Mamas Day 2014: Lessons from the Kitchen

This post is part our #MamasDay blog series and is authored by Echoing Ida's Samantha Daley. 

When I was growing up, my household, indeed my life, revolved around the kitchen. There was always something going on or some work to be done, and my mommy, Verns, was the center of the machine that was our family. To say she worked hard would be an understatement. A single mother, she worked 2 to 3 jobs for the majority of my childhood to provide everything her family needed. And though she bore that label, “single mother,” she and we were never alone. In fact, our family included a community of mamas who lent their support and made an indelible impact on my life. Mama’s Day is a day to recognize all the mamas in our lives, be they related by blood or so close they are family. Like many others, I’m sure, I was raised among many women who taught me deep and powerful life lessons. Surrounded by a community of mamas, all of whom I consider family, those lessons came with the stirring of a pot.

My mom was always working in some way or another. If she wasn’t trying to make ends meet for her children, she would be in the kitchen whipping out dish after dish of Jamaican delicacies. Many mornings, I would wake up before the sun and hear my mama’s throaty laugh reverberate through the house. Then I’d come downstairs to see the kitchen already buzzing with life and moving full steam ahead in the preparation of a breakfast spread. Often, she had made my favorite: ackee and salt fish with boiled bananas and fried plantains, and a little ginger tea on the side to warm your stomach and your heart.

But the kitchen wasn’t only a place of creation—it’s where I learned some of the most important lessons of my life. The kitchen was my mama’s sanctum. It’s where I learned how to prepare oxtail, and where I learned the values that shaped me as a person and the decisions I would make thereafter. It’s where I learned that in order for me to be successful and happy, I would have to venture out of my comfort zone and try things that might make me uncomfortable. It was by watching my mama take pride in every dish she prepared, that I learned to have pride in everything that I do.

Because my mama worked so much, I also leaned on my community of mamas to share their styles and techniques, as well as what the kitchen meant to them. The kitchen was where all big decisions were made, disputes were settled, and where my community of mamas taught me some life lessons that I may have never learned otherwise.

This community included my stepmom, my aunt, cousins, and close family friends from the past and present. Our kitchen was the center of our home and our emotions were conveyed through our meals.

My stepmom, Hillary, was always the worker, the traveler, and the networking queen. My experiences in the kitchen with her were lively to say the least, and always included her friends and getting business accomplished over the course of a meal. I remember being overzealous and ecstatic about helping my stepmom cook because along with a delicious meal came stories of her fantastic adventures in the Cayman Islands and the hospitality industry. These experiences taught me to take a chance both in my cooking and my life because you never know what opportunities you will come across when you try something different and take a chance. And you couldn’t help but feel utter satisfaction after a piece of my stepmom’s raved about rum cake.

My aunt, Althea, was the most soft-spoken of my mamas, but she never really needed to raise her voice. Her meals—especially her soups, all made from scratch—said everything for her. Whenever there was a schism in the family, my aunt and her unforgettable soups would be called upon to restore order. Through the experiences with my aunt, I learned the value of creating a safe space where people feel they could come and not be judged and where issues could be settled without the combativeness and the yelling that can sometimes come whenever my opinionated family of Jamaicans gathered.

There was Peppa with her spicy palette and even spicier tongue and Ms. Monica who always kept it real. I have some of my earliest memories in the kitchen with my cousins Cynthia and Forba, whose elaborate spreads during the holidays kept our family tight. Through these powerful women I’ve gained an understanding about how spices can shape a dish and how meals with family can be just what you need to help you through hard times both professionally and personally.

One would be lucky to see all my mamas in one room; the confidence in their skills and that inner power that was evident in their stance left people in awe, and will always be one of the first memories that I hold dear. This group radiated strength and in a major dispute my community of mamas kept my family from coming apart at the seams.

What strikes me now about this unique and yet universal way I was raised is how far American culture has strayed from it. Obsessed with parenting perfectly and trying to do it all on our own, modern mamas must remember what our foremothers knew—that mothering happens in community and is far too much for one woman alone to bear. All these women taught me the importance of breaking bread, and how powerful of a tool that can be for learning and growth, laughter, and helping to move forward. There is so much to learn by watching and getting to be in the kitchen with our elders and family. Without their willingness to take me into their kitchens, to teach me the ways of the world through the stovetop, I may not have come to know about love and relationships, about striving for dreams, and taking my time. I look to these women with fondness, gratitude, and respect for everything they did to shape me while growing up in their kitchens of love.

To all of you beautiful mamas—those who invest in the rearing of children, who open their kitchens and their homes to the young curious ones—I salute you for everything that you are, and for the culture and stories that were passed to you and that you have so fiercely and unapologetically passed on to others.

