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War and Global Unrest: Black Folks Respond

Nayaba Arinde
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War and Global Unrest: Black Folks Respond

By Nayaba Arinde
Editor-at-Large
As the media has the nation hyper-focused on the war with Iran over 6,000 miles away from the five boroughs, healthcare, housing, and groceries, are the concerns of most New Yorkers. This, alongside crime on the streets, food insecurity, unemployment, the increasing cost of daily living, and high transportation costs.


But President Donald Trump’s major combat operations in Iran dominates the 24-hour news cycle.
Un-or-under-reported by the mainstream press are several countries struggling with violent conflicts, regional instability, and social unrest–such as Sudan, DR Congo, Nigeria, Haiti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, France, Cuba, Mexico, and the Ukraine.


“We ourselves live in the global world, and we often times don’t have time to think about it because we are so busy with our daily crisis,”Colette Pean, member of the human rights community advocacy December 12th Movement organization told Our Time Press. “But, I think we will feel it in the cut back of essential services, as more money gets spent on a war that we didn’t need to be in. I think we will feel the inflation in gas prices, both when we go to the pump, when we purchase items that have to travel, as the price of everything goes up”.


NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani slammed what he called, “Opening a new theater of war. Americans do not want this. They do not want another war in pursuit of regime change. They want relief from the affordability crisis.

They want peace…I am focused on making sure that every New Yorker is safe. I have been in contact with our Police Commissioner and emergency management officials. We are taking proactive steps, including increasing coordination across agencies and enhancing patrols of sensitive locations out of an abundance of caution.”


Attorney General Letitia James urged New Yorkers to remain vigilant for price hiking in the wake of heightened geopolitical conflict in the “Middle East,” affecting supply chains. “There is no excuse for unfairly raising prices of essential goods and services that New Yorkers depend on. With sudden increases in oil prices poised to drive up costs for New Yorkers, I am encouraging everyone to be on the lookout for unreasonable price hikes.”


“While events overseas are beyond New York’s control, they can affect the price of food and fuel costs and report price gouging to my office…so that it can be investigated and appropriate action can be taken,” said New York Secretary of State Walter T. Mosley.
Governor Kathy Hochul called on folk to report price gouging, so she can hold “unscrupulous actors accountable.”


As the Iran battle–Trump has called a pre-emptive measure, stretches into its third week, he termed the deadly conflict “a short-term excursion.” Despite mixed messages, with cabinet statements that it may be a prolonged battle, Trump said this week that the war, “is very complete, pretty much,” adding that his military had decimated Iran’s ability to respond to the American bombardment.


As Iran has struck back, hitting nations like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Dubai, Trump has denied that it was a U.S. Tomahawk missile that hit a girls school in Iran, killing more than 170 people, many of them children.
While Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said that they may block oil shipments sailing from the Gulf, Trump threatened that if Iran attacked ships within the Strait of Hormuz “death, fire and fury will reign upon them.”


“I think everyone is just deeply concerned with irrational, unchecked, unstructured, impromptu behavior of our president, without really looking at how these issues impact upon everybody else,”
Rev. Dennis Dillon told Our Time Press. “Such as, the price of gas, the price of travel flights, people getting stranded, myself included coming from the Jesse Jackson funeral and celebration of his life in Chicago.”


Stranded for two days, Dillon, the publisher of The New York Christian Times, and pastor of Broklyn’s New Rise Church Global said, “The airline said there were delays because of the war, and JFK Airport was overbooked because of the extra flights for people who are trying to get back. So, obviously we have a president who is not thinking through these things. He is impulsive, arrogant and ignorant, and that’s what drives him and it is sad.

This is a man who is totally devoid of love and compassion. The concern of the community is that this is an unnecessary war, with the killing of innocent people, including our service men and women for no good reason.”


Meanwhile on Saturday, close to Mayor Mamdani’s Gracie Mansion home on the Upper West Side, opposing protestors got into a violent confrontation where a smoking explosive device was thrown.
The Florida-based far-right “Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City” demonstration organizer Jake Lang, is a Trump-pardoned January 6 riot participant and current U.S. Senate candidate, who thought bringing a roasted pig to Mamadani’s home during Ramadan–was a flex.


His twenty or so supporters were met by over a hundred counter protestors. Now facing federal terrorism charges, police said that two men, Emir Balat, 18, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, drove from Pennsylvania with at least 3 improvised explosives–one was thrown into the crowd, and none of the devices detonated.


