The Mosquito and the Elephant

The mosquito has a clear advantage over the elephant.

So what if they have the world’s largest military, if they have more weapons than us, if they are organized beyond measure, if they control minds through media. So what. This is not an acceptable reason to accept an attack on our children’s children’s children. And that is exactly what is happening. The underground railroad was a small network. With far fewer people than folks believe. It was no where near as large as the militias of the newly forming states. But there is strength in your small numbers. The mosquito has a clear advantage over the elephant. It can move swiftly. It can change paths with very little conversation. It can fly. So yes it seems as though folks who run these large institutions and large corporations and large governmental bodies are huge and without reproach but this is a lie. Our small forces. Tribal groupings, literary clubs, prayer circles, sisterhood meetings, all have a remarkable ability to harass their large ones. When we act as small interconnected cell groups, just like our ancestors on the underground what we find is we have the ability to overwhelm systems by forming small forces that share resources, information and tactics. We are so tiny that sometimes we are invisible to the naked eye. We move like insignificant ants, yet like the ant we can carry 50 times our weight. We can organize small groups of safe havens for those who are vulnerable and under attack by the larger establishment. There will be those who are vocal and need safe keeping. Our positions, whatever they are grant us the ability to harass and harangue. And when things hit the fan, it is those who are most prepared to lead who will inhabit the positions of leadership.

REVOLUTIONARY PETUNIA SEEKING RAIN

Dear Alice,

If you are reading this, it is because yet again the Great Listener has deemed my seeking worth finding. I am placing in this letter a few questions which I hope to learn your thoughts. It is May 31, 2022. I am sitting with news of massacres. I have spent the last few months with your writing, rereading The Color Purple and rewatching the movie of the same name. Checking your website for new blog entries.

Earlier this month, I interviewed you after reading your newest book, Gathering Blossoms Under Fire, 50 years of your journal entries. I am a little over halfway done with The Same River Twice, playing Quincy Jones’ Color Purple movie soundtrack while I write you this letter with dreams of someday hosting a live listening party with you and Quincy as our special guests. We would chat music, the Color Purple soundtrack, and review copies of Quincy’s new book–12 Notes on Life and Creativity, alongside your extensive catalogue. Big dreamer. I know.

I wrote your staff requesting an opportunity to share space with you at the beginning of the year, and I get that I am one of a billion people who have that same prayer, so when I didn’t hear back I was not astonished, just patient until Sara Lomax Reese, head of the oldest local radio station in Philadelphia, calls me up and asks if I’d like to interview Alice Walker, I say: YES! And then cut a step. Yes to the Great Listener. Wave my hand in the air. Yes to fate. Close my eyes. Inhale. Yes to Alice.

You won’t believe this but on December 31, 2021, I wrote down all my wildest dreams for 2022 and right on top of my list, under complete my memoir, was your name–have tea and chat with Alice Walker. The tea didn’t happen just yet (but I have hope). Our chat began at 6 pm on May 12th at the Comcast Technology Center. But how does one squeeze a lifetime of questions into a 45-minute interview where I must share half the questions with a co-host and 15 minutes of the interview on audience questions. The day before the interview, my sister said, “Just make sure you have one good question because that might be all you get.” And she was almost right. I got to ask you about love, flowers, reparations, finances, and fame. But I still have so many other questions.

I will not write them all here today. Just one: I want to know your visions for the future of this world and how you see us getting there. After reading the journal entries in Gathering Blossoms, I am challenged on how to teach folks, especially young folks, how to practically apply the lessons the book so eloquently layers in. For instance, I just finished watching a documentary on Hulu about XXXtentacion, a young rapper with millions of fans who was shot dead at 20 years old during the height of his tumultuous career.

I wanted to understand XXXtentacion more because my 18-year- old son damn near worships him. “XXXtentacion to me is what Alice Walker is to you,” my son explains. In the documentary, XXXtentacion, like Mister______, like your grandfather, has a deep mix of undesirable qualities alongside great fragility. These qualities are attractive to millions of young people who listen to XXXtentacion and feel heard. And I am aware that in Philly, it’s the 16–24-year-olds who are both the most at risk (highest murder rate, highest suicide rate, highest rape rate) and share the highest opportunity for growth. I am aware that the young person who shot and killed elders in a Buffalo grocery store was 18 years old. That the young person who shot and killed babies in a Texas elementary school was 18 years old. That the cadre of conductors working in our shops come there to restore their belief in connection. And these are young people who just came out of years spent in the captivity of a global pandemic. I just want to know from your perspective how to love them better. How to reach the otherwise unreachable. How to get as many of your books into desiring hands as possible. How to get us writing letters like Nettie. And freely expressing ourselves like Shug and Sofia. And restoring ourselves like Celie.

