This fall, we invite YOU to "Fall into Giving" through supporting The Future is US!

 The Future is US isn’t just about what we do—it’s about what WE do together.  The Future is US is built by our community, for our community. With a focus on education, arts & cultural expression, advocacy, and mental health support, we have been working to create a brighter, more inclusive future for the next generation.

As the fall season brings warmth and reflection, we encourage our community to embrace the season of giving by supporting The Future is US. Your support will ensure that our youth and families continue to have access to spaces that uplift them now so we can have a brighter future later.

How can you support?

Donate to support Art in Activism, our upcoming 3rd annual Black History Talent Show (!!!), Books & Breakfast,  It Takes a Village, and more programs and events we have that support our youth and families

Volunteer and be a part of our mission

Spread the Word and let everyone know the great work we're doing! 

Your donation directly impacts the youth and families in Galveston, ensuring we continue providing opportunities supporting education, self-expression, artistic expression, and mental health.

https://givebutter.com/SupportTFIU

NEO Friendsgiving Hill Country Camp

Friday - Sunday: November 29 - December 1

https://www.meetup.com/neohouston/events/304015611

Details

Come camp and swim with us at beautiful Pedernales Falls State Park! Our friends Nature and Eclectic Outdoors (NEO) are hosting a FREE camping trip in the hill country! This includes food, gear, and the equipment for the many fun activities they have planned! 

This will be a super fun and exciting weekend camp to enjoy each other's company post-Thanksgiving in one of Texas beautiful state parks, Pedernales Falls. This park is featured in many Sci-Fi movies due to its other-worldly appearance after thousands of years of water flowing through limestone and carving spectacular trenches, crevices, and caves to explore.

In addition to coordinating activities during camp, NEO will provide food for meals, some stoves for cooking group meals, campfires, s'mores, life preservers for swimming, fishing gear, and more. If you need to borrow a tent, they  have some available to borrow on a first sign-up / first-serve basis. Feel free to bring your own life jackets, fishing gear, cooking gear, floating tubes, etc. But if you don't have it, do not worry! 

Activities will include hiking, birding, swimming, fishing, stargazing, a night hike, scorpion/spider hunt, and more! NEO will provide instruction and safety guidelines for all activities. More details including a suggested packing list will come soon. No outdoor experience is necessary to participate.

Friday and Saturday nights, we will make a group campfire and bring out camp stoves to cook dinner as a group. Campers are responsible for bringing their own food for lunch on Friday as well as their own snacks and drinks (other than water) for the duration of camp. NEO will provide food for Friday dinner, Saturday breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and Sunday breakfast. You need to be a flexible eater, but if you have special dietary restrictions or are a picky eater, you may want to bring your own food for all meals. You are welcome to bring your own food and make dinner on NEO's stoves or over the campfire if you like. We will cook as a group over the weekend! 

Feel free to register yourself at the link, or reach out to Coordinator Shanice Blair for any questions regarding logistics or support to get there from Galveston! sblair@fscgal.org

If you represent a school, church, or youth group that would like to participate, you can reach out to NEO directly by emailing contact@neoproject.org.

NAMI Greater Houston (AAAA partner) is collaborating with the Representative Gene Wu in bringing to you an advocacy training, focused on understanding how best to engage with your lawmakers to make a difference. Some of the issues we may be covering include youth engagement, mental health and juvenile justice. If that is of interest to you, please come out and bring your community members - together, we can learn how best to mobilize to make sure our voices are heard! 

When: November 14, from 11am to 1pm

Where: HOPE Health and Wellness Center, 13930 Bellaire Boulevard, Houston, TX, 77083

Please register using this link or the QR in the flyer - we will have food and refreshments! Contact me if you have any questions or concerns!

https://forms.gle/7K6tWXJqgeP9M8mM8 

If you love diverse books for kids and have a social media platform to share a review on, Read Your World want to give you a FREE diverse children’s or young adult book to review!

