A Reason to Live: The Future is Greater

Have you ever been asked the question: "What keeps you going?" ? What is your typical answer to that?
 For me depending on where I am or the context of the question, the answer varies but is usually the same.

What keeps me going?

1. My immediate family, whom I adore and admire
2. The future/Youth

Working with youth for me has increasingly grown over the years to be akin to eating and breathing. What is the point of life if I'm not investing in the future? Why even bother? They are hope, that in a fucked up world that we've created we can still make something better.

My mom almost always says to me in those 'what are you doing with your life?' phone conversations "I want my kids to be better than me." At first I would sigh and want her to stop blabbing but now I'm repeating the same thing to my youth. She also named me 'Nkeiruka' which means: 'What is coming (the future) is greater'. Little did she (or I) know at the time that I would manifest this almost to a fault (at least if you ask her sometimes).

I know it's a cliche saying that 'Children are our future' and a lot of times it's said without the meaning or weight that it carries. But for me it's pretty much one of the few phrases that matter to me in life, and almost everything I do has to be branched with that as the root.

Sometimes I lose sight or I get frustrated with the process, but watching videos (below) like these makes me inspired to see that other people are working with the same value.

So I can keep it in my head that the only thing that matters in this world is the young people coming after me. 





Happy Mardi Gras!

your neighborhood bleeding heart radical,
N

Sat. Nov 19 Catch Us If You Can

We will be at this awesome event TODAY. Stop by and say hello, and get some awesome gifts.

It’s here! The Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy Holiday Design Bazaar is SATURDAY, November 19, 2011, noon-6pm.

Join us at Harvey Milk for some excellent and unique gift ideas by local artisans and designers. You’ll find something for every budget and in a wide range of styles, AND you’ll be benefiting the arts programs at our school while you shop!

WHAT IT IS: Local artists and designers sell their wares and donate 25% of their sales for the day. (We will also have a ‘Harvey Milk’s Own’ table, with Spike’s Coffee, HMCRA t-shirts, and more)
PLUS: a booth on the value of arts education, DJs throughout the day, silent art auction, live drawing/sketch artists, activities for the kids (face painting, art projects, etc.), childcare, and yummy food!

WHY: The proceeds of the bazaar will go towards our developing visual and performing arts program. This event was created last year to provide Arts Education in every classroom. This year, a Visual Artist will provide 10 art classes to all 11 classrooms through SFArtsEd Artist in Residence program starting in January (http://sfartsed.squarespace.com/artists-in-residence/). Our dream is to raise enough money to not only fund our artist in residence, but also to bring back Performing Arts Workshop for creative movement and capoiera classes in the Spring.

Holiday Design Bazaar Benefit for Harvey Milk Creative Arts Academy

One3snapshot will be here!! Stop by and begin your holiday shopping while supporting Artisan and education for youth

Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy looking for Artists to Donate Art & do Live Demos

Dear Artist,

Would you be willing to donate a piece of your artwork or an hour or two of your time to host an art demo to help raise money for arts education?

The Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy is organizing a Holiday Design Bazaar that will be held on Saturday, November 19, 2011 from 12-6 PM at the school, located at 4235 19th Street (one block up from Castro). The proceeds of this bazaar will go towards our developing visual and performing arts program. The event will have 30+ local vendors selling their handmade art-wares. In addition, we plan to host an ART AUCTION. We also want to have live ART DEMOS throughout the day celebrating what the arts is all about.

In 2010, this event grossed roughly $10,000 and with the donations received, we were able to partially fund the school's Visual Arts Program. We are raising money specifically to fund 10 art classes per year in each of our classrooms.

Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy is a small, public school located in the Castro District of San Francisco. Our mission is to empower student learning by teaching acceptance and non-violence, celebrating our diversity, achieving academic excellence, and fostering strong family-school-community connections. Our kids need art, and the San Francisco Unified School District has virtually eliminated arts funding. This is why we are asking you, our San Francisco art community, for your help. Young children are our investment. What we give them now sets the foundation for the future. We hope you will consider our request and take this opportunity to help fund an innovative, urban public school arts program.

We will feature gorgeous, hand-made crafts, yummy food, art auction, live art demos, childcare, a presentation on the value of arts education, and more! This is a beautiful event and a real community builder, plus a great opportunity to support our little school!

If you are interested in participating please let us know by replying to this email, or contacting us at <artsdesignbazaar@rocketmail.com>.

