Reciprocity is the equal distribution of resources, privileges, and a state of care that strives to make individuals equals. The idea of “the village” is based upon the principles of reciprocity. And in my own aims towards being part of my community’s larger village, I aim to put forth my experiences, talents, and resources to help achieve such aims. And from a young age I have vivid memories of how volunteering my time and energy , which can require little or great involvement, was one of the first ways I became familiar with the idea of community. Now these instances of volunteering were not always formally organized in the way a food drive would be, sometimes it was helping a neighbor shovel themselves out of their driveway, watching their children as they went to run errands, pet sitting when they left town. While assisting those in our communities can feel “good”, what is truly is about is recognizing that we do not need to do a lot to make an impact. Today, I am a member of multiple mutual aid organizations in my community including the Crown Heights Care Collective and in the coming weeks we are hosting a free community event with a focus on how to collective care for and educate youth in our communities - working towards building the village that it takes. As someone who has been a childcare worker for the last decade, I have a deeply vested interest in how we support all children, not just our own or in our families. As James Baldwin (today is his 100th birthday, August 2nd) said, “the children are always ours, **every single one of them, all over the globe”** - and we must live as though this is true every single day. The collective is working towards alternative methods to policing, thinking broadly as to how we keep each other safe, especially in a predominately Black community in a nation that has a history of police brutality to Black people. I am also a volunteer with the Bowery Resident Committee here in New York City. I mainly provide meal service support at the various in-patient service homes throughout the boroughs, assisting in the serving of meals, preparation, and cleanup. This experience has introduced me to so many community members who play a major role in the greater unhoused community and the services that existed and those that are still being implemented to support unhoused New Yorkers. Outside of community service roles, I also am an active letter writer to incarcerated folks, especially those who are survivors of intimate partner violence. Taking the time to let folks know that there are people outside who care for, and are thinking of them when they may no longer have the support or family is of great importance to me. As a Black woman who worked tirelessly to see my way through an undergraduate degree, from an underserved community, I know what it is like to not know where to turn or to feel comfortable reaching out for support. Though in giving back, so many stigmas around reaching out for support have been dispelled for me, and I intend to assist others in feeling empowered in this process as well - because we can only support folks if we are aware of what they require. Again, while service can feel good, the goal is to not fill one’s own cup but to distribute what one has to support those who are still actively underserved.

When you are asked about the profession of Geography what typically comes to mind are physical maps, two-dimensional projections of the world we inhabit. While you’re not wrong in that thinking, it is also much more expansive than that. I often tell people that geography is how I understood my family’s history before I have the formal language to know it was human geography - and I would argue that is true for each and every one of us. We all come from somewhere, and our current lives are proof of histories that extend thousands of miles from where we find ourselves today. I know this is true for me because there are locations and sights I have visited only in family retellings, decades I have lived through images and songs, and ingenuity I have experienced via family recipes passed down generation-to-generation. This framing of my own ancestors relationship to the world is how I understand my history and myself - through oral histories of migration, some voluntary and others forced. It was the resiliency of those who came before me, traversing unfamiliar environments in times of uncertainty, and negotiations across space and time, which made a viable future for myself and I intend to honor those sacrifices by pursuing my dream of becoming a Geographer. How our relationships to space and time govern so many of the outcomes of our lives and what we will have access to has always fascinated me. This is of course influenced by external factors like advances in STEAM, and geography, especially as it relates to humans, is a combination of all of these sectors. We consider how technology changes the physical environment and how we can survey and further explore its possibilities from GPS systems to public transportation. The physical geography of land, including weather and climate, proximity to water, and features of land are all scientific aspects of the lived experience of a place. Art and aesthetics add color and symbolism into our world, bringing the imaginative aspects that sometimes go beyond the world we know and creative something bigger - new geographies in many ways. Art is also a marker of the current times, art styles can be specific to location as well as conflict. What a portrait can convey to an audience about grief, a symphony can strike within someone about love, or what a dance can show us about movement is almost always contingent upon one’s location and the external factors that have shaped an artist. Engineers must understand scientific and mathematic aspects of the land to best utilize its resources and reshape what is undisturbed. All of the sectors that comprise STEAM and make daily appearances in each of our lives, is a primary reason why I intend to pursue graduate studies in geography. Despite where we are from, we all have the capacity to continue learning, improving, and find ourselves in a different position - figuratively and literally, than where we began. Above all, geography is truly about the consideration of care with our environment, those within it, and ourselves.

