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COMMENTARY: “COVID-19 and White Supremacy, Creating Our New Normal”

We must rescue and refine the best of Black ways. Look at our historical grandeur. We once imagined the great Step Pyramid before there was a pyramid. How did we do that? Black people lived through over four hundred years of rabid, hostile, savage, dehumanization yet never became rabid, hostile, savage dehumanizing people. Our way, our worldview, our narrative, our normativity is what allowed us to do this. This is what we need to revisit.

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Dr. Wade Nobles
Dr. Wade Nobles

Black Mental Health pt. 2

By Tanya Dennis

With the global COVID-19 pandemic, we knew the world would never be the same. For some, COVID-19 has provided an opportunity to correct a society filled with bias, inequality, and meanness.

For Dr. Wade Nobles, long-time scholar/activist, and co-founder of the Association of Black Psychologists, “This is our time of reckoning. It is a time to redo what we have always done, sometimes under the radar, always in opposition to white supremacy. This is the time for Black people to interlock, reconnect and heal our community without European influence.”

Dr. Nobles, the Bay Area Chapter of the Association of Black Psychologists, and Oakland Frontline Healers are bringing together the best minds and calling on every sector to join them in the development of African American Wellness Hubs and an African American Healing Center in Oakland.

“Restoring wellness is to make the whole well. It is to connect everything and everyone in life affirming ways throughout the entire African world. Our way of being well and whole were well established in our past. In the past we gathered and found solutions collectively. Remember rent parties, Sunday church special offerings to send a child off to college or visiting the sick and shut in? These are our examples. In our way, personhood, familyhood, neighborhood, peoplehood, all the “hoods” are of equal importance. We can’t have a sick community and think our people will be well.”

Nobles and colleagues, after surveying and talking with Black people in Black communities across the nation, designed a detailed written plan for an African American Wellness Hub Complex. They envision a hub that is linked spiritually and psychologically, as a place where wellness and wholeness is real and ethnically authentic. Nobles said, “In many places our children are failing in school, many of our children are feeling they have no value, are being demeaned and assaulted. We need to take charge of these places. If teachers don’t love our children, they cannot ignite in them a desire to know and a passion for learning. If law enforcement doesn’t have high regard and deep respect for Black people, they will never understand that to ‘serve and protect’ means to be life affirming in what they do.”

“A big part of our new normal is to have in our thought, beliefs, and behavior the best of our wisdom, traditions and restorative practice available. This means to have in place living learning laboratories that are unapologetically devoted to our wellness, e.g., a wellness hub complex with healing centers. To have an exceptional and extraordinary place to bring people together and take them from hostile angry dis-at-ease producing places to places where we can work in harmony, create in dignity, and live to inspire life and ways of being that is affirming.”

Alameda County has stepped forward and is committed to establishing a Black Mental Health facility in partnership with the Association of Black Psychologists. The Association is grateful to Alameda County but notes four or five locations are necessary considering the amount of damage and illness that needs to be undone in the Black community.

Nobles says, “We must create a space, place and time that is guided by an African American wellness narrative that is awe-inspiring.” As an example of how important space is, he notes, “We tried to escape the blight and poverty of the inner city and move out to the suburbs, but all we did was go from inner city hostility to outer city hostility in the white enclave. At least in the inner city, our children didn’t lose their point of reference of belonging in the neighborhood or church. Healing spaces and places must be grounded in life affirming worldview and culture.”

“We must rescue and refine the best of Black ways. Look at our historical grandeur. We once imagined the great Step Pyramid before there was a pyramid. How did we do that? Black people lived through over four hundred years of rabid, hostile, savage, dehumanization yet never became rabid, hostile, savage dehumanizing people. Our way, our worldview, our narrative, our normativity is what allowed us to do this. This is what we need to revisit. We need a wellness place in our Black community where people can ‘imagine the better.’ A place where we can dismantle the ill and wrongfulness and recreate a vibrant affirming life spirit.”

Dr. Nobles says, “our new normal is the old African normal, where Black people inspired greatness just by living well and whole. Black people are a people of caring, sharing and daring. Our way was to care for our people, to share what we have, and to dare to be free. Our history records us having sacred places in nature where we would go to recreate our spirit of wellness. We need those places today and that’s why we need an African American Wellness Hub and healing centers.”

Activism

How a 40-Year PG&E orker Became a Safety Pioneer

Clifton also received the 33rd John A. Britton Gold Medal Award for rescuing a family from a burning home and started his 40th year at PG&E last October. Over his four decades, the native San Franciscan has been in Electric Operations as an apprentice, journeyman electrician, sub foreman, electrical technician, maintenance supervisor, construction supervisor, and maintenance and construction engineering supervisor.

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Clifton Smith Sr. Courtesy of PG&E
Clifton Smith Sr. Courtesy of PG&E

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June 14, 2003. A day Clifton Smith Sr. will never forget.

Clifton, then an electrical technician at the Helms Pumped Storage Plant east of Fresno, was an hour into his shift. He was deep inside the underground plant to replace a failed breaker for one of the water pumps.

Clifton and his coworker, Rick Cheney, were placing a rubber blanket over another existing energized breaker. But an exposed wire, combined with other factors, triggered an electrical explosion.

The explosion blew Clifton 15 feet backward. If he hadn’t hit a guard rail, Clifton said he “would have gone over the railing and fallen 50 feet down to the basement onto a concrete floor.”

The accident burned more than 40% of Clifton’s body. “From my belly button all the way up to the top part of my forehead,” he said. “I retain heat from the middle of my chest to my right arm all the way up to just past the elbow. I don’t sweat.”

A champion for safety

He didn’t work for more than two years. As a result of Clifton’s accident, all coworkers at Helms, as well as those working on job sites and locations with gas transmission and distribution, substations, and electric transmission, are now required to wear flame-resistant shirts and pants.

