The Coming Jobless Society

Children protest the closure of a jail in Lansing, Michigan.

It is only right that I am drawn to learning about the ascension
and decline of civilizations, as a I saw my community
Oakland, California, and my family, in many ways,
destroyed by the crack epidemic and the war on
drugs in the 1980's.

What as happened to post industrial to Detroit,
Oakland, Philly, Newark, Los Angeles and Baltimore, is
the closest thing to the decline of civilization I have seen,
in my short lifetime.

Last week I spent much of my time writing about pop culture,
Drake, Black women, which is what I do. I write critically
about race, class and power. Imus, The Duke rape case,
Nelly, Oscar Grant, Rihanna, Slavery, Capitalism and what
the life of being a writer looks and feels like. Then, after reading
one book it felt like what I was writing about was pointless.

As you can guess this isn't a good moment for a writer, in
fact, it felt quite awful.

Artist make art, regardless of whether they are being paid for it. ~Rafi Kam.

I am an impressionable reader. So last month, when I noticed
that Ta-Nehisi was reading about The Civil War, I wanted to
start reading about the civil war. It seemed as if, given the
fact that Obama is president, and that we are in the midst
of a huge change, that it would be helpful to read and learn
more about our countries origins.

I came across a book, The Founding Brothers, which
was fascinating because it talked about the conversations
that the founding fathers, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin,
had about slavery, emancipation the American Revolution.
(I will talk more about this book in a later post, as it deserves it.)

I needed to mention The Founding Brothers because,
a couple weeks later, I was in Birkhold's car, I saw, a book
on the seat and began to read it. You know the seven stages
of grief?

I think I experienced a remixed version of it after reading this book. I was
excited, then angry, then sad, then cynical, then I accepted it.

A few more days passed and I was ready to make moves. It also
helped that I read Gramsci's wiki entry. Fortunately, Gramsci
makes it clear that culture is important, just as important as politics,
because it is through culture that we decide and reaffirm what is
normal. Gramsci also believes that we need organic intellectuals.
After I read that, I did the robot.

The book that, forced me to question it all is American Revolution:
Notes from a Negro Workers Note Book. It's central argument is
that automation will make our society a jobless society, and as a
result we will have to organize our society into one which is based
our needs instead of our wants. A year ago, I would have thought
this book was far fetched and or outdated, just based on the title.

I would have thought this book was far fetched if I haven't been a
waitress for the last month, the only waitress in a white restaurant
largely managed by, ran by and servicing working class white folks.
Most of my exposure to white folks has been middle class, affluent, and
the elite. So working with the working class has forced me to rethink
work, race, assimilation and American social progress.

I would have thought this book was far fetched if I didn't have two
Black men, to good family men in my family, who have felonies.
This means that every time they apply for a job that they are
qualified for, more than likely they will not get it because the legal
system requires for them to be branded as felons, felon's for life,
even IF they have paid their debt to society, even if they have reformed,
even if they infraction occurred almost twenty years ago.

I would have thought this book was far fetched, if I hadn't been laid off
from an awesome job last year. The job was with an organization that
served high achieving low income kids. I still remember the irony
washing over me when I realized that as a young person I was a
high achieving low income kid. Given that, I asked myself, why couldn't
they figure out a way for me to remain and make a contribution?

I would have thought this book was far fetched if I hadn't been denied
my unemployment extension last year. I had a hearing and everything.
The judge, bless his heart, told me that if it were up to him, that he
would grant it to me, based on my argument. But according to
California legislation, an employee has to earn 40 times her weekly
base salary in order to qualify for an extension, which meant that I
would had to have earned 80K to get an extension. Right? right.
I would have thought this book was far fetched if my father, a resident of
California moved to Las Vegas last month, after coming to California
in 1970 after the Air Force, because it became clear to him that that state
is only for the affluent and the people, mainly hardworking immigrants,
who serve them. Earlier this year, it became clear to him that as a semi retired
man, there was no way for him to survive in that 2009 California economy.

I would have thought this was far fetched if I didn't personally know
6 under or un employed Black people, who have recently been laid
off. All have advanced degrees or five to ten years experience in their fields.

The above evidence is anecdotal, at best. However it underscores
the large system in which we live, which is why I wrote about them.

