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2016 Emerging Leaders Awards and Gala

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Tonight’s episode of the Real Housewives of Atlanta was fluff, as usual, but there were also serious undertones that revolved around Phaedra. The episode opens with Phaedra chatting with her mentor, congresswoman Frederica Wilson. Their conversation follows news of another unarmed black man being shot, so Phaedra is motivated to start organizing in the name of her non-profit organization aimed at saving the lives of African-American men and boys. What came out of this conversation is that Phaedra plans to make an appearance at the Democratic National Convention to set things in motion. Phaedra invited her girl Porsha to the convention. Remember, Porsha’s grandfather was Hosea Williams, for the umpteenth reminder, so this is supposed to be up her alley. Whatevs. Hopefully Porsha knows by now that the Underground Railroad isn’t a literally a railroad, and then we’ll talk about Civil Rights work. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

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Kenya’s man drama takes center stage again. This time we find her making birthday preparations for Matt. She plans to surprise him with a Gucci cake and a couples ATV riding session with Kandi and Todd, and RL (from Next) and his girlfriend in tow. Her reasoning for making the ATV day all about couples is that she and Matt could benefit from time with other couples, aka they’re having issues again.

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Sheree’s situation this episode goes in tandem with Phaedra’s activism interests. Basically, Sheree’s son had a run-in with the police. Apparently they pulled him over with pot in the car. She let him have it for making dumb decisions and reminded him that he better stop doing stupid stuff, especially because he is a Black young man. That could have ended terribly for him, so hopefully he got the message.

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Speaking of messages, Phaedra made it to Philly with Porsha and participated in a gun violence prevention roundtable. Frederica Wilson was also on the panel and they were discussing solutions to unnecessary police force and gun violence in general and it was actually nice to see a storyline of substance play out on this show in particular. This is an important dialogue to be had on a mainstream cable network, especially since RHOA is one of the Bravo’s most watched shows.

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Now back to Kenya’s drama…

Today is the day for their ATV date. We find Kenya and her girlfriend filling in for Matt, Todd and Kandi, and RL from Next and his girl, as promised, all celebrating Matt’s birthday. Yeah, you read correctly, Kenya’s girlfriend is filling in for Matt. She explained Matt’s absence by saying that Matt decided to stay in Cali with his family for his birthday, and that this was supposed to be a surprise. They went ahead with ATV fun anyway, but eventually Kandi tried to get the real out of Kenya about Matt’s absence. Kenya claimed they were “working things out.” Still vague, but uh…mmmkay. We all know by now that Matt has a temper. Maybe it was best that he stayed with his family for his birthday, but this whole situation is just really fishy, but that’s not new given the fact that we’re dealing with Kenya.

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The episode ends with Phaedra still in Philly, on her way to visit Apollo in prison, and then we revisit the bomb situation. Remember when that crazy ex-client of Phaedra’s showed up at her office with a grenade and threatened to blow up her building? We know how that ended by now, because it was all over the news, but seeing their reactions compounds the seriousness of the matter even more. Luckily Phaedra wasn’t hurt and she’ll live to bring us more shady shenanigans.

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