MsConcerned's Manifesto

Tag: Black History

  • The Power of Kitchen-Table Conversations

    The Power of Kitchen-Table Conversations

    Good evening, family. Let me talk to you the way we talk to each other not in the language that floats over our heads like Charlie Brown’s teacher, but in the language that lands on MLK Blvd, in the language that reaches the porch, the pew, the bus stop, the break room, the places where real life happens.

    Because I’ve been watching something. And I’ve been feeling something. And I’ve been carrying something in my throat so heavy I joked I needed Kaopectate just to swallow it down.

    See… every time somebody shows up with a message meant for us, the people with alphabet soup after their names — the PhDs, the JDs, the MBAs, the “I‑studied-you-but-I-don’t-know-you” crowd — they pour a royal king’s cup of lard all over the moment. They make it slippery. They make it messy. They make it impossible for folk to grab onto the truth.

    And then they wonder why nobody heard it.

    Let me tell you why.

    Because the message wasn’t spoken in our language.

    Because the message wasn’t shaped for our lived reality.

    Because the message wasn’t carried by somebody who knows what it feels like to be followed around the beauty supply store buying $134 worth of “natural hair” products from people who don’t even wear the hair they’re selling.

    Because the message wasn’t shaped for people who’ve been told for 14 years they can’t have more than $5 in savings and then punished for not magically crossing the bridge the moment the rule changed.

    Because the message wasn’t shaped for people who’ve been abandoned, dismissed, overlooked, and then told to perform perfection the moment somebody steps on a stage.

    And let me say this gently — when Kamala walked into that church with 90 days on the clock, fresh out of political ER, folk didn’t hear her. Not because she didn’t speak. Not because she didn’t identify her lineage. Not because she didn’t stand in her truth. But because hurt people hear through hurt filters. Suspicious people hear through suspicious filters. Tired people hear through tired filters.

    And the alphabet‑soup crowd didn’t translate. They didn’t bridge. They didn’t connect the micro to the macro. They didn’t say, “Let me meet you where you are.” They said, “Let me talk to you like you already live where I live.”

    That’s not how you reach folk.

    That’s not how you build trust.

    That’s not how you break generational silence.

    And that’s not how you speak to people who’ve been carrying cages inside their chests longer than some of these experts have been alive.

    I know that cage. I’ve been in that cage. I’ve spoken from inside that cage. And sometimes, when I get on a roll, I can feel the bars rattling — because I’m still trying to break out while explaining the architecture of the prison.

    But let me tell you something tonight:

    We don’t need Wall Street language. We don’t need think‑tank language. We don’t need “policy summit” language. We don’t need the curse of knowledge.

    We need folk language. We need porch language. We need kitchen-table language. We need “let me tell you what’s really going on” language.

    Because when the message is spoken in the language of the people, the people hear it. And when the people hear it, the people move. And when the people move, the whole landscape shifts — not because somebody told them to, but because they finally understood what was being said.

    Tonight, I’m not here to predict anything. I’m not here to tell anybody what to do. I’m not here to speak for any candidate or any party. I’m here to speak for folk — the ones who live the consequences of decisions made in rooms they’ll never enter.

    I’m here to say: If you want to reach us, speak to us. Not at us. Not around us. Not above us.

    Speak to us.

    Because when you speak to folk in their own language, they don’t just hear you — they feel you.

    And when they feel you, they move.

    Thank you.

    The content published on this blog reflects journalistic commentary and personal opinion and is protected under the right to Freedom of Speech pursuant to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution (ratified in 1791).

  • Reparations for Black Americans: Here’s what some state and local governments are doing | CNN

    Reparations for Black Americans: Here’s what some state and local governments are doing | CNN

    Reparations for Black Americans: Here’s what some state and local governments are doing | CNN

  • OnPolitics: Virginia elects its first Black woman to Congress. What’s next?

    OnPolitics: Virginia elects its first Black woman to Congress. What’s next?

    OnPolitics: Virginia elects its first Black woman to Congress. What’s next?

  • Black History – CRT – 020123

    36 states have restricted education on racism, bias, the contributions of specific racial or ethnic groups to U.S. history, or related topics.

    The true measure of public education is how well it teaches students to function in a democratic, pluralistic society.

    Brown v. Board of Education, Southern school districts that were intentionally segregated were subject to constitutional remedies that were supervised by the federal court. many re-segregated after changes in the law made it easier for federal courts to release them from supervision. In other parts of the country where cities were segregated—but not by law—the only way to integrate was through metropolitan desegregation plans that crossed into the suburbs. But the 1974 United States Supreme Court case Milliken v. Bradley, limited the power of federal courts to order integration across school district boundaries.

  • The Perils of Riding the #Bus

  • Edwin Pratt – Did You Know?