Black unemployment is at 14.7%.
Schwarzeneggger is gutting public assistance.
AIG is begging for more bonus money, again.
2.6 Million jobs were lost in 2008.
GM is now by and large a government ran company.

The American Revolution is important because it provides
a theoretical framework for understanding what the above
statistics mean.

The book was written in 1964, so we have the pleasure,
or perhaps, the horror of seeing the phenomena he has
written about come alive today in 2009. His writing is so
straight forward, that I have decided to include
excerpts below, preceded by a contextualizing sentence.

James Boggs on our automated society:

America today is headed towards an automated society, and it cannot
be stopped by feather bedding, by refusing to work overtime, by sabotage,
or by shortening the work week by a few hours. America today is rapidly
reaching a point where, in order to defend the warfare state and the
capitalist system, there will be automation on top of automation. The
dilemma before the workers and the American people is: How can
we have automation and still earn our livings? It is not simply a
question of retraining or changing from one form of work to another.
For automation definitely eliminates the need for vast numbers of
workers, including semi skilled unskilled, and middle class clerical
workers.

On organizations and change:

All organizations that spring up in a capitalist society and do not take absolute
power, but rather fight only on one tangential or essential aspect of the society
are eventually incorporated into the society.

On the unions and pensions:

They cannot get it in their heads the these old workers, who use
to be so militant are now a vanishing herd who know that they
are a vanishing herd, who know that because of automation,
the days of workers like themselves in manufacturing are numbered,
and who have therefore decided that all they can do now
is to fight to protect their pensions and seniority and hope the company
will need them to work until they are old enough to retire or die, which
ever comes first.

On automation in the past vs. new automation:

Automation replaces men. This of course is nothing new. What is
new is that now, unlike most earlier periods, these displaced men
have no where to go. The farmers displaced by mechanization of
the farms of the20's could go to the cities, and man the assembly
lines....But automation displaces people even when they have
been made expendable by the system.

On coming discord between the tax payers and the dependents:

Growing in numbers all the time, these displaced persons have to
be maintained, becoming tremendous drain on the whole working
population, and creating growing antagonism between those who
have jobs and those who do not. This antagonism in the population
between those who have to be supported and those have to
support them is one of the inevitable antagonisms of capitalism.

On the end of the demand for labor:

It is easy to accept that a man should move from one form of
labor to another, but it is hard to accept that there will no longer
be a mass demand for any labor.

...They still assume that the majority of the population of such
goods will still remain the heart of society. They have not been able
to face the fact that even if the workers took over the plants they
would be faced with the problem of what do with themselves now that
work is becoming socially unnecessarily.

Lastly, on American citizens and politics:

...In the United States...everyman is a policeman over himself,
a prisoner of his own fears. He is afraid to think because he is
afraid of what his neighbors might think if they found out what
he was thinking, or what his boss might think, or what the police
might think, or the FBI or the CIA. All because he thinks
he has a lot ot lose. He thinks he has to choose between material
goods and political freedom. And when the two are counterposed,
Americans will choose material goods. Believing that they have
much to lose, Americans find excuses where there are no
excuses, evade issues before issues arise, shun situations and
conversations which could lead to conflict, leave politics and
political decisions to politicians. They will not regain membership
in the human race until they recognize that the greatest need
is to no longer to make material goods but to make politics.

I hope, after reading these excerpts you can see why my
dungeon shook a little bit. In thinking about the above
quotes, and experience of reading this book I am thinking,
honestly about sustainable local, artistic, communities that
are organized to serve our needs vs. our wants.

A community garden here and there ain't gonna cut it.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

What do you think of the idea of a jobless society?

What does a society look like that places our needs
above our wants?

What is the greatest obstacle to achieving such a society?

When you eat out do you tip 18%?(personal question, lols)

We Are The Leaders We Need: 100 Visionaries [UPDATE]

For my long time readers, you know that Court Bear and I
have been working on a non profit, 100
Visionaries, that came out of the "Who Raises the Kids,
the Momma's or the Rappers" discussion on this blog.

A couple of days ago, I was tired and frustrated. Sore throat,
no health care, and my knee hurt.

I have started slanging burgers and margarita's to pay
for fall school expenses.

