To white women who voted for Kamala who think “blue bracelets” are an answer to Black women.
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
I’ve held off on doing any ranting about the results of the election. Have spent a lot of my time talking with friends and family, and trying to provide a bit of comfort and resolve to younger folks in my circle who haven’t been through this before. I’m continuing to fight back on social media to the best of my ability — juggling 3 platforms atm. However, I am gonna talk about this newest wrinkle that popped up no sooner than the election results were posted, and if this mini-rant is gonna hurt your fee-fees, I suggest you scroll past what I have to say today.
I don’t want to hear “I’m sorry” from anyone. Don’t apologize to Black women for a failure to organize white people, especially the white female vote. We did our Black job, as did Jewish women (and men).
To now virtue signal to us, that you are a “safe space” (when most of you more than likely don’t even have Black friends, or live in our neighborhoods) is frankly — from my pov, insulting. I’m not alone in that.
Just want to post a few samples of responses here today.
I’m not active on TikTok, so am posting some of the retweets found on Twitter.
Went over to YouTube, and this channel host, Cindys Villa, collected a wide spectrum of TikTok responses — both pro and con the bracelets. Take some time and listen.
SMDH. If you want a suggestion for what y’all can do — start organizing your peeps, and start pushing back against the vilification of Kamala’s campaign.
Sister Michelle posted a TwitX thread, which keeps growing, with suggestions for reading — not “beading.” I suggest you check it out.
End of mini-rant.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Like many Americans, Laverne Cox was devastated by the outcome of the 2024 presidential elections. On an episode of the “Just for Variety” podcast, the actress revealed that she cried while watching polling results come in and eventually turned off the news coverage when things seemed to be leaning in former President Donald Trump’s favor. Though she does not want to operate in fear, Cox, who is a proud transwoman and LGBTQ+ advocate, voiced her concerns.
“I don’t want to be in too much fear, but I’m scared,” Cox said, per Variety. “As a public figure, with all my privilege, I’m scared, and I’m particularly scared because I’m a public figure. I feel like I could be targeted. I think they spent close to $100 million on anti-trans ads. It’s deeply concerning.”
Leading up to the election, Trump and his running mate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, showcased anti-trans rhetoric and advertisements in their campaign. Now, with the looming threat of a virulently anti-trans Trump administration in the White House, Cox says she and several of her trans friends are considering relocating.
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In the hours after Joe Biden’s decision to end his re-election bid and endorse Kamala Harris as the democratic nominee for president, 40,000 Black women – leaders in politics, business and entertainment – met on a Zoom call to rally around the vice-president.
“We went from that call to organizing our house, our block, our church, our sorority, and our unions,” said Glynda C Carr, president and co-founder of Higher Heights, an organization that works to help Black women get elected to political office. “That is what we did for the 108 days that she ran for office. Black women used our organizing power around a woman that we knew was qualified, that had a lived experience.”
For many, Harris seemed to be the one woman to break the glass ceiling of reaching the highest office in the US. Harris, a graduate of Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington DC and a member of the country’s oldest Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc (AKA), who had become the first Black female vice-president after spending a career as a prosecutor, California’s attorney general and senator, had reached a point where voters would welcome a woman – many deemed to be beyond qualified – versus Donald Trump, an embattled former president then awaiting sentencing on more than three dozen felony convictions.
“Here is a woman that has had access to be able to build upon legacies and blueprints,” Carr said. Harris’s candidacy was so exciting because “she literally embodies Black excellence for Black women.”
Harris’s 107-day campaign to become president began in a year of recognizing the anniversaries of pivotal advancements for Black people during the Jim Crow era and Civil Rights movement – 70 years after Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley and the NAACP dismantle school segregation; 60 years after Fannie Lou Hamer spoke at the 1964 Democratic national convention; and 52 years since Shirley Chisholm became the first woman and first Black to run for president.
