One of the things that I like about blogs is the level of interaction a writer has with her readers.
That being said.
What do you want me to write about?
More about hip hop or less. Less about writers.
More of my BBC antics. Less about BL?
More about cultural topics like the N-word?
Fewer rants about being angry and a minority?
Lemme know. I have a couple of ideas up my sleeve and I want your input?
As what you all say will effect the priority in which I post?
~m.dot.
Thats it. Harlem is about to be the new East Village.The scene might have been typical at any other university. But at City College’s 36-acre campus, it was an unusual sight, as students moved into the college’s new $56 million dorm building for the first time yesterday. The building, called the Towers at the City College of New York, is a beige-brick, ultramodern complex at West 130th Street and St. Nicholas Terrace. There are 164 apartments to house 600 students and faculty members.Don't get me wrong. I understand that "Progress" is inevitable.
What's more, you could end up working or studying in what will take their place in Manhattanville: nearly 7 million square feet of offices, research space, and housing for Columbia University. With scant wiggle room at its main Morningside Heights campus or uptown medical center, Columbia wants to move onto 18 acres roughly north of 125th Street and just east of Twelfth Avenue. To do it, the state's oldest college is asking the city for a special rezoning, scooping up parcels of land, and preparing to ask the state to invoke eminent domain if necessary.
Needless to say, not everyone in the area is thrilled with the idea. Residents, business owners, and some Columbia students have banded together to oppose the plan. The local community board is pushing an alternative development scheme. Civil liberties lawyer Norman Siegel has signed on to resist eminent domain. A sign on a door in the area reads, "Dear Columbia: Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself."
In the constant evolution of New York neighborhoods, this sort of fight isn't anything new. And for Columbia especially, this is not a first. Thirty-eight years ago, the university's bid to expand into Morningside Park�coupled with outrage over the school's military contracts�touched off days off unrest on campus in which students occupied five buildings and, in some cases, clashed violently with cops. After the bloodshed, that expansion plan died. Columbia has pursued projects in the years since, but none were as ambitious as the vision for Manhattanville.
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“The kids ain’t gonna leave, I don’t care how many tickets the cops write,” said Laura Strother, 22, who had driven from Waynesville, a tiny outlying town with an odoriferous paper mill, she said. She was trolling Patton that weekend in her 2001 black Mustang — nicknamed Bullitt, after a favorite movie. Her cruising companion, Kelly Edwards, 17, also of Waynesville, who wore a tiny rhinestone stud in her nose, agreed: “If you take this away, then nobody has anything to do.”
For some teenagers on this side of town, cruising becomes a chance to explore, and define, their budding identities. Will Thompson and his friends proudly fly Confederate battle flags
— “They say ‘Heritage, Not Hate,’ ” Will emphasized — and crank up old Conway Twitty albums on the car stereo while cruising Patton. Most nights, they set up lawn chairs that teeter in the bed of their pickups.
“We’re not rednecks,” Will joked. “We’re Appalachian-Americans.”
The Dixie vibe is readily apparent on Patton Avenue in the form of rebel-flag bumper stickers and decals. Still, it’s hardly universal. Many of the teenagers would not seem out of place in Santa Monica, Calif., with their Abercrombie & Fitch meets “The O.C.” look — baggy jeans, flip-flops, oversize surfer-style shirts.
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One man's heritage is another mans hate.
Thats some deep sh*t to being a week thinking about.
How was your weekend la familia de la blog.
I have an interview with an artist friend in the works.
What have you all been working on.
By the way. I hate when my innernet service gets interrupted.
Other than that. Life is bien!
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So, Wil-E-Coyote, the resident Scorpian Artistic-Know-it-All says I have a bit of Negro ADD. Its true. But my brand of ADD is special because I can have a conversation about three things at once AND keep track of that sh*t.
That's talent fam.
I mention this because I started this post, a few weeks ago.
And in browsing drafts of old post I realize that I was working on this, yet I never posted it. Yall know I am allways interested in issues relating to women & money, men & money, Sex & money, gender and money.
You add somthing to the cream and I will talk about it.
So this post is about how model minorties are making it up the ladder and saying f*ck it rather than toil, becuase that sh*t is too painful. It certainly gave ME something to think about.
Enjoy!
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There are a couple of articles out about professional model minorities and how they faring in a cash rules society. The first article is from the New York Times. It is about what Wall street is doing to keep women. Women are leaving for a variety of reasons. Among them are the fact that:
Investment banks and brokerage firms typically lose women when they are in their 30’s, executives say. Expected to ramp up to reach coveted managing director jobs, many women feel that midlevel jobs offer them little while demanding a lot. Pulled to have children and pushed by a less-than-rewarding workplace and often uninspired midlevel management, they leave.Only a substanial CHANGE in the way Big Law Firm, Wall Street Firm, Big Banking is structured will women be able to remain at the firms after 32. Companies are SIMPLY UNWILLING to change the power dynamic to reflect the fact that Firms are doin' little work shops here and there. But the bottom line is this. Both the egg and daycare situation need to be addressed.
What will Wall Street think of next?