Mamdani called it “A vile protest rooted in white supremacy.” Neither he nor his wife Rama were home.
“I’m the first Muslim mayor of our city. Anti-Muslim bigotry is nothing new to me, nor is it anything new for the 1 million or so Muslim New Yorkers who know this city as our home.”


At a press conference on Monday, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said, “We have been in a heightened state of alert in New York City since the start of hostilities in Iran, and we remain in that posture …[with] additional counterterrorism resources throughout New York City.”


Saying that people should “stay hopeful that this difficult time will pass,” Bed Stuy businessman Lookman O. Afolayan, owner of Buka New York restaurant, told Our Time Press, “The war we now face is troubling and unexpected for many Americans. Families were already dealing with rising costs, and this conflict will likely make life even more expensive and uncertain…
This moment should also remind us of the importance of leadership and accountability in the leaders we elect.”


Activist Colette Pean told Our time Press, “The impact of the war I think we will feel it as the focus of so many things gets distorted, and people have to think ‘Who are we?’ ‘What is our place in the world, and how do we relate,’ because when we talk about this particular action, we have to talk about what happened when they bombed Nigeria? And when they took President Maduro and his wife out of Venezuela? What does it mean when they are bombing small boats in the Caribbean where so many people are from; and blockading Cuba? It’s all part of a global conflict.

Those of us with relatives in different parts of the world, are going to feel it when they go into a financial crisis because of the cost of energy, because a lot of this is based on economics.”

Rev. Valerie Cousin Named Interim Chair of Bridge Street Development Corporation

Fern Gillespie
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Rev. Valerie Cousin Named Interim Chair of Bridge Street Development Corporation

Fern Gillespie
When the Bridge Street Development Corporation (BSDC) Board of Directors recently appointed Rev. Valerie Cousin as its interim chair, she had already served 27 years as a key member of the BSDC board. Over the decades, she had been an active BSDC board member operating as chair of fundraising, board secretary and other duties.


Bridge Street Development Corporation is an instrumental part of her life. Her husband Rev. David Byron Cousin, Sr., is pastor of Bridge Street AME Church, the church which founded BSDC in 1995. She is the executive pastor of the church. Rev. Cousin balances the trio of roles as the church’s first lady, executive pastor and interim board chair with the skill set of an executive administrator, which was her career as a college official for over 20 years.


“At Bridge Street Development Corporation, our motto is Building on Community Strength. The entire board of directors helps support the work and vision of our CEO. Whether it’s community engagement, supporting our small businesses, assisting churches and faith-based institutions that own buildings to rehab them to get the equity and increase the quality of life of folks living in them,” Rev. Cousin told Our Time Press.

“Whether it’s constructing multi-use buildings or rehabbing existing buildings in the community that provide affordable housing. We support community engagement with programs, not only in our senior buildings, but in the Open Streets program with commerce, public spaces, and community performances.”


Gregory Anderson, President & CEO, Bridge Street Development Corporation, and Rev. Cousin have collaborated on social impact community programs for years.
“Rev. Valerie Cousin has been a trusted advisor and steady leader throughout my tenure as President & CEO,” Anderson told Our Time Press.

“As board secretary and a long-standing member of our Executive Committee and other key committees, she has consistently provided thoughtful guidance, deep institutional knowledge, and a deep commitment to our mission. I am confident she will continue to serve the organization well as Interim Board Chair. I look forward to continuing our work of Building on Community Strength with Rev. Cousin in her new role.”


Previously Edward Odom, Jr. was the longtime board chair of Bridge Street Development Corporation. “She is a very dedicated, hard-working, committed individual to her community, her church and her family,” Odom told Our Time Press. “I want to acknowledge Edward Odom, Jr., for his strong leadership, professionalism, and steady hand as Board Chair during several important periods of growth and transition for the organization.,” said Anderson. “We are pleased that he will continue to serve as a member of the Board.” Rev. Cousin agreed. “Edward Odom has had an instrumental impact on BSDC. I am looking forward to his involvement as a board member.”


Before being called to the ministry in 2004, Rev. Cousin aspired to be a president of a community college. Her career in higher education spanned positions as manager of student loan, and financial aid’s accounting office at Fairleigh Dickinson University; assistant dean for business and finance at a Westchester community college and director of business affairs at Purchase College.