I have worked retail and cafe's before. But the corporate
food industry is a whole other animal. Two things have
become clear to me:

>How do parents with children manage to be there
for their children when they work wage labor job's?

>How can the masses meaningfully participate in a
democracy when their weeks are made up of two or three
double shifts?

I would imagine it's lightweight impossible.

As a worker, you have no control over your schedule and
if you wait tables, the wage is below the state minimum because
the expectation is that you will make more than the
difference in tips.

I use to think that I had an understanding of class and
class mobility because my family was working middle
class before the crack epidemic and then on public
assistance during the crack epidemic.

While it is true that I had an understanding of class, it is far more
nuanced now.

Experiencing what I have now termed, adult onset poverty,
has forced me to think about the ways in which 100 Visionaries
would both educate and advocate on the behalf of families.

If I have learned anything, it is one thing to call myself a
feminist it is another one to serve food and wash dishes
to pay my rent while having a theoretical understanding
of labor, wages, race and the law.

I am a zombie when I get home. I don't want to eat, or talk.
I just want to sit and for my knee to stop hurting.

This is material because I really like to cook and I like to eat even more.

In some ways, I needed to have this experience in order to think:

>How different would our labor laws be if every Senator
had to work and pay rent with fast food minimum
wages for a few months every year?

>Our system produces far too many graduates
for the number of jobs available and a just, sustainable
Democracy requires this issue to be addressed head on.

Saturday morning I woke up with the Senate subcommittees
on my mind. While I have a cursory idea of how bills are passed,
I wasn't sure of the nuts and bolts.

On Friday, I was reading Baldwin, and I am sure
that influenced me. One of the things that Baldwin said was
that Black people don't want to be white, they want what white
people have, power.

Late last week read that the health care reform will be difficult, for
many reasons, one of which is that many senators and
senators family members have financial ties to the health care
industry. With all this floating in my mind, I guess I woke up thinking
about power. I wanted to know who the different committees
were, who the members were, and the nuances of getting a
bill passed.

When I found the senate committee site, it became clear
to me that we are the leaders that we need.

Joseph Stiglitz won the Pulitzer prize for something
called the asymmetry of information, which deals with
the study of decisions in transactions where one
party has more or better information than the other.

We have the information. We have the people. We just
need the will and a mission. The asymmetry of information
and arguably power can no longer stop us. API's and
the internet have changed or at least had a huge impact on all this.

100 Visionaries Ideas On the Table:

>Political Education for Children and Adults
>Issues- Crime, Poverty, Education, Labor, Eco Justice,
Entertainment
>Eco Justice - Sustainable Local Green Economies
>Labor - Living Wage Advocacy
>Poverty- Reclassification of teen prostitution from
a criminal issue to a public health issue
>Education - Equitable distribution of funds within
urban school districts
>Crime - Re-establishing Pell Grants for prison inmates
>Entertainment - Media Literacy and Race, Gender
Sexual Awareness in Pop Culture

Ann (programmer extraordinaire) and I are working on the
relaunch of Model Minority and my homie site for her production
company, Hot Comb Pics. We just finished up Brooklyn Magic.

There are three more sites in the pipeline, which are the
100V site, a site on Black women and another on Black book clubs.

This post feels like the beginning of a new year.

Awesome.
What are you working on?

Doesn't it feel good to think, We are the leaders we need.

Why do site relaunches take so much work?

The Problem or The Solution: 100 Visionaries

I AM SEAN BELL, black boys speak from Stacey Muhammad on Vimeo.

"I'm already scared in New York, because of all this crime on the
street, but now theirs cops are killing us, that means are hero's
are the murderers, like the bad guys now."

It all started with the watching people debate whether
Rihanna deserved to be hit.

As a Black feminist who writes about violence and rage,
I was particular intersted in how this conversation has played out
in pop culture in general and in the Black community specifically.

When you are a thinker, with a sense of obligation, it can
be hard. It has been hard for me. Hard but not impossible.

I see myself as being beholden to the young men in the video above.

I wasn't sure what I was suppose to do, but I knew it was something.

So I re-sent Ann another design for 100 Visionaries. She was open
and we worked out a project schedule.

Then I saw someone twit, "Don't let the need to be perfect
stop you from doing something."

I am always interested in what stops me and us from acting.
Perfection and fear are the two main sources.

