Thread by @KosherSoul

I really want to make this a thread. Can we make this a thread?
The land belt where #VoterSuppression is at its highest is one of the most remarkable situations in the history of politics and culture and nature. @stevesilberman pull up a seat.

When I was writing The Cooking Gene I was confronted with something that was really startling. The Black Belt. There are two. One is the demographic region where enslaved people formed a plurality and the other is a swath of l
Counties in AL &MS where the best cotton grew.

@BreeNewsome you here? I'm looking up to you on this one. The Black Belt didn't start in the 1800s. It's actually the ancient seashore and seabed. From Prince George's county MD to east Texas there were voter suppression efforts or difficulties where large Black pops voted.

This was historically the very belt where the best tobacco, cotton, sugar and rice grew. The worst oppression occurred where profits were highest. Reconstruction ended on the backs of Black cotton sharecroppers esp those in the belt between Georgia and Texas centered in AL&MS

That ancient seabed is the home of some of the worst pollution, police brutality, substandard education, poverty, diabetes, and so many other ailments. It's not by accident. Wealth and power were purposely unevenly distributed.

This region was the site of the greatest mass pattern of rape in American history. It was where 5,000 humans, a third of them businessmen and female teachers and the like...were castrated and or hung from trees to terrorize them and their descendants in perpetuity.

When we tolerate #VoterSuppression as to not legislate national action against it...we perpetuate the damning effects of that ancient seabed. We drown in it. But there's another aspect.

Hope. We had no choice in coming here. But the South is our home. The South built America bc we built the South. We are there in mass for a reason. We will not accept schoolyard to prisonyard pipelines. We will not have our children taught from textbooks that hate them.

We will not hinge this on anything short of right vs. wrong. Land ownership, environmental justice, food systems takeovers, artistic and cultural revival and stabilization of our family tradition. (Everybody not a few) are key. We have to be strong to get the full benefit

Of our numbers here.
We cannot continue to be an occupied people or a people with subdued economic and social power. There is no reason why Black and Brown cannot have full political power in Texas, Georgia or Florida.

What do we need to do in the next two years to scare the hell out of the red menace and get them to back the hell off and let us exercise our full citizenship?

We have work to do. Voting rights need the same type of priority as the military complex. Don't be fake patriots. Don't be fake Americans. If you don't want that 92 year old Black woman in Georgia (thank you for YOUR service)To vote...dont holler at us about #TakeAKnee

I must go write.
My soul is on fire.