The history of violence against Black women in America leads all the way back to forced arrivals and the slave trade. From these terrible beginnings, we see the clear links between white supremacy, institutional racism, gender inequality, and the constant failure of law enforcement. Here on the show today to unpack the subject and share her experiences working to support survivors of domestic violence and abuse is the one and only Sumayya Coleman! We start off our discussion looking back at Sumayya's career before she unpacks her thoughts on the legacy of slavery and racial oppression in the US. This leads to some thoughts on what is now called safety planning and Sumayya explains how this idea is as old as the presence of Black people in America. The reality for so many women of color in this country is that the police do not offer safety and a solution to the threats they have to face, and Sumayya shares some of the ways she goes about analyzing these failings and the resources that keep her on track with her work. We also get into the types of attitudes that are common towards law enforcement and we look at the example of the Marissa Alexander case and what that teaches us about the price of surviving. The conversation also covers Second Amendment rights, access to information, and why we need more black women to be hired to help with domestic violence cases. We hope this episode can serve as some solace and provide hope for a better future. Join us to hear it all.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Harambe Phone Number — 609-225-6936
African-American Black Women’s Cultural Alliance
Policing the Poor: From Slave Plantation to Public Housing
Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation
Suicide Prevention Hotline — 1-800-273-TALK
Domestic Violence Hotline— 1-800-799-7233
Harambe Social Service on Facebook
Harambe Social Service on Instagram
The history of violence against Black women in America leads all the way back to forced arrivals and the slave trade. From these terrible beginnings, we see the clear links between white supremacy, institutional racism, gender inequality, and the constant failure of law enforcement. Here on the show today to unpack the subject and share her experiences working to support survivors of domestic violence and abuse is the one and only Sumayya Coleman! We start off our discussion looking back at Sumayya's career before she unpacks her thoughts on the legacy of slavery and racial oppression in the US. This leads to some thoughts on what is now called safety planning and Sumayya explains how this idea is as old as the presence of Black people in America. The reality for so many women of color in this country is that the police do not offer safety and a solution to the threats they have to face, and Sumayya shares some of the ways she goes about analyzing these failings and the resources that keep her on track with her work. We also get into the types of attitudes that are common towards law enforcement and we look at the example of the Marissa Alexander case and what that teaches us about the price of surviving. The conversation also covers Second Amendment rights, access to information, and why we need more black women to be hired to help with domestic violence cases. We hope this episode can serve as some solace and provide hope for a better future. Join us to hear it all.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Harambe Phone Number — 609-225-6936
African-American Black Women’s Cultural Alliance
Policing the Poor: From Slave Plantation to Public Housing
Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation
Suicide Prevention Hotline — 1-800-273-TALK
Domestic Violence Hotline— 1-800-799-7233
Harambe Social Service on Facebook
Harambe Social Service on Instagram
EPISODE 03
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:04.5] RW: Welcome to this episode of We Hear You from Harambe Social Services in South Jersey. We Hear You is designed to give a voice to victims and survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. This forum is for survivors and their allies to discuss issues that impact them and their families, as well to educate communities. In the coming segments, we will hear from survivors. They will tell us their stories and what they would like for us to know. As allies, we want to hear how we can support them.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:46.7] RW: Welcome to We Hear You Podcast. We Hear You Podcast is coming to you for the voices of victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, we will be a weekly podcast coming to you to talk about issues that directly impact their lives. This week’s guest, we have with us Ms. Sumayya Fire Coleman who is a nationally known advocate for women, nationally I should say internationally known. Ms. Sumayya Coleman has done tremendous things, I’m just going to read off a couple of things that she has been involved in, but she has clearly on the reputation for her resourcefulness and ways to develop and present at grassroots types organization and effectively serve survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.
Her personal leadership invites and also embraces and encourages, mentorship to young advocates who are doing outreach in their community. Ms. Coleman has been, as I said, not only a national leader, she’s been in almost every state in this country, advocating for domestic violence, either through direct work or through training, teaching young advocates as well as community people about these issues that affect women and their children.
