MyBrownBaby

Feb 14

Today, my daughter and I will dance.

Not just because we’re happy. Or because we feel like doing some Soul Train-styled dance off featuring the musical stylings of Beyonce, Mary J. Blige and the elements we know as Earth, Wind & Fire. Or because it’s Valentine’s Day.

My girlpie and I will dance in honor of V-Day, an international call by the organization ONE BILLION RISING for women and men across the globe to gather in our communities and dance to demand an end to violence against women and girls. Our dance will be an act of solidarity—to send the message that ending violence against women is as important as ending poverty or AIDS or global warming. We will dance to send the message that violence against women isn’t a local issue or particular to any culture or religion or village or age. We will dance to show that violence against women is dead wrong—that it’s wrong to shoot little Pakistani girls in the face for going to school, that it’s wrong to rape 23-year-old med students from India for going to the movies with their boyfriends, that it’s wrong to stone pretty girls in Ukraine for participating in beauty contests and mothers in Nigeria for having sex before marriage, and that it’s not cool to celebrate singers who beat the crap out of their superstar girlfriends.

We will dance because it is right to do so. For our sisters. For ourselves. For us all.

From, “A Valentine’s Day Dance With My Daughter,” on MyBrownBaby.

Jan 31

Hadiya Pendleton: From the Inauguration To the Mortuary

Where are the tears for Hadiya and all the brown babies like her? Where are the hastily-called speeches and the national groundswell of condolences and hand-drawn cards and warehouses full of teddy bears and school supplies for our children? And as the parents of Sandy Hook Elementary School cry and yell out and stand on a national stage to proclaim that their children’s right to life supercedes the Second Amendment (Amen! It does! And they have the right to say it!), why aren’t gun control advocates, Congress and CNN, theToday show, the New York Times and our most treasured, respected media organizations making the connection between the deaths of our children and the severe lack of uniformed gun control legislation and support to stop the flow of illegal guns in our communities? Why did White House spokesman Jay Carney’s shoutout of Hadiya at a press conference yesterday—”It’s a terrible tragedy any time a young person is struck down with so much of their life ahead of them, and we see it far too often. The president and first lady’s thoughts and prayers are with the family of Hadiya Pendleton,” he said—ring terribly hollow when juxtaposed with images of President Obama’s passionate tears as he called the children of Newtown “America’s children”?

Finally, and perhaps most important, why do we, the mothers and the fathers and the sisters and the brothers and the friends and the neighbors of brown babies, continue to collectively cloak these fools, these cowards, these animals who use their guns to flood Chicago’s streets with the blood of our children? Where is the good/God in a “no snitching” policy? Where is the police and judicial protection for those who would come forward and tell what they know? Why do these bastards get to shoot and run and hide, leaving a trail of our tears in their wake? Like this ish is normal?

I got questions.

From MyBrownBaby.com’s Hadiya Pendleton: Chicago Gun Violence Takes Star Teen From Inauguration To Mortuary.

Oct 12

On the occasional silly day and most Fridays, Little Sister can still make her giggle. (Taken with Instagram)

Oct 8

Giggles. (Because getting a straight shot of this child is an exercise in futility.) (Taken with Instagram)

MyBrownBaby

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Hadiya Pendleton: From the Inauguration To the Mortuary