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Perspective: With the world rapidly changing, this is what’s needed from our leaders and institutions
Reposted from Alrick Pagnon at Ideapod
Never before has one species been able to conquer or impact so many elements on Earth so dramatically. We are accelerating into the future. The rate of change continues to astonish us, and the awesome power of human ingenuity enables us to make what was once consigned to the pages of science fiction novels reality.
But, the increased progress is creating a parallel sense of existential dread. Are we the masters of our future? Will we set the direction for the economy and the environment? Will we set out the nature of the ethical society we want to live in? Or will events and mistakes overtake us?
NASA Reports
Five years later only 30% of the same group of children scored at the same level. Testing the same group again five years later, it had decreased to 12%. When adults took the same test, it only 2% scored at this genius level. As we learn to excel at convergent thinking, or the ability to focus and hone our thoughts, we are taught to suppress our instinct for divergent thought. We use this process in education to train our workforce, but it can cause a decrease in creativity. Studies have shown, however, that we can increase our creative ability through meditative practices, using our imaginations, or partnering with still divergent-thinking, creative children. Image attributed to Sunnya343 [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
The global economy swings between optimism and pessimism. Governments seem to either be paralysed or at risk of falling prey to populism. Many businesses are cash-rich, risk-averse, strategically incremental and lacking fresh ideas and innovation. The world needs leadership, invention, generosity and daring now more than ever. We need audacity and abundance not austerity. Individuals and organisations need to embrace bold, creative ideas and innovative solutions that represent real business opportunities and spark a revolution for courage and change. We must attack our big, wicked, problems to improve the economy and society as a whole, re-invent the future and ensure we do not leave people behind.
Yes, we live in interesting and challenging times. Actions we take now will impact future generations in a most powerful way. Artificial intelligence, robots, and other exponential technologies entice the imagination. We need human energy to drive forward in a world of huge potential and stare down enormous problems now and on the horizon.
If there is one word that sums up what we need from today’s leaders and institutions, it is: agility.
We need our institutions to create the future we all desire. After all, problems of scale – think climate change, poverty, job displacement via automation, terrorism, high energy costs, and resource scarcity – demand scale solutions. Yet, institutions such as large companies, governments, and universities need radical reform to rise to the challenge. Over time, organisations tend to become more rigid. At first, this is a feature, not a flaw, because the only way an organization can scale is by finding consistent ways to repeatedly solve a particular set of problems. However, a strength in one context becomes a weakness in another. As the pace of change accelerates, our institutions must become more agile.
That means developing the systematic ability to test, learn, adjust and adapt. To tolerate missteps, mistakes, false starts, fumbles, and, yes, even failures. That’s much easier said than done. How can organizations develop cultures that hardwire innovative behaviors such as immersive research and rapid prototyping?
Institutions only change if leaders change. Today’s ever-quickening pace of change demands that leaders be ready, willing, and able to quickly adapt and change course. As the saying goes, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” Humans as a species are born to be creative and adaptable. However, as we go through school and work we become increasingly rigid and risk adverse. How can we develop the ability to rapidly process information and change course in environments that too frequently constrain us? How can we become the improv comics or jazz musicians the world so sorely needs to solve our wicked problems?
We face the certainty of uncertainty. Strategic creativity is increasingly valuable to nations, communities and individuals making the transition to innovation and knowledge-based economies. Creativity and innovation are vital for businesses exposed to globalisation, increased competition, consumer diversity and rapidly changing technology. Tomorrow’s competitive success will be based on the implementation of creative ideas and the ability to keep up with an ever-accelerating world. The development of agile human beings who can imagine and create innovative new solutions and enable agile institutions to deploy them at scale is the key to future success and sustainability.
Creative Universe founder and Ci2017 Executive Producer, Tania de Jong AM, says Ci2017 gives delegates the opportunity to expand thinking and leverage their often hidden “right-brained” creative capabilities to help alter traditional mindsets and open the doors for new solutions.
“Ci2017 is a cross-sector, community-wide program and the cross-pollination of ideas at this event is a significant factor for anyone wishing to innovate, become more agile and develop more of a culture of collaboration and innovation. This is a rare opportunity to learn, connect and share ideas across sectors with some of the world’s most influential thinkers and innovators under one roof.”
One of Ci2017’s Ambassadors Hugh Morgan AC says that successful leadership in business and government often requires simplifying the complex and finding new ways to achieve sustainable growth.
“Ci2017 provides a unique chance to see through the complexity and acceleration we are experiencing and find new ways of thinking and collaborating to achieve lasting growth. It is a wonderful opportunity for leaders and potential leaders in all walks of life to explore and understand these issues and to take strategies and new thinking back into their organisations. This outstanding event is a wonderful contributor to developing a true culture of innovation in this nation.”
About the Author: Alrick Pagnon
Alrick Pagnon is the creative development and partnership lead of the award-winning Creative Innovation Global Conference. Recognized both in 2015-2018 as one of the top 50 innovation personalities on Twitter by ‘Innovation Excellence’, he is passionate about disruptive innovation and discovering new talented innovators. Pagnon has also co-written articles on lessons of innovation from creative thinkers like Maya Angelou and Jess Bezos. He tweets from @alrick_pagnon.
Perspective: Do Windmills Cause Cancer? A Very Quick Scientific Study.
Reposted from 'KeithDB' at Daily Kos
On April 2, 2019 the President of the United States delivered a speech in which he said that the noise from windmills causes cancer. Watch it yourself.
The question is so bizarre, I doubt it has been scientifically studied, so I gave a quick stab at it. I acknowledge the methodology was crude, but this is what I did.
Method: How to Test if Windmills Cause Cancer
Data Sources And Variables
I gathered data on national per capita cancer rates, and national per capita megawatts generated from wind power. For the scientifically minded, the hypothesized independent variable (the cause) is national per capital megawatts generated from wind power. The dependent variable (the effect) is national per capita cancer rates.
The Theory, Hypothesis and Null Hypothesis
The theory being tested is that wind power causes cancer. The tested hypothesis, based on this theory, is that as national per capital megawatts generated from wind power increases, national per capita cancer rates shall also increase. As usual in statistics, the Null Hypothesis is that there is no statistically significant relationship between these two variables.
The Data
I decided to use only industrialized countries, and I was limited to countries who were included in both lists. That produced the following chart.
Data Analysis and Regression Analysis
The next thing to do was a simple scatterplot of that data.
The scatterplot reveals no obvious relationship. But this is an effort at statistics and science. I commanded the spreadsheet program to perform the traditional least squares standard linear regression analysis line fit. That produced this chart.
Two things stand out about this chart. First, and perhaps foremost, to the extent there is a relationship between the independent variable of wind power and the dependent variable of cancer rates, that relationship is negative. Put another way, to the extent there is a relationship, as national per capita wind power increases, national per capita cancer rates decrease. This is the exact opposite of the relationship hypothesized based on the President’s theory.
Results: What do these Observations Mean?
The Question of Statistical Significance
Of course, that relationship certainly does not look very strong. It isn’t. Here are the basic tests of statistical significance from those numbers:
Pearson’s R= -0.166
R Squared= 0.028
N (sample size)= 17
p= 0.53
The R Squared of 0.028 is actually a calculation of a percentage. It means that to the extent the statistical relationship measured actually exists, then a rather meaningless 2.8% of the decrease in cancer rates is explained by the increase in wind power megawatts per capita.
Which leads to the question of whether the measured statistical relationship exists. That is reflected in the variable “p” above. The .53 means that there is a 53% chance that the apparent negative relationship between wind power and cancer rates is completely explained by . . . chance.
Standard rules of science require much, much, much higher standards of proof. Generally, p must be < 0.05 reflecting less than a 5% chance of being explained by chance. This is not even close. So what are the conclusions?
The Hypothesis
The hypothesis based on Trump’s theory that wind power causes cancer is not supported. There is stronger support for the opposite claim.
The Counter Hypothesis
The reverse hypothesis that wind power is associated with less cancer is poorly supported, with nothing close to scientific significance.
