Quick context: the month was started in 2004 by an engineer named Frederick E. Jordan — who created it because in 1969 nobody would fund his firm. Not a sentiment. A response. The math since then: 194,585 Black-owned employer businesses in the US, $211.8B in revenue, 1.6 million people employed. And still only 3% of American businesses, pulling 1% of the revenue. Growth and gap, same house. Georgia is #2 in the country. Atlanta is not a footnote in this — we're the hub. So I'm running a roll call all month. Week one is six ATL businesses with actual addresses and actual things you can book, because "support Black business" is not a repost, it's a reservation. Week one's list is up here 👇 Comment your ATL gem — the one you're a little selfish about — and I'll check them out and support!

This one's for us, and it's direct. ✊🏾 Ardenia's argument: there's no movement right now not because people don't care, but because caring got organized into a reaction—and a reaction needs somebody else to go first. Waiting isn't neutral; it's a transfer, handing the cost of going first to the people who can least afford it. The essay names what "going first" actually looks like on a regular Tuesday, in a regular meeting, in the rooms we're never in. https://open.substack.com/pub/askardenia/p/youve-got-next-ally?r=4eitmy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true Think about the last room you were in where a decision got made about someone who wasn't there. Did you say something in the moment — out loud, while it was happening — or did you save it for a DM later? What's one specific place this week where you could go first? 👇🏾

Let's chat about the idea that Black insistence on dressing up is respectability politics — a performance for white approval. Here's my argument: to call dressing up "dressing white," you first have to agree that dressing up belongs to white people. That's a deed transfer, not liberation. And HBCU formal tradition is older than most of the corporate dress codes people are mad at. The freedom to be casual at work isn't a style permission, it's a downstream effect of ownership. Carefree is what safety looks like when you wear it. 👉🏾 https://open.substack.com/pub/askardenia/p/dressing-up-is-not-dressing-white?r=4eitmy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true Here's the one I want us to sit with, and it applies whether you're Black or not: Think of the most casually dressed person in your workplace. Now ask yourself honestly — what makes them able to get away with it? Seniority? Tenure? Whose kid they are? How hard they'd be to replace? Then ask who in your building would get read as "unprofessional" for wearing the exact same thing. Same clothes, different verdict. What's the actual variable?

New piece is live, and it's the economics one. ✊🏾 Ardenia's been boycotting the same bank since the Great Recession. Target's done. Walmart's been on the list since the nineties. And the argument here isn't "boycotts are good"—it's that most of them are built to fail, because four corporations control more than two-thirds of the U.S. grocery market. You cut one big box and drive to another one owned by the same handful of people. She also takes apart the $2 trillion buying power stat everybody loves to quote. Spending isn't power. Ownership is. 👉🏾 https://open.substack.com/pub/askardenia/p/i-hold-business-grudges-on-purpose?r=4eitmy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true So let's get specific, because vague is comfortable. Name one company you've actually cut—and tell us where that money goes now. Not where you stopped spending. Where it landed. And if you can't answer the second half, that's the real conversation. What would it take to redirect it on purpose this month?

Lindsey Graham is gone, the "statesman" eulogies are pouring in — and Ardenia said the quiet part out loud! Here's the thing nobody wants to say at the funeral: death is not an eraser. Every person living inside the consequences of his votes is still living inside them today. The man rests. The policies don't. The full accounting is up 👉🏾 https://open.substack.com/pub/askardenia/p/may-he-rest-in-his-policies?r=4eitmy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true So let's talk, honestly: When a powerful person dies, are we required to be gracious about a harmful record? Where's the line between respecting a family's grief and refusing to let a legacy get laundered? And the sharper one: whose death got the "statesman" treatment that a regular person never would? Name a time you watched power buy someone a softer obituary than their record earned. Not here to dance on a grave. Here to read the receipts!