Leader Teachers - Are You One?

Leader Teachers-Are You One?

"The most important thing to remember is this: To be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become."
__W.E.B. DuBois

As a life-long political activist and teacher, trainer and leader, I know first-hand that my education includes an unusual upbringing, over four decades of community work, and the culmination of three successful university degrees. In Northeast Detroit, I took part in intense teachings and trainings by my community's pro-active leaders following the 1967 race riots through the 1970's. This education became a necessary means to freedom's better ends. What the schools didn't teach us, our leaders taught us. What the textbooks didn't teach us, our leaders taught us. What we didn't know ourselves, our leaders taught us. Our leaders were many teachers of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as individuals who lead politically aware lives. One of my early teachers used to tell us that she had a "Ph.D. in Life" and she did. She was and is wise, celebrating now 84 years young.

Detroit, during these turbulent times, imposed the controversial STRESS (Stop the Robberies and Enjoy Safe Streets) program, especially prominent in use among Black males, Vietnam War protestors, and community people who began activating to address local social, economic and educational issues. Keeping good people out of trouble became a major concern for our community. In efforts to organize and unify community people towards better ends, we were taught by the leaders of a newly developed non-profit community organization. North End Concerned Citizens Community Council (NEC4). They provided us with free lectures, seminars, retreats and other functions intended to uplift people's hopes and realizations. They offered conversations and sharing of experiences, applied to our local community, our nation, and the Civil Rights Movement. Their intentions were to educate and activate positive change. Irrespective of race, we took part in strategies to offset the unfair limitations that were imposed through a wide variety of racist and prejudiced systems. Self-education became part of the lexicon of our plans to create change, allowing us to believe we can gather knowledge and exercise wisdom, giving us the power to break our economic, educational and self-imposed bonds.

A lot of students didn't finish school in my neighborhood. The paths of formal education dwindled over time, especially among the schools serving the impoverished people of color. The majority of young people often fell into only a couple of categories. They 1) joined the military, 2) went to jail, 3) moved away, and/or went to college, or 4) died, often violently. It was necessary for community leaders to stem the tide of failure and help us recognize our real potential as young people who took part in our own life decisions. All too often, there were others that decided for us that we were "locked in a poverty cycle." Poverty and civil rights issues have been around for a long time, but we have to ask ourselves, and answer ourselves, whether or not we can do better than to embrace the limiting ways of poverty's traps, racial traps, gang and violence traps, drug traps, or any other crooked roads laid before us. As young adults, we were taught to become aware and informed, and to step out of the suppressions, oppressions, and depressions we faced. We were taught to recognize the limitations and learned how to define ourselves as capable, and our goals as attainable.

Education comes from schools, yes. But it also comes from parents, mentors, from community leaders and church leaders, and volunteers whose work furthers community goals. We all can learn from books, from essays and poems, from experience and from others' experiences. We can learn from President Barack Obama whose community organizing skills LEAD our nation, in more ways than one. As a nation, we continue to learn from each other in our continued walk towards full citizenship, endowed with full citizenship rights and responsibilities.

During the Civil Rights Movement, I benefitted from the teachings of my community leaders, my community teachers, who taught us that we could advance ourselves by following effective strategies, to develop an understanding of “self-awareness, self-determination and self-respect to attain self-sufficiency.” These became the goals that we were taught—to offset the limitations imposed and perpetuated by racism and classism in America. We learned that we do not let others keep us ignorant, define us, or convince us to lower our opinions of ourselves, no matter the race, or culture, or religion, or creed. What I came to realize is that the beautiful individuals that our youth are can only lay down all the arguments against success—by growing success anyway. Education plays a key part of success’ growth.

Educating our communities can be accomplished by efforts of leaders and teachers, by reading, thinking and communicating, witnessing and steering yourself toward worthy goals. It is important to come together in unity and strength when creating strategies for positive and effective change. Self-education can be improved by each one assuming the responsibility of being their own first teachers. It can be improved by taking counsel from those who came before us, and are with us still, that share valuable lessons learned. Literacy allows the book learning necessary for us to prevent mistakes made from happening again, by not repeating them. Historical and future reference points can be constructed through knowledge gained. Ask yourself, “What has your solid education showed you that are worth sharing?” We automatically become teachers when we have learned, hopefully helping each other to achieve and practice self-awareness, self-determination, self respect and attaining self-sufficiency.

