Here is what the data says out loud. We opened 2025 with a jobless figure sitting around 5.4 percent. By December that same measure had climbed to 7.3, a level that exposed how sharply the labor market had turned against us. Diplomas did not save anybody. Among Black women, sisters holding bachelor’s degrees watched their footing slip more sharply than every other education group, and the federal government by itself shed 277,000 roles, with an estimated 95,000 of those losses falling on Black women. By early summer of this year, the headline had eased toward 5.7. Good news, supposedly. Except that softer number did not necessarily mean more of us were bringing home a check. The labor force itself had shrunk, leaving fewer Black women counted as working or actively looking for work. Some likely got tired and stopped searching. Others stepped away for reasons the headline rate cannot tell us.

I want to sit inside that stillness for a moment, because that is where the ache actually lives.

Think about who tends to give up the search. Not the one who never tried. No, the one who wore herself down to the nub trying. She rewrote that resume until the words stopped meaning anything. Sat through a webinar on personal branding during her lunch break. Rehearsed answers at six in the morning to a bathroom mirror, half of which never got asked. Bought the ring light because somebody’s cousin swore it read more professional on camera. And after the fourth no, or the twelfth, or the interviews that just went silent, which somehow cut deeper, something in her clicked off. That closing does not register anywhere official. There is no line item on a government spreadsheet for a spirit that got tired.

So let me name what I keep watching happen to grown, accomplished women I love and respect.

A friend of mine, fifty-one, twenty years in nonprofit management, got walked out of her building on a Tuesday. Nine years at that organization. She had a corner desk, a plant she named, a reputation people trusted. The travel got frozen first. Then her email login stopped working. Then a stranger from HR read her a paragraph off a laptop. By Thursday it was finished. A master’s degree, a kid in the fourth grade, and that whole weekend she spent apologizing to me, to her mama, to herself, like she had done something wrong. She hadn’t. The floor moved. She only happened to be standing on it.

That is the piece the charts miss.

When the paycheck vanishes and you did nothing to cause it, the brain goes looking for a reason inside you anyway. Strange as it sounds, that hurts less than the alternative. Own the mistake and at least there is a lever to pull, something to correct by Monday. Accept that the whole floor tilted under everybody at once and there is nothing to grab, and that thought will keep you up at two in the morning. So we reach for the version that hands us a lever. We tell ourselves we should have networked harder, spoken up less, spoken up more, worn the other blazer, stayed later, smiled bigger. We audit ourselves into the ground.

And the promotions. Lord, the ones that never come.

Here is a cruelty nobody warns you about. Do everything they told you to do. Earn the credential. Mentor the young ones. Volunteer for the committee nobody wants. Make your manager look brilliant in the meeting. Wait your turn, patiently, professionally, and then watch the title go to somebody who golfs with the director. Not once. Over and over, across years, until patience curdles into something quieter and more corrosive. Then the wondering starts, whether maybe the problem is you. Your voice. Your hair. The way you push back in a room. That wondering is expensive. It taxes a woman in a currency that never shows up on any pay stub, and she pays it every single day.

Economists and labor analysts keep using a phrase for us. Canary in the coal mine. Bellwether. They mean that when the wider economy begins to rot, Black women buckle first, because we sit stacked at the exact intersection of everything fragile. Public sector employment. Care work. Retail and service floors. Households where one income holds up a lot of people. When the system catches a cold, we get pneumonia, and we get it early. Research has estimated that more than one in five Black women in the labor force work somewhere in health care, another field where policy shifts and budget pressure can hit hard. So the pressure is not slowing down. It is loading up.

I need the Black women reading this to hear the next part plainly.

A layoff is not a verdict on your value. A stalled title is not proof you fell short. Ninety applications out, three replies back. That math is the market breaking down, not some hidden truth about you finally surfacing. Whatever is squeezing us got set in motion way before your name ever showed up on a layoff spreadsheet, and it grinds on no matter how clean your last review looked. A person can be excellent at the work and still land on the wrong side of the cut. Both are true at once, ugly as that sits.

The joblessness itself is not the part that scares me. We have survived lean stretches before. Our grandmothers wrote the book on it. What gnaws at me is the quiet shame underneath, how a sharp, qualified woman slowly trims her dreams down to fit whatever scraps are left, and calls it being realistic. That is not wisdom. It is a slow surrender with better manners. I have watched brilliant Sistas take themselves out of the running for jobs they had every right to chase, because one more no felt like one more than they had left in them. That is the wound that outlasts any recession. It keeps bleeding long after the economy technically recovers.

