This article runs the actual numbers so you can.

The 47% Who Finance: What They’re Actually Spending on Interest

When Rocket Mortgage’s survey on financing home renovations asked 1,018 U.S. homeowners about renovation plans and funding methods, 53% said they would use personal savings. The remaining 47% planned to borrow — spreading across HELOCs (13%), home equity loans (10%), credit cards (10%), personal loans (7%), and cash-out refinances (4%).

That distribution matters because each product carries a structurally different cost over time. The interest rate is only part of the equation. The term length — how many months you are paying — multiplies that rate into a total dollar figure that can surprise even financially experienced borrowers.

Take a $20,000 renovation as a baseline. It is a reasonable midpoint for the projects homeowners actually want. The same survey found that bathrooms rank as the top interior priority (28%) and kitchens second (25%), with realistic costs ranging from $15,000 to $30,000 for a bathroom remodel and $25,000 to $60,000 for a full kitchen renovation.

HELOCs vs. Personal Loans: The Total Cost Comparison

A HELOC at 8.5% over a five-year repayment period on a $20,000 draw generates roughly $4,500 in interest. Your total repayment is approximately $24,500. Monthly payments run around $410.

A personal loan at 12% over three years on the same $20,000 generates roughly $3,900 in interest — slightly less in absolute dollars, but the monthly payment climbs to about $664 because the term is shorter. The faster payoff saves money on paper, but it creates a meaningfully higher monthly obligation.

The comparison flips depending on what you optimize for. If cash flow is tight, the HELOC’s lower monthly payment looks attractive. If you want to minimize total interest paid and can handle the payment, the personal loan’s shorter term wins on total cost — barely. The real danger sits on the credit card line. At 20% or higher APR with minimum payments, a $20,000 renovation charge can take a decade or more to pay off and accumulate interest that dwarfs the original project cost. The survey’s 10% who plan to use credit cards are taking on the highest-risk financing path available.

One factor that shifts HELOC math: rates are variable. An 8.5% rate today can move upward during your repayment window. The total interest figure of $4,500 assumes the rate holds. If it climbs to 10.5% midway through repayment, your actual cost rises accordingly. This is not a reason to avoid HELOCs — they are well-suited for larger projects — but it is a reason to stress-test the numbers before committing.

When a Cash-Out Refinance Makes the Math Work — and When It Doesn’t

The cash-out refinance deserves its own section because it operates on entirely different logic than every other product on this list. When you roll renovation costs into a mortgage, you are not borrowing over three or five years. You are borrowing over twenty or thirty years, which changes the math dramatically.

A $20,000 addition to a 30-year mortgage at 7% does not cost $4,500 in interest. It costs approximately $27,000 in interest on that portion alone over the full loan term. You are paying for a bathroom remodel from 2025 until 2055. Stated plainly, a $20,000 project becomes a $47,000 project when financed this way over the full term.

That does not mean cash-out refinances are the wrong tool. They are the right tool in specific circumstances: when you are already refinancing for rate reasons, when the renovation is substantial enough (think a $60,000 kitchen at the upper end of the survey’s range) that a lower monthly payment is genuinely necessary, or when the alternative is carrying a high-rate personal loan. At larger project scales, spreading cost over 30 years with a lower interest rate can make monthly ownership more manageable. The problem is using a 30-year instrument for a project that a 3-to-5-year product could handle.

Matching the Financing Product to the Project Scale

The survey data on project preferences maps reasonably well onto a financing tier structure.

For projects in the $10,000 to $20,000 range — a bathroom remodel, window replacements, or landscaping upgrades (which ranked as the top exterior priority at 23%) — personal loans and HELOCs both work. The total interest difference is modest, and neither requires tapping long-term mortgage debt for a short-term improvement.

For projects in the $20,000 to $40,000 range — a mid-scale kitchen renovation or a significant exterior upgrade — home equity loans and HELOCs become more competitive because fixed rates and larger credit lines suit the scale. A home equity loan at a fixed rate eliminates the variable-rate risk a HELOC carries.

For projects above $40,000, the math shifts enough that a cash-out refinance or home equity loan starts making structural sense, particularly if the homeowner has sufficient equity and is not extending the payoff window unnecessarily. The 47% of survey respondents who cited resale value as a significant factor in their renovation decisions are likely thinking at this scale — projects large enough to move the needle on a home’s appraised value.

The underlying principle is straightforward: match the financing term to the useful life of what you are building, and calculate total cost — not monthly payment — before you sign anything. Monthly payment tells you what you can afford. Total cost tells you what you are actually paying.

References

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (2024). What you should know about HELOCs. https://www.consumerfinance.gov

Federal Reserve. (2025). Survey of Consumer Finances. https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm

Staff Writer; Charlie Goode

We look at our economic times and see the hardship and difficulty all around us. Hence, we are all looking for a good deal and want to get the things we need at the cheapest cost possible. So, we buy only if it is on sale or discounted. Well, with this mind set in place, it can be easy to treat people the same way and soon we begin seeing the effect.

When people do not feel they are worth much, they begin selling themselves at a discounted price. I have heard of single mothers in desperation turning to work at strip clubs to obtain an income to support their children because the father has run off. How sad in every respect!

But, what about the drug addict selling themselves for another hit or even the alcoholic trading his reasoning for another drink. Sure, it can be clearly seen in the obvious down and out but it runs rampant beyond what we consider obvious. Take for example the executive at the corporate office who seems to have everything like a wonderful home and loving family who is willing to compromise his time with his family to work seventy or eighty hour weeks for an increase in the bottom line. Perhaps it’s the manager on the manufacturing line who sells his morality when they look the other way as product is taken home by an employee rather than inventoried. Why do people feel these things are justified? I believe it’s because they are attempting to increase their value in their subconscious.

Somewhere, someone perhaps told them things like; they were stupid, worthless or would never amount to anything. Therefore, it hurts, it wounds and it devalues – I know because I’ve been there. Maybe they were made to feel like they did not measure up to others, when sly comments were uttered or comparisons were made. So they viewed themselves as cheap and their value declined – I know since I have experienced that too. It could be as simple as one small seemingly innocent trade off that began the ball rolling down hill when a supposed friend said just try it once, it won’t kill you. And so the one small theft, the one small puff, the one small sip began the leak of one’s self worth until it was hard to plug the hole and now maybe you’re not even sure it can be fixed, repaired or restored.

