You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
From John Lennon’s Imagine (of course)
Martin Luther King and his people – the society at the time as it was pushed by young folk – collected the will; gathered the resources; moved the crowd; and, did what they were required to do – make change. They rode buses, walked long distances, confronted hostility with love, held hands, died, and, sang. Change.
Our turn. Let’s acknowledge Martin Luther King memory with a flurry of conversational energy and psalms, and by posting our ideas about change.
My idea of change is for folks graduating from high school to be free. Free to take a job without worrying about healthcare. Free to start a business without worrying about where you’ll live. I want to change it up so that after high school you can write poems, sing songs, make stuff I need, and create. Surely, we can figure out a way to make this happen. Game-changing enough?
Send me a short video or a 4-minute riff. If I gave you the spell of destiny manifested and meaningful, what would you change? Assume you have the energy, will and resources – how would you change our world? Post your ideas.
Tell me what the ancestors and the ages whisper in our ears – what makes them nod with approval? What do the ghosts of Susan B. Anthony, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, Emma Tenayuca, Aretha, Virginia Woolf, Fannie Lou Hamer, Woody Guthrie, Lily Yeh, Joe Strummer, and Martin Luther King tell us? These people had the gall, hope, daring, power, and people gathered to change the game.
Look forward to hearing your ideas. Even better, looking to checking out how you make your ideas happen.
Peace.
Love all the convo and discussion during the last few months: education; AIDS; corruption in political systems; happiness; the nature of activism; and, the value of a vote. We had a lot of flow, and of course, plenty of music.
The last conversation of the year – yes, 2011 – is all about your flow. Less a convo in a circle and more snacks, drink, and social chit-chat. This Friday – 3 to 5 p.m. in the Howard Thurman Center – we’re applauding the convo. We’re checking in and chatting. Reveling another year around the sun.
The featured playlist for the party includes songs you shared back in September – Music Isn’t Dead: The Coffee and Convo Playlist.
Peace.
Georgia Arnold's Twitter avatar
Now, a complete rundown of all the news from the front would take hours. Risk of death from AIDS: way down. Risk of death from other things: going up. Risk of drug reaction: depends. Risk of fatal drug reaction: low but not zero. Risk of drug resistance: gets higher every year. The statistics change almost hourly as new treatments appear. It is all too cold, too mathematical, too scary to dump on the head of a sick, frightened person. So we simplify. “We have good treatments now,” we say. “You should do fine.”
The bottom line is clear enough: once, not so long ago, we were working in another universe. Now we have simply rejoined the carnival of modern medicine, noisy and exhilarating, confusing and contradictory, fueled by the eternal balancing of benefits and risks.
From Dr. Abigail Zuger’s, AIDS, at 25, Offers No Easy AnswersTop of Form (essay published on June 6, 2006, in The New York Times)
Simple question: as we reach this moment – thirty years later – do we still have to talk about AIDS? Societies usually know how to commemorate, memorialize, forgive, reflect, and remember. When it comes to HIV/AIDS, is it time to learn to forget? Just an American way of looking at it all? What about the world? All Overblown?
This Friday, we’ll think about AIDSBottom of Form. Our friend Georgia Arnold – Executive Director of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation and Senior Vice President of Social Responsibility for MTV International – will join us for the first half of the convo. (Be sure to also check out how she and her crew work public health messages into attractive, inspiring, and entertaining drama on the tubes – Shuga: Love, Sex, Money.) See you – 3-5 p.m. – in the Howard Thurman Center. I’ll have the cookies and coffee; you bring the conversation.
Peace.
#buconvo
