Black business group presses demand for Amherst relief funds

Daily Hampshire Gazette – Black business group presses demand for Amherst relief funds UMass Professor Amilcar Shabazz, secretary of the Black Business Association of Amherst Area, is seen at the 36th annual MLK day celebration in Northampton in January 2020. STAFF FILE PHOTO AMHERST — A Black-owned business organization is continuing its campaign to elicit financial support from the town, including money that it claims was unfairly withheld from those who run shops in town and needed the funds to recover from the pandemic. “We don’t benefit from the resources from our town,” Pat Ononibaku, president of the Black Business Association of Amherst Area, said during a gathering at BakuCare in Hadley on Friday afternoon. The meeting of eight members of the organization at Ononibaku’s adult care business came a few days after the March 18 Town Council meeting in which it made appeals for $1.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding, with $650,000 to go directly to under-resourced Black residents, $400,000 as direct capital to support Black-owned businesses, $125,000 to support staffing needs for the business group and $45,000 for job readiness training and culturally sensitive programming for Black youth. The group learned earlier in the week that...