Let me tell you it can! Instead of repeating the phrases you’ve heard perhaps all of your life about how terrible you are, you need a new script and it can be found already written out and well rehearsed for thousands of years now in the Bible. Countless others have found the means through God’s word to encourage a turn around in their lives and it can help you out as well!

Sure, we can assume that Scripture was written for the masses but it was dedicated to the individual – YOU. When God authored the words, He had you in mind! He designed you with such creativity and specialty that there has never nor will there ever be anyone exactly like you.

“I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.” (Psalm 139:14 KJV)

I know you say but you don’t know me, and how can God be concerned about me when there are billions of people living on earth right now. Well, to respond to that I have to ask you to think about the snowflakes. Scientists will confirm that there are no two alike and yet how many fall each winter? There are thousands of bird species alone and yet if you lined up a thousand cardinals or robins or sparrows, no two of them would look exactly alike. Think of all the thousands of animals and fish and insect species there are and yet no two of them look exactly alike. Do you think it is all coincidence or could perhaps a creative God like to express Himself uniquely with each design of His.

Then think about each blade of grass and each flower and each tree or plant and how on the surface they may appear similar but in the smallest of details, they are each different. Why does God create all these differences? To show or to demonstrate His love to each one and that includes YOU! You are unique and special to Him and if you need more encouragement here:

“Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee: therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life.” (Isaiah 43:4 KJV)

God has allowed others to pass away over the course of time to allow you to be here today. In America, we have had countless brave men and women fight to the death to provide the very freedoms we experience. However, even above and beyond that God gave His one and only begotten son – Jesus Christ for our eternal redemption.

God wasn’t looking for a bargain or a deal when He suffered and died for our sins. He was willing to pay the greatest most expensive price there was for our salvation. To pay anything less would have been to discount His creativity, His love and our worth. Knowing this then, you need to view yourself as worth a gazillion dollars or a billion times that or else you’re giving the devil the steal of a lifetime when you sell out for a few dollars, a line of coke, a drag or a ten finger discount at work.

I would encourage you to remember this from Luke 12:7 (kjv): “But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than……” (you fill in the blank). If God is concerned about even the hairs on your head, don’t you think He values the rest of you? I sure do!

This is just something I thought you should know!

Staff Writer; Rick S.

One may contact this man of God at: RS@ThyBlackMan.com.

The above topic, as believers well know, is the first part of a most interesting scripture and one that so many fights with to their own destruction. People wrestle with scripture at times not because the scripture is difficult to understand, and let us be honest and admit that some scriptures are difficult and puzzling, but because of its logical application.

No other book comes close to the mighty Holy Bible. This is because the Bible is not a dead document like the works of Shakespeare or Plato but the living word of God; and you can read the same verse of scripture every day and get entirely new and different insights and inspiration; and it will address your needs and concerns as if God is addressing you by telephone.

For this reason, above all else, the Bible is the most valuable and effective document in all creation and no matter how perverse and wayward the world is, the Bible is still the most read document there is, and year after year it is the world’s best-selling book.

Believers need to start looking with fresh eyes at the Bible, stop taking it for granted and move away from the routine use of last thing at night or first thing in the morning and start dipping into it frequently, unplanned and impulsive and enjoy the spiritual gems on offer.

The gem on offer from our topic, and if the righteous scarcely be saved, is mined from 1 Peter 4:18 and the full verse reads like this, “And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?”

The Apostle Peter, leader of the church universal, was writing to the churches in the Roman Province of Asia Minor (present day Turkey) and was encouraging them to be ready for the coming brutal assaults and persecution.

By the same token this verse, 1 Peter 4:18, is appropriate to our time; not because we are physically abused and brutally persecuted as in pre-Constantine times but because the world is drowning in a surfeit of ungodliness. The things Paul warned us about, “For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God…” (2 Timothy 3:2-4) are here and happening now and those not anchored in Christ run the risk of being overwhelmed.

The Apostle Peter was not saying that believer’s salvation, or status with God is tentative, cautious or unsettled, he was not alluding to any uncertainty or lack of sureness that would leave believers in a spiritual state of doubt or inertia.

Peter would not because the Bible gives mighty assurance to all believers about their salvation:

“Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.” (Hebrews 7:25)

“Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6)

“And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.” (John 6:39)

“And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” (John 10:28)

No, there is nothing tentative about believer’s salvation and there is absolutely no uncertainty as regards believers standing with God. So what did the Apostle Peter mean by those words in 1 Peter 4:18? Here is the verse again but from the Easy-to-Read Version, “If it is hard for even a good person to be saved, what will happen to the one who is against God and full of sin?”

God does not punish the obedient righteous with the wicked, but the righteous because of their bad choices put themselves in peril and at times escape God’s judgement by the slimmest of margins.

This is what the Apostle Peter was referring to.

The story of Lot makes interesting reading and we know that Lot, because of his bad choices, barely escaped God’s judgement on Sodom and Gomorrah. In spite of repeated warnings, and the strong arm of angels, Lot almost got caught up in the deflagration that consumed those two cities as recorded in Genesis 19:1-26).

Bad choices are not necessarily sinful, but when people make bad choices there is the tendency to defend those choices even when there is convincing evidence that those choices are harmful. People hate saying “I was wrong” “I am sorry” “I messed up” “I should have known better” and move on to better choices. This is one of people’s most besetting faults and believers are not exempted.

Believers, just like many people, make bad choices in many areas of their lives and sometimes they suffer in silence the awful consequences.

We make bad choices in our politics.

Many people have very little interest in politics and they never get involved in the political process except at election time when they cast their vote. If you vote for a political party and that party wins the election and then goes on to do foolishness you might then effortlessly condemn them for their foolishness, regret you voted for them and move on.

This is commendable but many people are partisan, they belong to the party and will defend its policy even when in their heart of heart they know their party is on the wrong track. I understand that certain “Christians” were still “blessing” Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party throughout World War 2 and army chaplains employed by Hitler’s army were busy bolstering their morale and giving them spiritual sustenance during their campaigns.

