Sound crazy…?  Not really… some of you may have heard the recent news about the possibility of government agencies stepping in to take extremely overweight children away from their parents…

Yep, a recent article on MSNBC entitled Should parents lose custody of super obese kids? talks about how a growing number of folks, including some established doctors, say putting children temporarily in foster care can be more ethical than having them subjected to obesity surgery…

…in other words, they’re arguing that the government should be allowed to remove obese children from their homes…

I don’t know about this, guys… any time you talk about the state taking children from homes, it is a serious issue… especially in our community where we are already justifiably concerned about efforts to break up the black family…

Still, the discussion does raise some interesting questions, like, Who is ultimately responsible for the eating habits and related health of overweight children? And, If the parents are held liable or accountable, what type of measures or actions are appropriate?

Well, let’s first look at the scale of the problem in our community… roughly a quarter of African American children and adolescents in the United States between 6 and 17 have been identified as overweight… and unfortunately, poor dietary practices and health habits are often passed down from generation to generation…

…and this can lead to type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high levels of blood fats and high cholesterol which, in turn, are all risk factors for heart disease and stroke, much more common in our community…

…and such obesity-related diseases have some doctors promoting weight-loss surgery for severely obese teens while others feel state intervention is necessary…

One doctor had a 90-pound, 3-year-old girl brought into his clinic briefly only to return at age 12, weighing 400 pounds and suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure and sleep apnea… Her parents were poor, had physical disabilities, and obvious difficulty controlling her weight…

The girl was removed from the home and placed in foster care where she received three balanced meals a day and moderate physical activity… After a year, though still obese, she lost 130 pounds and her diabetes and apnea disappeared…

Now, for me, it still doesn’t quite justify taking children from their homes… obviously the parents were dealing with some serious issues themselves and could have likely used some help and education on how to take care of their daughter…

I mean, couldn’t the same or less money be spent by the state to have someone counsel or assist the family in nutrition a few times a week at home as opposed to the amount spent on keeping her in foster care…? You think?

Okay, enough said. Time for you to weigh in and let us know what you think about this – shall we say – weighty issue… Text us here at 64-64-64 and tell us if you believe that: 1) super obese children should be taken from their parents; or 2) the children should stay, but with mandatory family nutrition counseling; or 3) the parents should be punished by locking them in a room for 24 hours with a large screen TV with surround-sound looping last week’s Republican presidential debate; or 4) tell us your own idea on how to best handle super-obese children…

Think about it… imagine these are your children or relatives…We want to hear from you…

I’ll close with this Lee Haney quote:

“More than ever, we as parents and a nation must do something about the growth of obesity in our children. We must do more than just talk, we must be concerned enough to act.”

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

Accompanied by former slaves, Cary sailed to a small coastal region in western Africa with the intent of establishing a colony for the formerly enslaved… this territory would later become the nation of Liberia…

Now fast forward to Liberia in 1990, a country of 3 million people embroiled in a horrific and lengthy civil war that would ultimately take over 250,000 lives and trash its national economy…

A five-year old girl by the name of Wayetu (Wah-YAY-2) Moore, along with her father and two sisters flee the Liberian capitol of Monrovia and head north on foot amidst masses of traumatized war victims, flying bullets and the roadside remains of dead families, to stay alive…

Each day, while hiding from warring factions, Wayetu and her sisters join their father on the floor of their hiding quarters to read, listen to him read  and practice their writing…

Unlike those missionaries who colonized the country two centuries before, the Moore family eventually takes the opposite path, from Liberia to the United States…

Once in the states, the family happily reunites with their mother who had left a year earlier to study as a Fulbright scholar at Columbia University Teachers College in NY… but things were far from easy for the father.  He longed for his Liberian home, a home where his education had given him an advanced social and financial status…

The elder Moore now left the cramped college dorm they lived in early each morning to look for work, often unsuccessfully… He took odd jobs, far below his educational level, just to keep food on the table for his growing family…

Even so, he would return home each night and, along with his wife, ensure that Wayetu and her siblings had new words to write in their spiral notebooks…

Well, let’s fast forward again to today where Wayetu, now 27 years old, has started a remarkable family business aimed at keeping children reading and writing around the world…

She is the publisher of One Moore Book, a company that publishes culturally sensitive and educational stories for children of countries with low literacy rates …

