(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Thursday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE San Diego 10, Seattle 7 Seattle 8, San Diego 3
AMERICAN LEAGUE LA Angels 12, Houston 5 Boston at Toronto (Postponed) Baltimore at Tampa Bay (Postponed) Minnesota at Detroit Oakland at Texas
NATIONAL LEAGUE Pittsburgh 4, St. Louis 3 LA Dodgers 7, San Francisco 0 LA Dodgers 2, San Francisco 0 Cincinnati 6, Milwaukee 1 Cincinnati 6, Milwaukee 0 Pittsburgh 2, St. Louis 0 Colorado at Arizona (Postponed) Miami at NY Mets (Postponed) Philadelphia at Washington (Postponed)
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION PLAYOFFS Boston at Philadelphia (Unnecessary) (Boston wins 4-0) Toronto at Brooklyn (Unnecessary) (Toronto wins 4-0) Denver at Utah (Postponed) (Utah leads 3-2) NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE PLAYOFFS Philadelphia at NY Islanders (Postponed) (Series tied 1-1) Vegas at Vancouver (Postponed) (Series tied at 1-1) WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION Chicago at Indiana (Postponed) Dallas at New York (Postponed) Las Vegas at Seattle (Postponed)
(ELIZABETH, N.J.) — New Jersey officials approved a piece of land to build a monument dedicated to transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson in her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey. The monument would be the first in the country to honor a transgender person, according to Union County officials.
City and county officials met with members of the Johnson family on Thursday afternoon to formally announce that the space had been approved, Union County officials told ABC News.
The Johnson family was instrumental in the proposal for the monument, which will be located across the street from the Thomas Jefferson Arts Academy near the city’s downtown area.
“Today, the family of Elizabeth native and LGBTQ+ Civil Rights activist Marsha P. Johnson was joined by Union County Freeholders and LGBTQ+ advocates to announce the future site of a public monument on Freedom Trail in the City of Elizabeth in Johnson’s honor,” the county wrote in a statement. “The monument is anticipated to be the first public monument in the State of New Jersey to honor a LGBTQ+ person and transgender woman of color.”
The Johnson family is scheduled to host events in partnership with Union County Freeholders, the City of Elizabeth, Garden State Equality and the Office of LGBTQ Affairs “during LGBTQ History Month (October, 2020) to engage with the community and the public to participate in the planning and creating of the historic project,” the statement said.
Johnson, an early and outspoken advocate for transgender women of color, is widely credited with helping start the Stonewall uprising in 1969.
New York City police officers raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood, on June 28, 1969, to enforce a discriminatory law that made it illegal to serve alcohol to gay people. Johnson and others fought back, helping spawn the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement.
Johnson founded the Street Transgender Action Revolutionaries — a group aimed at helping homeless transgender youth — before she died tragically at the age of 46 in 1992, when her body was found floating in the Hudson River. Her death was initially ruled a suicide, but police reopened the investigation in 2012 amid calls from her family, who claimed foul play. The circumstances of her death remain unsolved.
The announcement came just days after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo dedicated the East River State Park in Brooklyn to Johnson, making it the country’s first state park to honor an LGBTQ person, according to the state.
Cuomo made the announcement last Monday, on what would have been the transgender civil rights icon’s 75th birthday.
“I’m proud to announce the dedication of East River State Park in Brooklyn to #MarshaPJohnson. Today, Marsha P. Johnson State Park becomes the first State Park to honor an LGBTQ person,” Cuomo tweeted. “NY is indebted to her for her brave advocacy and relentless fight for LGBTQ equality.”
The state plans to improve the park’s facilities and install public art celebrating Johnson’s life and her role in the advancement of LGBTQ rights, according to a statement, which called the move the largest investment in the park’s history.
Cuomo said the state wanted to honor Johnson’s work to make sure that her memory lives on forever.
“Too often, the marginalized voices that have pushed progress forward in New York and across the country go unrecognized, making up just a fraction of our public memorials and monuments,” Cuomo said in a statement. “Marsha P. Johnson was one of the early leaders of the LGBTQ movement, and is only now getting the acknowledgement she deserves. Dedicating this state park for her, and installing public art telling her story, will ensure her memory and her work fighting for equality lives on.”
