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Julie Bolejack is a 72-year-old activist, entrepreneur, and lifelong creative with a passion for empowering diversity, equity and inclusion, championing human and animal rights, and exploring the intersections of business, advocacy, and personal growth. With a master’s degree in business and decades of experience in project management, she now dedicates her time to helping people embrace new chapters in life. She’s a wellness enthusiast, and advocate for meaningful change – Julie is always learning, laughing, and elevating.
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Hello readers!
Some truths take a long time to land, not because they are complicated, but because they are inconvenient.
Black History Month invites us to sit with those truths without rushing to soften them. It asks us to remember that history is not a story we tell about the past. It is a set of patterns that continue to shape the present.
Here is one of those truths.
Black History Fact: The Emancipation Proclamation did not free all enslaved people. Many remained enslaved for years afterward, especially in states where enforcement was weak or nonexistent.
Freedom, in America, has always come with conditions.
Black history teaches us that declarations are not the same as reality. Laws written on paper do not automatically translate into justice lived in bodies. Rights delayed are rights denied, and delay has been one of this nation’s most reliable tactics.
Even after slavery was formally abolished, freedom was rationed. Access to land was denied. Promises were broken. Violence enforced “order.” The message was clear and consistent: freedom would be granted only so far, and no further.
That pattern did not end in the nineteenth century.
We see it repeated through literacy tests, poll taxes, redlining, exclusion from GI Bill benefits, and discriminatory lending practices. Each one legal at the time. Each one defended as reasonable, necessary, or temporary.
Today, we still see rights delayed through bureaucracy, court challenges, voter suppression, and economic barriers. Justice postponed until it becomes abstract. Relief offered just late enough to be meaningless.
Black history reminds us that progress without enforcement is performance.
And performance is cheap.
When we talk about freedom, we should be precise. Freedom to do what. Freedom for whom. And freedom backed by what power.
Because freedom without protection is fragile.
And fragile freedoms are easily revoked.
One of the most comforting lies in American history is the idea that injustice was caused by a few bad people.
A few bad slave owners.
A few bad cops.
A few bad politicians.
A few bad apples.
This lie is seductive because it allows the system itself to remain innocent.
But Black history teaches us something else entirely. Oppression does not survive for centuries by accident. It survives because it is built into laws, policies, and institutions, and because enough people benefit from it to defend it.
Slavery was legal.
Segregation was legal.
Redlining was legal.
Mass incarceration was legal.
None of these required everyone to be cruel. They required enough people to comply, look away, or tell themselves comforting stories.
This is why Black history cannot be reduced to heroes and villains alone. It must include the bystanders. The enablers. The “good people” who did nothing and called it neutrality.
We still cling to the myth that injustice is a glitch rather than a feature. That if we remove the worst actors, the system will heal itself.
History tells us otherwise.
Systems do exactly what they are designed to do.
If Black communities experience worse health outcomes, higher incarceration rates, lower generational wealth, and increased surveillance, the question is not what is wrong with them.
The question is what the system is rewarding.
Black history reminds us that neutrality is not neutral. Silence is not passive. Comfort is not harmless.
And the present day is offering us the same choice it always has.
Disrupt, or comply.
History is watching.
Support Black journalism not as charity, but as citizenship. Read their work. Follow their reporting. Share their words. Democracy depends on whose stories are told—and who is believed when they tell them.
Suggested journalists to support:
Nikole Hannah-Jones
Investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner whose work reshaped how many Americans understand the legacy of slavery.
Wesley Lowery
Former Washington Post reporter known for rigorous reporting on policing, race, and democracy.
Jelani Cobb
Dean of Columbia Journalism School and longtime writer offering deep historical context to present-day politics.
Tremaine Lee
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist whose work focuses on structural inequality, poverty, and criminal justice.
Yamiche Alcindor
Political reporter and moderator known for clear, persistent questioning and accountability journalism.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Essayist and reporter whose writing connects history, policy, and lived experience with moral clarity.
Errin Haines
Editor-at-large at The 19th, focusing on democracy, race, gender, and political power.
