Call of Duty

Marketing from Call of Duty:
Advanced Warfare. Art imitates life?
Or the other way around? And if these
games train our youth's minds, for what,
precisely, are they being trained?

Four o'clock in the afternoon is normally a lull in the work day. It's an hour or two before most folks normally walk out of their offices, depending on the organization for which you work, productivity has slowed, and there are minor side bar conversations around happy hours and after work activities.

Yesterday, however, turned all of that on its head.

Three lives in rapid succession have been determined of lesser value than those of uniformed 'law enforcement'. Decisions surrounding the cases of Trayvon Martin, Akai Gurley, Michael Brown, and now Eric Garner are to say the least atrocities, if not something more offensive. The wholesale devaluation of one particular race in our country is one of those frequently untreated conditions of democratic dementia deemed unnecessary to treat. Spin doctors have seen it as a kind of nuisance cough: leave it alone and it will go away.

But this isn't going away. In fact, the metastasis of the invading cancer has so completely infiltrated every corner of our society as to make the host system indistinguishable from the infected one. Selma, The Watts Riots, the original March on Washington, the LA Riots, the recent 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, Ferguson, last night in New York City and the nation... this is not going away.

Oppression does seem inherent to the human condition. Jews in the ancient world/during the ReConquest/the Holocaust, Christians in the Roman era, non-Christians during the Crusades and Inquisition, Natives during the period of Exploration, Slavery... the subjugation and obviation of entire races of people is a continual characteristic in human history. It would be impossible to make a case that war is not already being perpetrated. Community members die in the streets every day, collateral damage is a marginal cost in the accounting process, and manipulation is so rampant we can no longer be called a Democracy, nor can we any longer call New York City the last bastion of liberalism. We have inarguably and unequivocally registered our discontent, we have assembled peacefully and it has brought us neither relief, nor a redress of grievances, and inexorably, the body count ticks up.

"Unite for Justice" From the
Ferguson Decision rally
11-28-2014. Photo Credit:
 David A. Brezler 

Where, then, is Spartacus? Where is that sorely needed paladin who will unite the clans of the oppressed and lead them forward to shake the very foundations of the oppressor state? History is rife with examples of whole systems that evolved only as a result of the collective, a unity of groups who previously might have been - to say the least - uneasy towards each other banding together to throw off the yokes of oppression. Marching in the streets, chanting inciteful slogans, and waving standard bearing banners is not unimportant. However, it is temporary, and the powerful are not apt to decide for change as long as they can count on paid  security and continue to change the channel.

We must create a much stronger movement, a much more strategic answer, something infinitely stronger than just ‘sea change’. The power structure from bottom to top must be entirely disrupted, and disbanded, from how funding is controlled to how politics is controlled, to how housing, food, and health is controlled. The often quoted "a system cannot protect those it was never designed to serve" could not be more true than at this very moment. Any system that presupposes as a base part of its structure inequities, impoverishment, and the devaluation of human life is not a system built on lasting precepts. We know this from studying the last several times empirical enterprises attempted global control. In fact, we should be asking if these are qualities intrinsic to the economic and political structures we have in place. Just how much of an ideal is this Enlightenment Era experiment before we go exporting it about the globe? 

ALL lives matter. More than simply a new political party to languish by the wayside and eventually be co-opted into the current status quo, we need an entirely new system. We require a system where elitism is not bread as an inherited trait into our culture. That ethos reigns whether the elitism expresses itself in Sports, Wall St., Education, or Community Organizing. Shut it down, shut it all down. Those fanaticisms that transform normally thinking, critical individuals into perpetuators of disparateness and exclusivity cannot persist.

Our only way forward is as a singular, cogent, incisive unit with the survival of Humanity as our central, unifying cause. Let us not be so caught up in the demonstration of our discontent that we forget to forge fruitful new pathways, and become the tomorrow we were meant to see.

Media Strategy

This week has been full of unexpected surprises. For example, what started as a minor twinge in my back Tuesday night ended up being a slipped disc Wednesday morning, and that has peppered my experience throughout, up through today. To be sure, the symposium which I'd signed up for on Wednesday was a difficult experience to sit through because the very act of sitting caused me so much discomfort that I'm not entirely sure how, exactly, I was able to accomplish it for hours at a stretch. In contrast, having been to this event, I've managed to make a few new contacts, and find out more information about potential places and positions towards which I can focus my efforts. Also, it's been raining in the capitol region for the past several days, which pleases me greatly since it keeps the heat and mosquito population down, and makes the experience a bit more bearable.

The Dialogue on Diversity is a series of day-long symposia focused on different topics, and this one was specifically tailored for the purpose of discussing health disparities in the minority and immigrant communities in the United States.  One of the main presenters with possibly the greatest number of representatives from its myriad offices and subdivisions was the Federal government's Department of Health and Human Services. Specific sections spoke on topics that ranged from obesity - one study claims that every child born in the US in 2000 will in some way be affected by obesity, unless, that is, we make some changes in our diet and practices, - Food Insecurity - one representative spoke on the evolution of Food Stamps into the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program, and it's potential for wider impact in minority communities that are in need, - the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (which, it so happens, is the purpose for the title of this post,) and quite a few others, including National Minority AIDS Council, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, National Council of La Raza, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and several others who made clear several crucial health concerns for the future of our communities.