Although education does not guarantee absolute success, not learning takes you nowhere and keeps you there. Learn and learn how to lead, and you will become a leader who is a teacher.

“Ignorance is a cure for nothing.”
W.E.B. DuBois

About the Author: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nancy-bell/30/231/855

Fight for Freedom

It starts as a feeling
That something's not right
Then walks in your mind
While you're up late at night.
The problems are many,
The solvers too few,
So the work that needs doing
Starts pointing at you.

You ask, "Who am I
Who can bring about change?
I've my own things to do
And this world is so strange..."
Then you think of the faces
And hurdles you'll greet
As you work to solve problems--
All the hate you will meet.

And you just have to wonder
If it's worth all the pains,
When by closing your eyes
You won't see freedom's stains.
But you know you can't do it
There is no way at all
'Cause once you have seen them
You've heard Justice call.

The song starts out softly
And travels so slow...
But along come the others
And soon you will know
That many are willing
To work through the day
And lift up their voices
When FREEDOM's held sway

There can be no more silence
When hate comes to stand
In the midst of a people
Who share the same land.
Come together to heal!
And grow strong in what's true!
Join the voices of others
Who love justice, too.

Hate can't breed us out
And it can't hold us down
And it won't stop the voices
That rise from the ground
'Cause the land still remembers
All my brothers who bled
To fight for our freedom--
The struggle's not dead.

When you first have the feeling
That something's not right,
Don't just look away,
Take courage and fight!
'Cause the hangman keeps coming
To cloud what is true
If you don't fight for freedom,,
Who'll fight to save YOU?

Teach your children to love,
Help the poor not to drown
In the sea of oppression
That keeps people down.
Keep freedom alive
And continue the Call
'Til the day we say truly
"There is Justice for ALL."

--N.J. Bell
----------------------------
The AWESOME story, The Hangman, by Maurice Ogden, inspired me as a child (see link below). In the Civil Rights era of the 70's, we were watching this film on reel-to reel-projectors, but the truth of it still stands. They say that freedom is renewed by the blood of patriots, but it also renews by the breath and deeds of free people. Don't give up the fight!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZSS3yxpnFU

About the Author: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nancy-bell/30/231/855

And then there were the Manatees and the Tigers...

     In 2003, my nuclear family was living in Orange City, Florida; I was homeschooling. We lived within walking distance of Blue Springs State Park, winter home of the manatees. By January, the manatees would gather in the warm outflow of the spring because it has a year-round temperature of 73°F (22.7° C), and runs into the St. John’s River, which of course, runs into the Atlantic Ocean. The manatee would come inland with their young calves, in pods or pairs, singular or grouped to enjoy the warm and clear water. Each January, local residents hold a Manatee Festival, drawing people from all over the world to see the marvelous creatures and share in the celebration of them and the park that protects them. That is where we met the tigers for the first time.

People quite often swam in the warm waters even in January, although touching or harassing manatees was not allowed by park officials. Still, a walking path along the water was a great way to get up-close views of the manatee. At the very opening of the spring, no manatee would go because the water was not oxygenated enough for them to breath. The churning and the moving of the water made it breathable a bit further away.

In that area, we sometimes saw divers come to explore the spring’s well. It was very deep and was considered one of the more challenging springs to deep-dive.

We did not dive, but we did float over the opening of the spring. The water’s motion made us buoyant and the tiny bubbles on the surface of the skin was fun. Blue Springs’ water was very clear and pure. When we left at the end of 2003, there was a lot of talk about the chemical pollution to the ground water which could adversely impact the entire hydraulic cycle in the area. We wrote “Circle Stories” together at this park, using the beautiful and tranquil area as a writing inspiration for creativity.

For More Information about the Blue Springs Annual Manatee Festival: http://www.uptake.com/blog/family_vacations/blue-springs-state-park-central-florida_2283.html

           

This beautiful Siberian Tiger was less than 3 months old when I met him. His name is Hollywood, and he was as gentle and sweet as he could be. I did have the chance to feed him a bottle of formula and he napped for a big on my lap. I met an “inner-tiger-circle” of the area, and was able to bring my homeschooled children to a wonderful animal sanctuary Amazing Exotics, and to work with Adam Fishman, a brilliant exotic cat handler and trainer. He appeared on animal planet with his tigers.