I believe that your books are medicine, a soul rejuvenating elixir that will protect and guide us through the days to come if we read, hear, and apply the wisdom.

signed a revolutionary petunia,

jeannine

The Culture Makers Moral Compass

every image we take and share is a tiny gift of a story told to the world. media literacy though it worked hard to teach us about being a consumer of media, it lacked on the conversation about the ethical and moral implication of being a content producer and then in an age where so many are now content makers and sharers but of course without the prerequisite course in ethics, we get an inconsistent array of messages going out into the world without as much as a blink of an eye about how our “stuff” impacts us, our neighbors, the world at large and even the future. watch what you say— its never just a picture.

three fates

I was born the middle daughter between two sisters. This identity as a sister is one of the first ones I knew or assigned meaning to. It meant that I always had a playmate. I can laugh, cry, and yell with my sisters. We weren’t big on making fun of one another and the few times when we did, we lived to regret it. When our parents’ relationship had its breakdowns, we sisters had each other. When we fought, and we did fight, we still knew we’d be sisters the next day, the next week, the next month, and we couldn’t fight in a way that would damage that with permanence. We taught each other, learned from each other, challenged each other, and believed in each other. We did not always like each other, but we certainly loved each other. That is the lens by which I enter conversations on sisterhood. It is not a relationship that ever asked me to be anything other than myself, but for them, I always wanted to be stronger, and wiser, and braver, so when I bought information or life experience to my sisters, it was from a solid and intentional place. And when I found that Sonia Sanchez quote about Sisterhood being a covering, when I heard her talk about her own relationship with her older sister, Patricia, I knew she understood, what I understood, that there is sacredness in such relationships that isn’t marked by ceremony but instead fte.

On Wilford & Christopher

…yea it’s the same loss of control displayed in video games, movies, cartoons, local, national, and federal govt, music, social media, every news outlet, and in humans beings in general—my response is to your question “how do we expect to teach conflict resolution to young people…” my answer is as an educator you take everything/anything and you use it to open up dialogue about a real and true phenomenon. you don’t make this scenario as a teachable moment any more or less important than any other, you discuss the issue from its varying perspectives without trying to convert folks to a “side” or belief system. instead you invite them to know and clearly express their own stance. all too often issues are far more nuanced than folks are allowing them to be. to me this issue raises great social questions that we as a society, community, neighborhood, and individuals get to grapple with such as—when, if ever, is physical violence ok? is it ok during self defense? is there a difference between verbal violence and physical? when is either effective? when defending another? when defending self? never? how does one know when they are about to “lose” control? what is respect? what is disrespect? how have you been taught to handle disrespect? by whom? where do you stand on a spectrum of non-violence? why did brother malcolm oppose brother martin’s teaching of non-violence and vice versa? who are other historical and contemporary figures with differing opinions on turning the other cheek who can be referenced? if educators haven’t asked themselves the hard questions about their own philosophical stances and challenged their own biases, there’s no way they can be effective as educators on real topics. this is just a few questions to get the conversation started with self first and then with others.

Homework To Do—Ida Bell Wells Barnett

“Are you Ida?,” a woman in a tie dye tee shirt and polka dot beanie poked her head into our bookshop one day before we had officially opened.

“No,” I smiled. “The bookshop is named for Ida Bell Wells Barnett. Not me.”

“Ida Bell who?” her forehead wrinkled.

“Wells Barnett.”

“Never heard of her,” she said looking around the near empty bookshop.

“Then we have homework to do,” I said handing her a copy of Ida, A Sword Among Lions.

According to Ida Bell Wells Barnett’s biographer, Paula Giddings, Ida Bell Wells Barnett solidified her work as a literary activist in the late 1800s because of three young Black gentlemen–Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart.

These three gentlemen were the proud founders of the People's Grocery Store, a small coop in a neighborhood called The Curve. The People’s Grocery Store was a great success, so much so that it cut into the sales at another local White owned shop that once had a monopoly on Black and White customers alike. The growing tensions between the two stores led to a violent outburst between the races and as a result, those three gentlemen, Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart were arrested unlawfully.

On Wednesday, March 9, at about 2:30 a.m. 75 men in Black masks surrounded the Shelby County Jail and nine entered. The feral group of White men dragged Thomas Moss, Will Stewart, and Calvin McDowell from their cells and brought them to a Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad where Moss had his hands and fingers shot off "inch by inch" until they were shot to pieces. Next the angry mob shot four holes into McDowell's face, each large enough for a fist to enter. His left eye was shot out and the ball hung over his cheek in shreds. His jaw was torn out by buckshot. Where his right eye had been there was a big hole which his brains oozed out. Stewart was described as the most stoic of the three, and was also shot on the right side of the neck with a shotgun.

