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Current News

Stacey Abrams – Our modern day heroine of the vote

A Spelman College graduate and attorney, Stacey Abrams responded to the sabotage of her run for governor of Georgia by bringing hundreds of thousands of people of color to the polls in time for the 2020 election. Stacey understands that our votes have the power to determine election outcomes. She understands that our people, when apprised of the facts, are most likely to use our strong family and cultural values to pick our leaders. People of color are now and have always been focused on The Big Truth. Our democracy is in danger of being lost because Republican politicians are giving up all sense of pride to keep power. In the adoption of The Big Lie, Trump supporters in government all over the United States are using the playbook of denial to keep racial apartheid in place.

One would think that access to the internet would cause politicians to hesitate to put out patently false rumors, knowing that we can just look up the facts. But the internet is flooded with misinformation and outright lies. Because her opponent in the Georgia race actually controlled the election in which over a million of likely democratic voters were disenfranchised, Ms. Abrams feels that the governorship was actually stolen from her. Republicans and their supporters in the state of Georgia continue maneuvering to reduce the potential of people of color to vote in upcoming elections. Not one to take her toys and quietly recede into the background, Stacey has come out fighting, with facts, education, and a strong sense of purpose and fairness. Stacey has shown us how to handle “defeat” with well managed power. A Yale Law School graduate, she is teaching us to claim and protect our votes, our “citizen’s gold”. Stacey’s Fair Fight team has mobilized, especially, the voices & votes of black women.

The next time you are challenged with resistance and defeat, think of sister Stacey. Do your homework. Think about what needs to change in order for the next brother or sister to claim their victories. If it’s as individual as your one vote or as sweeping as all the votes in your county, state or region, get out there and do your part!

Wow! What black women’s activism can do ala Stacey Abrams. Revel in her success. Follow her steps. Never again feel that you have no choices. That you can’t be heard. Look how Stacey did it. Our democracy survived (so far) because this former representative of the Georgia state house led the way to democratic victory.

Racism/Diversity

Grace standing in her truth

Photo by Jonathan Bachman
Photo by Jonathan Bachman

Fear blocks your ability to hear God

Ieshia Evans, a peaceful protester in Baton Rouge, LA demonstration in July, 2016 following the killings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota shows what faith looks like. Faith has no fear. Faith stands in the certainty of its truth. Ms. Evans, a 28 year old nurse and mother of a 6 year old son told Gayle King, CBS “This Morning” co-host, that it was a first demonstration for her.

Why she stood up

After watching the videos of  the two shootings and after the countless other police shootings of unarmed black men and women that she had heard about, she felt that she had to stand up for her people. Noting that her job is to take care of people and that she could even be the nurse who takes care of those policemen one day, she demonstrates for all the world what it looks like to show peacefully and powerfully that Black Lives Matter as all lives matter.

Lifestyle, Mind Health

How to feed your brain to make it last

Let’s face it…..every time you feed your body, you feed your brain. A well-fed brain can think clearly, make great decisions, handle stress and remember well.

A poorly-fed brain can’t remember, is impatient, is stuck in a cloud and can’t make decisions. Everything you eat affects you, so don’t you want to know which foods are best for your brain AND your body? You’ve met those people who look great but their brain is running on empty? With a
little know how and an eye for spotting fresh, home cooked, chemical-
free food, you can build your brain muscle and release the inner gunk
associated with Alzheimer’s and dementia. Oh, and with ADHD and
memory problems as well.

What’s really the best food?
Who knew that the best foods for you, now that you know the food pyramid misses the mark, are, u name it:  good ole greens, beans and veggies as close to fresh picked as you can get them. Organic produce is important because it is not grown with  pesticides, which  are potent cancer causers. With the widespread marketing of GMO foods (genetically-modified “Frankenfood” fruits and vegetables), it is doubly important that black folks and urban neighborhoods don’t become dumping grounds for pesticide-laden, old, poorly regulated and nutrient poor foods.

Food distributors know that they can unload lower quality foods in urban and immigrant neighborhoods. Check the expiration labels on the food products that you buy. For unpackaged foods, use your eyes and your nose. If you can smell the fish counter or the meat section from the front of the store, maybe you should go somewhere else. If you can smell
that a packaged food is rancid (old smelling), don’t use it. Packaged foods,
like nuts and crackers should be fresh.

