"I made it Big, no lie, and know that I chose my own fate/I drove by the fork in the road and went straight"
That's a beautiful line. Anyway, I was looking through my old xanga posts, and I think I completely understand why people enjoy having journals and diaries. It reminds me of the decisions that I made in the past. It's a lesson in my own history so that I don't repeat the same mistakes.
It can also remind me of my inspiration and my motivation. I wrote the following post when I was in New Orleans getting ready for uNAVSA 4. During the week before the conference, I decided to take a day out and go back to Biloxi. It was really interesting to see how the community fared, and how people had begun to rebuild their lives. I remembered the Vietnamese neighborhood along Oak Street, and saw how it was decimated. I visited old friends, and my old place. That day really help me get centered again. The post is below.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
i have to post on here while i have the opportunity...
So I landed in New Orleans a couple days ago for the 4th annual uNAVSA conference, and to be honest, the entire experience has been a huge eye opener for me.
Yall know that I had one hell of an experience in the south. Odd thing was that I never actually wanted to leave. I did get homesick, and I definitely missed my friends, but my time in Mississippi was such a new experience, one where I was able to learn so much, that I didn't actually want to leave. That became even more true after the hurricane, because I didn't want to leave the people behind that I had connected with.
In the time that has followed, I discovered that I got lost. Not in the physical or geographical sense, but in more the mental and spiritual sense. I lost my sense of purpose. Nothing was the same for me. Oddly enough, not even the way I worked or organized.
I always knew that I needed a chance to be back in the south, if for no other reason than to at least be able to tell myself that I had gone back. I want to actually spend time back here again, but I know that doing so would go against what my family wants for me, and I know that I've pushed off what they want for long enough. But being here now has already proven to remind me of some of what I had forgotten two years ago.
I am an organizer. My work, my purpose, is with those who need the most help. I'm not meant to be around big wigs and "important" people. I don't know what to say or how to act around them. I'm meant to be with a group of people, sitting in the frontyard on some boxes, playing cards and drinking beer. I'm meant to be at community meetings and finding ways to make our lives easier to manage and to stop those who would make our lives harder. I'm meant to be a "grunt" or a "sargeant," seeing and perceiving from the ground, not from the sky. I am grassroots, not treetops.
Things don't happen because one man or one woman wills it to be. It is the collective effort of the people and the community that moves everything. Social problems aren't solved because one man or woman decides what the solution is and imposes it on those who suffer from it. They are solved because society works together to address it and to break those problems. New leaders aren't born, they are developed and forged through the fire of struggle. The best and the brightest aren't always those who are privileged enough to get a degree, or have good jobs, or have a lot of money. The greatest minds can come from those who must survive in a community that suffers from poverty and neglect. The conditions of our neighborhoods, our homes, and our people don't progress because somebody throws money into it. They improve because we take responsibility for our own welfare, and find those resources that allow us to create the living conditions to thrive (though money does help!).
Maybe things will be different now for me. Maybe they won't. At the very least, I just need to remember who I am.
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