You get what you vote for…

“Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. For, “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”” ‭‭1 Peter‬ ‭3‬:‭8‬-‭12‬ ‭NIV‬‬ https://bible.com/bible/111/1pe.3.8-10.NIV

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Encode Productions | Jessica Solce

Documentary films by director Jessica Solce.

“It is easier to build strong children, than to repair broken men” – Frederick Douglass

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” ‭‭Matthew‬ ‭7‬:‭13‬-‭14‬ ‭NIV‬‬ https://bible.com/bible/111/mat.7.13-14.NIV

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“It is the Division’s view that transactions in the types of meme coins described in this statement, do not involve the offer and sale of securities under the federal securities laws. As such, persons who participate in the offer and sale of meme coins do not need to register their transactions with the Commission under the Securities Act of 1933 (“Securities Act”) or fall within one of the Securities Act’s exemptions from registration. Accordingly, neither meme coin purchasers nor holders are protected by the federal securities laws.”

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

Staff Statement on Meme Coins

As part of an effort to provide greater clarity on the application of the federal securities laws to crypto assets, the Division of Corporation Fin...

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Bitkey is creating a very nice transfer of wealth plan. Nice job @jack and all the developers over at Block working on the Bitkey project. https://support.bitkey.world/hc/en-us/articles/32141067207444-What-is-Inheritance-and-how-does-it-work

We have to teach our children how to critically think and formulate independent ideas in a world where everyone is following and being controlled by “whatever goes”, “everything goes” and “whatever is trending” in popular culture. We have to be intentional about showing and teaching our children how to be independent, critical thinkers. Adults, young adults, and children are not thinking these days. They are “Googleing” and using their findings as the foundation/core and or starting point of their talking points and ideology/philosophy on life. This is pathetic and dangerous!

The view from the front seat of the rig are always breathtaking! #fireservice

Opt out. #bitcoin

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“Not being allowed to work in Harlem angered Williams, but work conditions at Engine 55 improved as time went by. The new men who entered the company included several probationary firemen who took over his previous duties, such as spittoon and bathroom cleaning. Also, while many of his company-mates remained hostile and dismissive, several began to converse with him. As an avid reader of history and an intellectual within a highly anti-intellectual workplace culture, Williams was ironically called upon to settle an interethnic dispute regarding the whiteness of Italians. When asked by an Irish fireman if Italians could be considered white, Williams told the predominantly Irish men in the company “that he didn’t know whether or not Italians were White, but he did know that when Ancient Rome was conquering the world people in Ireland were living in caves.”” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/8YJGqfU

“Discrimination in the assignment of firehouse tasks, vicious practical jokes, or in-house physical threats, while demeaning, disgusting, and dangerous, paled in comparison with the danger that Williams was subjected to while on duty. “The story they put out to the community,” he later recalled, “was that they ‘would burn the nigger up,’ and that I couldn’t take smoke because my nostrils were too wide.” In his first major firefighting duty, Williams and his company responded to a dangerous cellar fire in the Bowery district. Ordered to take the nozzle to prove his “courage and staying ability” to the rest of the company, Williams led while the others followed. He directed the nozzle’s stream at the heart of the fire, but a backdraft sparked a gas explosion. Williams’s company-mates, including his lieutenant, ran from the building into the street, leaving Williams for dead. Knocked on his back during the explosion, he somehow managed to maintain control of the hose, right himself, and quell the blaze by himself. Other fire companies on the scene snickered at the pack of cowards who had abandoned him, while Battalion Chief Ben Parker mocked Williams’s white company-mates, snidely remarking, “You were gonna burn him up? It looks like he burnt you fellas up.” FDNY officials later conceded that Williams had single-handedly “saved the building and probably the block.”” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/iv8b5Mr

“Williams’s career as a firefighter began on January 10, 1919. His credentials and connections did little to shield him from the onslaught of hate and discrimination he faced upon joining the department. Williams was assigned to Engine 55 on Broome Street, the Italian section of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. On Williams’s first day, the captain of the firehouse retired at roll call, and every fireman in the house, refusing “to work with a nigger,” requested transfers. Recognizing that no one would work with Williams if FDNY brass caved to these demands, the FDNY’s fire chief and fire commissioner (the two highest positions in the department) froze all transfers for one year so they could maintain full manpower at Engine 55 as well as any other company that Williams or another African American might be appointed or transferred to in the future.” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/hC84mLn

“Williams’s composite test scores placed him at the top of a list of hundreds of applicants, but his appointment remained uncertain due to his race. All candidates were required to present three letters of recommendation and were then subjected to the department’s “selection process.” While almost all Blacks lacked the political clout to move beyond this point, Williams’s father managed to secure reference letters for his son from former president Theodore Roosevelt as well as Cardinal Patrick Hayes. Yet in the world of Tammany-controlled patronage politics, perhaps his most crucial letter of support might have come from florist and real estate mogul Charles Thorley. Thorley owned and operated the famed Thorley’s House of Flowers, served as J. P. Morgan’s personal florist, and provided extremely expensive arrangements for the city’s elite. Thorley, for many years, employed a number of African Americans in his shop, including Williams’s father during the 1890s and Langston Hughes for a brief period in 1922. Thorley bought and sold a number of real estate holdings in Manhattan, including the parcel of land that the New York Times purchased to build its headquarters. As a millionaire and active member of Tammany Hall, Thorley made frequent and substantial donations to the machine, which gave him tremendous power and sway. “It was Thorley,” Williams recalled, who “let the fire commission of the City of New York understand that regardless of how they felt about it, I was going to stay in the fire department.” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/aZ9UOC9

“In 1918, Williams, who studied on his own because he was not allowed to take the Tammany-backed prep course, took the civil service examination for the FDNY and placed thirteenth out of 2,700 applicants. As an avid weightlifter, athlete, and bodybuilder whose physique was later described by sportswriters of the 1920s as comparable to that of Jim Thorpe, Williams had little problem with the physical examination and became only the second man in the department’s history to earn a perfect score on the physical exam.” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/4zlvnwH

“Years after retiring from a storied career with the Fire Department of New York City, Wesley Williams, the most celebrated Black fireman in the nation’s history, occasionally made the journey to the graveyard. Williams had entered the FDNY in 1919 and eventually rose to the rank of battalion chief before retiring from the force in 1952. His ascent up the promotional ladder of the ethnically and culturally insular FDNY had not been an easy task. As one chronicler of his early career remarked, the struggles he faced “made Jackie Robinson’s stormy entrance into the Big Leagues look like a cap-pistol skirmish.” Still, “the Chief,” as Williams affectionately came to be known by Black firefighters across the country, always sought to turn the negative treatment he received into a positive. If anything, Williams’s resolve was fortified by his white company-mates’ racist bullying, intimidation, and attempts on his life. These staunchly racist firemen, from his earliest days on the job, as Williams later explained, “helped to make me a Superman in the fire department because of their prejudice.” It was these firefighters whose graves Williams visited. Well into his seventies, the Chief came not to pay his respects or to thank his antagonists for motivating him to become a better firefighter, but to urinate on them.” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/eP9jObG

“With patronage jobs under the control of the Irish bosses of the Tammany political machine, Blacks were largely excluded from civil defense positions just as the public sector grew rapidly in the early twentieth century. New York’s fire department, for example, grew from a force of 1,000 firemen in 1888 to 7,500 men by 1930. And while the FDNY employed several different generations of firefighters during this forty-two-year period, only 5 African Americans managed to secure firefighting positions. 4” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/ejvzY9a