4 Pillows
Principles At Work
At Sankofa Intent, our principles are more than ideals—they are lived practices that guide every step we take. We operate with cultural integrity, honoring ancestral wisdom as a foundation for modern solutions. We act with purpose, ensuring our efforts are intentional and rooted in impact. We empower through knowledge, believing that education and self-awareness are keys to transformation. We center community in all we do, building together, not alone. We innovate by blending tradition with creativity, and we remain resilient—committed to healing, restoration, and long-term change. These principles shape our work, our partnerships, and our purpose.
Rebuilding Family Infrastructure
Cultivated Ignorance is the new enslaver in the African American community in 2018
As I write this great truth concerning apathetic African American Leadership, it comes with great pain. As a child, I learned early in life everything has a price. As an Adult male and father, I understand the power of those words. Unfortunately, American leadership has failed to realize or cultivate this life principle. African American Leadership has been unable to understand “no one is coming to save us.”
Since the end of the Civil Right era, the African American community has regressed into a sorry state of social, civic, and economic co-dependency. The African American Religious, educational, and Political leadership ignorance are holistically killing the soul of the African American community. Before the post-Civil Rights era, we had a common philosophy of one love regardless of our economic status as individuals. Since then, we have regressed holistically into a state of profound Ignorance perpetuated by misguided African American Leadership. Today, a dollar lasts for 30 minutes in our community. Our families are broken and sick holistically. Our children don’t trust us. Most AA Adult men can’t read at a sixth-grade level or have empathy for family and community. Black Leadership is dead at the end of the Civil Rights era. The difference between a good community and a great community is Leadership.
Today, more than ever, Leadership is required in the African American community. The African American community collectively suffers not because of racism, poverty, or crime. The primary reason is self-inflicted Ignorance. I respect the African American religious, educational, and political leadership but hold them accountable overall for the blighted economic condition in the urban core. For more than 50 years, the Black Leadership has betrayed the African American community. Decreasing the pathology in North Jacksonville cannot be achieved by the present African American Leadership, especially the Faith-based, educational, and political Leadership. The violent crime increase directly correlates with misguided leadership failure to understand and implement Community Engagement 101. No longer can the African American community allow leadership folly, religious fanaticism, and political cronyism to misdirect our resolve. The only way to improve the blighted conditions of so many in the Urban Core requires new Leadership. Open-minded cohesive Leadership, who are readers, live in the community and are committed to our resolve.
The African American Economic Recovery Think Tank has developed a holistic economic roadmap impacting the Quality of Life in the urban core throughout Jacksonville North Bank. The AAERTT understands the methodology needed to affect these communities. Further, AAERTT knows how to build a competent goal-driven team to achieve that strategy. AAERTT has four implementation components required to increase the Quality of Life index by 20 to 30 percent within three years in North Jacksonville.
Afrocentric Education
Perry, author of “Push Has Come to Shove: Getting Our Kids, the Education They Deserve – Even If It Means Picking a Fight,” said teachers’ unions control the length of the school year and school days and how educators are evaluated, which puts them in control of the entire industry. Unfortunately, this allows too many children to slip through the cracks.
Perry, the founder of Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, Conn., greets every child at the front door daily and is smart enough to know that education does not happen in a vacuum. Students must be motivated and prepared to learn, and teachers must have high expectations for every child. At the very least, parents must also be advocates for their children, and all of these entities must work in tandem.
To be clear, Perry, 42, is a Democrat. He grew up poor. He says he will vote for President Barack Obama again, although he is critical of Obama’s educational reforms.
Schools are failing because a majority of the funding – in some cases, up to 80% – is tied up in the salaries and benefits of current and retired employees. He also said kids do not spend enough time in school. “We must change this perception that kids should spend their summers playing all day. Puppies don’t play all day. There’s no justification for short days and long summers,” Perry said.
Capital Preparatory Magnet School is considered one of the best high schools in the nation, with a zero dropout rate. It has sent 100% of its primarily low seniors- income, minority, first-generation high school graduates, to four-year colleges every year since 2004.
Hartford is similar to Milwaukee in that it has one of the lowest-performing districts in Connecticut, and the state has one of the most significant achievement gaps between black and white students in the nation. However, Perry’s school is no different from any other successful school in the country because it stresses high expectations for everyone and increased accountability.
But his school is different in some ways. For one, the school is year-round. The 2012-’13 school year started Thursday, and kids go to school 203 days out of the year and spend eight hours a day in school. Compare that with most traditional Milwaukee Public Schools, in which the students attend school 180 days out of the year and spend about seven hours or less in school.
“When you factor in lunch and gym at some schools, you have to subtract another 90 minutes of actual in-class time,” Perry said.
MPS Superintendent Gregory Thornton told me earlier this year that the district needs to extend the school day and year to close the reading and math gaps.
Put, when kids are not in school, they are falling behind. I don’t buy the idea that kids will get bored in school if the school day is lengthened. The best schools already have longer school days and a more extended school year. The best teachers know how to use that time to make school more engaging and fun.