Then things started to happen.

The first thing is that I read that the bloggers and the
unions were getting together to start a political action
committee that would elect local politicians
and hold President Obama accountable. I thought, awesome,
that is what I want for 100 Visionaries.

WASHINGTON — A group of liberal bloggers said it was teaming up
with organized labor and MoveOn.org to form a political action
committee that would seek to push the Democratic Party
further to the left.

I began to think that if I got our 100 Visionary infrastructure running
then we could poly with them and try to make some REAL change.

The second thing was the firing of Liz Smith from The Post.
I figured if she got the ax, then there was truly a new day in
publishing. The day after I learned that I decided to publish an
online anthology of essays on hip hop, masculinity/femininity.
My rationale was, why go through a gate keeper, when
I know enough people who would be willing to contribute?
I also thought it would be the first of its kind.

The third was that in sketching the 100 Visionary site,
I decided to make an issues campaign spread sheet.
It is hard to think both big and small picture simultaneously.

I need your help with doing so.

Issue

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Spreadsheets issues 100 visionaries

I invite any of you who are interested, and want to make a
contribution to e-mail me any suggestions.

If you are on gmail, e-mail me, and I can
add you to the google documents list. This will allow you to
update the spreadsheet on your own time.

I am excited about the idea of those of us who care
and want to take an action on a a systemic and local level.

This is the change we can believe in. It feels good to be
a part of the solution.

Focused Anger in '09 Love.

What do you think it will take to get folks to move from
talk to action?

What are you excited about this year?

Did you work on the Obama campaign?

Bart Police Kill an Unarmed Man, Oscar Grant, on New Years Day

Video

Oakland haunts me.

Last week, I started trying to convert my essay's on the
crack epidemic into a memoir and the above sentence
came to mind.

As many of you know, on early New Years day , the BART
police killed an unarmed man, Oscar Grant.

I felt my heart flip in my throat when I heard the woman say
they just shot him.

Oakland haunts me.

I hate that moment. The moment in the hood where the violence
sparks and we have no fucking idea of what is going happen next.

Richard at Fem-men-ist captures it when he writes about being at the riots,

I head down 14th street towards Webster... and that's as far as i get. A couple blocks further down, the crowd looms, and its a riot crowd. i can smell something burning, and Broadway is obscured with smoke that could be the source of the smell, or tear gas. A metal hulk slowly rolls out of a backlit cloud of smoke. it is a paramilitary tank with a mounted water cannon. Is this my neighborhood?

It is really easy to think of Oakland as the home of side shows, The Black
Panthers, the spiritual seat of pimp mythology. It is easy to think of Oakland
as San Francisco's pathologized other. However, there is a very
strong thread of Wild Wild West street justice that permeates
the culture of Oakland. A shoot first and maybe ask questions later
steelo that is both reflected in how the police and how the hood
resorts to violence to deal with rage and retribution. Furthermore
there is a shoot first and ask questions later attitude associated
with American foreign policy. Operation Iraqi Freedom anyone?

In fact the confluence of rage, revenge and retribution is palpable
in Oakland.

I shuddered when I read the account of a woman, Nia Sykes,
wax matter-of-factly about violence at the riot. She sounds cool as a fan,
but I know rage when I see it. Demian Bulwa and others from the San Francisco
Chronical write,

"I feel like the night is going great," said Nia Sykes, 24, of San Francisco, one of the demonstrators. "I feel like Oakland should make some noise. This is how we need to fight back. It's for the murder of a black male."

Sykes, who is black, had little sympathy for the owner of Creative African Braids.

"She should be glad she just lost her business and not her life," Sykes said. She added that she did have one worry for the night: "I just hope nobody gets shot or killed."

Lets be clear, the riots didn't happen until a week passed without a word
from BART executives.

Lets also be clear that it wasn't until the riots occurred that national
news took an interest in what happened.

It is also important to note that the BART police are not OPD.
They are officers specifically hired, trained and compensated
by Bay Area Rapid Transit. This merits being noted simply
because they earn $64K per year, at the entry level. This is an important
distinction because they are not under compensated $32K/year
NYC cops.

That being said, Oscar Grants death is clearly personal to me. December
28th 2003, at approximately 5am the Oakland police tried to kill my brother.

