The Federalist-Socialist-Democratic Republic of the Little People

Wow. That title is a mouthful, but it truly captures the essence of the last 6 weeks of my life.

All of our lives, we are taught to develop some tough outer shell of self-importance that will carry us toward the shining beacon of healthy adulthood. So we try, in our short time on the earth to accomplish an impossible (nothing is impossible really), rather unrealistic, To Do list that is often polluted with a number of self-serving items that do little more than give us something to talk about when we want to impress the pants off of people or a good opening line that ends with us passing along our business card. Little do we know, and few people discover that the truth behind living a good, worthwhile and healthy lies in the the small things that we do for others.

Ever since I finished with Jim Martin's runoff campaign, I've been searching (both my soul and the classifieds) for the NEXT BIG THING that would launch my career and the fast track to a Time Magazine cover shoot. I was waiting impatiently for my trip to DC for inauguration and looking forward to seeing all of my organizer friends. Little did I know that the NEXT BIG THING was working with little people. Not midgets. I now have a gig at a Christian Day School. Don't laugh. Because I really...well...love it. If you know anything about me, you know that naturally, I protested a bit because I thought myself "not the kid type," through I suppose I was one at some point. But along the way, and by way, I mean 1 and a half weeks, little people have been the source of multiple epiphanies. While I've spent most of my life as a social scientist, studying people, systems and the behavior that connect them, working with these kids has been like a crash course in democracy, where the subjects include:

1) Relationships yield effectiveness in discipline- Have you ever listened attentively to someone you didn't like, didn't trust or didn't respect?? Probably not. What is that? I supposed it's because people require relationships, even kids. You must seek to understand them and then prepare to be misunderstood by them (kids). Nonetheless, legitimacy goes along way. They will only heed your correction if they know you care about them.

2) Monotony...Psh!! Discipline is important. Routines in life (get up, work, come home, sleep, repeat) aren't meant to such the fun out of life....they are, in my opinion, a way to get us to understand that the earth-shattering task of reform is based upon our ability to retain livelihood. Or, as my Deputy Field Director in MO would say, "Earth shattering things begin with the little things."

3) SELF IMPORTANCE. Why do we desire to be so gosh-darn IMPORTANT? It seems we are all in a rat race, so that we can spend our whole lives basking in the glow of...... ourselves. The political world lends itself to this. In light of such things, I asked God for little humility. A bit help me serve and a bit to keep me sane, and he sent me somewhere where none cared who I was. It didn't matter that I was a college grad...or a community organizer...or even that my name was Jonae. They're KIDS for crying out loud. I'm Miss Jonae that makes them snack and reads them stories. It's refreshing really. In conversation, I'm usually referred to in a manner that accompanies a litany of positive adjectives and before I know it, they began to define me. And while I don't protest having nice things said about me, we have to be careful not to be boxed in by our own ambition.

4) Civil unrest- I witnessed, last week, the purest form of civil unrest there is....a group of kids (4 year olds), totally unprompted, started marching around the playground chanting "No more babies." It was led by a little boy whom I refer to as the little Marcus Garvey. But this whole epidose made my heart swell. When you've learned to protest, you've learned democracy. :-)

5) We are shaping a movement for them, sowing seeds- Just like my time spent organizing in Southwest Missouri, I feel that my time spent at this school is another way to sow seeds into the community. What I've realized is that once you've been apart of the movement, you have an inherent responsibility to stand on the sidelines for a bit and guide those who are coming after. Instead of resenting their immaturity, teach them the way to go.

6) Fundamentals of communication- We must learn to communicate outside of our comfort. I'm used to striking up conversation about the latest post on Huffington Post or Fivethirtyeight.com and anyone who could do so, immediately had my attention. These kids, much like most of the world, don't read blogs and don't spend nearly as much time on the computer as I do. I've had to bring my vocab down a couple notches and focus much more on the meaning. We should all try it.

7)Diplomacy- Negotiation is something that anyone, who desires to be successful at almost anything, needs to learn how to do. I swear, negotiating naptime, the dispensation of toys on the playground, and being an arbiter for 4-yo fist fights is sometimes like negotiating peace in the Middle East. Hilary Clinton could take notes.

