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Tom, one of our favorite holidays is coming up… Martin Luther King Day is this Monday, January 16th…     

…and with all the talk about the importance of social networking these days, I’ve been thinking if he were alive today, would Dr. King be on Facebook? Imagine him at home in the ATL, sitting in front of a computer with loosened tie uploading pictures of himself, Mrs. King and their children on his wall, and posting videos of marches and excerpts of his favorite speeches for Facebook friends?

How about Twitter? What would he tweet? And given his propensity for lengthy speeches, would he have started a global movement to overturn Twitter’s original 140-character restriction?

Of course, I’m sure he would have appeared on the TJMS to discuss the issues of the day… but afterwards, if someone said something about him he didn’t like, would he text oh-oh-oh to let us know?

Maybe not… but all of this speculation does raise a more profound question… Could Dr. King’s message actually be delivered effectively in our technology-obsessed age? Or would it be spliced, chopped and remixed into sound bites, devoid of its original substance and meaning?

What we do know is that Dr. King’s message and legacy are still affecting people and movements around the world… We can look at the recent examples in several Arab nations where King’s words were trumpeted during popular uprisings or where We Shall Overcome, the song most associated with him, was played in the streets…

That said, it could certainly be argued that Dr. King’s words and legacy are being used these days in more superficial ways that do not necessarily capture the essence of his life or his agenda… we heard talk about this in the debates surrounding the recent dedication of the King Memorial in DC…

So would Dr. King have been encouraged by the explosion of technology, social networking and its use in current movements on the world stage, or would he be deeply concerned about the loss of time for real reflection and critical thinking, and at how impersonal, shallow, and mechanical communication has become?

Well, I obviously am not sure about the answers to these questions, but it is certainly something to think about… In fact, because of modern technology, we can do more than think about it… Text us here at 64-64-64 (oh-oh-oh) to tell us what issues in particular you think Dr. King, if he were alive, would be texting about today…

What we do know for sure is that Dr. King was a deep and critical thinker… and his thinking, combined with his moral obligation to God and humanity, compelled him to speak out and act upon his thoughts and principles…

…and while he may well have found a way to communicate the essence of his message to the world’s masses even with today’s shorter attention spans, Twitter character limits, and real-time technologies, I think Dr. King, in his unique and eloquent way, would have certainly reminded us of our human capacity for – and responsibility to engage in– careful and critical thought, and substantial, meaningful communication…

I think he would have pushed us to resist technologies that encourage quick sound bites and the splicing and tweeting of complex ideas – I think he would have challenged us to think deeply.  And he would have pushed us to really engage with one another in thoughtful, difficult, and often lengthy, conversations and debates… in the quest for just and lasting solutions…

As always, his words say it best:

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

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Good Morning Tom, Sybil, and Jay.

Tom, it’s Black History Month and naturally there’s a lot going…

As always, we are acknowledging those notables who came before us, inspired us, and paved the way…

But that said, this year has historical implications well beyond being our favorite month of the year, 2011 is also, as many of you know, the 150^th anniversary of a not-so-civil American conflict known as the Civil War…

The Civil War started 150 years ago, in 1861, as the South pushed to secede, or break away from the Union …

Now Sybil, we’ve often been told or at least been led to believe that the issue of slavery was the cause of the American Civil War…

Not quite true …It was a key issue through which the competing political and economic power dynamics of North and South could be viewed, especially given the tug-of-war over whether new states would be admitted to the Union as “Free” states or “Slave” states, thus giving more power to one faction or the other .…

In February of 1861, 150 years ago, mere months before the first shot of the Civil War was fired that April, a concerned citizen penned these fiery and historic words:

“In viewing the alleged causes of the present perilous and dilapidated condition of the Federal Union, and the various plans by which it is proposed to set that Union in safety, all manly sensibility is shocked, and all human patience breaks down in disgust and indignation at the spectacle. The attitude of the Northern people in this crisis will crimson the cheeks of their children’s children with shame. As between the North and the South, history will record the fact, that the latter (the South), though engaged in a villainous and wicked cause, acted bravely, and displayed a manly spirit, while the former (the North), with the best of causes and pledged to it in open daylight before millions of their countrymen, acted the part of miserable cowards, insensible alike to the requirements of self-respect or duty.”

The man who uttered these bold, unapologetic words was none other than a formerly enslaved African by the name of Frederick Douglas, whose birthday we celebrate this week…His speech was entitled The Union And How To Save It…

Douglas was definitely, as they say, “spittin’ fire” as he took the North to task prior to the war for not “manning up.”