I had just came home from New York, fresh with my new engagement ring.
Ambivalent, proud, scared. In many ways, I felt grown.

My mother got the call at that deadly time of the morning. The
it could only be bad news time. My brother was at Highland Hospital.
That we needed to come. We piled in her boyfriends truck and headed
to Oakland's public hospital, Highland. The sun was coming up.
The sky was orange sherbert and periwinkle blue. Gorgeous, the way
that the Oakland sky is notorious for.

I was in shock because we had just taken my niece to see Bad Santa
at the Metreon in San Francisco on 27th.

The police knocked teeth out of his mouth. Cut his lip open.
Opened his head. Handcuffed him to a fence and beat him, in front
of a group of eye witnesses in the heart of deep East Oakland.

I didn't feel so grown anymore. I was scared of what the police
had done to my brothers face.

My brother ran from the police that night. Had been running for years.
They caught him, and commenced to letting him know the
consequences of his actions.

I wrote the FBI, OPD's internal affairs and John Burris
(the attorney for The Rider Trails.) Burris's office ultimatly
told me that while my brother suffered from being harmed
by the police, a jury would not be particularly
receptive to a formerly convicted D-Boy, albeit even if he
wasn't hustling anymore.

I also became intimately acquainted with Bay Area
Police Watch, which is a program ran by the Ella Baker Center
for Human Rights. They were the only institution that listened to
me. They ultimately found an attorney to take my brother's case
pro bono, however, by that time the statue of limitations had ran.
In many ways Ella Baker has inspired me to start 100 Visionaries.

Back to Oscar Grant. This video reminds me of both the
historical worthlessness of the Black body, as it pertains
to the state. Of lynchings, of Tuskegee syphilis experiments,
the bombing of Black little girls in churches, of Sean Bell, of, of, of.

It reminds me of 1989, Task Force in my living room,
my brother handcuffed, and feeling incredibly powerless.
It reminds me of how that situation on the BART platform
could have gotten even further out of hand had someone
else on that platform had guns and decided to use them.
You see, I was raised to believe that everyone had a gat.
In the flat lands of Oakland many people do.

Let's be clear about how this is a teachable moment about who
does and doesn't have power in our society.

When you live in a society where the people who taken an oath
to serve and protect you, can conceivably smoke a person
who looks like you in front several witnesses. You feel powerless.

Furthermore, it is reasonable for you to feel powerless and
want smash the symbols of the power that you do not have.

Rage can only turn to violence when unchecked.

In many ways, rage is violence.

For many young folks, the idea is to carry a gat, because it is
clear that no one will protect them. This means always staying
strapped.

15 years ago, Ice Cube said on Death Certificate, "I would rather
be judged by twelve than carried by six." This is the code of the
streets that I know.

Yes, there are major fallacies to this argument. To put it simply,
it invites that eye for an eye logic, which is incredibly harmful,
because if we all do an eye for an eye, we will all be blind.

But think about this, power is the ability to restore yourself after you
have suffered a set back in life. To right a wrong.

What power do the people in this situation have?

BART possesses and has and exercised the power to be silent.

Some folks in Oakland exercised their power to burn property
and be destructive.

Think about this as well.

What does an Obama presidency mean to Oscar Grant,
Oscar Grants family, or the people who were in Downtown
Oakland on Wednesday night saying "We Are All Oscar Grant."

I know that some of you may balk at my bringing Obama in this.
Think about it this way. Where does Oscar Grant fit in our
"post racial" society?

I ask you all this question because last year it was
revealed to me that part of my purpose is to ask the
uncomfortable questions. Not just affirm what you already know.

On Wednesday morning, someone Twittered me a message
asking if I was going to the protest. I responded saying
that I was not in Oakland, and that I don't do protests.

However, I also thought, if the BART police will smoke a man
on a BART platform in front of arguably 20 to 30 witnesses,
then what would stop the OPD from smoking other people
at a rally/protest riot?

That being said.

Oakland haunts me.

But I am not only just haunted. Courtney stays on me about
100 Visionaries. Last week, I sketched the website and now
I am just looking for a template and finalizing a color scheme.

Shooting incidents like these remind me that so much work
has to be done. As individuals we can stand and be reactive,
bumping gums all day about how horrible the police are.
Or, we can be reflective, strategic and decide exactly which
part of the system we are going to come together to analyze
and change.

