Many people equate the word “revolution” with violence when it simply means, as the American Heritage Dictionary says, “activities directed to bringing about social change.” I like to say that revolutions begin the minute someone decides to stand up and speak out. This is what plants the seeds of change in the minds of the people. Thus, the seeds of change were planted in the poetry of Phyllis Wheatley, the […]
Larry Carter | An empowering moment
The year was 1968 and all eyes were on the summer Olympics. I was on an extended summer vacation due to the teachers’ strike in New York City. Being me, I was not too sad about the strike; in fact I rather enjoyed my extended summer break. I was a fourteen-year-old athlete and involved myself in playing a lot of football, basketball and baseball. I enjoyed the World Series games […]
Somaly Mam | Something in me has always been a fighter
I’ve had a hard time facing the subject of human trafficking. Surely we ended slavery a century ago, I told myself. Perhaps activists were overstating the case, using a provocative term, “slavery,” to compel our attention. Then Somaly Mam received a CNN Hero award in 2006 and a primetime national TV audience was introduced to a former sex slave transformed into a radiant survivor, doing daily battle on behalf of […]
Claudine Nash | You wasted nothing
You wasted nothing. You breathed energy into the ozone, recycling atoms of spent oxygen into pockets of positively charged air. Micro moments were deemed thrilling things, snow and sand flecks of thin but wondrous matter. You savored day’s existence, wiping clean near empty slates, prizing every piece of light that wrapped around each eyelash. You didn’t spend an instant nursing anything but exuberance, spilling anything into the atmosphere that wasn’t […]
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