Samantha Daley is a senior and soon-to-be graduate of the University of Central Florida in Orlando. Her major of studies is Biomedical Sciences and Health Sciences with a minor in Women’s Studies. She is the president of the Choice USA chapter at her college, and also is a former Choice USA student correspondent. In participating as a Choice USA blogger, she has been able to share her points of view on a number of issues. Samantha has helped perform research on bullying and harassment in middle schools, and also volunteers at The Inspiration Family Birth Center in Winter Park Florida. Samantha is passionate about all things surrounding reproductive justice, and one day hopes to open up a women’s clinic.

Mamas Day 2014: Mothering Through Climate Chaos

This Mamas Day 2014 piece by Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan is cross-posted from the Movement Strategy Center's "Let's Talk: At the Heart of Movement Building" blog. 

Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan

Our kids love it when we tell good stories. Throughout time, we mamas have imparted wisdom and values through storytelling. Like all humans, mamas are narrative creatures.

But many of us have lost the art of storytelling, forgotten the values and wisdom of our ancestors. Our kids hear their stories from mainstream media, often closing their minds to the possibilities of another world—or as the Zapatistas say, a world of many worlds. So we try to find good books for our kids—stories that depict our girls as the agents of change, images that show the real diversity of our families, teach the morals of taking care of each other.

As I struggle to impart a coherent vision and set of values to my kids, storytelling has become an essential practice. On my mind every day is Grace Lee Boggs’ question “What time is it on the clock of the world?” After centuries of an extractive economy taking its toll, I’m clear that the world our kids are inheriting will look very different than the one I was raised for.

My parents raised me and my sisters to work hard and play by the rules. This was their best strategy to teach us to survive—at the least to get by and ideally to get ahead. These values were reinforced by the stories I saw on TV while my parents were at work. These values were supposed to help us land good jobs, settle down in our own houses, have security in old age—all things that seemed within reach at that point.

But that world is not the world my kids will inherit. The basis of the economy—the natural world—has been disrupted to the point that we cannot depend even on the stability of the climate.

The values of working hard and playing by the rules won’t equip my daughters for a world of instability and transition. What my kids need are a different set of skills and values, a way of moving in the world, that will help them navigate the shocks and slides ahead, to carve out lives of purpose, achievement, and happiness that all parents wish for their children.

For the future ahead I am parenting my children to:

• Trust their instincts and each other in the moment; take the time to reflect and learn from mistakes, communicate lovingly and fearlessly to grow beloved community.
• Respond to the changes and challenges ahead in ways that seize the moment to win the kinds of systemic transformation needed.
• Restore ancestral ways of taking care of one another, holding each other through good times and bad, using what we have around us to meet our needs, and holding sacred all that which holds us.

So the stories I tell my girls are of sheroes who work as part of larger groups (that may include animals, fairies, and elves) to cultivate their resilience and resistance: farmers who practice martial arts, artists who are also scientists, former princesses turned rebels working with the underground trading society to redistribute the wealth stolen from the people.

It’s clear that in the next period of human history, playing by the rules will not protect our children from the challenges they will face. Even knowing this, I still feel afraid, still worry that I’m putting too much of the weight of this crumbling world on their little shoulders.

As I head to a police brutality speak-out with my six- and nine-year-old daughters, I question myself: How will they feel as mothers from East and West Oakland share pictures of their dark-skinned boys killed by police? How will anger or fear of the police play out for them? Will it keep them safe? Will it help keep others safe? Will it change or reinforce the racial stereotypes of black men as criminals? Sometimes I can barely sleep as these questions scroll through my mind. But I am more afraid—deeply afraid—of shielding them from what is coming—leaving them stunned and unable to act as crises hit.

I recently shared the post-disaster stories of Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell with my daughters. Solnit tells how during 9/11, one World Trade Center office worker walked down 44 flights of stairs after being told to go back up to his office by a man in a uniform with a megaphone saying everything was fine. Minutes later, the elevator shaft was filled with jet fuel and everyone in it died in the explosion.

Photo by Shadia Fayne Wood

She tells how during the Tsunami in Japan in 2012, some teachers kept their kids in their classrooms under instructions from school administrators. A few took their kids out of the school to higher ground, saving their lives. In times like these, the courage of people to use their own agency to act boldly and courageously meant the difference between life and death.

Solnit shows us that in case after case, when disasters strike, the authorities—driven to keep things “normal”—give horribly bad instructions. And, regular people step up to do whatever needs to get done—acting with what they have: their hearts and their hands.

My kids describe my job as “saving the world” and I don’t shield them from all of what I know is happening: extinction of languages, cultures, and species; oceans dying; severe drought in the Southwest U.S. where my family lives and massive flooding in the UK where their dad’s family lives; toxins in our air, water, and soil making people sick; massive industrial “accidents” happening all the time destroying this community or that one.

Even before we understood how human activity was disrupting the planet’s climate and other systems, I could have told them stories of how this economy had ripped our family apart. From the lush tropical land and rich coastline of Goa where my grandmother was born, my family migrated to the other five of six continents. Driven into the global economy, my family were tobacco merchants in Africa in the early 1900s, oil company workers on the Arabian Peninsula mid-century, and more recently, white collar workers for the corporations making and selling the ever-expanding basket of stuff we never knew we needed. I know that our our ancestors’ labor was an essential “fuel” for the extractive economy.

