We will not be erased!
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver Velez
Just finished reading The Blackout Report
I have currently limited my reading/viewing of piss poor Dump legitimizing mainstream media, and I pay much more attention to Black media sources — such as they are.
I want to point out that it would be very helpful if more white folks would do the same. I’ve spent my entire life viewing white ABC. NBC, CBS etc. along with reading now cancelled newspapers like WaPo. I have always also read the Black Press.
You don’t have to be Black to support Black media.
Please Repost on TwitX and/or Bluesky
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The harm is real: Black workers pushed out of jobs, HBCUs stripped of resources, Black mothers and fathers denied healthcare, and neighborhoods left without protection from floods, asthma, or poisoned water.
📖 Read the full Blackout Report now.
#BlackoutReport #OnyxImpact
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— theonyximpact.bsky.social (@theonyximpact.bsky.social) October 16, 2025 at 9:38 AM
BlackOut Report Documents 15,000 Incidents of Black Progress in America Erased or Distorted! - Historian & National Political Commentator Michael Imhotep founder of The African History Network on 'Roland Martin Unfiltered' 10-17-25
Esosa Osa, founder of Onyx Impact, unveils the Blackout Report — a groundbreaking investigation exposing a systemic campaign to erase Black progress. 15,000 documented cases reveal how history, data, and funding tied to Black advancement have been quietly deleted or distorted. This is not a glitch. It’s a strategy. And the report proves it.
Michael Imhotep connects these policies to Project 2025 that Donald Trump said he knew nothing about. Project 2025 is 48% Complete based upon the Project 2025 Tracker.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The Atlanta mayor has forfeited millions in federal funding by refusing to cancel airport diversity programs. Iconic Atlanta companies have been quicker to comply. Business Week: Trump’s DEI War Roils Corporate Giants in Cradle of Civil Rights
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The Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity programs arrived last month for Atlanta’s airport, with a demand to cancel inclusion policies or lose federal funding. Mayor Andre Dickens refused — forfeiting tens of millions of dollars for the world’s busiest aviation hub.
But for Dickens, who’s led the city since 2022, it was worth it. Atlanta is, after all, the place that gave rise to the US civil rights movement; the city that promoted itself in the 1960s with the slogan that it was “too busy to hate.”
The mayor’s statement summed up the dilemma he faced after refusing to make changes. “The city is currently evaluating all options to ensure alignment with our long-held values, local policy and federal law,” Dickens said.
His balancing act tells the story of Atlanta in the age of the Trump presidency. Since the ‘60s, the city has built its reputation as a place where the shared interests of economic progress and corporate growth have been intertwined. Some of the country’s most iconic companies — and biggest employers — have long called it home.
Now, not all of them are following the mayor’s lead.
At Coca-Cola Co., references to racial and gender representation have been removed from the corporate website. Home Depot Inc. and United Parcel Service Inc. have replaced mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion with “respect for all people,” and “inclusion and belonging.”
The corporations are just three of a growing number of household names that are making changes to their DEI policies, after President Donald Trump assailed the initiatives with a series of executive actions that labeled them as illegal.
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Four South African rowers are making history over the weekend at the prestigious Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston as the first crew of color from the country to compete internationally.
Their participation marks a multinational effort to expand access to one of the most elite and exclusive sports, dominated by white athletes, and to open the 60-year-old regatta to a more diverse future of rowers.
Competitive rowing originates among Englishmen who colonized both South Africa and what is now the United States, but historically excluded large swaths of the populations that lived there from recreation on the water.
In recent years, a network of advocates has gathered athletes from around the world in efforts culminating with several firsts for representation at the Charles: the first all-Black women’s 8+ from the U.S., an indigenous 4+ and a native women’s 4+, among others. An 8+ is an eight-oared sweep boat with eight athletes and a coxswain to steer and direct the rowers, while a 4+ is a four-oared sweep boat with a coxswain.
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The Caribbean Colombian village that proudly calls itself “the first free Black territory in the Americas” is on the verge of freeing itself once again – not from the Spanish crown, as it did in the early 18th century, but from local government control.
