Wellness Inc. Janet Robinson Flint Magazine Interview with Black Women

Every place I went was fun. The most recent places I went were Zanzibar and Tanzania. I went on a safari to a place called Arusha. I got a great shot of the lion coming towards me. I was in a jeep. Since I ride Jeeps, I now call my Jeep “City Girl.” Because she is nothing compared to the jeep we used on safari.

One of my favorite heroes is Ida B. Wells. One is that she said she has to have a gun in her house. The world we live in is not a nonviolent world. She loves the fact that she was a journalist. She traveled a lot. She was married and had her family. She started her activism because she bought train tickets to take her family from one place to another, but she was kicked off the train because of racism. So she thought, “Oh, this isn’t going to work,” and sued her railroad, and just created her own activist life.

I love being a gourmet. I love great food and great conversation. She was one of six women to start Black Women for Wellness. Four of the six were vegetarian and two were not. So when you start an organization with a group of women, you end up spending a lot of time eating together. We were always trying to find the sweet spot where everyone was happy with the food. That was the beginning of Kitchen Diva. And now I’m ready to go internationally with it! In 2021, we held Kitchen Diva in Ghana. And Charity, our program manager, is going to South Africa this year. So we’re planning on doing that there. And South African food is surprisingly out of chain stores. It’s as if the world has come together for South Africa’s food scene.

Friday? What a thought! Friday afternoons are a time for policymakers to meet and discuss policy. I actually had to laugh the other day because it was 30 minutes on my schedule. The meeting never lasted more than 30 minutes. But I enjoy the people I work with and enjoy chatting with them about everything beyond policy. And before the pandemic, you could find me dancing salsa at night. There used to be a club called Mama Juana’s in Cahuenga, North Hollywood. We just skied there and bought some food, but it was a Friday night.

You can only have one! It has to be a dinner party. I would love to see a conversation between my mother and Malcolm X. Let’s see how they go back and forth. Of course my father will be there too. [They’d chat about] Mixing the politics of the time with the politics of older black men and older black women. That would be fascinating.

We talk about how reproductive justice is the interplay of all the factors we use to decide whether to have a child. Do you have enough money? Do you live in the right environment? How is work? Address any system challenge. But then I thought about this panel, about the policy makers, about the midwives of Kindred Space. My daughter recently had a baby and went to Kindred Spaces LA for her prenatal care. They had a garden. Even as I picked vegetables for kale collards, I was able to hear about the visit. And I thought: This is how people receive prenatal care. And we also have the political will. Barbara Ferrer came to Los Angeles and said, “We’re going to attack this issue of maternal and infant mortality from a public health perspective.” I’m with you too! We are in a position to make meaningful change. We have public health officials, we have people in elected office, we have community-based organizations, we have midwives, we have pregnant women. For us, progress toward reproductive justice will involve all of these factors coming together.