So what do we do, sitting here in the middle of it. Tell the truth to each other, for one. Quit performing fine over brunch. When a friend loses her post, nobody should rush to fix it or spin it bright. Let her be furious. Remind her, more than once if she needs it, that the ground moved and it was not her doing. Hold onto your own records too, the emails, the wins, the receipts, so that on the bad mornings there is something solid to press against the lie in your head.

And we carry two truths at once, which is a thing our people have practiced for generations. Yes, this economy is taking more than it gives, and that is real, and naming it out loud matters. And also, no market on earth gets to decide what we are worth. Our value was never up for a vote, never printed on a stub, never contingent on some director’s mood in a budget meeting.

The figure will rise again, or fall again, and the papers will make a fuss either way. Meanwhile we stay breathing and hold each other. Staying ready is the move, not because the door is fair, but because when it finally cracks open, I intend for us to be right there, degrees in hand, unbroken, and still entirely our own.

Staff Writer; Jada Williams

This sister writes about politics, money, family, and the issues that shape everyday life… Her work looks at how decisions made in government, changes in the economy, and challenges within our communities affect Black women and their families…

Feel free to email her at: JadaW@ThySistas.com.

Reliable is a fine word for a car. Applied to a citizen, it starts to mean predictable, and predictable slides quickly into taken for granted. A voter who can be counted on without effort receives no effort. She gets the visit to the church, the photograph, the borrowed cadence at the pulpit, and then eleven months of silence. This is not a partisan complaint. It is arithmetic. Nobody bargains hard for something already in the drawer.

What interests me more than the neglect is the enforcement. Watch what happens when one of us steps out of formation.

I know a physician, sharp and devout, who mentioned at a dinner that she had grown skeptical of certain welfare structures, that she believed some of them had bound the very families they were built to lift. She did not sneer when she said it. Her tone was the kind people reserve for a wound they have examined for years. The table did not ask her to explain. Within minutes she had been renamed. Sellout. Traitor. A sister who forgot the road that carried her. The verdict arrived long before anyone bothered with the reasoning behind her words, and the reasoning was never requested at all.

That sequence is the thing I want to hold up to the light. Disagreement I can respect, because thought without friction is not thought. What unsettles me is the speed of the excommunication, the eagerness to convict before the sentence is finished.

Let me be fair to the allegiance, because it was not born of nothing. My grandmother would have walked barefoot over gravel before she cast a ballot a particular way, and her reasons were sound. She remembered who barred the schoolhouse door and who pried it open. Carried in her too was the memory of relatives laid to rest without justice while the officials shrugged. When people cling to a coalition, they are usually holding onto a debt that somebody, at some hour, actually paid. I will not mock that. My only question is whether a kindness done in a single era binds all who follow, whether gratitude is meant to harden into a permanent obligation with no expiration.

Here is what few will say aloud at the family gathering. Devotion that forbids its own questioning has stopped being devotion. It has become a cage with a comfortable cushion.

Consider the incentives honestly. A bloc that delivers no matter the treatment teaches the recipients that treatment does not matter. Our schools continue to fail the children inside them. The grocery store charges more for less. Work long promised stays permanently on its way. And still, every fourth autumn, the same buses arrive at the same sanctuaries with a speech polished to a shine, and we are expected to feel courted. Some of us stopped feeling it a long time ago.

When we say so, the response is telling. We are informed that we have been deceived, that some clever operator must have crept into our thinking, because surely a sister could not have arrived at heresy through her own reflection. Listen closely to that reply. It erases her mind entirely. Her conclusion becomes evidence of manipulation rather than evidence of reason. There is nothing enlightened in that posture. It is the oldest condescension there is, the reflex that regards us as bodies to be mobilized and never intellects to be convinced.

Now I will get concrete, because vagueness is where honesty goes to hide.

Is a mother permitted to want her son inside a functioning classroom, even when the arrangement offends a teachers union? May she defend the value of a stable marriage in her home without being accused of shaming those who parent alone? Can she carry a conviction on abortion shaped entirely by the sanctuary she has occupied since childhood, and still find a chair in a room of marching women? Is she allowed to look at a thriving little enterprise, the kind an auntie built from a folding table and stubbornness, and conclude that a lighter tax on that enterprise lifts the poor rather than betrays them? None of these are exotic positions. They are the ordinary subjects of our private arguments, the ones we conduct freely until a recorder appears. The instant they surface in public, the speaker is handled like a defendant.