The Null Hypothesis
The best support is for the Null Hypothesis. There is no relationship between wind power and cancer.
Weaknesses Of The Study And Suggestions For Further Research
My sample size was obviously limited. A larger one, involving more nations and more years might produce statistically stronger results.
In addition, the variables used were crude. Cancer, and in particular national cancer rates, involve enormously complex multiple variable interactions. This study did not control for any other potential variables. However, one wonders whether the President’s anonymously sourced “they say” controlled for any variables at all. Not knowing who the “they” are, I cannot say.
About the Author: KeithDB at Daily Kos
KeithDB is a retired lawyer & army veteran currently living in Key Largo. Listed as a lifelong (pre-Trump) Republican, Constitution buff, science nerd & dog lover. Follow him at Twitter: @KeithDB80
Environmental Justice: What Happens After the Mines Close?
Reposted from Monica Potts at Sierra magazine
For the people of Harlan County, Kentucky, climate change brings about a specific sort of cultural and economic disorientation: The coal-mining industry they have relied on for decades is no longer viable. Now former coal mining towns are plotting how to reinvent themselves.
Brookside Strike: Coal Mining Culture of Harlan County
For 100 years, the economy of Harlan County and other counties in eastern Kentucky depended on coal mining. The sign depicted was posted by UMWA picketers during the Brookside Mine Strike of the 1970s. This strike became what the county was known for through, serving as the subject of the film, Harlan County, USA (1976), and another dramatic film called the Harlan County War (2000). It was a long and sometimes violent strike that ended when a man was shot and killed on the picket line.
The latter-twentieth-century decline of coal production and employment has led to widespread poverty and high unemployment.
Image attributed to Jack Corn [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. THE TALLEST MOUNTAIN in Kentucky, Black Mountain, straddles the border between Virginia and the Bluegrass State, and from its summit, the views stretch to the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina to the south. Beneath Black Mountain, three small Kentucky towns—Cumberland, Benham, and Lynch—line up along a two-lane highway that winds through a narrow, vine-covered valley split by a small stream called Looney Creek. For 15-year-old Cumberland native Chase Gladson, this is the best place on Earth. His friends can't wait to go to Lexington for college—the University of Kentucky, home of the Wildcats. Gladson is different. "I want to stay here," he said.
He gestured to the mountains above, Black Mountain and two of its neighbors—Little Black Mountain and Pine Mountain. Gladson is a tall, sturdy teenager with a mop of curly blond hair gathered in a ponytail. He wears thick glasses and speaks with a soft, sure voice and a slight twang. He sighed as he began an emotional tribute to his hometown. "It's home, and I love it here," he said. "I think there's a lot of potential here, and it's just so beautiful. . . . It's just where my heart is."
We were sitting on a patio in front of the old schoolhouse, now a hotel, in Benham. International Harvester, an agricultural-equipment manufacturer that went out of business in the 1980s, built the schoolhouse, which sits on the side of a hill. The company also built the three small brick buildings we were looking down on: an old commissary that is now the Kentucky Coal Museum and two other structures that have been repurposed as a convenience store and the City Hall. International Harvester built the roads themselves, all the infrastructure that lies beneath the town, and the houses that line the side streets before the town gives way to the pine-covered mountain. The company made all these investments a century ago because it needed the coal found in this corner of Kentucky to fuel its manufacturing lines. Without coal, Benham, as it is, wouldn't exist.
Economic Empowerment: The hidden tax: Average Americans pay a tax of 74% that they don't know about and isn't in the media
In American media, we hear a lot about the taxes that the wealthy want to cut: Income taxes, estate taxes, and corporate taxes. What we don’t hear about is the largest tax the American labor force faces. This tax is the difference between what we produce and what we get paid.
Let’s call this the profit tax because it goes to corporate profits. This tax is taken from workers and redistributed to owners and shareholders. As tax day approaches, I wanted to highlight this hidden tax.
2017 Tax Day March in Philadelphia
Image attributed to 7beachbum from Tsuruoka, Japan [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
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What would a fair profit tax look like?
Five percent? Ten percent? Twenty or 30 percent? The average profit tax in America is actually 74 percent. Here’s how to calculate the average profit tax: it’s the difference between the productivity index, what an average worker produces in 1 hour, and what this average worker gets paid by the hour.
The latest business productivity index number from Q4 2018 is $106.27/hour. For this same quarter in 2018, the most recent average wage number is $27.53/hour.
These figures mean that the average worker is producing $106 worth of goods per hour and is getting paid roughly $28/hour for it. The difference or profit tax is 74 percent. In America, business owners take 74 percent before you ever see a paycheck.
Why aren’t more people angry?
Good question. My best guess is because it’s gone before people ever see it. That is, we don’t know about it. Most people have no idea how much they’re producing. All they see is their paycheck. They don’t get to see the profits.
And numbers like the productivity index typically aren’t presented in this fashion. It’s just a number that doesn’t have a lot of meaning to it. Whereas if someone gave you a weekly check for $4,240 and then made you pay 74 percent of that or $3,137.6 to the government we would have armed uprisings. Without seeing the value of what you’re producing, it’s hard to be angry about the difference.
Why didn’t you include benefits?
You could say, “but your calculation doesn’t include benefits.” You would be right. The reason I didn’t include benefits is for a couple of reasons. First, it’s an illustrative exercise. I wanted to show people that we have numbers for what people produce and what people get paid. It just takes some digging to find them because they don’t often appear in our media. What appears in our media are all kinds of numbers trying to convince us to give tax breaks to wealthy people. Why? Because our media is mostly advertising and the wealthy advertise to get what they want.
Second and more importantly, corporate America is trying to shift the cost of benefits onto people. We see this with health care. We see this with the shift to contract labor. We see this with the attacks on Medicare and Social Security (which are benefits we get taxed on through FICA taxes). Corporate special interests want to merely give people a flat wage and then have benefits come out of everyone’s pockets. Benefits are going away so we can’t count on benefits.
Profit Tax: This is what’s really wrong with America
In our media, we hear a lot about what’s wrong with America. We hear that there’s a loss of values. We hear complaints about the government. We hear that our taxes are too high. We hear that it’s the fault of immigrants or gay people or black people in the inner city. We hear about this political party or that.
I think what’s really wrong with America is the 74 percent tax we pay to corporate America. If the average person is producing $106 worth of goods per hour, maybe the average worker should make $80/hour.
Wages flatlined in the 1970s
Productivity growth (orange) compared to hourly compensation growth (blue) since 1948. Wage growth stopped in the 1970s. Data and chart attributed to the Economic Policy Institute.
Wages flatlined in the 1970s
Productivity growth (orange) compared to hourly compensation growth (blue) since 1948. Wage growth stopped in the 1970s. Data and chart attributed to the Economic Policy Institute. We’re told that a rising tide lifts all boats. Productivity and wage data tell a different story. The reasons often cited by researchers for why wage growth stopped in the U.S. are technology, globalization, and government capture.
Productivity Gap: It’s not this way everywhere
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has also looked at wage/productivity decoupling and found that it’s not happening everywhere.
In the United States, for instance, annual real median wage growth over the past two decades has been around .5 percent. Countries with similar productivity growth but no decoupling such as France, Finland, and the UK, have seen wage growth between 1.5-2 percent.
Global differences in wage/productivity decoupling
There are global differences in wage/productivity decoupling. According to the OECD’s report [PDF], the three primary factors behind wage/productivity decoupling are:
- Technology —Reducing labor’s share of productivity gains
- Labor Globalization —Outsourcing reduces labor’s share of productivity gains
- Government Capture —Governmental policies that put downward pressure on wage growth
Raising America's Pay: Government Matters
In 2014, the Economic Policy Institute released a report titled Raising America’s Pay. In this report, they argue that raising pay is the economic challenge of our times.