I ride for the analyze and change approach, because while
Oakland still haunts me, my goal, god willing, is to be able to
rest assured that at the end of the day I contributed something
other than just hot air.

If you want to get involved contact the Ella Baker Center for
Human Rights. They are on the ground. They are organized
and they can use your help. Below I have attached an excerpt of
and e-mail I just received from them.

This week, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights joined the call for justice in the shooting of Oscar Grant III, a 22-year old unarmed man shot dead by a BART police officer on January 1st, 2009, at the Fruitvale BART station. As an organization that has tackled the issue of police brutality and accountability for the past 12 years, we share in the anger, sadness, and frustration this tragedy has stirred within our community and beyond.

Several Ella Baker Center staff members -- and many of you -- attended the January 7th rally at the Fruitvale BART Station. We were joined by hundreds of other activists from all over the Bay Area, a crowd that mirrored the incredible diversity of our region. Youth read poetry inspired not only by their pain, but also by their hope for justice; elected officials stood with the community; activists led chants and local performers shared their souls through song. It was a sight to behold.

As you may have heard, some people then led a march from Fruitvale to the Lake Merritt BART station. While most of the march was peaceful -- and at times even beautiful -- a small number of participants succombed to their overwhelming anger, rooted in a long history of police misconduct and lack of accountability, and lashed out with inexcusable behavior. The Ella Baker Center believes the fight for justice must sometimes be taken to the streets, and does not condone vandalism or the destruction of property while speaking truth to power.

That's why we must keep our focus on the issue of justice for Oscar Grant and his family. We'll need your help as we continue to speak out in protest to ensure that this case is handled with respect and urgency.

Specifically, we demand:

• A thorough, independent investigation into the training, supervision, and arrest procedures of BART police.
• A full criminal investigation to be conducted by the State Department of Justice of all officers involved in the shooting that evening.

In addition, we're joining forces with the Courage Campaign and ColorOfChange.org to support a bill by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and Senator Leland Yee that would create a civilian oversight board for BART police. Senator Yee and Assemblymember Ammiano are ahead of the curve in calling for this kind of legislation, and they'll need our support to get it passed and signed into law. Click here to sign the petition:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/NeverAgain

Please also join us in helping turn this tragedy into hope for change by making a donation to Oscar's family. Checks should be made payable to "Wanda Johnson" (Oscar's mother), and sent to Ella Baker Center at 344 40th Street, Oakland, CA 94609. We'll then pass along all donations to Oscar's family.

We are all deeply saddened by this tragedy and express our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Oscar Grant III. In the coming months we hope you'll join us in demanding justice and continuing to work for peace and opportunity in our communities.

In solidarity,

Jakada Imani
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

What Stops You from Acting?

You can imagine how amped up I was when I noticed that the

100 Visionary widget jumped $40 this weekend. While I was amped

up about it this summer, my essays have taken over as my 

dominant focus in the last few weeks or so. I admit that this is largely

connected to the fact that  three weeks ago, I accepted that many folks

would rather just talk  about "the problem" than take action.

Which brings me to the question.

What stops you from acting?

Is it time, not knowing what do to or where to go?

For me, it is a fear of whether people will show up. 

Now this is odd, especially since I blog about a pretty

niche topic, Hip Hop, Feminism, Sexuality and Politics,

yet I have a healthy and consistent readership.

People like you show up every day to read, so part of 

me had to check myself, as that was clearly evidence

that people do show up. However, reading is not the same

as coming together the purposes of addressing an issue.

On the other hand, I believe the people want to do good. I am not

saying that I don't think they don't have a darkside, because they do.

I just also know that they want to do good as well.

I have an old friend that would always say that my naivete would get me

in trouble one day. As I have gotten older, I have learned that many

folks are out for self and that it is prudent for me to allow

their actions to confirm who they are instead of just granting

everyone the benefit of the doubt on gp.

Since deciding to do 100 V I was finding that every time I encountered

a person, I wonder are they really real or are they just talking that yack.

For instance, when thinking about the reflection retreats I mentioned to Filthy

that I should try and form like Voltron with the other bloggers and he was like,

"it is important that you keep in mind that many Bloggers, may just be that,

bloggers, they just want to talk. Just because they blog, they may not be

interested in taking action."

