OCTOBER 2020

BOLD NEWSLETTER

Voting Day Message: Statement from director

Voting is one small part of what is necessary for all of us to do, I don’t need to say that to those who are reading this newsletter. Getting your membership and constituents to vote is the other part of what is necessary for us to all do. I don’t need to say that to you all either because this is what most of you all have been up to for days, weeks, months or maybe even years! Many of your organizations have been prioritizing time on the phones and in streets and it is greatly appreciated. 

I want to acknowledge and thank all of those folks who have been helping take us through scenario planning for post election. This is a very grounding process to keep all the pieces of the state systems and our strategies into relationship with one another. We can’t have the pre-election and post-election efforts be in isolation from each-other, which means we can’t be in isolation from one another no matter our role. We need to know when and where we show up and what our position is going to be on this turf of North America. Our vote determines the conditions we will struggle in. And yes, we will experience a distinct difference with the conditions under a Biden/Harris victory.

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Our Collective Liberation Lies In The Land

As Indigenous and Black people navigating a year of toxic politics and a global pandemic, many have returned to practices that help ground us in where we come from — the land. Sitting, walking, and planting in our backyards, community gardens, and the farms of our home towns has served for many as more than medicine. It has been a reclamation of our heritage and our power. 

With shelves bare of fresh food in stores across many urban centers for days, we have become more acutely aware of issues of food insecurity that for years have been met with strategies to build the health and self-sufficiency of urban and rural communities. These efforts have achieved milestones. Yet decades after civil rights workers established the Freedom Farms of the Mississippi Delta, Black Americans and people all over the globe find themselves in the same position as our forebears: without meaningful access to land. And so for many of us returning our focus in this area, the fundamental right to claim the land has become both a justice strategy and an organizing principle.  

But what does a successful land reclamation strategy look like?

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Starting at the center: A Conversation with Adaku Utah

Adaku Utah, a National Trainer with BOLD, is an award-winning teacher, organizer, healer and ritual artist. Her work centers in movements for radical social change, with a focus on gender, reproductive, race, youth and healing justice. She has been recognized as a 2017 Essence Magazine Woke 100 Change Maker and is a recent recipient of the 2017 Gye Nyame Empowerment Project My Sister’s Keeper Award.

Who Are Your Ancestors?

Adaku grew up in Lagos, Nigeria to Igbo parents who had survived the Biafran War.

My people grew up during a time of deep famine, starvation, and war and had to rely on community organizing, the earth, and the plants and ritual…

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Adaku Utah, Credit: Rob Ferrell

The Black Power At Our Base: The Formation of SNCC

In a year that will be difficult to compare politically to any other in our recent memory, many of us are focused on mobilizing for the upcoming U.S. election. As we do, we also reflect on the past and the urgent need for greater impact and lasting transformation. What we know is that change at the national level will have no meaningful effect unless there is a consolidation of Black power at every level. 

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wHAT'S ON YOUR NIGHTSTAND?

BOLDERS IN THE MEDIA

The podcast is an intergenerational space for BIPOC women, especially those over 50. In this episode, our host, BOLDer connects with her inner 12 year old with the inner 12 year old of feminist writer, activist and journalist Mona Eltahawy as they share our journeys around identity, healing, reclamation, power, voice and story. And there is a big shout out to BOLD!

Listen Now

Check out this story by Jenna Wortham in the New York Times, featuring many BOLDERS, including Black Visions Collective and Prentis Hemphill.

In these powerful and personal reflections, just released, Alicia Garza shares her personal story and the lessons of the new generation of movement organizers of which she’s played a leading role.

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Charlene Carruthers gives us a dose of her radical feminism in this essential testimony and guide for the movement for Black Lives.

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Lingua Franca

A film by Isabel Sandoval about a woman who like her, is a transgender Filipina, exploring complicated questions of sexual identity in a perilous time for immigrants in Trump’s America.

Belly of the Beast

When an unlikely duo discovers a pattern of illegal sterilizations in women’s prisons, they wage a near impossible battle against the Department of Corrections. Filmed over seven years with extraordinary access and intimate accounts from currently and formerly incarcerated people, Belly of the Beast exposes modern-day eugenics and reproductive injustice in California prisons.