Remembering Meka: So Many Memories

On Sunday (09/19) I learned that a very special person has passed away. She was strong and courageous. She was my friend and I loved her. Her name was NaaMeka White.

I met Meka at the Victory Church when she & I lived in Atlanta. It must have been 2001. However, in January 2004, we kicked our friendship up a notch. I was driving cross country to Los Angeles and I needed a co-pilot. Meka came to my going away dinner, learned of the news and said she wish she had known. Literally, 24hrs later, we were on a 36hr (non-stop) journey, heading west. When we got L.A., I only knew 2 people here. Meka moved to L.A. in March of that year. She became my family.

I loved my friend.

[S]he went away from me.

There's nothing more to say.

The poem ends, softly as it began -

I loved my friend.

-Langston Hughes

NAAMEKA WHITE

(April 25, 1974 - September 19, 2010)

From Shock to Responsible Action

(4:45am) My entire body cringed as the news anchor announced the headline. I felt immediate disgust – an experience reserved for the melodramatic in my mind. From disgust to stomach sickness, to anger laced with rage, to heartache, to utter sadness; this downward spiral of emotion all at the thought that there are young people in this country so pain-stricken that they repudiate civilization. My mind searches aimlessly to understand how a teenage girl might be repeatedly raped and beaten for 2.5 hours by a gang of children with hardened-hearts as her attack is made a spectacle to satisfy the sick curiosity of reprehensible onlookers. But in my quest to make sense of vile senselessness, I soon recognize that my shock is not surprise. Young people are crying out from the anguish through which they experience the world. And as their cries become less vocal, their behaviors become more heinous. Why call out when your requests seem to always go unanswered? Why give voice to the fear and darkness that haunts you when the world seems pre-occupied with waging wars and protecting ideologies? Why speak your name or tell your story when you live in a shroud of invisibility which is only recognized when you act out from your most base nature? In our ever evolving high-tech, low touch society our children are being bombarded with mixed messages on civility. Our adult fears about terrorism, foreclosure and joblessness collide with their youthful fears about belongingness, identity and survival as we are rendered a nation paralyzed by fear. Numb to our own humanity, we model for our children how to exist in a world out to get us. No place seems safe enough to relax your guard. Normalcy has become a perpetual state of “fight or flight”. And our children learn that livin’ ain’t easy, life is hard and you must fight to stay alive. However, the figurative is lost on their youth. So they fight. They fight hard. They fight constantly. They fight with everything that they have. But what for? What is the message that is being confused with their behavior? Listen carefully and you will hear in 2.5 hours of rape: “I am in need of attention;” “I am hurting;” “I feel hopeless.” Look more closely and you will see in countless murders in cities like Chicago: “I need guidance;” “I am lonely;” “I am afraid.” Check out the tunes blaring from their ipods and it will become clear: “I am mis-educated;” “I am confused;” “I am desperate.” And as we begin to hear correctly and see correctly, hopefully we’ll become more compelled to save our children from a manufactured demise. Hopefully we will see more squarely our collective neglect. Hopefully we will be willing to take compassionate action to heal their hearts and ease their minds and return to them the gift of childhood.

The Struggle Continues - A Prelude

Sunday, November 16, 2008

11:19am
The irony has not been lost. In the wake of our recent tryst with history, many profound thinkers have been eager to juxtapose the significance of America electing its first African American President against the passage of California’s Proposition 8 legalizing a ban on gay marriage, and the bellowing demonstrations that have ensued across the country. The query has analyzed polling results, dissected campaign propaganda, and has sprinted to the finish line of laying blame and inflicting salt upon humanity’s gaping wound – our inability to see, validate and appreciate each other…our delusion of individualism…and the cataract which impairs our ability to recognize the interconnectedness of our fate.

This has led me to reflect on the concept of “struggle” – a construct in human experience that seeks to answer perceived wrongs endured and invokes yet another construct … “activism”. It makes me wonder what propels struggle forward toward the advancement of human thought. As I witness throngs of disenfranchised homosexuals and their allies protest in the streets and before the misidentified targets of their rage (the Mormon Church, the ultra-conservative right spurred by their evangelical ideologies, black voters incapacitated by their oppressors religion, et al), I beg the question: Is anger the operative ingredient for social change? Must it be? Moreover, do our interests really lie in social change or are we merely interested in adding yet another egoic layer to the status quo of human experience?

