10-15-2023 Women to Watch - Flipbook - Page 38
Sen. Jill P. Carter, named a Woman to Watch in 2017, sponsored a criminal justice
reform bill that passed in 2021 and increased public access to police disciplinary
files. PAUL W. GILLESPIE
Adrienne A. Jones,right, became the first woman and first African American
speaker with the Maryland House of Delegates in 2019. KARL MERTON FERRON
lieutenant governor and one of this
year’s Women to Watch. In the state,
progressive advocates have secured
victories through the passage of legislation like this year’s Trans Health
Equity Act, which requires equitable access to gender-affirming care,
and measures to strengthen abortion
rights after the U.S. Supreme Court
overturned Roe v. Wade last year.
Longtime delegate Adrienne A.
Jones became the first woman and
first African American speaker of
the Maryland House of Delegates in
2019, the same year she was named a
Woman to Watch. The whiter, more
male House she joined 26 years ago
would not have made issues like abortion and domestic violence legislative
priorities as its current membership
has, she said.
While racism may have become
more overt in recent years, so too has
the pushback from activists, Ryan
said. She pointed to the killing of two
Black men in 2020 — George Floyd,
who was murdered in Minneapolis
38 | 2023 | WOMEN TO WATCH
by police; and Ahmaud Arbery, who
was murdered by three white men
who chased him through their South
Georgia neighborhood — as moments
where onlookers said “this is not going
to happen” without accountability.
In what many see as a chilling
prequel to Floyd’s death, a young
African American man named Anton
Black died on the Eastern Shore in
2018 after police chased, tased and
cuffed him, laying their body weight
on top of him for almost six minutes.
One of the officers in Black’s death
had multiple use-of-force complaints
against him from a previous job.
When the General Assembly passed
a sweeping criminal justice reform bill
in 2021, among the components was
Anton’s Law, which increases public
access to police disciplinary files.
The law was sponsored by 2017
Woman to Watch honoree Sen. Jill
P. Carter, who had long championed
other measures included in the bill,
which requires independent review of
police-involved deaths and a focus on
treatment over incarceration.
Carter said she is pleased to see
progress amid the continuing fight
for police accountability and against
mass incarceration. She points to how
she was mentioned in the February
2022 apology by The Sun’s editorial
board for the paper’s history of racial
prejudice, in which writers noted
that she had “raised alarms” for years
about police brutality and the need for
reform.
“Society,” Carter said, “caught up
with me.”
The Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences caught up with
concerns about lack of diversity in its
award recipients after the #OscarsSoWhite campaign April Reign
launched on Twitter, the website now
called X, went viral in 2015.
That year, the academy had not
nominated a single actor of color in
its best acting categories. In response,
Reign posted “#OscarsSoWhite they
asked to touch my hair.”
By lunch of that day, the former
Howard County resident’s sarcastic jab at the academy was trending
worldwide, and it soon spurred serious ruminations in Hollywood.
“Over the years, #OscarsSoWhite
has now turned into a conversation
about the importance of representation of traditionally underrepresented
communities in entertainment as a
whole,” Reign said. “It’s taken on a
life of its own.”
Reign left a career in law to have
conversations about diversity and
inclusion around the world. In her
new chapter, which includes working as a senior adviser for the market
research platform Gauge and as an
adviser for the Black and queer-focused social media app Spill, Reign
keeps a close eye on tides that are
starting to turn.