8) Something out of nothing- Lastly, the thing that I admire most about these kids is their purity of heart. They see the world as we desperately wish we could. No one has (and I won't be the one to do it) told them how the world is and what it can and cannot be. They look at 3 hoola hops on the playground and imagine that it's a castle...or something. I wish I had that. Maybe you do to. While we may have the courage to remake the world, we must also have the imagination.

In short, I left the general election campaign and the runoff looking for hope that could sustain me a lifetime, I found it in the eyes of a child. I'm not trying to liken my experience at this school to the enormous, seemingly insurmountable obstacles that our society faces. I'm certainly won't try to sell you on my "change a diaper, change the world" brand of thinking but I can't help but think that the time and patience that it takes to rock a child to sleep, may just be the tenderness that we need to cure the world of it's ills. Surely, there's a direct parallel.

The world, as I alluded to earlier, won't be won through intense shouting matches filled with multi-syllabic words; it will be won by looking into the eyes of an individual, cynical or pure and of heart and asking them to make choices about their lives and the lives that are connected to them. That's the kind of stuff that I do everyday with people who are young enough to be my own children. I've spent my life, verbally or physically protesting, unjust and unfair authority. Now, I have a chance to be that authority and set that standard. But I'm careful with that responsibility because the tenderness of the heart and spirit of a child bears striking resemblance to that of an ailing nation. I am careful not to, even as I reprimand them, break their spirits. I simply can't. They may be the last hope to redeem the cynicism of a nation. And I could probably do this thing half- heartedly, but at this moment in history and at this moment it my life, I believe this job requires my complete, undying attention. So, I am momentarily pausing on my aspiration to be a politico.

To spare you a closing rendition of "We are the World," and for the sake of not making this entry any longer. I'll say this. Children, like the virtues of liberty, justice, and "the American way" are placed in the earth for us to steward, providing, sometimes forging an environment for them to grow and flourish. Therein lies the connection between me, Jonae, the community organizer and me, Jonae, the young adult that works with kids. So I'm not, just in case you were worried, CHANGING professions (once an organizer, always and organizer), I'm simply channeling what I have learned :-)

Time, S P A C E and A Place to Belong

As the New Year dawns on humanity, bringing with it a new calendar, a new President (thank the Lord ), a new slate of issues to address and a new frontier of promise and opportunity, I’ve spent time (of which I have an abundance lately) contemplating the ever elusive ideas of time, s p a c e and a place to belong. It’s the kind of stuff that you think about when you are listening to Jack Johnson or something.

So I’ve spent the last 5 months as a physical, emotional and spiritual nomad, finding my way through these complex mediums. My time has been double time, my car has been my sanctuary of clutter and my place has been a community organizer. When I returned to my mom’s house (a living space complicated a bit by the occupancy of 4 adult women.) all of that changed and I felt a bit isolated. I found that, more than anything, I just wanted some S P A C E. I don’t have my own room so I asked my mother to give me, at the very least, the screened area off of the living room. Her reply, to no shock of mine, wasn’t “ Sure 22 year old daughter that has no sanctuary to let her creative genius flow” It was, instead “ S P A C E for WHAT?!?!?” Really. Was she kidding me? No. She wasn’t. I needed that space for the same reason that I needed to take my next breath. Survival. I’d like to say that the convo ended more dramatically, but after a slight bit of bargaining, I settled in to the space and suddenly my whole life confronted me. There were boxes of campaign stuff….college stuff….bills….winter clothes…summer clothes. It was a bit more than I bargained for. But there I was with 2 of the things that I desperately craved….time and space. I felt overcome with my thoughts and this idea of where in the world I belong.

After I packed, filed and organized just about everything that I could and made unrealistic TO Do Lists that would plague me for the next 70+ years of my life; what was I supposed to do then?? Somebody, anybody? Build community and make the idea of SPACE grow, both physically and metaphorically, by leaps and bounds. We, as people, have devolved into materialists who punch the clock of time constantly. We acquire S P A C E to fill it with stuff that WE have amassed on our OWN by punching the opportunity clock. Creating S P A C E this way can be tiring and painful. What we miss in all of this is that we need each other. The success of the “world” lies in the intermixing and interdependence of shared SPACE.

In the book I’m reading, “The Impossible May take a Little While” there were a few passages that really spoke to this need.