One Moore Book, which is celebrating its one year anniversary this month, has hired all four of Wayetu’s siblings as writers or illustrators and has been featured in The Huffington Post, The Economist, MSN and The Houston Chronicle… Wayetu was also invited to speak at Harvard last spring on integrating education and commerce…

The company has successfully published and distributed 7 children’s paperback and digital books, and has formed distribution partnerships with non-profits like Worldreader.org, an organization that sends eReaders to impoverished schools in Kenya and Ghana…

…and Wayetu recently launched a new website that publishes other writers of multicultural children’s literature as well…

You can go to onemoorebook.com to support Wayetu’s family book business and literacy programs…

Her commitment to give back to children, not only in her native land but around the world, is truly inspiring and a direct result of the support and inspiration her father gave her…

I leave you with Wayetu’s words:

“I will never be able to give my father back the twenty years he spent working to educate us, or the home and life in Liberia he lost. I repay his sacrifice by honoring the education he fought for and offering my art to the world, with stories that make the histories and narratives of my people come alive, with words to live by and a legacy I promise I will not disappoint.”

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

…and with all the talk about the importance of social networking these days, I’ve been thinking if he were alive today, would Dr. King be on Facebook? Imagine him at home in the ATL, sitting in front of a computer with loosened tie uploading pictures of himself, Mrs. King and their children on his wall, and posting videos of marches and excerpts of his favorite speeches for Facebook friends?

How about Twitter? What would he tweet? And given his propensity for lengthy speeches, would he have started a global movement to overturn Twitter’s original 140-character restriction?

Of course, I’m sure he would have appeared on the TJMS to discuss the issues of the day… but afterwards, if someone said something about him he didn’t like, would he text oh-oh-oh to let us know?

Maybe not… but all of this speculation does raise a more profound question… Could Dr. King’s message actually be delivered effectively in our technology-obsessed age? Or would it be spliced, chopped and remixed into sound bites, devoid of its original substance and meaning?

What we do know is that Dr. King’s message and legacy are still affecting people and movements around the world… We can look at the recent examples in several Arab nations where King’s words were trumpeted during popular uprisings or where We Shall Overcome, the song most associated with him, was played in the streets…

That said, it could certainly be argued that Dr. King’s words and legacy are being used these days in more superficial ways that do not necessarily capture the essence of his life or his agenda… we heard talk about this in the debates surrounding the recent dedication of the King Memorial in DC…

So would Dr. King have been encouraged by the explosion of technology, social networking and its use in current movements on the world stage, or would he be deeply concerned about the loss of time for real reflection and critical thinking, and at how impersonal, shallow, and mechanical communication has become?

Well, I obviously am not sure about the answers to these questions, but it is certainly something to think about… In fact, because of modern technology, we can do more than think about it… Text us here at 64-64-64 (oh-oh-oh) to tell us what issues in particular you think Dr. King, if he were alive, would be texting about today…

What we do know for sure is that Dr. King was a deep and critical thinker… and his thinking, combined with his moral obligation to God and humanity, compelled him to speak out and act upon his thoughts and principles…

…and while he may well have found a way to communicate the essence of his message to the world’s masses even with today’s shorter attention spans, Twitter character limits, and real-time technologies, I think Dr. King, in his unique and eloquent way, would have certainly reminded us of our human capacity for – and responsibility to engage in– careful and critical thought, and substantial, meaningful communication…

I think he would have pushed us to resist technologies that encourage quick sound bites and the splicing and tweeting of complex ideas – I think he would have challenged us to think deeply.  And he would have pushed us to really engage with one another in thoughtful, difficult, and often lengthy, conversations and debates… in the quest for just and lasting solutions…

As always, his words say it best:

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

Some folks who believe in the so-called “Mayan Calendar,” which ends in December of 2012, think that that will be the ‘end times’ or the end of life on this planet as we know it…

…while some people will get caught up in world-ending prophecies, I recently came across a fascinating news item that had me thinking about the importance of planning when it comes to end of life issues…

Case in point: 21-year old Sam Schmid, a student at the University of Arizona thought to be brain dead after being critically hurt in a car accident in October, suddenly awoke from a coma just as he was being considered for organ donation…

As doctors prepared to take Schmid off of life support, he began to respond to their commands and hold up fingers upon request… Today, he is walking with a walker, speaking well, and doctors are expecting a full recovery… a miraculous story and perfectly-timed holiday blessing…

This story brings to mind some very important questions… like ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ orders.