He didn't mean no disrespect, he was just trying to get me to recognize real.

Which brings me to the widget. 

Baldwin says to act is to commit and to commit is to be in danger.

I add on that to commit is to commit to personal transformation

and that is what stops folks from acting. To commit to transform is 

bugged out ish, because by its very nature you are stepping out on faith.

In the past three weeks I have been reading essays and books about 

Black Women Organizers, Street Harassment, The History of Black Feminism, 

Wage Suppression, German Social Theory.

The difficult part is taking what I read, sharing it, and figuring out

how to use it to address some of the ish that we face every day.

Its hard, because the whole time, in my head, "They ain't gonna show up,

folks just wanna complain, blar, blar, blar".

Then I have moments like the other day when I am in Au Bon Pain,

a fancy Starbucks like coffee and sandwich chain, and the 

Black lady operating the cash register is saying "This company don't care about

me, they don't pay me even a tiny fraction of what I make for them all day"

and I think to myself, wow, did she just do the knowledge to "surplus value"

and man I wish I had a flyer for these Hip Hop and Feminism study groups,

I would give one to her.

It was at that moment that regardless of the doubts that I had, that little moments

would come along and push me towards acting, whether I would accept them

as they nudge they were or not was up to me.

What stops you from acting when you see something taking place

that you know is wrong? 

What have you told yourself, in order to walk away from a problem?

What stops you from taking the step from talking to action?

100 Visionaries

I had a watershed moment yesterday. I was pacing, writing notes and just
simply amped.

The 100 Visionaries Mission came to me.

Our mission is to work to create a better future for our young people
through local and national activism and policy lobbying.

The strategy for achieving this is a five pronged effort. The first is
having regular one on one interactions with young people through
reflection retreats.

The second is supporting local members who share our vision,
and are running for office such as city council or the board of education.

The third is lobbying around policies that effect their lives such as
ending mandatory minimums, creating a national Prop 36 legislation,
eliminating zero tolerance in schools, and ensuring that public school
funds are equitably distributed within the school district.

The fourth is through supporting and promoting artists, writers, musicians,
who are our vision of a better world for young people.

The fifth is by working with other organizations who are doing related work.
One of us may not have an impact. But, 100 hundred of us is a Movement.

Our organization is a learning organization. Nimble, eager and ready to take
action. Contact me directly with further questions at m.dotwrites@gmail.com.

Click on the Widget on the left to donate to cover the cost of incorporating
the non profit.
100 Visionaries will be the 501 (c) (3). Cost. $75
100 Visionaries Fund will be the 510 (c) (4). Cost. $75

I seek to build this with you all, with "buy in" on the ground from
all the folks who have commented and said they want to contribute
and support.

Moveon.org is a 501 (c) (4). This kind of organization has far more leeway than
a (c) (3) when it comes to lobbying. Read more about it here.

501 (c) (3) will be 100 Visionaries.
501 (c) (4) will be the 100 Visionary Fund, similar to Moveon in terms of
action and scope with a bit more urban focus. Early.

Who knew that what began as a conversation on, "who raises the kids
the mommas or the rappers", would bring us to this?

Reflection Retreats

The majority of you have suggested that you would participate in a
reflection retreat.

After giving it some thought, here is a draft of an agenda. I envision that
5 or 6 of us would have a retreat on the 4th Saturday in October,
November, and share back via phone/e-mail.

REFLECTION '08
10am Breakfast, Coffee, Bagels, Juice

10:30am Introduction Stating Purpose of Retreat

10:35am Watch Clip of Byron Hurts Beyond Beats and Rhymes

11:00am Bathroom Break

11:10am Reflection on video, break out groups

12:00am Lunch, Pizza, Soda

12:30pm Discussion on another topic

1pm End

Is it really obvious that I have done logistics for a living?

Lets have discussion on the pre-work (money, location, dvd player,
obtaining copies of Byron's film, finding young people)
that will go into making this happen.

T-Rose sent me this fresh education guide for "Beyond Beats and Rhymes"
that I will be a great tool for us to use.

Sign up for the yahoo group.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/100visionaries

100visionaries@yahoogroups.com