In addition, they argue that policy decisions are critical:
Key economic evidence implicates policy decisions–and particularly changes in labor market policies and business practices–as more important in explaining the slowdown in hourly wages for the vast majority than many commonly accepted explanations (such as the interaction between technological change and the skills and credentials of American workers).What this means is that government is important. However, this isn’t what we’re told. We’re told the government is the problem. Of course, the people telling us this, meanwhile, spend billions on influencing government to increase the profit tax.
If we want to change anything, or if you believe in any cause, the first step is getting people into government, getting representatives who believe that government matters and should be run by and for the people of our country.
David Akadjian is the author of The Little Book of Revolution: A Distributive Strategy for Democracy (ebook now available).
He is also a freelance writer and instructional designer. He has designed sales, negotiation, and communication training for some of the top companies in the world. He has written for Daily Kos, HuffingtonPost, Alternet, Popular Resistance, Truthout, The Cincinnati Enquirer, and The Washington Spectator. He currently lives in Cincinnati, OH.
Perspective: Policy recommendations to the 116th Congress for the preservation of public lands
Posted from Kathy DeCoster, VP & Director of Federal Affairs at The Trust for Public Land
The Trust for Public Land is a U.S non-profit organization with a mission to create parks and protect land for people, ensuring healthy, livable communities for generations to come. The Trust for Public Land's Federal Affairs Team in Washington, D.C. issued this letter as an overview of their activities in our nation's capital. They are petitioning Congress to:
- Codify the Antiquities Act
- Reinstate protections for all of Bears Ears National Monument
- Fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund Program
- Stop the public land sell-offs
- Stop the Charitable Conversation Easement Loophole
Civic Engagement: Local Demonstration at Utah's State Legislature
Demonstration for public land in front of the scenic Utah State Legislature. Rep. Bishop (R) from Utah introduced a bill that would gut the Antiquities Act, threatening public lands.
In addition to their office in D.C petitioning for public lands, The Trust for Public Land has many local communities within their network. The best activism starts a home and is never done alone. Image attributed to Jay Dash Photography.
Civic Engagement: Local Demonstration at Utah's State Legislature
Demonstration for public land in front of the scenic Utah State Legislature. Rep. Bishop (R) from Utah introduced a bill that would gut the Antiquities Act, threatening public lands. In addition to their office in D.C petitioning for public lands, The Trust for Public Land has many local communities within their network. The best activism starts a home and is never done alone. Image attributed to Jay Dash Photography.
BACKGROUND
Our public lands are the pride of our nation and are enjoyed by Americans of all political stripes. They tell the history of our shared heritage, encompass some of the most beautiful terrains in North America, support iconic wildlife, capture carbon, and provide precious opportunities to be in nature. And when the average American now spends about 93% of their life indoors—that connection with nature is more important than ever.Despite the growing importance of these special places, our public lands face mounting threats. Recently, the Trump Administration rolled back essential protections for some of our country’s most iconic landscapes. This shocking action resulted in the largest elimination of public lands protection in the entire history of the United States and started a battle for public lands as we’ve never seen before. Following this, one of our country’s most successful conservation programs, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, was allowed to expire for five months, with little thought in Congress or the Administration to the consequences. And in recent years, climate-related disasters are becoming more and more commonplace, wreaking havoc on our communities and economy.
Americans across the country have made it clear that public lands should be created and protected, not sold or rolled-back. Election after election, the majority of voters vote in favor of conservation measures. This display of public support expands outside of elections as well. When the Department of Interior threatened our national monuments, over 2.7 million people wrote public comments urging the administration to keep protections for these iconic landscapes.
This activism and support have made a significant impact. Our Federal Affairs team is working tirelessly around the country and in Washington, D.C. to defend our iconic national monuments and critical conservation programs that are at risk—and with your help, we are making headway. Our experienced staff and volunteers are meeting with members of Congress from both sides of the aisle—and recently helped convince Senators and Representatives to pass the most sweeping public lands legislation in a decade. This legislation—the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act (S.47—formerly known as the Natural Resources Management Act)—was signed into law on March 12, 2019.
Even with this law in place, our public lands are still in peril. Congress must take further action to protect our nation’s special outdoor spaces and iconic landscapes. In addition to passing the following legislative items below, we urge Congress to make the protection of public lands a top priority. Unless we protect these wild areas now, we and future generations will have fewer places to explore nature and enjoy the outdoors. And we will be at greater risk of climate disaster.
CONGRESS SHOULD IMMEDIATELY ACT ON THE FOLLOWING ITEMS:
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Codify the Antiquities ActThe Antiquities Act was signed into law in 1906—giving U.S. presidents the authority to protect lands of historical, scientific, and cultural significance so these special places would not be at risk of destruction or reckless development. Since then, the Act has been used by just about every president to create or expand our country’s national monuments such as the Grand Canyon National Monument (now Grand Canyon National Park), Muir Woods National Monument, and Dinosaur National Monument. |
Reinstate protections for all of Bears Ears National MonumentPresident Trump’s presidential proclamation on December 4, 2017, nearly eradicated Bears Ears National Monument—the iconic landscape is now only 15 percent of its original size! Archeological sites like Cedar Mesa are at renewed risk of looting and desecration, recreational areas within the original monument boundaries could be damaged beyond repair, and the great sandstone buttes of the Valley of the Gods are at risk of reckless development. | |
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| Photo: Bob Wick, BLM on Flickr | |
Call to Civic Action: Contact your Congresswomen and CongressmenIf you are concerned about the preservation of your public lands, contact your Representatives and Senators. Before calling, familiarize yourself with bills already in progressing through Congress. You can track bills directly using Congress' website and searching legislation. Depending on where the legislation currently is in the chambers, either the House of the Senate, direct you call towards that Congressperson. |
Perspectives: The Missing Black Millennial
Reposted from Reniqua Allen at The New Republic
On a cold winter morning this year, I stepped on a downtown 6 train in New York City. I had just come from a grueling workout, and I was tired and hungry. Bundled up in my coat, with a pocketbook and bulky backpack, I took up more space in the aisle than usual, as if I were some exaggerated version of myself. A few seconds later, a blonde woman about my age huffily pushed by me, annoyed that she had to brush past my backpack. Apparently dismayed that her shove hadn’t gotten the message across, she loudly told me that my bag was in the way. Annoyed at her annoyance, I told her, “Figure it out.”
MLK: A Black Millennial Contemporary at age 34
April 4, 2019, would 51th Anniversary of MLK jr's Assassination
Martin Luther King was called, during his lifetime, "the most dangerous negro," for his work as a civil rights activist advocating for the rights of black people in America. The majority of MLK's work occurred in his 30s and he could be considered a contemporary for Millenials at our current age. Unlike Millenials at our current age, MLK didn't have to operate under the guise of a "Post-Racial Society": everyone could see the injustices happening to Black people. Of the current year, many people do not see injustices still happening to black people.
MLK. Birmingham AL police dept [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
She proceeded to berate me for over ten minutes. Like the rest of the people on the train, I ignored her. A few stops later, as she got up to leave, our eyes locked and I flashed her a smile.
“Typical,” she said, glaring at me as she walked out.
“Typical for who?” I yelled back.
I was fine with being called out for bad behavior and a bad attitude. I probably could have been nicer. My backpack was clunky, and protocol required that I take it off my shoulders and put it on the floor. No, it wasn’t her complaints that bothered me—it was the way “typical” flew out of her mouth.
The only things she knew about me were my race, my approximate age, and my gender. The way she looked at me, the disgust with which she hurled that word, told me that this interaction wasn’t about another rude New Yorker on the subway. It was about what I stood for: some group of people she thought she understood, whose stories she thought she knew.
But she didn’t know my story, nor the stories of many others like me.
A few years ago, because of people like that blonde woman on the train, I set out to collect the voices of young black people across the country for a book. As I talked to these black millennials, it became clear that nearly all of them were frustrated by the gross popular perceptions about what it means to be young and black in America.
