Batista becomes first Black principal dancer in Pacific Northwest Ballet history

While celebrating 50 years as a ballet company, the Pacific Northwest Ballet is making history.

“This is a moment for us,” said dancer Jonathan Batista while describing how he felt about becoming the first Black principal dancer in the history of the Pacific Northwest Ballet.

The newly promoted Batista joined the organization as a soloist last year and says moving to the highest rank as a ballet dancer last month means the world to him and the Black dance community.

“Being the first Black dancer in 50 years of Pacific Northwest Ballet, this is a moment for young Black boys, young Black girls, that want to dance, that want to see themselves on that stage,” Batista said.

Originally from Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, Batista has performed with companies from the UK to Canada, sometimes as the only Black member of the company.

Batista says he’s grateful to make history through his promotion to principal dancer in Seattle.

“It is such an honor to be in this position,” he said. “It also is a moment where I think, ‘Wow, it took 50 years for Black man, for Black person, to become a principal dancer.'”

The Pacific Northwest Ballet has a total of 46 dancers in its company. Batista is one of nine who identify as Black.

https://www.kuow.org/stories/batista-becomes-first-black-princip

Charles H. Fuller Jr. (March 5, 1939 – October 3, 2022) was an American playwright, best known for his play A Soldier’s Play, for which he received the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2020 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.

Early life

Fuller was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on March 5, 1939, the son of Charles H. Fuller, Sr. and Lillian Anderson. Raised Roman Catholic, he attended Roman Catholic High School and then Villanova University (1956–1958), then joined the U.S. Army in 1959, serving in Japan and South Korea.^[1][2] He left the military in 1962, and later studied at La Salle University (1965–1967), earning a DFA. Furthermore, he co-founded the Afro-American Arts Theatre in Philadelphia.

Career

Fuller vowed to become a writer after noticing that his high school’s library had no books by African-American authors. He achieved critical notice in 1969 with The Village: A Party, a drama about racial tensions between a group of mixed-race couples.^[3] He later wrote plays for the Henry Street Settlement theatre and the Negro Ensemble Company in New York City, which have performed several of his plays. His 1975 play, The Brownsville Raid, is based on the Brownsville Affair, an altercation between black soldiers and white civilians in Brownsville, Texas, in 1906, which led to an entire black regiment being dishonorably discharged, though later pardoned in 1976.

Fuller won an Obie Award for Zooman and The Sign in 1980, about a black Philadelphia teen who kills a young girl on her own front porch, and whose neighbors eventually rise up against him after being goaded out of their apathy by the girl’s father with a sign. Zooman presents himself as a helpless product of his society, but his victim’s father convinces their neighbors that they need to stand together and achieve justice.

Fuller’s next work, A Soldier’s Play, told the story of the racially charged search by a black captain for the murderer of a black sergeant on a Louisiana army base in 1944, as a means to discuss the position of blacks in white society. Although the play enjoyed a long run, Fuller said it never played on Broadway because he refused to drop the last line, “You’ll have to get used to black people being in charge.” It was nevertheless a critical success, winning Fuller a Pulitzer Prize in 1982, and being produced as the 1984 film A Soldier’s Story, for which Fuller himself wrote the screen adaptation. His screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Writers Guild Award of America, and it won an Edgar Award.

After this play, Fuller switched his focus to movies for several years, saying “I always wanted to reach the most people with my work. Not enough people go to the theater.”^[3] Roundabout Theater Company presented the play’s Broadway debut in January 2020, starring David Alan Grier and Blair Underwood, and directed by Kenny Leon.^[4] It ran for 58 performances, closing on March 11, 2020, when Broadway theaters were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The production was deemed eligible for a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play at the 74th Tony Awards despite it had never performed on Broadway before. The Tony nominating committee had deemed A Soldier’s Play a classic, but in their ruling, the committee also decided that due to this being the play’s first Broadway production, Fuller would also be included in the production’s nomination as if the play were nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play.^[5] As such, Fuller won a Tony Award for A Soldier’s Play nearly 40 years after its first production.^[6] He subsequently penned other works for the stage, but they have not been critically acclaimed.

Of his methods for advancing the African-American cause, Fuller said in a 1982 interview, “My argument is on the stage. I don’t have to be angry. O.K.? I get it all out right up there. There’s no reason to carry this down from the stage and into the seats. And it does not mean that I am not enraged at injustice or prejudice or bigotry. It simply means that I cannot be enraged all the time. To spend one’s life being angry, and in the process doing nothing to change it, is to me ridiculous. I could be mad all day long, but if I’m not doing a damn thing, what difference does it make?”^[7]

Fuller received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, the State of New York, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He also wrote short fiction and screenplays and worked as a movie producer. In 2010, he published his first novel, Snatch: The Adventures of David and Me, a work of children’s fiction written for his two sons. He was a member of the Writers Guild of America, East.

