Tag Archives: health care

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Selma ~ In Memory of ~

03/21/2025 Nativegrl77

This month marks the 1965 marches in Selma, Alabama — a moment in American history that is layered with bravery, fear, hope, hatred, violence, perseverance, and triumph.

In many ways, Selma is the quintessential American story of people banding together against all odds to stand up for the promise of freedom and fairness. It is a story that deserves to be told, explored and understood by every American in this country.
Whether we realize it or not, every one of us was touched by this courageous moment that is often considered the emotional and political peak of the Civil Rights Movement.

It is because of events like the Selma marches … and the entire Civil Rights Movement … that makes the completing of the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall so important.

The construction of the Museum is more than halfway complete. But to ensure we can open the Museum’s doors in early fall of next year as scheduled requires additional support from those of us who understand the importance of building this place of remembrance, celebration and reconciliation. Please help keep us on track with a donation of $ 25 or more today.

When I think of African American history, I often think of Selma, Alabama and the Civil Rights crusaders who made the historic marches and all of the African-American heroes, famous and not famous, and the white supporters who came together to push freedom forward.

I’m thinking of people like Amelia Boynton who was beaten, tear-gassed, and left for dead during the Bloody Sunday March. Ms. Boynton lived to tell her story and she is now 103 years old. But it is up to people like you and me to build our Museum to make sure her brave story lives on forever.

That is why the Museum embarked on the very important task of interviewing people who were foot soldiers in the Civil Rights Movement, to give them the chance to tell their stories and have them preserved and shared in ways that resonate with people from all backgrounds.

So as we spend this month commemorating the heroes who courageously marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, please take your celebration one step further by making a special contribution of $ 25 or more to the Museum that will forever share this important history with the world.

On behalf of the entire Museum, thank you again for your leadership and support.
All the best,

Lonnie G. Bunch
Founding Director

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Spring – did you know? … Our Environment

03/20/2025 Nativegrl77

Pinterestwh_climate_banner

Rachel Carson ‘s book Silent Spring , an early voice for our environment in 1962..get it

Climate Change… chief victims of global warming are women, we grow the food, walk miles for water, and gather the firewood.

Fend off Allergies … by eating more leafy greens, having high levels of folic acid may decrease your risk of wheezing and silence some genes, including those of the immune system. author, Elizabeth Matsui MD

Making a glass jar impacts our environment, you have to burn a gas furnace 24hrs at 2000 degrees, this consumes a huge amount of energy.

According to the WTC wiping your feet off before home entry can reduce tracking pesticides by 25%, removing shoes can cut the amount of dust by 10 times, clean carpets every 18months instead of every 12months and save $300

the EPA states the air indoors is 2 to 5times more polluted, install smoke/carbon monoxide detectors, open windows daily, buy air cleaning plants, English ivy, Philodendron, spider; green cleaning recipes at Planetgreen.discovery.com

Buy local … less packaging if you buy local, more fresh tasty choices …support local farmer’s markets and community gardens

Raising Beef accounts for 18% of global warming emissions worldwide

You can reduce your carbon footprint just by switching to vegetarian meals for 1day, save about 860calories &9pounds of carbon,if done for 2weeks, a reduction of carbon by 122pounds and 12,460calories, losing about 3lbs or more.

So, this post is 11 + yrs old, so the numbers must be staggering now

Black History, ~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

African Americans in Full Color – in memory of Black History – a repost

02/23/2025 Nativegrl77 1 Comment

Lonnie Bunch, museum director, historian, lecturer, and author, is proud to present A Page from Our American Story, a regular on-line series for Museum supporters. It will showcase individuals and events in the African American experience, placing these stories in the context of a larger story — our American story.A Page From Our American Story

In the first half of the twentieth century, Americans became fascinated with photo journalism. Pictures were literally “worth a thousand words” as full-color magazines and tabloid newspapers became the rage.

Publications targeted to African American audiences that featured illustrations and photographs began appearing in the early 1900s. One of the earliest to effectively use illustrations and photography was The Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP. Seeking to educate and inform its readers with scholarly articles, the covers of the journal and its entertainment section were designed to appeal to the masses of African Americans.

In the 1930s, we see pictorial magazines such as Abbott’s Monthly, published by Robert Sengstacke Abbott, the founder of the Chicago Defender newspaper, and Flash, which billed itself as a “weekly newspicture magazine.” Published in Washington, D.C., Flash contained a mixture of news, gossip and advertisements and articles on racial issues, providing an overview of the highs and the lows of Black life in the 1930’s.

In 1942, African American businessman John H. Johnson founded the Johnson Publishing Company, a corporation that would go on to publish the well-known magazines Ebony, Jet, Tan, and Ebony Jr. The magazines promoted African American achievements and affirmative black imagery in popular culture, which appealed to readers … and to advertisers. Mr. Johnson was a savvy businessman and used the statistics of a rising black middle class to persuade companies and businesses that it was in their economic “self-interest” to advertise in his magazines to reach African American consumers.

With the success of the Johnson Publishing Company’s magazines, other magazines targeted to African Americans quickly came on the scene. For example, in 1947 Horace J. Blackwell published Negro Achievements, a magazine highlighting African American success articles and featuring reader-submitted true confessions stories. After Blackwell died in 1949, a white businessman named George Levitan bought the company and renamed the publication Sepia. This publication featured columns by writer John Howard Griffin, a white man who darkened his skin and wrote about his treatment in the segregated South, that eventually became the best-selling book Black Like Me.