A Profile of the Black Millenial: The black millennial is composed of contradictions and ambiguity; her journey of tentative steps forward and horrific setbacks
As a generation, millennials are used to being misunderstood. Perhaps no generation has been so gleefully maligned in the press, which has produced a zillion think pieces casting millennials as entitled, lazy, mayonnaise-hating, over-educated pampered whiners who, in their blinkered narcissism, are selling out the human race. That caricature has slowly given way to a more nuanced picture of a generation profoundly shaped by the events of its time—9/11, the Iraq War, the Great Recession, climate change—and baleful socioeconomic trends: growing income inequality, staggering levels of student debt, stagnant wages. And yet, for all this new understanding, there remains a huge blind spot when it comes to black millennials in particular.
African-Americans make up 14 percent of the millennial population, born, roughly speaking, between 1981 and 1996. Black millennials came of age in the so-called post-race era, their worldview defined by Barack Obama’s historic rise to the presidency, Beyonce’s dominance of the entertainment industry, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s emergence as one of the premier public intellectuals in this country. But they also witnessed tragedies like the Rodney King beating, Hurricane Katrina, and the police shootings of Mike Brown and so many other young black men and women. They saw the horrific and racist treatment of our first black president and his wife. And then they saw the alleged “post-race” period give way to the election of the most openly racist president in modern American history.
The black millennial, then, is composed of contradictions and ambiguity; her journey of tentative steps forward and horrific setbacks. In this, young blacks are not so different from their ancestors, complicating the whole notion of generational change that we are used to ascribing to non-black people, in which a particular cohort is perceived as being fundamentally different from its predecessors. In many ways, the story of the black millennial is as much about consistency as it is about change—which is to say that the story of the black millennial is the story of what it means to be black, period.
The Story of being Black
Like all millennials, black millennials have to deal with a host of economic challenges. In addition to middling wages and the burden of student debt, they have to negotiate a thriving gig economy that provides little security and an urban housing market that has increasingly priced out the working and middle classes. They are uncertain about the future in a way that past generations weren’t, and grasping for an adulthood that feels forever delayed.
But though black millennials have much in common with their white peers, there are important distinctions. In almost all areas of life, the deck is stacked even higher against us, in part due to historical discrimination and in part because of inequities unique to the millennial era. By many measures, black millennials are behind. We lag in terms of employment, wages, and attaining “good jobs.” We have less wealth, live in poverty more. Even when we try to do something positive like go to college, we have to take on higher amounts of student debt. And then we still end up with fewer job prospects than our white counterparts.
As an older millennial, I saw my black friends working harder than ever and going to graduate school—and still taking on multiple jobs. Meanwhile, my white peers regaled me with tales of miraculously landing great positions and getting into fantastic schools with mediocre test scores. They told me about promotions, about just being in the right place at the right time. They struggled less, made more money, and had all the luck. It made me angry.
And that’s just the economic situation. Black millennials are increasingly asked for their ID when voting. We are still disproportionately being sucked into the criminal justice system. We have less access to health care, and are likely to die at a younger age. We have to dress a certain way so we aren’t stopped by police at night. We are mocked for the way we look and disparaged for being angry and loud. Our sexuality, always expressed as something animalistic and promiscuous, is often still the subject of public indignation. Even the wealthiest, most successful black millennials can’t protest peacefully without being called ungrateful and unpatriotic.
Even the wealthiest, most successful black millennials can’t protest peacefully without being called ungrateful and unpatriotic.
What makes Black Millenials distinct: They are supposed to believe that the playing field has been evened out
Even the wealthiest, most successful black millennials can’t protest peacefully without being called ungrateful and unpatriotic.The great irony of all this—and perhaps what truly makes black millennials distinct from their forebears—is that we’re supposed to believe that the playing field has finally evened out. Many people, including older blacks at times, just don’t understand why young black millennials are frustrated. They think because we aren’t being threatened by the Klan every day, that, if we point out racism, we are playing the “race card,” indulging in identity politics, playing the victim, and simply not working hard enough. Martin Luther King Jr., once dubbed the “most dangerous negro,” has a national holiday in his honor; explicit segregation and overt discrimination are universally condemned (but nevertheless ubiquitous); Black Panther destroyed the box office last year; and heck, we had a black president.
Obama looms large over this generation, a symbol less of progress than of the fundamental ambivalence of being a black millennial. “I specifically remember the day I watched Barack Obama get inaugurated into office,” Patrick, a 28-year-old graduate of Howard University, told me. “My mind was like, maybe we are in a post-racial society. People elected a black person.” But he slowly began to understand that in this country there is always a qualifier to progress. “We’re realizing more and more that whatever happens, whatever benefits that we get, there’s always a ‘but’ to it,” he said. “There’s always something that comes after that makes it almost not worth it. So, yes, we had a black president, but now we have a racist white president.”
“We’re not living in a post-racial society,” Patrick added. “We just elected a black president. That’s all we did.”
I spoke to dozens of black millennials who echoed Patrick’s experiences.
There was Jeremy, a coal miner from West Virginia, who had to overcome the perception that the industry was for whites only. “It was hard on me at first,” he said. “I was called the N-word when I started working underground, people not talking to you, just walking by you like you’re invisible. They put people in a category. If you’re black, there’s nothing good about you—especially if you’re black and taking a white person’s position, where another white person could be. They just don’t like it.”
Then there’s Trina, from Jackson, Mississippi, a mother of three who says black women are constantly held to different standards. “Society makes it harder on us for everything,” she said. “If we have six kids we look like we got no morals. We just have sex with anybody. If a white woman got six kids, ‘Oh she’s probably just doing the Lord’s will. He says be fruitful and multiply.’ Black women, we got colored hair, we ghetto. White women, they got colored hair they’re cultural. We get braids, oh we pro-black. White women braid their hair, ‘Oh they’re just diverse.’ There’s a double standard.”
Jalessa, who worked in communications for a major company in Los Angeles, said that the idea that blacks have to work twice as hard is very real. “Black people gotta prove so much before our opinion can be valued,” she said, “whereas a white man could walk into a room and he could just come out and say what he wants, negotiate with who he wants.” She added, “Let me come in and have a bad day. I’m supposed to suck it up, smile and not be the black girl with the attitude.”
To understand the black millennial, then, is to not only reverse the tired tropes about millennials that have proliferated in the media for the past ten or so years—it is also to rethink the role of race in twenty-first century America. Despite the increased acceptance of interracial relationships, a widespread love of black culture, and a more visible presence for blacks in historically white institutions, it’s still hard to overstate just how much the past remains present in this country. Research conducted by The Washington Post in 2015 about the supposedly “woke” millennial generation found that 31 percent of white millennials think blacks are lazier than whites, and that 23 percent say they’re not as intelligent. Shocking responses, and statistically not much different from those in previous generations.
If it is the case that black millennials are stuck in a cyclical experience that transcends history, then some will ask why the experience of the missing black millennial, in particular, matters. They will say this is essentially the same story that black people have suffered for decades, and to some degree they will be right. Promise and decline, hope and suffering—it is a pattern that weaves together Reconstruction, the Great Migration, the Civil Rights movement, and the election of Barack Obama. Throughout it all, the black community has waited for America to finally make good on its promise. Yet that day hasn’t come.
The Black Millenial: A desperate hope for America to make good on its promise
To comprehend the black millennial experience in America is to comprehend what it means to hope. Not in a feel-good way, not in a naive way, but in a desperate way, as a way of life, because the alternative is unacceptable. This is the story of black America, a story of strength and overcoming. But I sometimes wonder: When do we give up? When will hope fade? I am reminded constantly that, despite the hope of a black president, it was under his watch that the movement for black lives started. And it’s in his shadow that a racist president exists.