On October 3, 2022, Fuller died of natural causes in Toronto at the age of 83. He leaves behind his wife, Claire Prieto, his son, David Ira Fuller, his step-son, Ian Kamau, his daughter-in-law, four grandchildren and three great grandchildren.^[8]

Bibliography

Plays

• The Village: A Party (also known as The Perfect Party), 1968^[9]
• An Untitled Play, 1970^[9]
• In My Many Names and Days, 1972^[9]
• The Candidate, 1974.^[9]
• In the Deepest Part of Sleep, 1974^[9]
• First Love (one-act), 1974.^[9]
• The Lay out Letter (one-act), 1975^[9]
• The Brownsville Raid, 1976^[9]
• Zooman and the Sign, 1982.^[9]
• A Soldier’s Play, 1982^[9]
• We, 1988^[9]
• Eliot’s Coming, 1988^[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fuller

On #dementia TikTok, family caregivers find support and bring the disease to light

It all changed on a Saturday night in New York City in 2016. Jacquleyn Revere was 29 years old, and headed out for the evening to attend a friend’s comedy show.

She was still on the subway when her phone rang. It was a friend of her mom’s, back in Los Angeles. That’s weird, Revere thought. She never calls.

“And while I was on the subway, my mom’s friend said, ‘Something is wrong with your mom,'” Revere said. ” ‘We don’t know what’s going on, but your mom got lost driving home. What should have been a 15 minute drive, ended up taking two hours.’ “

Revere flew back to L.A. At her mom’s home in Inglewood, she found foreclosure notices, untreated termite damage on the porch, and expired food in the kitchen.

Her mother, Lynn Hindmon, was a devout Evangelical who worked for her local church. A slim, regal, self-declared “health nut,” Hindmon was now forgetting to pay bills and couldn’t remember who she was talking to on the phone. This was just a few years after Hindmon herself had moved in with her own mother, Joyce Hindmon, Revere’s grandmother, after the matriarch had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

“My mom was taking care of her mom, who had Alzheimer’s, [and] not telling anybody how hard it was or that she needed help, or that it was completely stressing her out,” Revere says.

“And then it became about me coming home to be in a house with three generations of trauma, and working my way through that … while also being afraid and young and scared and not knowing what to do.”

It would take nearly a year before they got the diagnosis that confirmed what Revere already suspected: Her mother had Alzheimer’s, too. Barely 10 years since Revere left home, she found herself moving back in with her mom and her grandmother — this time as their full-time caregiver.

“That first year and a half, I was just filled with fear: What if I lose the house?” Revere says. Because of the stress, she says, “I went through bouts of migraines. My hair, right in the middle, fell out completely.”

“I had to figure out how to get control of all the banking, figure out the passwords, make sure the bills are paid, make sure everything’s taken care of.”

In 2017, her grandmother died. Revere’s grief and isolation felt overpowering. Her friends in their 20s either couldn’t relate, or thought she was “wallowing in pity,” Revere says.

Trying to get them to understand what her daily life was like now seemed impossible. “I just wanted to find people I didn’t have to explain everything to,” she says.

Revere even tried a support group for caregivers, an hour’s drive away. But the other attendees were decades older, and had more financial resources. “[They] would say ‘And now I have to take equity out of our house,’ or ‘I’m thinking of reaching into our 401k.’ And then I would tell my story, and people would be looking at me like … a charity case, or like my problem is unsolvable. … If anything, I left and I just felt worse.”

But these days Revere no longer feels so alone. In fact, she’s a celebrity of sorts on TikTok, at least among the hundreds of thousands of people who post about dementia and the difficulties of caring for a loved one with the disease.@momofmymom What were your first signs? #momofmymom#dementia#alzheimer#cognitivedecline♬ Pieces (Solo Piano Version) – Danilo Stankovic

Over the past few years, Revere’s account, @MomofMyMom, has become wildly popular, with more than 650,000 followers. Many of her most ardent fans have told her that they feel like they personally know her and her mom. Revere has both found a supportive community, and helped build one.

Caregivers for people with dementia have flocked to social media, but TikTok has been an especially helpful platform. Content with the hashtag “dementia” has already racked up more than 4 billion views on TikTok, as younger generations, already accustomed to sharing their lives online, now find themselves caring for aging loved ones — often with little preparation and no idea how to actually do that.

The “unmet need”

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, but other forms include vascular dementia, mixed dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies, and frontotemporal dementia, according to the CDC. Nearly all forms of dementia get worse over time, and there is no cure, although there are some treatments.

The task of caring for people with dementia usually falls on family members. Every year, an estimated 16 million Americans provide more than 17 billion hours of unpaid care for family or friends suffering from Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias, according to the CDC. About two-thirds of these caregivers are women.

“Here in the United States, unfortunately, there is not a very strong system of paid support for people with dementia,” says Elena Portacolone, an associate professor who studies aging and cognitive impairment at UCSF’s Institute for Health & Aging. “And so the most common way of supporting persons with dementia is the daughter.”

Like Revere, many of the women who become caregivers end up having to quit their jobs. They often now find themselves financially vulnerable and “extremely isolated,” says Portacolone. “So like Jacquelyn [Revere], the unpaid caregiver of her mother for six years, they are left to their own devices.”

Another expert, Teepa Snow, agrees that too many caregivers are struggling. Snow is an occupational therapist in North Carolina, and runs a company offering training for caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s and related dementias. “We know that there are so many younger…people out there dealing with one form of brain change or another in their life, and they’re left hanging,” she says.

If Revere is the older sister everyone on dementia TikTok wishes they had, then Snow is their patron saint. Her own how-to videos about practical, compassionate caregiving rack up millions of views. “TikTok is where people are expressing an unmet need,” she says.