We can go on and talk about Ms. Sumayya and her background but I want to just kind of move into our topics for today. Again, I'd just like to welcome you, and thank you for doing this tonight Sumayya.
[0:02:46.7] SC: Thank you. I’m just so enthralled with being able to see you tonight. I’m so excited for one, just to be with you doing this, usually, I'm nervous and palms are sweaty and feeling faint sometimes before we get on to speak but today, because I’m with you and you’re my dear friend and trusted colleague and sister and all that stuff, it’s great. So great to see you.
I think about our sisterhood of 15 years together, doing all kinds of things in New Jersey and nationally together, I just want to connect with you first and think about all the leadership training we’ve done in domestic violence and disabilities and all kinds of stuff.
[0:03:36.7] RW: We were scheduled to meet up for one of your regional events with the Women of Color Network just this April.
[0:03:44.9] SC: Yeah.
[0:03:44.9] RW: Because of COVID, all of that got shut down and you were planning to come to Philadelphia and I was going to cross the bridge and so all of that seems like years ago now but it was a few months ago that we were just that close to connecting again.
[0:04:03.6] SC: Yes, super, uber excited to just be here and see your face, and especially after my past few days, hey, I’m excited to see anybody right now.
[0:04:13.4] RW: I know, I was very concerned when you were sharing your symptoms.
[0:04:20.9] SC: Yeah, to be able to talk about domestic violence and black women, I’m ready to do it, let’s have a conversation.
[0:04:28.5] RW: Absolutely. I wanted to, because I didn’t want to go into a lot of the details that were in your biography but I know you push it again, you have done so much in the time that we have, I want you to just give our audience a little summary of some of the things that you’ve been doing over this last couple of years with the Women of Color Network and by reaching out to various states and whatnot.
[0:04:54.6] SC: Yeah. Let’s see, the last few years, I would say, since maybe 2010, when we basically were offering leadership academies for women of color across this country who work in domestic violence and sexual assault coalitions and local programs, that was powerful work that I led with the Women of Color Network.
We did focus groups to find out what was going on with those advocates who were serving survivors who were women of color. You know, the work I was leading, it was multilayered in terms of, first of all, ensuring that survivors were the center of the work and that women of color who are advocates who were doing outreach to those women had access to opportunities for leadership to do that.
We were working primarily in mainstream, domestic violence, and sexual assault organizations across this country to expand leadership opportunities for women of color and New Jersey was one of those states. That work led to an even larger approach to ensuring that women of color survivors were centered and that ensuring that leadership opportunities were for women of color advocates. The larger opportunity came when I was able to go into coalitions across this country, domestic violence, and sexual assault coalitions and, provide technical assistance to them in developing culturally responsive programs for survivors. That was huge.
[0:06:39.2] RW: Yeah, it was huge and now, that work, although that was some years ago, when we first initially met almost 13, 15 years ago — how timely it is now because now, once again, something has renewed the conversation around racial equity and the need to have culturally specific programs, the need for women of color to be in leadership, particularly in domestic violence programs and sexual assault programs. Again, it is not a new issue but it comes up and it manages to get rallied over time and there was a tremendous amount of work that was done around this some years ago but I see an opportunity for it to be resurrected right now.
So again that’s definitely very timely that particularly works on hoping that you’ll have another opportunity, we will have an opportunity to –
[0:07:40.3] SC: Like you and me, you and me work together? Please, bring it, yes.
[0:07:49.2] RW: New Jersey A-game and we will make some things happen.
[0:07:57.0] SC: Interesting because all of the work that I’ve done for like 30 years now and I say that because I need to hear myself saying that, right? That I’m still here. I was talking to some folks the other day like well, I’m back in Nashville, Tennessee now and it’s been 26 years since I was here, right? When you talk about coming full circle on doing this work and being around to be involved in community engagement, it’s just mind-blowing because all of the things that I do now stemmed from what I was doing 26 years ago when I had a domestic violence shelter and I don’t like to call it shelter and I don’t like to call it shelter but housing for black women and Latinas who were victims of domestic violence.
