The SuperSpade is everywhere.

Just a quick note today about ways Brandon and I are making The SuperSpade available to you in as many ways as possible:

• If you’re a Twitter user, make sure you follow Garlin (@garlin), Brandon (@bqw) and The SuperSpade (@superspade).
• If you own a Kindle, you can subscribe to The SuperSpade on your Kindle for $1.99/month. (My personal blog is there too).
• If you read from your cell phone, type http://www.thesuperspade.com into your phone’s web browser. It will work on any phone with Internet access. If you’re using an iPhone, you’ll see a special, optimized version of the site. It’ll look something like this.
• If you use an RSS reader like Google Reader, make sure you add our RSS feed to your list.
• And as always, you can put http://www.thesuperspade.com into any web browser and get to the main site.

Last but not least, we’ll soon be rolling out an email newsletter where subscribers will receive great insider benefits like:

• Tips on how you can be an effective activist and get involved at the local and national level
• Additional in-depth analysis on issues and events
• Connections to other online activists and bloggers working on issues impacting people of color
• A chance to have your voice heard on The SuperSpade
• Much more…

There will be another announcement when the email newsletter is up and running.

Stay tuned and stay connected.

One Love. One II.

Photo Credit: lennbob on Flickr

James Baldwin

Take This Hammer is a 1963 documentary film that shows author/activist James Baldwin’s fact-finding mission to San Francisco that same year. His purpose was to answer the question: is the Negro in San Francisco, CA any better off than the Negro in Birmingham, AL? He concluded that:

There is no moral distance between the facts of life in San Francisco and the facts of life in Birmingham.

Baldwin presents an extraordinary social critique of America North & South, white liberalism, and the angst of Black teenagers. What’s exceptional are some of the specific barometers he uses to judge young Black people’s view on their future.

Will there ever be a Black President?

There is one exchange where he asks a group of young men if there will ever be a Negro President in this country. They flatly tell him “No, never.” Baldwin retorts with solidly nuanced optimism: “Yes, there will be a Negro President, but this country will be different from the one that exists now.”

Obviously, we have a Black President now. That begs the question: was Baldwin right? Is this a different country than it was in 1963? Yes in many ways, and no in many others.

The failure of Christianity

Near the end of the film, Baldwin opines on the almost comical hypocrisy of American [white] Christianity. Baldwin asserts that:

…these churches are absolutely meaningless and almost blasphemous…more social club than spiritual institution…the Christian church in this country has never, as far as i know, been Christian.

Baldwin is himself a Christian, but he sees and hears the spiritual frustrations of Black youth. One young man told him that the best way for Black people to organize [for revolution] was by “coming together as Muslims.” What does that mean? That spirituality & religion as forces of identification, pride, and community were as important then as they are today. It also speaks to the fluidity of religion, to people’s desire to find a spiritual persuasion that speaks to their needs. Baldwin’s critique on American Christianity shows that many young, militant Black folks rejected a faith they saw as hypocritical and weak. Today’s Christianity is still fighting this battle. 

On “liberalism”

Baldwin shares an intellectual pedigree with Steve Biko with his disdain of “liberals” (in this context, they both mean White liberals). In the film, Baldwin has a lot to say about this:

Everywhere I’ve been in this country, white people think race relations are excellent.

Liberals are looking for an alleviation, a protection of their own consciousness.

Liberals can’t be fake and be heroic too.

White people think of themselves as missionaries…but we don’t want you to do it for the Negro, we want you to do it for you.

His critique is not of liberalism, but of dishonest, half-hearted activism. Activism and organizing are based upon trust, and Baldwin did not trust white liberal activists in many cases.

This tension still exists in some circles today. Most interestingly, it creates a chasm between those arguing over whether the shortest path to equality and freedom in this country is through racial reconciliation or class-based economic struggle. Baldwin, Biko, myself, and others saw this as a false choice, but it creates a very real debate for many activists and thinkers.

Where do we go from here?

Baldwin in the film is neither overly optimistic nor terribly pessimistic. He does offer some thoughts that give insight into his thoughts on the future:

Buildings without foundations will inevitably come down.

I can be fooled, but my kids won’t be…either we will correct what’s wrong, it will be corrected for us.

This is something that’s been hitting close to home with me in recent years. The aspirations and assumptions of one generation are often realized, debunked, and adjusted by the next. Baldwin speaks specifically about ideas such as the “fakeness” of the American dream (i.e. having a garage) and what is actually meant when politicians & developers say “redevelopment” (to Baldwin, that means “remove the Negro”).