Now, I’m teaching my kids how to put their own labor into an economy for life. This means getting together instead of getting ahead. It means buen vivir—living well. In practice this means we have tried to set up our daily lives to reflect these values. We have after-school co-ops where parents share child-care (and child-rearing) while the kids grow up together—mutually learning about their boundaries and strengths as part of a larger group.

Our kids take martial arts together, learn how to grow food, cook together, and create their own ritual and ceremony. We grown-ups have each other’s backs when we have to work late, when a marriage is on the rocks, when someone is ill, when someone needs a place to stay. We share conversation and laughter over collective meals and our kids know what it feels like to be truly seen and heard for their beautiful selves. These are small acts that will not topple a corrupt economic system that is destroying the planet. But they build the tools for embodying the world we must create.

Over time, our families will be positioned to more easily take bolder, collective actions to confront and replace a system that makes us poor and breaks our hearts.

My friend Max has a tattoo on his arm that says, “What the hands do the heart learns.”

Our work and our stories will equip our children to love the world they are creating—a world where people act courageously to defy the old rules and instead, fight for a just transition to an economy for life.

Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan is a collective member of the Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project and Co-Director of the Our Power Campaign. Since 2007, MG has been helping to bridge the divide between the scale of the ecological crisis and our movement strategies. As a collective member, Michelle leads trainings, facilitates strategy sessions, and works with other groups to carry out local and national campaigns. Michelle co-led the founding and launch of the Our Power Campaign which brings together nearly 40 organizations and alliances rooted in frontline communities across the U.S. to foster a just transition to local, living economies. Michelle brings over a decade of experience in organizing for just food systems as the founding director of the Center for Food and Justice and a Kellogg Food and Society Policy Fellow. She was one of the early initiators of the Farm to School movement in the U.S. helping to start the first Farmers’ Market Salad Bar at McKinley Elementary School in Santa Monica in 1997. Michelle loves to build the soil and work in the garden.

Mamas Day 2014: Give Affordable Healthcare This Mother’s Day

This Mamas Day post is from Leandra Lacy from SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW based in Atlanta, Georgia.

This Mamas Day we recognize and celebrate the tenacity Black mothers living in Georgia and the South. Many of these women are struggling to support their families while living under the pressure of structural violence deserve access to resources that help maintain their health, safety, and wellbeing and that of their families. Unfortunately, due to Georgia Governor Nathan Deal’s refusal to expand Medicaid eligibility and therefore healthcare access in Georgia, many of these women are forced to go without quality, competent healthcare.

Every day, I strive to honor my mother’s strength as I fight for healthcare access for the hundreds of thousands of low-income uninsured Georgians, many of whom are women and children. As an intern at SPARK Reproductive Justice Now, I have compiled research on the impact that Medicaid expansion would have on low-income Black women and low-income Black LGBTQQ communities in Georgia. The benefits to expansion are incredible. 650,000 Georgians would be eligible for healthcare, thousands of lives would be saved costing the state zero dollars for the first three years.

My mother became the sole provider of my household when my father passed away. Fortunately, she receives medical and dental care benefits that extend and provide coverage for my sister and me due to provisions of the Affordable Care Act that allow us to remain on our mother’s policy until age 26. Though we are extremely blessed to have healthcare under my mother’s plan, I wonder about those young people whose parents are not employed or underemployed. How can they get covered? What of the children of the 70% of Black workers employed in blue-collar jobs that typically provide low wages and are less likely to even offer health insurance coverage?

However, there are plenty of mothers and families in Georgia who must face the unfortunate reality of living without healthcare coverage. Black women in Georgia earn an average of 62.1 cents for every dollar earned by a non-Hispanic white male. Low-income women are more likely to forgo doctor’s visits, getting recommended tests, and following up care due to costs. While this should be alarming to all Georgians, our Governor is currently set to sign into law yet another piece of legislation that would increase the barriers between Black women and their families and quality, competent healthcare.

Black women have the right to healthcare for themselves and their families. I firmly believe that the key to leading a fulfilling life is being the healthiest person you can be, and this is why I am fighting for Medicaid expansion in Georgia. So that all low-income Black mothers can have access to health services outlined in the Affordable Care Act. By making coverage more affordable, the expansion will give these mothers and their children a chance to take advantage of resources that will keep them healthy. This Mother’s Day, let’s all pledge to give our mamas a gift they can use year-round and one that saves their lives! You can join the fight for Medicaid expansion today by visiting sparkrj.org.

Leandra Lacy is a Black feminist from Columbia, South Carolina who enjoys soul food and sunny days. As an intern with SPARK Reproductive Justice Now, she is able to use her passion for health promotion and advocacy on behalf of Black women. She is pursuing a Master of Public Health degree at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, after earning her Bachelor of Arts in Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in May 2013. She is interested in comprehensive sexual health education for Black female adolescents and teens and, in the future, she hopes to work in underprivileged communities in the South as a health educator.