[0:08:42.9] RW: Was that in Tennessee?
[0:09:06.4] SC: That was in Nashville, Tennessee. So, to come back 26 years later and be able to still have this conversation about those things that are specific to the lives of black women and children and families, it’s just amazing. And COVID, my God, has helped to make that happen. You know, we’ll talk about that later.
[0:09:09.4] RW: We’re going to get this – tonight’s topic rolling but we certainly are going to have an opportunity to bring you back again because you certainly, you bring such a wealth of experience and information that I’m sure [inaudible] be excited to hear from you yet again and again.
What we’re kind of focused on tonight is just given the history of violence against black women in this country and how even looking from the historic context of our period of enslavement and how black women were treated and then fast forward to ongoing disproportionate treatment of women in so many areas. How black women are poorly treated, disrespected, and denigrated in a lot of different areas in that of course also has influenced of how our own black men treat our black women.
I just wanted to talk some about that historical perspective and that we could begin to look at that and unpack that in terms of where we are at this point.
[0:10:30.2] SC: Yeah, I’m glad we’re going to talk about the history of black women and violence because when has there ever not been a history of black women violence in this country? Really? We came here under duress, we came here due to violence, we came here in a very violent way. In my opinion, we’ve never been in this country without violence, this thing with Breona Taylor and different ones who are experienced violence, it’s a culmination of all of that of how we even got here.
We’ve never been safe, we’ve always been someone’s property with no human rights as a person or a human being, we’ve been raped, beaten, worked sick, worked in the fields, pregnant or bleeding. No one to call for safety outside of family and God. So when have we ever been like safe? We spent a lot of time talking about safety planning now and what it means to be safe. I always speak about it in terms of being safer. Except for you know, moments like you and I because we’re sisters, we sit together and we can do virtual hugs and feel one another and be safe.
But, in terms of now, what the political climate of racism and hatred, black hatred, hatred period, in this country, it’s very dangerous for us. I think often when I feel the presence of our community, our common ancestors, my personal ancestors and I think about how common safety planning for them was. Always safety planning. Safety planning go to the store, safety planning to get into the field, and get back up to the house or whatever.
You have always done safety planning in terms of white supremacy and racism. I don’t ever want to lose touch with that in terms of our ancestor’s experience because that’s what keeps it real for me, what they experience and comparing what we experience, I don’t ever want to loosen the reins of what that means.
[0:12:38.2] RW: It’s a clear connection.
[0:12:38.5] SC: It’s a clear connection.
[0:12:41.1] RW: Does not go.
[0:12:42.3] SC: Yes.
[0:12:44.9] RW: You’re right, we don’t talk about it, but that connection is there.
[0:12:49.3] SC: It’s there and sometimes I think we’d lost connection of that or we don’t want to be connected to that because it was so hard. But it’s a part of who we are, it’s a part of our history. I think the thing is to listen to the opportunity and the challenge or the call to make change around that. How can we be safe with one another?
[0:13:11.6] RW: Have you seen the role of law enforcement playing into that, having women be safer, especially as we’re talking about victims called these particular types of crimes? How do you see their role being effective or ineffective?
[0:13:30.7] SC: I’m going to talk about ineffective first and I want to show you resources thaws I used to kind of keep my analysis clear. This is a book, I don’t know if you can see it.
[0:13:43.1] RW: Okay, Policing the Poor.
