Wake Up Everybody

Wake up everybody, no more sleeping in bed, no more backward thinking , time to think straight ahead. The world is such a different place from what it used to be, there is so much hatred, war and provety. From the song Wake Up Everybody by Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes. Who am I? Why am I here? Answer: I am that man that Ralph Ellison wrote about 55 yrs ago, THE INVISIBLE MAN-40 yrs ago people from all walks of life marched in a struggle to give everybody their basic Human Civil Rights. So why is it in the Year of our Lord 2008, we are still struggling. I do not know where you live but I live Northampton Mass one of the first corporated settlements in the new world called AMERICA. So why does it feel like I am in 1960`s Birmingham Ala, Why do you say I feel this way? well this is just my opinion but I am sure that many who have come before me and many who will come after will agree, that there are lost citizens of this fine city with no sense of being. Wake up Nothampton and listen to your people. Your own children are calling out you saying " Look at me , What about me, Do I matter" I am a Black Male living in a town that is predominately well off White Working Class and Upper Class. So yes I am frustrated with how things are done in this great city of Northampton but so are your children. I am that INVISIBLE MAN that Ralph Ellison wote about, but your children are not. How soon we forget that you were the ones that spoke up for your alienable rights not so long ago. Have you forgotten your past? An old AFRICAN PROVERB says "It takes a Community to raise a child" So it also takes you as a community to listen to your children and neighbors, about what they are concerned about and then lets start a healthy dialouge so that we can address the Cause, Problem and most of all the Solution before it is to late. A friend of mine named Jen a Smith College student from Portland Maine is a true inspiration. Her views on the problems and solutions is what I am going to share with you in the coming weeks. but let me leave with this qoute: " To be in somebody else`s power.... Induces doubt about the order of the universe, while those who have the power, can assume it is the part of natural order of things and invent or adopt ideas which justify their possesion of it." Martin Luthor King " I came to see that no one gives up his privileges without strong resistance" Until tomorrow!!!!!