Today believers are still making bad choices in their politics and are afraid to speak out against wrongdoing because they are afraid of being victimised.

Whatever your politics, and it is good that Christians have different political affiliations, unlawful activity and bad behaviour should never be tolerated and the principles that you live by should never be trodden underfoot without your most vociferous objections.

We make bad choices in our friendships.

Some friendships are special and we all wish that we had a special friendship like that of David and Jonathan. Throughout the Bible there was no closer friendship than these two and the Bible records the essence of it thus, “And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” (1 Samuel 18:1)

A lot of people will find themselves in hell because they made the wrong friendship and were not perceptive enough to see where it was leading and did not exercise enough courage to sever the friendship bonds.

Rehoboam made the wrong friendships when his father King Solomon died and as a consequence he tore Israel apart, ruled for a time in Judah and eventually submerged himself in wickedness on the advice of his friends, “And Judah did evil in the sight of the LORD, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins which they had committed, above all that their fathers had done.” (1 Kings 14:22)

Alas some people, believers included, would rather stick to their friends and sink with them into perdition rather than make the sensible, life-saving choice and move on. Happily some do.

We make bad choices in our church affiliation.

Church affiliation is not only a spiritual matter it is also an emotional matter and it is not surprising that people are almost irrational in their response when their church affiliation is questioned.

Many people still do not understand that there is only one church, The Church and it belongs to Jesus Christ and all true Christians are part of that church. Jesus referred to it as “my church” (Matthew 16:18) and there is no other Christian church.

The denomination to which you are affiliated or the local assembly that you attend may or may not be part of the true church.

As we evangelize we never tell converts to go to any specific assembly or join any specific denomination but we always tell them to affiliate to a proper Bible believing, gospel preaching, mainstream church that is Christ-centred.

But some people make bad choices and end up in assemblies that are spiritually toxic and mentally devastating and may even be physically destructive like the assembly of Jim Jones of the Guyana disaster or David Koresh of Waco infamy.

Many believers still affiliate to denominations that are shown to be Christian cults that do not teach sound biblical doctrines or follow the Apostolic Traditions handed down through the ages or respect the faith, “… which was once delivered unto the saints.” (Jude 1:3)

Judgement is surely coming to this world and believers need to be ready; need separation and distance; need to take seriously their calling and being chosen by God and strictly observe the admonition of the Apostle Paul when he wrote, “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” (Romans 12:2)

Staff Writer; Henderson W.

You can contact this Christian brother at: HWard@ThyBlackMan.com.

The earliest known public use of this proverb or adage was on March 22, 1862, in The Christian Recorder newspaper.

The Christian Recorder is the oldest existing periodical published by Blacks in the United States.  It had its genesis in The Christian Herald, which was established by the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s (AME) General Conference that was held in Philadelphia in 1848. Founded by Rev. Augustus R. Green in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The Christian Herald was published weekly with subscribers paying one dollar and fifty cents a year.

The Recorder is a publication of the AME Church.  The AME Church was founded by Richard Allen who also served as its first bishop.

The name of The Christian Herald was changed to The Christian Recorder at the Ninth Quadrennial Session of the General Conference held in 1852 in New York City. The first issue was published and disseminated on July 1, 1852. The first editor of The Christian Recorder was the Reverend M. M. Clark, who was one of the first college graduates in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Clark was a graduate of Jefferson College and was considered to be one of the best-educated men in the A.M.E. Church. He wrote that the Recorder’s focus would be religion, morality, science and literature and it was to treat all geographical areas of the A.M.E. Church equally.

With the rise of social media and the insatiable demand by many people to have their “fifteen minutes of fame,” otherwise masculine men have been reduced to the most feminine of traits that are stereotypically reserved for women; that is being chatty, katty and batty (crazy)!

What am I talking about?

Let me give you a few examples.

Earlier this month, ESPN personality, Stephen Smith interrupted his vacation to find a studio so he could respond to what he perceived as negative comments made about him from four-time NBA champion for the Golden State Warriors, Draymond Green and radical liberal Democrat activist Jemele Hill.

Yes, you heard me correctly.  A grown man interrupted his vacation because his feelings were hurt.

There is definitely nothing masculine about this type of immature behavior.

He sought out a makeshift studio he could use to put out his response almost in real time.  This was something I would have thought a woman would have done simply because they tend to be more emotional than men, er “real men.”

This was the reaction of a grown man who is supposed to be educated and sophisticated, but because of the sticks and stones syndrome he was reduced to a very feminine reaction.

Smith is fifty-eight years old; Green is thirty-six years old and Hill is fifty years old.  This is how the internet has made grown folks act like little children and these two men in particular come across as very effeminate.

To watch the video of Smith’s cringeworthy response to Green and Hill on his podcast, Straight Shooter, click on the link.  Make sure you have your popcorn in hand!

Remember, this man interrupted his vacation to respond to this juvenile banter!

This is beyond sad on so many levels!

Another example that proves my point is the asinine beef between former NFLer and Hall of Famer, Shannon Sharpe and comedian Mike Epps.

Sharpe is fifty-eight years old and Epps is fifty-five years old.  What led to the beef?  Hold on to your hat for this one.

During one of his comedy shows, Epps insinuated that Sharpe was gay.  Sharpe in turn threatened to reveal private text exchanges between the two of them, implying the release would embarrass Epps.

This turned into a series of negative, vitriolic social media posts going back and forth culminating in Epps appearing on Sharpe’s podcast to squash the beef.

Where is the masculinity in this type of he said she said behavior?

This is the behavior of little kids in primary school.  But you have fifty-year-olds who have massive platforms publicly behaving in such a juvenile, effeminate manner.

There are a plethora of other examples involving rappers, actors, politicians, and yes, even preachers.

In my day, rarely would one fight someone over words, unless you invoked the word “yo mama.”  Mothers were totally off limits, they were sacred.

You could talk about someone’s father, but not their mother.  That was a bright red line that was never to be crossed.

In my day, confrontation, verbal or physical, was used as a last resort; when everything else had failed.  You were viewed as a man when you could avoid or deescalate conflict.

Now everyone is performing for the cameras, i.e. social media in order to collect likes, shares, and followers.