[0:13:46.0] SC: Policing the Poor: From Slave Plantation to Public Housing. I’ll say it again, it’s the book is called, Policing the Poor: From Slave Plantation to Public Housing and it’s written by Neil Websdale. You can get this book for like 97 cents on Amazon now. This is a book from 2001 and it is the historical work of Neil Websdale who came here to do community — I’m going to say for a lack of other terms, community research in this area at that time and that was during the time when I was doing the domestic violence housing program here. In this book, under a pseudo-name and I’ll tell you, it’s Regina. I was Regina in this book and that’s very significant because it speaks to how safe I did not feel to be myself, at that time.
There was a burning down of our general store here in the community. There are lots of things going on then. Drugs were being brought into the community, violence against black men was very high at that time, that was when we were talking about dual arrest, mandatory arrest, all that stuff that, you know, it’s about policing, we were talking about community policing, which was over-policing and under protecting.
All of that is where I built my analysis from in that. We were getting those stories from the black women that we were serving, okay? You’re trying to work with a system inside of Metro Nashville, Davidson County, where at that time, a black man who was undercover, a police officer was beaten by police. You know, you have all these dynamics, you have all these things going on at one time and you’re just trying to keep black women and Latinas and their children safe, okay?
That’s one part. The other part of my analysis that I always keep close to me is Beth Ritchie's book. Yes. Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation. You know, mother, Beth, always have such to understand the analysis between the politics within domestic violence and sexual assault movements and also, to help us to understand how we buy in to so much politics around law enforcement. The criminal justice system and those kind of things so that there’s a barter, there is a definitely a compromise between this movement and criminal justice system that compromises the safety of all women and children, but specifically black women and children.
Those things, I keep those too to keep me straight in my analysis so that when I start running off on tangents because there be some things that I could run up on in a tangent on just on a day, in a day's experience with dealing with these issues. And so I try to keep that straight. But yeah, then there was the National Domestic Violence Hotline Report in 2015 that talked ab out victim’s experiences with domestic violence and whether they were reluctant to call law enforcement.
There were that report is about a study of 630 something participants, the average group was 30 years old, 56% of them were white, 15% of them were Latino, Hispanic and 11% of them were African American. The big question was, who do you call, if you’re not going to call the police, who do you call? While they were reluctant to share their experience in turning to the police, one out of four reported they would not call the police in the future, more than 50% said that calling police would make it worse. And then two thirds of them said that they were afraid that the police would not believe them or they would do nothing. You start to break that down in terms of how does that look, how does that feel right now for specifically for black women who are in violent relationships.
COVID has caused the calls of domestic violence to go up, while shelter programs were trying to figure out how to do COVID, those DV calls were going up. While you couldn’t bring them into a shelter program per se, you had to find a way to put them somewhere else because of COVID with social distancing, all of that. Lots of money has come through recently out of nowhere and I’m glad about it, thanks be to God.
[0:18:44.4] SC: That’s a good thing because —
[0:18:45.8] RW: It’s a good thing. It’s a very good thing.
[0:18:48.9] SC: That allowed for programs, especially small programs, most domestic violence programs run by us, for us, with us, about us, don’t have money. I’ve seen sisters here lately getting a little bit here, a little bit there, we put together something like we always do to continue to serve survivors in our communities.
[0:19:11.0] RW: You mentioned an important fact, you talked about that national hotline, a study in 2015 that there was an another study done and I believe that was 2013 by New Jersey, [inaudible] where they identified issues that created a disproportionate number of black and African American women, who were killed in intimate partner relationships that was at least three times over that of white women and women of other races. Identified that report as well.
I know you were part of that study, putting this study together, that whole issue around women feeling it’s going to create more of a problem if I call versus my just taking the brunt of this situation again and I can maintain some more control over this or feeling that they can. That is quite prevalent.
[0:20:18.1] SC: You mean in terms of let’s not call the police and see what’s another way we can do this?
[0:20:26.4] RW: Yeah.
[0:20:27.2] SC: Yeah, all of the dynamics around that for black women right now, some of that is about, I’m not going to call the police because she’s well, a lot of things, she’s thinking about him and that he could get killed, we also, brother George Floyd, need killed, suffocated on international television. Not only are you thinking if it’s an intimate partner violence situation and calling the police, you don’t want your baby’s daddy, that to be him or if it’s your son.