“Forming strong bonds amongst people to go where life is fragile and hidden, and create new life. But it does not happen automatically. It happens when we have the sense to choose community, to come together and celebrate and share our common store"

The time is now but the timeline is eternity. The space is small communities projected onto the world stage. The place where we belong? Up to us. We must harvest our own communities.

WEB Dubois captured the sentiment when he said:

“Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime.”

It was all super -confusing at first, and it’s still a bit fuzzy. But now, I’ve cleaned up a bit, gotten my business handled, and taken captive my thoughts (the kind that feed OCD tendencies). I like my little space. It’s cozy. But when I look out the window (which I fear that none of us do enough), I can see the bigger world and I am connected by something deep inside of me. Kind of like my workshop on the world. Kind of mad scientist-esce, Not huge, but it’s all that I can handle right now. Much like my life. The problem, I realize is not that people seek individuality and a S P A C E to call their own. The problem is that this desire consumes our thinking and bludgeons our thinking about community. Let this not be the mark of another year or another generation. Coming into a new year, that epiphany was just what I needed.

My New Years Resolution (of sorts….because I hate New Years resolutions) is this. I feel the need now, as a community organizer, to reach out to those who seek these things-time, S P A C E or a place to belong. I can’t create time. My closet is a testament to my inability to create s p a c e. But there’s something about this whole “place to belong” thing. It doable. If only to help someone to recognize that they are a non-conformists in a sea of conformity. We have an unwavering responsibility to create community in this new day and age of disharmony. As the author of this article closes:

" Community (shared S P A C E) not only creates abundance, it is abundance." The STANDard here? To do just that every chance we get .

Happy New Year Everyone!! Go hug a neighbor and take it to the streets.:-)

It's YOUNG, It's BLACK, It's ATLANTA!! : Poverty of Ambition in the BIG city

In my fervent attempt to build on the past 5 months/21.5 years of my life and launch myself into a promising future, I, quite the square peg, made a half-hearted attempt at fitting myself into the round hole of "young, black, Atlanta." I knew it was risky, but I gave it a shot. I went to an event the other night at some Wine Loft that was intended to be a prime networking event. Networking events in Atlanta are mainly "meat/meet markets" full of women squeezed into little skirts, balanced on stilettos, staring down other women who might be in competition with them to attract men who might be interested in dating them, I mean, giving them jobs.

Sitting on a couch for about 30 min, people watching in a sea of young professionals, my mind was drawn away to this idea of "poverty of ambition." Our illustrious President-Elect just might have said it best.

"Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential." --President Obama

My fear: That a room full of young, intelligent, black professionals, may be, despite the occasional effort, living out this "poverty of ambition."

No one, almost none, even moves to Atlanta to serve the ailing communities that populate the city. They instead, flock, because they are young, single, fly and childless.....or at least they seek to be. But what else are they chasing? What virtue are they seeking? My sister, the consumate young, black, Atlanta professional, explains these events to be a means to an end, a stepping stone so to speak, but I think more than a few folks step and get stuck waiting for the next mixer.

The larger problem in all of this: being a community organizer makes you look at everything like a social experiment. It causes you to despise the simple, surface conversation and the array of self-serving items that top people's lifelong To Do lists. I want to make it clear though that I am not turning my nose up a girl who owns a new Coach bag and volunteers at a shelter once/month. We can't all be Mother Teresa. I'm simply saying that my wagon, as Obama says, has been hitched to something much bigger than the next sale at the mall, or the newest bag by Coach (don't get my wrong though, I do love a good sale). There's gotta be a place for community organizers in this lipstick jungle!! Here I was, all dressed up in my tight little skirt with my afro packed down to satisfying heights and I have never, ever, felt more displaced, nor have I even felt myself to have so little in common with people who LOOK JUST LIKE ME. Is it my job, as a community organizer, to help people hitch their wagons to something bigger than themselves, whatever that may be. Is that how we sustain a movement? It that our place as community organizers who have been released out of the captivity of election season into the wild?

So, to make a long story short, or long, I didn't quite fit in. Perhaps, it's because I am a community organizer and not a social climber. Perhaps it is because I'd rather be on the phone in my stretch pants and Converse doing volunteer recruitment calls than in an uncomfortable outfit, showing cleavage to attract my next short term boyfriend or long term disappointment. Perhaps it is because this is all a little bit country, and I am just a little too rock and roll. :-)