SoFreshandSoGreen.com | Madam Toussaint on Going Green, Art, Hip Hop, and Politics

“I believe that you shouldn’t have to leave your neighborhood to live in a better one.”

Majora Carter is a Black environmental activist. And you thought it couldn’t be done! I tried to told you- there are others!!!

If you’ve never heard of Majora Carter you will. Here’s the short version of her story: She “greened the ghetto”.

That was pretty short so here’s a bit more detail. Majora Carter founded a non profit called Sustainable South Bronx (you know, the birthplace of Hip Hop in New York City). This foundation pioneered green-collar job training and placement systems in one of the most environmentally and economically challenged parts of the US.

Carter was recently on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams in a segment called Greening the Urban Jungle.

If this is your first introduction to this former TED Convention speaker then I’m proud to be the one to bring her words to you!

Check out what Majora Carter is working on now at majoracartergroup.com

“It is not the style of clothes one wears, neither the kind of automobile one drives, nor the amount of money one has in the bank, that counts. These mean nothing. It is simply service that measures success.” ~ George Washington Carver

“Since new developments are the products of a creative mind, we must therefore stimulate and encourage that type of mind in every way possible.” ~ George Washington Carver

My sister organized a talent show at a school one year and in an effort to add educational value to the mix and sell the school’s administrators on the idea she added a Black History Month Quiz. Maybe 10 questions were asked and prizes were given for the correct answer.

Time after time they answer my fellow New York City teens gave was “George Washington Carver” even after he was used as an answer already. Yeah, I know… (more…)

“[Woodson] literally made this country, which has only the slightest respect for people of color, recognize and celebrate each year, a week in which it studied the effect which the American Negro has upon life, thought, and action in the United States. I know of no one man who in a lifetime has, unaided, built up such a national celebration.” ~W. E. B. Du Bois

“No other single thing has done so much to dramatize the achievement of persons of African blood.” ~Dr. Carter G. Woodson on Negro History Week

Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson is known as “The Father Of Black History” and for good reason. He took it upon himself to write Black people into American history and championed the idea that Black people should know our own history.

In 1915 Woodson and friends established the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in Chicago. A year later he established the Journal of Negro History. In 1926, he developed Negro History Week, later expanded to Black History Month in the 1960s.

Carter G. Woodson was also the author of The Mis-Education of the Negro, which Lauryn Hill played on in the title of her classic album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Woodson’s book was about the conditioning of Black people in schools to remain inferior and oppressed. You can read it at historyisaweapon.com

So BHM started out as only a week. It was the second week in February and was intended to bringing attention to the contributions Black people have made to the US.

Why February, the shortest month of the year you ask? (more…)

The Earth we share is not just a rock tossed through space, but a living, nurturing being. She cares for us, she deserves our care in return.”
~Michael Jackson

Fresh off of the Grammy tribute here we have a quote from MJ himself. At the Grammy tribute to the late artist those in charge saw fit to use the song “Earth Song” with Celine Dion, Jennifer Hudson, Usher, Carrie Underwood and Smokey Robinson.

This quote makes it plain and shows that it isn’t odd at all that a Black person might say that. Free of vocabulary words like sustainability, dark green, CFL and carbon footprints here we have a statement about the environment all kinds of people, Black or otherwise, could get behind. It’s just that simple.

I think Michael Jackson genuinely cared for the environment and (more…)

I like this. From Marvel Comic’s Truth: Red, White & Black by Bob Morales and Kyle Baker.

“Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.” ~Carter G. Woodson, the “Father of Black History”, founder of Negro History Week, a precursor to Black History Month

Every year Black History Month brings up a lot of issues for me. After a few recent conversations I decided to address those issues this entire month!

Firstly even as a child I felt Black History Month was poorly taught. Maybe that’s a given if you’ve ever had to sit through an awkward white teacher trying to make a classroom full of Black kids understand the need for a Civil Rights Movement or benefits of slavery.

Not to be left out, I also take issue with Black adults who don’t offer Black children the same rehashed Black History stuff in sporadic bouts with even less context than what is offered in school. Saying things like “People didn’t march on Washington for you to have your pants sagging” is absurd. “Young people need to read more” also useless unless you’re willing to offer a serious reading list a comment like that should be left out of conversations with young people.

The History of Black people on this planet is too important a subject to be so mishandled every year. Dragging out the old MLK “I Have A Dream” speech for children to see once a year is a criminal. Shaving that man’s life down to one speech does us all an injustice everywhere.

They call this guy “The Teacher”.

Here’s a few of my issues with BHM itself:

All this talk of BHM and more of my peers learned who George Washington Carver was than Carter G. Woodson who started BHM in the first place.

Why does George Washington Carver get to be so popular for all the wrong things?

We were allowed for far too long to perpetuate the idea that BHM was the shortest month of the year because Black people just can’t catch a break in this white man’s country. As kids I doubt we were ever taught how BHM got to be in February in the first place. (more…)

There are so many layers to Gigi Bio. She’s a painter, illustrator, a real deal fashion designer by day and “Urban Reconstructionist” photographer by night.

Layers are also a major feature of Bio’s work. In this part of the interview Gigi Bio explains where some of those layers came from by explaining where she came from. In case you missed it here’s Part 1. (more…)

One of Hip Hop’s latest golden boys, no not Drake, Raekwon the Chef released a mixtape this month. Ok, so many he would be more like a golden man, but this guy has managed to beat back the ravages of “old age” and the ageism in rap that goes with it.

One of my favorite tracks off his Coke Up In Da Dollar Bill mixtape is “The Set Up” which features our leading man in the midst of a sexual encounter first interrupted by DJ Scream? then later on by 3 dudes with guns. Hey, it’s on a mixtape called Coke Up In Da Dollar Bill Mixtape from a track called “The Set Up”, what did you expect?

Anyway, Rae smoothed it out on that one. Take notes, it’s all about the consonants and don’t forget the vowels! So I got to thinking why do cats like Fabolous get so much burn when it’s time to “do something for the ladies” when we have a perfectly good Raekwon here? And he cooks!

I was asked once by my man my mellow Carlito Roc of the tckonbroadway.com what was the best pick up line I ever heard and my first thought was “Yo, what fabric is that?/ It’s only wool and rayon”. RIP Teddy Pendergrass who is sampled for this Ghostface joint. (more…)

The first time Gigi Bio showed me her work she said, “See, this is what it looks like in my head”. So what’s in her head are photos from multiple views, images of New York City’s urban landscape, herself, and those she meets in her travels. Each image layered upon each other is unique like the snowflakes that come together to blanket her adopted city in the middle of winter.

The single image formed can show anything from hard angles in architecture softened in a layered, loose, curvilinear composition or a reflection of the ever shifting energy of urban life swirling around a singular figure simply waiting for a walk signal on a street corner.

I told her my first thoughts were of cubism, specifically Marcel Duchamp’s cubist inspired “Nude Descending A Staircase No. 2″ pictured left, which depicts a woman at multiple moments while in motion through still images, abstract lines and planes presented all as one image. Gigi shut down that label with the quickness!

I set out to find out what the stuff in Gigi’s head is, how it got there and what she intends to do with it next. Oh yeah, and why she doesn’t want to be called a cubist! (more…)