It is a lot of things for us. A lot of thinking of through the grid of what happens when we call the police. So we hopefully have a trusted friend, hopefully we have an understanding pastor or understanding imam or somebody who can help us in that situation and like those women said in that particular report that they will be believed. So often the violence with black women starts with we’re not believed. We’re not believed that we don’t have pain, we’re not believed that we are in fear, one of the things that was so clear, was a real clear talking point for Marissa Alexander’s campaign was it was said that Marissa wasn't afraid. She couldn’t be afraid because she was –
[0:21:49.4] RW: She was not appear to be a victim because she was not afraid.
[0:21:53.4] SC: Because she not afraid.
[0:21:55.1] RW: The stereotype or the prototype, however you want to describe it and therefore then she was really vilified by the prosecutor and then given this unjust sentence. How much time did she actually serve? And just tell people who Marissa Alexander is.
[0:22:15.7] SC: So Marissa Alexander is a woman, a young woman who lives in Florida and who has caught up in the criminal justice system for firing a warning shot. It was one of the biggest domestic violence cases ever. We led a campaign that reached into national proportion. So it was huge. She tried to save herself and she fired a warning shot and she was prosecuted for that. She served over a thousand days in jail for that. She did not get to connect with her baby when her baby was born.
Her baby was in ICU when all of that happened. She was disconnected from her child for a very long time and she was looking at serving three 20-year sentences. She was made an example of because some of that was about she was determined to fight for her right to be free. She was determined to not be seen as a perpetrator because she was a victim by all purposes of the lethality scale. She was very high on that lethality scale. So talking about surviving and being punished, she survived and she was punished for it and that was very much about a poor criminal justice response to her victimization.
[0:23:31.4] RW: But again, this particular case is unfortunately a good example of how racism enters into the picture and victims then become the villains in cases such as this, where no one was harmed. Her husband was not harmed. The shot was a warning shot in the ceiling but yet this overzealous prosecutor was determined to have this woman prosecuted for what reason?
And when you look at everything, you lay all of the particulars out on the table. Racism rises to the top of the rationale for this whole prosecution. And that’s a very sad commentary for our country and for victims everywhere when we are saying, “Well, we would rather stay in a violent situation and risk the possibility of being further harmed or possibly killed.” Rather than bring in law enforcement.
[0:24:45.6] SC: Yeah and you know how the case exemplifies so many things. She is a survivor who did not ever really call the police when there was violence. She is one of those represented statistics from that hotline and so look what happened. The violence escalated and then when she called the police and then she was arrested and then she was in the system in the way that she was prosecuted and persecuted but that is a very real thing for us is again, who you going to call?
So also too, her case was not handled like it was a domestic violence case. Her case was handled as she was the perpetrator. She was trying to save her life and she was the one who was seen as the villain or as the perpetrator and so what we say about that was that basically, she was made an example that if you fight the system, if you fight back, if you survive, there is punishment for that. 20 years for a warning shot? That’s ridiculous, while at the same time that was happening as we talk about multiple things being true at once, George Zimmerman.
[0:26:03.3] RW: This was during that time.
[0:26:04.9] SC: This was juxtaposed to George Zimmerman’s case, who killed a young boy for minding his own business, walking through the community. He was not a police officer and he acted with the law enforcement, okay? And he served no time, no time. So you just have to look at so many different variables and correlates that are happening at the same time with the situations and specifically for black women. So right now, people are protesting in the streets about law enforcement and defunding the police and all of these kind of things.
So who are black women going to call? That is the question I have, who are they going to call and when you do call them, then what? Who is training police how to work with us? It is like when I worked with the State of Virginia and developing model domestic violence and sexual assault, law enforcement policy there were so many factors to bring to that conversation and at that time, I was definitely deep into the community organizing around that case.