As my generation of activists, thinkers, leaders, and citizens chart our course through this dynamic social landscape, we can learn a lot from those that came before us. However, learn means neither repeat nor ignore. Instead, it means absorbing the knowledge and experiences, examining the current context for similarities and differences, applying what we’ve absorbed where appropriate, and innovating where necessary.

One Love. One II.

Photo credit: Ben Wheeler on Flickr

Enjoy.

One Love. One II.

My piece begins at the 14.18 mark and lasts for approximately 8 minutes, through 22.32, but I encourage you to listen to the voices and perspectives of the other Black bloggers featured. They are:

• Dwight Hunter, exodusmentality
• Yobachi Boswell, blackperspective.net
• Gina McCauley, whataboutourdaughters.blogspot.com

We’ve stated our position here, and this interview was a chance to communicate it on another platform. The issue to me is about embracing the next generation of activism and respecting the results that online activism has produced. The SuperSpade, Color of Change, and members of the blacknetaction coalition are committed to making a difference today, tomorrow, and beyond in a transparent, accountable, and measurable way.

One Love. One II.

The title is “Reframing Net Neutrality,” and it talks about why an accessible and public and non-discriminatory Internet is important to preserve. You can listen to the audio here.

One Love. One II.

Below is a rough transcript of the podcast:
–
Hello and welcome to the Northwest Progressive Institute’s second podcast for May 2007.

My name is Garlin Gilchrist II. I’m the Senior Policy Analyst for Technology of NPI, and I’m pleased to be your host for this episode. To reach us with your comments and suggestions, send a message to feedback@nwprogressive.org. I will give you that information again at the end of this podcast.

Today’s podcast will be NPI’s first that focuses specifically on a Technology issue. One of the most pressing technology issues that we face today is that of Network Neutrality.

First, a definition. Columbia Law School Professor Tim Wu best defines Net Neutrality as “a network design principle whose premise is that a maximally useful public information network aspires to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally.” What this essentially means is that everything available on the public Internet should be equally available and accessible to everyone with an Internet connection.

Advocates of Net Neutrality traditionally argue that because the public Internet is a public good that is “owned” by no one, access to it should be non-discriminatory.

Constructing a logical reason why there should be discrimination in Internet access is, difficult, to say the least. However, in order to better communicate why Net Neutrality must be preserved, a reframing of the discussion is necessary. In order to make our position more effective and more understandable to the public at large, we must talk about Net Neutrality as an issue of consolidation, discrimination, and control.

Pew Research has published that half of Americans view the FCC’s decisions to relax caps on how many newspapers and TV stations a media corporation can own in local a market as bad for America. People understand that consolidation of media outlets leads to echo chambers of strategically designed and distributed propaganda. The media, which could potentially be a platform for diversity in its purest form, is with few exceptions fast becoming a bastion for not only anti-diversity messages but anti-progressive messages as well.

The term Net Neutrality, while elegant and accurate, is not something that’s easily understood by everyone. By reframing Net Neutrality as a fight against efforts to consolidate control over what web sites people can view and discriminate against consumers who are not subscribers to a particular “tier” of service, we put it into terms that are more easily digestible. “Neutral networks” sounds like a buzz word; consolidation and discrimination sound like things to fight against.

What are the opponents of Net Neutrality trying to consolidate? Access to the Internet. In their words, they’d like to “use price descrimination to achieve economic efficiency in the Internet access model.” No matter how much lipstick the lizard wears, it’s still ugly. They want to exacerbate the gap between technology haves and have-nots by creating a third category: have-worses. The have-worses are the people who would be priced out of access to certains areas of the Internet reserved for “upper-class” customers. The have-worses are the small business owners who could potentially have their web sites made inaccessible because they do not agree with the politics of those controlling Internet access. The have-worses are the free-thinking, forwared-looking people who would no longer be able to use the Internet as a source for diverse viewpoints. Consolidation of Internet access channels is bad, bad, bad, just like consolidation of media ownership is bad.

The Internet was itnended to be a large area with subdivided spaces between which web browsers could move freely. Every subdivision is equally accessible. The Internet was not designed to be “walled garden.” A “walled garden” locks off certain areas to certain people, both implicitly and explicitly. This is not a website that wants you to join and login to participate; it’s the blocking off of an entire section of the Internet. It’s the digital equivalent of “not being able to go to the other side of the tracks because that’s where the rich people live.” Companies such as BellSouth, AT&T, Verizon, and AOL Time Warner have stated intentions price people out of certain portions of the Internet. These intentions directly conflict with the Internet’s purposefully and intentially designed open model of communication. Ironically, these intentions also directly conflict with Internet access business models, as AOL knows better than most. They found this out the hard way when they phased out their “walled garden” model in 2006.

