Was going to announce this myself but I guess The Wrap scooped me: After nearly six incredible years at
@thedailybeast
, I am accepting a voluntary buyout from the company.
Lots of bad news out there rn, but yesterday my sister helped open the first free grocery store in San Francisco for low income residents. It’s such a cool project and I’m so proud of her!
I spent the last several months investigating allegations of racism at the National Organization for Women (NOW.) What we published today is shocking, and it's honestly just the tip of the iceberg.
Wow, thank you everyone for your kind words! If you want to support this project you can donate here: . Make sure you put “community market” in the memo for your donation.
For weeks now, commenters have flooded Tennessee nurse Tiffany Dover’s Facebook wall with messages of tribute, offering their condolences for her loss. But Tiffany Dover is not dead.
My story on a viral conspiracy theory and anti-vaxx harassment campaign:
Videos show WOC being shouted down at NOW chapters. Emails show them being lambasted for speaking up. Nearly a dozen members, employees, and visitors recalled women of color being heckled, silenced, or openly disparaged at NOW meetings and offices.
Covid-19 is pushing New York's funeral industry to its limits. In some places, the waitlist for burial or cremation is a week long.
“I’ve been doing this over 50 years,” one funeral director told me. “It’s never been like this.
Some personal news: Today is my last day at
@Independent
. I’ll be starting Monday as a gender reporter for
@thedailybeast
, writing about all the topics I talk about all the time anyway!
At the NOW national headquarters, things were worse. At one point, 15 former staffers signed onto a letter accusing current president Toni Van Pelt of racist behavior. These are just some of the incidents they listed.
“I’m not buying any of this nonsense about ‘white silence,’” a chapter president told one WOC who complained. “You do not know anything about my experience in life and I resent you thinking its ok for you to spout off about race issues to me."
Van Pelt also allegedly told staff that she only chose her Native American running mate because she needed a woman of color to win.
That running mate, Gilda Yazzie, is now suing the group for racial discrimination.
But some members aren't buying it. “The greatest fear I see in NOW is that the older white women fear change,” longtime NOW member China Fortson-Washington said. “In this organization they always want women of color to be second.”
“I am a black woman, I have experienced racism,” one former NOW employee told The Daily Beast. “But what happened there… I have never experienced that before.”
Some former patients of Robert Hadden, the doctor accused of assaulting Evelyn Yang, are getting his name scrubbed from their children’s birth certificates
Last week, NOW released a statement on the killing of George Floyd, saying that racial justice was “at the core of NOW’s mission.” Ten days earlier, their digital media manager had posted this on Facebook.
“They didn't care that I was being discriminated against, that I was being tokenized, that I was being threatened in the office, that I was afraid for my safety,” Yazzie said of the organization. “They wanted me, but they wanted me as a token."
“Multiple victims, when asked if they had reported these incidents, consistently responded that they could not ‘report it to the police because it was the police.’”
Why did a record number of Republican women run in 2020? Because of the record number of Democratic women who ran in 2018.
"A lot of conservative women started to think to themselves, ‘You know what, I can do this too,'”
@khilldavis
told me
Some personal news: After three years(!!) on the gender beat, I’m transitioning to senior reporter at
@thedailybeast
, focusing on long-form narratives about secret worlds and subcultures
Wow. "Eight other women provided statements recounting their alleged encounters with Hankison, most of which involved him allegedly targeting women outside the same bar and offering to drive the women home."
After The Daily Beast asked for comment on these issues, Van Pelt sent an email to all NOW members apologizing for any harm she caused and committing to five action items to improve racial justice within the organization.
Healthcare workers are are being evicted by landlords who fear they'll bring the coronavirus home with them.
“We’re being seen as walking Petri dishes,” one nurse said. “While we’re looking out and taking care of other people, who’s taking care of us?”
"I want other people to speak up for [survivors] so that we don’t have to. I want it to become normal to name the elephant in the room. And I don’t ever want to become comfortable sharing space with a monster."
Time's Up has been in the news a lot lately. Here' a thread on our reporting on the gender equity org, which one former staffer described to me a "patriarchy with a dress on"
My dad is a 61-year-old emergency room doctor in Seattle. He’s still going to work every day. The doctors and nurses in this story are still going to work every day. But make no mistake: They are all terrified.
@ladidaix
Hi! Thanks so much for asking. You can donate at (put “community market” in the memo). And here’s a link to a tweet with the legislation that made this possible, if you want to pass this where you live!