Clifton doesn’t consider himself a pioneer when it comes to raising the safety bar at PG&E. But he was certainly a champion for mandatory FR clothing on the job. Clifton believes 90% of his injuries would’ve been prevented if he had worn FR clothing. He traveled to various PG&E locations to share his story of what happened and to convince coworkers of its importance.

“I have a bucket list of the things our department has done that was substantial in making a big difference in the things we do,” said Clifton. “The FR clothing requirement was one of them.”

Clifton appreciates PG&E’s approach to safety. “Over the last 10 years, we’ve tried to be more proactive than reactive,” he said. “Being reactive tells me you don’t really care about me. Being proactive tells me you genuinely care about my well-being.”

‘I just enjoy teaching’

Clifton also received the 33rd John A. Britton Gold Medal Award for rescuing a family from a burning home and started his 40th year at PG&E last October. Over his four decades, the native San Franciscan has been in Electric Operations as an apprentice, journeyman electrician, sub foreman, electrical technician, maintenance supervisor, construction supervisor, and maintenance and construction engineering supervisor.

These days, he’s a senior technical instructor at the electric training facility in Livermore.

Clifton teaches the basics to apprentice and journeyman electricians as well as the Engineers in Training program. He also instructs refresher courses in substation operations.

“I’m giving my all to see to it that when they come to work,” said Clifton, “they get to go back home to their families and enjoy the benefits of a hard day’s work.”

As a former journeyman electrician, Clifton is also obligated to pass his knowledge forward.

“It’s a code of ethics,” he said. “A journeyman has an obligation. You must train the people below you. You must take your knowledge and pass that on to improve your classification.

“I just enjoy teaching,” added Clifton, who wanted to be a teacher or a football coach before coming to PG&E.

Football is family

Clifton, whose football career was derailed by a knee injury at Fresno State, has lived the dream through his family.

His son, Clifton Jr., was the second undrafted rookie free agent named to the Pro Bowl. During that season, he returned a kickoff 97 yards and a punt for 70 yards for touchdowns. He accomplished those feats in 2008 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Clifton Jr. also played for the Miami Dolphins and Cleveland Browns.

Baseball was also an option for Clifton Jr. Baseball Hall of Fame manager Tom Lasorda tried to recruit him for the Los Angeles Dodgers. “In my opinion, he was a better baseball player,” said Clifton Sr., “but his heart was in football.”

Clifton’s brother-in-law is Tim McDonald, a starting safety on the San Francisco 49ers’ Super Bowl XXIX team. His nephews, Tevin McDonald (formerly Oakland Raiders) and T.J. McDonald (Miami) also played in the NFL. Clifton’s cousin, Terry Robiskie, was an NFL assistant coach for nearly 40 years.

In addition, Clifton’s grandson, Brandon Smith, ran for 1,900 yards and scored 28 touchdowns in leading Fresno’s Central High School to the 2024 California Interscholastic Federation 1-A state championship game.

‘I’d rather look at the blessing side’

As for the future, Clifton wants to work for “as long as I’m healthy. I love what I do.”

What would Clifton like to be known for?  “Probably for my honesty,” he said about his speak-up skills. “I’m not afraid to tell you something. It’s like, ‘If you don’t want to know, don’t ask Cliff because he’s going to tell you the truth, whether it hurts or not.’ It has carried me a long way with this company.”

No matter what happens in the future, Clifton will never forget that day more than 20 years ago.

“There was some divine intervention because I shouldn’t be here today,” he said. “I’d rather look at the blessing side of it than anything else.”

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Activism

Oakland Post: Week of February 12 – 18, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of February 12 – 18, 2025

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Former U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee Reflects on Her Career as She Bids Farewell to Congress

“Together, we have raised our voices and pushed the envelope for peace, justice and equity. It has been the honor of a lifetime to provide constituent services, deliver federal investments to my district, speak out, and often times be the only one to take tough votes against the tide. I have, and will continue to, fight for working families, the middle class, low income and poor people,” said Lee On her final day in Congress.

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Rep. Barbara Lee. File photo.
Rep. Barbara Lee. File photo.

By Bo Tefu, California Black Media

Outgoing Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA-12) expressed deep gratitude to her constituents and marked the end of her 26-year career in public service.

Lee, who is succeeded by Lateefah Simon, a civil rights and racial justice activist, praised people in her community for their support. She also highlighted her dedication to promoting peace, justice, and equity.

“Together, we have raised our voices and pushed the envelope for peace, justice and equity. It has been the honor of a lifetime to provide constituent services, deliver federal investments to my district, speak out, and often times be the only one to take tough votes against the tide. I have, and will continue to, fight for working families, the middle class, low income and poor people,” said Lee On her final day in Congress.

Throughout her tenure, Lee earned a reputation as a principled lawmaker known for taking bold and sometimes unpopular stances. One of her defining moments came in 2001 when she was the sole member of Congress to vote against the Authorization for the Use of Military Force in response to the September 11 attacks. This decision led to death threats but ultimately cemented her legacy of courage.

Lee’s leadership extended beyond her district, where she fought for social justice, the rights of low-income communities, and global health initiatives. She was a key figure in pushing for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). She was a vocal critic of the Hyde Amendment, which restricts federal funding for abortion services.

The Congresswoman also faced significant challenges in her career, including a failed Senate bid in 2024. Yet, Lee’s efforts have paved the way for more excellent representation, with more Black women now elected to Congress. She worked closely with organizations like Representation Matters to encourage more women of color to run for office.

Lee says she looks to the future, confident that the next generation of leaders will continue her unfinished work, particularly on issues like military force and reproductive rights.

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