This is a first from us — the beginning of a new video learning series focused on Black studies and history. In this video, we explore Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington, following his journey from slavery and poverty to the building of Tuskegee Institute, while examining his ideas on education, labor, discipline, and Black advancement. Please enjoy.

This summer, the Black Voter Outreach Network of PA is proud to launch Anti-Racist Summer Camp 2026, a new virtual youth web series built around Stamped (For Kids) by Jason Reynolds and Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, adapted by Sonja Cherry-Paul.

This series will take place on Zoom and will give young people and families a chance to learn honest history together in a thoughtful, welcoming, and age-appropriate space. Using Stamped (For Kids) as our guide, we will talk about race, fairness, dignity, truth, and the history that still shapes our world today.

I am a Black man in the process of becoming conscious. I want to be precise about what that means because it matters for everything that follows. I am not writing from the safety of distance or the authority of arrival. I am a man who looked up one day and decided that surviving was no longer enough — that the world my people are living in demanded more than endurance. It demanded understanding. And so I started reading. I started thinking. I started asking the questions that comfortable people learn early not to ask. And what I found on the other side of those questions was this: the condition of Black people in America is not an accident, not a mystery, and not a failure of character. It is the intended and measurable outcome of a system that has been working exactly as designed for four hundred years.

Lancaster City’s monthly reporting requirement is set out in Section 3 of Administrative Ordinance No. 14-2025, codified in Chapter 30 (Budgets and Control).

Section 3 requires a Monthly Budget Report, defined as a monthly cash flow report: a financial statement of revenues and expenditures by department, bureau, and line item (organized to match the budget ordinance), showing the amount budgeted, the cumulative amount collected or expended, and the percent of each line item collected or expended by the end of each month. It must be submitted to City Council, the Office of the Controller, and to the public within 21 days of the end of the preceding month.

More than 50 Black leaders gathered at Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church in Harrisburg to learn more about Janelle Stelson’s campaign — and to endorse her. That’s the headline. Not because endorsements are rare, but because Black folks are organizing in public, together, in our institutions. This is the first step toward real political infrastructure: relationships becoming alignment, alignment becoming structure, and structure becoming power.

Nine months out from Election Day, the 2026 midterms have moved from “next year” to a measurable, shifting contest. The Horse Race is a monthly tracking memo produced by the Black Voter Outreach Network of PA’s Research Division—a straight read of the political environment using the indicators that shape outcomes: presidential approval, the generic ballot, major issue pressures (like costs, SNAP, and healthcare), and what those signals suggest for control of Congress and for key fights in Pennsylvania. It’s not prediction or punditry—just a consistent, evidence-based snapshot of where things stand and what’s changing, updated each month.

The City of Lancaster raised a flag today. The county will issue a proclamation later this month. 

Today There was speeches. Photos. Logos lined up neatly. A proclamation read aloud. Black organizations invited into City Hall for a moment of visibility. And later this month the county commissioners will invite similar groups to county government building to the same. 

It will stop there.

Black History Month did not begin as a celebration.

It was an act of resistance.

In 1926, Carter G. Woodson created Negro History Week as a direct challenge to Jim Crow. Black people were being erased from textbooks, classrooms, and public memory by design. Teaching Black history was not symbolic—it was defiant. It was dangerous. It was a refusal to accept erasure as fate.

Let's stop pretending.

The Trump Administration is terrorizing Black and Brown immigrants.

Not immigrants broadly. Not "undocumented people" in the abstract. Black and Brown immigrants.

They are targeting Black people. They are targeting Brown people. They are targeting Latinos. They are targeting Somalis. They are targeting Haitians.

The administration is hunting them, detaining them, and killing them because of who they are.

President Trump sent ICE into Minneapolis to terrorize communities of color. That is the point. The administration concentrates raids, stops, detentions, and armed confrontations where Black and Brown people live. Fear is not an unintended consequence. Fear is the goal.

John Donne wrote,

“Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

In Minneapolis this month, that bell has tolled more than once.

Two lives — two people — were taken by federal immigration enforcement.

Tomorrow is January 15th.
My birthday.
And the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr, born in 1929.

On Monday, January 19, 2026, Lancaster County will do what it does best when it comes to Black people: pause briefly, pose politely, and move on unchanged.

There will be prayer breakfasts.
Photo ops.
Proclamations.
Committees shaking hands with one another.
Churches reading excerpts.
Nonprofits posting quotes.

And then—nothing.

No feeding the hungry.
No housing the unhoused.
No clothing for the unclothed.
No material changes for Black people who live here every single day.

By Tuesday, the Black community will once again be an afterthought—until February rolls around, and then again until Juneteenth. Ritual recognition without responsibility. Symbolism without sacrifice.

That is why I will not celebrate MLK Day in Lancaster.

Right now, as we speak, the federal government is shut down.
SNAP benefits are frozen.
Workers are not being paid.
Families are going hungry.

Across Lancaster County, people are stepping up — churches, nonprofits, and neighbors are organizing food drives and meal programs to make sure no one is left behind. That is good and righteous work. It is what Dr. King would have called the work of the Good Samaritan — stopping along the roadside to help the wounded and hungry when others pass them by.

By the end of this year, Lancaster City will be hiring its fourth police chief in less than five years. Four leaders, four approaches, four promises — and still, the same unease.

Chief Richard Mendez is retiring in December. The city has said it will appoint an interim chief to serve in the meantime, which means the next permanent police chief will likely be chosen by Lancaster’s next mayor after the new administration is sworn in.

That kind of turnover raises a simple but serious question:

🏛️ Spotlight: U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D–PA‑12)

Bill: H.R. 4387 – Division on Community Safety Act
Summary: Proposes a new division within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) focused on community safety and public health initiatives.

What’s the issue?

Public health is more than hospitals and clinics—it includes violence prevention, mental health, substance use support, and building safety networks within communities. But there’s no central hub within the federal government coordinating these efforts under one roof.

There are no records of John Lewis ever visiting Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He did travel to Philadelphia on two occasions to receive awards: once in 2012 to receive an honorary award from the University of Pennsylvania for social justice advocacy, and in 2016 to receive the Liberty Medal at the National Constitution Center.