at the time of her arrest, even though staff members at Geoffrey’s specifically mentioned her erratic behavior.

Richardson’s car which she had driven to Geoffrey’s was impounded by the Sheriff’s Dept. and she was unable able to retrieve it.  She also had no money or credit cards on her when she left the sheriff’s custody. Richardson’s family has questioned exactly how a young Black woman released into the dead of night without calling anyone or without any means of being able to return to her home could possibly be reasonable or safe.

Additionally, the family maintains that it is quite possible Richardson could have been having a mental health crisis and that sheriff’s department employees were negligent in releasing her in that manner.

Nationally, there appears to be a disturbing trend of gaps in credibility and omissions from the official record in many of the cases where a Black person dies in police custody.  According to the family of Mitrice Richardson, the same is true in this case.

Richardson’s family says the Sheriff’s Department was (and continues to be) uncooperative in communicating with them about the status of their investigation. That investigation would eventually be “kicked” to the LAPD, according to Richardson’s family, because Richardson was a resident of Los Angeles, even though her disappearance occurred in Malibu.

Some of the more egregious conduct by the sheriff’s department includes the refusal to release video documentation of Richardson leaving the Lost Hills Sheriff’s station in the early morning hours of Sept. 17, 2009. Richardson’s family repeatedly asked for video evidence from the department, and they were repeatedly told that none existed.  Eventually, Tom Martin, a captain in the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Department admitted that not only did video exist, but that he had been in possession of said video the entire time.

 Martin would be promoted within the department and then retire within two years of Richardson’s disappearance.  The Sentinel was unable to reach him for comment.

The video that Richardson’s family sought showed the young woman leaving by herself. The video also showed a Lost Hills deputy, Ismael Rodriguez, leaving the station approximately two minutes after Richardson did.  At that time, Martin had stated that no deputies were at the Lost Hills station while Richardson was in custody.

Deputy Rodriguez, who as of this date has not provided an accounting of his activities during the night/morning of Richardson’s arrest and exit from the station, has been transferred from the Lost Hills station. Efforts to reach Rodriguez for comment were not successful by press time.

 “The officers who were involved in Mitrice Richardson’s arrest, disappearance, death, mishandling of her remains, and multiple acts of malfeasance are continuing to move forward with their lives,” said Rhonda Hampton in a statement released Aug. 9, the fifth anniversary of the discovery of Mitrice’s remains.

 A psychologist and close family friend of the Richardsons, Hampton’s statement went on to say that “Some [of the deputies involved] have had children, had children graduate from high school and college, celebrated holidays, weddings and anniversaries with their loved ones. They have received promotions, raises, and some have retired quite well off.  I can only hope that guilt will prevail someone to come forward with information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individual(s) responsible for her death.”

Michael Rossen, the officer now in charge of the Mitrice Richardson case, says it is classified as an “open death investigation,” according to Rhonda Hampton.  Hampton says Rossen told her that the case is now “lead or clue driven … as clues come in, they will investigate them.”

Hampton does not believe this to be the case. 

“Firstly, I don’t believe there are [or will be] that many people calling in with tips after five years; secondly … I personally know of two individuals who repeatedly contacted the sheriff’s department with information.  One individual was never contacted.  The other was contacted, but there was no follow-up by the sheriff’s on the information provided,” she said.

Efforts by the Sentinel to reach Rossen to verify Hampton’s charges were also unsuccessful by press time.

“[These people need to be] exposed for what they are … and people need to see just what kind of officials we have saying they’re protecting us and they’re not,” said Michael Richardson, father of Mitrice.  “This [excrement] has been sitting and it’s gotten hard,” he continued.  “But if you step in it, it will start to stink again.  I want it to start stinking again,” Richardson said.

“Cease fire, cease fire,” reigned through the streets of Crenshaw as community leaders from the Safe Communities Initiatives Rally came together for a press conference on ways to promote peace in front of the Los Angeles Sentinel Newspaper building on Sept 2.

The conference was led by leaders of communities stretching from Crenshaw to Watts to East Los Angeles who work with youth in­volved with gangs, gun violence and drugs. Many of the leaders were part of the same lifestyle when they were younger, but are now trying to guide the youth in a different direction.

“You brought back the originals, the people who have the right and the license to operate” said Dr. Cynthia Mendenhall one of the founders of the Watts Gang Task Force who is also known in the community as Sister Soldier. “The problem is that the community left the community. We have to come back, the moms the pops the grandparents, we have to come back.”

During the time of #BlackLivesMatter spreading through the internet, there was also a #100days100nights happening in Los Angeles where gang members set out to kill 100 people in 100 days. Community leaders say that there needs to be an end to the killing within our communities and community members need to be the ones to make that change.

“When people start setting a goal of 100 deaths in 100 days, that’s senseless because they’re killing themselves, they’re killing our children, they’re killing our mothers our fathers, they’re killing our future,” said Danny Bakewell, Sr., executive publisher of the Los Angeles Sentinel and L.A. Watts Times. “We have to intervene and do something to change the tide, and nobody can do that but us. If Black lives matter, Black lives must matter to Black people first.”

Within the next eight weeks, thousands will march through gang-related parks, including Jim Gilliam, St. Andrews, Athens, South, Jesse Owens, Magic Johnson, Manchester and Ted Watkins. The Nation of Islam, Gangsters for Christ, Front Line Soldiers, along with many more, will all be a part of the 2015 March and Rally for Peace in the Streets.

“We want to go to hottest communities and talk with our young people, eyeball to eyeball,” said Khalid Shah, one of the directors of the 2015 March and Rally for Peace in the Streets. “We want to make sure that they understand that their own brothers, their own cousins, their own fathers do not like what’s going on.”

The press conference was about unity. It was about getting people who think that they are separate to realize that they are in the same battle. Without unity, community leaders say that the cycle will only continue.

“We have to stop acting like the Ku Klux Klan,” said Brother G during the conference. “We have to take off these blue and red flags and stop acting like we hate each other.”

The conversation also centered on creating resources within the community. One mother was given hundreds of dollars on the spot to help burry her child. Danny Bakewell, Sr. also donated $10,000 to the Safe Communities Initiatives Rally. Community leaders understand that there is much work to be done, but they also understand that it must start within the community.

“This is a holistic approach to ending community violence,” said Alicia Thompson, staff member of the Professional Community Intervention Training Institute. “This is a unified structure, a unified front and a unified body of professional peace-keepers convening for the goal of stopping the violence and protecting our youth.”

To get involved, call (323) 777-4893