A “Do Not Resuscitate” or “DNR” is a legal order respecting the patient’s earlier wishes to not undergo life preserving measures if their heart stops beating, or if they stop breathing…

If there had been a DNR in place, Schmid’s doctors could have justifiably taken him off of life support while he was unresponsive given the elapsed time and the severity of his brain injuries… and we wouldn’t be talking about Schmid right now… since he’d be dead…

To clarify, with a DNR, a patient, once off of life support is left to die regardless of how they fare… meaning even if they start breathing strongly on their own and becoming responsive, caregivers are not allowed to feed or assist them in any way…

And, given that the decision to resuscitate or not resuscitate is played out weekly in hospitals across the country, what are the implications of such a stunning modern-day holiday miracle?

The obvious thing that comes to mind is that our knowledge of life, health and our brains is limited – and medicine is not an exact science… there is so much more for us to know and learn about what our bodies and brains can do, and about what is humanly possible…

While “Quality of Life” considerations are very important, and most who elect DNRs are concerned about existing in a “vegetative state” or as a “burden” to others, we should at least be clear that the nature of life is unpredictable and that miracles can happen at any time… After all, isn’t that what the word ‘faith’ is all about?

So going into this new year, with all its uncertainties, what can we do to ensure our wishes, whatever they may be, are clear for our doctors and loved ones?

Well, we can prepare a Living Will (or Advance Directive), a legal document making known our wishes regarding life prolonging medical treatments in the event we cannot speak for ourselves, and we should make sure we fully understand what our wishes would mean in action…

For more information on this, do an internet search on Living Wills … it’s always good to be aware and prepare for things like this, not for the sake of worrying about tragedy or dying, but to free ourselves to focus on the miracle and joy of living…

…and as we march into 2012, I’ll leave you with this forward-looking quote that speaks to the value and sanctity of life even with all the curveballs it sometimes throws at us…

Although I may not be able to prevent the worst from happening, I am responsible for my attitude toward the inevitable misfortunes that darken life… I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness… or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself.”

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

Martina died last Thursday at age 44 after a long battle with cancer… And despite her illness, she championed the fight to save the life of her late brother who was ultimately put to death for a crime many of us felt he did not commit…

It’s very sad on a number of levels… and my condolences go out to her family once again…

That said, today, rather than focus on a case where many felt the law failed to step in and prevent an injustice, I’m going to talk about another case out of Georgia where the law did step in…

By now, many of you have likely heard about 103 year-old Vinia Hall who was scheduled to be evicted from her home of 53 years this past week after a court approved notice was delivered to her northwest Atlanta residence…

Fulton County sheriff’s deputies and movers were sent to the home to kick out Ms. Hall and her 83-year-old daughter after her grandson, the owner, was unable to make regular payments… but upon arriving at the tiny home and seeing the elderly woman, the deputies refused to go through with the order…

When news got out of the incident, community leaders, neighbors and elected officials rallied around Ms. Hall, leading Chase Bank to announce it would work out a deal and let her and her daughter stay in their home…

This story has been a source of encouragement to a number of groups who want the banks to declare a halt on foreclosures… especially for the holiday season…

This would be a good thing since banks are projected to repossess some 800,000 homes this year… Even more troubling is the fact that the number of homes in the United States that received first-time default notices during the July to September quarter has increased 14% from the previous quarter…

This increase is a strong sign that banks are now moving more aggressively against borrowers who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments…

…and these measures are especially disruptive during the holiday season … But, thankfully, A few banks have already agreed to a moratorium…

What we can do to help the situation is reach out to our elected officials and our own banks to demand they declare a moratorium on foreclosures this holiday season…

…because we certainly don’t need any more grandmas, or anyone else for that matter, out on the streets during Christmas…

So whoever you bank with, if they or their parent institutions are foreclosing on folks during these holidays, tell them they need to stop or you’ll consider banking elsewhere…

Because, just like the Hall incident, sometimes it’s the spirit of the law, or the simple decency of those who enforce it that can far exceed any policy, ruling or legal right to act…

For as they say, “Ultimately, our laws are only as good as those who make and enforce them.”

