Be The Change 2011 Day 2

Day two of Be The Change was all about rolling up sleeves and getting down with what movement building is all about, learning how to identify root causes of problems in our communities, and effective tools to create the change we want to see in Georgia.

The day started off with a workshop on movement building. It's a workshop that I've done the last few years, but this year the lovely and talented Dejah Ault did the bulk of facilitating. The workshop focused on solid models designed to start conversations and build relationship with communities you're working in.

After the workshop there was a social justice market place. Several amazing organizations set up tables with literature and spoke with youth about their work. Atlanta Indy Media, Georgia Students for Public Higher Education, Women's Feminist Health Center, Student Career Alternatives Program, and Art as an Agent for Change were all there.

After lunch the day brought a bunch of high impact presentations on not only what Dr. King referred to as the giant triplets of evil(militarism, racism, and poverty), but also on effective tools to create change in the community. We were blessed have a crew of super talented, dynamic facilitators from some of our closet ally organizations including Anton Flores from Alterna, Allie McCullen from Georgia Students for Public Higher Education, Dawn Gibson from Atlanta Indymedia, Charmaine Davis from Working Women 9-5, Jeremy Foreman from Hands On Southeast Georgia, and Pablo Paredes from the Bay Area American Friends Service Committee kept the energy high, and the information flowing. I was surprised at the amount of information participants were able to soak up. During youth report backs I remember thinking, "dang, these youth are ready to facilitate the workshops that they just got out of!"

Every social movement has used art to express ideas. Some so art is the essence of human expression. We've all had moments when art spoke to us in ways a speech could never do. Art as an Agent for Change worked with WonderRoot Community Art Center to put together a program Saturday night called, "The Art of Activism" and they invited youth to plug their talents into it. I gotta say it was by far the dopest thing I've every seen AAC put together. Not only was there a barrage of amazing spoken word, music performances, and youth putting their talents out in front of folks, there was also live painting going down during the show.Folks were just blown away by the work of artist Corey Barksdale.

We ended the night with a big bonfire with smores, and a lot of great conversation at the lovely landtrust.


Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee

Be The Change 2011 Day 1

On April 4, 1967, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a groundbreaking speech in which he famously made the link between the war in Vietnam and the “giant triplets” of militarism, racism, and poverty. Unfortunately, his message resounds all too clearly today with regards to our involvement in Iraq and elsewhere, and the link between our country’s militarism abroad and poverty at home. In Georgia, our communities spiral further into poverty while the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq approach the decade mark . Young people see no option to pay for school other than joining the military, while others end up getting caught up in the prison system. Meanwhile, 35,000 four-year scholarships to colleges and universities could have been given for what we spend on just one day of the war. There is a new sense of hope in 2011, particularly among young people, yet that energy and excitement must be harnessed and focused for any of this hope to materialize.

The American Friends Service Committee and the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition are organized a three-day convergence for Georgia youth that created space for youth to imagine the Georgia that they want to live in, grasp organizing tools that lifted up past movements in the South, and build community with each other.

Dr. King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech will serve as the “grounding text” for the weekend. The speech was a great way to star conversations around the deep connections between systems of violence and oppression that control our bodies, minds and communities. How does recent anti-immigration legislation, like HB87, have anything to do with the war in Afghanistan? How does the foreclosure crisis, or the recent drastic cuts the public education have anything to do with the prison industrial complex? King's groundbreaking speech proved extremely relevant when exploring these questions.

This year's Youth Convergence was like no other. In years past we've held the youth convergence at Koinonia Farms in south Georgia, and it's been attended by mostly college aged youth that had some experience with activism. While we all REALLY love Koinonia, we wanted to do something different this year. There was a feeling that we needed to reach out to younger folks. So we decided to exclusively outreach to high school aged youth in Atlanta, we focused on schools we had relationships though out Student Career Alternatives Program(SCAP) and several Boys and Girls Clubs. We decided to hold the convergence at the Horizon's School in Atlanta, who we've had the pleasure of working with in the past.

Well this past Friday, day one of the convergence, we were all super excited to have a crowd of mostly high school aged youth, along with several middle school students, and a few college aged youth.

There was a little bit of tension in the first few hours of Friday's program, most of the folks had never met before and I won't lie, I thought it was going to be a challenge to get folks to come out their shell and take the risk to put themselves out there to each other....I was wrong.

The King Center facilitated an ice breaker and a presentation on Dr. Kings, "Beyond Vietnam" speech, and by the time dinner started folks were really mixing it up with each other. Nothing prepared me for what went down after dinner. Art as an Agent for Change has facilitated an hour long ice breaker at every Be The Change Youth convergence and this year was no different. They asked folks to develop a short skip, each group with a different topic, with topics being, militarism, racism, poverty, and hope. The skips were to be intertwined with each other with hope going last. At the end of the hope skit unplanned spontaneous singing just happen, and it was beautiful. Friday night was a highlight for me, I'll admit it brought tears to my eyes. Check out the video:



Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee

Be The Change Tour: Americus!!

In response to a special request from our close friends at Koinonia Farms, we decided to pull off one more stop on the Be The Change tour in the historic city of Americus. Americus holds a special place in our hearts for a number of different reasons.

