I Can See Clearly Now

Man I promise, I'm so self conscious

That's why you always see me with at least one of my watches

Rollies and Pasha's done drove me crazy

I can't even pronounce nothing, pass that versace!

Then I spent 400 bucks on this

Just to be like n_ _ _a you ain't up on this!

And I can't even go to the grocery store

Without some ones that’s clean and a shirt with a team

It seems we living the American dream

But the people highest up got the lowest self-esteem

                                                Kayne West All Falls Down

The above lyrics set the stage for a discussion I have been having all day with some folks surrounding the efforts of those engaged in Occupy Wall Street and the upcoming Black Friday shopping bonanza.

The greatest trick the 1% has ever perpetrated on mankind was to make the 99% aspire to have what they had.  What the 99% did was broke that down even further and got so gangster with it they separated the economic pie based upon race.  Therefore, removing the humanity from the concept of economic fairness.  What I have come to understand in my work is poverty has no color.  It looks the same no matter if you are living on the northside of Jacksonville, FL or in the mountains of West Virginia.  However, the culprit is different based upon those same locations.

What I have also come to understand is that given the right opportunity many of “us” would jump at the chance to be a part of the 1%.  Matter of fact as I suggested in a previous post the reason we go to work everyday and drug dealers even sell drugs is not to get by, but to get closer to the 1% and further away from the bottom portion of that 99%.  Why do you think we buy nice stuff and go into debt doing it? If I were to expand beyond the basic needs of survival and that being food, clothing and shelter and allotted for Maslow's hierarchy of needs which calls for physiological and safety needs, loving and belonging, self esteem and self actualization no where in the mix would Rolex, Gucci or Mercedes be included.  However, that learned was designed by the 1% to keep the 99% on the treadmill of life.   Furthermore, ensuring a permanent class system as identified by Karl Marx, father of capitalism.  

Now don’t get me wrong I like nice things and I AM committed to going to work every day and furthering my education to ensure I can have and afford them.  However, many in the 99% are now committing what I AM defining as “1% Envy.”  What I have concluded is the crime of the 1% is that they have grown their wealth at the expense of the 99%.  Thus pushing the 99% to see them as the common enemy.   Greed and excess has been the downfall of many great nations and a hungry man in Liberty City has the same hunger pains as a hungry man in Willacoochee, GA.  Therefore, what the Occupy Wall Street Movement represents for me is the 99% developing a collective consciousness that together we have all been hoodwinked.   The ability to earn the resources that allow you to fulfill your basic needs is not an option, but a right regardless of where you are on the economic pyramid or what shade of brown you are.

That’s my Truth and I AM sticking to it.

Occupy Wall Street

This may seem as if I have something against the idea of HOPE, but I really don’t.  I AM by and large as HOPEFUL as any one person can be.  Matter of fact HOPE is intertwined with as much of my being as my FAITH.  Although, at times own up to the fact I have the miniuim as suggested by the Bible (size of a mustard seed).  Hey don’t get mad with me I didn’t make the rules, but on most days my FAITH is as deep as the deepest ocean.

That being said in my latest revelation that occurred during one of my quite moments I thought about the profitability of HOPE. 

·      The 99% are really more like 35% because the other 45% are really envious of the 1% and truly HOPEFUL that if they work really hard their jobs won’t be sent overseas and they to can be in the 1% at some point.

·      Politics has drained us all of HOPE and confused so many in the masses that you have people who get Social Security and Medicare screaming for no more entitlements.  Last I checked there was a line on my pay stub that showed I did pay into both and that is called an investment not an entitlement. 

·      Schools are no better.  The very institutions we send our children to get HOPE for a brighter tomorrow are tuning them into HOPELESS test takers with no practical skills other than how to pass or maybe not pass a test.  No disrespect to the countless teachers who do their best everyday trying to keep young people HOPEFUL. 

·      Jessie Jackson suggested “Keep HOPE Alive” and President Obama simply said “HOPE,” yet one media outlet reported on the struggles of African-American men finding a job paying $8.00 an hour let alone finding ones that pay $100K a year http://2025bmb.org/.

See what many African-Americans know and many of my White brothers and sisters are just learning is despite where we are economically we are all one corporate merger, one bad encounter with a manager, one brother, sister or cousin away from starting over again.  Also, when your linage includes slavery and Jim Crow you are born with a DNA inclusive of HOPE. 

Therefore, when the question is asked “Where are the black folk during the Occupy Movement?”  Kindly let them know we been fighting Wall Street while trying to get a job on Main Street for a minute now and we thank you for showing up to the fight with the cameras in tow.  Your support is kindly appreciated.