What to look for
Now is the time to look for the stickers on fresh produce that says “Organic” or has a five digit code that begins with a number 9.  Let the manager at your local market know that you want high quality, organically grown, fresh produce. If a few people ask, they can order it for their produce section. Look for farmers markets with produce that is often picked the same day or the day before. Pay a little bit more or check out your local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) to buy a “farm-share” where you’ll get weekly deliveries of freshly harvested veggies from May to November for a lump sum payment. Check the prices of several farms but this usually averages $40 a week for the growing season for a family of four. They usually deliver to a drop off point like a church,  school or farmers market.

In the end, it’s less expensive
Fresh produce can be quickly cooked into a meal for 25% of the cost of processed, prepared foods and have four times the nutrition because it hasn’t been processed, baked, boiled, colored, preserved and sometimes, dried for packaging.

Follow health-conscious sister/brother bloggers
Vegan and healthy food bloggers, like Tracye McQuirter, will give you the details, recipes, facts and motivation for cooking up delicious, nutritious, “skintastic” and age defying meals! Join her movement to enroll Black
women in an 8 week campaign to change your life.

Also, check out The Afro-Vegan Society where Executive Director,
Brenda Sanders explains to you how your food choices can change
the black experience from one of poor health and limited opportu-
nity to one of extended longevity and boundless energy.

For Tracye’s new plan……
Books We're Reading, Racism/Diversity

“They Can’t Kill Us All” – A Washington Post reporter on shootings of unarmed black men

Wesley Lowery, reporter, author of "They Can't Kill Us All"
Wesley Lowery, reporter, author of “They Can’t Kill Us All”

“They Can’t Kill Us All; Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement
By Wesley Lowery,  Publisher: Little, Brown.

Something big is happening across the country and Washington post reporter, Wesley Lowery, is documenting it.  From Baltimore to Oakland, Ferguson to New York, Seattle to Miami, unarmed black men and women are being killed by the police.  The stories are starting to sound the same. The policmen “thought” they saw a gun, which turned out to be a book, a cell phone or simply a hand.  Guns and knives were “found” near the body but many victims were shot in the back.  Two weeks pass, the story falls out of the headlines, the world moves on. The story repeats itself in another city, with another mother’s son or daughter and another community is devastated and hardened.

Wesley Lowery has conducted hundreds of interviews, following these shootings during 2014 and 2015 from city to city. Against the backdrop of the first African American president, these shootings are increasing. Many were documented in cell phone videos yet 97% of these killings resulted in no charges against the police.

Mr. Lowery is a member of his newspaper’s Pulitzer prize-winning team and focuses in with precision clarity on a wave of assaults against the black body that Ta-Nehisi Coates outlined earlier in his book, “Between the World and Me”.

Books We're Reading, Racism/Diversity

We all need to read “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”

Gallery
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander - A must read for the parents of every young black man.
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander – A must read for the parents of every young black man.

Michele Alexander is a lawyer, legal scholar, advocate and  author who has written a comprehensive, well-researched examination of what is happening to our young men and women, to our families, to our future generations at the hands of the criminal justice system.

It seems that nearly every black family has a child, cousin, nephew or uncle who has been incarcerated. It’s happening to our college students, business professionals,  working dads & mothers, drug involved and not.  At every level, all over the country, black men, in particular, have been stopped and questioned multiple times. Now, that level of intrusion into black life is resulting in more than overwhelming legal costs and delayed goals for families. The fact that our men are constantly being sought out for examination of their being, is resulting in staggering numbers of deaths. We can no longer blame it on the boys, the neighborhood, our color. It is way bigger than that. We need to understand exactly what is happening and why. You cannot negotiate with an enemy that you cannot identify. This book identifies the problem AND the solutions.

Excerpt from the Introduction

Jarvious Cotton cannot vote. Like his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather, he has been denied the right to participate in our electoral democracy. Cotton’s family tree tells the story of several generations of black men who were born in the United States but who were denied the most basic freedom that democracy promises—the freedom to vote for those who will make the rules and laws that govern one’s life. Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Ku Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation. His father was barred from voting by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Jarvious Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole.

Cotton’s story illustrates, in many respects, the old adage “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” In each generation, new tactics have been used for achieving the same goals—goals shared by the Founding Fathers. Denying African Americans citizenship was deemed essential to the formation of the original union. Hundreds of years later, America is still not an egalitarian….(read more….)