Pick a number any number-start now

Bronze Trinity has compiled an action list for the Afrospear members.

1) Get the UN to stop the war in Darfur. Join organizations and promote the cause until the UN or someone steps in to stop the African World War. Post a Stop the War in Darfur button or image on your blog or website at the very least. As you can see to your right I have the button and I have signed
maybe 4 Darfur petitions. For some of the petitions prewritten emails or letters were automatically mailed. Tonight I also donated $100 to the UN Refugee Agency. Have you done this yet?

2) Make Poverty History. Join One.org and support organizations that are working to end poverty. Spend the dollar at least and get the bracelet.I have done this and I wear the bracelet. I have also signed at least one petition at their site and I sent emails about the One to my friends. I also make monthly donations to UNICEF even though my income is unstable and I have loads of student debt. Have you done this yet?

3) Black Leader Recruitment and Promotion. If you know positive Black role models then promote them, ask them to get involved, help them to make changes, and work with them. Make a website of good Black role models so they become famous and so that they are called when the media wants to hear from the Black Community. If you want better leaders then go out and find them because they are just waiting for your support and encouragement. There are two sites already doing this, Black Male Appreciation and Sistas in the News (available on the Afrospear Politics & Opinion Page) but PLEASE HELP to find some more sites like this and to encourage or participate in their work.

4) Convict Workforce. Hire ex-cons who no one else will hire and have them fix up Black communities in return for food, shelter, clothing, recommendation letters, and help finding another job. Employ them as security guards and construction and maintenance workers. Make it so that those who want to change can find rewarding work that can help our communities.

5) Citizen Police Surveillance. Videotape cops whenever they are around and post it to a website so that we can catch corruption and police brutality. Videotape how they react to being recorded in a public place in the same way many places in North America are under constant surveillance. People behave if they are being watched and court cases are easy to win if there is video footage. Use cellphones to post instantly and anonymously to the site. Support the underdog because one day he might be you. Youtube has an instant mobile upload service that you can use to instantly upload video to the site.

6) Marry Your Baby Daddy. This is a campaign started by author Maryanne Reid. Encourage people to get married and raise children as families. Its not cool to raise kids in broken homes or to have children when you do not have the means to support them. Visit the site HERE.

7) Sex Education Website Promotion. If parents don’t want their children to get pregnant and catch STDs, schools only teach abstinence, and parents are too afraid to talk about sex then make an interactive website that will do the talking for them and answer questions. Let them know about the various sex education sites online. Are you going to let schools decide if your kids become teenaged parents and die of AIDS? Some sites include Scarleteen, Sex Education Links, Sex Etc, .

8) Why Are You Wasting Your Money Campaign. Make ads showing how much money we waste in a year on booze, cigarettes, designer clothes, and other crap and compare it to the cost of a house, university education, tutor for a year, company shares, and other expenditures that would actually improve the African Diaspora. Those who want you to waste your money benefit from keeping you poor and they don't care about you. They only care about what you can do for them.

9) Stop Using the N-Word. Stop saying it, tolerating it, and purchasing music that uses it. You have been fooled into thinking that using an insult in a friendly manner takes the power away from the word. You were tricked into habitually insulting yourselves and making racists smile.

10) Elect Barak Obama. Stop the monopoly by getting registered to vote and voting for Barak Obama. Make history and change the way Black people are viewed in the world by making a Black man the leader of the most powerful country in the world. Choose a leader and get together and back him!

11) Make Education Cool. Stop paying attention and promoting ignorant behaviour and people. Make educated involved citizens our heroes by writing about positive Black Role models and flooding the media with stories about them and demanding that they are aired.

12) Make Gangstas Uncool. Stop looking up to Gangstas and buying there stuff. Stop acting like them, dressing like them, talking like them, and buying their music. Make a website of bad Black role models and make them look like the idiots and losers they are.

13) Afrosphere Online Newspapers. I have already started one but other people can get out there, find content relevant to different parts of the world and different interests so that we make it easy for people to get involved and knowledgeable about African Diaspora issues. If you don’t like the media then make alternative media sources available.

14) Positive Hip Hop Free Promotion Campaign. If you don’t like Gangsta rap then promote positive, conscious hip hop artists on your blog or website until it becomes the mainstream.I have started this with a premade slide show of artists with positive and conscious lyrics and I have pasted it on my blog. Have you done this yet? Also please sign the Stop Offensive Media and Negative Hip Hop Petition!

15) Plus 1 Minus 1. Created by Young Black Professionals Guide. Only buy CDs and mp3s from artists who do not make the African Diaspora look bad and hurt our members. Advertise the campaign on your blog. I have done this. Have you done this yet?

16) Internet Public Service Announcements. Use YouTube, paint shop, and any means you can to promote these African Diaspora issues. Make interesting, inspiring, moving, funny, or any announcement that gets our causes noticed. You can find freeware and online sites so you don’t even need a cent to make them. Find announcements that have already been made and keep them them on your site.

17) Single Mothers' Village. It's difficult for single mothers to raise children alone. There is an African saying that it takes a village to raise a child. Single mothers can get together and share houses and apartments together with their children to share the child raising and foster community support.