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As Democrats continue licking their wounds after the stunning defeat of Kamala Harris by President-elect Donald Trump, all eyes are on Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), whose party in Congress has a slim chance of regaining a majority in the House of Representatives.
If Democrats can win the House, it would give the party its only hope of slowing Trump’s agenda from being enacted. Jeffries, a 54-year-old congressman from Brooklyn, New York, would also become House speaker, making history as the first African-American to hold the position, which is only two degrees of separation in the line of presidential succession.
“It would be very significant,” Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., told theGrio. The 84-year-old congressman noted that there is a “very critical role” in “our government process for the opposition.”
As Democrats continue licking their wounds after the stunning defeat of Kamala Harris by President-elect Donald Trump, all eyes are on Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), whose party in Congress has a slim chance of regaining a majority in the House of Representatives.
If Democrats can win the House, it would give the party its only hope of slowing Trump’s agenda from being enacted. Jeffries, a 54-year-old congressman from Brooklyn, New York, would also become House speaker, making history as the first African-American to hold the position, which is only two degrees of separation in the line of presidential succession.
“It would be very significant,” Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., told theGrio. The 84-year-old congressman noted that there is a “very critical role” in “our government process for the opposition.”
As Donald Trump begins to name cabinet members of his second administration who will be tasked with carrying out his agenda — which includes proposed mass deportations, the elimination of racial equity programs, and massive cuts to federal spending — Democrats’ ability to play defense will be critical to softening what they see as potentially critical blows to vulnerable communities.
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More than a decade ago the Republic of Congo, an oil-producing country of 6m people in central Africa, wanted to improve its decrepit health-care infrastructure. It paid €491m (then worth $658m) to a Brazilian company called Asperbras to build a dozen new hospitals.
Ten years on, the country could use them. The already dire state of public health in central Africa has been made worse by the mpox epidemic. The disease has killed more than 1,000 people and infected tens of thousands across the region this year alone, including several in Congo.
Yet of the 12 hospitals that were promised, only four have been built, according to Publiez Ce Que Vous Payez-Congo, a watchdog. (Asperbras says its companies conducted their business in accordance with the law and their contractual obligations.) Meanwhile, much of the money has disappeared. Where did it go?
Legal proceedings in America, France and Portugal allege that a good chunk may have ended up in the pockets of some of the president’s relatives. Denis Sassou Nguesso has ruled the country since 1979, with a brief gap between 1992 and 1997. Court documents offer a glimpse into the mechanisms by which some of his family members allegedly enriched themselves at the expense of fellow Congolese.
America’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is trying to seize a flat in Trump International Hotel and Tower in Manhattan. In court filings in New York, prosecutors allege that José Veiga, a Portuguese fixer for Congo’s president, bought the flat for $7.1m on behalf of Claudia Sassou Nguesso, one of the president’s daughters. In a forfeiture complaint prosecutors allege that the money used to buy it was diverted from the hospital-building program.
Ms Sassou Nguesso did not reply to requests for comment. Members of her entourage have previously described allegations that she has a flat in New York as “fake”. Lawyers for Mr Veiga declined to comment, but a company he manages is contesting the DOJ’s attempt to seize the property in Trump Tower, arguing that prosecutors have failed to prove that it was bought for Claudia using embezzled funds. Asperbras says it has always acted in accordance with the law and that it severed ties with Mr Veiga upon learning of the allegations against him.
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Somalia has announced that more than $1.1bn (£860m) of outstanding loans will be cancelled by the US, a sum representing about a quarter of the country’s remaining debt.
The announcement is the latest in a series of agreements in which Somalia’s creditors have committed to forgiving its debt obligations.
Most of Somalia’s debt had built up during the era of Siad Barre’s military dictatorship, which collapsed in the early 1990s and triggered a ruinous three-decade civil war.
Somalia’s president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, said the country had been “suffocating under the huge weight of unsustainable debt” as interest payments that could not be paid accrued “during the painful, prolonged period of state collapse”.
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