Plus, there are economic incentives. In 2006 the gay community reached an estimated buying power of $641 billion, with 69% of gay people fiercely loyal to companies with progressive work policies, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy organization. "If the business world didn't reach out to the GLBT community, years from now the result would be staggering—not only to the U.S. economy, but to the global economy," says PwC GLBT Strategy Leader Matt Milligan.
I remember when Sway told me that there are these two cats from Atlanta that were dope.
I was like, them dudes rappin' in the pool hall in they video. (I had a self admitted East Coast Bias back then).
He was like, yeah, OutKast.
I responded, they cool. Its catchy, but I couldn't see myself bumping it in my walkman.
Then the album came out.
Get Up and Git Out was some righteous upliftment.
Crumblin' Erb was some mellow get right music.
Then there came Hootie Hoo and I figgered, aight, these nigg*s is cool.
Fast foward. Two years later, I was messing with this cat that went to Hampton. Mike C.
Mike rocked for OutKast. That was the only group he talked about on our winter break. OutKast this, Dungeon Family that.
So, I was compelled to get Atliens when it came out.
So when Atliens came out I was open.
How could you not be sprung off a group who starts off a song with,
I came into this world high as a bird
From second hand cocain powder
i know it sounds absurd
I never tooted but its in my veins While the rest of the country bungies off bridges
Without no snap back
and bitches they say they need that
To shake they fannies in the ass clubs
they go the other route turn each other out burn each other out
where a bonified nigga like me can't even get no back rub these days
ain't that bleak on they part
but let me hold it down cause they shut you down when you speak from your heart
now that's hard while we rantin and ravin bout gats nigga they made them gats they got some shit that'll blow out our backs from where they stay at
This makes me feel like a failure.
Crime is so big in Oakland, that the New York Times is talking about the way that they are dealing with it.
Apparently, the police have compiled a list of recently parollees and are inviting them in for "conversations". The idea is to make folks aware of the resources available and to let them know if they commit a crime, they are going STRAIGHT back to jail.
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There are constitutional issues that arise when someone is taken down to the police station for a conversation.
I see the PD's sentiment interms of reducing the number repeat offenders.
However, it comes across as too little too late.
When folks was considering three strikes, they did not take into account the psychological affect it would have on people serving time and on the overall cultures perception of prison.
Prison has become an accepted part of the lives of many brown and black men.
Now po-po wanna "intervene".
That sh*t is damn near a perverted rights of passage for fools.
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I have been ranting and raving about Chango's Fire for the last two weeks.
It is an imaginative book about gentrification in Harlem.
About burned buildings in the Bronx.
About Dutch, Dominican, Russian and Puerto Rican immigrants.
About what it means to have your home in the hood.
A place that looks like nothing, and you flip it into something, because that is all you have at the moment.
Ernesto is that Dude.
I present to you.
Chango's Fire.
Spanish Harlem was worthless property in the seventies and early eighties. Many property owners burned their own buildings down and handed the new immigrants a neighborhood filled with hollow walls and vacant lots. Urban Swiss Cheese. The city would then place many of us in the projects creating Latino reservations. These city blocks, full of project buildings on each corner, were built not so much to house us as to corral us. To keep us in one place. We were slowly but surly relocated, as many who owned real estate burned the neighborhood, collected the insurance, sat on the dilapidated property and waited for better days.
Today, the wait is over, Spanish Harlems burned out buildings are gold mines. Many of the same landlords who bruned their tenements are now rebuilding. Empowerment zoning has changed the face of the neighborhood. Chain store rise like monsters from a lake. Gap. Starbucks. Blockbuster Video. Old Navy. Like the new Belin, El Barrio is being rebuilt from the ashes. THe rents are absurdly high, and it breaks my heart, because Spanish Harlem had allways been the springboard.A place where immigrants came to better themselves and, when they had reached the next plateau, they'd leave traces of their culture, a bit of themselves behind, and move on. A melting pot pf past successs stprioes- Dutch, Jews, Irish, Italians.
I know all neighborhoods must change, but if you are Puerto Rican and need to learn where you came from and who you are, you need to start in Spanish Harlem. The spiritual landmarks are still here in El Barrio. Helens people don't seem to have mystical places like ours. They don't have a sacred Harlem, an East L.L., a South Central. They don't have a poor holy place that speaks to your soul, vibrant streets that tell you about those that came before you.All they have are small towns that either die or stay the same. Small towns that they don't care to romanticize. Small towns that they try and kill inside themseleves when they leave for New York City or whereever and never look back. __________________
So I have been thinking of moving toward taking about the economic effects of issues that we discuss here on mm. So I bring you, the economic effects of crack. We often do the moral. But rarely do we do the economic. I find that the economic anlysis provides a more nuanced view of an issue.
Even though they outta stock. These is hella fresh.
Talk about affirming something positive.
From 10 deep mens T's.
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Here at Model Minority, we go from hood books to super woman stamps and round it out w/ photos of Evander Old @ss Holyfield, who in fact won last night. We can't be serious all time. Enjoy the post!
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Get 'em here!
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You best- protect your- er- head.
