I’ve decided, after much deliberation, to revive this blog. I know it’s a risky venture, that very likely, very few people will read this site. Most visitors will be related to me or friends with my mom. I know also that I do not yet know css or html well enough to create an aesthetic that better illustrates the content I wish to include on the blog. I know it could be better, much better, and I could wait many months to painstakingly figure out how to make it better, but if I do, I fear I will explode with all the things I see, read, and want to share.
I recently attended a discussion as part of Philadelphia’s Art Sanctuary Celebration of Writing 2010 festival. The discussion was about black blogging as a tool for social change. The panelists were distinguished and avid bloggers – including frequent CNN guest, Dr. Marc Lamont Hill – and they each said that whether you have 1 reader or 1,000, you blog because you are moved, because you are compelled to write.
Well, I feel compelled. I am compelled because every day, I read one article after another that makes me think, “Do people know this is happening?” or “What would happen if more people knew about this?” What would happen, for example, if instead of lambasting Helen Thomas’s remarks (which come at a rather interesting time, following as they do the recent Israeli attacks on the activist flotillas and the United States’ ambivalent reaction, hinting therefore at some tensions in U.S.-Israeli affections) we spent more time thinking and talking about how it is that an elected official can call the President of the United States a “rag head”? What if rather than publicly shame detractors of Israel (and stalwart defenders of democracy as Ms. Thomas has been for so many years) we hold accountable those who disparage and demean citizens of our own nation?
But what moved me most from the Art Sanctuary discussion was that these excellent bloggers are part of something larger than themselves. They are part of a conversation. And I too wish to join.
I’ve also learned, through working with documentary filmmaker and avid blogger Therese Shechter that blogging is an excellent way of creating a community, bringing together people of like minds who can, united, more effectively advocate for social change. *(Therese is currently blogging at The American Virgin, companion site to her documentary film about the meaning of virginity in U.S. American culture, How to Lose your Virginity).
So I will try, as imperfect as my attempts might be, to get some of my thoughts out there, to share them with my mom and her friends, and perhaps with you, a stranger who stumbled into this hidden corner of the webbed forest that is becoming the primary habitat of our lives.
Please look around, read, then read some more, follow the links, find new links, read as much as you can, and please join in the conversation with me.