Because there’s no cure for Alzheimer’s or dementia, the medical community often treats dementia the way previous generations of practitioners treated cancer — like “a big black box,” Snow says. Decades ago, when people got cancer, “we didn’t say anything, we didn’t talk about it. We said, ‘Oh gosh, that’s horrible.’ And people were like, ‘…How long have they got?’ “

And while cancer is still a devastating diagnosis to receive, the medical community is more likely to respond by creating “a therapeutic alliance with the patient and the family,” says Portacolone, the UCSF professor.

But families of Alzheimer’s patients often report feeling like the medical system simply hands them an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, tells them there’s no cure, and essentially shows them the door. “[They’ll say] ‘You know, there’s really not a lot we can do,'” Snow explains. ” ‘You could read this book about the origin [of dementia.]’ It’s like, the last thing I need is another book to read.”

What family members need from the medical system, Snow says, is more understanding of symptoms and how to handle them, more help setting up long-term support systems, and knowledge about how patients can be helped by changes to their diet, sleep, exercise and lifestyle.

All too often, however, caregivers are left to muddle through and figure out the complex tasks of keeping a patient safe. ‘That’s pretty lonely,” Snow says. “And that’s so common. And at this point in time, if we had five families dealing with dementia, four out of five would fall apart before the disease was ended. And so that person who’s just chosen to be the primary [caregiver], they’re all alone. They’re truly all alone.”

Caregivers for people with dementia have been reaching out to one another for years, holding local in-person support groups or joining mega-groups on Facebook. There’s also no shortage of websites or books about the disease and the burdens of caregiving.

But the COVID pandemic disrupted or closed down many of those supports, such as in-person groups, or the adult daycare center that Revere’s mom had been attending five days a week. During lockdown, Revere noticed her mom’s condition started deteriorating. Desperate to keep her stimulated, and to find some kind of social connection for herself, Revere did what so many others did during COVID: She got on TikTok.

A single TikTok post of Snow’s can rack up millions of views. That’s because dementia TikTok, she says, is where “people are expressing an unmet need.”

Using TikTok feels like being submerged in an infinite torrent of videos — most about a minute long. But the short video format has attracted caregivers, who find they can document and share the vivid, daily moments of their homebound worlds in ways that would be less visceral on more text- or photo-centric platforms.

‘How many of us are on here?’

Just as you can watch videos showing World Cup highlights, you can also watch a woman’s “day in the life” video of caring for her husband with early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Or, perhaps, watching one of Revere’s @MomofMyMom posts from 2020, which walks viewers through their bath routine.

“It’s bath day,” Revere says at the start of the post, while still lying in bed. “I try my best not to make this an emotionally draining experience,” she sighs. “So let’s begin.”

Giving someone with dementia a bath can be difficult, or even dangerous. They can get disoriented, or feel threatened when someone takes off their clothes or maneuvers them into a wet tub. They may slip and fall, or try to physically fight their caregiver.@momofmymom If i had one word of advice, it would be, try to have fun. #Caregiver#blackcaregiver#poccaregiver#caregiversupport#selfcare#momofmymom#caregivercoach#caregivingcoach#caregiverlife#caregivers#caregivertips#caregiverburnout#caregiverspace#dementiacare#dementia♬ original sound – 💜MomOfMyMom💜

But Revere has created a soothing and predictable routine for her mother Lynn. At the time of this video, Lynn Hindmon is 63, and it’s about five years after her Alzheimer’s diagnosis. She’s not speaking much.

But in this video, Lynn Hindmon is still gorgeous: tall and regal, with great cheekbones. She still loves to pick out her own clothes, and on this day she’s wearing neon blue leggings and a purple beanie hat. She’s put on gold hoops and pink lipstick.

Revere starts off by promising her mom a present — which she’ll get after the bath.

“We’re going to get you some new lipstick. All right, let’s start.” Revere walks her audience through the process — sharing what works for them. She turns on some soul music, plugs in the space heater, puts the dog outside and lays out all her mom’s clothes. “Lure her into my cave,” she says, as her mom enters the bathroom.

The video then cuts to after the bath is over: Hindmon is dressed again, and mother and daughter are celebrating with a dance party in the bathroom.

“We dance and we dance and we dance,” Revere narrates. “And when we’re done, she gets a gift.” At last, Revere brings out the promised gift: a sleek black tube of lipstick.

“I have a present,” Revere tells her mom. Hindmon beams, but struggles to open the cap. “Here you go, it’s open,” Revere reassures her. “I opened it for you.”

Revere could not believe this video, of their regular bath routine, got more than 20,000 views. Hundreds of people left comments, saying how they can relate. One comment read: “My mother-in-law passed a year ago this week. This was the most frustrating part of caring for her. Devoted a whole day to getting this done). Another commenter told Revere “God Bless you! I know it’s hard. I see you and send so much love your way.”@momofmymom

I miss us, but so happy to have the memories💜♬ original sound – 💜MomOfMyMom💜

It was then that Revere realized she was no longer so alone. All the burdens of caregiving — the house maintenance, the medical bills and insurance paperwork — were still very real. But she knew others were out there, struggling with the same chores and challenges. It was because of her TikTok channel, and the community it was helping her tap into. Revere posted a follow up right away:

“How many of us are on here?” she said into the camera. “I’ve been, like, looking for people my age that I can relate to, who have the same experience.”

TikTokers responded from as far away as South Africa. Revere’s following soared from just a couple thousand followers to more than 650,000. Many people used the comments to talk about their own caregiving struggles. They wanted to see the little victories, like her gentle and even joyful tricks for getting through bath time. But they also listened to Revere’s candid confessions and watched her struggle through moments of total exhaustion.