And when I would raise the question about self-defense, is self-defense a right in terms of surviving domestic violence. We had lots of long conversations about that. We probably could do another show on that, too. But it is like are we telling all of their options, all of their legal options and what does that say? We never encouraged killing anybody. A lot of people say, “Well, she would have been better off when she had killed him.” We never encourage that but I do, I am saying me personally, I do think people should use their second amendment rights in terms of self-defense and self-preservation.
[0:28:03.1] RW: Yeah, right because we do know certainly there are those will include after multiple years of abuse that they finally have tried to defend themselves and ended up with [inaudible] sentences in prison [inaudible] for those very reasons and they’re not being universal laws related to that issues. So therefore, again some women, some people automatically assume that oh it was self-defense or it was all will you claim to be a victim.
And there is so many ways that haven’t been victimized for multiple years does not come out in the court, things that are not allowed to be presented and then they do end up being convicted of murder and serving time. You know, even though they have been a victim for so many, many years. So I know speaking back to this fatality review board report, when I was doing my work around training advocates about the impact of the domestic violence in African-American communities, black communities, I felt it was important that they understood that what that statistic was really about when we [inaudible]. There were three times more of a chance that a black woman would be murdered in an intimate partner situation than women of other races.
[0:29:48.4] SC: And that is because of resources. There is this peculiar dynamic that I observed and Rose you may see it too, I don’t know. But there is this really peculiar dynamic that I see. Most of the shelter programs that I have provided to technical assistance too or just have any kind of connection to, the conversation we had is about a huge number of black women who are in the shelter, okay? And they’re going to mainstream shelter programs. Who basically have these high numbers of women of color, black women and they have inadequate services. Services that are not relevant for them, so they tend to go back to their perpetrators.
The other dynamic that I see is you have main stream programs who do not hire woman of color or black women to provide services to victims of domestic violence. So if you are not providing culturally response and services and you are not hiring women of color to develop and provide those services, and you got women of color who are coming to those programs in large numbers and going back, coming in and going back and coming in and going back, what are we doing?
So, I think, what was it? 2010 I was there working with you and we were celebrating the caucus development for women of color and starting to have annual celebrations and banquets and things like this for the work that were doing. And I think at that time 2010 it had been 20 years, right? And so now we’re here, we’re at 2020 and we are still having this conversation so —
[0:31:42.6] RW: Right and that is the part that is sad to me. You did a tremendous amount of work and I met when you had already been working. I came in at 2013 and I met you. You were already working and the work that I was able to do going forward and left and that is not 2013 but in 2002 is when I actually met you. It stayed for 13 years, left and now we are in 2020 and the same issues are still –
[0:32:21.3] SC: It was still there.
[0:32:22.9] RW: How can that be?
[0:32:24.3] SC: You know how I refer to that, moving while standing still. Moving while standing still. I mean it is a sad thing in some ways but I do have to also think about and lift up and celebrate all the work that we’ve done, you know what I mean? It’s like if we hadn’t done it because I remember, shoot, well we’ll talk about that at another time too. So what it was like 30 years ago, historically in terms on working on this deal but we have come a long way.
[0:32:59.0] RW: Yeah we have come a long way. There is still much work to do and when we are talking about women losing their lives, we certainly have to step up. One of those things with using this particular forum, we are trying to pivot because of COVID, we choose survivors and their family and friends. So we are using this podcast as a means to reach out to them in a different way. We don’t know who will hear this or how they would hear but we are hoping that people will tune into this and then hear this information so that we can want to continue to bring people in such as yourself and that we would be able to talk openly about these issues and how we can make things better for victims that are out there.
[0:33:59.0] SC: I look forward to that. I look forward to having those conversations openly and fearlessly, creatively. Talk about the ways in which we’ve done our work but also how we see the work going forward in the future in terms of what would it look like if women of color, leading culturally responsive programs based on the communities that they serve. Because it is very complex. We are addressing systemic racism, systemic oppression, discrimination and prejudices.