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

Of course, there are the recent allegations against presidential candidate Herman Cain…

… but even worse are the unfolding events at Penn State, where college football icon, Joe Paterno, was recently fired after 46 years of coaching …

You know, Tom, over the past three years on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, I’ve talked about a wide variety of subjects…and some of them have been very difficult …

But one of the most difficult topics for me to talk about is the sexual abuse of a child… the allegation that an adult would violate the innocence of a child in that way is sick and disgusting…

…and yes, although Coach Paterno apparently didn’t break any laws and did the minimum required in reporting the abuse, he should still be held fully accountable for not doing more to protect and advocate for that particular child, as well as for all of the past and potential young victims of Sandusky…

…and his conscience should haunt him for the remainder of his days for not doing so…

But, that said, I also want us to recognize that, while this particular case is now in the public eye, what about the countless other incidents involving the sexual abuse of minors that occur each and every day in this country and go unreported? Who is speaking up for these children…?

It is commonly known among health professionals that sexual abuse often has long term and devastating effects on the victim, including a loss of trust, poor self esteem, feelings of shame, guilt and depression, substance abuse, suicide, promiscuity, anxiety, and criminality…

A National Institute of Justice study found that childhood abuse increased the odds of future delinquency and criminality by 40%… In addition, victims of child sexual abuse are 27 times more likely to be arrested for prostitution as adults…

So if nothing is done about it, this horrific cycle continues with the very real possibility of those being abused becoming abusers or criminals themselves… To learn more about child sexual abuse and how to prevent it and break this cycle, you can go to stopitnow.org…

Now, I’m sure many of you remember the powerful movie directed by Denzel Washington awhile back named Antwone Fisher, in which the movie’s namesake was victimized by sexual abuse as a young boy…

Well, I’d like to close this week with an excerpt from the poem Fisher wrote that, speaks of the suffering, pain, and stigma of lost innocence, of stolen childhoods, as a result of the sexual abuse of children across the world…

Who will cry for the little boy?
Lost and all alone
Who will cry for the little boy?
Abandoned without his own

Who will cry for the little boy?
He cried himself to sleep
Who will cry for the little boy?
He never had for keeps…

Who will cry for the little boy?
Who knows well hurt and pain
Who will cry for the little boy?
He died again and again.

Who will cry for the little boy?
A good boy he tried to be
Who will cry for the little boy
who cries inside of me.

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

As children, the impact of our relationships with our parents is critical and foundational for our later growth for who we ultimately become…

Our relationships with our family, in general, our siblings and friends are equally important; and our relationships with our significant others are often a reflection of who we are and what we want, and can have a very strong influence on how we fare and what we accomplish in life…

So why am I talking about this? …Well, I was recently online at thebooklook.com looking at a clip of rapper/actor and now author, Common, talking about relationships in light of his recently-released autobiography, One Day it will All Make Sense…

In particular, he spoke about his past relationship with songstress Erykah Badu…

…and though he starts off by complimenting Erykah on the beautiful individual she is, Common goes on to say that, through their relationship, he allowed himself to quote-unquote “dim his light” for her…

He suggests this relationship caused him to forego opportunities he may otherwise have had if he hadn’t been in that relationship…

hmm… I wonder how many of us have experienced the same? How many of us have been in a relationship where we’ve suppressed our ambitions or our dreams for the sake of our mate, friend or family?

Think about it… have you ever been there? Or are you there now…?

Now, to clarify, I am NOT trying to have TJMS listeners coming after me screaming that their wife, husband or mate left them because Stephanie Robinson told them to…

But what I am saying is that within or beyond a relationship, you should always seek to follow your passions, achieve your goals, and strive for your own truth, fulfillment, and success…

…and it may not be that our significant others are hindering or preventing us from doing things; it may just be that we never really took the time to prioritize what is important to us…

This is something you should do… the late technology icon, Steve Jobs, who knew a thing or two about pursuing his dreams, once said, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

…very smart words from a very smart man…

For any relationship to be truly fulfilling, both individuals should make the time and effort to acknowledge and pursue their dreams for themselves and for each other…

Coming together in this fashion greatly adds to the health of a friendship or relationship and minimizes the chance for the tension and resentment that can sometimes grow when envy sets in between individuals…

In his recent book talk, Common went on to reconcile his own feelings on his former high profile relationship with these relevant and inspirational words:

Through the relationship and breakup, it taught me that I was willing to dim my light for somebody else… and it is not necessary for you to do that in any relationship, be it family, friends, or whoever. God gave you your light and it is up to you to let that light shine on the world.