Perry said parent involvement is overrated. He said the best students have something inside of them that motivates them regardless of who their parents are. While it breaks his heart when parents are not there to support their children, educators can’t worry about that. Instead, he tells his children to focus on what they do best and change what they can.
Saying that a child can’t learn because they are black, Hispanic, poor, or comes from a single-parent home is racist, Perry said. I’d have to agree with that.
And this: If schools demand the best out of their kids, chances are they will get the best.
Preventive Health
25 Steps to Help Curb Health Problems
By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Medical News Reviewed By Louise Chang, MD, on Wednesday, May 17, 2006
May 17, 2006 – The Partnership for Prevention has released a report listing the top 25 preventive health services.
The report “Priorities for America’s Health: Capitalizing on Life-Saving, Cost-Effective Preventive Strategies” was funded by the CDC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
“Currently, about 95% of health care dollars in the United States is spent on treating diseases, with relatively little attention paid to preventing diseases, which should be a national priority,” states former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher, MD, Ph.D., in a Partnership for Prevention news release.
“These are the preventive health services that offer the biggest bang for the buck,” says Satcher, who chaired the panel that drafted the list.
List of Top 25 Preventive Health Services
Here is the report’s list of the top 25 preventive health services, along with the score assigned by the panel (with 10 being the highest score).
The list starts with the most highly rated services, but many benefits had tied scores. For instance, three services earned the top 10; six received the second-place score of eight. To compare rankings, could you check the services’ scores? • Discussing daily aspirin use in men aged 40 and older, women aged 50 and older, and others at increased risk for heart disease to help prevent cardiovascular events such as heart attack and stroke: 10 • Childhood immunizations: 10 • Screening adults for tobacco use and providing brief counseling to help them quit using tobacco: 10 • Colorectal cancer screening among adults aged 50 and older: 8 • Measuring blood pressure in all adults and using high blood pressure medicines to prevent cardiovascular disease: 8 • Influenza immunization for adults aged 50 and older: 8 • Pneumococcal vaccination for people aged 65 and older: 8 • Screening adults about alcohol use and providing brief counseling with follow-up: 8 • Vision screening for adults aged 65 and older: 8 • Cervical cancer screening (Pap smears) among women who have been sexually active: 7 • Cholesterol screening and lipid-lowering drugs, if needed, for men aged 35 and older, women aged 45 and older with other risk factors for coronary heart disease: 7 • Breast cancer screening for females aged 50 and older; discussions and options to start screening at age 40-49: 6 • Screening sexually active women under 25 years old for chlamydia, the most common sexually transmitted bacterial disease in the U.S.: 6 • Counseling adolescent and adult females to use calcium supplements to prevent fractures: 6 • Vision screening in children less than 5 years old: 6
• Folic acid supplementation to help prevent congenital disabilities: 5 • Obesity screening: 5 • Depression screening: 4 • Hearing screening: 4 • Injury prevention counseling: 4 • Osteoporosis screening: 4 • Cholesterol screening for high-risk adults: 2 • Diabetes screening: 2 • Diet advice: 2 • Tetanus-diphtheria booster vaccination: 2
About the List
A 24-member panel of experts created the list. Those experts came from health insurance plans, an employer group, academia, clinical practice, and government health agencies.
The panel created the list and scores based on two factors: • Disease, injury, and premature death that would be prevented if the service was delivered at recommended intervals over a lifetime. • Cost-effectiveness.
The Partnership for Prevention is a national, nonprofit organization. Its members include several state health departments, health agencies (including the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association, and March of Dimes), and drug and insurance companies.
SOURCES: Partnership for Prevention, “Priorities for America’s Health: Capitalizing on Life-Saving, Cost-Effective Preventive Services.” Partnership for Prevention: “Members of Partnership for Prevention.” News release, Partnership for Prevention.
Collective Economics
At Sankofa Intent, we champion Collective Economics as a powerful pathway to rebuild wealth, ownership, and self-determination within the African American community. Rooted in the principle of Ujamaa—cooperative economics—we focus on pooling resources, sharing knowledge, and supporting Black-owned businesses and initiatives. Our plan includes creating community investment circles, rotating savings systems, and co-owned ventures that allow individuals to participate in group economics with shared risk and shared reward. Through education, transparency, and unity, we aim to shift our community from consumers to collective investors, builders, and owners—laying the foundation for lasting economic empowerment.
“If we want real power, we must own what we build.”
Sankofa Intent believes that true liberation starts with economic ownership. Collective Economics means pooling our resources, talents, and knowledge to build businesses, invest in our neighborhoods, and circulate Black dollars where they matter most — in our own communities.
We move beyond consumerism into cooperative wealth-building. From launching community co-ops to buying property together, we are creating economic ecosystems that serve us — not exploit us. By teaching entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and group investment strategies, we equip our people to become owners, not just workers.
We’re not asking for a seat at someone else’s table. We’re building our own.
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