Millennial Minds with YazzieSpeaks Yasmine Arrington

Millennial Minds Eps 62 Gabrielle Perry, Founder of the Thurman Perry Foundation by Yasmine Arrington

Yazzie speaks with Mr. Desmond Williams, founder of Nylinka School Solutions and author of The Burning House: Educating Black Boys in America about his passion for educating black boys and encouraging them to dream, and pursue their dreams. Desmond describes his journey - growing up in Detroit in a war zone during the Reagan administration, having hip hop as an outlet "to help make meaning of the things that he was [we were] seeing." Demond migrated to Washington, DC to attend Howard University in 1996. He describes how powerful and transformative his trip to Washington, DC in 1995 to be a part of the Million Man March was for him as a young man. The conversation further delves into harsh realities around race in the United States of America and the importance of black people being able to make meaning of what is happening around them, and become change agents that drive solutions.

Yasmine sits down with Heather Rice-Minus, an executive at the Christian non-profit Prison Fellowship and her husband Paul Minus, a black and white interracial married couple who have an open and candid conversation about their family dynamics, acceptance amongst parents, talks with family on race, and the idea of having conversations with their children around identity.

This conversation could not have happened at a more pivotal and critical time in the United States (2020) - the year of the racially driven murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Aubery and countless others. 2020 was also the final year of the Presidency of Donald Trump who often spewed inappropriate racial slurs often and would call on The Proud Boys, a known White Supremacist group, to cause disturbances in the nation to attempt to conduct voter suppression tactics, inflict violent acts during peaceful Black Lives Matter protests. In early January 2020 before the inauguration of President Joe Biden, Proud Boys and people affiliated with White Supremacists groups raided the Capitol in Washington, DC an. This is also an era where nonprofits and for-profit businesses alike are facing a racial reckoning and having conversations about the effects of Systemic Racism, the need for more diversity, equity and inclusion efforts (DEI) and the need to invest more dollars in black-owned, black-led organizations and companies and entities founded and led by people of color.

What better time than to learn from two individuals who have merged their worlds together and love each other not on the basis of skin color, but because of their interpersonal connection and relationship.

Mary Blackford was inspired to create Market 7 while on a teaching trip to Ghana, where she saw firsthand how integral community markets were to underserved residents. In 2017, she began hosting pop-up markets in Ward 7 to prop up Black retailers and urban farmers before the Neighborhood Development Group offered her a dedicated space at its Benning Market development. In July, Essence awarded Blackford $150,000 to jump-start Market 7 as part of the magazine’s “Build Your Legacy” competition with Pine-Sol. - Washington Post, September 2020

I sit down with Marcus Bullock, CEO of Flikshop. Flikshop is an app you download on your phone, in order to send postcards to your incarcerated loved one. Marcus has a powerful story of becoming incarcerated at a young age. He loves to tell the story of how impactful it was for him to receive letters from his mother while he was incarcerated. He says that her letters kept him connected and gave him hope. Now he is on a mission to give that same hope he felt through his mother's letters to all incarcerated persons! Marcus is a reowned figure in the Criminal Justice Reform, Reentry and Tech spaces and is making his mark! Marcus has given multiple TEDx talks, one of which, his TED Salon: The Mallacan TEDx talk has well over 1 million views. He also has partnered with national organizations such as Prison Fellowship to offer thousands of people free credits to stay in contact with their incarcerated loved ones. We go in depth into his personal story and get insights from Marcus on his life as a master entrepreneur, justice reform advocate, son, father, husband and master storyteller and pitch king!

YazzieSpeaks sits down with actress, Ashley Rios. Ashley is the leading lady in the movie Sinners Wanted, produced by the Jenkins Brothers. We talk about how she got into acting, her early career as an actress, why she walked away from acting for many years, how she met her husband in high school and how they maintain a loving, successful, happy marriage. When Ashley was young she would look at actresses on television and tell her mom that that is what she wanted to do. As a young girl she liked to put on performances and sing and dance for her family. She would even get her siblings involved. Her mother enrolled her as a child in Townsend Management, which is how she began her acting journey. As of today she has acted in plays that have toured the country such as "Black Boy Blues", and movies, one of the latest being "Sinners Wanted." When Sinners Wanted was first released in the DMV (DC, Maryland and Virginia)it was selling out in movie theaters and now it airs on networks like TV One. Ashley grew up in Washington, DC and originally attended Duke Ellington School of the Arts for dance. If you are an actor/actress or interested