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Newspaper article describing Black laborers’ frustration with the mainstream labor movement and the 1972 formation of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists

Brittany Iron competes in the Crow Nation’s Ultimate Warrior Challenge. The Challenge spurs her to master canoeing, running, and riding. The race teaches the Native values of commitment and perseverance. To participate, she has to commit to abstain from drugs and alcohol. The Crow are reimagining what it means to be a warrior. They are now drawing on traditional rituals to combat the effects of centuries of stigma and trauma, and to rebuild the tribe’s sense of pride and purpose.

“Marine Corporal Jeremy Dobbins returned to Dayton, Ohio, from duty in Afghanistan with an 80% disability rating and issues with anger. Trained in service to others, veterans often resist the idea that they themselves need help and they have difficulty with sharing their war experiences with family and friends. An oral history project at Wright State University is giving Jeremy and other young veterans a chance to help older veterans recover their stories of war, and to come to terms with their own.”

“English Avenue, an historic African-American neighborhood with an illustrious past, sits at the bottom of Atlanta’s water runoff. Blighted by regular flooding, mass vacancies, unemployment, and impoverishment, English Avenue finds hope in a home-grown response from its youth. Longtime resident MacKenzie Bass — along with fellow members of Street Smart — helped construct a park that curbs the excess water, creates a gathering place, and seeks to reclaim English Avenue’s identity.”

“The Fort Peck Assiniboine & Sioux Tribes Reservation in Montana is home to tribes whose culture was defined by their relationship to their land and their horses. Generations of systemic oppression drained their culture of its traditional meaning, and they struggle with grief, shame, and loss. Their trauma has led to fractured families, substance abuse, and a high teen suicide rate. Charlie Four Bear gives troubled Fort Peck youth a chance to build relationships with horses, and through them, with tribal elders like himself, to reclaim their tribal family’s cultural pride.”

“Traditional sports build cultural solidarity. In rural North Carolina, Tomás, a retired semi-professional soccer player from Mexico, co-founds an organized soccer league with family and fellow Central and Latin American undocumented immigrants. The common language of the sport forges bonds among the players and across generations, helping to foster more open communication between fathers and sons, and creates mentoring relationships with other adults. Moreover, the league's frequent games promote physical and psychological resilience in a community burdened by the risk of deportation.”

Carrol Layfield manages a quilting group of older women from Ritchie County, West Virginia, who used to work in the area’s garment industry. Using techniques handed down over generations, the women piece together quilts from remnants of fabric from shuttered factories. Kayla Turk is a young mother of two children who returned home to Ritchie County to live with her parents when her husband was laid off. At a communal baby shower, Kayla receives a quilt from the older women, and discovers a network of support.