Join us in the celebration! Read Your World (previously Multicultural Children's Book Day) will be celebrated annually on the last Thursday in January. Our mission continues to be to raise awareness of children's books that celebrate diversity by getting more books into classrooms and libraries. To achieve our goal, valued book reviewers -- like you -- play a huge part by shining the spotlight on diverse and multicultural books.

Register for a volunteer session here, Juneteenth Legacy Volunteering

Soul 2 Soul Bar & Grill is our biggest and most delicious sponsor! 

Ms. Ouida Cook and her establishment serve up scrumptious soul food and deserts including fried pork ribs, ox tails, catfish, chicken, banana pudding and more! 

Head over to her restaurant at 315 Broadway Avenue J in Galveston and support a Galveston favorite and The Future is US' Trailbazer sponsor! 

When Community Action Task Force Lead, Phylicia French, isn't doing The Future is US duties and writing (she's an author too!), she is helping and empowering others! 

Co-Coordinator Shanice is on the Woodville Public Engagement Planning Committee in Gloucester, Virginia! 

The Woodville Rosenwald School Foundation in Gloucester County, VA, is collecting oral histories from people who attended, or whose family members attended, historically African-American schools in Gloucester County from 1871, when public schools first opened, until the year schools were integrated in 1968.

The Woodville School is the only remaining one of six Rosenwald schools built in Gloucester County in the 1920s and celebrates its 100th birthday this year—2023. The Foundation plans to open this historic building as a museum and community center once renovations are complete.

During the Great Migration, African-American families in Gloucester relocated to urban centers such as Washington, DC; Baltimore; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; and New York City to seek better employment and educational opportunities. The Foundation hopes to connect with this descendant community to add their stories to the archive.

For more information, and/or to share your experience, please contact the Foundation by email at info@woodvillerosenwaldschool.org.

From Black Alliance for Peace:

Resistance to Oppression is a Human Right

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) recognizes that we are in a moment of increased and increasingly dangerous political repression. Peoples’ resistance to oppressive, militaristic, and genocidal policies enacted by the U.S. national security apparatus are once again being met with persecution, marginalization, violence, and even lawfare. The latest example being the sanctioning of Samidoun, an organization advocating on behalf of Palestinian prisoners, as an operation supporting a group that the U.S. state designated as a “terrorist” organization. 

BAP is not interested in debating the merits of these charges because the weight of evidence on state actions suggests that the state bears the responsibility to prove that it is not engaged in another crude effort to smash all opposition to zionist settler colonial fascism. Having lost the narrative on its support for the zionist apartheid state and bogged down in another militaristic adventure in Ukraine, we see an almost desperate attempt by the U.S. political elite (and its Western minions) to crush dissent. It is using a variety of tools: federal and local police, the propaganda apparatus in the form of the corporate media, and the legal system.

Just in the last year, this infrastructure of repression has been weaponized against independent media such as African Stream, which was deplatformed from Meta, Google, and TikTok after U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken claimed, without evidence, that the site is controlled by Russia. Radio Sputnik was also forced to end its programming, and the U.S. FBI convicted the “Uhuru 3” – Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess & Jesse Nevil – on conspiracy charges. Meanwhile, the violent crackdown of pro-Palestine/anti-genocide student protests across college campuses continues. 

The punishment of those who openly oppose U.S. government policies, particularly in opposition to U.S. support of zionist occupation and genocide, is in full swing as the state and its foreign state agents, like AIPAC and the ADL, move to designate organizations, entities, or individuals that support Palestinian resistance as “terrorists” or supporters of “terrorism.” The objective of this repression is not just to silence political opposition, but to criminalize it – totalitarianism in practice.  

We in the Black Alliance for Peace fully understand the dangerous times we are in. Yet, we remain unyieldingly committed to our principles, to People(s)-Centered Human Rights, to people’s liberation struggles, and to the right of all individuals and people to resist colonialism, dictatorship, global imperialist warmongering, and all forms of oppression. For BAP, “No Compromise, No Retreat!” is more than a slogan. Ultimately, it is our response to the deepening repression; and it is an affirmation of the ongoing struggle that must be waged in order to finally defeat the dark forces of oppression and build a new world.