Our mission at The Lighthouse | Black Girl Projects is to help build power. Not the kind of Black Panther Party founder Huey P. Newton described as the ability to “define phenomena” and make it “act in a desired manner.” It’s more intimate than that. I believe the genesis and fulfillment of power is space and time.
I’m talking space, literal space. Space to think, to express physically with dance, verbally with a loud voice, or without being told that one’s very being is offensive. It’s that, coupled with time.
Time to play, mourn and rejoice, time to figure things out, screw up and time to do nothing without being called lazy.
Black girls who have access to space and time have power. Powerful Black girls are autonomous, self-actualized, liberated Black girls. And perhaps those Black girls will define phenomena and make it act in a desired manner … if they so choose.