“Ya’ll, I have never been so emotionally drained in my life,” she shared in one video from February of last year. “Caregiving eats your soul. It kills your spirit. It’s constant mourning for years. … And it’s beautiful. And it’s said. Some days you just have to take it breath by breath.”

The ethical issue: Should we be showing dementia patients like this?

But the intimate, unvarnished depictions of dementia on TikTok dementia also raise unavoidable ethical issues involving privacy, dignity and consent. Because now the internet is littered with videos of adults who, for the most part, haven’t given conscious consent to their most vulnerable moments being shared with millions of strangers.

In one TikTok, a granddaughter chronicles her grandmother’s aggression, filming as the elderly woman chases her through the house, fists swinging wildly. Other accounts film the verbal abuse that caregivers can experience, or show Alzheimer’s patients in their most vulnerable moments: a distraught woman standing in her living room in a thin nightgown, pleading for her long-dead parents to come pick her up.

Beth Kallmyer, the vice president for Care and Support for the Alzheimer’s Association, doesn’t think the people posting these videos intend to be exploitative. “You could tell that the caregivers just felt isolated and frustrated and at their wit’s end, with no resources,” she says.

“If I were talking to a family member … considering doing this,” Kallmyer says, “those are the questions I would pose to them: Would they [the person with dementia] be comfortable with this? Is there a way for you to film something that gets the idea across but maintains their dignity and maintains their self-respect?”

Public posts can potentially violate dignity in various ways, she explains. “Should we have a video of somebody that isn’t fully clothed? Or maybe [before Alzheimer’s] they only went outside when they were dressed to the nines or really put together, and you’ve got them in pajamas or sweatpants or whatever, and they don’t have makeup on. That’s about real … respect for the person. And I’m not sure that’s the best way to go about using TikTok.”

Some accounts have tried to directly address the issue of consent. The @TheKathyProject, for example, was created by sisters Kathy and Jean Collins to document the impacts and evolution of Kathy’s early-onset dementia diagnosis. In the early posts from 2020, Kathy’s symptoms are still fairly mild, and she’s clearly an eager participant in making and sharing the videos with the TikTok community.

Revere has a video that she now feels ambivalent about posting, in retrospect. Perhaps ironically, it’s the most-watched video on her channel, with 27 million views. In it, her mother is walking around the living room, holding an open bottle of mouthwash. She had somehow gotten past the locks on the bathroom cabinets.

Lynn Hindmon thinks the mouthwash is just a normal drink, like juice or milk. She looks frustrated and dazed as Revere tries to explain to her mom why she can’t drink mouthwash.

But Hindmon doesn’t want to let the mouthwash go. As caregivers know, Revere now has to keep this from escalating into a big conflict. “May I have it please? Please?” she asks her mom, who eventually relents and hands it over.

“Thank you so much, and I’m going to exchange it for something that tastes even better, all right?” Revere gets her mom a popsicle.

But some of the comments on that post were cruel, calling her mom an alcoholic, or saying she looked scary. The experience made Revere feel protective — like she needed to be more careful, as she didn’t want to post anything that might put her mom in a bad light. Still, after much consideration, she decided to keep the mouthwash video up. She says it’s still a good example of “redirecting” away from a risk — something other caregivers would understand.

Life after caregiving

On March 9, Jacquelyn Revere posted another video on TikTok.

“Hey ya’ll, I just wanted to come in and tell ya’ll that, that Mommy passed. She passed on Sunday night. … And it was, it was a really hard experience. And that’s really all I have for now. So lift us up in prayer. Send us your condolences. But Mommy is dancing up in heaven right now.”

Lynn Hindmon had collapsed suddenly at home on the evening of March 6. She died of cardiac arrest at the age of 65. On Tik Tok, the messages of surprise and condolence poured in.

“There were people who tuned in … to literally just watch Mommy eat in the morning, and then whatever we did at lunch time,” Revere says. “And people became a part of our family. People cried. People have been so touched by this story and have mourned my mom in a way that I never would have expected.”

For Revere, an only child, she’d always assumed that when her mom died, she’d have to mourn her alone. Instead, people were checking in on her, sending her gifts, sharing memories of their favorite videos of Lynn.

“It’s been the least lonely I’ve ever been throughout this experience actually,” she says. “It’s not just my lonely journey anymore. Now it’s everyone’s.

Revere has continued to post on @MomofMyMom. Recently she’s been posting about her grief. In videos, she talks about what it feels like to miss her mom, and to mourn the life she didn’t live while she was caring for her.

Now she has all the time in the world. She can go on dates. She can take her dog, Dewey, to the dog park again, let him lean out the open window in the car. Go out for a pedicure or drive by the ocean. But it’s been hard to let herself do these things, she tells her followers. Because what they mean is that her mom is gone.

After six years of caring for her mom, starting when she was just 29, Revere is now trying to figure out who she is now — and what she wants. She knows she wants to stay connected with dementia caregivers, especially the ones who don’t have huge followings, or who don’t get thousands of comments about what a good job they’re doing.

“I just want them to know that they’re being thought about,” Revere says. “Because that’s what I needed most. Just to know that life isn’t passing me by, and I’m not seen.”

“I just want to make sure that they feel seen.”