Mamas Day 2014: Mamas and Children Thrive Because of Community

This is the first post in our Mamas Day 2014 blog series featuring submissions from many of our Strong Families partners. The post below was written by Erin Wilkins from the Family Tree Clinic in Minnesota.

I couldn’t be the mama that I am without my community. Not only do these important people help take care of my kid, but my community helps take care of me so that I can be the mama I want to be. The older my kid gets the more my parenting feels like a collective process in many ways and involving lots of people.

The road of single parenting and co-parenting can feel like a lonely one at times, and having the nourishment and support of the grown ups in our life helps it feel more manageable and actually pretty amazing. Being a parent in this way has allowed me to embrace the idea of interdependence on a level that I never had before. I’m still learning to feel ok with the idea that I need help from other people. I can’t do this parenting thing alone and it is good for us to share the responsibilities with the people who love us.

My kid has a lot of honorary aunties and uncles, and she has a special spot in her heart for all of them. Many of the people who are central to my life and support network are central to her too. The time I spend with the adults I love, away from my kid, is sacred. Having space to take a break, to be listened to, and to recharge goes a long way. By knowing me intimately, my close friends also know my kid in a way the is deeply personal and special.

The support of my co-workers and the place that I work has also been vital to my confidence and happiness as a parent. As a workplace and organization we value family and prioritize our children, and this makes being a working mama so much better. I work with some amazing parents and they provide me with endless encouragement, advice, and validation.

The biggest source of support in my community though has been the other parents, and especially the other queer parents and single parents who share similar joys and struggles as me. Our children have become best friends. We have built up a community of different kinds of families who are collectively woven together by our mutual values and our visions of parenting, childhood, and justice. We gather often to share food and drinks and stories about our kids while they play. They get it. Or a lot of it, at least.

I feel lucky to be raising my kid with this community. My daughter and I make up a two person unit, but we are also so much more than that. I embrace the privilege of being surrounded by people holding us up and helping us to be whole, so that I don’t feel so alone in the journey. So I can feel like a person, connected to other people. So I’m able to feel strong and independent while always trusting that there are people who have my back and my kid’s back. And most importantly, so I can do my best job as a parent.

Erin Wilkins is a queer mama living and co-parenting in Minneapolis, MN. She works at Family Tree Clinic, a community sexual health clinic that has been providing holistic, sex-positive, patient-centered health care and education for over 40 years! Her co-workers are some of the most amazing parents ever.

Echoing Ida Writers Talk Reproductive Justice at CLPP 2014

Taja, Amber, Bianca, and Jazmine being fierce at CLPP 2014

This past weekend, seven Idas traveled to Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts at the Civil Liberties and Public Policy (CLPP) conference. This year was the 20^th anniversary of the conference focused on shifting our movement from abortion rights to social justice, with a particular focus on the reproductive justice framework and intersectionality within the movement. For some Idas this was their first time attending, but others were veterans to the conference, but for all, it felt like a family reunion. Over three days, the Idas were able to share their expertise with conference attendees through panels, performances, and deep conversations about our beautiful visions for the future.

Jazmine, Bianca, Ashe Helm-Hernandez

As the participants arrived on Friday night, Jazmine Walker and Bianca Campbell shared their experiences with cross-movement organizing in the South. They spoke about the policies impacting poor families and how accessing healthy foods, health care, and the right to vote is getting increasingly difficult. In particular, health care access is difficult for youth, queer folks, and poor families because of policies that are pushing them even further to the margins.

Taja (right) performing

The opening plenary was lively with brilliant speakers and partners from the Strong Families movement including, Jessica González-Rojas of National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, Monica Simpson of SisterSong, and the mother of reproductive justice, Loretta Ross. Our own Ida Taja Lindley pumped up the crowd with her beats and rhymes performing the Colored Girls Hustle Hard anthem with Colored Girls Hustle! She later spoke on a Saturday evening panel to explain how theater can be used as a tool for organizing around reproductive justice.

Malika speaking on the
disparities in the ACA

Through out the weekend, the Idas spoke on panels sharing their thoughts, intelligence, and experiences working, organizing, and changing the world through reproductive justice. Jasmine Burnett co-hosted a workshop on White allyship and what it looks like to step out of white privilege and truly show up in solidarity. Amber J. Phillips joined her Advocates for Youth team to educate students about challenging abortion stigma on their college campuses through the 1 in 3 campaign. Jazmine Walker again shared her expertise on food justice, worker’s rights, and creating sustainable systems for people living in poverty.