New York Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul said the current social climate made this the right time to honor Johnson, who she called an “LGBTQ hero.”
“With the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement, now more than ever we must continue the fight for LGBTQ equality and racial justice in our society,” Hochul said. “We have come a long way with the passage of GENDA (the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act) and legalizing gestational surrogacy, but we still have more work to do to combat division and hate and achieve true equality for all.”
Courtesy of Orion Pictures(LOS ANGELES) — With the COVID-19 pandemic upending the movie and television industry, a brand new film hits the big screen today, Bill and Ted Face the Music, and stars Keanu Reeves and Alex Winters believe the movie couldn’t have arrived at a better time.
With theaters opening back up after a long pause, albeit now at limited capacity, Reeves was first asked by ABC Audio if he thinks the film, which is about Bill and Ted saving the world again, can save the beleaguered box office.
“I hope so,” he expressed. “Hopefully people can feel safe and go to the movies because I know I miss going to the movies.”
The 55-year-old Reeves, who plays Ted, also shared his vision of what a perfect opening night would look like, “I personally wish that I could go have an opening of Bill and Ted and invite all my friends and eat some popcorn and laugh and feel good.”
Reeves knows he’s not the only one who misses laughing with other people and, because of this pandemic, the world is in an emotional place that needs a Bill and Ted comeback.
“Bill and Ted Face the Music is really about family and community, that we’re all in this together,” he noted. “Let’s let’s laugh, let’s love, let’s be excellent! Party on, man.”
Volleying off the sentiment, Winters says Bill and Ted share an important message that the globe is desperate to hear due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“[It] is very much about people coming together and about community,” Said Winters, adding that the theme is present in all three films. “[It’s] about the importance of of humanity being open and being one.”
Bill and Ted Face the Music is in theaters now and available for streaming rental this weekend.
Daniel MeigsAshley McBryde famously dubbed herself a “Girl Goin’ Nowhere” after a high school teacher predicted her musical dreams would never come true.
Now, with widespread acclaim and multiple awards to her credit — including the CMA New Artist of the Year trophy — the hard-working troubadour is learning to enjoy some of her success.
“I’m a little less afraid,” Ashley tells ABC Audio. “There’s just a lot of unknowns. And then you kind of eventually get to a point where you realize everything is unknown.”
“Nobody knows what’s going on, nobody’s exactly got it together. We don’t know where the elevator is,” she offers as an example. “And then you kind of go, ‘It’s fine if I don’t know what’s happening. No one else does either.’ And you can really roll with change a lot easier.”
The Arkansas native admits that was hard for her at first, having built a successful career as an independent artist all on her own.
“At first, you’ve got to think about someone who’s booking all their own shows, doing all of their own stuff, running their own sound and everything in the bars,” she explains. “And you’re giving up control of those things.”
“And it’s really uncomfortable for a little while,” she continues. “But then once you realize it’s okay to give up that control, that there are people that will have your back, then it gets a lot easier.”
“So I guess I am a little lighter,” she reflects.
Ashley’s current single, “One Night Standards,” was just certified gold as it topped the country chart in Canada. The lead single from her sophomore album, Never Will, is on the verge of breaking into the top ten in the States.
Disney(LOS ANGELES) — Disney announced Thursday that Star Wars sequel star Kelly Marie Tran will voice the title character in the upcoming animated film Raya and the Last Dragon.
The announcement didn’t mention that Canadian actress Cassie Steele was at one time supposed to voice Raya, and was even promoted as such during last year’s Disney D23 expo. Tran is of Southeast Asian descent, and the film’s animators apparently looked to countries in that region for design inspiration.
The project centers on warrior princess Raya’s quest to find the last surviving dragon in the fantasy world of Kumandra, to battle against a race of sinister monsters bent on ruling the land. Raya’s unlikely partner, a water dragon known as Sisu, will be voiced by Akwafina.
In announcing the casting news, Disney shared an image of the warrior along with her sidekick, an armadillo-like insect that’s large enough to ride.
Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Raya and the Last Dragon opens in U.S. theaters on March 12, 2021.
iStockBy ABC News
