Check The Diagonal

It’s So Hard

I’m still around and will be back in time once I get some more time to do it in.  With the little spare time I do have I’ve been working on a developing a sales curriculum for inner city community centers to teach kids how to use very basic sales technique to chameleon based on audience in order to fit in anywhere and to sell themselves and their ideas with confidence regardless of background and economic circumstance. 

I give it to people who blog full time without getting paid to do it.  It is hard.

Yes We Can and Why I Did

“But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been
anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible
odds; when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we shouldn't
try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a
simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people.

Yes we can.”

-Barack Obama, New Hampshire 2008

There are dozens of recaps and impact analysis stories on yesterday’s historic health care reform vote in the House so I’m not going to do that today.  I am ecstatic that affordable health care is now a right for all Americans.  This is what change looks like and is exactly why I voted and worked so hard to elect President Obama. 

Instead I’m going to tell a story about why I care so much.  Those of you who believe in fate or even dumb luck might appreciate it.

I’d never been to Iowa before, yet there I was, freezing my ass off in the December arctic cold in front of Des Moines International. I was waiting for my new boss who had invited me to a customer call to assist in my ramp up. That’s typical for life in sales, August worldwide sales meetings in Arizona, or winters in Chicago or Des Moines; it’s never South Beach in January. The company we visited were not good prospects but we were flying out the next morning and they were really nice guys, so at the end of the call we invited them out for dinner. They declined, a Democratic Presidential candidate named Barack Obama was speaking at a local high school and they wanted to go hear him. After some education on how seriously Iowans take their civic responsibility we could only accept their invitation to join them.

At this point I have to admit that I was seriously unhappy with this turn of events. I was cold, there was no sale, and I wasn’t going to get a cocktail to soak my miseries with.

As corny as it may sound what happened next literally changed my life forever. It wasn’t the speech itself, which was a combination of his red state-blue state speech from the 2004 Democratic Convention and his Iowa victory speech. This was the first time I’d ever heard a politician speak without depending on personal pronouns to carry the point. The speech wasn’t about him or the shiny new job he wanted to get his hands on or how he was going to single handedly make my life better because he was so great. The speech was about the people in that gym and it was about personal responsibility and accountability and perseverance and accomplishment in the face of the longest odds. It was about the failures of cynicism and the power of hope and what could be accomplished if Americans would stand up and work for change, because we must, not selfishly, but on behalf of each other.

For my entire life I equated my own personal success with wealth creation, with hustling to get ahead and get by. I had escaped the ghetto of my childhood and never looked back. At that moment I realized that I learned all the wrong things, and that I’d lived my life in a very shallow and meaningless way. Now I feel very strongly that if all I do with the balance of my life is to create more wealth in order to create more distance between myself and where I came from, I will have failed miserably. 

I was 39 years old the day I voted for Barack Obama in the Georgia Democratic Primary.  It was the first time I’d ever voted in my life and looking back I have a lot of guilt associated with my non-participation in our government, especially considering the Bush 8 years.  Understand though, where I come from parental guidance was a daily lesson in what not to do and politicians only pandered in my neighborhood during the closest of elections only to disappear again the day afterwards.  In my eyes, and in the eyes of my community, voting was a privilege reserved for downtown people, rich people and more specifically, rich white people and so I never wasted my time or my energy on voting.  The only thing registering to vote got you was jury duty.  I was wrong. 

Those nice Iowans I met that day took their responsibility seriously because it is.  Elections matter.  If President Obama has taught me anything over the past two years its that one person CAN make a difference.  Perfect isn’t achievable, waiting is untenable and ambivalence, in the way I was, is inexcusable.  But if we each get up and try to do only what we can, great things can be accomplished.

“When faced with crisis, we did not shrink from our challenge -- we overcame it. We did not avoid our responsibility -- we embraced it. We did not fear our future -- we shaped it.”

-President Barack Obama, White House 2010 

 

The Failure of the NAACP

My twitter feed and inbox was full of cheers over the NAACP Image Awards last night.  Most people loved it.  @NAACP retweeted comments which they were most proud of during and after the show, most of which equated to this year’s Image Awards being the best one of all time. The only consistent criticism I saw was either in protest of Sandra Bullock’s nomination for her work in “The Blind Side” (both because she is white and the movie is one big racist stereotype) or against the stereotypical freight train that is Tyler Perry Inc.  And THAT is exactly why the NAACP is an absolute failure in its current incarnation and how it has utterly failed people of color and America.

From The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People website, some history:

“The NAACP was formed partly in response to the continuing horrific practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, the capital of Illinois and resting place of President Abraham Lincoln. Appalled at the violence that was committed against blacks, a group of white liberals that included Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard, both the descendants of abolitionists, William English Walling and Dr. Henry Moscowitz issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial justice. Some 60 people, seven of whom were African American (including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell), signed the call, which was released on the centennial of Lincoln's birth.”