The Internet, like any democratic system, is made better by free and equal participation. One only needs to look at three of the web’s most popular destinations as examples: MySpace, YouTube and Wikipedia. These sites are made more interesting with every piece of user-contributed content that is added to them. Every comment, every video, every picture makes these sites more desirable. If only “top-tier” consumers were able to access these sites or contribute to them, not only would the idea of a directly democratic Internet perish, but so would any semblance of a valuable one, as more and more new sites adopt this user-generated-content model. Users should continue to be the ones who select the best content, not the owners of Internet access channels.

There is much work to be done and action to be taken on this issue. The easiest way to get started with involvement on this issue is to go to SaveTheInternet.com. There you’ll find background information as well as daily news concerning Net Neutrality.

There is also legislation that seeks to directly address and ensure Net Neutrality. One example is the Media Ownership Reform Act, sponsored by Democratic Representatives Maurice Hinchey of New York and Diane Watson of California. Another piece of legislation is the Internet Freedom and Preservation Act of 2007, a bi-partisan Senate measure sponsored by Democrat Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine. Understanding where Congressmembers, Senators, and Presidential hopefuls stand on these two pieces of legislation will be very telling in terms of their views on the importance of a fair and open Internet.

Net neutrality is one of the cornerstones of technology policy today. Preserving and protecting it from powerful cable and telephone company lobbies is essential to achieving the goals of freedom of expression, diversities of viewpoints, and equal access to information. Just as media consolidation hurts consumers, consolidation of control over Internet access hurts consumers, by robbing them of access to quality content.

Thanks for being a part of NPI’s firs podcast focusing on Technology and Network Neutrality. If you have questions about this episode, or suggestions for future ones, send an email to feedback@nwprogressive.org with your comments.

We hope you’ll join us again for our next podcast next month.

For the Northwest Progressive Institute, I’m Garlin Gilchrist II. Thanks for listening.

I had the opportunity to share my thoughts on the Obama-Sharpton squabble, Obama’s dealings with “traditional” Black political leadership, and briefly the Congressional Black Caucus Institute considering partnering with Fox News to air their upcoming Presidential debates.

For those that missed it, you can listen the interview here. A big Thank You from The SuperSpade to Ben & Cenk of The Young Turks and and Air America Radio.

One Love. One II.

Categories
Speech
Politics
Barack Obama
Voting
Black Issues

• Satellite Radio: XM Channel 167
• Your Local Air America Radio Affiliate
• Live streaming at Air America’s website
• The Young Turks Website

This will be a conversation concerning Al Sharpton questioning Barack Obama, as well as Fox New’s attacks on Black people.

As always, I will try and get audio from the interview up here on the site as soon as I can. Listen and Enjoy!

One Love. One II.

Categories
Speeches
Interview

Here is a link to my short address (WAV Format, 9 min 6 seconds, 8.33 MB). I talked about the importance of finding mentors and connecting with people that have experiences in areas that you care about and are interested in.

The entire program was a lot of fun, and there was food, trivia, and good times all around. I got to stay and connect with many of the people in CYFS’s programs and talk with staff members too.

One Love. One II.

Categories
SuperSpade
Speech
Black History Month

- The importance of media & communication to revolution
- Reaching out to more people by using multimedia (audio, video)
- Reaching more people by partnering with alternative media (Public TV, Low Power FM Radio, etc.)

There’s more in there as well, including why it is important to connect and work with ethnic media, the largest for of alternative media.

Integrating with Alternative Media (Windows Media Audio, 16 min 50 sec, 7.79 MB)

One Love. One II.

Categories
Speech
Media

Here is the audio (1 min 51 sec, wav file) from my brief interview on Radio Nation with Dr. Laura Flanders this past Saturday night while I was in Memphis, TN at the Free Press National Conference on Media Reform. I used this time to describe what the mission and vision of The SuperSpade is to a broad audience.

This gathering was one of the most inspiring and energizing assemblies that I have ever attended. I will reflect more on the conference, who I met, and what I learned a bit later. The SuperSpade was very well received.

I am back in Seattle for all of one day before I go to Detroit for a few days this week.

Happy MLK Day everyone. Use this as a day of learning and not of laziness.

One Love. One II.

Categories:
SuperSpade
Speech
Radio Interview