In September 2018, GirlTrekker Trina Baker from Seattle, Washington, arrives at the #StressProtest, an annual self-care retreat for Black women held in Estes Park, Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains.
Photo by Jati Lindsay
Vanessa Garrison:
I am Vanessa, daughter of Annette, daughter of Olympia, daughter of Melvina, daughter of Katie, born 1878, Parish County, Louisiana.
T. Morgan Dixon:
And my name is Morgan, daughter of Carol, daughter of Letha, daughter of Willie, daughter of Sarah, born 1849 in Bardstown, Kentucky.
Garrison:
We call the names and rituals of our ancestors into this room today because from them we received a powerful blueprint for survival, strategies, and tactics for healing carried across oceans by African women, passed down to generations of Black women in America who used those skills to navigate institutions of slavery and state-sponsored discrimination in order that we might stand on this stage. We walk in the footsteps of those women, our foremothers, legends like Ella Baker, Septima Clark, Fannie Lou Hamer, from whom we learned the power of organizing after she had single-handedly registered 60,000 voters in Jim Crow Mississippi.
Dixon:
60,000 is a lot of people, so if you can imagine Vanessa and me inspiring 60,000 women to walk with us last year, we were fired up. But today, 100,000 Black women and girls stand on this stage with us. We are committed to healing ourselves, to lacing up our sneakers, to walking out of our front door every single day for total healing and transformation in our communities, because we understand that we are in the footsteps of a civil rights legacy like no other time before, and that we are facing a health crisis like never, ever before.
We don’t usually put our business in the streets. Let’s just put that out there. But I have to tell you the statistics. Black women are dying at alarming rates, and I used to be a classroom teacher, and I was at South Atlanta High School, and I remember standing in front of my classroom, and I remember a statistic that half of Black girls will get diabetes unless diet and levels of activity change. Half of the girls in my classroom. So I couldn’t teach anymore. So I started taking girls hiking, which is why we’re called GirlTrek, but Vanessa was like, that is not going to move the dial on the health crisis; it’s cute. She was like, it’s a cute hiking club. So what we thought is if we could rally a million of their mothers…82 percent of Black women are over a healthy weight right now; 53 percent of us are obese. But the number that I cannot, that I cannot get out of my head is that every single day in America, 137 Black women die from a preventable disease, heart disease. That’s every 11 minutes. 137 is more than gun violence, cigarette smoking and HIV combined, every day. Can you imagine that?
Garrison:
So the question that you’re all asking yourselves right now is why? Why are Black women dying? We asked ourselves that same question. Why is what’s out there not working for them? Private weight-loss companies, government interventions, public health campaigns. I’m going to tell you why: because they focus on weight loss or looking good in skinny jeans without acknowledging the trauma that Black women hold in our bellies and bones, that has been embedded in our very DNA. The best advice from hospitals and doctors, the best medications from pharmaceutical companies to treat the congestive heart failure of my grandmother didn’t work because they didn’t acknowledge the systemic racism that she had dealt with since birth.
A divestment in schools, discriminatory housing practices, predatory lending, a crack cocaine epidemic, mass incarceration putting more Black bodies behind bars than were owned at the height of slavery. But GirlTrek does. For Black women whose bodies are buckling under the weight of systems never designed to support them, GirlTrek is a lifeline.
Dixon:
Walking through pain is what we have always done. Change-making, it’s in my blood. It’s what I do, and this health crisis ain’t nothing compared to the road we have traveled.
Garrison:
So how did we take this simple idea of walking and start a revolution that would catch a fire in neighborhoods across America? We used the best practices of the civil rights movement. We huddled up in church basements. We did grapevine information sharing through beauty salons. We empowered and trained mothers to stand on the front lines. We took our message directly to the streets, and women responded. Women like LaKeisha in Chattanooga, Chrysantha in Detroit, Onika in New Orleans, women with difficult names and difficult stories join GirlTrek every day and commit to walking as a practice of self-care.
Do not wait. Walk right now in the direction of your healthiest, most fulfilled life, because self-care is a revolutionary act.
Garrison:
We believe that the personal is political. Our walking is for healing, for joy, for fresh air, quiet time, to connect and disconnect, to worship. But it’s also walking so we can be healthy enough to stand on the front lines for change in our communities, and it is our call to action to every Black woman listening, every Black woman in earshot of our voice, every Black woman who you know. Think about it: the woman working front desk reception at your job, the woman who delivers your mail, your neighbor—our call to action to them, to join us on the front lines for change in your community.
Learn more at GirlTrek.com
GirlTrekkers gather in prayer before a hike at the #StressProtest, an annual self-care retreat for Black women held September 2018, in Estes Park, Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains.
Photo by Laylah Amatullah Barrayn
GirlTrekkers from around the country participate in Ciara’s #LevelUpChallenge at the GirlTrek #StressProtest, an annual self-care retreat for Black women held in September 2018 in Estes Park, Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains.
Photo by Jati Lindsay
GirlTrek at the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., on January 21, 2017
Photo by Taylor Rees
In 2016, GirlTrek launched the #BlackGirlJusticeLeague to mobilize 50,000 Black women to walk to the polls on Election Day 2016. This image was captured in Brooklyn, New York.
