Republished with permission from Ideastream Public Media.
Cleveland, OH – Ideastream Public Media announces the release of Living For We, Season 2: Keep Ya Head Up, in collaboration with Evergreen Podcasts. This video podcast, which premiered February 11th, 2025, is part of Connecting the Dots between Race and Health, an ongoing initiative for Director of Engaged Journalism Marlene Harris-Taylor and the larger team at Ideastream. “While season one focused on livability for Black women in Cleveland, season two explores the most pressing mental health epidemic facing the country: gun violence.”
“It’s the number one cause of death for young people,” says Marlene Harris-Taylor, executive producer and co-host on the project. “We hope to bring this topic to the forefront of community conversations and change the current dynamic.”
This season introduces a new co-host: Myesha Watkins, director of the Cleveland Peacemakers. Her organization is dedicated to providing resources to victims of gun violence, and to preventing cycles of retaliation that often arise in the wake of a shooting.
“Her expertise is a welcome addition to the show,” states Mark Rosenberger, Chief Content Officer at Ideastream Public Media. “She understands the root causes of gun violence, she knows what needs to be done to interrupt these patterns, and which community leaders are already in the trenches, doing the work.”
With a video component of the podcast, available for free on YouTube, audiences can expect to hear and see from those leaders this season. They’ll also be confronted with compelling stories from those most affected by gun violence—including young perpetrators.
“Every bullet fired creates two victims: the person in front of the gun, and the one pulling the trigger,” Harris-Taylor explains. When it comes to street violence, most shooters are hurt by guns long before they ever use one. Breaking the cycle means understanding what led them to pick up a weapon in the first place. As one guest on the podcast notes, “There’s always a story behind it. It’s never for fun.”
This season aims to be a resource for the community. The team has assembled a landing page for anyone in need of resources, whether they’re a victim of gun violence, worried for a family member, looking to escape their situation, or even re-entering civilian life after time away.
Harris-Taylor and Watkins understand that the solutions have been in place for a long time. They just need funding and support to be more widely effective. “That’s why we also hope to reach leaders in positions of power,” Harris-Taylor says. “To forward the conversation.”
Episode 4 Something Greater Than Me addresses how the church can play a role specifically in breaking the cycle.
In this episode we go to church, with three men who were once entangled in street hustle culture and ended up behind bars. Now they have created a ministry that’s reaches out to those with misguided ideas of manhood. Stanley Frankfurt tells an incredible story about how he was backed into a corner, it was either him or me, but he believes divine intervention kept him from facing a murder charge. He was introduced to Jesus in prison and he is one of the founders of Canton, Ohio-based Young Christian Professionals. The community organization was started by a group of men when they were still incarcerated. It’s now helping others reintegrate into life on the other side of the walls. We also talk to Bobby Johnson who provided a Godly example for Stanley and our third guest Deshawn Johnson in prison. Bobby experienced some harsh realities as a child but at 8 years old he was told there was something greater inside of him. It took going to prison before he could fully embrace his calling to mentor and minister to other men. Deshawn Johnson also joins us and shares how he is thriving as a business owner. He opened The Experience Barber and Beauty Shop in Akron as a place where men can relax and share in a safe environment. He also provides jobs for formerly incarcerated men. The Young Christian Professionals mentoring program is now available in five different prisons across Ohio.
Living For We, Season 2: Keep Ya Head Up is part of the Connecting the Dots between Race and Health Podcast: Living For We series. Living For We is made possible by generous support from the Dr. Donald J. Goodman and Ruth Weber Goodman Philanthropic Fund of the Cleveland Foundation. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and many other podcast platforms. Find more details about Living For We at ideastream.org. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere you find podcasts.
For the past 15 years my family tradition is to travel from Washington, D.C., along with both grandparents, to sunny Florida to celebrate Thanksgiving with cousins. This year we decided to skip the travel and will have fall and winter celebrations at home.
We are not canceling the holidays, but to keep ourselves and others safe, we are keeping plans small and flexible and remembering that the health of those we love is most important as we enter the season of gratitude.
Maintaining vigilant social distancing, mask-wearing and good hygiene in the weeks leading up to the holidays are the first steps to reduce risk. AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli
Before you gather
First, it is important that everyone who will be attending any holiday celebration is on the same page about how to take precautions before getting together. The idea is to lower infection risk in the weeks leading up to the holidays and then test to confirm.
In conjunction with quarantining, testing is the second strategy.
Research has consistently shown that people are most contagious a day or two before they show symptoms, so everyone plans to get tested with an RT-PCR test within 72 hours of Thanksgiving, while still being able to get results in hand before we gather.
If the demand for tests is high and wait times are long, we will get rapid tests. But these are a second choice, as they are less reliable and can be expensive.
Where and how to eat and socialize
No matter how careful you and your family are, there is some risk that someone will be infected. With that in mind, the goal is to reduce the conditions that lead to viral spread. The biggest risks are indoor spaces with poor ventilation, large groups and close contact. So we are planning the opposite: a short outdoor Thanksgiving with a small group and plenty of space between everyone.
To reduce the risk of infection from flying and to keep the gathering small, the only people coming to Thanksgiving at my family’s home in D.C. are my mother, my aunt and my uncle – all of whom live within driving distance. This is in addition to myself, my husband and our kids. When deciding how many people will come to the holidays, keep it small and consider the amount of space you have to maintain social distancing.