Adam Fishman took us to the lake one day, with his then baby tiger Raja, a Bengal tiger, who was also less than 3 months old. He was training me to handle exotic cats in a training that would lead to licensing and handling but I could not give the time commitment to permanent care of tigers (who live for about 25 years in captivity). It was her first time going swimming at the lake and she loved it! She was playful and having the time of her life. It was pure joy!

I have often wondered how my life would have been different if I had elected to stay in the tiger conservation and education business instead of leaving the state. Hurricane Charley and the rest of the 2003 Florida Hurricane Season was enough for me to leave Florida. (Bonnie, Charley, Francis, Ivan, and Jeanne, and Ivan again.). Little did we know that the next year would show us Hurricane Katrina, and much worse devastation than Florida got the year before.

While Adam was out of town in August, one of his adult tigers gave birth. We were able to be there with the children and even film part of it. The film has not been transferred off of the VCR tape yet, but hopefully, I can post it to You Tube soon and provide a link to my viewers. However, we did get some photos a couple of days later with the babies, and I was very happy to have the intimate moments with some of the most beautiful creatures on earth!

One of the babies just as his eyes were opening. A RARE view of a tiger belly-button. I was told that no one ever really looks for (or can find) one on an adult tiger!

The off-shoot of this experience for my children, as homeschooled students, was for my son (then 10) to do a long-term research project about tigers. He wrote a 26-page paper about the various types of habitats available to tigers (as an endangered species). He ranked the type of things he thought a tiger would need to “be a tiger.” In the end, he argued, tigers do not belong with people at all! His argument was made that tigers in the wild are able to exercise more of their natural behaviors with less risk from humans, even despite the poaching (which should be a focus of preservation efforts, instead of captivity). I don’t think he will ever go to a circus again, and he definitely was not in favor of private ownership for anyone not certified and qualified to handle wild animals. Public interaction with tigers is definitely one he argued vehemently against because of the danger it poses to both tiger and human. We have supported tiger conservation and proper care, as a family, ever since. First-person-eye-witness education: Changed my children's views of tigers forever!

NOTE 1: Although my children did enjoy meeting and petting the baby tigers, they were NEVER allowed to go in close quarters with the adults. The one day I went in with the adult tiger, there were three handlers, and I had been interacting with the tiger for about 9 months. I spent about ten minutes in the cage and left intact. However, a picnic bench was set up for my children to study between the outer and inner enclosures of a titanium two-fence barrier. Inside the final fenced lived  the two adult tigers who were parents to the tigers born while we were there. We were invited by the tiger owner/handler to hold home school lessons with the tigers for several months. We left Florida in late October 2013, after several hurricanes, leaving the tigers behind. (I will be working with these pictures to improve the quality. My son declined publication of his image).

NOTE 2: The tigers survived all of the hurricanes in 2003. However, the owner was required, by law, to stay with the tigers, with a loaded gun, required to shoot any tiger that got out during the hurricane, to protect human life. The fences held, but hurricanes are a big deal in sanctuaries and other environments where tigers are housed.

NOTE 3: Adam Fishman was featured on an episode of Animal Planet. We have a VCR copy of the show but I am currently searching to see if I can find another copy online to post. He is truly remarkable with the Big Cats! Special thanks to he and Anne for the experience of a lifetime!

About the Author: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nancy-bell/30/231/855

PALESTINE

 

     If you are still with me after scrolling past the same picture 8 times, you have more than half a thought more than most. The Palestinian people suffer under the conditions that engulf them, permeate their lives, and doom their children as assuredly as their parents. Their crime? "Being alive and in the way" and not protected by the population that governs their occupiers and isolation walls. The same is true of the American Indians-Native Americans-Tribal Peoples-Indigenous Population of America. Over the years, decades, centuries, there has been an incredible amount of unnecessary suffering at the hands of others who controlled them not by RIGHT but by MIGHT. America claims them in its ideal form...as a free people promoting freedom and equality and justice. America does not claim them in reality because they are an inconvenience that must be contained and in many cases ended, for all intents and purposes. The population of America does not protect either the Palestinian children or the Native American children because we do not pay attention enough to what WE are responsible for...in every blanket firing and carpet bombing, every removal of ancestral lands to which they were intimately wed, every broken treaty or false promise to fix the situation. I pray for the children of the world, especially those who have been targeted as inconvenient and preferably invisible by the ones who keep it that way. 