And the organizations mission statement, also from the NAACP website”

“The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.”

The NAACP was formed 102 years ago in response to the appalling violence and injustice committed against people of color in America.  And in that past 102 years the NAACP has been responsible for a countless number of great accomplishments, including but by no means not limited to:

• The first African Americans to be commissioned officers in World War I
• IN 1920 taught America to be brave in the face of injustice and hate by holding their annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia-Stronghold of the Klan
• First broke segregation at the University of Maryland in 1935
• The Kerr Principle
• Morgan vs. Virginia
• Brown vs. the Board of Education
• The Civil and Voting Rights Acts

If the goal was to assimilate then I am sadly mistaken and you can stop reading now.  If the goal was to be accepted into the big house, through the front door, not because it’s our house, but because we have grown to look and act the same as they who now accept us, then the mission was accomplished, you can stop now, there is nothing left to fight over.

I hope to fucking God, not.  I spend a majority of my day feeling like ALL I ever do is complain.  My three beautiful babies are inheriting a world that is racially less diverse, more segregated and more insensitive than the one they might have been forced to navigate 40 years ago.  Racism and hatred in the form of perverse nationalism and populism has become mainstream and acceptable and it is broadcast live on Fox every single day.  A United States Senator, just yesterday said that Black people were better off as slaves than they are now and CNN won’t even give that two minutes of airtime, Fox News will applaud him for saying it every 30 minutes for the next week.  There will be no constructive outrage.  We are officially desensitized.

Last night I watched the only organization in America with the size, history and experience capable of mobilizing Americans against this growing surge in racial hatred as an acceptable political weapon condone it by paying the very people responsible for cultivating that same racism and hatred to host their Image Awards. The millions of African American advertising dollars spent on the NAACP Image Awards broadcast are free to be used to fund Roger Ailes campaign against minorities in America via Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity.  In prouder days the NAACP would be at the forefront of the war against Fox and their exploitation of minority athletes on Fox Sports as a vehicle to fund racism and hatred on Fox News.  Today the NAACP merely makes its own contributes to the fund.

No, this is sickening tragedy, Shakespearian in quality.  The NAACP has turned its cheek and claimed great success as measured by how many people watched an award show. An award show which included the nomination of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” and Michael Jackson’s Funeral Services.  Since when do we celebrate stereotypes or perpetuate them ourselves?  I don’t get the sense that the NAACP is paying attention to the needs of minorities in America.  Maybe they are waiting for President Obama to their job for them ala Tavis Smiley’s search for a Black agenda.  Don’t search, lead.  Either way, the NAACP is currently worse than irrelevant, they are complicity part of the problem, and should therefore no longer be supported by minorities in America .   Those accomplishments I listed above were a really long time ago.  Those laurels done died.

On the off chance someone at the NAACP reads this, there is an army of intelligent, angry and frustrated Americans waiting for someone to organize them in the cause against racism and hatred as a weapon in America if you would only show the courage and vision to do the work your founders so vigilantly did before you. In other words, wake the fuck up por favor.

War

I’ve seen some real things in my life.   Death, murder, drug addiction, violence, crime.  Growing up when and where I’m from was like watching a never-ending clip of Miami Vice and New Jack City.  We used to affectionately call our hood “Vietnam.” I’m not naïve, pampered or sheltered but looking back now, we had no fucking idea what we were talking about because none of that ghetto nonsense prepared me for the picture I saw out of Iraq, forwarded by Juan Cole on Facebook, from Chris Hedges' TruthDig column, yesterday.  Don’t click on the link to Chris’ article-which is a must read if you can handle it, or the fold below unless you are mentally prepared for a very haunting image.

On Hope

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.”   -Reinhold Niebuhr

 

 

I take a lot of heat for my unwavering support of President Obama. But you’ve got to understand my perspective before we go there.

I grew up in a time and place where the greatest limits we faced as children were the ones we created in our own mind.  The public schools we attended were halfway houses filled with stillborn brilliance and parental guidance was most often a shining beacon of exactly what not to do.  Hope was a luxury reserved for other, more fortunate children growing up somewhere else.  Instead our wishes were all ones of instant gratification filled with band-aids for our future which looked more dismal than our present. That’s why welfare children in the ghetto are the best dressed, it’s why our sneakers were our prize possession, and why the lure of the live for today life on the street was so strong.  These things allowed me to forget that there was very little to be hopeful for.  Instead we learned to survive a day at a time. And that’s the tragedy of a hopeless existence; living day by day and check to check forces us to live in the NOW, hope becomes tomorrow’s unaffordable luxury.  Fuck a dollar and a dream, ya heard?

