H/t (that means hat tip) Anoa Changa told me about the Christmas movie where a Black woman takes over a small family newspaper in Alaska. In one scene, she and her printer, a Black woman, go around town like old school newsies handing out their paper. Anoa said it made her think of me and the BBG crew riding around West Virginia – our gumption.
I certainly saw myself in the movie. I, too, love holding and smelling BBG’s print and knowing it is made with care. I thought about how hard it would be for someone to show up in West Virginia and distribute 5,000!
But we did. Because we have invested lifetimes of building networks that are often unsung and undervalued because a collective of progressive anti-racists across West Virginia is not something that comes to mind, but neither is a Black newspaper. We are troubling the narrative!
And. As Bunmi Kusimo reminds me in Mountain Mama Hoodoo Medicine, that we is all we got. And we know West Virginia starts with we.
Movie spoiler: Marie Osmond is the villain, and the small-town paper in Alaska survives because the people $upport it.