I have heard it declared that a conservative sister is a contradiction in terms. I find the claim intellectually lazy. Many of our congregations still carry deeply traditional teachings about faith, family, discipline, and personal responsibility. The elders who raised us practiced enterprise before anyone handed them the vocabulary, running kitchens and storefronts and side ventures out of dignity and need. Thrift. Faith. Family. Self reliance. A settled distrust of grand assurances from powerful men. Name for me which of those was imported from elsewhere. They were pressed into us at home. So a sister who carries them to the polls has not deserted her lineage. She may be honoring the very ancestors who were never once invited to state a preference.

Understand where I stand, so nobody mistakes this for recruitment. I am not steering anyone rightward. My quarrels with that side are real and unhealed. A great many figures who wave my values as a banner would not cross a street to assist me, and I can tell the difference between a man who esteems me and another who merely covets my grievance. Autonomy has never meant trading a master for a substitute. It means keeping the ledger on all of them, requiring each faction to come to my porch, remove its hat, and demonstrate precisely what it intends for the streets I actually inhabit.

That is the entire proposition. Not a change of jersey. A refusal to be owned by either locker room.

The rebuttal I receive most often is that unity is our sole instrument, that a fractured ballot is a squandered one, that in a country still hostile to us we cannot afford the indulgence of private conscience. I feel the fear beneath that argument, and I do not dismiss it. Yet history gives us little reason to believe that a people are strengthened by pretending they all think alike. Our power was never sameness. It was the debate itself, the deacon and the militant and the schoolteacher quarreling inside a single fellowship hall and embracing afterward regardless. We could once differ without banishing. That capacity has thinned, and I would like it restored.

There is also a hidden expense nobody tallies. Picture the one who suppresses her real view to preserve the peace. She has convictions, but experience has taught her that airing them invites exile, so she nods, and something in her contracts each time. Multiply that person across a nation and you produce a community that mistakes quiet for consensus, that never encounters its true spectrum of belief, that governs itself through dread of a label. That is not vigor. It is a body holding its breath.

So I return to the question I raised at the start. Are we permitted? The truthful answer is that permission was never anyone’s to distribute. A free person does not audition for title to her own mind. Yet permitted and protected are separate creatures, and I will not soften the second. Protection has not arrived. The price remains steep. Old friendships grow cool. The invitations slow, then cease. A cousin studies you sideways across the table at the repast.

I have chosen to pay it regardless. I would sooner be a woman who reasoned her way toward an error than one who was never granted the right to reason at all. And should enough of us reach that same decision, the labels will lose their bite, and the buses will be obliged to deliver more than a rehearsed appeal.

We are not a bloc. We are individuals with histories and minds of our own. It is well past the hour that the country, and the circles we move in, began to treat us accordingly.

Staff Writer; Jada Williams

This sister writes about politics, money, family, and the issues that shape everyday life… Her work looks at how decisions made in government, changes in the economy, and challenges within our communities affect Black women and their families…

Feel free to email her at: JadaW@ThySistas.com.

I love that woman. Let me say it plain and clear before anybody twists my meaning. When the former First Lady walks into a room, something in me stands a little taller. The way she carries her shoulders. How she looks folks dead in the eye and still smiles like your favorite auntie. The steel it took to raise those girls under a spotlight hot enough to melt most of us. Watched her speeches more than once, cried at a few. So this is not one of those pieces where one of us tears down another to prop herself up. We do too much of that already.

But there is something I have needed to say to my sisters for a long time, so I am just going to come right out with it.

We set the bar for ourselves up in the clouds and then wonder why we keep falling short of it. Degrees from schools that turn most people away. A husband who stays, and looks good staying. Your figure holding firm past forty and two babies. Work that lands your name in the history books. And through every bit of it, never letting a soul see you crack. Nobody handed us that list on paper. We breathe it in anyway, and most nights it leaves us lying awake, certain we flunked a test we never agreed to take.

I want to gently call that what it is. A lie.

You do not have to become somebody else’s masterpiece to matter. Your life was already stitched together on purpose. Nobody made you by mistake and then left you to fix yourself by copying another sister’s blueprint.