I am still mystified by the fact that adults today are so quick to engage in arguments with people on social media that they have never met and do not have any relationship with.

Whenever someone states that, “I am a man, I am a real man;” then they are not a man.  Manhood is not spoken, it is displayed.  You do not have to scream about your manhood, it just goes without saying.

Denzel Washington once told me, “The loudest one in the room is the weakest.”

If you have ever been around Denzel, you know he never “enters” a room; he walks into a room.  I will let you marinate on that one for a while.

Influence and fame are like soap, the more you use them the less you have.

So, to all these supposed alpha males with their faux hypermasculinity, STOP IT!!!!

No one takes you seriously, let alone anyone in a position of power or influence.

Have you noticed that most, if not all, of the people involved in these internet beefs have few if any corporate endorsement deals?

With a few exceptions, corporate America does not reward masculinity anymore; they reward Blacks who are very effeminate.  Think about it.

Their goal is to continue to weaken the family unit.  What better way to accomplish this than by emasculating the Black male.

Once that happens, the takeover of our community is complete.

Black men cannot continue to succumb to the radical liberal feminist agenda from the seventies.  This was the beginning of the destruction of the Black family and the total emasculation of the Black male.

Even Black women are describing masculine males as toxic.

Most of the males you see in all these internet beefs are single/divorced; have tenuous relationships with their children and are more accepted by the white community than by the Black community.

Now let that sink in!

Until Black men regain their masculinity, the Black community will continue this downward spiral into destruction and irrelevance.  Black masculine males have become an endangered species.

You cannot show me one thriving community without a strong, masculine male present.

God put man at the center of a functioning society and this radical liberal feminist push to marginalize the role of the male only assures continued upheaval; especially within the Black community.

Staff Writer; Raynard Jackson

This talented brother is a Pulitzer Award nominated columnist and founder and chairman of Black Americans for a Better Future (BAFBF), a federally registered 527 Super PAC established to get more Blacks involved in the Republican Party. BAFBF focuses on the Black entrepreneur. For more information about BAFBF, visit www.bafbf.org. You can follow Raynard on Twitter; RealRaynardJ; on Gettr: RaynardJackson.

Can also drop him an email at; RaynardJ@ThyBlackMan.com.

]]> https://thyblackman.com/2026/07/25/black-masculinity-lost-age-internet-beefs/feed/ 0 https://thyblackman.com/2026/07/24/lebron-james-philadelphia-76ers-final-championship-run/ https://thyblackman.com/2026/07/24/lebron-james-philadelphia-76ers-final-championship-run/#respond Fri, 24 Jul 2026 17:49:11 +0000 https://thyblackman.com/?p=141570 (ThyBlackMan.com) The Philadelphia 76ers have assembled one of the most aggressive roster overhauls of this NBA offseason, and the biggest piece arrived Friday morning when a 41 year old free agent decided where he would continue playing.

Man, listen. I have been watching this brother play professional ball since my knees still bent without complaint. My oldest was in diapers back when he was throwing lobs to Tristan Thompson in Cleveland. Now here I sit with gray creeping through my beard and a blood pressure pill waiting on the kitchen counter, and LeBron James is out here agreeing to contracts and changing expectations for an entire conference. None of that is normal. Twenty four seasons is the kind of longevity you expect from kickers and knuckleball pitchers, not from somebody who spent two decades absorbing contact from the largest human beings walking the planet.

What caught me sideways was the money. Two years, eight million dollars, with a player option attached, Rich Paul told ESPN. Read that figure again slowly. Eight million total. Bron collected close to fifty three million from the Lakers last season and just accepted what amounts to a rounding error by comparison. Bench guys who cannot crack a rotation clear more than that. Whatever else you want to say about him, and there is always something worth debating with him, he left serious paper on the table chasing one more parade.

Where he chose to chase it is what has me pacing around my living room.

South Beach forgives. Hollywood forgets. Philly does neither. That town will love you like blood on Tuesday and question your entire family tree by Thursday, and both reactions will be completely sincere. These are folks who booed Santa Claus and never once apologized for it. At no point in his professional life has the King answered to a crowd wired like that. Cleveland worshipped him from the jump. Miami barely paid attention until the playoffs arrived. Los Angeles handed him sunshine, a media empire, and enough distraction to soften any bad stretch. North Broad Street operates on a different frequency entirely, and honestly, that is the part I cannot wait to watch.

Now let me put my critic hat on, because the fan in me will absolutely lie to you if I let him talk first.

On paper this roster is scary. Joel Embiid owns one of the meanest scoring arsenals ever assembled in a big man. Tyrese Maxey finished fifth in the league in points per contest last go round and plays with his hair on fire. Jaylen Brown arrived from Boston in that stunner of a swap involving Paul George and four draft selections, which means Philadelphia is not pretending to rebuild anymore. VJ Edgecombe looks like a real one. Add a four time champion who averaged 20.9 points, 7.2 assists, and 6.1 rebounds while shooting 51.5 percent from the floor, and yeah, Nick Nurse got a beautiful birthday present.

Paper does not play defense in April, though.

Everything in that building runs through Embiid’s availability, and that has been a coin flip for a while now. Fifty seven appearances across two campaigns tells you everything. When he is upright, that squad can beat anybody breathing. When he is in a suit courtside, all those title odds turn into pumpkin. Nobody in that organization can control it, nobody can predict it, and every optimistic projection you read this summer quietly depends on it.

Then comes the touch problem, which nobody wants to discuss during honeymoon week. Maxey needs the rock. Brown has spent his whole career hearing people question whether he can lead an offense, and Philadelphia did not bring him in to stand in a corner. Bron has never been primarily a spot up shooter, no matter how many times commentators claim he has evolved into one. Somebody’s usage has to shrink. Somebody’s ego has to bend. Nurse has to draw up an arrangement where grown men with All Star credentials all feel fed, and he has to do it while managing a center whose minutes require careful rationing. That is not coaching. That is diplomacy.

Defensively, I need to be honest with y’all. At 41 the King picks his spots. He gambles in passing lanes, he saves his legs, and he shows up for the moments that matter while cruising through the ones that do not. Against New York in a seven game war, that math gets uncomfortable. The Knicks are the defending champions and they are not intimidated by anybody’s résumé.