In a 1965 piece for The New York Times, James Baldwin talked about the painful generational trap that blacks face, a trap that black millennials are starting to confront as the older among us approach our forties:
You realize that you are 30 and you are having a terrible time. You have been through a certain kind of mill and the most serious effect is again not the catalogue of disaster—the policeman, the taxi driver, the waiters, the landlady, the banks, the insurance companies, the millions of details 24 hours of every day which spell out to you that you are a worthless human being. It is not that. By that time you have begun to see it happening in your daughter, your son or your niece or your nephew. You are 30 by now and nothing you have done has helped you escape the trap. But what is worse is that nothing you have done, and as far as you can tell nothing you can do, will save your son or your daughter from having the same disaster and from coming to the same end. Yet we continue to hope, we continue to struggle. Study after study shows that, despite being left behind, black millennials are still optimistic. But the nature of that struggle has changed, especially when it comes to the kind of freedom black millennials desire. A new crop of African American politicians, for example, have refused to whitewash their political personas, demanding that voters accept the ways in which they are different. Mayor Frank Scott Jr. of Little Rock, Arkansas, has said he is “unapologetically black.” Park Cannon, who was elected to the Georgia House in 2016, is one of that legislature’s three queer representatives and openly supports Black Lives Matter. Similarly, audacious themes have cropped up in the 2018 campaigns of Gen Xers like Stacey Abrams, Ayanna Pressley, and Andrew Gillum.
Black millennials, like others in their generation, are frustrated with the current system. Participation among black millennials in presidential elections dropped between 2012 and 2016, according to Pew, with turnout at 55 percent and 51 percent, respectively. That could partly be attributed to Obama no longer leading the Democratic ticket. But black millennials also supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary, while their parents went for Hillary Clinton, an indication that young blacks are disillusioned with the establishment and hungry for the kind of economic freedom promised in Sanders’s more far-reaching platform.
Black Millenial Entitlement: "if we worked hard, we could have an affordable home, decent health care, and a modest feeling of security"
Perhaps young blacks are guilty of being that most unforgivable of millennial sins: entitled. But our sense of entitlement does not revolve around avocado toast and CBD lattes. Our sense of entitlement, or at least mine specifically, comes from the notion that the richest nation on earth can provide all of its citizens with basic necessities. I thought that, if we worked hard, we could have an affordable home, decent health care, and a modest feeling of security. I thought that we were supposed to be able to have families without paying out the nose for daycare or worrying about student loans. And I thought that, after 400 years in this country, black people wouldn’t have to remind the world that our lives matter. But I was wrong.
Black America is not a monolith. We don’t all agree on what blackness or Americanness means, or whether we should even reconcile those two things. But we all have our own stories, and those stories are crucial to understanding the experience of black millennials and what that experience says about our country.
BuzzFeed, for example, recently published a story that addressed black millennial burnout. However, the piece was a response to another article about millennial burnout that went viral and that was very rooted in white experience. Though the response was a beautifully crafted evocation of black trauma and suffering, it reminded me that all too often our pain is seen as a side issue—an addendum to, instead of a legitimate part of, mainstream experience. And only one author ended up on the Today Show talking about millennials. Guess which?
If we were to put those stories front and center, we would find a version of young black America that is no less profound for being different—for being far from “typical.” My conversation with a young artist Shamir comes to mind. He had a breakout album in 2015, but years later found that he was being pushed in a direction he didn’t like. So he gave up the fancy producers and set out to define his career in a way that departed from what was expected of a black musician, recording a lo-fi album alone in his Philadelphia bedroom. He found the experience to be liberating. “I’ve already reached my American Dream,” he told me. “I have this career that feels boundless now.... It can only go up from there. I know there’s still a lot of other things that I want to do, but they don’t feel out of reach.”
About the Author: Reniqua Allen
Reniqua Allen is a writer and producer. Her new book, It Was All a Dream: A New Generation Confronts the Broken Promise to Black America, is out now from Bold Type Books.
She has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Quartz, Buzzfeed, Teen Vogue, Glamour and more, and has produced a range of films, video, and radio for PBS, MSNBC, WYNC and HBO.
Reniqua is also completing a Ph.D in American Studies from Rutgers University. Her dissertation looks at how black culture has and continues to engage with the idea of the American Dream. She lives in the South Bronx.
Media Accountability: Confirmed-- GOP's tea party win under Obama got twice as much media coverage as 2018 Blue Wave
Reposted from Eric Boehlert at Daily Kos
Last year, Democrats posted their best midterm cycle win since Watergate, flipping 40 seats in the House as part of a sweeping blue-wave pushback against Trump. Yet the three major television networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, devoted less than half as much airtime covering the 2018 resistance midterm cycle as they did covering the GOP's big tea party-assisted House win in 2010 under President Barack Obama.
Tea Party Demonstration
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March 2010 Tea Party demonstration on the Denver Colorado State Capitol.
Attributed to dalelanham [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia CommonsLast year, during Trump's first midterm election cycle, ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News aired 274 minutes on the topic, according to monitoring done by television news researcher Andrew Tyndall, who recently emailed his annual findings to followers. But during Obama's first midterm election cycle in 2010, the same network newscasts aired an astounding 666 minutes when tea party activists rallied against the Democratic president and helped the GOP take control of the House.
The networks just weren't that enamored with Democrats last year. For instance, World News Tonight spent more time covering Hurricane Florence in South Carolina (68 minutes) than it did covering the entire midterm election cycle (67 minutes), which Democrats dominated.
The snubbing appears to be part of a long-running trend, where the networks are far more keyed into midterm cycles when Republicans do well, compared to when Democrats score big wins. Indeed, the tea party findings once again seem to confirm that so many Beltway news cycles revolve around a very simple premise: What are Republicans angry about today?
Note that, since 1990, Democrats have posted their two best midterm wins in 2018 and in 2006. During those two years, the networks aired a combined 649 minutes of election coverage, according to Tyndall. By contrast, the networks aired a stunning 1,110 minutes in the Republicans' two best midterm cycles, in 1994 and in 2010.
It's true that, numerically, Republicans picked up more House seats in 1994 and 2010 (117) than Democrats did in 2006 and 2018 (71), but some of that is because of increased gerrymandering over the last decade by Republicans, which has made it harder for political parties to flip seats. Still, there's no question that the amount of time devoted to those four signature midterm campaign cycles should have been relatively similar. But it wasn't even close.
That's because the press went bonkers producing coverage of the GOP's so-called Contract With America in 1994 when Bill Clinton was president (453 minutes), and the tea party uprising under Obama (666 minutes). In both instances, the press played a key role in hyping Republicans’ claims and helping them turn the midterm cycles into national referendums.
How big are those numbers, 453 minutes and 666 minutes, respectively? According to Tyndall, the most-covered news story on the network evening newscasts for all of 2018 was the nomination and then bruising confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. For that, the networks set aside 426 minutes of coverage. Yet that's still less than the amount of time the networks devoted to the 1994 and 2010 midterm elections when Republicans won big.
Beltway news cycles revolve around a simple premise: What are Republicans angry about today?
It really is amazing to look back and see how the political press in America absolutely showered the tea party with nonstop coverage after Obama was elected. The newly elected Democrat had just won a historic landslide victory. Yet the D.C. press corps almost immediately—within weeks of Obama being inaugurated—decided that loudmouth Republican critics represented the real story in American politics. Fox News' unabashed marketing and promotion of the anti-Obama tea party movement helped the Republican allies create even more headlines.
Recall that the tea party movement was born on CNBC, when reporter Rick Santelli started ranting about Obama on the floor of the Chicago stock exchange, warning viewers the new Democratic president was steering the country toward a Cuban Castro-like economy. CNBC then hyped the clip incessantly ("Shot Heard Around The Word"/"Santelli's Manifesto"), while NBC led its evening newscast the night of the rant with a clip of Santelli, announcing his rant had struck a "populist" chord. (It hadn't: Polling at the time clearly showed that most Americans supported Obama’s plan to stem foreclosures, which is what Santelli had railed against.)
One other example of how the network newscasts often pay less attention to midterm cycles that favor Democrats came in 1998. That year, the networks produced a paltry 158 minutes of election coverage. The punch line is that the networks were so busy burying Clinton with impeachment and Monica Lewinsky coverage that they didn't have time left to pay attention to the fact that Democrats used the GOP's and the media's ceaseless scandal hysteria to actually win seats in the House, an almost unheard-of accomplishment for a party in power whose president is serving his second term. In 1998, the three networks aired an almost unimaginable 1,931 minutes of Clinton sex scandal coverage, according to Tyndall, but just 158 minutes on the Democrats' victorious midterm election cycle. That year, CBS Evening News produced just 50 minutes of midterm coverage, compared to a staggering 662 minutes of CBS White House scandal reporting.