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/10/11/1102436118/on-dementia-tiktok-family-caregivers-find-support-and-bring-the-disease-to-light

Black Farmer’s Antibiotic-Free Meat Products Now Available in Grocery Stores and Online

Meet Ricky Dollison, a fourth-generation African American farmer who is the owner of Dollison Farms located in Poulan, Georgia. He is also the owner of a company called Warrior Creek Premium Meats that produces responsibly raised, antibiotic-free bacon, sausage, ground beef, ribeye steaks, pork tenderloins, and chicken leg quarters. The family-owned and operated business also produces a multitude of leafy greens, peanuts, cotton, soybeans, and corn for their livestock. They also raise cattle and their signature swine, “The Georgia Dolli”, in which their premium sausage, country cut bacon, and ham are derived.

Their high-quality meats are Georgia born and raised, without added hormones, by-products, nitrates, or antibiotics. Warrior Creek Premium Meats can be found at various grocery stores throughout Southwest Georgia such as Towson Meats, Snipes, Publix, and Piggly Wiggly.

Small farmers have always been the major food producers of the world, even before COVID-19. Now during a pandemic with scarce equipment and limited financial resources, creating value-added products and extending harvest offerings directly to customers is imperative for their survival beyond the next generation.

This Black-owned family farm operation is on the list of very few who are certified and able to sell nationwide. Dollison is also the CEO of AG First Community Co-op and a farmer advocate for the state of Georgia. He recognizes that bringing his company’s premium meats and their vegetable harvest directly to market is necessary for their survival.

Warrior Creek Premium Meats ship nationwide directly from the farm to your freezer. Monthly subscriptions are also available.

For more details and/or to place an order, visit WarriorCreekPremiumMeats.com

For press inquiries, contact (404) 484-6784 or warriorcreekpremiummeats@gmail.com

https://www.blackbusiness.com/2021/01/4th-generation-black-farmers-antibiotic-free-meat-products-available-grocery-stores.html

‘I just wanna surf’

Black women and nonbinary surfers are rarely in the spotlight. This photographer changes that

Photographs by Gabriella Angotti-Jones
Story by Leah Asmelash, CNN
Published October 7, 2022

Gabriella Angotti-Jones just wanted to surf.

It was the beginning of 2019. Fresh off an internship with the New York Times, photographer Angotti-Jones was stuck freelancing — constantly worrying about when her next assignment would come.

“I felt like I was stuck in a hamster wheel,” she told CNN. “I just felt like this working machine.”

So she turned inward. With the intention of pursuing a personal project, the Capistrano Beach, California, native’s mind went to one thing: surfing.

“Like f**k — I just wanna have fun,” Angotti-Jones said. “And I just wanna surf.”

That’s the title of Angotti-Jones’ new book of photography — “I Just Wanna Surf” — available now for preorder. Centered on Black women and nonbinary surfers, its pages are filled with lush images of the sea and the people who ride its waves, with locations ranging from California to Costa Rica. But it’s also a personal heirloom, chronicling Angotti-Jones’ own journey with surfing and depression.

The project, after all, became a homecoming for Angotti-Jones. She left New York for California for a month, connecting with a group called Black Girls Surf. Armed with cheap disposable cameras, she started snapping photos of other Black women and nonbinary folks on the water. At the time, she didn’t know where it was all going. She was just having fun.

The photos in the book reflect that feeling. Surrounded by water and sand, the joy of the surfers and their community is tangible. Their grins beckon the reader closer; their body language calls on us to jump in, too.

Angotti-Jones’ work is reminiscent of surfing photography from the 1950s — fuzzy photos of people hanging out on the beach and in the water, surfboards in tow. And it’s a direct contrast to what many may picture when envisioning more commercialized surf media, showing people riding 8- to 9-foot waves and making cutbacks.

“That’s not relatable,” Angotti-Jones said. “What’s relatable is the vibes.

But surfing and surf culture aren’t always about chill beach vibes. There can also be an intense culture of surf localism, the territorial idea that waves exist only for the locals of the area. It’s a mindset that can turn aggressive toward surfers deemed outsiders. Last year, for example, two Black surfers said they were called racist and homophobic slurs by an older White surfer while at Manhattan Beach, in an incident that quickly went viral through the local surfing community.

Angotti-Jones’ work stands in defiance to those localist ideas — highlighting instead the profound community surfing can create, particularly among Black surfers.

“I just wanted to show Black women and nonbinary people, and Black people in general, in the same context as what surfing is,” she said. “I thought that was a super powerful storytelling tool, to just be like, ‘Yeah, we’re here. We’re surfing.’”

It’s not a common sight. In the book, Angotti-Jones reveals she didn’t meet another Black surfer until January 2019.

One photo in particular stands out. Angotti-Jones captured Kimiko Russell-Halterman during 2021’s Black Sand Peace Paddle — a paddle-out at Manhattan Beach meant to raise awareness and create space for Black surfers following the incident of racial harassment.

And yet Russell-Halterman is captured in the midst of a gleeful scream, having gone out on her new longboard and popping up over a wave.

“When I look at Kimi, I just see the ocean’s joy, and I see what’s possible when you let the ocean ground you,” Angotti-Jones said.

But there are quieter moments, too. Moments spent waxing a board alone, or rubbing white-sheened sunscreen into dark skin.

