Take a Walk. Join a Movement.
“Why are black women dying faster and at higher rates than any other group of people in America from preventable obesity-related diseases?” GirlTrek co-founders Vanessa Garrison and T. Morgan Dixon ask in their inspirational and action-oriented TED Talk, “The Trauma of Systematic Racism is Killing Black Women. A First Step Toward Change…”
Vanessa’s grandmother died from a heart attack at the young age of 66, when Vanessa was 13. Throughout her life, Vanessa’s grandmother tirelessly cared for 11 children, many more grandchildren, and her entire community. However, she sacrificed her own health in the process, struggling with her weight and with chronic illnesses. Vanessa began to notice a pattern in her family when two of her aunts passed away at the ages of 55 and 63 from what could have been preventable causes. Calculating the average life expectancy of women in her family, Vanessa was astonished to discover that her female relatives lived to be only 65. The average life expectancy in the United States is 79.
Meanwhile, 53 percent of black women are also obese, and 82 percent are over a healthy weight. Half of black girls will get diabetes if they do not change their diets. Every day in America, 137 black women die from heart disease, a preventable illness.
“And no one is talking about it,” Vanessa says matter-of-factly.
Determined to change these statistics, Vanessa and her friend Morgan founded GirlTrek, now the largest public health nonprofit for African-American women and girls in the United States. With GirlTrek, women sign a pledge to walk for just 30 minutes per day, five days per week. Through neighborhood walking programs, GirlTrek inspires women to take a first step towards healthier lives, families, and communities.
While these health statistics are an apparent surface issue for black women, Vanessa and Morgan realize that there are deeper problems at play. Health and weight problems are a symptom of generations of systemic racism, from divestment in schools and predatory housing prices to mass incarceration and a cocaine epidemic. Obesity and inactivity stem from deeper concerns about community safety and historical trauma. As a result, GirlTrek goes beyond a fitness-only approach to provide black women with a strong community support system as well as training for organizing and problem-solving.
“For black women whose bodies are buckling under the weight of systems never designed to support them, GirlTrek is a lifeline,” Vanessa promises.
Vanessa believes that the solution to the problems faced by black women must be grounded in women’s own communities. Following the example of generations of black women, GirlTrek embraces walking as the way to empower women and create lasting change, and it makes use of grapevine techniques of information-sharing that have been at play in the successful movements of the past. On the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman and other conductors walked slaves to freedom through a network of secret routes and safe houses. In the 1950s Montgomery Bus Boycott, walking was the alternate form of transportation through which African-Americans in Montgomery, Alabama, were able to fulfill the pledge, “We will not ride.”
“From Harriet Tubman to the women in Montgomery, when black women walk, things change,” Morgan declares.
GirlTrek asserts that walking is the single most powerful thing a woman can do for her body. But the positive impact of walking isn’t only physical.
“Once walking, those women get to organizing — first their families and then their communities — to walk and solve problems together,” Vanessa observes in the TED Talk. “They walk and notice the abandoned building, they walk and notice the lack of sidewalks, the lack of green space… and they say, ‘No More.’”
Susie Page, a Philadelphia resident and member of GirlTrek’s Team Nazarene, is an example of Vanessa’s words in action. During Team Nazarene’s walks in their North Philadelphia neighborhood, Susie and the team noticed that an abandoned building and parking lot near their local church was covered with graffiti and had become a dumping ground for old furniture, appliances, and trash.
“We kept calling the city, but they never did anything,” Susie remarked in an interview with online publication Philly Powered.
Led by Susie, Team Nazarene decided to take charge and organize a cleanup of the neighborhood eyesore. Susie and the team continue to walk the neighborhood year-round, monitoring the abandoned lot that they cleaned and looking out for other neighborhood spots in need of attention.
“I can’t help but wonder what would happen if there were groups of women walking on Trayvon’s block [the day he died], or what would happen in the South Side of Chicago every day if there were groups of women and mothers and aunts and cousins walking, or along the polluted rivers of Flint, Michigan,” Morgan says in the TED talk, imagining the potential impact of walking. “I believe that walking can transform our communities, because it’s already starting to.”
In order to enact the kind of change envisioned by GirlTrek, Vanessa and Morgan welcome all people to join GirlTrek’s mission of promoting individual and community health. Walking is affordable and accessible, and it’s a great place to start for anyone regardless of their baseline fitness level.
The Project for Public Spaces concurs: “Walking is for everyone — no matter if you live in an inner city neighborhood or a suburb without sidewalks or a rural community, no matter whether you are out of shape or a youngster or roll in a wheelchair.”
The founders encourage integrating walking into daily life, from running errands to taking a break from work, but they recognize that walkability is a luxury for many. As a result, they advocate for deliberate urban planning that makes walking a safer and more convenient option for more people.
As of 2018, GirlTrek has more than 100,000 neighborhood walkers, with the goal of getting one million people in the 50 most vulnerable communities in the United States to sign the pledge to move. In often-matriarchal African-American families, mobilizing women to get moving also mobilizes their families. All of these people walking together has the power to uplift entire communities.
“We’re walking so we can be healthy enough to stand on the front lines for change in our communities,” Vanessa and Morgan assert in the talk.
The GirlTrek guidebook, aptly named Harriet’s Handbook, makes clear the interconnectedness of walking, self-care, and changing the world, quoting American writer Audre Lorde: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence; it is self-preservation. And that is an act of political warfare.”
GirlTrek is just one of the movements that demonstrates the power of pedestrians in igniting social change. While individual pedestrians do have an impact when they walk alone, the act of people walking together as a unified group magnifies the impact of each individual’s steps. So, if there’s something about your world that you think needs to be changed, don’t hesitate to take the first step. You never know how many people might follow.
Want to join me in walking for a better world? Email me at crc107@georgetown.eduor connect with me on LinkedIn. To read more about how you can change the world by walking, check out my latest book It Starts with a Step on Amazon.