    Edwin Pratt – Did You Know?

    On a snowy night in 1969, Edwin was shot in his home, while Miriam and her mother, Bettye, were inside.

    “I remember, I heard my mother cry ‘Edwin!’ and I sat up in the bed, and I was immediately engulfed in fear,” Miriam, now 55, tells Jean.

    Jean and her mother were Pratts’ neighbors. They rushed over after receiving a phone call from Bettye.

    “When I saw that front door was open, I knew. I knew,” says Jean, who was 21 at the time. “I’ll never forget walking into that family room and I could see your dad laying there and, of course, he was totally still. He died instantly.”

    Jean Soliz and Miriam Pratt raise fists a few months after Edwin Pratt’s assassination in 1969. Inspired by Edwin and his wife Bettye, who had been a social worker, Jean went on to have a career in social services.

    Jean ran and got Miriam from her room. For Miriam, that’s when “I knew everything was going to be alright,” she says.

    Edwin had spent his last day playing with his daughter. “He played snowballs with you and took you on your little sled and spent that whole day with you,” Jean tells Miriam. “Which I think is a marvelous thing.”

    After his death, Miriam’s mom didn’t talk much about Edwin, because it made her sad. Miriam was able to learn about him through a photo album that Bettye had put together. It was filled with newspaper clippings, obituaries, and personal pictures of Edwin.

    What’s different about this story is what this little girl did all because she walked past a plaque for Edwin Pratt

    NPR

  • #WebsterGrove

    #WebsterGrove

    At the end of the Civil War, many black families, formerly enslaved, found their way to Webster Groves. They began to settle on Vinegar Hill and along Shady Creek. One of these persons was Ken Lankford, who was a preacher. He began preaching, just after the war in 1865, in a brush arbor, alongside Shady Creek. The trees there also provided shade for those who attended his services.

    A year later, in 1866, William Porter helped to formally organize the church and it became the First Baptist Church of Webster Groves. Allen Brown contributed the first $25 for the church building, which had 18 other original members. Those members built the first church in their community, making sure it had a tall foundation because of its location near Shady Creek. Churches have long been a part of creating a community, and the First Baptist Church of Webster Groves did the same in North Webster.

    The year that the First Baptist Church of Webster Groves was created, an English woman came through Webster Groves on a mission to establish schools for black children throughout Missouri. She was working for the assistant state superintendent of public schools, James Milton Turner, who was in charge of postwar black schools. Mrs. Dotwell, as she is only recorded, began the first school for black children in Webster Groves at the First Baptist Church in 1866 and taught black children there until the Webster Groves School District undertook its responsibility in 1868. At that time, there were 30 children in North Webster eligible to attend between the ages of 5 and 21. The school later became known as Douglass and the church still stands, albeit, in a new building.

  • #Juneteenth Never Forget

    #Juneteenth Never Forget

    Juneteenth is a holiday celebrating the liberation of those who had been held as slaves in the United States. Originally a Texas state holiday, it is now celebrated annually on the 19th of June throughout the United States.

  • What Have We Accomplished By Protesting

    👉🏾Within 10 days of sustained protests:
    Minneapolis bans use of choke holds.

    👉🏾Charges are upgraded against Officer Chauvin, and his accomplices are arrested and charged.

    👉🏾Dallas adopts a “duty to intervene” rule that requires officers to stop other cops who are engaging in inappropriate use of force.

    👉🏾New Jersey’s attorney general said the state will update its use-of-force guidelines for the first time in two decades.

    👉🏾In Maryland, a bipartisan work group of state lawmakers announced a police reform work group.

    👉🏾Los Angeles City Council introduces motion to reduce LAPD’s $1.8 billion operating budget.

    👉🏾MBTA in Boston agrees to stop using public buses to transport police officers to protests.

    👉🏾Police brutality captured on cameras leads to near-immediate suspensions and firings of officers in several cities (i.e., Buffalo, Ft. Lauderdale).

    👉🏾Monuments celebrating confederates are removed in cities in Virginia, Alabama, and other states.

    👉🏾Street in front of the White House is renamed “Black Lives Matter Plaza.”
    Military forces begin to withdraw from D.C.

    Then, there’s all the other stuff that’s hard to measure:

    💓The really difficult public and private conversations that are happening about race and privilege.

    💓The realizations some white people are coming to about racism and the role of policing in this country.

    💓The self-reflection.

    💓The internal battles exploding within organizations over issues that have been simmering or ignored for a long time. Some organizations will end as a result, others will be forever changed or replaced with something stronger and fairer.

    Globally:

    🌎 Protests against racial inequality sparked by the police killing of George Floyd are taking place all over the world.

    🌎 Rallies and memorials have been held in cities across Europe, as well as in Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand.

