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Opinion

Op-Ed: “Silence Is Not an Option”

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By Jovanka Beckles

 

I would like to see our Black communities across the country stand up in outrage, just as many in Muslim communities are coming together to speak out against the hate that made this heinous act of murder possible.We cannot let the media frighten us into believing that this is all about terrorism; it is about home -grown hate that is manifested in homophobic tolerated beliefs and actions.

 

As Black people, we know what it is to be scapegoated. Will we stand idly by and allow this to happen to another group of people who are being targeted?

 

Do we not know silence is not an option?

 

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King is known to have said…silence is not an option.

 

A friend of mine expressed both appreciation for the outpouring of support on social media, and a challenge for those posting to do more than simply post a message.

 

She encouraged people to remember that many in the LGBTQ community – especially but not exclusively young people –are traumatized, fearful and suffering.

 

I wholeheartedly share these sentiments and ask that family, friends, educators, neighbors, faith community leaders and others reach out to folks in the LGBTQ community to let them know that they are loved, not hated.

 

What are you doing to challenge the hate that inspired the killing of innocent people? How do you passively and implicitly co-sign hate expressed as homophobia?

 

We are all connected.

 

Jovanka Beckles is a member of the Richmond City Council

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Activism

Oakland Post: Week of May 7 – 13, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of May 7 – 13, 2025

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Activism

Oakland Post: Week of April 30 – May 6, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 30 – May 6, 2025

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Arts and Culture

BOOK REVIEW: Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy

When Bridgett M. Davis was in college, her sister Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

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Love Rita Book Cover. Courtesy of Harper.
Love Rita Book Cover. Courtesy of Harper.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: Bridgett M. Davis, c.2025, Harper, $29.99, 367 Pages

Take care.

Do it because you want to stay well, upright, and away from illness. Eat right, swallow your vitamins and hydrate, keep good habits and hygiene, and cross your fingers. Take care as much as you can because, as in the new book, “Love, Rita” by Bridgett M. Davis, your well-being is sometimes out of your hands.

It was a family story told often: when Davis was born, her sister, Rita, then four years old, stormed up to her crying newborn sibling and said, ‘Shut your … mouth!’

Rita, says Davis, didn’t want a little sister then. She already had two big sisters and a neighbor who was somewhat of a “sister,” and this baby was an irritation. As Davis grew, the feeling was mutual, although she always knew that Rita loved her.

Over the years, the sisters tried many times not to fight — on their own and at the urging of their mother — and though division was ever present, it eased when Rita went to college. Davis was still in high school then, and she admired her big sister.

She eagerly devoured frequent letters sent to her in the mail, signed, “Love, Rita.”

When Davis was in college herself, Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

First, they lost their father. Drugs then invaded the family and addiction stole two siblings. A sister and a young nephew were murdered in a domestic violence incident. Their mother was devastated; Rita’s lupus was an “added weight of her sorrow.”

After their mother died of colon cancer, Rita’s lupus took a turn for the worse.

“Did she even stand a chance?” Davis wrote in her journal.

“It just didn’t seem possible that she, someone so full of life, could die.”

Let’s start here: once you get past the prologue in “Love, Rita,” you may lose interest. Maybe.

Most of the stories that author Bridgett M. Davis shares are mildly interesting, nothing rare, mostly commonplace tales of growing up in the 1960s and ’70s with a sibling. There are a lot of these kinds of stories, and they tend to generally melt together. After about fifty pages of them, you might start to think about putting the book aside.

But don’t. Not quite yet.

In between those everyday tales, Davis occasionally writes about being an ailing Black woman in America, the incorrect assumptions made by doctors, the history of medical treatment for Black people (women in particular), attitudes, and mythologies. Those passages are now and then, interspersed, but worth scanning for.

This book is perhaps best for anyone with the patience for a slow-paced memoir, or anyone who loves a Black woman who’s ill or might be ill someday. If that’s you and you can read between the lines, then “Love, Rita” is a book to take in carefully.

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