Renee, Jazmine, and Jasmine

“Sisterhood is powerful,” Jasmine Burnett said while sitting on a panel with Loretta Ross on ensuring contraceptive safety for people around the world. She beautifully explained how our US policies like the Hyde Amendment are translated into international policies like the Helms Amendment, and impact the access people around the world have to reproductive health care. Malika Redmond also shared her experience organizing in families in the south, and how the policies of the Affordable Care Act have opened up access to health coverage for many, a number of the poor, people of color, and young people are still left without support – especially in states that have refused Medicaid expansions. And Renee Bracey Sherman live-tweeted it all!

Taja and Amber do the 'church hug'

The three whirlwind days at CLPP were filled with empowerment, deep thinking, creativity, and beautiful sisterhood…and a few ‘church hugs! Several said that it felt like a reproductive justice family reunion. The future of the movement is bright, and the Idas are excited to be part of it.

Mothers Making Tough Decisions…Every Day

Every day parents make tough decisions. They are forced to choose between what they want for their children and what is accessible with the limited resources in their communities. Shanesha Taylor’s story is just one example of those tough decisions. You see Shanesha is a homeless mother of two children, aged 2 years old and 6 months old. And last month she received that phone call that all parents want – a job interview.

With no home or family to leave her children with during the interview, Shanesha made the difficult decision to bring her children with her to the interview and leave them in the car. After 30 minutes, Scottsdale police arrived, saw the children in the car, and arrested Shanesha on charges of felony child abuse.

After the media reported the story, our own Echoing Ida Gloria Malone took to Twitter to share her thoughts on the impossible decisions that poor, single mothers have to make to survive in this world. Being a single and former teen mother, the decisions Shanesha and mothers like her have to make were all too real.

Shanesha Taylor finally got that call for an interview! FINALLY! So she is excited & worried bc who will watch her babies while she goes?
— Teen Mom NYC (@GloriaMalone) March 27, 2014

She does what MANY mothers have done & DO. They do what they have to even if it's not conventionally "the best" decision. & gets jailed 4 it
— Teen Mom NYC (@GloriaMalone) March 27, 2014

Shanesha Taylor was "Leaning In" as someone who has little to no support. She "Leaned In" & it got her thrown in jail & her babies taken
— Teen Mom NYC (@GloriaMalone) March 27, 2014

Lets talk about how many single mothers have an interview but can't go because childcare isn't an option. Can we PLEASE!
— Teen Mom NYC (@GloriaMalone) March 27, 2014

Can't go to interviews bc no childcare, can't get a job bc no childcare, can't KEEP a job bc no childcare. society's take away=dont have sex
— Teen Mom NYC (@GloriaMalone) March 27, 2014

After seeing Gloria’s tweets on the lack of support our society gives poor and low-income single mothers, MotherWoman [http://www.motherwoman.org/], a nonprofit that supports and empowers mothers to create social change through community safety nets, and Huffington Post asked Gloria if she would write a longer piece on the issue. At Huffington Post, Gloria writes:

While "Lean In" has become the new mantra for working women, it is imperative that we acknowledge that not all women have the option to "Lean In." As a single homeless Black mother, Taylor leaned in and it cost her far more than a job. It cost her her children--who are still in child protective services--and if she is convicted on felony charges of child abuse, that could make her future prospects of obtaining a job more difficult since employers are not eager to hire convicted felons.

Gloria shared her own experiences of making challenging parenting decisions based on few decent options in her community – in particular around her daughter’s day care:

After having my daughter during my sophomore year of high school, I returned the next year and took part in a program for teenage mothers which provided partial vouchers (which meant I still had to pay out of pocket) for child care, if I attended patronizing and condescending parenting classes after school. Once I had the partial voucher I began looking into daycare facilities, which had good reputations in my community only to find out that none of them took vouchers. Ultimately, I ended up placing my daughter in the least terrible facility in my neighborhood.

Weeks after her attending that facility I began to realize my daughter had bruises on her little body, the bottles and clothing she was sent home with were not hers, and they always sent me letters saying she needed more diapers even though I sent a new pack the day before. One day while I sat in my geometry class I got a call from her teacher saying that I should not be alarmed when I picked up my daughter but that she would have a pretty large bruise on her head which was caused by her running into the bottom of a door.

These are the type of facilities that are available to poor single working mothers across the country who have been "leaning in" long before they were told to.

Mothers like Shanesha and Gloria are leaning in, but society isn’t recognizing it, only punishing them for making the best of problematic situations. Like all mothers, they want the best for their children, but our society doesn’t afford them the safety net to ensure their children have those opportunities. Gloria points out that community organizations are helping to make a difference in families’ lives across the country, however it’s up to us to stand up, demand policy changes, and push back when the narrative admonishes mothers for providing for their children in ‘unconventional’ ways. It’s not the Shanesha’s fault; it’s all of ours.

Read Gloria’s entire piece on Huffington Post and see all of her tweets on Storify.

Banning ‘Bossy’ Won’t Help Black Women and Girls Seeking Justice

This article by Echoing Ida's Amber J. Phillips originally appeared on RH Reality Check. 