Elie Mystal
Legal journalist translating complex law and constitutional issues into accessible, often bracing truth.
Clint Smith
Writer and journalist whose work bridges history, poetry, and reporting, especially around memory and injustice.
Imani Perry
Scholar and journalist offering nuanced analysis of race, culture, and American identity.
And of course independent street beat reporter, Don Lemon.
Mindful activism asks us to stay awake without becoming hardened, to tell the truth without losing our humanity, and to remember that how we show up matters just as much as what we oppose. Thank you for being here and for walking this path with me.
Julie Bolejack, MBA
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Black History Fact:
In 1619, enslaved Africans were brought to what would become the United States—before the country existed, before democracy, before the Constitution.Black history does not enter America as a footnote. It enters at the beginning.
Before there was a United States, there was forced labor. Before liberty was written into founding documents, it was denied in practice. Black people were not added later—they were foundational.
This matters, because when something is foundational, it shapes everything built on top of it.
America was not born innocent and later corrupted. It was born conflicted—professing freedom while practicing domination. That contradiction has never been resolved; it has only been managed.
We like to imagine racism as an unfortunate detour in an otherwise noble story. Black history tells us it was baked into the blueprint.
And when we refuse to acknowledge that, we misunderstand the present.
We ask why inequality persists, why wealth gaps remain, why neighborhoods look the way they do, why schools are still segregated in practice if not by law. We pretend these outcomes appeared magically, as if history has no momentum.
But history has gravity.
The effects of centuries of stolen labor do not disappear because we passed a few laws or elected a few leaders. The consequences of exclusion do not vanish because we declared ourselves “post-racial.”
Black History Month is not about blame. It is about honesty.
You cannot fix what you refuse to name.
And naming the truth means admitting that many of today’s “problems” are actually legacies—unfinished business passed down through policy, culture, and silence.
Black history does not ask us to hate America. It asks us to stop lying about it.
Because real repair requires real reckoning.
Black History Month is often packaged as inspiration. Look how far we’ve come. Look at these heroes. Look at these triumphs.
But Black history is not a feel-good story. It is a survival story.
It is a record of what happens when a nation builds itself on stolen labor and then spends centuries trying to forget who did the building. It is the story of people who were never meant to survive—and did anyway.
Black history does not begin with chains, but American Black history does. And that matters, because systems do not vanish just because we stop talking about them. They evolve. They rebrand. They learn how to look polite.
Slavery did not end—it morphed. Into convict leasing. Into Jim Crow. Into redlining. Into mass incarceration. Into “random” traffic stops. Into schools without resources and neighborhoods without grocery stores.
This is not ancient history. This is infrastructure.
When people say, “Why can’t we move on?” what they usually mean is, “Why can’t you stop reminding me?” But history that is unresolved does not politely stay in the past. It shows up in outcomes. In statistics. In who lives and who dies younger.
Black history forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: progress in America has never been inevitable. It has been resisted at every step. Every inch gained was fought for by people willing to risk their lives, their livelihoods, and their children’s futures.
And the resistance never stopped.
Today’s attacks on voting rights, education, bodily autonomy, and protest are not new. They are familiar. They follow the same pattern: restrict, punish, erase, deny.
Black History Month is not about celebrating exceptions. It is about recognizing patterns.
It is not about proving that America can be good. It is about reckoning with the fact that America has often chosen not to be.
And yet—Black history is also a record of imagination. Of joy. Of creativity that flourished in the cracks of oppression. Music, language, art, food, humor—all forged in conditions that should have crushed the human spirit.
That is not a miracle. That is resilience.
This month, I am not here to offer comfort. I am here to offer truth. Because truth is the foundation of any justice worth having.
Black history does not ask us to admire it.
It asks us to learn from it.
My February newsletters will focus on Black History. I hope we all learn, reflect and take action to address ongoing racism and its effects.
Regards,
Julie Bolejack, MBA
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Well, folks — if you were still squinting to see whether the GOP had any shred of empathy left for ordinary Americans, the shutdown just switched the lights on and handed you binoculars. What we saw wasn’t pretty. Picture the Emperor — orange glow, long tie, and all — strutting through the ruins of a government he broke, shouting about “winning.” Spoiler: the only people winning are the ones who already own the board.