Thank you so much for considering our request,

Design Bazaar Committee

artsdesignbazaar@rocketmail.com

 http://harveymilk.com/

the 99% ignored in Arts Funding #Occupy

REUTERS/Mike Segar

 Even if you were living under a rock. You know about the occupations happening around various cities in the US. What we're also talking about is the various ways this crazy 1% plays out. This Washington Post article talk about how Foundations basically pretty much fund more wealthy-white serving institutions than it does diverse communities. This funding trend does not match up with the growing population of said diverse communities.

“It is a problem because it means that — in the arts — philanthropy is using its tax-exempt status primarily to benefit wealthier, more privileged institutions and populations,” wrote the report’s author, Holly Sidford.

Talk about keeping it in the family.

Of course it's not telling me anything that I don't know. The money just circles around and 'philanthropy' is just a guise that rich people use to keep the things that entertain them alive.

Even though seemed like an ad for the Ford Foundation (which hopefully may encourage them and others to continue diverse funding) at the end, the point of the article is still something to that can be paid attention.

Ana Goes to School

Rioting in London: Police vs. Black Man

 This is basically a bit of a stream of consciousness surrounding the recent London riot after police shot a Black man (London riot you say? What pray tell is it?) Colorlines has a "short and sweet" report about it.

Photo from Colorlines

I'm way past sick of this police vs. black man; colonist vs. black lands phenomenon. It makes me want to throw up and I feel I'm simply so over this human 'race'. And the news around the after-effects drives me crazy, aren't people tired of sick of just narrowing it down to something done by those savage-black-gang-involved-tennis-shoe-stealing youth? We're such a lazy group of people who never will actually fight for change because our lives are really just great, so we pass the blame. And so the media goes ahead and puts up their template news and we go deeper into our discrimination. But sometimes I wonder maybe that's just what we need, for everything to really go to complete shit, and for people to become REALLY uncomfortable so they can pay attention.

Here's one article that begins some exploration of the causes and effect of blaming the youth, it's not that deep (neither is this blog post) but a lot of this is very emotional for me, the comments to the article make me angry and illustrate what is messed up about our societies and how far we have to go in terms of regard for humanity.

This article is particularly interesting to me. I've been intrigued out how much the blackberry is a huge thing especially from the point of Nigerians in Nigeria and the Diaspora. If you know the half of it, you know that blackberries are now getting something akin to a human right.

Because these days twitter and facebook can get you in big shit, and BBMs are less traceable by the authorities (for now), Blackberry is saying that they would give information to the police about people's BBM messages to help aid the arrest of folks who are passing on info about the London riots. So these hackers threaten Blackberry... i.e.

"You Will _NOT_ assist the UK Police because if u do innocent members of the public who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and owned a blackberry will get charged for no reason at all,"

"If you make the wrong choice your database will be made public, save yourself the embarrassment and make the right choice. Don't be a puppet," 

(read the article for more)

Like I said most or all even of the people I know who have Blackberries are Nigerian/African/Caribbean. We support Blackberry, one (too many) of us gets killed, we up-rise, the company that we fish over our moola to fecks us in the ass.

dog eat dog sucka.

the Pencil vs. the Gun

On this past weekend the SOS Rally/March happened in Washington D.C. Lots of things were said. Lots of things happened. Below are two videos I've selected to highlight.

Okay see now the problem is. Goodness! Okay I'm glad that the people in this video are the ones who are doing it, because if that was me, there would have been some weave pulling and butt kicking. I know I know, not a good example for the kids. sigh. woosah. meditate. visualize.
If you know half of anything about me, you know that I don't joke with providing the best and equal opportunities for all! But I'll just let you watch the video.



Jose Vilson (click to visit his blog) who is one of my favorite educators and activist that keep me going from afar had this to say:



p.s. Jose you need a "Teacher  Don't Teach Me Nonsense" tee

Busy Bee

Damn. It's been a minute. *insert busy rant* Basically working and trying to live a sane life. Lots of fun and exciting new and old things going on.

Working on the production of ReVulvaLution a performing and visual art event that celebrates the power of women and girls
Creating new work for my dance projects D-Fuse & Whoa!
Working on some new designs for One3snapshot ...the Whimsical Warriors collection in honor of Women's History Month in March & International Women's Day...Coming Soon

Trying to stay healthy, could be better. Will be.

Off The Clock: Restuarant Worker's Appreciation Day

I hadn't been in the Mission Neighborhood in SF in a while and I happened there last Friday and out of a lot of things that were annoying one thing made me smile. Saw this in a store window. I think it's so dope a thing to do! I'm posting it past the fact but I think it's so dope. Gotta give props to MCCLA and Young Workers United... makes me happy to see work like this in the community!