Let me tell you about my cousin Renita. She never finished college. Got pregnant her sophomore year, came home, and everybody had an opinion about what her future looked like now. Renita raised three children on a nursing assistant’s pay. Worked doubles. Sang in the choir on Sunday morning even when her feet were screaming inside her shoes. Not one of her babies went hungry. All three grew up knowing they were loved down to the marrow. Two of them own homes now. The youngest is finishing the degree his mama never got to finish. Tell me that woman is not exceptional. I dare you.

The world will hand you one narrow picture of a successful Black woman and try to convince you it is the only frame that counts. Polished. Poised. Perfectly spoken. Powerful in a way that shows up on magazine covers. There is nothing wrong with any of that. But it is not the whole story of who we are, and it never was.

Plenty of us are quiet. Others stammer the second nerves hit and never did learn to face a crowd without their hands shaking. There is the sister who is single at forty five and worn thin from folks asking when she plans to settle down, like a ring is what finishes a woman. One of us buried a marriage she fought like everything to save. Another went wide and soft in the middle after carrying life, and no amount of arm exercises is bringing back what the years took, and honey, that is fine. Some clean other people’s houses. Some teach. And a whole lot of us are still figuring it out at fifty, with no shame in that at all.

The women I was raised around did not rank each other by résumés. My grandmother would have laughed at the idea. To her, a person’s worth showed up in how they treated the folks who could do nothing for them. Whether you gave up your seat, fed a stranger who could not pay you back, kept your word when there was nobody around to hold you to it. That is a different arithmetic than the one the world runs, and I have come to trust it more than any headline.

So why do we keep grading ourselves on the world’s report card?

Part of it is love, honestly. We are so proud of the sisters who broke through. After generations of being told we were less than, watching one of us stand in the highest house in the land in her own skin, unbought and unbroken, felt like vindication for all of us. That pride is a good thing. Hold on to it. But somewhere it curdled into pressure. We took a sister meant to inspire us and turned her into a ruler to beat ourselves with. That was never her intention. She has said as much in her own way, speaking openly about self-doubt, fear, anxiety, and the difficult days that come even for someone the world sees as strong.

Even the ones we admire are not made of what we imagine.

Here is what I have come to believe after enough years and enough hard seasons to know a thing or two. Your value was settled before you did a single impressive thing. No diploma adds to it, and no divorce takes anything away. Neither a promotion nor a layoff moves that truth an inch. You were worth loving on the day you drew your first breath, and any voice telling you otherwise, even your own, is lying to you.

Comparison will rob you blind if you let it. It will have you scrolling past somebody else’s highlight reel and feeling like a failure by breakfast. It will have you looking at your own real and beautiful and hard won life and seeing only the places it does not match a picture you were never meant to copy. That kind of thinking steals the joy right out of the ordinary blessings sitting in your own two hands. The children who call you. A friend who shows up when nobody asked her to. Rent that somehow got paid. Stillness on an afternoon that owes nothing to anybody. Those things are not small. They are the substance of a life well lived.

I am not telling you to stop reaching. Reach. Go back to school if that is your dream. Build the business. Run for the office. Write the book that has been stirring in you for years. Ambition is a gift when it grows out of who you truly are and not out of a desperate need to prove you deserve to take up space. That space is already yours. It was yours the day you got here.

But if you never do one headline worthy thing, hear me. If you live and die known only to a handful of people who loved you, you were still a whole and precious somebody. A mother rocking a colicky baby at three in the morning is doing holy work. So is the daughter caring for her aging parents while the world spins on without noticing. So is the one holding down a job she does not love so her family can eat.

I watched my own mother do that kind of quiet labor for thirty years. Never gave a speech in her life, never owned a designer thing. Raised five of us on a checkbook that had no business stretching as far as it did, and to this day I cannot tell you how she made a way out of no way so many times over. Her name will not show up in any history book. But she is the strongest person I have ever known, and if greatness counts for anything, she had it in a form the cameras were simply too dull to catch.

That is the thing nobody tells you. Our culture only celebrates the version of us it can photograph, the dressed up, spoken up, lit up one. Meanwhile the real work of holding families and neighborhoods and whole communities together happens in kitchens and hospital waiting rooms and church basements, done by women whose names will never trend. Those lives are not the runners up to the story. They are the story.

So stop waiting to become somebody else before you accept that you are already enough.