Perhaps I do resemble a fan when it comes to Obama.  I can find no wrong in his consistent effort to change our conversations and outlook and direction in positive and substantive ways.  Conversely I find nothing at all redeeming about an opposition refusing to play out of spite.  What matters is that we pay attention. Progressives who are angered about the Afghanistan escalation and Hawks who were pleased with the Nobel Speech clearly have not been paying attention to Obama these past few years.  Those positions are old and he is exactly who he said he was.  If we are going to allow others to spoon feed their opinions to us, pawned off as our own, we are going to be disappointed and misled.  

I have plenty of policy and tactical disagreements with the President.  He has been slow on GITMO and DODT and DOMA and weak on equal rights for same sex partners.  I think there should be top level war crime prosecutions for the torture administration and I think Joe Liebermann and Republican obstructionism should be publically unveiled for what it is and punished.  But I didn’t vote for Obama to carry my water to the White House and enact policy the way I think he should.  I voted for him because of his character and his intellect and his willingness to try hard.  Hope is not a strategy and it’s not blind optimism either, but what the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve and President Obama has given that power back to me and others in this country and for that he has my support.   

 

“We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.” 

-Barack Obama

 

 

Sotomayor Confirmed!

I couldn't help but hug my daughter.  I hope this means her glass ceiling as a female minority just got a little bit higher.  The hard truth remains that she will still have to work twice as hard and be twice as good as a less than equal white male.  We will do what we can as parents to prepare her for that but it is just the sad state of our nation today. 

But, I think today is a day for great celebration.  The original constitutional framers never accounted for Barack Obama or Sonia Sotomayor.  When America was founded slavery was intentionally allowed to remain legal and a woman wasn't legally considered equal until 1920.  In that light I think its fitting and wonderful that America's first Black president nominated America's first Latina justice to the Supreme Court.

Its unfortunate that America is still a country of so many of these firsts.  It seems like every major election cycle brings the same tired meme of another major milestone for women and minorities and with it the sexism and racism that always follows.  It is so contrary to what we Americans espouse as what makes us great and special; as if we are more simply, a nation of hypocrites.  Give us your tired and poor as long as they don't look or sound different from the average white male or need any help, at all....

Judge Sotomayor's confirmation process was no different.  78% of Republican Senators, a great many from traditionally racist southern states, voted against confirmation for Judge Sotomayor despite her long and outstanding record of academic over-achievement and fairness on the bench.

Keep this list of their names.  Watch for their re-election campaigns.  Obama proved to us that Yes We Can isn't a slogan, its proof that we can each individually make a difference.   If you are one of their constituents call and write your representative, express your displeasure, canvass in direct opposition to racism and Rovian politics, write letters to the editor of your local paper, tell your friends and for gods sake vote. 

The Soft Power of Barack Obama

Pew's Global Attitude Survey is out and positive perception of America is already back to pre-Bush Administration levels.  The 10+% spike in Lebanon is especially impressive considering Hezbollah just lost what was supposed to be a shoe-in election for them there to a pro-Western, incumbent government.  That election was held directly after the Cairo speech.  Advantage Obama, in just seven months.

For Inner City kids, life always goes on.

When a 15 yr old is senselessly murdered who's to blame? The parents, teachers, America's culture of violence, our Government for being lax on guns, crime and education reform? I don't know, but it doesn't make me feel any less helpless. The children in the picture above turned tragedy into personal triumph but what a sad and all too common a story. From heavy hearts, a song soars

The choir's unexpected triumph brought needed emotional uplift to a small, close-knit school hit hard by a violent act. It also vividly illustrated the resiliency required to be a student in many urban schools and the sheer challenge that students and teachers often face simply to achieve a sense of normalcy.

This is the harsh reality of life in America's inner cities and very little is done to remedy it since the problem is largely contained and rarely pours into affluent suburbs. There is an added component of pure luck that must be factored into survival for kids growing up in our inner cities. Various factors can tip the scales in a kid's favor, great parents, close friends, teachers that care but in the end it could very well come down to wrong place at the wrong time, so sad, too bad. Its the reason I live happily in exile in Georgia. While I recognize anything can happen, even in my own backyard, its far less likely than in Washington Heights and P.S. 132 or I.S. 187.

For my children.

'What I Want for You — and Every Child in America' By President-elect Barack Obama

I want for you-to grow up in a world with no limits on your dreams and no achievements beyond your reach, and to grow into compassionate, committed women who will help build that world. And I want every child to have the same chances to learn and dream and grow and thrive that you girls have. That's why I've taken our family on this great adventure.

Wonderful.

Young People Are the Same Everywhere