Blogspot

I want to take you back to an extraordinary day 191 years ago this week, when a black minister by the name of Lott Cary, who had purchased his own freedom, set out on a historic journey across the Atlantic Ocean…

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.

admin Uncategorized One Moore Book, Wayetu

This past week, we were all sad to hear about the death from cancer of Troy Davis’ older sister, Martina Davis Correia.

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.

admin Uncategorized Christmas, Martina Davis Correia, Troy Davis, Vinia Hall

Tom, here’s a question recently raised in our community and one we all need to consider… it goes like this:

Is life different for women whose skin is darker?

[Now] I offer this far-from-original yet still-provocative question today for a number of reasons…

…but before I even talk about these specific reasons, Sybil, it certainly comes as no surprise that the issue of skin color is still as polarizing and problematic as it was in the 20^th century, the one DuBois labeled as the century determined by “the color line…”

Many of you saw the unfortunate sequel to the famous “Doll Test” done by CNN last year where those beautiful little black girls, when asked to choose which dolls were ‘beautiful and smart’ selected the whitest dolls, and then identified the darkest dolls as ‘ugly and dumb…’

In fact, in the wider study, both white and black children overwhelmingly responded in a similar fashion…

I bring this up for two reasons… first, I want to share with you the results of a study done by researchers at Villanova Univ. called “The Impact of Light Skin on Prison Time for Black Female Offenders,” [it] monitored over 12,000 black women imprisoned in North Carolina between 1995 and 2009… 

[And] Accounting for other factors like prior record, conviction type and date, prison conduct, and even weight, they found that women with lighter skin are sentenced to 12% less time behind bars than darker-skinned inmates, and that having light skin reduces the time served by 11%…

[I mean] Can you believe that… the question I opened with is dealt with in an upcoming documentary entitled Dark Girls currently being produced by longtime actor/director Bill Duke and director D. Channsin [CHAN-SIN] Berry…

The film explores deep-seated biases and attitudes about skin color, particularly dark skinned women, outside of and within Black America… It promotes discussions on how society treats darker women and the effects of that treatment on identity and self esteem…

Long overdue…because our community has for far too long bought into –or, as author Tom Burrell would say, been “brainwashed” into a tragic “white is right” mentality, and the results of this self-hatred have been devastating…

The two African American directors of Dark Girls’ should be commended [they should be commended] for taking on such a challenging topic… but [you know] they need more than commendation and encouragement…

[Because] For the past two years, Duke, Berry and others close to the project have spent much of their own money to get the documentary made…

If you want to help out, you can go to the site for the movie at officialdarkgirlsmovie.com where you can view the trailer and then click on the box to the right where it says “Donate to the Film”… Duke and Berry are trying to raise $250,000 to complete the film before key film festivals take place, and [of course] every dollar counts…

Tom, you may recall a recent commentary I did regarding the current movement by African Americans to create our own films and stories…Well, here’s a chance!

So please help this important film get made so that maybe the next set of young African American girls they bring on CNN will select the beautiful doll that looks most like them…

I’ll close with these words from a 2007 song from the one and only Will Smith:

“Afro Angel, born against the world
You don’t have to sell your soul and throw away your pride
Afro Angel, sent from heaven above
Never forget that you are loved.”

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

admin Uncategorized

Good Morning Tom, Sybil, and Jay.

Tom, I’m honestly beginning to think it’s time for an intervention…

Now, perhaps I’m overacting, but after seeing excerpts from her recent interview with Rolling Stone and her steady stream of “girl gone bad” media images, I am definitely starting to question the decision making of 22 year-old pop superstar, Rihanna…

For those of you who don’t know, the successful singer has been on a bright red sadomasochistic terror as of late …

The Rolling Stone interview left some mouths wide open… It was bad enough that Rihanna gave us all way too much information on her sexual fetishes, but the sexting thing where she spoke about receiving pictures of certain parts of the male anatomy was way overboard…

Some of you may say, “Well Stephanie, she is a woman of age so she can do whatever turns her on.”

True, but I’m not questioning Rihanna’s age, I’m more concerned with the age of a big slice of her fan base which is still in middle and high school, where sexting has been a serious issue…

And, the fact that Rihanna spoke about the domestic violence episode with Chris Brown in the same interview where she carelessly discussed how she likes for men to dominate her, tie her up, and spank her is certainly not appropriate for many of her younger fans.

Look guys, I am not trying to act like I’m The Moral Majority, nor am I hatin’ on a talented and successful young sister… I actually believe this situation cuts deeper than any of that…

It’s one thing when celebrities use controversy to maintain their relevance and keep the media machine rolling… I get that… Madonna famously did this for years…

But Rihanna was very publicly victimized in an all too real incident involving abuse and law enforcement… This was no media machine …

But even the media machine has limits.  According to a number of recent articles on the issue and sagging ticket sales at her concerts, folks are suggesting Rihanna’s bad girl routine may have reached such a limit…

…which leads me to believe there may be something else going on…

Now, I’m certainly no Dr. Phil—but, maybe she’s reaching out for help?

The bottom line is, obviously, we don’t know what is going on with Rihanna… We can only speculate…

However, we should speak out when a big star like Rihanna with a large TEENAGE audience carelessly glorifies a dangerous practice like sexting…

And while I wish nothing but the best for Rihanna and pray she’s not crashing and burning before our very eyes, it is our responsibility as parents, teachers and people of age to monitor the impact such behavior is having on our youth…

Of course, this commentary is ultimately about more than Rihanna because there is a bunch of craziness and social pathology out there affecting our children and youth daily… and we certainly can’t keep our children away from all of it…

So we should talk about it with them…Talk about what’s right and wrong, talk about what they think about what they see in the media, how they feel about it, and if they’ve been exposed to similar behavior in their lives…

You might be surprised by their answers… They may even be as troubled by it as you… Perhaps Rihanna’s declining ticket sales are an indicator of this…

And when you’re talking to young people –be they your own children or the youth in your community–also recognize that we adults, not them, are the ones who created these troubling images and the often-sick society they are growing up in…

So use this as one of the many teachable moments along life’s rocky path… Empower our children to speak out and stand up against the many ills that plague our society so hopefully, by the time they come of age, they’ll have less sickness and pathology surrounding them…

I’ll close with these memorable words from late environmentalist Edward Abbey, who certainly had some provocative ideas about the world we live in…

Abbey once famously quipped: “Society is like a stew. If you don’t stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.”

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

admin Uncategorized