You do not have to be her. You never had to. What you get to be is rarer than that, the specific woman the world has never seen before and will never see again, and that, my sisters, has always been more than enough.

Staff Writer; Raven Jones

Raven writes about music, relationships, and the everyday ups and downs of Black women… She keeps it honest, encourages other sistas, and can be reached at RavenJ@ThySistas.com.

The bottom line is this “doing you’ without consequence is nonexistent for our people. That is like playing Russian roulette with life. Some young people began to understand the lesson I was trying to impart. The problem is too many of them learned the lesson, as my grandfather used to say, in blood. They saw their friends killed, experienced wrongful arrest, experienced assault, and very other kinds of trauma. This was heartbreaking as they were just teenagers.  The problem is why are we fighting with adults now over the same thing?

This idea of I’m going to “do me” is running rampant in our community. As with the young people I understand the sentiment, but the problem is the ones leading the cry now are adults. They have some experience, some understanding, and they know the price that is on the line…or they should. The time we are living in is just as perilous, some would argue, as those that came before us and we are getting closer to their reality. This is not a history book, this is 2026, and the evil in power is trying to turn back time to redefine our understanding of oppression. When some of us think of ICE we think of our brothers and sisters from different places, but do we not understand our people have been harassed, and unlawfully detained too? As adults, how we process the world around us, and how we respond to it will affect our children. We can’t tell them to practice caution in what they wear and where they go, and we can’t do the same. Disciple and control will have to come together in us so that we are not impulsive, and so that we don’t become so fed up with everything we are seeing that we just say to heck with it, I’m “doing me”.

The truth is there are events we may get a gut feeling it won’t be wise to attend. There are times we might decide it is best to stay home. Sometimes the small family gathering will have to be enough. We might not want to venture out into places we don’t know in our state and in various parts of the country. Many of us may have unplugged after the elections not caring about being bothered by the stress of knowing specifically what’s going on in the country. We may be telling ourselves we will just rest for the rest of this admiration’s term. However, the truth is any of these positions at this time might be the ultimate undoing of our people. We want to rest, live, breath, and “do us”. This has a price, and it’s not one we want to endure.

We are an innovative people. We can find ways to express ourselves, be ourselves, have out balance of peace and still be mindful of the reality around us. We may have to redefine what it means to “do you”, so that it doesn’t get us killed. Teaching the youth will mean checking back in. I’m not saying we must march and be everywhere, as I truly believe we will need to find a different way to protect ourselves and our future. But we can’t just walk around like madness is not happening and move haphazardly in spite. As I stated, I have the saying “ignorance is bliss”. In these times I’d prefer, “Just because you can do a thing doesn’t mean you should”.

Staff Writer; Chelle’ St James

May also connect with this sister via Twitter; ChelleStJames.

The problem of racism in Mardi Gras run deep. Long before the parades became tourist attractions, the city’s krewes were exclusive social clubs that openly excluded Black people from membership. Some of the oldest krewes refused to integrate well into the 1990s, choosing to stop parading rather than accept Black riders. In 2026 the hierarchy of who gets to ride, who gets to lead, and who gets to be celebrated still reflects old lines of racist power. At the same time, Black New Orleanians have always shaped Mardi Gras—from the Baby Dolls to the Skull and Bone Gangs to the Mardi Gras Indians—yet our contributions were historically dismissed or treated as exotic side attractions rather than central pillars of the culture.

This year, those tensions resurfaced in ways that felt both familiar and exhausting. One of the most disturbing incidents happened during the Krewe of Tucks parade; photos circulated showing Black dolls hanging by their necks from bead ropes attached to a float. The images spread quickly and sparked outrage across the city. Officials, including Mayor Helena Moreno, condemned the display as deeply offensive and demanded accountability from the krewe’s leadership. The Louisiana Attorney General even launched a state-level investigation into how such imagery made it onto the parade route at all, and whether any civil rights violations were involved. The problem is those in leadership know how the imagery made it to the parade route. They know the history of the hatred on those routes, and the sad part is we do not expect the matter to be handled. We hear the words, but we have been hearing them forever without adequate change.

Seeing those photos hit me harder than I expected. It wasn’t just the dolls—it was the reminder that even in 2026, even in a city where Black culture defines the rhythm of daily life, someone still thought that kind of imagery was funny, or edgy, or acceptable. It made me think about how often Black people in New Orleans are expected to perform joy while swallowing disrespect.