He was not one to hold his tongue in front of anyone, be it the President he passionately pushed to end slavery and give black people the vote; or the slave master he literally whooped in a fight while he was still enslaved on a Maryland farm…

Douglas’s ‘fire’ reminds us of another incredible, outspoken and fiercely proud brother whose untimely passing, ironically, we also mark this month… Next week is the 46^th anniversary of the assassination of the incomparable Malcolm X…

…like Douglas, Malcolm was known to call a whole lotta folks “cowards,” both black and white…

But the irony doesn’t stop there… cause there is yet another anniversary we acknowledge this week: two years ago, the newly-appointed Attorney General of the United States spat some fire of his own when he famously labeled the United States a “nation of cowards” when dealing with the troubling issue of race…

Apparently, Tom, this rich tradition in our community of ‘speaking truth to power’ doesn’t end even when some of us are already in power…

So this Black History Month, we should acknowledge such truth-speakers and spend some time reading and discussing the words of Frederick Douglas and Malcolm X along with the insights of Sojourner Truth, David Walker, Marcus Garvey, Ida B. Wells and the many others who fearlessly spoke out on America’s racial shortcomings…

And speaking of speaking truth to power, James Baldwin, in his classic The Fire Next Time, used the poignant, provocative and threatening words from a Negro spiritual to warn our American society of the cost of racism…

Baldwin wrote that love ultimately had to prevail over hate, suffering, violence, and racial antagonism, lest these prophetic words come true:

“God gave Noah the rainbow sign,

No more water, the fire next time.”

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

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Hey guys, it’s our favorite time of the year of again…

That’s right, Black History Month… YAYYY!!!

So Tom, when you think 20^th Century black history and culture, one place in particular comes to mind…

Harlem…

For the whole of the 20^th century, Harlem was representing every step of the way…

Marcus Garvey and the United Negro Improvement Association… Duke Ellington… Madame CJ Walker… the Harlem Renaissance … the Cotton Club… Adam Clayton Powell… Malcolm X… the Apollo Theater…our own Rev. Al Sharpton…

…and, of course, the beloved business mogul, civil rights activist and Harlem icon, Percy Sutton, whose recent passing we marked a few weeks back…

Harlem… what a place, what a history, and what an incredible representation of African American culture…

But wait a minute…

Apparently, here in the 21^st Century, things are a changin’…

…and if you believe a recent article in the NY Times that said Harlem has lost its traditional black majority, the new 21^st Century representation of Harlem might read something like this:

Bill Clinton… Starbucks Coffee… CAUCASIANS…

Jay, it’s like that Eddie Griffin movie, Undercover Brother, where he spoofs the Sixth Sense with, “I see White people…”

Yep, well that’s what many are saying is happening in Harlem…

It’s Farewell Laquisha and Helloooo Buffy!

But, Sybil, talented journalist and longtime Harlem resident Les Payne recently wrote a piece posted on blackamericaweb that disputes the NY Times article…

Payne argues that the NY Times was being selective in the way it drew Harlem’s disputed boundaries, and that the obvious changes in demographics are more a result of the area’s increasing Latino and Asian populations than its increase in white folks…

Even so, it’s easy to see that Harlem is changing and that the Harlem of the 21^st Century already looks much different from the last century…

And Payne also points out such changes in Harlem don’t give the whole story; In the November mayoral election, exit polling showed for the first time in New York City history that white votes tallied less than 50 percent of the count…

So one can interpret these figures in a variety of ways…

But no matter what the numbers may or may not be, the real point of all of this for black folks is that we need to make sure we support and protect the cultural institutions that define and provide for our communities whether we are the majority or the minority…

The Apollo Theater on 125^th Street –Percy Sutton’s baby that he saved when he purchased and renovated it in 1981– needs our support to make sure it lives on into the 21^st century and beyond…

The Schomburg Library on Malcolm X Blvd –although officially a part of the New York Public Library system—is an institution that has celebrated our culture and history for countless years and we need to make sure we use it and have our children use it regardless of the demographics around it…

…and Sybil, this point is not just relevant to Harlem, because we have African American cultural institutions and black colleges across the country in need of our ongoing support, engagement, and protection…

…so let’s take Percy Sutton’s example and commit ourselves to supporting our cultural institutions…

Now, unlike Percy, most of us can’t afford to buy them… cause Tom, as you know, Percy was rollin’ like that…

BUT, what we can do is go out, find and engage with a relevant institution in our community and become a member of it, support it with a donation, or become a volunteer…

…there are countless black organizations and institutions across the country in need of our help and service…

…and if we don’t give our help and support, the changing demographics in Harlem and everywhere else won’t matter because we’ll have little culture left to protect anyway…

…and then our culture really will be history…we cannot let that happen.

As Octavio Paz, a Nobel Prize Winner in Literature once said:

“ Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life.”

Until next time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

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