Just over 300 years after Spain recognised San Basilio de Palenque as a slavery-free territory, residents of the community, just 30 miles away from the touristic hub of Cartagena, are set to vote on finally becoming an independent town.
The town is the most famous Colombian palenque – the name given to communities formed by formerly enslaved people who escaped bondage – and is home to about 4,000 residents.
Despite its historical significance – recognised by Unesco as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2005 – Palenque is at the moment no more than a division of another municipality, Mahates.
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Voices & Soul
“… An elderly diabetic I visit regularly tries to regulate by diet alone for weeks because the MAGA Government has raised the cost of her insulin. I guess amputating a limb is cheaper to the Captains of Commerce and MAGA Government… “ — Justice Putnam
“Sometimes A Great Expectation”
by Black Kos Editor, Justice Putnam
(“If you feel like breaking, think of all the other dreams unfulfilled, the children unseen, the books unwritten, the work never to be done, the last nights together, the countless acres of anguish and the darkened haunted cities: consider the pity war distills and ourselves as creatures of luck, compared with the others who can gain no last moments more.”
- Malcolm Lowry)
It wasn't supposed to be like this. They weren't supposed to fall through the cracks, but they did. I've read this book before, something from my grandparents' time. The Captains of Commerce and MAGA Government have capitulated and the hungry mother in a cold water flat coughs a feverish cry for help that will come, if at all, in too small a measure, just as it always has been and just as it always will be.
I know hard working men and women who cannot afford dental care, even though they are covered at work. Their coverage may pay for a few cleanings and exams, but heaven forbid that a broken tooth from an old filling needs to be repaired, the out of pocket expense precludes the dental work, so it does not get done and it gets worse and painful and as a last resort the dentist extracts the tooth because the insurance fully covers that procedure, thank you very much!
An elderly diabetic I visit regularly tries to regulate by diet alone for weeks because the MAGA Government has raised the cost of her insulin. I guess amputating a limb is cheaper to the Captains of Commerce and MAGA Government.
There was a former book shop owner I knew who died of cancer recently and the Captains of Commerce and MAGA Government made sure his last moments were a hell of bills, reprisals against family and friends and the erosion of certainty that none of that would happen. Oh, did I mention he never missed a payment on his premium?
But his friends and family still took a collection for and volunteered hospice care. The Captains of Commerce and MAGA Government had made sure his coverage considered hospice care to be, "experimental" so he was on his own for that one. It was his 'public option' he joked with us when we came to care for him.
We used to laugh together, when he was a little healthier before the end, where he would hold his soup bowl up and ask in a perfect Dickensian,
"May I have some more, sir?"
"More?" I would respond in mock incredulity, "You want more?"
We would laugh and laugh.
Because we both knew that something as the expectation of another tablespoon of soup sometimes is too great for the Captains of Commerce and Government to provide, and it is that Great Expectation the poor, the forgotten, the old and the infirm take to their grave.
As it always has been and as it always will be.
- JP
These days, the plants are overtaking the plants,
abandoned factory packing centers overgrown
with ivies and moss. Kids on TikTok filming buildings
where people were made to be machines, assembling
a living from the parts of cars. You can say industry
plant here and mean Packard, and mean crabgrass,
and mean Reagan’s crack cocaine in Black lungs
since the 80s. Down South, a teen could call you
green as hell and not mean the color of rust or vines
breaking vacant sweatshop walls—growing for God
knows how long. Green, not for youth, or ecological
consciousness, but green because you’ve done one
of us wrong, shady as a wing-seeded sycamore on a record-
setting summer day. Green as in you really won’t lend me
that twenty? Green as in you’ve eaten up so much
and left nothing for my hunger. Green, you refuse
to ease anyone’s living but your own. I say invasive
species and mean yards of weeds redressing blighted
homes; we invasive species say green and mean lead
in our water from Flint to West Virginia, green the hue
of Great Lakes’ pollution-induced algal blooms—I’ll stop
here. I can’t remember its graffiti, stories, rhythm,
or winds too big to fit description without seeing
everything green this city, the many, still let happen to us.
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY PORCH
IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, GRAB A SEAT, SOME CYBER EATS, RELAX, AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF.