Still, I understand why he did it.

No player in the history of this league has ever won a title with four different franchises. Not Kareem. Not Kobe, who never left. Not Jordan, obviously. Nobody. That record is sitting there unclaimed, and if there is one thing two decades of watching this man has taught me, it is that he keeps a running ledger of every argument ever made against him. Folks spent years saying he needed superteams. Folks said he ran from Cleveland, then said he ran back for the storyline, then said the Lakers ring came with an asterisk stapled to it. Winning one in Philadelphia at 42, on a contract worth less than what some backup guards make, would silence a whole lot of talk radio.

Do I believe it happens? I lean no, if I am being straight with you. Health, age, and a loaded conference are heavy opponents. But I have watched this brother make me look stupid too many times to bet against him with any real confidence.

One thing did make me chuckle. He dropped the phrase “trust the process” at Fanatics Fest a week earlier, and Philadelphia heads immediately started squinting sideways at their timelines. Bron quickly insisted he had been using that phrase since 2003, but sixteen years after that infamous television special, homie is still leaving breadcrumbs for us to argue over. Some habits never die.

He also called this his last decision. I have heard variations of that speech before, from him and from plenty of others, so forgive me if I hold the retirement talk loosely. Athletes rarely know when the end arrives until it has already passed them.

Here is where I land, sitting in my recliner with my own body reminding me daily that time collects every debt eventually. Watching somebody my kids grew up with still competing at this level does something to a middle-aged man. It is not really the rings anymore. It is the refusal. It is somebody looking at the calendar, understanding exactly what it says, and choosing to keep swinging anyway.

Philly is about to get the last chapter, whatever it ends up looking like.

That city deserves a wild one. Something tells me they are going to get exactly that.

Staff Writer; J.G. Lacour

Covering the NBA, NFL, college basketball, college football, and Major League Baseball from a Black man’s perspective. He loves the full world of sports, but the NFL remains his favorite.

Need to contact this bro, feel free to use this email address; JGLacour@ThyBlackMan.com.

            When Israel facilitated the attack by “Hamas” on October 7, an attack which the Zionists referred to as “their 9-11”; which was ironic because the US 9-11 was at the very least was allowed to happen, then just like the US did in Afghanistan and Iraq, Israel unleashed a savage genocidal assault on Gaza; Trump said he would use his influence to bring about a negotiated peace settlement.  He didn’t.

Again, Trump failed to keep his word and Israel has viciously bombed civilian infrastructure, hospitals, schools, mosques and indiscriminately murdered innocent men, women and children in their quest to steal land and annex territory, yet Trump has not been successful in stopping the carnage and slaughter by the Israelis. The killing continues as we speak.

Then in June of 2025 Trump and Israel launched and unprovoked attack on Iran, a nation that posed no threat to the US, Israel or their neighbors; he did it under the flag of “peace talks”, not once but twice. Meanwhile the lying US media depicts the Iranians as the bad guys and threats to world peace!

Most Americans don’t know the US has been bombing Somalia since 2007 and Donald Trump has continued this ongoing war of aggression even in his second term! This is all part and parcel of an unending legacy of war and aggression the United States has conducted since its official inception in 1783. American leaders, like their European cousins, love war.

What are you an ordinary “citizen” getting out of all this war? What benefits have you accrued from the American Empire’s sordid history and tradition of predation, plunder and war?!   How much say do you as a citizen have in US foreign policy? How is it the wars keep going on and on no matter which party is in control of the Congress or the White House?  How is it the Congress critters get richer and we get poorer?

How is it you tolerate the prioritizing of conflict and war profiteering at the expense of much needed infrastructural improvements, peaceful technological innovation, a peace driven economy and over the moral and ethical wrongness of war? Are you so brainwashed and comatose you can’t see what is going on? The warmongers are spending more and more of your tax dollars on war and you are getting nothing out of it! Now more and more US body bags are starting to return home, are you okay with this?

Are you satisfied with the way things are going? Do you like being forced to pay exorbitant prices at: the food store, for energy, higher interest payments for loans and credit card usage and consumer goods? Do you like being in a situation where things become more and more unaffordable and beyond your accessibility? You can thank Donald Trump and his predecessors including Barack Obama for this. All Trump is doing is putting petal to the metal on an already existing multi-generational imperialist war machine!

Now Trump has escalated the war against Iran and Iran’s allies are intensifying their responses. Ansar Allah (the Houthis) is blocking the Bab el-Mandab Strait effectively cutting off the Red Sea, blocking trade and commerce in a vital transit way for oil.  Saudia Arabia is going to pay a heavy price.

This action is literally choaking Saudia Arabia’s import and export lifeline. As payback for US bombings in Somalia al-Shabaab is collaborating with the Houthis to disrupt traffic in the Bab al-Mandab Strait and Iran is supplying them both with drone technology! How do you think this will impact Wall Street and Main Street USA?!

The closure of the Straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandab will cripple global trade and commerce. This is a huge development Trump cannot counter with more bombs, in fact bombing will worsen the situation. These closures will cause major price increases on consumer goods due to longer transit times, higher insurance rates and major supply chain disruptions and scarcity. You can thank Donald Trump for this. Meanwhile Trump and Congress are spending money they don’t have on more wars. Who bebefits?!

When you add the negative consequences of the war in Ukraine, no fertilizer, disrupted supply lines for goods like wheat and oil due to Ukraine striking Russian energy infrastructure, the ongoing global fall out from these wars is going to be horrific. Buckle up it’s going to get rough.

Written by Junious Ricardo Stanton

Official website; http://fromtheramparts.blogspot.com

I came up hearing two versions of Booker T. Washington, and neither one sounded like a human being. In my grandmother’s front room, his portrait hung near the mantel like a distant uncle who had done well for himself. Over at my cousin’s place, the college students had another name for him, and it was not affectionate. Sellout. Handkerchief head. The man who swapped a ballot for a bricklaying certificate.

Both houses argued over the same photograph and saw entirely different faces.

