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?