When the Democratic Party scores historic midterm election wins, it ought to be treated by the media in the same way as the GOP is when it does.
Eric Boehlert is a veteran progressive writer and media analyst, formerly with Media Matters and Salon. He is the author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush and Bloggers on the Bus. You can follow him on Twitter @EricBoehlert.
Human Rights and Economic Empowerment: Activists demand Wall Street banks break up with Private Prisons in National Valentine's Day protest [with Update!]
Reposted from Huiying B. Chan at Daily Kos
Love was in the air this Valentine’s Day, but not for Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase. These major Wall Street banks have become the subject of increasing public scrutiny for their funding of the private-prison industry and immigration detention centers. Numerous organizations and individuals—from the worlds of grassroots community organizing to social investing—joined together to expose the true money story behind these banks.
In partnership with Daily Kos, Jasmine Rashid at social investing firm Candide Group conducted interviews with key organizers and leaders across the country, in order to get a glimpse into the work of change-makers who are pushing the needle when it comes to exposing the companies profiting most from private prisons and immigrant detention.
Valentines National Day of Action Outside of Wells Fargo Headquarters in San Fransico
But first, what exactly are Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase’s connections to private prisons and immigrant detention centers? The banks are major funders of GEO Group and CoreCivic, the biggest operators of both private prisons and immigrant detention centers in the United States. These two corporations control nearly 75 percent of the private prison industry, and earn over $2.7 billion in taxpayer dollars per year—all to keep people behind bars. A major driving force behind the mass incarceration and detention of black and brown people is a simple one: It makes a lot of money.
How exactly does it work? GEO Group and CoreCivic collectively hold nearly $4 billion in debt, so they rely on debt financing from major banks as they tighten and strengthen their control over the prison and immigrant detention systems. Without funding from major banks, it would be impossible for GEO Group and CoreCivic to carry out their day-to-day operations and keep the lights on in the facilities where black and brown people are detained and abused by the hundreds of thousands. In other words, without funding from JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, with the complicity of their shareholders, the private prison industry would suffer.
In the past six months, there has been a surge of national action to fight against banks’ toxic relationships with prisons and detention centers. On the ground, MomsRising, an organization working for the economic security of all moms, women, and families, along with Candide Group, led the #FamiliesBelongTogether corporate accountability committee, with over 80 organizations—representing over a million members across the country who are horrified by the separation and incarceration of immigrant children and families.
Last September, MomsRising held a rally in San Francisco, where they delivered a letter with 400,000 petition signatures to Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase, requesting that they stop financing the private prisons used in family detention. Our very own Daily Kos Community members made up a significant number of the petition signers who helped make the rally a success. The coalition agreed to use Valentine’s Day as a National Day of Action to support an initiative by Real Money Moves: If Wells Fargo and Chase didn’t break up with the private prison industry by Feb. 14, then customers would commit to breaking up with their banks.
On Valentine’s Day, immigrant families, activists, and allies showed up at Wells Fargo branches all across the country to deliver hundreds of thousands of petitions, including the voices of more than 150,000 people who pledged to switch from their banks unless they ended their relationships with private prisons.
Protest outside of Wells Fargo
Mothers and children call on Wells Fargo to #ShowLove by ending their funding of family separations and detention.
Organizers and families held ”playdate protests” around the country to complement the petition deliveries. At these protests held outside of Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase banks, kids played with their families, and led songs and chants with their parents. It gave children a role, and allowed for parents to show the next generation that they too are rising up against hate, and in support of what is right.
“We are doing this to bring thousands of moms and caregivers to the overall movement ecosystem in a powerful way, to build circles of organizing in local communities that can include ongoing protests, but also other forms of mutual aid, and support for people in detention or deportation proceedings,” said Ilana Berger, organizing director at Hand in Hand, a national network of domestic employers. Hand in Hand has been part of protests against ICE and DHS, but they also believe it is important to go after what they refer to as “the corporate backers of hate.”
“As mothers and caregivers, so many of us were appalled by the administration's brutal policy of separating families and detaining children, and we knew that this was an atrocity we could not let continue,” Berger added. “We want them to inherit not just a better society, but also the knowledge that they have the power—and the responsibility—to make a better world for all of us.”
In New York City, members of Make the Road New York (MRNY), an organization that builds the social, economic, and political power of Latinx and working-class communities, spent the morning at their local #ShowLove action with a serenade. They arrived with a mariachi band that sang breakup songs outside of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s doorstep.
Valentines Day of Action: Protestors in New York
Attribution: Ricardo Aca,Make the Road NY
Image of New Yorkers calling on JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to break up with the private prison industry.
“Punctuated by songs of heartbreak and loss, our members called on Dimon to once and for all break up with the private prison companies,” said Mateo Guerrero, lead organizer at MRNY. “The crowd chanted and sang beautifully, before continuing on to deliver more than 100,000 petition signatures to the bank headquarters, urging the bank to show love to their communities by ceasing to bankroll oppression.”
Songs of Protest to the CEO of JP Morgan Chase
A mariachi band plays and sings break up songs outside Dimon’s home in Manhattan.
Since the launch of the campaign back in September 2018, organizers have seen major shifts in the positions of the banks. In the beginning, Wells Fargo’s public position on private prisons was that overcrowding in the state prison system made them necessary. However, in December 2018, it issued a statement to shareholders, shifting its position: It stated that private prisons posed an escalated investment risk that ran counter to its human rights policy. It would no longer seek business from the industry.
“Wells Fargo was the first bank to respond in this way, and their statement was an important first step,” said Matt Nelson, executive director of Presente.org, the largest online advocacy group for Latin American immigrants in the United States. “However, it’s still not good enough. The bank still has tens of millions of dollars in existing funding supporting the private prison industry, and they haven’t presented any long-term strategy for even how they would gradually leave.”
Although there is still a long way to go, Wells Fargo’s shift in its public position is a testament to the power of grassroots organizing and large-scale mobilization. Last year and early 2019 have seen incredible mass efforts and victories against the corporate atrocities of banks and tech giants. The No Tech for ICE campaign highlighted the role of tech companies in aiding ICE, and called for corporations like Microsoft and Salesforce to cancel their contracts. Amazon also saw major public scrutiny for its contracts with ICE and marketing of dangerous facial recognition software. On Valentine’s Day, at the same time the playdate protests were happening, New York City successfully broke up with that monopoly when Amazon officials announced their decision to cancel their second headquarters in Queens—after facing consistent community organizing and outrage in the months since they first announced their decision.
Because of the continued coordinated national actions and press coverage, the stories coming out of private detention facilities have become more and more visible. “With the deaths of children and trans people and the daily torture of families within these facilities, the issue has reached beyond human rights communities to a point of widespread moral outrage,” Presente’s Nelson said. “This has become a moral issue that has put banks in a situation where supporting this industry means supporting the brutal, and often deadly, immigration policies of our current administration.”
“Every time the public gets more engaged, it visualizes the real world challenges and pain that so many migrants are going through because of the policies of the Trump administration, as well as the obscene profit motivation for family detention within the private prison industry,” Nelson added.
100,000 Petition Signatures infront of JP Morgan Chase Headquarters in Manhattan
Attributed to Ricardo Aca, Make the Road NY. Community members deliver over 100,000 petition signatures to the JPMorgan Chase headquarters in Manhattan.
Since the national actions, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has joined in to make a public commitment to hold banks accountable. “We’re going to hold oversight hearings to make these banks accountable for investing in and making money off of the detention of immigrants,” she said at an event held by Make the Road last week in Queens. “Because it’s wrong.”
Berger, from Hand in Hand, remains hopeful for the changes to come. “We hope it will inspire many others to take action in their own communities, so that it will grow the movement of people organizing in solidarity with immigrants and asylum seekers in our country. We hope this will lead to a movement where any private entity sees that investing in private prison corporations will be bad for their brand and for their business.”