By the way Keep Your Head Up and oh yea Keep HOPE Alive.

That’s my Truth and I AM sticking to it.

View From The Vanguard

Within the last month I have spoken to two generationally polar opposite groups.  The first consisted of college students from the University of North Florida and the other a more senior group from a local Presbyterian church.  However, what they both shared was ethnicity and their discomfort with the state of many communities like New Town.  The fact that they identified things like parks and grocery stores and financial institutions as basic elements every “good” and “desirable” community should have and the fact none of these things existed troubled them. 

Is it that residents of these neighborhoods do not desire these basic institutions in their neighborhood?  Or is it that the residents of these same neighborhoods do not represent a big enough financial opportunity for said institutions to make a profit?  The mere fact that check cashing places exist on every corner within every challenged neighborhood throughout the country suggest likewise.  Therefore, a bank or credit union should be viable business within  these communities. 

Whatever the reason is these institutions do not exist we all can agree that they are needed in every community.  We have to make communities like New Town destinations that people want to live rather than vacate at the first opportunity.  Yes safety is a huge part of the equation (40% reduction in crime) and schools are another (S.P. Livingston is a B school) and quality housing is another (Habijax has 144 properties in the community), but access to fundamental things like banks, grocery stores and parks is another.  Therefore, I ask what are YOU prepared to do to make sure those institutions are available and young families who cannot afford homes that have soared beyond what a minimum wage or service worker can afford? 

That’s my truth…

Habijax looks for major new impact | jacksonville.com

Habijax looks for major new impact | jacksonville.com

Miseducation in 2011

As with any of my musings they always seem to come at those moments when my body and mind are at conflict regarding the need to conduct physical exercise as if I am training for mini camp with a NFL franchise or worst yet a MMA fight.  In light of that mental and physical battle I offer you this commentary regarding the Miseducation of Today’s Negro.    However, before I do I offer you these sobering statistics:

o   42,000,000 adults are illiterate meaning they can not READ

o   Every 26 seconds a young person drops out of school

o   90% of welfare recipients are high school dropouts

o   2/3 of the students who can not read by the end of the 4^th grade will end up in jail or welfare

o   85% of all who enter the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate

o   40% of minority students fail to graduate with their class.

If you are anything like me you find this not only heartbreaking, but a tragedy in light of the work that some of my friends who are educators are doing.  See what I have come to understand is that education like every other American enterprise from cars to real estate to good ole heaven has become profit centers and as any good capitalist would tell you there is money to be made and people are getting paid. 

Schools are no longer centers of intellectual curiosity as they may have once been.  In less than 15 years schools have been transformed into test mills that process young people into lines that ultimate suggest prison or college and do very little to prepare them for anything in between.  Matter of fact in a recent paper I wrote regarding high stakes testing I pointed out that within the last 10 years (1997-2007) the economics of the testing industry and all of the spin offs have gone from a $260 million dollar a year industry to an $700 million dollar a year industry (Supovitz, 2009). 

The unfortunate state of today’s formulated education system is that it is created to push square pegs into round holes without addressing all of the many variable factors that make young people round, square, triangle and any other number of geometric shapes.  The frightening part about it is young people are realizing this fact earlier and rebelling against a system that has insisted on defining them by a test that has no implications on their abilities to compete in a global economy.  Matter of fact researchers Donnor & Shockley suggested that standardized test are neither indicative nor representative of whether a person can apply or transfer the information they know in other settings (Donnor & Shockley, 2010).    

Moreover, while we test our way into nowhere American children are falling further behind their global counterparts in reading and math.   Therefore, leading kids down the path of forced servitude via America’s prison system.  However, the shortsightedness of all of this is that the prison system takes all comers and as our education system crumbles around us no one will be able to escape its impact. 

I AM Irvin PeDro Cohen

That’s My Truth and I AM Sticking To It.

Donnor, J.K., Shockley, K. G. (2010).  Leaving Us Behind:  A Political Economic

Interpretation of NCLB and the Miseducation of African American Males, Educational Foundations, pp 43-54.

Supovitz, J. (2009).  Can High Stakes Testing Leverage Educational Improvements?

Prospects From the Last Decade of Testing and Accountability Reform, Journal Education Change, Vol. 10, pp 211-227. DOI 10.1007/s10833-009-9105-2. 

Live chat with Carolyn Cohen | jacksonville.com

Live chat with Carolyn Cohen | jacksonville.com

Live chat with Cedric and PeDro Cohen, from the Letters from Carolyn series | jacksonville.com

Live chat with Cedric and PeDro Cohen, from the Letters from Carolyn series | jacksonville.com