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Phagwah Park, which was held in Loxahatchee Grove by the Guyanese and Palm Beach Hindu communities. Then, on March 18 in Cooper City, the Jamaican Indo-Caribbean community, with Rohan Tolan and Apache Promotions as hosts, held Phagwah 2023. “We celebrated Phagwah when we were young growing up in Jamaica,” Maragh explains. “When we migrated to the United States we kept the tradition alive, and we’ve been doing it for 25 years. It brings family and friends together, but we also collect donations to help take care of less fortunate persons in our community.” Maragh says that, due to the pandemic, the festival was forced to break for three years, but the community is elated to return to the joyous annual tradition. “We were so happy to do it again,” she beams.
This festival was brought to places like Trinidad, Guyana, Suriname, and Jamaica by East Indians who first came to the Caribbean almost 200 years ago. The celebration includes throwing colored water and powders on one another, with each color carrying a special meaning. Red, for example, symbolizes love and fertility, and green symbolizes new beginnings. This year the festival was officially on March 8, but celebrations have been held throughout the month of March. According to Indo-Caribbean community member Hazel Maragh, who is a prominent marketing and community consultant for GraceKennedy Remittance Services, “The IndoCaribbean community in South Florida actually had six Pagwah events that were put on by the different Hindu temples.” Two of those South Florida-based Phagwah events included one on March 12 called Holi in the
THURSDAY MARCH 23, 2023
Sheryl Lee Ralph speaks out on being sexually assaulted in Hollywood By Micaiah Morgan CNW Writer This week, Emmy Award-winning, Jamaican actress Sheryl Lee Ralph revealed that she was sexually assaulted by a well-known television judge. The revelation was made during an interview with Angela Yee, a famous American media personality best known from her time on the popular, widely syndicated morning radio show, The Breakfast Club. Ralph was on Yee’s new show, Way Up, promoting her latest book, DIVA 2.0: 12 Life Lessons From Me For You, when she disclosed details about two situations where she was touched inappropriately and urged to keep quiet, while working as an actress in Hollywood. “There was one incident where it was
like the third time something like this had happened to me, and I thought to myself, ‘what did I do to deserve that… what made this man think that he could just come over and put his hands on my body,” Ralph said. She continued by saying that she confronted her abuser after running into him years later. “He sat down at the table across from me. He did not remember any of this, but I had to let him know what he did that night… He was right there, I had to confront him about it. Do you want to know what was the shocking part? Everybody around the table was appalled continues on B4 – Sheryl Lee Ralph
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