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

I ask because there’s been a lot of talk in the media about “baby bumps” and a lot of eyebrows raised over pictures of pregnant celebs like Nia Long, Beyonce, Mariah Carey and others…

And let me clarify, unlike Nia and Mariah, the pregnant Beyonce did NOT pose nude… but that still did not stop a journalist from recently taking the songstress to task for allegedly pimping her bump …

So… while I don’t agree with that criticism because Beyonce has always been clothed in her pregnancy photos, I do think that the charge of pimping the bump could potentially hold more weight when targeted at those who have, in fact, posed with their bumps in the buff… Nia, Mariah and Halle to name a few…

But is it really baby pimpin’ or is it an artistic expression of motherhood by women who already live very public lives…?

Well, on one side, there is certainly a lot of press value in posing nude… and pregnant… Let’s not be naïve about how a bare baby bump can bump up a sagging career…

…especially for a 40-something year-old actress or singer in a Hollywood environment not kind to aging women… and definitely not kind to aging African American women…

But the answer may not be that simple… there are other sides to the issue…these women are already used to living their lives publicly… To a large extent, their careers are built around their relevance to their fan bases and for some, sharing aspects of their private lives is, for better or worse, a big part of what they do… Can you say ‘Twitter?’

Not to mention the fact that these individuals are not just celebrities, but they are women as well… mothers, sisters, wives and daughters… and they too like to celebrate and share their pregnancy with others like many of the billions of women around the world…

That said, how far should this sharing go? In other words, where is the line between pimping the bump and celebrating the precious and divine gift of life…?

To be totally honest, I don’t know the answer to that question… I can’t crawl into Nia’s or Mariah’s minds and see what they were thinking when they decide to pose…

But even with the obvious media boost it provides, I’d like to think these celebrities are tapping in to the wonder of maternity and promoting the beauty of this natural process to the world…

I’d like to think their intentions are honorable and that they are making a statement to women everywhere that, despite their sex symbol images, they are not ashamed of showing the world the beauty of the natural body that come with pregnancy…one of life’s most amazing miracles…

I’ll leave you with the words of a mother, not a celebrity mom, who also posed nude during her pregnancy… they come from The Mocha Manual to a Fabulous Pregnancy in a piece by Mocha Moms’ National President Kuae Mattox:

As I stood on those tracks and removed my coat, I remember a rush of cold air swept over my body. There were those few moments of self-consciousness when I wondered if any early morning commuters were watching. Then…, as the shutter clicked away, a sheer feeling of liberation.

What ultimately became the photo we selected still brings tears to my eyes. It is a portrait of calm, beauty and grace I will never forget… When I look at it, I am that pregnant woman again, full of optimism and hope for my children, feeling whole, at peace with my life and myself. One day, I will show my picture to my children, with the hope that they, too, will feel the beauty that I felt as they grew inside of me…

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

The coach at Fenger High School turned himself in to police and was charged with assault after bringing more than 20 students to the home of 16-year old Darion Jones, where they violently beat him in front of his mother while an asst. coach stood by and watched…

Among his injuries, Jones sustained damage to his prosthetic eye and had a tooth knocked out…

I bring this incident up today, not only because it is so horrible, but also because as many of you may recall Fenger High was in the news two years ago for another tragic beating…

Yes, this is the same Fenger High School attended by the late Derrion Albert where, in September of 2009, the brutal killing of this 16-year-old was caught on video as he was beaten, kicked and smacked with railroad ties about a half-mile from the school…

Albert was an innocent honor student caught in a conflict between two rival neighborhood factions who would bully, harass and target students as they walked to and from Fenger High…

I also bring these incidents up today, because October is Bullying Prevention Awareness Month… There are a number of events that have been going on this month as part of the national discussion on bullying…

As you know, bullying can come in many forms: verbal, physical, or even via the Internet… It affects the victim’s self-image, relationships, health, and even their school performance; dropout rates and absences among victims of bullying are much higher than among other students…

…and the bullies themselves can also be negatively impacted… Studies show that children identified as bullies by age eight are six times more likely to have a criminal conviction by age 24; and they are more prone to becoming child and spouse abusers later in life….