Monday, September 27, from 12-5:00pm FREE EVENT
Calling all servers, cooks, dishwashers, bussers and barbacks: This day’s for you! The Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts has teamed up with Young Workers United, Latin Dance Grooves, and many local restaurants to offer an afternoon of FREE massage, dance classes, yoga and other activities to relax your body and mind…plus complimentary food and drinks from your favorite local hot spots.

c.u.r.r.e.n.t ( in this moment)

• fruit obsession: Persimmons &; Pomegranates

• reading: Immortal: Love Stories with a Bite. not because that's the kinda shit I pick up to read, but because I'm doing a 5 for 5 book exchange with a teen (we read/finish at least 5 books given by the other). Apparently that's all teenagers read/watch these days: poorly written stories about the undead.
• song stuck in my head: Yori Yori by Bracket; Poison by Bill Bev Devoe; My Name by Lhasa De Sela
  
• creative project: Earrings for myself & friends, Dance piece for my Pocos Locos dance class, invitation cards for a teenager's baby shower 
• coordinating project: Loco Bloco's 2010 Blocura Gala
• favorite place to be: on a plane away from here
  
• event: the classic house party that i threw with like 10 other people last weekend; Nneka @ Cafe Du Nord (pics coming soon)
  
• pet peeve: none
  
• social justice outcry: ...
  
• general mental state: oppressed bliss
  
• random happening: walking out of the BART station in Berkeley with my friend, and getting vocally harassed by a bunch of young black boys; the weirdest thing was they almost let us go all the way through without saying anything to us (phew) but then as soon as I thought we would make it, they started out talking to us, and got exponentially louder and messy the further we got away. strange.
  
• current one3snapshot tee i can't stop wearing: Charcoal gray "Frida" Tee with neck line cut off
  
• social networking site: okcupid.com
• online destructive habit: reading live EVERY live feed update on fb (i do only have 200 'real & close enough' friends)
• all time destructive habit: orderings crafting supplies on amazon & other sites so I can feed my obsession about receiving packages in the mail
• pics: 

these are my obssesssionnssss

one3snapshot is now available at artillery apparel gallery in the mission @24th

loco bloco is having a gala one3snapshot is doing the graphic work and everyone's invited www.locobloco.org

some gooooodd sweet potato & pear pie (that my friend made) with plain yogurt on top.: nutritious and tasty

 

jars of applesauce from an apple-sauce making workshop with kids & families

 

bye bye

,n

Taxi!! Taxi!!

Oh my gosh. So I can be seen randomly championing a black cause and hating on white people. But I have to say I am relatively sheltered and naive about certain realities that apply to Black people in the United States, even as a Black person myself (possibly more on this in a way in the future post).

So a teenage black boy at my job asks for a taxi number. I absentmindedly reel off a 333333 number to him. A few minutes later he walks out the door and seconds later walk backs in like "shit what the #@!* that mofo drove off..."

I was distracted browsing facebook (of course) so it took me a few seconds after my coworker started laughing for things to register...

and i was like "what..? what?"
and it clicked
..."the driver left?"

and he replies "yeah"...
I say to the boy "Oh maybe you should have taken that black hoodie off..."

My coworker goes "yeah right! I tried to catch a cab the other day and I was dressed sharp too!! Cab driver drove OFF! They don't like black people, you see me I dress nice all the time. He did not care! As soon as he saw I was black he was gone!"

My mouth agape. "You lying!"

He goes on to say "I already had the car door opened and everything, that cab driver turned around and was like no no no and next thing I knew he was gone!"

This whole time my co-worker is laughing relaying his story, but I know he's not making it up.

I on the other hand really I'm floored. I mean I've heard all the jokes about how a black man can't get a cab. Shoot I've even had difficulties finding cabs in the wee hours in Oaktown. Eight or more cab companies in a row have hung up on me when I rattle off a certain address.

But somehow I have been in this cocoon. I thought this is 2009. This is San Francisco... Somehow I just always thought it was a joke that the Funny Black Man sure banks on for laughs while he's on stage.

Somehow...it never made say "damn" with my head hung low.



Speaking of Black Men... Here's some photos from one Black man who's doing things. Suru is a clothing line from Baba Afolabi; he introduced us to it 20 days ago on October 2 in Downtown Oakland. Photos by Kola Shobo

Suru Introduced







das all,

N