Recently, Lean In author Sheryl Sandberg, Girl Scouts CEO Anna Maria Chávez, and friends introduced a new campaign, called Ban Bossy, meant to encourage girls to lead by banning the use of the word when talking about girls. The campaign, announced in a Wall Street Journalarticle, is based on research conducted by social scientists on “how language affects society.” The research found “that even subtle messages can have a big impact on girls’ goals and aspirations. Calling a girl ‘bossy’ not only undermines her ability to see herself as a leader, but it also influences how others treat her,” explain Sandberg and Chávez.

Instead of just being swift in criticizing Ban Bossy, which I have been in personal conversations, I believe the introduction of this campaign presents us with the opportunity to find an intersectional approach to developing leadership skills in girls and women that could also address some of the most pressing problems facing Black women and girls, specificallyissues of gender, as well as race, class, power, and privilege. Black women are often known for being or are called bossy. While it may be said in malice, we have to be bossy if it means taking charge of our lives, protecting our families, and holding down our communities.

While campaigns like Ban Bossy focus on whether or not girls and women are called bossy and how that affects their ability to lead, it’s also important to expand societal notions of leadership to include the ways that women lead outside the board room and classroom, and the ways Black women and girls are systematically inhibited or punished for doing so because our motivations are seen as misplaced anger and spitefulness.

Black women and girls are not just faced with the fear of how we might be perceived when we raise our hands in class or ask for a major promotion at work. We fear that being assertive will threaten our quality of life. While it may just sound like strong galvanizing rhetoric, Black women are under attack, so despite our fears we know we have to be assertive and aggressive just to have a chance at fighting back. Because the systems—political, judicial, and social—are constructed in such a way that is oppressive for some groups and not for others, when a particular group, such as Black women and girls, break away from being silent or passive to take the lead through expressing justified rage while aggressively fighting to defend ourselves, we can end up facing unreasonable consequences. We saw this in the recent events surrounding CeCe McDonald and Marissa Alexander.

CeCe McDonald, a transgender Black woman, spent 19 months in a men’s prison after fatally stabbing a man while defending herself during a racist and transphobic attack. For CeCe McDonald, being “bossy” meant implicitly saving her own life by standing up for herself against verbal harassment and a violent attack from her perpetrators. Though this seems like the perfect example of when claiming self-defense under the law should be justified, McDonald was not granted this projection. Her bodily autonomy was further assaulted when she was forced to spend time in a men’s prison despite identifying as a woman. In an interview with Melissa Harris-Perry following her release from prison, McDonald said, “I felt like they [the prison authorities] wanted me to hate myself as a trans woman. They wanted to force me to be someone that I wasn’t. They wanted me to delegitimize myself as a trans woman, and I was not taking that. As a trans woman, as a proud Black trans woman, I was not going to allow the system to delegitimize and hyper-sexualize and take my identity away from me.”

Then there is the case of Marissa Alexander, a Black woman in Florida who now faces 60 years in prison—triple her original, repealed sentence because “the judge in the case gave improper jury instructions”—for firing a warning shot at her abusive, estranged husband. (The shot did not harm or kill anyone.) This case is particularly interesting because Alexander is seeking immunity under Florida’s “stand your ground” law. This is the same law that allowed George Zimmerman to be acquitted for pursuing and then murdering an unarmed teenager, Trayvon Martin. For Marissa Alexander, being “bossy” meant defending herself during an ongoing attack by only firing a warning shot in the direction of a man who has a history domestic violence toward her just to get the violence in that moment to stop. Additionally, Alexander had just given birth to a baby before the tumultuous altercation that may result in her being imprisoned for the rest of her life and the lives of her small children. In both cases, claiming self-defense/the right to stand your ground failed to be recognized as a valid defense, which is often how it is for Black women who must use force to defend their bodies against greater force.


To read the rest of this important piece, please visit RH Reality Check.

My Queer Chicana Eye on My Brother’s Keeper

This post by Carmen Iniguez was originally posted as part of the Movement Strategy Center's "Let's Talk" Gender Justice series.


I am a queer Chicana building an alliance with boys and men of color.

The connections between who I am and who I work with may not seem obvious to you or to many people, including those launching My Brother’s Keeper, President Obama’s new initiative aimed at empowering boys and young men of color. In fact, the connections weren’t even completely clear to me just three years ago.

Three years ago I was pregnant and bombarded with the question, “What do you want — a boy or a girl?” “A healthy baby,” I would answer.

A month into my second trimester I had a vivid dream, my wise curandera Tereza rubbed my swollen belly and gave me a consejo to take care of the little girl inside of me. I woke up from that dream thinking about how I would raise this child with the least amount of pink and dolls, and with the greatest amount of spunk and spirit.

Weeks later at the ultrasound that would confirm the sex of our baby, I looked at my partner with disbelief as the technician ceremoniously announced that we were having a boy. I was incredulous. Over and over I asked the technician to check again. In the end my partner and I were sent home with an ultrasound picture with an arrow pointing to our son’s anatomy and capitalized letters that read BOY!!!