I am mindful of the adage which cautions: “When battling the beast, be careful not to become the beast!”

Barak Obama’s success has been tied to the unique values and skills associated with coalition building and community organizing. He set his sights high, cast his net far and moved intentionally toward changing the conversation in American politics, and in so doing, he shifted the energy surging through this country.

I propose we do the same. It is time for those of us who love justice to up-level our conversation from small-minded and immature discourse to a thoughtful dialogue where the goal is not simply to DO something, but rather to BE something. We must discontinue our addiction to performing within the confines of our limiting roles and self-proclaimed identities and move consciously into the embodiment of our collective purpose.

I am of the mind that when we busy ourselves with BEING present, BEING in conversation, BEING informed, BEING engaged, BEING enlightened, BEING communal, BEING in love, BEING HUMANISTIC!….our capacity for work is expanded and our vision for social change becomes crystal clear. For we know without vision, the people perish.

So now what? ....

The Dawning of A New Day

Wednesday, November 5, 2008 7:00am The sun has risen. It's a new day. I marvel at the sun's capacity to rise and fall in utter allegiance to its function – to give light; to shine without judgment; to remind us of infinite potential longing to be fulfilled. In the disciplined rhythm of time passing, the sun has always risen to illuminate the darkness. It gives us hope in times of despair. The sun has risen. It is a new day.

President Elect - BARACK OBAMA

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

6:12am
I'm still mesmerized.

On the Brink of History

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

3:33am
Today marks the convergence of so many realities that have distinguished the American experience. History – the long and the short of it… the brutality and the beauty of it…the mystery and the inevitability of it – prepares itself this morning to speak the familiar language of change in an unfamiliar voice. The change that we embark upon today has been the sleeping giant in a county that has for centuries lived beneath its ideal. We’ve awaited its awakening. We’ve yearned for its initiation. Today our course in history will change.

This is election day in America! We commemorate the struggle and we celebrate the triumph. Today we exercise the most fundamentally democratic right to express one's opinion with the VOTE!

VOTE FOR CHANGE!

Why I Voted NO on PROP 8

Monday, November 3, 2008 3:10pm "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." These are words of one of the foremost renowned Americans of the twentieth century, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As an African-American minister who was literally thrust onto the stage of history by racial injustice in the south, Dr. King was most clear about the insidious nature of hate and discrimination. Throughout the pages of our history we have seen time and again how the small-minded ideologies of one group of human beings have been allowed to oppress the lives of others. This is unfortunate. In California, there is such a proposition on the 2008 election ballot. Proposition 8 seeks to amend the Constitution of the State of California to exclude homosexuals from the right to choose and marry the person they love and enter into civil contract. (One group of human beings, in their small-minded ideologies, has set out to oppress the lives of others). Those in support of this proposition have framed the conversation in “defense of marriage.” My question is: Why does marriage need defending? The idea that marriage has been an unchanged tradition in the human experience is not supported sociologic- or anthropologically. Marriage has evolved from our earliest understandings of the agreement. These evolutions have followed the pattern of human progression in expanded thought and insight for centuries. Long gone are the days when 12 year old little girls of ancient times (and recent modern times) were bartered off in exchange for goods & familial reputation. No more do we experience in civilized society the occurrence of women, though “married,” being considered property and having their rights apportioned into their husband’s trust. No longer is it illegal in this country of expanded freedoms for members of differing races to enter into loving relationships and later marry, as it was some short forty-one years ago (Loving v. Virginia, 1967). We are grateful for evolution in human understanding. Now, we who love justice and equality have another battle to fight. It would be easy to base this decision on fear. The supporters of this proposition have offered us a heavy dose of that medicine. Even easier, may be the notion to decide based on religious beliefs. However, we’re a country of laws and principles and one such law is the separation of church and state and one of the founding principles of this country is the notion that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL, THAT THEY ARE ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR WITH CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS; THAT AMONG THESE ARE LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PRUSUIT OF HAPPINESS... Proposition 8 is discriminatory and discrimination is beneath humanity.