Here is the part nobody enjoys sitting with. He entered this world as property, in Virginia, back in 1856. Freedom arrived while he was still small, and by the time he reached manhood the nation had already started clawing back what it briefly extended. Reconstruction fell apart. Federal troops packed up. Men who lost the war were rewriting the peace with rope and legislation, and they were winning that fight. That was his room. Not a lecture hall. No courtroom up in the capital either. Alabama in the 1880s, where a colored fellow who spoke out of turn might be found swinging from a limb before Sunday service.

Start there, or do not bother starting.

What he assembled in that environment deserves plain description. His school opened in 1881 inside a one-room shanty provided near Butler Chapel AME Zion Church, with about thirty pupils and no campus of its own. In the years that followed, students dug the clay, fired their own bricks, raised campus buildings, then sold surplus bricks to white neighbors who needed building material. Nobody handed that operation a finished campus. It got put up by hand, in a county where the sheriff was nobody’s friend.

Now, about the caution.

Critics then and since have described his public posture as bowing. Consider the physics of his position instead. He ran a Negro institution in the heart of the Black Belt, increasingly financed by Northern philanthropists and still dependent on an Alabama political order that could cut support, obstruct its work, or turn the state against it. One inflammatory sentence from him could threaten funding, invite political retaliation, or endanger the people working and studying there. Teachers were run off, schools were attacked, and Black education was routinely treated as a challenge to white authority. His caution was not a personality defect. It amounted to insurance on a property full of somebody’s children.

None of which excuses September 1895 in Atlanta.

Frederick Douglass had died that February, leaving a vacancy at the top of colored leadership that everybody felt. Before a largely white, racially segregated audience at the Cotton States Exposition, he told the country that agitating over social equality was foolishness, that in purely social matters we could be as separate as fingers on a hand. Cast down your bucket where you are. White newspapers crowned him spokesman for Black America practically overnight, and he wore that crown for twenty years without much complaint.

Understand what actually happened in those minutes. He did not merely make private peace with segregation. What he handed segregation was an endorsement, delivered by the most prominent Black spokesman in the country, quotable forever afterward by every governor and editor hunting for justification while the door swung shut.

Celebrity of that grade converts into resources, and he spent his shrewdly. The National Negro Business League followed in 1900, knitting grocers and barbers and undertakers into something resembling a bloc. Money arrived from industrialists who would never have written a check to an agitator.

Notice, though, that the care he took bought him no safety at all. October 1901, he ate supper at the executive mansion with Theodore Roosevelt, and Southern editors lost their minds for weeks over a shared plate of food. Politeness protects nobody. Several who had applauded Atlanta now wanted him horsewhipped.

Du Bois named the trade correctly in 1903. Swapping political power, civil rights, and higher learning for vocational training, economic advancement, and white goodwill could only pay off if white America honored its end, and white America never had the slightest intention. Lynching remained endemic. Voting collapsed throughout the South. Talented youngsters got steered toward the anvil and the plow while medicine, law, and politics stayed locked. Northern philanthropists and Southern politicians found something to agree on for once, which should have been the warning nobody heeded.

Then came the machinery, which did its own damage. Friendly newspapers received subsidies and returned the favor in print. Presidents consulted him about federal appointments, meaning ambitious men learned that his blessing could help open a door and his opposition could close one. When William Monroe Trotter heckled him in Boston that same summer, the meeting descended into chaos, Trotter was arrested, and he later served thirty days for disturbing the peace. Washington’s network monitored his opponents, subsidized friendly newspapers, invested in publications willing to attack his critics, and sometimes pressured publishers or printers to deny those critics a platform. A leader who deserved honest disagreement had constructed a system where disagreement carried a price, and that is no longer strategy. That is a boss guarding territory.

Even so, he kept a second set of books. Working through intermediaries and confidential correspondence, he bankrolled legal challenges he could never claim publicly. He secretly supported voting rights litigation, attacks on the exclusion of Black citizens from juries, and the broader legal campaign against Alabama’s system of coerced labor. That campaign culminated in decisions including Bailey v. Alabama, the 1911 Supreme Court ruling that struck down Alabama’s peonage law under the Thirteenth Amendment. Historians pulled that paper trail out of his files decades after the funeral. So the great accommodationist was quietly paying attorneys to sue the very people he flattered from a stage.

His final stretch produced the largest thing he ever touched. Around 1912 he talked Julius Rosenwald into a partnership that began with six Alabama schools. It eventually helped build nearly five thousand schoolhouses across the South, most of them completed after his death. Black communities supplied much of the money, land, materials, and labor themselves. Generations of children learned their letters because of it, including plenty who later marched.

By the time they lowered him into the ground in 1915, his campus held about a hundred structures and fifteen hundred enrolled students. Roughly two hundred faculty members drew a salary there, and the endowment approached two million dollars, making Tuskegee one of the largest and best funded Black educational institutions in the country.

Still, I notice something about the gentlemen who wrote the indictment. Some of his most prominent critics composed it from Boston, from Atlanta’s university district, and from New York. Distance from Macon County is not a moral failing. It remains worth remembering when we sit down to grade the courage of somebody teaching inside it.

So where does the ledger land? He was a survivor who confused survival with philosophy. His method fit one decade and one latitude, and he kept applying it long after conditions shifted and younger folks had earned the right to try something louder. Refusing to step aside was his genuine failure, larger than any single speech. Older leaders rarely surrender the microphone gracefully.

We repeat this argument every generation, only the names rotate. Somebody works inside the institution while somebody else hammers on it from outside, and pretty soon we are questioning each other’s souls instead of debating tactics. Our people needed both hands working then. We need both hands working now. That man was not a traitor and he was not a deliverer. He was gifted, ambitious, frightened, and calculating, doing arithmetic under conditions I would not wish on my worst enemy, and he got several of the sums wrong. Such a verdict is harder to chant at a rally. It happens to be accurate, though, and accuracy has always served us better than comfort.

Staff Writer; L.L. McKenna

Politics explained through the lens of justice and equity. Offering perspective that informs, challenges, and empowers.

One can contact this brother at; LLMcKenna@ThyBlackMan.com.

Sure, there’s a sucker born every minute, as P.T. Barnum allegedly said. But now we have a federal government that’s gone backward in providing protection from predators just as they adopt sophisticated technology to ply their craft.