The awesome responsibility of raising a boy of color weighed on me heavily. Having grown up with two brothers in a predominantly people of color community, I am painfully and intimately familiar with the low expectations, school tracking, and racial profiling boys and men of color are subjected to. I know that youth and men of color are seen as expendable by systems that are stacked against them.

Unconsciously I decided that the best way of protecting my yet unborn child was to keep him inside of me for as long as I could. I felt that he would be safer inside of me. Because how could I possibly protect him from the outside world? I was in denial about birthing him. Fortunately for me, I was in the care of an experienced and intuitive midwife, Eva, who saw right through my fright. At our 39th week visit, Eva and my partner gently confronted me and started chipping away at my fears. I was flooded with emotion, realizing that my role was to guide this baby into, and in, this world.

My son was born on his due date, one ounce shy of nine pounds. My fears of the world around him have not disappeared but have been abated by the network of people and organizations engaged in Boys and Men of Color (BMOC) work in local communities and through statewide initiatives funded by The California Endowment.

As a queer mami of color, my faith in a better world is restored through this work as I hear, witness, and engage in challenging yet healthy struggles about the boys of color who are traditionally left out of the conversation – queer identified and transgender boys of color. It’s undeniable that outcomes for boys and men of color are dire when it comes to higher education, employment, health, and life expectancy. These issues are compounded when we talk about queer and transgender boys and men of color.

In our work with BMOC we have found that focusing on gender and sexuality is crucial for empowering men of color. For example, the experiences of youth leaders in the Young Men’s Empowerment Program (YMEP) at the Long Beach-based Khmer Girls in Action (KGA) illustrate the power of creating safe spaces to address gender identity and sexuality with young men of color. In the words of Seng So, Young Men’s Empowerment Coordinator at KGA and a leader in the Brothers Sons Selves coalition in Los Angeles County,

YMEP serves as a safe space where young Southeast Asian men share in collective knowledge, growth, and transformation…Through YMEP we are redefining the markers of manhood, reshaping masculinity and the role that we play in being allies to our sisters and young women who are fighting to dismantle patriarchy.

Seng So describes how the empowerment of young men has allowed some to come out to their friends, family, and community––serving as leaders and advocates of LGBTQ rights in the process. Through YMEP young men are developing into effective organizers in their local communities, fighting for wellness centers and restorative discipline practices in their schools.

As Seng So’s story illustrates, focusing on gender means broadening the definition of “what a man is,” how masculinity is defined, enforced in our families, cultures, and society. In statewide gatherings and curriculum for BMOC, participants explore and challenge limiting concepts of what a man looks like. This exploration goes beyond breaking down familiar stereotypes to challenging the gender binary and widening the lens to look at the intersections of gender and sexuality.

Ultimately, a focus on gender means an inclusive way of looking at issues that affect all of us. How do we uplift our black and brown, young people of color without leaving out part of who they are – gender identity and sexuality? How do we raise our children to express their full humanity and all of who they are — for gender to support that expression — not be a prison, an expectation, a limitation, a target for state violence, a purveyor of unearned privilege and power.

Understanding and exploring gender is important for all men and boys as an essential part of their development and empowerment. Understanding and exploring gender is necessary for any program or initiative because otherwise we end up excluding and discriminating and traumatizing those who don’t fit into the established boxes, and reinforcing oppression for all.

My hope is that my son will grow to become a kind, thoughtful, community oriented human being: someone who believes in inclusion, who will struggle to find another way, a third way, that transcends the “either-or” options to which we’ve limited ourselves.

Let’s have this conversation as if the lives of all boys of color are on the line, because they are. Just like the lives of girls of color are on the line. Let’s find another way, a third way, to include boys of color in all of their wholeness.

What Do "House of Cards," "Joyous Sex" and Title IX Have in Common?

Answer: they are all topics Echoing Ida writers covered in the blogosphere last week.

"Don’t all people deserve to have safe and joyous sex even if they're poor?" That's the question Renee Bracey Sherman asked in her most recent article on Ebony.com. In "Black Women's Health Care in Crisis," Bracey Sherman discusses how restrictive and unjust legislation disproportionately affects low-income women and women of color's access to quality comprehensive health care and basic provisions. For example, Texas's HB2, one of the country's most restrictive abortion laws will close several reproductive health clinics across the state while Congress's cuts to SNAP benefits and public assistance hinder women's abilities to take care of their families. Sherman notes:

"The vast majority of Americans believe that everyone should have access to affordable, competent health care. Over 75 percent of African Americans believe that abortion should be covered by health insurance, and 71 percent believe that health care professionals in the community should provide safe, legal abortion services. When our policies refuse to cover abortion care, we perpetuate the stigma that it isn’t health care women want, need, or are deserving of. One in three women will have an abortion during her lifetime. It is a normal part of a woman’s reproductive experience."