    🌎 As the US contends with its second week of protests, issues of racism, police brutality, and oppression have been brought to light across the globe.

    🌎 People all over the world understand that their own fights for human rights, for equality and fairness, will become so much more difficult to win if we are going to lose America as the place where ‘I have a dream’ is a real and universal political program,” Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador to the US, told the New Yorker.

    🌎 In France, protesters marched holding signs that said “I can’t breathe” to signify both the words of Floyd, and the last words of Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old black man who was subdued by police officers and gasped the sentence before he died outside Paris in 2016.

    🌎 Cities across Europe have come together after the death of George Floyd:

    ✊🏽 In Amsterdam, an estimated 10,000 people filled the Dam square on Monday, holding signs and shouting popular chants like “Black lives matter,” and “No justice, no peace.”

    ✊🏽 In Germany, people gathered in multiple locations throughout Berlin to demand justice for Floyd and fight against police brutality.

    ✊🏾 A mural dedicated to Floyd was also spray-painted on a stretch of wall in Berlin that once divided the German capital during the Cold War.

    ✊🏿 In Ireland, protesters held a peaceful demonstration outside of Belfast City Hall, and others gathered outside of the US embassy in Dublin.

    ✊🏿In Italy, protesters gathered and marched with signs that said “Stop killing black people,” “Say his name,” and “We will not be silent.”

    ✊🏾 In Spain, people gathered to march and hold up signs throughout Barcelona and Madrid.

    ✊🏾 In Athens, Greece, protesters took to the streets to collectively hold up a sign that read “I can’t breathe.”

    ✊🏾 In Brussels, protesters were seen sitting in a peaceful demonstration in front of an opera house in the center of the city.

    ✊🏾In Denmark, protesters were heard chanting “No justice, no peace!” throughout the streets of Copenhagen, while others gathered outside the US embassy.

    ✊🏾 In Canada, protesters were also grieving for Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a 29-year-old black woman who died on Wednesday after falling from her balcony during a police investigation at her building.

    ✊🏾 And in New Zealand, roughly 2,000 people marched to the US embassy in Auckland, chanting and carrying signs demanding justice.

    💐 Memorials have been built for Floyd around the world, too. In Mexico City, portraits of him were hung outside the US embassy with roses, candles, and signs.

    💐 In Poland, candles and flowers were laid out next to photos of Floyd outside the US consulate.

    💐 And in Syria, two artists created a mural depicting Floyd in the northwestern town of Binnish, “on a wall destroyed by military planes.”

    Before the assassination of George Floyd some of you were able to say whatever the hell you wanted and the world didn’t say anything to you…

    THERE HAS BEEN A SHIFT, AN AWAKENING…MANY OF YOU ARE BEING EXPOSED FOR WHO YOU REALLY ARE. #readthatagain

    Don’t wake up tomorrow on the wrong side of this issue. Its not to late to SAY,

    “maybe I need to look at this from a different perspective.

    Maybe I don’t know what its like to be Black in America…

    Maybe, just maybe, I have been taught wrong.”

    There is still so much work to be done. It’s been a really dark, raw week. This could still end badly. But all we can do is keep doing the work.

    Keep protesting.

    WE ARE NOT TRYING TO START A RACE WAR; WE ARE PROTESTING TO END IT,
    PEACEFULLY.

    How beautiful is that?

    ALL LIVES CANNOT MATTER UNTIL YOU INCLUDE BLACK LIVES.

    YOU CANNOT SAY ‘ALL LIVES MATTER’ WHEN YOU DO NOTHING TO STOP SYSTEMIC RACISM & POLICE BRUTALITY.

    YOU CANNOT SAY ‘ALL LIVES MATTER’ WHEN BLACK PEOPLE ARE DYING AND ALL YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT IS THE LOOTING.

    YOU CANNOT SAY ‘ALL LIVES MATTER’ WHEN YOU ALLOW CHILDREN TO BE CAGED, VETERANS TO GO HOMELESS, AND POOR FAMILIES TO GO HUNGRY & LOSE THEIR HEALTH INSURANCE.

    DO ALL LIVES MATTER? YES. BUT RIGHT NOW, ONLY BLACK LIVES ARE BEING TARGETED, JAILED, AND KILLED EN MASSE- SO THAT’S WHO WE’RE FOCUSING ON.

    🖤🖤🖤BLACK LIVES MATTER🖤🖤🖤

    IF YOU CAN’T SEE THIS, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

  • Doris Davis #Compton

    Until 2013, Davis was the only female mayor in Compton’s history. On June 4, 2013, Aja Brownwas elected as Compton’s 2nd female mayor and the city’s youngest mayor. In 2004, Alita Godwin became only the second black woman to serve as Compton City Clerk.

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