This shutdown didn’t just stall paychecks. It exposed something deeper, uglier, and wholly intentional. It revealed — again, for those in the back — that Trump and the Republican Party don’t give a damn about feeding children, protecting seniors, or making sure a single mother can afford insulin without auctioning a kidney. Their sympathy has the shelf life of unrefrigerated milk and the sincerity of a Mar-a-Lago “charity” check.
🧊 Starving the Poor, One Budget Stunt at a Time
When the shutdown hit, food assistance programs were the first to feel the frostbite. Millions of kids who rely on school meals, seniors who depend on SNAP, and working families already stretched thinner than the truth at a Trump rally — all left wondering if they’d be the next “acceptable casualties” of “fiscal responsibility.”
The GOP’s new motto might as well be: If you can’t eat, at least be patriotic while you starve. They’ll tell you “we can’t afford” to feed children — right before voting to extend tax loopholes for billionaires who name their yachts after Ayn Rand novels.
Meanwhile, the same politicians who clutch pearls about the sanctity of life seem weirdly unbothered by the sanctity of lunch.
💉 Healthcare: Just Another Word for Weakness
If the shutdown taught us anything, it’s that Republicans think healthcare is a privilege — like a country club membership or being born in the right zip code.
The Affordable Care Act subsidies? Frozen. Medicare claims? Delayed. Community clinics? Closed. But hey, the billionaire class stayed healthy — their portfolios fattened while actual Americans skipped prescriptions and rationed insulin like it’s 1930s bread lines all over again.
And still, the MAGA crowd cheers. They cheer while their own communities suffer, proudly holding signs that say “Keep government out of my Medicare.” It would be funny if it weren’t so horrifying — watching people defend the very system designed to grind them down.
💰 Power and the Rich: The Only Two Things They’ll Protect
If Trumpism has a moral compass, it points directly toward the nearest donor check. The party of “fiscal conservatism” managed to tank the economy while still giving tax cuts to billionaires, subsidies to fossil fuel companies, and defense contracts to whoever praises Dear Leader loudest.
And when ordinary Americans — teachers, nurses, postal workers — can’t pay rent because of their political theater, the GOP shrugs. After all, they don’t need votes from people who can’t afford gas; they’ve got super PACs for that.
Remember when they claimed to be the “party of the working man”? Turns out, they meant the man who works in private equity.
🏛 The Anti-American Party
Let’s call this what it is. When a government deliberately harms its own citizens to score political points, that’s not “patriotism.” That’s sabotage.
Republicans love to wrap themselves in the flag while dismantling everything that flag is supposed to represent: fairness, opportunity, compassion, democracy. They’ve replaced the stars and stripes with a corporate logo and a “Don’t Tread on Me” sticker made in China.
And yet — their followers stand in the cold, chanting “USA!” while the party they worship sells off the country piece by piece to the highest bidder.
👀 The Real Question
So here we are. The government reopened (for now), the billionaires got their tax breaks, and the rest of us are left with the bill — again.
But here’s the real question: Will their supporters finally see it?
Will they see the naked greed, the cruelty disguised as policy, the indifference to hunger, illness, and poverty? Will they notice that the so-called “patriots” in charge wouldn’t cross the street to save an American child from hunger unless there were a campaign donation waiting on the other side?
Or will they keep cheering, convinced that their suffering is “freedom,” that cruelty is “strength,” and that empathy is “socialism”?
Maybe it’ll take one more shutdown, one more empty fridge, one more denied insurance claim. Or maybe they’ll never see it — blinded by the orange glow reflecting off the gilded towers of the men who sold them a lie.
Either way, the rest of us saw it clear as day:
The shutdown stripped them bare — and there’s nothing underneath but greed, cowardice, and contempt for the very people they swore to serve.
If this doesn’t wake America up, nothing will — except maybe the sound of another “patriot” voting against their own dinner.
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Julie Bolejack, MBA
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