That's off the top of my head and it wasn’t hard to come up with these ideas with absolutely no research. So lets hear some more ideas.

Afrospear member recognized by the MSM

Jared Roebuck, a member of Afrospear has had a busy week. First a quote in the Washington Post, an op-ed piece in his school newspaper,The Campus an interview on radio and more stuff in the works. Roebuck blog is called Lies before breakfast.

It should would be nice when MSM began to print the names of the blogs along with the bloggers name.

Afrospear

A national dialogue on race was to take place after Don Imus and Bernand McQuirk frothing at the mouth about the Rutger's Women Basketball team. However, in the Afrospear the dialogue has stepped over the two personalities who spewed the negative labels in describing the young college women. Afrospear is reaching for a higher ground.

Afrospear appears to be focused on the marketing of the war of words, hos and bitches and nappy head. Those who are spewing the negative message about women are only playing to the money. Young folks who have a talent for twisting, shaping lyrics may not have other opportunities appears to be the sentiments in the Afrospear. So joining the crowd to point fingers at the young cats is misdirected. Matter of fact, the Afrospear warns that we are playing right into the hands of the fat cats. We need to go to the root of the problem.

This is not to say that Afrospear is totally forgiving of the actions by folks who make noises that degrade women. But the Afrospear does not want readers to waste energy trying to separate one talent from the other talent because of inappropriate language. Instead put the spotlight on exactly who or what is exactly too blame for encouraging the inappropriate language. And that would be the airwaves, producers, and distributors of the noise. The paper trail is the source, the fat cats in the media. Artists are switched at the rate of a dime a dozen.

You can listen in some of the debate by going to : freeslave and his comment section on Hip Hop, Temple 3 gives some back ground on getting a clue on what is hip hop, rap and sexual healing music. Exodus Mentality is providing some examples of stuff we bob our head too, that just may contain words that we would not bob our heads too. EM expresses some concerns that a few artists are allowed to define millions and millions of other folks. Bronze Trinity is scanning the area for some good stuff after she created a petition affirming the commitment to hold our own accountable. Thanks to Bronze Trinity, a young blogger from Canada, has collected all the pages of the Afrospear members and placed them in a newsreader. Right here you can now read what each of the Afrospear members are saying and then some.

Update: African American Political Pundit and African American (Black) Opinion keeps us connected with our collective opinions. I would like to point our another resource, Afronary.com as another positive brother.

Afrospear-Ready for a brand new beat

I did it. The it is on my sidebar. I became a member of the afrospear. Names. Call it what you may, blackosphere/afrosphere/African-Americanosphere... But, I got my afrospear.

The symbol represents a concern many share in the blogosphere. Different concerns, but a common theme, a divide in the community.

I was concerned about the lack of African-American male bloggers in responses to Shaquanda Cotton. Of course, there were a few, but many where not presence on the site created for Free Shaquanda Cotton. No problem, just an insight.

So now I get to participate in the Afrospear challenge as it brings its movement. I read much of the material that has been posted on some of the sites. So, I am going to say, I think that many of the great minds will have an impact..the legal, the scholars. I believe they can explain legislations that are having a negative impact on our families in the prison system. I believe that Afrospear can help draft legislation to make changes. A grassroot net that must reach beyond the keyboard.

I find the creation of blogs troublesome. Simply because many who need the service offered by Afrospear are not on the internet. So I believe some other type of outreach program will need to be implemented. I suggest that we form a main blog, as a directory for those who do need the service of the afrospear. I suggest that those who do not have access to the internet be informed about the movement through webcast throughout the various cities that are represented in the afrospear.

I also agree with one of the bloggers, on the lack of brick and mortar participation from the afrospear in advocating for those most in need. I suggest that each blogger join an organization and implement the afrospear within such organizations. And the webcast could be one way of pulling in folks to learn how to blog. I suggest that a post goes up by one member, specifically about Afrospear agenda, once a week, a different blogger each week, and we all go over and comment.

This will change as the membership grows. I don't care who is the author, the article can be emailed to the host blogger, but a shared community. A model in which the Afrosphere can copy is African-American Political Pundit which does an excellent job for bloggers. And has already started a listing on African-American(Black) Opinion on the Afrospear members.

Perhaps these things are already being done, but I offer my two cents.

The post below is just something I wanted to share, and tell me what you think.To read the complete post go to Professor Zero.

None of these movements function effectively when the focus is on catering to the diverse needs of those enlisted in the ranks; the diversity can be acknowledged and supported, but a shared purpose must, for maximum effectiveness, remain the point of concentration. The common assumption that political action should be based on a fully shared–even identical–set of values and perspectives among those committed to a cause isn’t a good operational guide for effective organizing.

Within a given movement, differences are bound to exist among the rank and file in regard to class, race, gender, age, geographical location, religious belief and so on. But when those differences become the prime focus of attention, the energy that should be saved for working against a common oppressor gets diverted and sapped. To form powerful, effective political organizations, individuals cannot be allowed to let the differences that separate them usurp the agenda.

One central reason movements for social reform in this country have rapidly run aground is our commitment to the ideological belief (not the practice) of the supreme importance of the individual