Criminals now use AI to generate fake images and scrub their pitches of misspellings and odd English usage that would give away their origins in Africa and Southeast Asia. They set up slick websites with glib text hawking their investment swindles. Amazingly, they convince Americans, especially older ones, to wire their life savings to someone they’ve never met.

And to top off the cruelty, they follow up with “recovery scams,” portraying themselves as lawyers or even FBI agents able to get the money back. The dupes then wire money to the recovery scammers promising to recover the money they foolishly wired to the original crooks.

Lonely women lured online by potential romantic partners count among the saddest marks. Some stories are shocking: Women send thousands of dollars to help their phantom mates get out of legal trouble, pay for childcare or travel expenses — all sold as a means of furthering a meeting with the nonexistent lover. You know the end.

And we now have a Trump administration that’s actually grooming suckers to fall for the president’s investment offers. Shortly after leaving office in June 2021, Donald Trump was asked about Bitcoin, a type of cryptocurrency, on Fox Business Network.

“Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam,” he responded.

Complaining about a “scam” seemed a good tactic for later getting elected to a second term. Trump cleverly tacked on a patriotic message: “I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing against the dollar,” he said. The U.S. dollar should remain “the currency of the world” and Bitcoin should be regulated “very, very high.”

As a master scammer himself — recall Trump University and his saddling fans with stock in bankrupt casinos — you wonder how the voice in his head might have shifted at the thought of crypto as a scam. Was it “this must be stopped” or “hmmm”? We now know the answer.

Five years later, Trump is back in office, and guess what? He promises to make America the “crypto capital of the world.” And his family is up to their eyeballs in crypto while as president, he influences how it is regulated.

The latest reports have Trump vacuuming up $1.4 billion in crypto deals. His buyers are not doing so well. About two-thirds of the investors in his meme coins, $TRUMP and $MELANIA, have basically lost their shirts.

World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency company tied to the Trumps, was launched in 2024. One analysis found that 85% of investors who bought World Liberty’s $WLFI token after it began trading publicly are underwater. Trump-controlled interests, however, made $520 million last year from token sales.

It would be inaccurate to call his crypto deals “scams.” His lawyers’ fine print protects him from suits. For example, the website for the $TRUMP token specifically calls it an expression of support “not intended to be … an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security.”

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created in 2010 to protect ordinary folk from unfair, deceptive and abusive practices in the financial industry. Trump in his second term has been shrinking the agency to mouse size, dramatically cutting the watchdog agency’s power.

Americans, you’re on your own. Our freedom to be scammed has never been greater.

Written by Froma Harrop

Official website; https://twitter.com/FromaHarrop

According to the complaint filed in federal court, the plaintiffs did not seek monetary damages. Instead, they wanted officials to clear sidewalks of illegal drug dealers and fentanyl users, violent behavior, and tent encampments and to treat the troubled Tenderloin area as it would any other neighborhood where crime is not tolerated. “They demand an end to the rampant illegal street vending and from the squalor and misery that exists throughout their neighborhood because the city has decided that people in the throes of addiction can live and die on the Tenderloin streets,” said Matt Davis, one of the attorneys, in a prepared statement.

In downtown Los Angeles, Central City East, also known as Skid Row, remains a critical humanitarian and public safety crisis characterized by a massive concentration of 4,000 to 5,000 unsheltered homeless individuals across a 50-block area. Similar to the troubled Tenderloin section of San Francisco, Skid Row struggles with severe open-air drug markets, violent crime, daily emergency calls connected to drug overdoses, and untreated mental illness, leading to dangerous and unpredictable conditions, particularly after dark.

There have always been various degrees of poverty and poor people in our nation, but we didn’t always have large-scale and visible homelessness on the streets of our cities across America. While conservatives revere Ronald Reagan for how he transformed the conservative movement, the modern mass homelessness crisis in the U.S. emerged in the early 1980s and is tightly linked to policy and ideological shifts under President Reagan — especially cuts to affordable housing, social safety-net programs, and mental health services, combined with “Reaganomics” and deregulation that increased economic insecurity for low-income residents.

Before the early 1980s, older “skid row” districts comprised a relatively small homeless population–often single men in transient hotels or missions–rather than families, women, and children in large numbers. The rise in homelessness coincided with the election of Reagan and a conservative movement to roll back federal responsibility for social welfare. The Reagan administration advanced an individualist, anti- “big government” ideology that framed poverty and homelessness as personal failure rather than structural injustice. It aimed to cut domestic social spending, deregulate markets, and shift responsibility to states, cities, and private charity.

One of the most direct targets was the sharp reduction in federal funding for low-income housing. Federal housing assistance (construction and support for low-income housing) was cut by roughly 70 percent to 80 percent over the decade: funding fell from around $30 to $32 billion in 1981 to about $7 to $9 billion by the late 1980s, drastically shrinking new affordable housing production and subsidies. As older units aged or were demolished and with no comparable new stock being provided, poor households were pushed into an increasingly tight private rental market, with more people ending up in shelters or on the streets.

The policy of “Reaganomics” did not help people who were already living on the margins. It combined tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, and a tight monetary policy that contributed to high unemployment in the early ‘80s, particularly in industrial and urban areas where many low-income people lived. At a time when wages stagnated or declined for low-wage workers, rent rose faster than incomes in many cities, creating an affordability gap that left more households one crisis away from losing the roof over their heads. The Reagan administration’s budget severely reduced funding for key safety-net and social services programs that were in place to guard poor households from homelessness. Programs affecting income support, health, and human services, including Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), food assistance, and other social programs—faced tighter eligibility requirements, making it harder for vulnerable families to stay housed. Local governments, also squeezed by federal cuts, struggled to expand shelters and services fast enough, leading to overcrowded emergency systems and more people left outside.

The first target of the Reagan administration was housing. The second was the safety-net programs, and the third was mental health policy. The shift away from large state psychiatric hospitals had begun earlier, but Reagan’s administration reduced federal support for community mental health centers and shifted responsibilities to states without providing sufficient resources. These unfunded mandates resulted in many people with serious mental health and substance-use challenges ending up homeless or cycling between streets, shelters, and jails rather than receiving stable treatment and housing. We cannot forget how the specific cuts and policy shifts under Reagan established a long-lasting affordable housing deficit and weakened the safety net that subsequent administrations have not fully reversed.

