Locs, Heels, and the Bible

Right there in the ozarks of Arkansas, where the earth still holds the blood of lynched bodies and echoes of night riders, a new danger is taking root. Disguised as a quiet rural commune, a self-declared white nationalist town is being carved out with 160 acres of exclusion and hate. They call it “Return to the Land.” Return to the land my arse. Don’t let the pastoral branding fool you. It has nothing to do with community farming or sustainable living. This coded fortress is nothing more than a repackaged segregationist ideology with solar panels and Wi-Fi.   History as Rehearsal: This movement is not new either. It is the digital grandchild of the White Citizens’ Councils. The rhetoric has changed, but the goal has not. It is still remove, isolate, and dominate. The world has watched what happens when people build ethno-nationalist states. They don’t end in quiet. They end in genocide, apartheid, and collapsed democracies. (I say ‘collapsed democracies’ tongue in cheek). Als...

In Georgia this spring, Adriana Smith  30 years old and pregnant - was declared brain-dead. But for over four months, the state kept her body alive on machines to grow a fetus, without her family’s consent, without Adriana's voice, and without Adriana's dignity. Georgia's six-week abortion ban was cited as justification. And just like that, a dead woman’s body became a battleground in the war over fetal personhood. The legal machinery behind this tragedy  was meant to control life. And it did. This is what happens when law eclipses love, and when compassion is a casualty of political performance. The scaffolding that holds up such cruelty is older than this moment. It is rooted in power, patriarchy, and the insidious lie that some lives are disposable if others are deemed more "worthy." We’ve seen this before in the silencing of enslaved women, forced sterilizations, and in the criminalization of miscarriage.  I chair the Committee on the Status and Role of Women ...

I have something to say about the gall of Western media to still approach formerly colonized nations with the smugness of a master quizzing a servant. The now-viral interview with President Dr. Irfaan Ali of Guyana was definitely more than just a conversation about oil and development. It exposed the festering wound of neocolonial arrogance that still believes it has the right to interrogate the dignity and direction of sovereign nations while refusing to reckon with the centuries of theft, murder, and dehumanization that built its own empires. Yes, England, I am talking about you! Dr. Ali was understood the assignment to a spade a spade regardless to who is holding the hand. What we witnessed was the spirit of resistance cloaked in a presidential suit. With unflinching clarity and righteous indignation, he named the historical theft of resources, the violence of chattel slavery, the deceit of colonialism, and the continued exploitation masquerading as investment and partnership. And s...

They didn’t tell my people that they were free, right away. Even after the ink dried on the Emancipation Proclamation, they didn't tell them. Not even after the blood spilled and bodies piled in the name of a nation supposedly united under liberty and justice were they told. Instead, the power-brokers waited and held freedom hostage behind borders of greed, ego, and entitlement. And on June 19, 1865 - two and a half years later - when word finally reached the shores of Galveston, Texas, it wasn’t because the enslaved had been seen as human. It was because their labor was no longer useful, their bondage no longer profitable, and their bodies no longer essential to the overall goal. The story of Juneteenth is that of a freedom which was announced late, thus postponing justice, and forcing liberation to find its own breath after being suffocated for centuries. Here we are in 2025 watching an administration strip away aid to vulnerable nations, criminalize immigrants, roll back civil r...

I wrote "Tears at the Altar" because the silence was suffocating me, and my voice was missing from the conversations about grief.  There are certain stories that demand to be told. They are not satisfied with being whispered, scribbled into private journals, or diluted for someone else’s comfort. This book is one of those stories. It was born from a collision of love, loss, and lament in a sacred space that should have held me - and didn’t. Tears at the Altar is not just about my personal grief; it is a public reckoning. It’s a confrontation with how the church - our supposed refuge - often fails those who bleed in the pews and behind the pulpit. It explores how we, as communities of faith, avoid what is raw and messy, how we offer platitudes instead of presence, and how we bypass lament instead of allowing it to become part of our worship expression. Yes, I name names - grief, betrayal, silence, shame - and I hold them in the light of Scripture. From Job to Jesus, I make it ...

One day, the nation woke up to an ultimate heartbreak. After days of frantic searching, nine-year-old Chantel Crump was found lifeless in the bushes of Weatherills. Her abduction had mobilized the entire community, and her death shattered it. Chantel had simply been walking home from school when she accepted a ride from a woman. She trusted, as children should be able to, and for that, her life was stolen, along with a piece of Antigua's innocence. The island wept for Chantel and the others who have either disappeared without a trace, or found murdered and mutilated. You see, Antigua’s soil holds the tears of too many. Just months earlier, teenagers Yenifer Bridge and Achazia James were found murdered. Yenifer, a 16-year-old mother, disappeared one night and her toddler son was found wandering alone. Her body, later recovered, bore signs of brutal violence. Achazia, only 15, was found mutilated on a beach, the wounds so telling, they spoke of a wickedness the island still can...