In one image, a young Black girl is seen in her swimsuit in the foreground, walking ahead of a group of young White girls holding their surfboards. Though both are walking in the same direction, seemingly for the same thing, there’s a separation between the two.

All the girls were there for the same event, hosted by SurfearNegra, which aims to diversify the sport by making surfing more accessible to kids of color, and Sisters of the Sea, a group focused on introducing young women to surfing. Though the kids got along well, Angotti-Jones noticed there were still times when some of the Black surfers with less experience would separate from the White surfers, some of whom were already attending surfing competitions.

It was a feeling she recognized.

“I felt like I was reliving what I went through, which was not feeling like I was a part of it even though I was a part of it,” she said.

The book, on its surface, is about surfing. But it was also a vessel — a way for Angotti-Jones to process some of her own traumas and unearth the root causes of her depression. Her mental illness made her put up walls, she said; the Black people pictured radiate an openness she never let herself experience.

That’s what she wants her readers to remember — the Black surfer story is not defined by racism and conflict, but by love and friendship. We are not the bad things that happen to us. We are the joy and community we choose instead.

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/10/us/black-women-nonbinary-surfers-cec-cnnphotos/?iid=cnn-mobile-app&fbclid=IwAR15vksmvdNQ5JjNDntmR0kUsbqXvQqybhiNIEwNgCuoasICh6RmvTGnlQs

Founder of Black-Owned Food Service Business Wins $17M Contract With Boston Public Schools

Sheldon Lloyd, founder and CEO of City Fresh Foods, a Roxbury, Massachusetts-based Black-owned food service business, has landed a deal with Boston Public Schools to provide food to its thousands of students. The $17 million contract is reportedly the largest non-construction contract the city has awarded to a Black-owned business. The food service contract comes after a committee consisting of both BPS and city staff unanimously decided to choose City Fresh Foods due to its operational strength, commitment to reducing the use of processed foods, as well as dedication to the community.

City Fresh Foods will provide breakfast, lunch, afternoon meals, snacks, and summer meals to nearly 50,000 students in the city’s schools. The meals will be made fresh in their production facility using nutritious ingredients that are mostly locally sourced.

“Transformative change for BPS starts with the everyday experiences of our students, and this new contract ensures every child will have access to nutritious foods to energize and nourish them through the day,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said in a statement, according to Boston 25 News. “We’re proud to partner with a local, Roxbury-based, Black-owned business to deliver for our young people.”

City Fresh Foods will collaborate with BPS to ensure that the students receive high-quality and nutrient-rich meals. A dietician will be a part of the team to analyze the nutritional value of all meals and also monitor student participation and minimize food waste.

“Many of our employees, including me, have children in Boston Public Schools and we are deeply committed to further supporting our communities where we work, learn and live to simultaneously provide quality meals and support our local economy. We are grateful to the Wu Administration and Boston Public Schools for their partnership and look forward to getting started this summer,” said Sheldon Lloyd, Co-founder and CEO of City Fresh Foods.

For more information about City Fresh Foods, visit CityFresh.com

https://www.blackbusiness.com/2022/05/sheldon-lloyd-founder-city-fresh-foods-black-owned-business-food-service-contract-boston-public-schools.html

At the intersection of social justice, political empowerment, human development and the cultural arts one will find LaTosha Brown. As a catalyst for change, thought leader and social strategist, her national and global efforts have been known to organize, inspire and catapult people into action—not just lip service—enabling them to build power and wealth for themselves and their community. Honored to receive the 2010 White House Champion of Change Award, the 2006 Spirit of Democracy Award and the Louis Burnham Award for Human Rights, it is more than evident that LaTosha is passionate about leading social change for the purpose of advancing humanity, creating a more equitable redistribution of wealth and power around the globe.

Where other leaders see nothing but poverty, despair and destitution, this 2018 Bridge Jubilee Award and Liberty Bell Award recipient sees great opportunity. To her, there is more than enough resources on the planet to comfortably sustain every human being. Affectionately known by many as a “Black Renaissance” woman, her southern roots, coupled with her global thoughts toward people, ideas and money, have opened doors for her to maximize her voice in the U.S., as well as over 30 countries abroad. In addition to being recognized as a well-respected leader in the South who has led numerous initiatives, campaigns and special projects to empower marginalized communities, LaTosha is leading several international efforts to provide training, support and funding for women-led institutions based in Guyana, Senegal, Belize and Tanzania.

Having raised millions of dollars for a variety of causes throughout the U.S., she is most known for her philanthropic efforts as an effective fundraiser and resource person. From creating community-led funds to establishing donor networks, LaTosha has raised millions of dollars to support social justice causes and created projects that bring more investments into marginalized communities.

As the co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund and the BVM Capacity Building Institute, LaTosha is adamant about ensuring that all human beings have access to quality education, safety, security, peace, love and happiness. Striving daily to hear the voices of women in leadership amplified and supported, she is also working to eliminate human suffering through her vision of the Southern Black Girls & Women’s Consortium. Recognizing that her work is not rooted in strengthening political systems, governments or institutions—but in the advancement of people—LaTosha serves as an authoritative figure in the lives of thousands, if not millions. More than ever, she’s crystal clear that she is called to remind people of the power they hold within, pushing them through the birthing process of vision to manifestation.

