And a whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooole lot of debt
Happy 2024! What a time to be alive! I am thrilled for all that Break the Seal Press has in store for this new year! People have said 2024 is feeling like “Duvet” by Boa and I agree. It’s giving gorl power, truth-telling, and the final dismantling of the patriarchy! Bring it on!
A few years ago, right before the US’ 2020 Presidential election, I penned an open letter to the now current Vice President of the United States calling on the incoming administration to prioritize the needs of women and marginalized folks bearing disproportionate effects of the coronavirus pandemic. It was overwhelmingly clear at the time that American women and marginalized people were stuck in dangerous home situations, suffering the most from systematic economic instability, and being forced to give up their jobs to take care of children. I believed that a new administration would be courageous enough to use the momentum of the diverse activated voting population to make bold impactful changes. However, in the past three years, these calls have fallen on sold-out ears.
Instead of being the President of the United States from 2021- 2024, and even attempting to confront the contemporary issues voters voted him in to solve, Mr. Genocide Joe has chosen only to return a raggedy decades-old and dead presidential playbook from the 1940s. When you really unpack what he has made his priorities over the past three years, this man is living in a romanticized fantasy of the US he made when he was five years old. All American voters have gained in the past three years from this current administration is high grocery and gas prices, empty promises and pockets, and a ridiculous amount of gas-lighting.
The only reason society is still functioning is because of the unpaid and selfless labor of women and marginalized folks. People have taken on incredible roles and responsibilities to fill in the critical roles that actually hold society together. Mothers, teachers, community leaders, fictive kin, librarians, doulas, care-givers, artists, and activists are some of the most important roles in any civilization worth something yet they are the most unpaid and unprotected industries in the so-called United States right now. Not only is this unsustainable, but it is also horrible for the environment. The US’s insistence on military spending and nefarious dealings cannot go on forever. When the whole world is reduced to rubble, then what, Joe? And how does a nation $34 trillion dollars+++++ in debt spend on anything? Pay women and cancel student loans, Joe!
Historians can tell you what happens when a nation spends more outward than inward. It has happened time and time again: they fail spectacularly. I’m not wishing anything on anyone, but if certain people want a job this time next year, people have to start doing the right thing. Fear-mongering and deflection will only get you so far. I refuse to surrender to fear. I operate in faith in God, in people, and the moral bend of the universe towards justice. It is very possible to live in a non-violent world. Just ask the people creating it and living in it.
Tune in every other week for more blog posts on topics in Black feminism, music, and history brought to you by Break the Seal Press, a womanist press dedicated to transforming the world through quality literature and grassroots activism founded by Spelman grad, musician, local herstorian, and writer, Jacqueline H. Brown-Gaines. You can support this work by reading and sharing it, sending us a lil something @ $btspress on Cashapp or by purchasing my debut short story, Adventures with the Funk Haus Band on this same website.
Adventures with the Funk Haus Band is an action-packed spell-binding short work of fiction for teens featuring all of the fun and funk of the 93rd Malik College-Douglass University Classic. Told through the eyes of Sage, a sophomore tuba player in the band, readers get a first-hand look into Black college band life, legacy, friendship, and community.
Proceeds from this work support Black music and history programs as well as provide teens and lifelong readers with an incredibly rich reading experience. Follow us @ Break the Seal Press on Instagram and Facebook to hop on board the band bus!