If you want an inside look at Palestinian Life, I suggest: The Tears of Gaza. WARNING: I includes sensitive information about real-life issues in Gaza.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubuiz-T4DxI

 

About the Author: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cultivatingmygarden/

Cops and Soldiers and Tanks in Detroit 1967-1973

     Before we started our crusades for peaceful integration and the desegregation of schools, we supported protests against the Vietnam War. My personal incentive was because Uncle Paul was drafted and sent to Vietnam. As a “conscientious objector” he objected to the killing and war, but was forced by law to serve, which he did faithfully as a clerk (our own “Radar O’Reilly”). We used to talk to him via cassette tapes, drawing and sending pictures through the mail (all the kids) and via Aunt Pat, whom he married when he came home on leave.

     Another thing that troubled us about the Vietnam War was the treatment by American people toward soldiers in uniform here in the U.S. Uncle Paul was spit on by protestors at the airport, and called “baby killer” by war protestors who thought that protesting the soldier would make any difference to the wheels of war! We did not agree with the war but we did not blame the soldiers. We KNEW it was not the soldiers’ fault because Uncle Paul was a soldier and he didn’t want to be there!.

     Peaceful war demonstrations became deadly. We were, like everyone else, traumatized by the shooting of college students at Kent State and the lesser-known shootings at Jackson State.Grandma Sabatini wanted to shield the children from the gruesome photographs and the violent news on television. My mom said she wanted us to know what was going on. Compromise, we could be talked to about what was going on but we didn’t need to keep watching the violence or staring at its picture. “Us kids” had smuggled a Time magazine with Kent State shootings on its cover into a corner of the living room to peer into and we got busted. It was taken away and we were sent outside to play.

 

     I circulated my first petition in kindergarten, when I brought a petition to school (from my mom) to try to get teacher signatures to help protest S.T.R.E.S.S. in Detroit.

     “Beginning in the 1950s, the population of Detroit began to change. Many white citizens relocated to suburbs in the north, east and west. Remaining and new African American citizens often clashed with the predominantly white police force. The strain grew to a climax in July 1967, when the city erupted in violence after police raided an after-hours club in a predominantly black neighborhood and arrested 82 people.” (Wikipedia)   At this time, Uncle Lester was launching his new career as a photographer:

“A native of Detroit, Lester Sloan's journalistic career began in the 1960s as a freelance photographer. The 1967 Riot in Detroit gave him his first taste of national exposure after one of his photos was published in Newsweek Magazine. A degree in journalism from Wayne State University soon cemented a career in his new profession.” (excerpt from Lester’s online-biography) http://www.lestersloanmediagroup.com/bio.html)

     There was one day, during the riots, when the Governor deployed tanks into the neighborhoods via the National Guard. We watched tanks rolling down our streets, were advised not to leave the house during the imposed curfew hours, by armed soldiers using bull horns.

In Detroit, We were under martial law.

 

     My father, a navy man, was proud to see the show of strength to quell the riots (like many other people who were concerned about the violence between Blacks and Whites, police and citizens, who were watching the burnings in the city by television). He stood on the porch saluting until my mother started shaking her fists at the tank and yelling for them to get those tanks off our street. “We are American citizens! How dare you turn tanks loose on us? Get off of my street you SOBs!” Dad started to fuss at her, she started to fuss at us kids to lay on the floor until the tanks passed. (We were SOOOOO in the window watching anyway! I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be mad, scared, or proud, but I at least wanted to SEE what was going on.) We were getting the first taste of the sound of gunshots, something that would later become commonplace in my neighborhood.

 

For more: The Summer Detroit Burned http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2177891/Detroit-Riots-1967-Powerful-TIME-images-aftermath-race-riots.html 

 

OR 33 minute DRAMATIC WXYZ-TV historical video: http://vimeo.com/5337314 (see the fires and tanks hit the streets of Detroit. Hear the gun-fire and comments from witnesses.)

