FOR THE BROTHAS: CULTURE AND INTELLECTUALISM: March 2014

FOR THE BROTHAS: AN INTRODUCTION

It must have been about 20 years ago when I first began thinking about creating a "Cultural Salon" as a reaction to the mundane social circles In Washington D.C. The richness of intellectual and artistic interchange had died, college friends had moved, the internet had not yet become the phenomenon it now is... I romanticised about the Salons of the mid to late 1800's in Paris, London and Berlin and the cultural dynamo of the Harlem Rennaisance. I was fortunate enough to meet a gentleman, an artist who lived and traveled with James Baldwin... Jimmy he affectionately called him, and he spoke often of their small cottage in southern France and of the many Artists, Poets and Luminaries that dropped in to chat and relax. Well, the impressionists, cubists, modernists, etc. all hung out together famously in those days and shared their ideas with one another creating a creative greenhouse in a world that was rapidly changing. I longed to have lived in those times, to have met Cassat, Rodin, Ellington, Fitzgerald, Baker, Balwin, well I did finally meet Baldwin and others purely for the joy of intellection upon the arts. This was in the late 1980's and by the mid 2000's I happened to run into a friend of mine from Hampton University who had been living in New York since he graduated in the early 90s. Well, I was surprised to hear him comment that in all of the wonder that is New York he never met anyone who ever really had anything interesting to say about art, literature, architecture, science, fashion or anything... I was so surprised to hear this since it had also been my experience. Well here I am in 2011 attempting the Virtual Salon...

Friday, March 28, 2014

AN ANALYSIS OF 21ST CENTURY CIVIL RIGHTS STRATEGIES

THE EVOLUTION OF CIVIL RIGHTS IN AMERICA: HOW TO RE-PURPOSE OUR HISTORIC THINK-TANKS

As I walked past iconic images of The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s… past images of workers marches from the late 1890’s and early twentieth century I realized that that style of protest was now thoroughly rooted in the past, that it was totally incapable of working in the age of cyberspace… The summer of 2013 was alive with reminiscences of The Civil Rights Era being the 50^th anniversary of The March On Washington. I sat in the audience of countless luminaries from that era feeling within them an energy and passion that had not dissipated but continued to burn scorching the dimmed conscience of the 21^st Century…

Nobody sees the masses marching in protest in the city streets anymore and their senses are dulled to the chime that once roused Americans to what were then extraordinary events. 21^st century Americans are moving faster than the speed of light; they no longer have time or inclination to slow down, to look and listen to the protest in the streets. We are a nation of telecommuters and commuters, busy, driven, exhausted urbanites who only stop to take an ephemeal break from the monotony of the workplace and to sleep. We are a nation who does not take time to raise children or to manage their own health.

The place where 21^st Century Americans come together is in cyberspace. Cyberspace is the landscape in which the great social movements of the 21^st Century will take place and unless the old Think-Tanks of the golden age of Civil Rights prepare themselves for combat in this new landscape they will become obsolete. In their place the engines of popular culture spew out diversions designed to placate their weary minds in the scarce moments of freedom.

The new Think-Tanks will exist on the internet. They will reach billions of people 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The new Think-Tanks will mobilize people, resources, time, energy, money, etc., on multiple platforms from an instantaneous and simultaneous network in the cloud. If properly organized, the 21^st Century could make the battles of Civil Rights much easier to fight in a conceptual, digital landscape that is wide open, waiting to be planted and harvested.

The early failures of social and civil rights movements such as “Occupy Wall Street” can be attributed to the fact that they relied too heavily on civil rights tactics of the past failing to capture an internet audience. Can you imagine what kind of effect Occupy Wall Street could have had if had at its disposal the pop culture platform of Facebook or Instagram? There are many successful models that can be adapted as best practices for the implementation of humanitarian causes such as Civil Rights Movement. If we ask ourselves, “what great causes in the past were also popular culture phenomena?” the list would startle us. The American Revolutionary War and the Gulf War, prohibition and the WPA, the Jazz Era and the Era of Rock and Roll are but a few. All of these things had one thing in common; they were grass roots movements that exploded into popular culture movements of national and global stature. In alignment with the global focus on sustainability, a 21^st century pop culture phenomenon in its own right, let us now take time to repurpose our social Think-Tanks retrofitting them for a new mission in cyberspace. If change and adaptability are truly the life-blood of successful evolution then it is the only way the entity which was once called The Civil Rights Movement can survive…