Because when you start to look at the different layers of the ways in which our identities as black women. From LGBT community, lesbian, bi, gay, sexual transgender community and trying to put them in a shelter and you can’t keep them anymore safe or treat them any better with dignity and integrity, that’s first. That’s primary to victims feeling safe is how they are treated. So yes, I look forward to having more conversations like this and to just really lay it out and have conversations.
There is something about that model, that white mainstream model that holds people in a place where they are up here and we are down here like there is one that is over and one that is under. That comes out in a conversations and in the ways that we train. And so for me I always approach my work from a place of equality and equity, that we are all here. We are all in the same level and then we have experiences and knowledge that we can all bring to the table.
[0:35:44.2] RW: Each person bringing something to the table and not respective of your particular education may not be this particular experience that bring the original idea to the table. And I think that very often use a Eurocentric model, we don’t recognize that or we value in terms of, oh, Eurocentric models, we recognize paper and documentation and that that is not always the most useful way to communities of color and communities who are other than white, male-dominant population.
So we certainly will have some additional conversations and for those of you that are out there and maybe listening to the program this evening and this conversation is touching a nerve for you, maybe you, maybe someone that is sitting there and wondering, “Wow, I didn’t think that anybody was thinking about me being a victim in my circumstance.” But we are thinking about you. We do hear you even though your voice has been silenced.
We do hear you and we want you to call into us at 609-225-6936, to Harambe Social Services. We do offer counseling for you that counseling will be free of charge and we want you to know that you will be held in the highest confidence and we will do all within our power to keep you safe during your process. So if it is not for you then maybe you have a niece or you have a daughter or it is your sister, your neighbor down the street. Call them and let them know the number. And have then call us and get this help.
And again, it is not about insurance. It is not about having the money. This is something that you can do free of charge. Sumayya, I just want to thank you for coming in this week. You have just been a wealth of information and we want to just thank you so, so, so much. Are there any last things that you would like to say before we quit for tonight?
[0:38:23.2] SC: Yeah, I would. I would like to lift up my own services, Share Time Wisely Consulting Services and the African-American Black Women’s Cultural Alliance because I hope there’ll be – well, I know that you and I are going to be doing some collaborating. So I just want to make sure that is out there but under Share Time Wisely Consulting Services we do provide technical assistance and training in this area on organization and program development.
And the African-American Black Women’s Cultural Alliance is an alliance of black woman who are actually doing the work, to shape and change the landscape of mainstream leadership and also that is about needing us where we are as families and children and those that we love in authenticity. So we can unpack all of that at another time but I do look forward to us getting together and doing some things again. It is just great to know, Rose, that you are still in the community doing this work. I am so glad and excited about that and it is par for the course of what’s next.
[0:39:31.3] RW: Well, I do. We certainly have a mutual admiration for each other. But we will invite you back. This is a new endeavor but we hope that it will be something that our listeners want to hear much, much more of. And they can also check in to BuzzSprout and make a comment there and rate us and we will have other information about that as our weeks go along but again, as We Hear You Podcast. We will see you again and hear you again next week.
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[0:40:10.9] RW: Thanks for joining We Hear You Podcast with our host, Rose Williams, from Harambe Social Services, a grassroots organization in South Jersey. Harambe is Swahili for pulling together in unity. We use the principles of the Nguzo Saba in all of our services to educate communities about domestic violence and sexual assault. Our primary focus is to provide counseling services to victims and survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.
If you or someone you know needs to talk to us, please call 609-225-6936. Again, that number is 609-225-6936. Our counseling services are free of charge. Be sure to follow Harambe Social Services on Instagram and Facebook. We would love to hear your feedback about tonight's focus. Tell a family member and friend about the show. You can help us get the word out and go to buzzsprout.com to make a review.
Thank you. Be safe. Be well.
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