 

“After the riot, city officials created a special police task force called S.T.R.E.S.S. (Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets). STRESS escalated the tensions between the police department and the city’s residents. Civil rights leaders charged that STRESS was unjustly targeting African Americans. In 1974, Coleman Young, Detroit’s first African American mayor, disbanded the STRESS unit. Mayor Young later hired William Hart, Detroit’s first African American police chief.

 (http://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/detroit-police-department)   

 

     Under S.T.R.E.S.S. police could enter someone’s home without a warrant, arrest them without rushing to press charges, and to target anyone they wanted to at their own discretion to “keep the peace,” although they often harassed peaceful war protestors as well as minorities (especially the Black males). Police brutality became common We knew of people that were arrested and moved around from jail to jail so their family couldn’t find them for months. We knew of a man who had his door kicked down, got thrashed in front of his family, then taken away without pressing charges for months. They often stopped young guys and frisked them, roughed them up, made them lay on the ground until they just left…or arrested them for being in a group (3 or more) and being Black.

 

 

     Detroiters were very happy that Coleman A. Young was elected mayor, partially on the platform of eliminating S.T.R.E.S.S. He did a lot to help the city of Detroit and had a strong support from Detroit residents, when he became the first Black mayor of Detroit in 1973 until his death in 2001. My mother’s household supported the mayor, but not everyone in the extended family felt the same way. Holiday meals were charged with political arguments, but courtesy at meals remained among us. Yelling in disagreement and passing food and drink around politely at the same time was pretty usual.

For more on Coleman A. Young: http://www.is.wayne.edu/MNISSANI/ELEPHANT/Young.htm

     For a summer, in 1970, my big brother Ralph and I joined a protest group to take part in a global movement for peace and justice orchestrated by young people. We were 8 and 10 at the time. Youth Against War and Fascism protested the war, and “the heroic black uprisings in Watts, Newark, Detroit, Harlem" and women's liberation. During the Attica Prison riot the rioters requested a YAWF member, Tom Soto, to present their grievances for them. The WWP was most successful in organizing demonstrations in support of desegregation "busing" in the Boston schools in 1975. Nearly 30,000 people attended the Boston March Against Racism, which they had organized.”  (Wikipedia) Although our mother consented to our request to join, by the end of the summer we were forced to leave because of its Socialist/Communist leanings. My mother was going through a divorce and she did not want our political protesting to be used adversely against her in her new single-parent role. We moved our efforts from the Vietnam War to work towards a pluralistic society with peaceful integration as an important part of preparing our nation for a more tolerant and just society.

     The first picket line I joined was at the grocery store chain “Great Scott,” for selling grapes during a migrant workers’ strike. We were given picket signs and we walked in a large circle singing protest songs, including “We shall overcome.” We were heckled by quite a few people who yelled at us for being “dirty hippies,” and suggesting we go home and take baths. I remember thinking it was an absurd thing to for someone to say to me because we were all clean. AND, I did not call myself a “hippie,” but rather, a “flower child.” Auntie Rain (Lorraine) used to draw flowers around our belly buttons, designating us flower children. “ We didn’t give away flowers, but we took the title because we considered ourselves to be children of peace, valuing life and “altruistic ideals of universal brotherhood associated with the flower power political movement.

 

     After YAWF, we joined protests in favor of Native American treaty rights and against violations of civil justice. Harry Command, a representative in Detroit for the Bureau of Indian Affairs talked to us about the history of America’s original indigenous people. He helped us to dispel many of the stereotypes used to devalue the character of his people. (He told us they don’t say “how” as a greeting, they did not start the practice of scalping people during battle, and they don’t walk around in loin cloths…)

     It was about this time that I also became aware of the National Organization of Women and started my practice of living as a liberated and socially aware young woman. I was especially against the mistreatment of women by “male chauvinist pigs.”

(For more information on NOW: http://www.now.org/history/purpos66.html)

     We never realized how unusual it was to be so involved in community work, politics, campaigning, picketing, letter writing, petition signing was amont other people our age because we met other activists with children and we all were the same…working for a better world. We taught each other.

I still teach about peace, tolerance, love, justice and equality.

The issues aren't gone, they've just changed their image.

 

About the Author: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nancy-bell/30/231/855