Please check out the Food Empowerment legislation that made the District 10 Community Market possible. If you want to duplicate this model in your city.
Planned Parenthood withdraws from Title X funding. “We will not be bullied out of providing abortion information to our patients," acting president Alexis McGill Johnson says.
"We need Congress to show up. We need the president to show up,"
@RBraceySherman
told
@thedailybeast
.
"We have been warning about this for a decade and they have treated us like fucking Chicken Little."
A doctor in Texas can face life in prison for performing a wanted abortion. Catherine Herring's husband tried to drug her with abortion pills seven times, and got six months.
This is the story of how she caught him.
More than 200 people were arrested last year for protesting Trump’s inauguration. 59 are still facing charges. This is how their lives have been upended.
New: Multiple women reporters describe their uncomfortable interactions with Cuomo
“You couldn't be just a lawmaker or a reporter. It was always clear that you were also a female, or a woman, and that that carried with it a different set of expectations."
A Virginia police department that recently received a $500,000 anti-trafficking grant was just sued by a trafficking survivor who says she was abused by... the police
Just talked to the broker who sold Maxwell her $1m New Hampshire hideout. The broker says she never met Maxwell, who didn't even want to put her name on the purchasing paperwork. She assumed the mysterious buyer was a movie star.
I just wrote about the states where you can literally get an abortion by mail, and now SCOTUS might let Mississippi ban it at 15 weeks. It's never been clearer that access to abortion in the U.S. is determined by your zip code and your income
Talked to a doctor this weekend at a hospital with 10 pregnant women in the ICU from COVID. (7 are on ventilators.)
“All I can say is get vaccinated," she said. "I’m not saying you can’t get COVID ... but hopefully it will keep you out of an ICU.”
I am by no means leaving journalism, so if you’re looking for an award-winning investigative reporter/features writer who specializes in women, wealth, and wellness, my DMs are open and my email address is emily.shugerman
@gmail
.com
Aura Hernandez hasn't been outside in three weeks. She is living inside a New York church, because it is the only way she knows to stay with her family. This is (just part of) her story.
In a call about new restrictions on pregnant travelers, State Department officials could not name a single instance in which so-called “birth tourism” had caused a national security threat
Was just diagnosed with an upper respiratory infection; getting a Covid test as soon as possible. Please send podcast + movie recommendations for the meantime while I'm quarantined in this attic 🙏
EXCLU: Internal documents reveal half of Time’s Up's staffers were warning of serious problems within the group last summer—more than a year before its very public leadership implosion
Jeffrey Epstein’s closest friend, French model scout Jean-Luc Brunel, is accused of preying on underage girls and farming them out to Epstein and others
A woman in Texas with a fatal fetal anomaly is suing to block the state's abortion law and end her pregnancy—the first time a pregnant person has done so since Roe
59 defendants still facing charges. Govt says it wants to focus efforts on "this smaller, core group that we believe is most responsible for the destruction and violence that took place on Inauguration Day."
Are you a frontline medical worker struggling to get PPE? The Daily Beast is covering it. Tell me what stories about this have been missing: emily.shugerman
@thedailybeast
.com or DM me!
Women's groups that endorsed Cuomo have been largely silent on calls for his removal.
Cynthia Nixon says she wishes the accusers' courage "was shared by more of those with power and influence in Albany, particularly those who claim to advocate for women”
Time's Up's celeb backers appear to be standing behind Tina Tchen. But some survivors say she needs to go.
“You can ask for all the feedback in the world,"
@_char_bennett_
said, "but if you’re one of the perpetrators, you just shouldn’t be at the table.”
My last big yarn for
@thedailybeast
(🥲) and it is a doozy: A Texas company promised to protect the money of gestational surrogates and intended parents. Then the founder—and all the money—went missing
NEW: Jeffrey Epstein brought groups of young women into Frederic Fekkai salons, even after his conviction. “It was very out in the open,” one former employee said. “Everyone knew."
When Summer Zervos learned Gloria Allred’s daughter, Lisa Bloom, had been working with Harvey Weinstein, she wrote to her lawyer to express her displeasure.
“I do not understand,” Allred replied. “Are you a victim of Harvey Weinstein?”
So many good quotes from the docs I interviewed but my favorite is from Dr. Quinn Snyder: “You can’t bluff this virus. People keep trying to find shortcuts around the issues at hand, but the virus just doesn’t care about those kinds of shortcuts. It will win.”