Hanging Black dolls is not ambiguous. It’s not a misunderstanding. It’s a reminder of lynching, of dehumanization, of the violence that Black communities have endured for generations. And to see it rolling down St. Charles Avenue, in broad daylight, during a celebration that claims to represent the whole city, felt like a slap. Many of us understand the old ways…we don’t need to be on St, Charles. It is sad that we must feel that way, but to truly enjoy Mardi Gra may of us stick to spaces that have always been for us. No one is saying any one has to stick to a certain part of New Orleans for Mardi Gras, but natives know some spaces are uncomfortable for us.

Still, I can’t help but feel conflicted. I love Mardi Gras. I love the music, the food, and the way the city feels alive in a way no other place can match. But I also carry the knowledge that the celebration has always been layered joy on top of struggle, tradition on top of exclusion. This year just made those layers more visible.

Maybe that visibility is a step forward. Maybe calling out these incidents, loudly and publicly, is part of how the city grows. But it’s hard not to wish that the burden didn’t always fall on Black people to explain why something is hurtful, or to push for accountability, or to remind others that Mardi Gras belongs to us too. There is a part of me that wants the change to truly begin.

As the season wrapped up, the parades still rolled, the beads still flew, and the crowds still danced. But for many of us, the celebration came with a heaviness that’s hard to shake. Mardi Gras will always be a mix of beauty and contradiction. This year just reminded me that the work of confronting its past—and its present—is far from over.

Staff Writer; Chelle’ St James

May also connect with this sister via Twitter; ChelleStJames.

After Katrina, as we struggled to come home, we watched a real time gentrification begin to happen in the city at a rapid rate, and our leadership was complicit. People of varying races moved to New Orleans and looked down on the Black native. They wanted to change a culture that had been here long before them. They wanted noise ordinances to silence the music that never stopped. They wanted to block streets that you could not, while being salty when a Second Line happened in their neighborhood. They didn’t realize the New Orleans you visit is not seasonal…that is life for us.

We watched the price of homes, rentals, insurance, everything skyrocketed while short-term leases were allowed to thrive in residential areas where families should have been able to live. Police began to see some and ignored others. Some native street vendors would be shut down, or they would have to jump through hoops to work, while other ethnicities were allowed to thrive, breaking rules they set for us. Yet in all of this were still expected to maintain the culture that keeps people coming to New Orleans all year long. This is exhausting, but more importantly it is heartbreaking.

How the homeless have been dealt with, and the issue of addicts that are not Black citizens further establishes the disenfranchised we experience in out own home. Our children don’t get the schools they deserve because our schools housed a good part of our culture, and it is being systemically destroyed. The culture we hold dear and have passed down for generations does not mean the same to the transplants. Some might disagree, but the truth is in how the natives of this city are treated. This is not Houston or Atlanta or another city in the US…the culture here is different and New Orleans can not survive without it.

We woke up one morning and realized our governor had invited the National Guard to New Orleans. In addition, our outgoing mayor is in turmoil, and we look at incoming leadership that still won’t center the deep needs for this city so that we all can thrive. New Orleans is, again, in a fight to survive and continue the culture we all know and love. What we create in our city happens to make money, but it is for soul first. The music that flows here is sourced from the depths of our being and it deserves to continue. We need to be able to have our soul respected in our place of origin. If you move to New Orleans please respect the culture and natives that are already here, if you can’t do so just visit or leave us in peace. Many of us will have to fight for our city the old fashion way…through the culture in the streets.

Staff Writer; Chelle’ St James

May also connect with this sister via Twitter; ChelleStJames.

One thing Black Americans have always had to do was keep watch. Even if we decided not to speak to matters immediately, we saw them; at the very least we began preparing mentally. What some may see as our ingenious brand of comedy is usually a way to begin vetting how we feel about things happening, or what we see is about to happen. Because of this we can begin to face what could be serious issues while maintaining some level of peace because we are not caught off guard. There is not a storm that just shows up that we are absolutely unprepared to address. Due to this, many might say we are prophetic…maybe, but its more so our people have been through enough to anticipate what those around us will do should hell break loose. Unfortunately, this means protecting ourselves from others, and each those of us within our “community” that don’t move like us. This quiet laidback observation with stealth movement has kept us through every major issue this country has faced, and that our people have faced. The important thing is we always saw the storm coming.