One of the most salient messages from everyone's presentation was the fact that information needs to be more available, more accessible, and more clear for the general public, especially those who stand to benefit from the broadest range of programs. For example, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius put together a video commemorating the first anniversary of the Affordable Care Act.

This is fantastic, but many more people need to be drawn to the site, and made aware of the fact that Healthcare.gov is a central information warehouse where they can make comparisons between healthcare plans, search for providers, understand the law, and find contact information for DHHS personnel. Also, there is the potential for several of these organizations to partner together for the purpose of realizing their communications outreach goals, and bringing their message to their target audience. I'm hoping I can help in that endeavor in several ways, this particular blog piece being one of them. 

But that was just Wednesday...

Friday, I presented a Social Media 101 workshop for the Altrusa District 2 conference, and it went over fabulously. Altrusa International, from their website, is "...an organization of professional women and men who volunteer our energies and expertise in projects dedicated to community betterment. We are also a community service organization that espouses volunteerism, service and fights for literacy and against AIDS." They are presently in the midst of a rebranding campaign, looking to increase their membership, and in truth, having heard some of the fantastic stories that this organization has been capable of achieving, they ought to attract a very wide audience. I would personally like to see the organization draw in a much larger crowd, committed, as I am, to the public service, hence the current objective in educational attainment.

I'm always pleased by how much people change their minds in an hour's worth of presentation and a few short demonstrations. Nearly the entire room went from eschewing the concept of even getting involved in any sort of social media interactions, to questioning excitedly what are the next steps. Once they realized that you could use these newfound super powers for good instead of evil "Can we set up a Facebook page for a Community Activity?" Absolutely, go and check out the Friends of Van Cortlandt Park.) "What if I don't want to have a blog where I tell the world every last detail about my life?" That's not necessary. You have complete control over the content of your blog (and for a great example, read mine! Or, go and see the Bronx News Network) Also, don't confuse your LinkedIn with your Facebook page PLEASE!!! I was asked several times if I was available for strategy sessions (yes,) and if I had a consultation fee (also yes,) but noone seemed to flinch at that idea. Many business cards were exchanged, and I feel fairly certain that I might soon be needing a secretary. I kind of like this sort of adventure, truth be told, I'm getting to utilize my technological, educational, and business acumen, and manage my own schedule. I could see myself falling easily into this pattern. Stay tuned and we'll see how this goes. If you find yourself needing to work on such a project, find me on my LinkedIn, through Facebook, or leave a comment here.

NUF love!

This first week of NUF experience has been quite the affair. Meeting and interacting with the 42 other fellows in this cohort gives me a renewed sense of purpose, almost as if all the crazy ideas about how to forcibly evolve the system I've been having during the rather long trajectory of my professional career suddenly have a springboard from which to leap. Before going much further in this journal, knowing that a few people will likely be reading it, I have to recognize that previously I used this blog as a teaching tool, and so the posts below this initial NUF 2011 spot will be webquests that I designed for my Spanish classes.

On to the details:

Graduation date is 28 July 2011, provided all goes exceedingly well. I predict that, now having read the stats book assignment (partially) that everything else will be, though rigorous, manageable. The welcome week/orientation was also quite pleasant. Many of our questions were answered in terms of how to navigate the very murky waters of financial aid in the university, and Baruch's peculiarities as a business school. The dean of the school wherein our Public Administration program is housed gave a speech which not only left me with insight into where our lives will be guided during the next 14 months, but also his own character, and the fact that I may actually need to spend more time listening to his words, or perhaps at the very least tracking down some of his publications.

Breakthrough leadership is one of those things that as a concept I noticed a while ago, but was entirely unable to completely articulate. As David Mensah kept saying, 'you all already know all of this, you just never strung it all together." In effect he's right; we inherently have all of these fantastic communications tools already bread into us as we acquire language, utilize language, create language, re-imagine language, watch/hear/read/speak about other people using language, we have intake and uptake (Mim is laughing about this right now, I'm sure) regarding the principles inherent in this Breakthrough system, but we just never put them into practice until someone or something creates the necessary stimulus, takes us past the tipping point, or produces an evolutionary event in our internal linguistically programmed productive schemata.

Other than that, I'm of the opinion that alternative revenue streams are in dire need of prospecting with the purpose of creating a separate endowment fund so that the fabulous breakfast and lunch spreads we had during the initiation/orientation week can be continued throughout the 10 weeks of course intensives, and again once we are all back in town for the capstone experience. I'm not entirely certain how many people are going to agree with me on this, but I'm just sayin.

During the holiday weekend, we've met up and shared a few rounds at local venues, and I'm thoroughly impressed by the level of immediate camaraderie in our group. It reminded me of one of the other professional organizations - that of Judicial Interpreters and Translators, - which was so instantaneously filial once we were all introduced. I'm fairly happy about it, and I'm looking forward with great anticipation at the year + alpha that is to come.