connecting*the*dots

Tomorrow, from 1 to 5pm, Clement Mallory is putting on the Second Annual C37Words Youth Poetry Festival at 200 N. Davie Street, next to the Cultural Arts Center and Center City Park.

From the Greensboro Public Library:

The Festival will include poetry readings along with teen steppers, games, a comedian, African drumming and dancing, music, storytellers, an open-mic, hip hop dancing and more.

The C37WORDS Poetry Program empowers young people to discover ways to earn money from their talents. Organizer Clement Mallory hopes to inspire the youth in our community by showcasing their creative efforts.

Come on down and support the youth of our community.

(direct link to the first pod of the seven part series)

From 2000 to 2003, I lived just down the road from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, first in Park Slope and then Gowanis.

As consistently penetrating as the New York City media is, not once did I even hear a whisper about the toxic issues my former neighbors in Williamsburg have been dealing with for decades now.

Instead, I reveled in the culture. Now I’m thinking, at what cost?

Gotta love that “self-interest” angle of capitalism, eh?

UPDATE: I’m currently watching part 6 of this 7 part series. Be sure to watch it all. It’s beyond disturbing. Greensboro residents are worried about strip clubs? Try living next to Radiac Research Corporation — a nuclear storage facility, where the radiation level can be pick up from a geiger counter flipped on at the front door.

It also resides across the street from an elementary school.

Scary stuff and great reporting.

Over the past 30 years, the Greensboro Police Department has developed a long history of mistrust within the local community:

• In 1979, the predominately black and poor Morningside community was left unprotected during a permit enabled, anti-KKK rally that came to be known as the Greensboro Massacre.

  Oh yeah, the GPD also had an informant riding shotgun with the Klan during the fatal firefight who reported just the day before that there would be bloodshed.

• In 2006, whispers of racism and charges of mismanagement and suspect behavior led to the dismissal/quitting of then police chief, David Wray.

  Ever since then lines have been drawn within the community here, with some folk pointing at reverse racism within the local media and city government hiring a shill third-party as the reason for Wray’s dismissal

Tim Bellamy does not have an easy road ahead of him.

(originally uploaded by Mute*)

Two years ago this Saturday, I was having my final “meeting” at Ameritrade. This March 17th, I’ll be spending my entire day over at M’Coul’s Pub celebrating… beer.

Yeah, life is good is like that.

I’ll be partaking in the festivities (courting my precious, Guinness) and pitching in both as a crowd clearer for the fire-twirling troupe, The Emberellas, as well as the block party photographer.

Oh yeah, I have one other responsibility…

The 5th Annual Limerick Competition!

That’s right, folks, I’m going to be a judge in the finals.

So take a moment from your busy day and drop us a submission (or twenty). Who knows, you might even make the final ten and not only get to perform Saturday night and have a shot at winning a trip to Myrtle Beach, but get to see if I’m still standing at 8pm. (the current over/under is 9pm)

Drop us a few limericks, toasts or song lyrics and then get ready to don your finest green gear. In just five short days, bagpipes will be wailin’, bands will be rockin’ and Irish lips will be a smackin’!

(Disclosure: I’m the new Web Dude at M’Coul’s and they’re paying me in brunch omelets. Seriously.)

A few months ago, Ndesanjo and I kicked back at a local pub and after a few drinks, began exchanging stories of past mentors that forever changed our lives.

I told Ndesanjo a few stories about Bill Readings, my revolutionary Contemporary Literary Theory professor from Syracuse University. That man completely altered the way I looked at both language and the world around me by planting his signature Deconstructionism seed in my skull. Without the experience of his class (and conversation over pints at Chucks), I’d be a completely different person today — processing both information and reality sans an apperception filter.

Ndesanjo spoke of Dr. Abdul Alkalimat, his former professor at the University of Toledo. He touched upon Dr. Alkalimat’s 40 years worth of work in the American Civil Rights movement, but even more importantly his forward-thinking thesis for bridging the digital divide and building local/global communities.

Last week, Ndesanjo passed me a speech Dr. Alkalimat gave at the 2004 Black Media Congress. If you have 20 minutes, take a listen — you won’t be disappointed.

Two words: On. Point.

A few weeks ago, Molly asked me if I would be interested in speaking with a group of students at Weaver Academy, a local high school here in Greensboro. Her friend, Meredith Newlin, is a teacher of rhetoric and writing at the school and Molly felt that our two worlds — full of words — were meant to collide.

I’m a teacher wanna-be, so I pretty much agreed to do it on the spot.

So after a bit of back and forth, Meredith and I were able to schedule yesterday as the day for the meeting. I made my way over to the school just after 1pm and was graciously received by her entire class.

Can I just say how cool it is to vibe with young minds?

I mean, we started in the typical lecture/audience model, where “Mr. Coon” began as the guest speaker for the day as the deliverer of wisdom. But after only 15 minutes of my back-story, the kids and I found ourselves immersed neck deep in a conversation about what it means to have a voice in the midst of the information revolution.

Yeah, 11th graders.

Meredith was great, as she guided the conversation from the back of the room, making smart bridges of relevance to her curricula — how rhetoric and solid writing skills can lead to both personal growth and new opportunities in the age in which we live, but it was the kids that led the direction of the conversation.