Transforming culture through her singing and songwriting, this innovative storyteller is shifting the narrative of African-Americans through media, campaigns and nonprofit projects. Featured on CNN, HBO, MSNBC and Fox, to name a few, Latosha also proudly serves as the founder of Saving OurSelves Coalition, a community-led disaster relief organization that helped hundreds of families in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Currently, she serves on the board of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, the Southern Documentary Fund, the U.S. Human Rights Network and the Congressional Progressive Caucus Center. After having worked with her, clients, colleagues and friends alike gain more clarity about their vision and life’s work, connection to quality resources, and a deeper sense of their own humanity after having encountered the incomparable LaTosha Brown.

http://www.mslatoshabrown.com/about/

Parity Homes

Bree is the founder of Parity, an equitable development company that rehabilitates abandoned properties by the block to create affordable homeownership opportunities. At the core of her work is development without displacement – she aims to revitalize distressed neighborhoods while ensuring that legacy residents are able to participate in and benefit from reinvestment.

Prior to founding Parity, Bree had a career in finance and investments where she was an analyst at Morgan Stanley, a vice president at Point72 Asset Management, and an investment associate at venture capital firm Anthemis Group. These roles included deal structuring, capital raises, conducting due diligence, advanced data analysis, and deal management. 

Bree has been a lifelong social justice advocate, focused primarily on economic justice, affordable housing, anti-displacement, anti-gentrification, and anti-recidivism. As an advocate, Bree played a pivotal role in the creation of Community Benefits Agreements in her hometown, and advocated for community protections in local legislation and zoning.

Bree Jones

At Freedom House, these Black men saved lives. Paramedics are book topic

PITTSBURGH, Pa. — John Moon stands on the 2000 block of Centre Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. He’s in front of a building that houses the Hill District Federal Credit Union, but he points to a plaque affixed to the stone façade commemorating the Freedom House ambulance service, widely acknowledged as the first paramedic program in the United States.

A half-century ago, Moon was a Freedom House paramedic, and he remains fiercely proud of it: The service, staffed overwhelmingly by Black men from the neighborhood, revolutionized emergency street medicine on the same blocks where many were underemployed, or even believed to be “unemployable.”

“We were considered the least likely to succeed by society’s standards,” said Moon, who was 22 and a hospital orderly when he started training to join Freedom House. “But one problem I noticed is, no one told us that!”

Today, however, Moon worries that Freedom House is in danger of being forgotten – a victim not just of time, but of the deliberate erasure of its memory.

“Unfortunately, today there are probably people who live here that has never heard of Freedom House ambulance service,” he said.

A new book could help.

Their story is committed to the page

“American Sirens” (Hachette Books), by Kevin Hazzard, tells the story of Freedom House, which operated from 1967-75, its historic accomplishments, and its unjust and untimely demise.

Moon, himself, plays a central role. He spent much of his childhood in an Atlanta orphanage before relatives living in the Hill adopted him. As an orderly at Oakland’s Montefiore Hospital, he was astonished one night when two Black men entered with a patient on a stretcher, giving orders and clearly in command – a nearly unimaginable thing in those days. Moon learned they were from Freedom House, and he vowed to follow in their footsteps.

Hazzard sketches other key characters. One is Peter Safar, the storied Viennese-born anesthesiologist and Holocaust survivor who invented cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, in the 1950s, while working in Baltimore. Safar was also interested in emergency street medicine at a time when ambulances were driven by police, volunteer firefighters or even mortuary workers with little to no medical training. For victims of car crashes, heart attacks and gunshots, there was no on-site treatment, only an imperative to get them to the hospital as quickly as possible. Mortality rates were high. In the 1960s, working at Pittsburgh’s Presbyterian Hospital, Safar developed a plan to do emergency street medicine, but he had no means to implement it.

Enter Philip Hallen, a former ambulance driver who was now president of the Maurice Falk Medical Fund, a local foundation. Hallen also saw the need for street medicine, especially in the Hill, which was medically underserved. He reached out to James McCoy Jr., a Hill-based entrepreneur who ran a job-training program called Freedom House Enterprises. After connecting with Safar, the men took the unusual step of recruiting their first class of “paramedics” – a job that, technically, did not yet exist – from the Hill itself.

“So, what you end up with was, you know, a number of guys maybe who were fresh back from Vietnam. A number of guys maybe who were fresh out of prison. A number of guys who were in-between jobs, because literally they’re picking people up who they see kind of wandering the streets,” said Hazzard, an Atlanta-based writer and former paramedic.

The rigorous training paid off, Hazzard writes: Serving just the Hill and Oakland at first, Freedom House saved lives that would have been lost before. Tour the Hill today with Moon, for instance, and stops will include the site of his first call for a heroin overdose, as well as the story of how he became, he believes, the first paramedic to intubate a patient in the field. The latter story involves another key figure in the book, Nancy Caroline, a doctor who in later years was Freedom House’s medical director.

Doctors speak of Freedom House’s success

“They were the first true paramedic program in the world,” said Ronald Stewart, a Canadian expert in emergency medicine who was medical director for Pittsburgh’s Public Safety department in the 1970s and ’80s.

“It just amazes me, the quality of the program they were able to develop,” said Jon Krohmer, a Michigan-based expert in emergency medicine and a board member of the National EMS Museum.

One intangible impact of Freedom House was the community pride it generated: Highly trained technicians – dozens of them, over the years — were saving lives in their own neighborhood, which was often ignored by the rest of the city.

“Often times, when a person would call for assistance, they would say, ‘Don’t send the police, send Freedom House,’ ” said Moon.

