The work our grandparents began and could not finish.
My name is Rasheid Scarlett. I am building NewBWS because the work our grandparents started is not finished.
Richard Allen and Absalom Jones founded the Free African Society in 1787. Mary Church Terrell co-founded the National Association of Colored Women in 1896 and the NAACP in 1909. The men who would become the 100 Black Men of America sat down together in 1963. Every generation built what its moment required. Greenwood proved what was possible when Black people owned the ground beneath their work. In 1921, an eighteen-hour mob proved how vulnerable owned ground could be when the ground was physical.
A community-owned digital network cannot be burned. The code is ours. The data is ours. The feed serves us — not a shareholder, not an algorithm tuned for someone else’s ad revenue, not a future acquirer.
I am not building a product. I am building an institution. I have structured it so it cannot be sold against you, advertised on, or redirected by any amount of capital that might come later. Those protections are written into the company’s legal DNA. They cannot be unwritten.
If you believe this community already has the answer — and it does — you are not a customer of NewBWS. You are the village. You are the inheritance.
On Juneteenth 2026, the door opens. I hope your name is among the first inside it.