You can get more info on bullying and how to prevent it in your community, by going online to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network at nctsn.org and click on the Bullying Prevention Awareness Month tag…

A good amount of press has been devoted to the issue of bullying …

A recent article in particular, written by a brother who writes for the NY Times, Charles M. Blow, powerfully personalizes the terror of bullying…

Blow tells how he considered taking his own life outside of a skating rink when he was eight years old… He’d been the victim of ongoing bullying and was suffering from associated headaches, and was standing outside of the rink with a bottle of aspirin debating whether to take two for the headache or swallow the entire bottle…

He writes poignantly about how his mother used to love to sing and how he recalled her voice and her songs at the moment he would have taken his life, and how her gift of song saved him…

He writes about how his mother’s singing would lull him to sleep during those difficult times, times he never told her about, as he penned these words:

“Bullying isn’t just a harmless game. It can be a deadly one, and we need to be reminded of that constantly. You never know how your words are affecting another person. Sometimes they don’t tell. I never told.

Like many children, I suffered in silence. I never even told my mother, and I am only here to share my gift with you because she coaxed me to sleep with a gift she didn’t believe she had.

So, Mama, when you read this, I want you to sing.”

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

Problematic, yes, but it’s just the latest in the stream of indignities against this president… like the president and first lady being portrayed as apes in cartoons… or a congressman calling the president a liar during the state of the union.

Whether we agree with all his policies or not, we have to agree that this president, has been accorded an unprecedented level of disrespect.

Disrespect –I submit– rooted in the long-standing and pernicious idea that Black people are just not the equals of white people.

Slavery and Jim Crow are over, but the myth of Black inferiority, which justified them both— is still very much with us—in the larger society and, worst of all, often, in our own minds in the form of internalized oppression…

That’s why the celebration of Community Healing Days – which is coming up next Friday through Sunday — is so crucial for our community…

Tom, this is the celebration sponsored by the Community Healing Network and championed by Dr. Maya Angelou that you helped support a couple of years ago at the Riverside Church in New York…

It’s a three day celebration on the third weekend of every October designed to mobilize Black people to overcome the lie of Black inferiority. That lie—and its devaluation of Black hair, Black skin, and every other aspect of  Black people – is a root cause of the low self-esteem so many black people have, the black-white academic achievement gap, the mass incarceration of Black men, the epidemic of violence, and many of the other problems facing our community…

If we really want to reverse these negative trends, we’ve got to engage in a fearless struggle for our psychological liberation.

Over the past year, Community Healing Network has entered into collaborations with the Association of Black Psychologists, Tom Burrell’s Brainwash Resolution Project, and the City of Tuskegee, Alabama – to begin to create a nationwide grassroots network of self-help groups focused on emotional healing for Black people…Tuskegee, your hometown Tom, has set out to be the nation’s first community healing model city.

…and all of this is happening — not a moment too soon.

As a people, we urgently need to focus on healing–in the face of all the lies and distortions of our beautiful African history…

We need to focus on healing because there are too many lies about Black people – lies we’ve been told and lies we’ve come to believe about ourselves.

We need to focus on healing because of the daily bombardment of negative, harmful media images of Black people…

We need to focus on healing even as we find ways to survive in an economic environment that has many of us jobless, homeless and looking for food… even as we challenge the inequities in our legal system that encourage police brutality, high rates of black male imprisonment and the inexcusable execution of people like Troy Davis – in the face of reasonable doubt…

Yes, if we are serious about solving the problems of the Black community we have to get at the root cause – the poisonous idea that we are inferior – which has for centuries undermined our ability as a people to fully love ourselves and each other.

Put “time for healing” on your agenda. Celebrate Community Healing Days… Go to communityhealingnet.org to respond to Dr. Angelou’s call to Wear Sky Blue during Community Healing Days to support this movement for emotional emancipation and Black self-love…

I leave you with the words of poet June Jordan:

“The fact that I am Black…means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.”

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.