In "When It Comes to Teen Pregnancy, Support is Prevention," Gloria Malone highlights how programs designed for pregnant and parenting youth are missing the mark. She asserts that prevention is the missing piece of the puzzle. Many of these campaigns aimed at young parents focus on shaming them instead of addressing ongoing cycles of poverty and figuring out ways to ensure healthier futures for families. At the same time, these programs also operate on the misconception that teen pregnancy creates poverty, instead of the fact that being poor makes it more likely that a young person will become a parent. Malone makes the point that there needs to be greater attention on preventing poverty and providing solid educational opportunities instead of pointing the finger at young people and young parents.

"It is a widely held truth that the best way out of poverty is a sound and quality education. Instead of improving our education system for all persons living in poverty, many teen pregnancy prevention organizations manipulate this fact. Telling non-pregnant and parenting teens that teenage parents are simply less likely to finish high school puts unfair onus solely on the teen, while failing to acknowledge that schools often push out teenage parents by coercion or noncompliance with Title IX. Teenage parents, and more specifically teenage mothers, face several obstacles when it comes to staying in school and graduating because of policies and practices at their schools, nevermind a condescending and or patronizing school environment. "

Renee Bracey Sherman addresses depictions of abortion in pop culture, particularly television in her piece, "The Second Lady's Abortion: What 'House of Cards' Got Right...and Didn't."Not only do portrayals of abortion lack nuance but the women characters who choose to have them are shown as cold women that care solely about their careers. These stories are one-dimensional and rarely address the complexity of reproductive health decision-making. While there is definite room for improvement in mainstream conversations about abortion, we are seeing more relatable storytelling. 

"The writers of House of Cards reveal the complexity of sharing an abortion story and illustrate how abortion stigma, defying maternal expectations, and the decision to speak publicly all affect Claire. This is a new narrative for audiences, and one that’s reflective of reality. Many characters with a history of abortion have been cast as feeling guilty and depressed as a result of the abortion itself, which research shows is not accurate. Instead of seeing Claire act out of shame—internalizing and accepting that she is bad for making her choices, as society would have her believe—she’s shown as a woman who was confident in her decision to seek abortion care, reflective in her choice to share, and navigating a world that she knows disapproves."

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#NoTeenShame Schools the Candie's Foundation

by Natasha Vianna, Gloria Malone, Lisette Orellana, Jasmin Colon, Christina Martinez, Marylouise Kuti-Schubert and Consuela Greene of #NoTeenShame

For far too long, organizations such as the Candie’s Foundation have been using teen pregnancy prevention resources on strategies that shame teenage mothers and their children. In their May 2013 teen pregnancy prevention campaign, the tagline, “You should be changing the world, not diapers” solely focused on scaring teen girls from wanting to become mothers instead of providing all young people with accurate and useful information. When we launched #NoTeenShame our goal was to raise awareness regarding the unnecessary exploitation and stigmatization of teen mothers while redirecting the Candie’s Foundation to promoting positive messages around sexual health and parenthood through comprehensive sexual education.

After more than 2,000 tweets, 800 emails, closer to 50 phone calls, and a constant presence on The Candie’s Foundation’s Facebook page, we have not been able to reach or speak to Neil Cole, founder of the Candie’s Foundation, or any staff. Imagine how a group of seven young moms felt when a nonprofit organization ignored our voices and continued to bash our families and our movement in the media. But we did get a response, Neil Cole wrote a dismissive post for The Huffington Post, reacting to our constant presence. His message was to say that they were not shaming anyone and again reminding young mothers “children should not be having children.” His written piece and lack of direct response to us, sought to render us invisible, but we never accepted defeat.

While our intent was to connect with Neil Cole to create a positive campaign together, we found victory in the way teen moms are being perceived and respected. The number of organizations who have started to improve their strategic messaging campaigns has significantly increased, the conversation around teenage pregnancy and motherhood has shifted to a non-stigmatizing and non-shaming approach, and the importance of comprehensive sexual education has become evident. Teen moms are a valuable asset to society, as we are industrious, motivated women with the potential to change the world, using our choices to have our babies not as a crutch, but as a ladder to build change and empower young women and their children.

We thank you for your support and for believing in our ability to ignite the spark of change. We thank you for standing by us through a difficult issue. We thank you for believing that a group of seven young mothers are capable of changing the world.

We value the support and encouragement from Strong Families during the #NoTeenShame movement and look forward to continued collaboration. Please join us in elevating #NoTeenShame and pledging to support young parents by amplifying our message through Thunderclap: https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/10401-support-young-families.

#NoTeenShame is a movement led by 7 young mothers, Natasha Vianna, Gloria Malone, Lisette Orellana, Marylouise Kuti-Schubert, Jasmin Colon, Christina Martinez, and Consuela Greene, to improve strategic messaging campaigns and conversation around young parenting to a non-stigmatizing and non-shaming approach, while highlighting the importance of comprehensive sex ed.