Special thanks to Jasmine Rashid who conducted the interviews for this article. This article was published with the Daily Kos Liberation League.
Call to Action: Check out the Protest Update
Since the day of action on Valentines Day, the banks have responded! This article was posted here for context but be sure to go check out the results at Chan's follow up article on Daily Kos.
Huiying B Chan is a creative writer, multimedia storyteller, and community organizer from New York City with roots in the Toisanese diaspora. They are also a Staff Writer for the Daily Kos as well as a racial justice campaigner through the Kairos Fellowship.
Rodney Sumler Day 2019 Q&A
An evening in budding Spring, lights bloom to life in an opened storefront space. Afrocentric portraits of buildings towered over the reception desk and greeted the people as they entered. The buildings curiously wore warm, dark masks of the people that they housed and were similarly adorned in fantastically textured regalia of Harlem. Rich, bright, and royal sculptures dotted the space, seeming to sway to the smooth beats of quintessential Black, American music.
Attracted passer-byers frequently entered the storefront-turned-community-art-space, inquiring if the party was RSVP only. It was but, as part of the community, they were invited too.
Last week, there was an article over viewing the presentation given at the event by the late honoree's daughter, Rahni Sumler. Of course, at the live event, audience participation always unearths more perspectives! The audience received index cards at the event to jot down questions while the presentation were given. Here were the questions asked.
Celebrating the AC Phoenix Newspaper: Origins of the AC Pharos
The newspaper explored a number of fronts. This issue inspired the name for the foundation’s blog, “AC Pharos.”
Pharos is the name of an Egyptian lighthouse outside of the great city of Alexandria: One of the most famous cultural, scientific, and economic hubs in antiquity. Rodney Sumler was a casual artist. This header might have been drawn while serving his 5 year sentence after indictment.
"How would a community grant management training program work?"
Background: The Advisory Board allows Social Entrepreneurs to pitch Community Development Projects
In the presentation, Ms. Sumler pitched the Rodney Sumler Research Foundation's Advisory Board to entrepreneurs, small business owners, and researchers interested in community development. This board would advise the Governing Board in how the foundation should run. The Advisory Board was also described as an opportunity for social entrepreneur. Through Research Expeditions, social entrepreneurs could sustainably develop community development projects that they want to see. The Advisory Board an open forum of similarly minded individuals that could provide the support to help social entrepreneurs reach their goals.
Community Grant Management Training: Community Development and a Medium for Self-Sustaining Community Service
Ms. Sumler is the Chairwoman of the Governing Board. She is also an entrepreneur with her own business. As such, she meets some of her financial obligations through listing her business as a sponsor of the Rodney Sumler Research Foundation. Using herself as a serving example of opportunities for entrepreneurs serving on the advisory board, Ms. Sumler shared her vision of an eventual Community Writing Center. This Community Writing Center would offer grant writing and grant management trainings for members of the community. Continuing the functioning example of how the advisory board would work, she asked permission to share her ideas with the audience, to which they eagerly agreed.
She went on to explain her observations of how community boards work to develop the community. Community Boards are formed to develop the community. However, Community Boards often do not have the power or the resources to bring developments to fruition. Through seeking grants and using the grant funding apparatus, Community Boards can build relationships with funders and politicians to achieve power. They can also get the resources they need in a sustainable, and manageable way.
Further, having members of the community as the grant managers is a vehicle for self-sustaining community service. This sort of community service will be self-sustaining because these grant managers will be gainfully employed. Community based grant managers are better equipped to their insights as members of the community to obtain these resources.
The Community Writing Center would teach these skills to interested people in the community. The foundation would assist with this through Research Expeditions that could investigate, for example, the best ways to make community grant writing courses more culturally applicable and impactful to the target community. Culturally approachable and applicable writing courses have greater potential to generate better outcomes.
"With Rodney Sumler's AC Consultants, AC Phoenix Newspaper and then eventually AC Pharos, why did he use 'AC'?"
Background: Rodney Sumler's Branding
During the presentation, Ms. Sumler described the different projects her father took part in. He started "AC Consulting", where he went on to help employ members of the community to put up billboards and advertise services within the community. Seeing many successes in the community for billboards, he naturally traversed to another vector of marketing. This became the free, monthly newspaper called "AC Phoenix Newspaper" in 1983. The newspaper served the community for over 30 years, helping many community businesses and institutions grow. He also employed journalists and other writers from the community, collecting their insights.
At his passing, Ms. Sumler explained that the newspaper inspired the starting of the AC Pharos. Starting in 2016, the mission and challenges of the blog lead to the formation of the Rodney Sumler Research Foundation that next year. The AC Pharos would eventually become the online publishing arm and blog for the Rodney Sumler Research Foundation.
Search Engine Optimization 1.0
Ms. Sumler did not know why her father chose to brand his projects with "AC". She proposed that her mother might know, but then gave some colorful explanation to what her father's reasoning might be. Her father was an avid reader and had a library of books in his office. Ms. Sumler frequently would sneak into his office and peel through some of his books. She recalled an old business book that gave suggestions on naming your business. In the days before the apex of the internet, Ms. Sumler spoke of distant memories of businesses printed in databases called the "Yellow Pages." Members of the audience laughed in agreement.
The business book suggested naming businesses starting with the letter "A," as an indexing hack. Businesses are often listed by name and those starting with A appear at the top of the list. This could be seen as a form of SEO 1.0 hacks.
Later on in the evening, audience members participated in a electronic scavenger hunt. They were asked to go to Digital NC and navigate to their list of newspapers. Rodney Sumler may have gotten the last laugh as "AC Phoenix Newspaper" was listed near the top of the first page on Digital NC's database of community newspapers.
"What is Environmental Justice?"
Background: Rodney Sumler Day Celebrates Economic, Environmental Justice and Organizing Action
During Ms. Sumler's presentation she outlined the objectives of the evening, one of which was to celebrate environmental justice. One of the realizations since Rodney Sumler's final project and the creation of the foundation was that economic opportunity and environmental justice are intrinsically linked. The "Rodney Sumler Research Foundation for Economic Empowerment and Environmental Protection" was found to focus on the different aspects of this relationship and ways to improve outcomes in the community. This relationship is especially apparent in poorer communities.
Poorer communities do not have the resources, influence or power to affect policy that impacts many of the environmental conditions of their communities. The AC Phoenix Newspaper was a solution to this problem by being a bastion for civic duties such as voting. Albeit, the paper was most importantly a vehicle for civic engagement. Audience members got to see parts of the archives, which featured many profiles of local politicians and ways of taking action: contacting decision makers to talk about community issues. This addressed gaps in power.
Lead in Flint: Environmental Crises stem from Environmental Injustice
Ms. Sumler proposed the example of Flint, Michigan for the audience's consideration. Flint is a high profile environmental crisis that many people know about. However, outside of environmental activist communities, not many are familiar with how the crisis came to be and how to describe it.
Ms. Sumler gave a brief overview of how environmentalists and environmental activists talk about the events leading up to the crisis. Some corporations wanted to cut corners and make more money, neglecting safety standards. The local government, inundated by contributions to from said corporation, relaxed safety standards in-kind. Further, the local government in Flint in particular wanted to further reduce costs by not maintaining the water system. This lead to the lead contamination and the continuing crisis. Flint is a poorer community and, therefore, had little access to the people who made these sorts of decisions. "Environmental Injustice" encapsulates the political and industry scenarios that lead up to this crisis.
Call to Action: Connect with us to Continue the Conversation
The main way to connect to the Rodney Sumler Research Foundation is to subscribe to the AC Pharos e-letter! We update weekly on Fridays at 12pm. We also will continue to take questions and continue the discussion on Facebook @RodneySumlerResearchFoundation and our Company Page on LinkedIn.