The current homelessness is not only a humanitarian and public safety crisis, but it is also threatening local tourism. Homeless encampments destroy tourism, warns George Lence of Nicholas & Lence Communications. When referring to New York, he stated that the city and state stand to lose $7.5 billion in tourism tax revenue.

Many people can easily forget how the Reagan administration brought us to this point. Now we are faced with the human fallout from Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” The Band-Aid solutions don’t work. The encampment policy of removing tents from sidewalks is only optics when the tents return, or they show up one block away. Jurisdictions must decide whether they will continue to manage visible suffering through sweeps, temporary housing through hotels and fragmented service, or seriously reverse Reaganomics by accepting the political cost of building large-scale permanent housing along with expanding mental health and addiction treatment.

Written by David W. Marshall

Official website; https://davidwmarshallauthor.com/

One may purchase his book, which is titled; God Bless Our Divided America: Unity, Politics and History from a Biblical Perspective.

I have been voting since Carter, and I have watched this cycle spin around more times than I care to admit. Somebody rises. Cameras find him. He can preach, he can quote scripture and Baldwin in the same breath, and when he speaks at a funeral the whole country stops chewing for a minute. We gather up all our grief and hand it to him like a collection plate. Then we wait.

What exactly do we expect that man to do? Explain every crisis on Sunday morning television. Show up in whatever town the latest tragedy happened. Defend more than fifty million of us against whatever slander is trending. Sit across from senators and governors and somehow negotiate with a system that took three hundred years to build its defenses. A single human being. One phone, one calendar, twenty four hours.

Nobody survives that job description. Dr. King was thirty nine and exhausted and under federal surveillance the day they killed him. Jesse could not carry it in his prime either, and none of the ones who came after have managed the trick. Some get bought. Others turn bitter. A few get caught with their hand somewhere it should not have been, and cable news runs the footage for a week straight. Plenty simply burn down to the wick doing work that ten thousand hands should have been sharing.

Here is the part that stings. When our chosen figure stumbles, the whole thing goes quiet. Problems did not solve themselves; we simply never built anything underneath him. Rallies stop. Listservs go cold. Folks who drove four hours to hear him speak cannot name a single person on their county commission. We invested everything in a personality and got no equity in an institution.

Go back and read the history honestly. Montgomery did not happen because a young pastor gave a good speech. Jo Ann Robinson and the Women’s Political Council had leaflets running off a mimeograph machine before most people knew what had happened to Rosa Parks. E.D. Nixon had been building labor and civil rights networks through the Pullman porters for nearly three decades. There were carpools, dispatch stations, insurance workarounds after the companies canceled policies on the cars. That boycott ran three hundred eighty one days on logistics, not eloquence. Preaching helped. Logistics won it.

Ella Baker understood this better than anybody, and she said it plain: strong people do not need strong leaders. Her organizing philosophy often pushed her to the margins, because the men around her were building a pulpit model in a moment that called for a network. Young folks in SNCC listened to her, though. They went into Mississippi with no cameras and no charisma to speak of, and they registered voters in counties where doing so could get you shot before supper.

Television changed our appetite. A movement of ten thousand quiet organizers will never be booked for a four minute hit, but one man in a good suit can. Social media took that appetite and put it on steroids. Now we measure influence in followers, and we mistake a viral thread for a base. A hundred thousand likes will not stop a school closing. Forty parents in a boardroom, showing up every month for a year, might.

Politicians love our arrangement, and you should understand exactly why. When a mayor wants cover, he does not have to answer to a thousand organized constituents with a written list of demands. He calls three reverends and a state representative, takes a photograph, and reports that he consulted the community. Consultation with a handful of individuals runs cheap. Accountability to an organized body costs something. Guess which one they prefer.

Political maturity begins the day a community stops confusing inspiration with organization. That confusion is comfortable. Inspiration feels like progress. You leave the auditorium with your chest full, you tell your cousin about it, you post the clip. Organization feels like nothing at all for a long time. It looks like a Tuesday night meeting with eleven people and bad coffee, arguing over whether to endorse in the district attorney race.

Yet the district attorney’s office has broad discretion over which cases get prosecuted and what charges are pursued in your county. School boards decide which buildings get renovated and which get shuttered. Local governing bodies and utility commissions approve water rates. Zoning boards and elected councils decide whether the warehouse goes up next to the elementary school. Far too many sheriff’s races across the South run unopposed. Those seats get filled by whoever bothers to show up, and for decades that has not been us in the numbers it could have been.

I am not dismissing the young folks doing mutual aid and bail funds and tenant work. Much of it is sharper than what my generation built. My caution is different. Horizontal structure without durable infrastructure has its own failure mode. Everybody talks, nobody decides, the group exhausts itself in eighteen months and the landlord is still the landlord. Distributed never meant unorganized. Somebody has to keep the membership list, file the paperwork, and answer the phone in year four when nobody is watching.

Churches carried this load for generations, and some still do. But a congregation of two hundred with a food pantry and a van is doing charity, which is holy work and still a far cry from power. Charity feeds a family this month. Power changes who writes the budget that made the family hungry.

So what would it look like to grow up? Stop asking who the next great figure will be. Start asking what your organization can survive. Can it lose its founder and still function? Does it have money that does not come from one foundation with opinions? Are there folks under forty being trained to run it? Do you have a written agenda that a candidate can be measured against, so that endorsement means something more than fondness?

Build a bench, not a throne. Twenty capable heads in a county with real assignments will outlast any single voice, however golden. And when that voice inevitably says something foolish, gets indicted, or just gets tired, the work keeps moving because the work never belonged to him.

No savior is coming down that road. Never has been one. Everybody we canonized was a mortal doing their part inside a machine that thousands of anonymous hands were feeding every single day, and those folks are the reason anything changed at all.

We should stop looking for someone to follow, and get busy being somebody worth joining.

Staff Writer; L.L. McKenna

Politics explained through the lens of justice and equity. Offering perspective that informs, challenges, and empowers.

One can contact this brother at; LLMcKenna@ThyBlackMan.com.