As we bounced from idea to idea, we spent a decent amount of time talking about social networking (every kid is on MySpace) and blogging (only a few kids actually blogged) and the power both hold nowadays, which quickly segued into a conversation about The People, Yes.

A Little Ditty About…

Over the past month or so, I’ve been hitting the library every Monday night at 6pm to catch the Food not Bombs homeless dinner, with laptop in tow to both present to the group when possible or pull people off to the side to introduce the ideas behind generating a voice, blogging and building community.

After giving the kids a bit of such context, I ventured into sharing some ideas and direction that I’ve yet to share with the majority of my board — such as opening up The People, Yes to all Greensboro residents, while diving deeper into more areas on the other side of the digital divide, like the city/county jail system (a Ndesanjo idea, I must confess).

I also mentioned that at some point in the near future, we’ll be looking to sign up volunteer blogging mentors, acquire digital cameras via donations and open up the project for either individual or local business sponsorships of bloggers.

Within minutes of sharing the nuts and bolts of the project, kids began asking about how blogging actually worked and one even volunteered to work on the project itself (what up, Cory!). Quite honestly, the amount of interest in the project was amazing and proved consistent with the feeling I have that once I can focus on TPY with all my attention, it’s going to be an extremely rewarding experience.

Until then, I’m relying on the folk who have stepped up to date, and that list is growing each day.

Back to yesterday: To give a bit more context surrounding the afternoon, here’s a few links to illustrate some of the ideas that we rapped about:

• Bruce Sterling’s closing speech and reading from Carl Sandburg’s, The People, Yes! at SXSW last year (my influence to start TPY)
• Introducing the notion of tagging meta-data to information these days through poetry
• How we can watch our rhetoric and writing grow and evolve through simple constructs like tag clouds

Just as we began to dig in and discuss different options for starting a blog, the hour and a half came to an end and the kids left for their next classes. Meredith asked me to speak a bit to her next class of ninth graders, which I was all too happy to oblige — we even have a Where’s Waldo-type photo to prove it:

Meredith and I are going to arrange another time for me and her kids to get down and dirty with blogging software, which will hopefully empower her class with a collaborative blog and/or individual ones for any of the kids who want to start publishing their Peter Bradyesque voices.

With the passion and curiosity of these kids, Roch won’t know what’s hitting him. ;)

Lisa and I hunted around Greensboro yesterday afternoon for locations and people, as we’re looking to illustrate a number of sections of the eventual The People, Yes interface. I’m not sure how successful we were, but Lisa will be heading out again on her own soon.

Would you like to help?

We’re looking for landscape images (they’ll be used mostly in the header, so think wide and short) of a number of subjects:

• Memorable locations - it could be an abandoned lot or City Center Park, just try to include people, in some fashion, within an interesting composition
• Everyday folk at work - from the local barber to an insurance agent, capture them doing their thing
• Homeless people - stay away from stereotypical images (i.e. beer bottles, strewn clothes, etc.), go for portraits and contextual settings

So if you want to help us out, simply tag your Greensboro-based images on flickr with “thepeopleyes.”

I’ll subscribe to the feed and contact you if we’d like to use your shot (we’re a non-profit, so you’ll have to apply a CC license that allows reuse with attribution). I’ll probably setup a flickr group as well in the near future.

Thanks.

every man has a vocal chord
but not every man has a voice
some choose to live life that way
others simply have no choice
with too much to think about
too much goin’ on
too much tryin’ to survive
too much watchin’ their own get gone
so what’s the worth of words
these mere utterances in time
these rearranged thoughts
in both rhythm and rhyme?
i’ll tell you their value
but you probably won’t hear me
being caught up in the matrix
you’ll just craft reason to fear me..

when i’m struggling to get by
and trying to fly
but instead i get high
and dance that fine line
it’s the words that come save me
like dry turkey in gravy
i flip back to my quest
and push along like scorsese
to craft a moment in time
script the next one to follow
not some hollow ass production
of bling pursuit do i wallow
in the mire i find the depths
the inspiration
the desire..

to live by the pursuit of the grade
A
performance bonus
A
white picket dream
A
life with no compassion
A
way to drown out the screams
the shit just ain’t for me
and i know i’m not alone
so pick up your pen
your pad
your phone
dial me into your realm
put on your friday night best
cause when we hit the streets
it’s all about the people
yes..

Ndesanjo Macha, the Central Unit Director for the Boys and Girls Club of Greensboro, pinged me about this earlier in the week:

Later today, The Central Unit is having a grand opening of the first recording studio for kids in Greensboro. The event will involve performances by club members, local artists, NC A&T university step team (Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity) and modeling group (Verge), etc.

The studio is for kids to learn news skills in digital technologies (sound engineering, recording, etc.). Their aim is to teach them how to be good producers of information and knowledge (since they are already very good consumers!)

(studio under construction)

Time: 6-8pm, February 23
Location: 840 Neal Street, Greensboro
Ticket: $3 (adults), $2 (kids - non-members of the B&G club).
Contact: 235-5236 (cell) or 274-1509 (o).

More photos of the studio in progress and their blog.