Whether featuring positive images of African Americans, inspiration stories, news features or commentaries on racism, the rise of African American magazines defied long-held racial stereotypes through rich storytelling, in-depth reporting, and stunning photography.

Due to a variety of economic, editorial, and other factors, most of these magazines have ceased being published. Yet today some African American magazines are still a thriving part of popular culture. Johnson Publishing Company’s Ebony and its digital sites reach nearly 72% of African Americans and have a following of over 20.4 million people.

All the best,

Lonnie Bunch
Director

P.S. We can only reach our $250 million goal with your help. I hope you will consider making a donation or becoming a Charter Member today.

To read past Our American Stories, visit our archives.

~ Culture & History, ~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Civil Rights Activist Rosa Parks

02/04/2025 Nativegrl77 3 Comments

Rosa Parks
Born: February 4, 1913
Died: October 24, 2005
Age: 92 years old
Birthplace: Tuskegee, AL, United States
Occupation: Activist

Early Life & Family

Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. After her parents, James and Leona McCauley, separated when Rosa was two, Rosa’s mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama to live with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards. Both were former slaves and strong advocates for racial equality; the family lived on the Edwards’ farm, where Rosa would spend her youth. In one experience, Rosa’s grandfather stood in front of their house with a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan members marched down the street.

Childhood and Education

Rosa Parks’ childhood brought her early experiences with racial discrimination and activism for racial equality. Taught to read by her mother at a young age, Rosa attended a segregated, one-room school in Pine Level, Alabama, that often lacked adequate school supplies such as desks. African-American students were forced to walk to the 1st- through 6th-grade schoolhouse, while the city of Pine Level provided bus transportation as well as a new school building for white students.

Through the rest of Rosa’s education, she attended segregated schools in Montgomery, including the city’s Industrial School for Girls (beginning at age 11). In 1929, while in the 11th grade and attending a laboratory school for secondary education led by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes, Rosa left school to attend to both her sick grandmother and mother back in Pine Level. She never returned to her studies; instead, she got a job at a shirt factory in Montgomery.

In 1932, at age 19, Rosa met and married Raymond Parks, a barber and an active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. With Raymond’s support, Rosa earned her high school degree in 1933. She soon became actively involved in civil rights issues by joining the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1943, serving as the chapter’s youth leader as well as secretary to NAACP President E.D. Nixon — a post she held until 1957.

Life After the Bus Boycott

Although she had become a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks suffered hardship in the months following her arrest in Montgomery and the subsequent boycott. She lost her department store job and her husband was fired after his boss forbade him to talk about his wife or their legal case. Unable to find work, they eventually left Montgomery; the couple, along with Rosa’s mother, moved to Detroit, Michigan. There, Rosa made a new life for herself, working as a secretary and receptionist in U.S. Representative John Conyer’s congressional office. She also served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

biography.com

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Where Do Women Turn When Planned Parenthood Is Gone?

02/03/2025 Nativegrl77

by Jessica Pieklo

Where Do Women Turn When Planned Parenthood Is Gone?

When conservatives made the big push to defund Planned Parenthood, they swore the issue was not about denying women health care services, but about protecting taxpayer dollars from waste. Two recent reports from the front lines of the Planned Parenthood battle show otherwise.

As Kate Sheppard reports, when officials in Shelby County, Tennessee took nearly $400,000 in state funding from the local Planned Parenthood, the Obama administration had to step in and fund the clinic directly. But instead of funding Planned Parenthood, originally local leaders directed that money to a religious organization that provides some women’s health care services. Needless to say, the taxpayer dollars were not well used.

Between July 2011 and June 2012, more than $500,000 of the $1.3 million grant the county received was not used at all. Hannah Sayle reports that Christ Community Health Services was averaging just 51 Title X visits per month in early 2012, compared to Planned Parenthood’s 841 visits in August 2011.

Amazing. When an organization isn’t interested in providing family planning services, women eventually have to turn elsewhere for that care. As Sheppard reports, the number of Title X visits in the state didn’t go down, but they did in Shelby County, meaning women had to travel outside of the county to get the care they need. The demand for health care didn’t go down, it just became less accessible.

The same is true in Texas where reporter Andrea Grimes chronicled her efforts trying to find a health care provider under the state’s Women’s Health Program for a well-woman visit. Even in a major metropolitan area like Austin, Texas trying to find a clinic to provide low-income, quality reproductive health care now that the state has excluded Planned Parenthood from its funding regime is practically impossible. In one instance, Texas officials listed a colonscopy clinic as one of the places a woman could go for a pap smear. When Grimes called to try and schedule an appointment and inquire about the services, clinic workers were understandably confused.

We can expect similar stories out of states like Ohio and Arizona as more and more hard-right legislatures set their sights on family planning services. And as these case studies develop, we are learning what we already knew: making health care services inaccessible won’t make the need for those services go away. Instead, it makes women go to greater expense and hardship to simply take care of their bodies. And when it’s too much, women will simply skip visits. In the case of well-women visits, that means a missed cancer screen. For some women, well-visits are the only time they visit a doctor absent an emergency, so that means fewer checks for other chronic conditions.

The inevitable conclusion to these developments is of course an increasingly segregated and discriminatory method of delivering health care to women. The Ann Romneys of the world will always have access to the health care they want and they need. But working women will not. This isn’t hypothetical, it’s happening.

Ohio GOP Move to Strip Planned Parenthood of Funds

Arizona Moves to Defund Planned Parenthood