As the United States prepares for another No Kings Rally on March 28, emotions online are running high as seasoned organizers—many of them Black and Brown folks—express hesitation that another national rally will do much to move the needle on our current conditions in the United States. In turn, many white-bodied people are feeling prickly as BIPOC folks online express …
While I am known for my writing online (and sometimes for various publications) and for public speaking work as “Black Girl in Maine” (or BGIM) those things are not my job. They are the things I started doing over 20 years ago to keep me sane as a Black woman who had moved to a very white state and who …
I have long considered myself a reluctant Mainer. I often refer to myself as a Chicagoan exiled in Maine. I never set out to be known for anti-racism work; I never set out to become someone known as a local leader, an activist, an organizer, or even a social justice writer. Rather, life dealt me an unfortunate hand that provided …
For generations—for most of its existence, in fact—the United States promoted itself as a beacon of light and hope, a place where all would be welcomed and all could achieve success if they worked hard. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” The United States lifted itself up as a place of transformation with …
Since day one of Trump’s second term, it has been a non-stop year of really bad things happening in the United States. Horrible and previously unimaginable things have become our new norm. To recap: The administration kicked off 2025 with rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion efforts—and while the executive order Trump signed was initially directed within the federal government, …
On Christmas Day, after the holiday hijinks had settled down, I—like millions of others—got on social media to “check in” with the world. A cute and heartwarming story about a guy paying for groceries for others at one of the Maine grocery stores popped up in my feed. Given the holiday season, it was the type of story that catches …
One of the greatest gifts of aging is that with each passing decade, you start to realize that the world and the people in it are a lot more complex than you initially assumed. It often means learning that things are not nearly as straightforward and black-and-white as we assume when we are younger—that life and people are often messy …
The official end of Jim Crow in the United States happened between 1965 and 1968. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and in 1965, they passed the Voting Rights Act, and then in 1968, the Fair Housing Act. These efforts effectively ended Jim Crow in the United States, though the lingering racial animosity persisted. As someone with a …
Most people who have read my writing in the last decade primarily know me for my political, cultural, and social justice writing and work. However, before I became the executive director of a grassroots anti-racism organization in 2014, I served as the executive director of a now-defunct youth development organization that offered free afterschool and summer programming to youth aged …
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Happy Friday! It’s a gorgeous day up in my corner of the world and way too beautiful to be writing a blog post today. So I present you with the Friday Round-Up a list of blog posts this week from other bloggers that blew my mind. Perhaps if you need to kill some time or have a quiet moment you can check them out. http://ravingblacklunatic.blogspot.com/ Check out this cat, I have been a fan of his work forever. http://www.whataboutourdaughters.com/ Good stuff here as well http://sweetersalt.com/ A Maine blogger who talks fashion and food…the best of both worlds http://paganchild-starmommy.blogspot.com/2011/03/keeping-focused.html A new blog that offers words of wisdom for all of us. http://mscleaver.com/ Another Mainer who for Lent is giving up pants, she is also a crafty gal If you have any links to good blogs, feel free to leave em. It’s my hope to make the Friday Round Up a regular feature at my new home specifically I would live to shine some light and love on smaller bloggers. It’s hard out here in this blogosphere with so many good blogs to choose from and so little time so let’s help everyone get a slice of the pie. I will be back on Monday, at that time I will unveil some ideas I have around monetizing things but You May Also Like: No related posts.
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AI isn’t here to help you
Yeah, AI is a tool, just not the tool you think it is—and what’s being peddled to you isn’t really for your benefit. This is something I’ve been learning and that I hope you will learn as well. So-called artificial intelligence (AI) is sometimes a confusing landscape, and really AI is a broad term that includes machine learning (ML), large …
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