She holds a Bachelors degree in accounting from Alabama State University, Master of Public Administration from Seton Hall University, and a Master of Divinity in Preaching and Worship from Columbia University/Union Theological Seminary. In addition, she holds a Certificate in Fundraising and Development from Marymount College.


“While I was studying education at Columbia University, one day I was sitting in my car and I felt a level of unrest in my spirit. Columbia Union theological seminary was across the street. The spirit started talking at me, saying to go over there and audit a class,“ she recalled. “I said, I’m not interested in preaching.

My husband is a pastor. We don’t need two pastors in the house.”
Since the 1980s, she has been a pastor’s wife. Her husband, Rev. David Byron Cousin, Sr., and her were college sweethearts who had married in 1981. Together, with their two sons, the couple moved to his pastoral appointments in New Jersey’s Salem, East Orange and Princeton.

She got involved in local community nonprofits and gained leadership roles on the Princeton YMCA board and at Rheedlen Center for Children and Families board (now Harlem Children’s Zone) when he was appointed to Harlem. In 1997, the family became a part of Brooklyn’s Bridge Street AME Church.


Switching from education to theology at Columbia University was a pivotal move for Rev. Cousin. “After auditing the theology class at Columbia, I accepted the call to the ministry,” she said. “Being a college president was a passion of mine. It was a desire, but I don’t think it was ever a calling. When you have the most urgent call of your life, that’s the one that you should be doing. I left my job and went into the seminary full time.”


Bridge Street AME welcomed her as a minister. “My husband sked me what title I was interested in functioning under,” she said. “Based on my skill set on working in higher education administration, dealing with policies and procedures, I told him after research that I wanted to be executive minister. The executive arm of your leadership.”


As executive minister, she transferred her higher education administration skills to the church management. Rev. Cousin created AME procedure manuals for baptisms, funerals, class leaders and stewardesses. Soon, she was giving workshops at churches, even the historic first AME church founded in Philadelphia in 1794.

“You name it, I was the manual queen,” she said. “Manuals help you keep order. I believe that everyone needs to know what everybody is supposed to do. This way, there’s no room for error. The Methodist Church is a church of order. We have our Methodist order of worship. You can go to any AME church and the order of worship will be similar.”


She was born in Chicago in a family of six siblings. Her parents worked at Chicago’s ComEd. In 1969, at age nine, her father moved the family to his widowed mother’s rural farm in Alabama. It was, at first, a culture shock for a city kid. “My grandmother still had an outhouse. She had a woodburning stove where she did all her cooking. Somebody had to cut that wood up in the fall to make sure that she had enough wood to go through the winter,” she remembered.

“My father would help his mother with any maintenance and upkeep on the farm.” Living in Alabama was life-changing for her. She attended Alabama State University, met her husband and pledged AKA, where she is still an active soror.


“I’m working with the Missionary Society at Bridge Street doing community outreach. I’m working with the youth, the Women’s Ministry and the Christian Education Department. All of those components have community service work that they do. I’m out there with them,” she said. “We all have gifts, graces, intellect and human capital that we can bring to the table to make our world, our community, our church what we know that it can become.”

My Mahogany Influencers: Karen, April, Myla and … Ebony, Essence & Diana

Editor, Our Time Press
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My Mahogany Influencers: Karen, April, Myla and … Ebony, Essence & Diana

by Lisa McFadden, Milliner

There have been some big introductions that opened my eyes to the world of fashion. My first, my mom, THE INFLUENCER, but here are a few others:


My cousin Karen, an excellent seamstress, walked me through my first design experience by advising on and sewing one of my sketches. That same year, Karen encouraged me to go to New York City.

She introduced me to Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), by giving me a gigantic, glossy catalogue of all the courses and images of campus life.At 15, I knew that’s where I needed to be. But I had decided to become a fashion designer much, much earlier — from the time I could hold a pencil. I would sit for hours drawing whatever was around me.


I later graduated to fashion illustration, adopting beautifully dressed models inside the pages of Ebony and Essence magazines as my muses. These publications represented the best of Black culture with images of beautiful Black stars gracing the pages.

Standouts for me were The Pointer Sisters’ and their fabulous vintage style and Diana Ross, gloriously outfitted in her starring role in the film, Mahogany among others. These fashion images actually changed something within me. I grew to love vintage dressing and the beautiful handwork involved in making clothing and accessories.