Today we are possibly at a disadvantage. Too many of us may be misunderstanding the concept of “protecting peace” and wanting a “soft life”. As stated, these are not bad, with that in mind one must understand it doesn’t look the same for our people as it may for other groups. We can’t shut out the world around us under the guise of peace. We can not misunderstand the true meaning of strength and surrender our greatest personal advantage for a “soft” that will betray us in the future. One of our greatest strengths was seeing hell and being absolutely unbothered because as a people we have seen worse. Our peace was not dictated by the world around us; it was a decision made in spite of the world. This allows us to maintain joy, thrive in various endeavors, build family and community, and move our people forward. Access can be a tool, but not one that should be internalized. None of what we see around us is new…it’s repackaged hatred, confusion, evil, and chaos. We can’t afford to ignore all of it, or to simply pretend the madness in the world is either not happening or won’t affect us.

When ICE began its rampage of violating human rights by pulling immigrants off the streets our people, for the most part, felt this is not our fight. We had every right to be angry and feel betrayed after the election. We knew people in this country voted for their own demise…we warned them, but no one listened. We said it was not our fight, but we didn’t say we wouldn’t observe the situation. Black America had to know they could not afford to go into a bubble whereby they did not pay attention. Sisters we had to know we could not just ignore what was about to happen…and did happen. Some of us tried to say it’s not my business; turn the TV off, turn the phone off, and disengage completely because it is not our fight and we are tired. The sentiment was understandable, but we should also know that is not the America WE live in. It is unsafe for us to completely disengage. The reason we were able to give the warning is because we currently live in the reality that was coming for others. Knowing that, we should also know we would be in the line of fire. We can disengage from the discussion while actively paying attention so that we move in a manner that protects our safety and peace. To ignore everything completely is to get blind-sided. This is not new…it’s always been our reality. Protect your peace by being aware and prepared. Ignorance is not bliss…it’s deadly.

Staff Writer; Chelle’ St James

May also connect with this sister via Twitter; ChelleStJames.

There should be solidarity amongst People of Color as there is usually a history that can be understood, and there are experiences that forge understanding. Helena Morena was born in Mexico and raised in Houston. When she reached New Orleans in 2001 she was a working adult. This is important because this is a culture that is not a part of her upbringing, as it was not for the previous mayor. There was a time when I would have said, maybe Moreno was for us after how well she covered Katrina as a journalist. There were times when I disagreed with her positions on city council, but no politician is perfect.

However, I felt there was work being done for a greater purpose. I didn’t feel like her voice was loud enough in opposition to the current administration and seeing that she is Mexican that matters. I also had to consider that the exchange between Black Native New Orleanians and the Mexicans that have become transplants have not always been the most respectful. Far too often, they looked down on the natives here and have taken many white adjacent positions. We knew it would not favor them eventually, but they chose that path instead standing with us. How would that increase now that she is mayor? She showed up in New Orleans East and it seemed like she would stand for all the people…but one could say finally she appeared because our vote was the goal.

As the campaign season was underway, I noticed signs for her posted all over the metropolitan area…in parishes that are not Orleans parish. That made no sense to me and others, and it was a red flag. However, what stood out the most is the double standards for the candidates. Helena Moreno did not feel it necessary to show up at forums held by the Black leaders in New Orleans. If the Black candidates would have done that they would have been drugged. But she was able to get away with not showing up in all the spaces that represented the city of New Orleans.

She was able to minimize the importance of our voice and concerns, and at that moment, I realized yes, she might win but she does not represent me. It was a slap in the face, and one that we must live with because she did win. We will as a people have to come together to help out city and each other from the grass roots level. We will have to advocate for ourselves, yet again because we have a mayor that will not prioritize our culture properly because she is not one of us in that way. There is a part of me that hopes the ancestors were wrong. I hope I am wrong. However, the sinking feeling in my gut says New Orleans will have to fight for itself despite the incoming administration. We do not know how she will align herself now that she has won, and that is the issue. However, we won’t assume that she will fully align with New Orleans and what it needs.

Staff Writer; Chelle’ St James

May also connect with this sister via Twitter; ChelleStJames.