These three gentlemen were close friends of Ida Bell Wells Barnett and she spent the rest of her life working to address, correct, and hold accountable the system that allowed the unlawful and immoral harassment and murder of innocent Black people. In 1893, Ida Bell Wells Barnett’s fight for equal protection under the law led her to the British Isles and onto London. It is during her time in London that she realized the importance of building small, women led civic societies charged with holding lawmakers and lawbreakers accountable for their actions and inactions toward Black Americans like the three gentlemen–Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart. It was her work in London that helped to fund and fuel her work here in the United States.

We share this story because perhaps like so many of my neighboring businesses and community members, you all don’t understand the unwavering legacy of our bookshop’s namesake–Ida. Perhaps you don’t understand the importance of Ida Bell Wells Barnett almost single handedly taking on the institution of vigilante lawmaking and lawbreaking on behalf of her people. And without that context perhaps you miss the significance of the little red phone booth outside of Ida’s Bookshop at 734 Haddon Ave–the ONLY monument or altar in this entire town erected on behalf of a Black historic heroine EVER.


From the beginning of this ordeal, we, a small business and one of very few Black owned businesses in this town, have been targeted and unduly harassed about this matter simply because we requested a conversation. “Just move it,” demanded “our friends'' from the zoning board, and the mayor, after we frequently asked for nothing more than to listen to your perspective and to also be heard. We’ve hired professional fabricators and designers of color, Mio Culture, to join into our dialogue about how to make the phone booth as safe as possible, but they were also demeaned by the zoning board and the mayor and then ignored.

We find it especially heinous and ironic, but not surprising that this threat to remove our private property without permission and without due process comes just days before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and as we prepare to share for Black History Month–it is very similar to the train conductor who in 1883 decided to strong-arm Ida Bell Wells Barnett to the back of a train car only for her to bite his hand rather than be bullied. This is what happens when people–especially unchecked overprivileged White people, forget that we are supposed to have equal protection under the law which means that one human or group of humans, even if elected into a so-called or hired into positions of power, have no actual power over anyone else and that small vigilante lawmakers and lawbreakers don’t get to throw the stones of the law to abuse small business owners and then hide their hands and faces behind ordinances. It is important to remember that you all work in a capacity of service to the community and that the final say about the community belongs to the community.

So in the name of Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart and under the guiding light of Ida Bell Wells Barnett, we would like to know:

Exactly which ordinance am I violating?

When was the ordinance adopted?

What is the process for adopting an ordinance and was that full process followed in this instance?

How am I being invited to exercise my rights to due process in this matter?

If and when my property is removed, where will it go and the process for me getting it back?

And who will be taking full responsibility for this matter as it escalates?

Finally, I request a public hearing on this matter and for myself and my community members to have a say in how it unfolds.

CANT JEFF THIS

We want our sister bookshops, Harriett’s & Ida’s, to fly, to survive and thrive and be here well after you and I are gone from this here plane.

At the same time we live and operate within the confines of certain systems, rituals, and “holy days” that feel contrary to our beliefs and desires.
Is it possible to grow and sew and fund your own creative work and the creative work of your peers while living within this here ideological box, without contorting and conforming in ways that feel too small and too limited for what is truly possible for humanity?


Yes, we want to offer massive deals on one weekend a year and make enough to see us through the darkness of winter, to pay for the construction on the new Home for Harrietts, to continue employing and training young folks, to host our own truth & reconciliation trials this March, to drop more fly merch focused on local and historical griots, but we refuse to do that at the risk of our own sanity or ethic or standard or that of our team.


We also don’t want to use advertising to manipulate and placate and dance a jig to make a few dollars. We want whatever coinage you spend with us to be because you live the mission, you see the work, and want to watch it healthily unfold in its perfect order. We hope you’ll buy books today and ANY day because you bear witness to the fruit that we bear.

Creatives Create

I designed this jacket for my Philly Mag interview, I also designed the shoes—I like to play in any medium because why not. Too often we limit ourselves because someone told us to “stay in our lane.” This ain’t a highway, dawg. Tell them to take their limited mindset thatta way. Creatives create. It’s giving afro vintage victorian hippie vibes if you ask me. Click to read the full interview.

“Modern day branding tactics are sneaky and not nearly as visceral as cooking someone’s flesh with a burning hot piece of metal. Because of this, they are a little harder to spot. They may disguise themselves in marketing lingo like partnership, campaign, and collaboration or hide behind financial backing calling themselves grants, fellowships, and awards knowing damn well they have an ulterior motive—let us put our names on your back, shoulder, or face like chattel.
”
— Jeannine A. Cook