The first time I watched Mahogany, Diana Ross’ character leaves design class and continues sketching on the train. Her ‘I-am-an-original!’ and ‘You-won’t-stop-me!’ attitude was so powerful. That moment is when I decided to become a fashion designer. I saved every issue of Essence magazine which became a tactile reference library for me.

Little did I know that years later I would meet some of the people gracing its pages and how gracious they would be to me as I began my creative journey in NYC.
Two people who had the most impact on my dream are cultural architect April Walker, the hip-hop fashion trailblazer, and playwright/ educator Myla Churchill.


I met April around 2003-04 in Brooklyn, where we both lived at the time; she, in Fort Greene and me, in Bed-Stuy.
I’d taken a break from corporate fashion life to pursue millinery. At the time, April was leading a small group of fashion startups into the world of entrepreneurship, brand building and community cultivation. I’ve watched her journey over the years, and she continues to inspire me.


Myla, artist, writer, film connoisseur, fierce card player and one of my biggest cheerleaders, left all who knew her a rich legacy in 2014. We lived in the same brownstone. What she said late one evening as we sat on the stoop stays with me today: “You are very lucky to have the freedom to do whatever you want to do. This is your gift, so go for it.”


I was lucky to have them and all the other sisters who have supported me through the years.
Advice: “Consider a path that embraces what comes to you naturally. There is an opportunity there and your passion for it will keep you on the path.”

Tipping My (“Kwrky”) Hat to Three Creative Women

Editor, Our Time Press
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Tipping My (“Kwrky”) Hat to Three Creative Women

by Noreen Chambers


Founder & CEO, Kwrky Hats

Three outstanding women inspired the process that led to the creation of my Kwrky Hats Collection: my mother, Syl Whittingham, designer Brenda Brunson-Bey, and Visual Artist Aleathia Brown

As a child, I watched my mother as she meticulously executed Vogue Couture patterns as a child. I was amazed watching her craft and uplift her community. It delighted me to see how her skills brought joy to her clientele. As a little girl she taught me to knit, crochet, needlepoint and sew. This experience ignited the designer in me.


In retrospect with more than four decades as a fashion creator, it started with my disco dresses and has evolved to Kwrky Hats.
My second inspiration came in the early 80’s, through my neighbor, in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. An innovator in the design industry tapping into her cultural heritage as her identity.

I admired her fierce unapologetic way of designing; she applied and combined fabric and textures in unconventional ways. I used to take her remnants and make hats and accessories. That neighbor was in fact, Brenda Brunson Bey of Tribal Truths Collection.


My third inspiration came from a sister friend, Aleathia Brown, a noted visual artist who loves hats. In fact, I had never seen one person own and wear so many different hats.


I had yarn I didn’t want to store nor discard. So, I amused myself and made a silly hat that I knew only one person would dare to wear. I happen to give it to my friend Aleathia Brown at a Diaspora Arts Collective event, held at Sister’s Place, Brooklyn and hosted by Brenda Brunson Bey, March 2021. When Brenda inquired, “Aleathia where did you get that hat?” Aleathia pointed to me. The rest is history.
It was the Sistership of these two talented women Brenda and Aleathia that inspired the birth and launching of the Kwrky Hats Collection.

My Mother Paid Attention to Detail … and To Me

Editor, Our Time Press
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My Mother Paid Attention to Detail … and To Me

by Susan Patterson
Founder & CEO, ArtfromthePlanet
The very first woman who influenced my art was my mother, Sarah. She made about 90% of my clothing and paid close attention to fiber content, quality, and even the number of stitches per inch. That level of care taught me early that craftsmanship lives in the details.


My mother also studied interior design, which helped shape my love for home décor. She always told me to look closely not just at the fabric itself, but at the story behind it: where it came from, how it was made, and what it carried.


Another key influence was my sister, Carolyn, who introduced me to quilting. She would bring me to quilting meetings where the women spoke in codes. I’ll admit it, at first, I thought they were dealing drugs. Turns out they were dealing in fabric.


I still remember one show-and-tell in particular. A quilter presented a log cabin quilt, and I was hooked. With what I’d learned about fabric, stitches, and color, I was on my way. I’ve been in a love affair with fabric for more than 42 years.


To me, fabric is spiritual; it comes from the earth. And that belief is exactly why my business is called Artfromtheplanet.
Instagram: @artfromtheplanet
Website: https://www.artfromtheplanet.co

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