If the weather cooperates, we plan to be outside for trivia games and the turkey meal. Rather than eat around one table, we will have individual tables and place settings spaced far apart and space heaters around. I’ve got a mini care package planned for each guest so that everyone will have their own blanket, hand sanitizer, utensils and a festive mask. My mother won’t be helping out in the kitchen this year and, unfortunately, that goes for cleanup too. We won’t take a group picture but I will be sure to capture some of the special moments.
If the weather doesn’t cooperate, Plan B is to be inside in the large family room with as many windows open as possible and with everyone spaced as far apart as possible. Being outside is safer, but if you must be indoors, improve ventilation by opening doors and windows. Consider turning on exhaust fans and using an air purifier.
Everyone who lives in the household will be in one section while my mom will have her own individual area, as will my aunt and uncle. Even though we won’t hold hands before sharing the meal, we will still recite that we are “thankful for family, friends and food.”
Whether outside or inside, everyone will wear masks when they aren’t eating, maintain 6 feet of distance and use the hand sanitizer that I will place throughout the house.
It is also important to be mindful of alcohol consumption, as a pandemic is not the time for lowered inhibitions and bad judgment.
After the event
I hope everyone enjoys the meal and quality time spent with one another in this melancholy year, but the work is not done once the dishes are clean and everyone is home safely.
Everyone is planning to get another COVID–19 test one week after the meal. Additionally, Thanksgiving is our family’s trial run for Christmas, so a few days after, I plan to call everyone and discuss what worked well and what didn’t. If all goes well, I hope to repeat this quarantine, test and gather process for Christmas.
The ending of 2020 deserves to be celebrated, given this difficult year. This Thanksgiving will be different from those of other years, and my kids understand they need to manage their expectations. But we still plan to uphold our tradition of writing all that we are thankful for and reading our messages aloud to one another. We will still share love, some laughs and a good meal while everyone does their part to protect one another.
The National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases is partnering with black churches to host Kidney Sundays (Photo courtesy of the National Kidney Disease Education Program).
You could be slowly dying and not know it. Your blood could be poisoned, yet you don’t have a clue. Then suddenly you need to be rushed to the hospital, but it’s too late. If only you had taken two simple tests that could have caught the disease before it became critical.
Troubling.
That’s what I was thinking as I listened to Dr. Griffin P. Rodgers,director of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases talk about the “silent” killer. Rodgers described this scenario that is sadly real for too many African Americans who fail each year to get tested for kidney disease. “It’s really considered the silent disease,” Rodgers said, which is why the institute has partnered with African American churches to publicize the importance of getting tested early before it’s too late.
March is National Kidney Month. On March 3, sixty churches across the country are kicking off the month with ongoing National Kidney Sunday. In partnership with the Chi Eta Phi nursing sorority, the American Diabetes Association, the Institute provides free testing at churches along with a kidney disease toolkit of information to be used for group discussions or individuals. Information includes how to prevent kidney disease and how to treat it successfully. In its second year, The Institute expects this initiative to reach at least 55,000 church members, who will hopefully spread the word to family, friends, coworkers, and so on.
“If you’re living in an area where there is not readily access to fresh fruits, but rather fast food that has more soda, and sugar that’s a factor,” said Rogers, adding that the two leading causes of kidney disease are hypertension and diabetes.
The preventable culprit is obesity, which often triggers hypertension and diabetes, Rodgers said. Obesity is a national crisis, which is why First Lady Michelle Obama has initiated the Let’s Move Initative. taken it up as a cause. But why are blacks particularly plagued by obesity? The good doctor didn’t say it, but I will: Much of the black community’s various health and destructive behavior problems are rooted in our cultural practices. These practices have in large part been shaped by our response to racism and oppression. Living sicker and dying younger is a predictable outcome. For generations we have been killing ourselves without thinking. It’s a miracle that we have survived. The black church has been a life source, but it has also have aided and abetted our bad choices.
As I’ve previously written on Urban Faith, Sunday dinners at Big Momma’s house or in church fellowship halls have been killing us gradually. Salty meals that contain starch Mac & Cheese, greasy pork and ribs, and chicken wings fried in lard – washed down with sweet tea or red Kool-Aid that tastes like liquid Skittles – are actually toxic. They may taste heavenly, but they’re not nourishing our bodies no matter how religiously we say the grace before eating. We’ve institutionalized and romanticized soul food rituals to our demise. Caribbean and Afrocentric meals are often no better. We need to renew our minds when it comes to managing our health. The church can lead the way.
We can eat healthy soul food that tastes just as good but with healthier seasonings. We can adopt a Bible-based diet. We can reject processed fast foods that are high in sugar and salt or eat them sparingly. We can eat more fresh fruits and vegetables and drink plain water. We can get our bodies moving. If we can’t exercise at a gym for at least 30 minutes a day three times per week, we can get out and walk every day. We can transform poor health in the community by renewing our minds in order to break our destructive eating patterns.
The kidneys are the body’s trash filter. When the kidneys fail the garbage piles up and starts poisoning the body. Rodgers said kidney disease can be found with simple blood and urine tests. For example, protein in the urine could mean kidney disease. If you catch the problem early enough, however, disaster can be averted.
Don’t let death sneak up on you. Get tested. Get your church involved. The life you save may be your own.