We plan to continue to have small Guided Talks for Economic Empowerment and Environmental Justice throughout the year. You can learn more and actively discuss the intrinsic connections between environmental justice and economic empowerment at these events. You can also discuss what members of the advisory board are up to and their projects. Connecting with us will help you reserve your seat at these events!
An Introduction To Rodney Sumler Day: Economic, Environmental Justice And Celebrating Organizing Action! Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - 7:00pm - 9:00pm
March 13, 2015, the Mayor of Winston-Salem declared Rodney Sumler Day (RSD) an official city holiday to honor Rodney Jerome Sumler for his service to the city and for the purpose of continuing the spirit of his mission.
You can RSVP for both the NYC event and Facebook Live event at the link below:
Rodney Sumler: Community Activist, Social Entrepreneur
The term "social entrepreneur" was coined in the early 2000s. However, Rodney Sumler had been displaying qualities of social entrepreneurship since beginning his consulting agency, AC Consulting, in the 1970s. His paper, the AC Phoenix Newspaper, served communities in North Carolina for over 30 years. It provided many opportunities for small business and even for community members to become more civically engaged. For some members, Civic Engagement turned into Civic Service. The AC Phoenix News was sited for sending many Congresspeople of color to Federal, and NC State capitals.
- Make people aware of the Rodney Sumler Research Foundation(RSRF), founded to continue the work of Rodney Sumler, and what we do
- Give people ways to contribute to the RSRF
- Build relationships for our programs- potential scholars, expedition fellows, and advisory board members
- Celebrate the digital archiving of the Rodney Sumler’s community newspaper: the AC Phoenix News
- Highlight the importance of preserving our community through digitally archiving our work
Who was Rodney Sumler?
Rodney Sumler was a Civil Rights leader who, in the 1960’s, organized demonstrations with the now Rev. Jessie Jackson while they were attending their Alma Mater: North Carolina A&T State University.
For the next 40 years, Rodney Sumler remained dedicated to the betterment of people of color. As an entrepreneur, he was well known and provided meeting spaces for community leaders to discuss ways to uplift their community in the 1970's.
For over 30 years, he helped maintain diversity of representation in our nation’s capital as the Head Editor of the AC Phoenix News, providing a medium for community members to learn about their representatives. His final project was combating forces of environmental injustice afflicting a poor community of color in Eden, North Carolina.
Continuing the Legacy: Rodney Sumler Research Foundation
Rodney Sumler Research Foundation for Economic Empowerment and Environmental Protection was founded on November 2017. The foundation was formed and supported by the family to continue the work of Rodney Sumler. The mission of the foundation is to rewrite negative cultural narratives for people of color through education, research, and development.
To serve this mission, the goal of the foundation is to connect researchers and activists to pursue research driven community development. After all, rewriting negative cultural narratives requires the truth to be revealed. The truth is best unearthed and respected through rigorous research.
In pursuit of this mission, currently overseeing the creation and implementation of these programs:
- Social Research Expeditions that sponsor researchers in the field
- Scholars in Residence that serves to incubate journalists, scholars, and activists focused on uplifting under served communities through research
Successful Past Project: Digitizing the AC Phoenix Newspaper
Digitization of community newspapers preserves them and makes them more searchable. This can be used to build the community: overcoming challenges by having a record of what worked in the past. The AC Phoenix News was started by Rodney Sumler as the head editor in 1983, serving the community for over 30 years until his passing. It empowered many voices of the community, small businesses and served as an economic boon for the Piedmont Triad. It was also the spiritual predecessor of the Rodney Sumler Research Foundation's blog, the AC Pharos.
Scans of the newspaper are currently hosted for view via web at DigitalNC for everyone to see.
This project is technically on going, as the public can continue to send in their back issues of the AC Phoenix News to the Bluford Library at North Carolina A&T State University, Rodney Sumler's Alma Mater.
If you have old copies of the AC Pheonix News, contact us here also send the papers to this physical address:
Re: AC Phoenix Newspaper CollectionF. D. Bluford Library ArchivesNorth Carolina A&T State University1601 East Market StreetGreensboro, NC 27411
Digitization makes the Voice of the Community more Accessible for Everyone
The AC Phoenix News employed a number of authors from the community, who gave community insights, impacts from past political campaigns, and cultural events. Not only does this preserve the history of the community, it will also make it searchable. Digitizing community newspapers provides data that can be used to gain valuable insights on the community. This data can be further used to build the community: overcoming challenges by having a record of what worked in the past.
Digitizing the community paper provides sources for community insights. This means that we can contribute information to reference websites like Wikipedia or even NCPedia.org, making the voices from the community more accessible for everyone.
There are plans to continue the AC Phoenix News as a community publication, but we also need help from the community.
How to Contribute to the Rodney Sumler Research Foundation
Rodney Sumler was first and foremost a businessman, who believed in the power of small business to foster self reliant communities. In that spirit, our outreach is focused on connecting the business owners, activists, and local community together to network on how to build a greater world.Donate to our Current Project: $83K Campaign to Continue the AC Phoenix Newspaper
As the media landscape changes and evolves, the AC Phoenix Newspaper had continued to serve the community unhindered until Rodney Sumler's passing in 2015. His last issue on February 2015 was enjoyed by many community members in churches, on the PART Transit, on NC A&T Campus, and many other community institutions. Many advertisers were prepared to continue to work with the newspaper as well.
This campaign will cover final costs, pay staff, and continue distribution. Continuing the newspaper will continue recording voices around the triad.
We plan to make headlining articles from the AC Phoenix News available here at AC Pharos, alongside community insights and published data from the Rodney Sumler Research Foundation.
Sponsorships: Reoccurring Donations
Rodney Sumler was first and foremost a businessman, who believed in the power of small business to foster self reliant communities. In that spirit, our outreach is focused on connecting the business owners, activists, and local community together to network on how to build a greater world. This is why our sponsorship packages are geared towards the entrepreneurial individual starting out to the established business seeking tax deductible services.
Benefits of this package include:
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Tour |
Journey |
Odyssey |
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$100 # of Packages Available: 50 |
$500 # of Packages Available: 20 |
$1,000 # of Packages Available: 10 |
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Banner on Website and Mention in Event Program |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
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Reserved Tickets to the Benefit |
✔ (2) |
✔ (4) |
✔ (10) |
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Consulting Services: Technical Writing Research Web Content Development (Including Blogging) Writing Coaching |
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✔ (2 hours) |
✔ (4 hours) |
- Higher visibility for yourself and your Business: by having your banner on our website and a mention in our event program
- Reserved tickets to our March event celebrating Rodney Sumler Day (as well as any Foundation event of your choosing): Reserved seats to network with other potential partners and/or clients
- A series of complimentary consulting services from professional consultants that will benefit the growth and prosperity of your organization. These services include:
- Writing Services (Web content and Technical)
- Research Consulting
- Writing coaching
- All of these services are meant to be mutually beneficial: Allows your company access to otherwise expensive services and networking opportunities, while being able to fund a burgeoning non-profit
- All proceeds to the sponsorship packages are tax deductible: This means that money spent on the foundation goes directly back into your business
Join our Advisory Board
A challenge as large as building our communities cannot be done alone. Creating more opportunities for everyone requires participation from everyone. The Rodney Sumler Research Foundation seeks professionals, activists, researchers, and any one else with insights in environmental as well as economic justice to join our board.
For those with seasoned non-profit experience: Joining the board will allow you access to the ground level of a new organization, having a large impact on decisions that steer the course.
For those looking for experience in social impact and nonprofits: Joining the board will allow you to gain more experience.
For those interested in social and community based enterprises: Members of the advisory board are also free to list their businesses and "side enterprises" as sponsors to the Rodney Sumler Research Foundation. You will also have the opportunity to volunteer in-kind services to our donors: fellow small business owners in the community.
Providing in-kind services are already common place for many community entrepreneurs as a way to build networks. Joining the Advisory Board will allow seasoned entrepreneurs to naturally build these inroads while writing off in-kind donation hours to help support your own business. For those looking to start their own enterprises, this an opportunity to practice and continue the work of bettering our communities.
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