The flip side: Hazzard recounts that some white patients refused treatment by Freedom House, even though their lives might have been at stake.

Freedom House operated under a city contract – meaning that for years, the Hill had better emergency care than the rest of the city, where ambulances were still driven by police. But, in fact, emergency medicine was in the midst of a revolution sparked in part by “Accidental Death and Disability: The Neglected Disease of Modern Society,” a 1966 report by the National Academies of Sciences/National Research Council. In this atmosphere, Freedom House’s influence spread nationally, too. Under a contract from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Freedom House director Dr. Caroline wrote the first national curricula on emergency street medicine.

Saving lives gets in the way

But despite such successes, in “American Sirens,” Hazzard writes, a new Pittsburgh mayor, Pete Flaherty, began to withhold support from Freedom House. At least one issue was racism: The overwhelmingly white police force saw the work of the overwhelmingly Black paramedics as an incursion onto their turf.

“There are many within Freedom House who eventually came to the conclusion that, you know, the problems that we’re having with City Hall are not what we’re doing, but rather who’s doing it,” said Hazzard.

Funding cuts were followed, in 1975, by the absorption of Freedom House into a new citywide EMS department. Many Freedom House paramedics stayed on, but most say they were treated poorly, their years of experience discounted. John Moon recalls being forced to “ride as the third person on a two-person crew.”

“I endured a concerted effort to eliminate as many, if not all, of Freedom House employees as humanly possible, and it was very, very successful,” he said.

But Moon himself persisted: In 2009, he retired as assistant chief of the department. These days, he is one of the main advocates for keeping the memory of Freedom House alive.

Savoring their memory

Public remembrances include the plaque on Centre Avenue (which was the headquarters of Jim McCoy’s Freedom House Enterprises), and another on the site of UPMC Presbyterian, where the Freedom House ambulance service actually operated (though the original building is gone). Heinz History Center also houses a Freedom House display as part of its permanent exhibit “Pittsburgh: A Tradition of Innovation.”

Moon hopes “American Sirens” helps spread the word. But in any case, Freedom House lives on in his heart.

“I owe Freedom House a debt that I don’t think I will ever be able to repay,” he said, “because they’re the ones that instilled that motivation and that drive into me that I could do something no matter what it is, no matter what the hurdle, no matter what the barrier.”

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/27/1124161896/at-freedom-house-these-black-men-saved-lives-paramedics-are-book-topic

It wasn’t until September 2021 that Sesame Street — which started in November 1969 — got its first full-time Black female puppeteer. That’s when Megan Piphus Peace joined the cast full time and landed the role of Gabrielle, a 6-year-old puppet on the classic children’s show.

This month, as she marks one year working with Sesame Street, she’s decided to dedicate her career to entertainment.

“I’m so glad I had the opportunity to be on Sesame Street and encourage other kids to dream as big as their imaginations will allow,” the 29-year-old tells NPR’s Weekend Edition.”I always dreamed of working in television, but I never imagined myself being at Sesame Street.”

A passion for puppetry

Her interest in puppetry and performing started when she was a child.

Piphus Peace says a woman at her church invited her to a puppetry conference where she first learned about the art. She saw female ventriloquists who would sing and tell stories with their characters.

She went home and told her parents she wanted to learn ventriloquism.

“I had never seen a ventriloquist before. And at the time, I didn’t realize that Shari Lewis, one of my idols … was a ventriloquist until I was much older because she was so good,” Piphus Peace says.

Lewis, the original puppeteer of Lamb Chop, performed puppetry and ventriloquism on television for decades, most notably on The Shari Lewis Show and the PBS program Lamb Chop’s Play-Along. Piphus Peace grew up watching her work.

“Lamb Chop was my friend and Shari was just her friend too,” she laughs.

Piphus Peace watched tapes, got her own puppet and started entertaining her classmates.

“I realized I found my passion in making children laugh and smile through puppetry.”

Becoming the show’s first Black female puppeteer

Her journey to Sesame Street was preceded by Kevin Clash, a Black male puppeteer who started with the show in the 1980s. It wasn’t until 2021 that a Black female puppeteer would do the same.

“It’s a matter of representation,” Piphus Peace says. “It’s not very often that you see women puppeteers in general and also Black women puppeteers. I can probably count on one hand the number that there are.”

She first performed with Sesame Street in 2020 as part of a special with CNN. Then after a year of training in what she calls Muppet-style puppetry, she formally joined the cast in 2021.

Piphus Peace says she hopes that by being the first Black female puppeteer on the show,more doors will open for women and people of color.

She notes that the show has had Black women in other production positions “who have been woven into the fabric of Sesame Street over the years.” That has inspired her to become a producer one day.

Discussing race on Sesame Street

Piphus Peace praises the show’s team of writers and producers, saying they take the hardest topics and frame them in a way that children can understand.

“One of the lessons that we have was on using your voice. It speaks subtly to equity,” she says. “You know, we didn’t have Gabrielle go into the camera and say, ‘Black Lives Matter.’ She says that we all have a voice that matters and we can use our voice.”

Piphus Peace hopes to bring an unwavering sense of confidence and love of self to her character.

“I want her confidence to just shine through the screen so that little girls and boys around the world are filled with confidence in themselves.”

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/25/1124974188/sesame-street-first-black-female-puppeteer-megan-piphus-peace