People from across the state & nation had their view of New Orleans; Katrina them the right to feel they could speak on a culture they did not know. After that hurricane Black people from New Orleans were branded as refugees, backwards, slow, and more importantly violent. We were blamed for violence in various cities that had nothing to do with us. We became the scapegoat people used and are still using to justify why there is crime surges in their cities. If they looked at how crime happens in New Orleans they would know what they are seeing has nothing to do with New Orleanians. This matters because even though crime has not surged in the city, and we have seen patterns of violence from outsiders in our city, it’s blasted all over the news as though we are acting foolish. Many governors have come with the agenda to “tame” New Orleans, they use the excuse of violent crimes as a reason to “step in”. Governor Landry called the President and offered up New Orleans for federal policing. In doing this what did he hope to gain? He wants to seize the resources of New Orleans and further disenfranchise the city to kill its voice…as he sees it as an opposition to the current administration. This governor has sold out the state to bow to the current administration and he has offered New Orleans.

We do not need the National Guard we need our elected officials to do their job. We need to see the state work with our city to actually fix the levee issues, and problems that still stem from Katrina. We need the state not to take more fiscally than they should and stop trying to police New Orleans in a manner by which they don’t with the rest of the state. It is unfair and creates further division within Louisiana. If the state wanted to help with something they could have worked with the city verses bringing in the National Guard which will not fix crime. It will only create further resistance and violence. Maybe the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina needs to be re-visited. New Orleanians, especially Blacks citizens of the city, were traumatized further. We were depicted as violent thieves, while our white counterparts were seen as trying to survive.

Those in authority were given the authority to kill us. Racists hunted us like animals, and many were killed. This is a history that is deeply rooted here now, and it’s clear the state doesn’t care about the city that brings millions of tourists a year to this state. Bringing the National Guard to New Orleans is like telling the Black citizens there who contribute to a large part of the culture people come to enjoy…they are bring death to our doorstep. We deserve better than this from our governor and state. We should have to remember the title, “The City That Care Forgot”. This is what I think of when I’m reading about our own governor choosing to request military presence in my city, and throughout the state of Louisiana. Rest assured history never forgets, and neither does New Orleans.

Staff Writer; Chelle’ St James

May also connect with this sister via Twitter; ChelleStJames.

Watching people lose everything they have as they are on the run trying to survive feels too personal to us. Yet, we have to remember how we got here. It is important that we are never the priority in terms of equality and safety…we are expected to fight and bleed for the benefit of others. Because this is the reality…New Orleans Blacks will have to find a way to sit down. There are enough battles that we have to fight.

New Orleanian natives are fighting to keep our culture intact. Moreso since Hurricane Katrina, we have seen people that do not look like us move in and attack our culture directly while benefiting from it. We were put under noise ordinances, have had our cultural practices attacked, and continue to have access to resources stifled but given to others. There are POCs that could have been working with us to better the city, but they chose to align themselves with those that govern systemic oppression. They looked down on us while invading spaces that never belonged to them. Twenty years after Katrina Black New Orleanians are still fighting for the city, and many are still fighting to come home. So much is happening here and in addition we see others that we could work together with demand us to prioritize their needs and fears. This should not be expected of us. We don’t face the “it will happen to you next”, the oppression never stopped happening to us. New Orleans has always been a laid-back open city…arms open to whoever would receive her. However, Katrina and the response to our devastation changed that some. Our hospitality is still intact, but it is not the same.

Black New Orleanians must center ourselves. We know how to fight for our city, and that has to be our focus. So much is happening, and our city is hurting on every level. Yes, we see the pain of others, especially regarding immigration. However, we must remain honest about why that pain exists as it does. There has to be a call to accountability in other groups, and we cannot absolve it. The days of us taking a stand in the city centering everyone has to be paused. We are in need of too much, and no one is going to come to our aid. We must reserve the energy and resources we share for the advancement and survival of our children. New Orleans is out home, our culture…it’s who we are and we need our children to have the opportunity to partake of said culture. We can’t take to the street in defense of anyone but ourselves right now. We have already been shown when the time comes to make the decision for solidarity where it will matter the most, in a voting booth, we are all we got. This will not be easy.

Some of the POCs we see suffering are neighbors and co-workers, but some of them also made it clear that they would center themselves no matter the cost. They are now realizing things like Project 2025 were not just propaganda created by liberals to trick them.  This was real, and what we see happening on the streets in many cities is real. No one listened to us, and now it’s too late to appeal to us about it. We must focus on our community. We have to sit down and let other groups organize and fight for themselves. We have our hands full with our people and the preservation of our culture.

Staff Writer; Chelle’ St James

May also connect with this sister via Twitter; ChelleStJames.