716,000 Black Women Pushed Out of Employment in One Year

More than half of Black women over 20 have some form of heart disease. We have been dying of stress for generations - and right now, the punishment being handed down by the Trump Administration is making it harder to breathe.

716,000 Black women left unemployed in a single year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Millions in generational wealth, gone. This is wealth we had only just begun to build. Snatched back.

The Fish Fry Party

The Democratic Party loves Black symbolism but can’t stand to be deliberate about Black problems. We pay the biggest penalties for their losses — watching lawsuit after lawsuit claw back the small crumbs we’ve managed to stack (see the Fearless Fund, gutted while Democrats offered condolences and nothing else). We vote blue and get fish frys. Maybe a Black Girl Magic conference with a keynote and a gift bag. My father called these “negro trinkets.”

I’m too mad to eat fish.

I’ve got an arm full of useless negro trinkets.

I’m ready to talk facts, business, consequences, and repair.

I asked myself, “Why should a change in administration mean the end of Black women’s survival?”

I saw nothing being done. So, I decided to do something myself.

The New Labor Contract with America

I stayed up late writing what I would call a declaration. I opened it up to commentary for the best ideas. It’s a list of demands to repair what was taken from Black women. Every candidate and every CEO should be asked their opinion on it – publicly.

It’s simple.

The Washington Declaration on Black Women’s Labor is exactly what it sounds like: a formal reckoning. It names what happened. The Great Firings of 2024-2025. The gutting of public service roles. The erasure of careers built over decades. It demands restoration, not sympathy. It calls for review of workforce reductions that disproportionately harmed Black women, reinstatement where wrongful termination occurred, and a seat at the table before decisions are made. Not after the damage is done.

A few things it makes plain:

We have always been the backbone of this country’s public institutions. That was not an accident. It was by design, and when the cuts came, so was that.

Invisible labor — the mentoring, the culture-holding, the conflict management no one budgets for — is labor. It will be named and it will be valued.

Security is not a benefit. It is a right.

Now I need you.

This declaration only works if the right people are in the room. I am specifically calling for women working in policy, law, journalism, and on the front lines: the case managers, the teachers, the nurses, the organizers who suffered these losses before anyone wrote a think piece about it. Your expertise and your experience are not optional to this conversation. They are the conversation.

Go to washingtonlabordeclaration.org. Read it. Tell us what’s missing. Tell us what’s wrong. Share it. The declaration is a living document that gets stronger every time someone who knows better makes it better.

Follow www.ikoni.org and look out for upcoming events.

There will be food. No fish. And we are completely out of Black Girl Magic.