As someone whose family has long dealt with the reality of the criminal legal system and incarceration, what has been most fruitful for my understanding of how it can change are the teachings of the Black Radical Tradition. Cedric Johnson brought light to this ideology with his text, Black Marxism (1983), but it was something that existed even long before then. It was informed by folks who had been bondage via chattel slavery, as well as by those who endured what eventually became incarceration as we know it today. Knowing that incarceration today is merely the afterlife of slavery, we must pose the question - how is any derivative of such a heinous system benefitting us today? Why are we so focused on forms of punishment rather than looking towards a system of rehabilitation and care? And how can we change the culture around this system and reject the status quo when so many private interests and obscene amounts of funding keep it around? Harm Reduction is necessary. For many folks, it is difficult to grasp alternatives to incarceration and policing without fear. Many will ask, well what happens to all of the bad people then, how will we keep our communities and families safe? When have these systems ever done any of those things? At Derek Chauvin’s sentencing his mother said, “When you sentence my son, you will also be sentencing me.” Did she not realize that when she spoke those words she directly pointed to the systemic work her son did for years separating folks from their own loved ones - why did it take these events happening for her to realize the gravity of incarceration? As I said before, these events are not isolated, they impact families, friends, communities, and more - so why don’t we treat them as such? Incarceration does not take into account the needs of the survivor and/or their family, nor those of the person sentenced - and in turn, who is being helped? Community Accountability is a crucial step in the process of rehabilitation after harm has taken place. But it can’t be done alone and requires a willingness to participate by all those involved, and the criminal legal system and those in power will never hold themselves accountable for the harm they’ve caused. So it must begin with us. If there were immediate reform actions to take, the first would be to eliminate contact services that require forms of payment. Access to loved ones shouldn’t be held behind a paywall, nor be limited to mere minutes. By withholding socialization, we further strip folks inside of their humanity. Secondly, the pandemic has further shown how little care is given to incarcerated folks as our jails and prisons quickly became epicenters with some of the highest death tolls in the world. Despite their status, they still should have access to medical care and livable conditions, including PPE, proper sanitation, and food. In the words of Angela Davis, “Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings.” And it is evident that change is necessary.

The melodious harmonies produced by the legendary Whitney Houston and Brandy seemingly float through the television screen as they sing ‘Impossible/It’s Possible’ from the 1997 film ‘Cinderella’. I hadn’t realized until later on in life, that this was my first experience with a Black princess. Having been born a few years after the film’s release, I was able to appreciate its artistry after its initial hype, especially as it wasn’t played nearly as much as the 1950 original. As a result of this, I always saw Princess Tiana from the 2009 film ‘The Princess and the Frog’, as my first Black princess. Though looking back, there are certainly aspects from both films which I do appreciate even today. The journeys these princesses take, and how they go from battling their everyday struggles on their own to having entire support systems by the end. Or the way these characters enter institutions they’d never historically been able to access - even becoming princesses, who will likely go on to become queens. And most of all, Black girls achieving happy endings, in spite of all those who’d hoped they’d never enjoy the fruits of their labor. Dreams do come true. Brandy’s Cinderella and Princess Tiana are truly one in the same. Knowing what I do now, I love both of these films for different reasons. This is because they were important to me at different periods of my life - so I have to give the top spot to both of them. You might say it’s impossible, but for a moment let it be possible - as Cinderella and her Fairy Godmother would say, “Impossible things are happening everyday.”