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African Ancestral Lesbian United for Societal Change, or Salsa Soul Sisters, are an incredible womanist group who joined in 1974 to boost LGBTQIA+ rights in the diaspora; they have made a sanctuary for Black people under this umbrella since the Stonewall era

February Blog Index

Next Post: Individual's Impact


We move into February 2020, and from Africa to Black American communities here in the U.S...change is here.


Giphogo Pende mask from modern-day Democratic Republic of Congo; for ancestral communion

AFRICAN UPRISING

Sierra Leone has outlawed schools' banning pregnant students who were learning in separate, unequal facilities for only three or four days a week! The Economic Community of West African States chose to end the law immediately, though four different gender rights groups filed this lawsuit in 2018 to achieve this victory in January 2020 (x).

Cell.com dropped some knowledge about human emigration from Africa 200,000 years before scientists first predicted. Geneticists are divided on the issue. Older migrational routes doesn't necessarily affect the signal strength in continental African genomes. The New York Times weighs this latest evidence here.

Some changes were hard to believe, they happened so quickly. Disgusting anti-immigrant policies have banned Burma, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania from travelling to the United States. Eritrean Foreign Minister Osman Saleh Mohammed "found the move unacceptable" to say the least. Kyrgyzstan has openly spoken about soured relations (Reuters).

Nigeria's already formed a committee in response (x). Tanzanian government officials never received any notification about Proclamation 9645 before media release. No one was prepared, and international embarrassment is an understatement. Trump's denying millions a chance to start over. But they will.

Malawi's own constitutional Court decides whether the late Mutharika's votes should be annulled after a narrow 38.5% vote allowed for a second five-year presidency. These elections have drawn protests to the scale of 1960's anti-British resistance rallies (x).

"There is more that binds us than that which separates us. No matter which corner of this country we come from, we are a peace-loving people and we look out for each other." United Transformation Movement's Saulos Chilima reminded us from Lilongwe, the Malawian capital.

Desert locusts spread across eastern Africa (x): a premonition of further climate crisis. Crops from sorghum to wheat disappear in minutes. 35,000 people face famine from one swarm alone, and the insects head toward Ethiopia's Rift Valley so food security is more relevant than ever previously. Eco-news isn't all tragic for Africa however. Multiple Rwandan ministries invested in the Ecobrigade Youth Programme, and that's handed life skills to over 1,600 young farmers who learn buffer zones, progressive vs. radical terraces, and all about managing their finances (x).

OBSESSION WITH LESS-THAN-HONORABLE "HEROES"

Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna perished on January 26th in a Calabasas, CA helicopter accident with Alyssa, John and Keri Altobelli, Payton and Sarah Chester, Christina Mauser, and Ara Zabayan onboard. The world-acclaimed basketball star's life and family still is mourned this week. We honor their privacy to a point.

Kobe Bryant's sexual assault charges were dropped in 2003, and will not be wiped from the overall life story if we truly embrace accountability. What do we lose from posthumous praise? All future standards for discussing survivors and their safety, their lives are at risk. So let's approach this in a nuanced way.

Black men are subject to "plantation" mentalities that fetishize and demonize them for sexual freedom with anyone, especially white women who supremacy automatically assigns innocence in court. Imprisonment rates are almost six times as high for African-American adults than white ones. Simultaneously, Bryant had already said the encounter was not consensual in retrospect. Nurses' reports confirmed this. This was not a set-up. Will 2020 be the year that women's testimonies matter, more than male credibility?

Kelis touched on how necessary it is to specifically protect Black women in a recent Guardian interview. Her former label mates did not respect her creative or physical agency enough. Nas was an abusive partner.

"Well, I’m a very private person, and whether it’s the stuff with the Neptunes and being assaulted from a business perspective, to then being assaulted in the home, I fought so hard to have my own voice, even with the umbrella of these men looming over what I was trying to do.

I’m not broken. But I don’t feel like protecting the sanctity of the black man any more." Amen to that, 2020 and beyond. America has yet to face its classist, racist past, just like Black patriarchy must be confronted whether it manifests in the NBA or the music industry (x). We must do better for Black femmes, non-binary people and women who speak up on their experiences. Don't silence.

A new dawn, a new day comes. The Black community will be the vanguard for healing actions, and ending war. So learn about someone who led revolutions and changed our lives: Ella Josephine Baker, a Norfolk hero, the intersectional organizer with 60 years' dedication to "a revolution of Black economic and political power".

Ella Baker had drafted and taught financial literacy programs for Harlem's low-income mothers. Her founding role in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee covered all revolutionary bases from artistic activism, financial freedom, independent parties and civil liberty exercises explicitly for stopping McCarthyism and the Klan to voter rights and health (Inside SNCC). There is so much love that Black women have given as activism.


Black Radical Tradition

Individual's Impact

Revolutionary Reassurance


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