Black Women’s Roundtable will advise NFL on domestic violence

(TriceEdneyWire.com) — Members of the DC-based Black Women’s Roundtable Public Policy Network (BWR) has convened a long-awaited meeting with National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell.

The group, a subsidiary of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, met with Goodell Nov. 14 and made plans “to continue working with National Football League (NFL) Commissioner Roger Goodell to assist them with developing culturally-competent strategies to eradicate domestic violence and sexual assault,” according to a release. The women met for two hours with Goodell at NFL headquarters in New York.

“We provided them with a resource list of locally-based women of color-led organizations in the cities with NFL teams,” said Melanie L. Campbell, president/CEO of the National Coalition and convener of the Black Women’s Roundtable. The release said the women “presented Goodell with culturally specific recommendations focused on violence prevention, intervention and social responsibility.”

Other participants were Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner, president of Skinner Leadership Institute and co-chair of the National African American Clergy Network; Marcia Dyson, CEO and founder of the Women’s Global Initiative; Dr. Elsie Scott of the Ron Walters Leadership & Policy Center at Howard University; Karma Cottman, executive director of the D.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence; Janaye Ingram, national executive director of the National Action Network; Chanelle Hardy, senior vice president of the National Urban League Policy Institute; Dr. Avis Jones-DeWeever, president, Incite Unlimited; Rene Redwood, CEO of Redwood Enterprise; Tamika Mallory, president of Mallory Consulting; and Monifa Bandele, campaign manager of Moms’ Rising.

The group originally reached out to Goodell in September, seeking the inclusion of Black women and other women of color experts as outside advisors that can assist the NFL in developing culturally competent solutions to address domestic violence and sexual assault. The meeting was convened in the wake of the high profiled incident in which Baltimore Ravens running Back Ray Rice struck his then fiancee Janay Palmer in an elevator, knocking her out. He was suspended indefinitely after protests arose over a two-game suspension and a video of the incident went viral. The NFL initially announced a team of women advisors who were all white.

Said Williams-Skinner, “The issue of domestic violence and sexual assault is a moral issue because it batters and shatters human beings lives and reflects broken relationships.”

This article originally published in the November 24, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.