One, Americus is home to Koinonia Farms. Koinonia is a shinning example of the deep roots of social justice in Georgia. Koinonia was one of the first racially integrated farms in the south. Blacks and whites not only worked side by side, they ate together and were paind the same wage. This might sound like the most basic right in 2010 but in the late 40's it was so upsetting to Sumtnar county residence that Koinonia was attacked constantly. Koinonia's road side stands were bombed, children were beaten, and the community was fired upon several times.

Two, Koinonia is not only the birthplace of Habitat for Humanity, it's also the birthplace of the statewide Georgia Peace & Justice Coalition.

And three, Americus is home to oe of my favorite Fair Trade Coffee projects, Cafe Campesino. The folks at Cafe Campesino also hosted the tour stop at their national coffee roasting site in the heart of down town Americus.

Art as an Agent for Change delivered a slightly tweaked performance, coming across as slightly edgier at times, which I certainly enjoyed.

On a personal note, this night was a reunion for me. I can't express how much I enjoyed being on the road with the AAC crew and witnessing their performances every night. Much love and much respect. I love ya'll!

Paul, Jenell, and I crashed at Koinonia Farms and enjoyed the hospitality from folks on the farm the next day.

Special Thanks to Jenell Holden for taking photos!


Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee

Be The Change Tour Day 5: Atlanta

So every good thing must come to an end, and I must say that although I was pretty tired rolling into Atlanta, I was also pretty sad that the tour was coming to an end.

I do want to take one more opportunity to speak to how moved I was to get to see AAC perform over and over again. Each poet on the tour poured so much heart, talent, and emotion into their performances. I'm sure everyone has their personal favorite piece to the performance. I really thought Tameka Dean was all sunshine during her, "Reintroduction" piece, Paul Grigsby was heartachingly heartful during his, "Mic Stand Revolution", and Mike Scott knocked the crowd out everyday with, "TV Box".

Anyway, back to our last stop, Atlanta. Thatnks to Dawn Gibson we ended up at the speakers auditorium in the student center at GSU. Awesome space!

Turnout was good with members of campus groups including, Progressive Student Alliance, MESPA, Amnesty International at GSU, Georgia Students for Public Higher Education, CaribSA, and community groups including Cop Watch, Food Not Bombs, the International Action Center, and many others also came out.

The discussion after the performances was lively and insightful, students and community members took turns pointing out the connectings between various systems of oppression and economic exploitation. We then discussed several helpful models for community organizing, campaign development, and movement/issue cross pollenation.

I should mentioned that Eldon Baines, The Dalton State Student that organized our stop there and organized peers to ride up to Atlanta for the Board of Regents meeting the past Wednesday, showed up in a velvet blazer. Eldon was asked to share his experience at the board of Regent meeting to the group, I've posted some of Eldon's reflections on the meeting in below blog posts.

I was happy to see so many people from the audience networking after we ended the program.

Everyone was invited to join us for dinner, after which we all were faced with the tough job of saying goodbye:(

But no real goodbyes. Be The Change Tour was actually just a pilot. A chance to get the performance out in front of folks, and explore what the talk back session should look like. All of us on the tour felt the experiement we really well. So we'll be developing a new audio visial component to the tour, some new companion literature, changing up the talk back session, and hitting the road in a much bigger way next fall......anyone wanna help book a tour stop in you town, or on you campus???

I wanted to give a special thanks to John Reynolds, who jumped on the tour very last minute, volunteering to take pictures, record video, and just help out in general. We would have no picture, and the tour would have been much more difficult with out John, thanks dude!

Check out Johns Site: curiousjohn.com

Here's some footage from the GSU event:




Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee

Be The Change Tour Day 4 Pt 2: Statesboro

We showed up in the boro just in time to set up. We were booked in the best venue in Statesboro, it was a HUGE beautiful stage and auditorium. The turnout was small in relativity of the capacity of the space, which was close to 1000, but it was the right crowd. We had a group of organic farmers who use their farm as a way to start discussions about economic injustice, a teaching major who plans to get 600 signatures in defense of public education in the next month, several librarians(we love librarians), and several community organizers.

I was especially impressed with how the group dealt with several tough questions and assertions regarding race from other audience members.

AAC was of course a huge hit, as always. I know that everyone has their favorite moments but I was really moved by Paul's Mic Stand Revolution, Mikes T.V. box, and Tameka's reintroduce myself.

After the performance we, along with several of the attendees were treated to dinner and hospitality by Dr. Rosemarie Stallworth.

Jeremy Foreman (Statesboro's organizer of a 1000 hats) and Emma Marie Tracy(Statesboro's kid genius) roped several of us into going out to some karaoke night in he boro. There was a bonfire outside, and country covers of MIA's paper planes, surreal for sure.

After not getting enough sleep we got up and where treated to breakfast by Rosemarie at the famed Snooky's. The restaurant is definitely a throwback, way back. I must say the service was amazing, everything you would imagine in a folksy southern breakfast joint in the 1970's.

Then it was back to the road!
Thanks Statesboro! Can't wait to come back!

Photos by,
John Reynolds
www.curiousjohn.com


Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee

Be the Change Tour Day Four Pt 1: Milledgeville

Well, Milledgeville was a trip on several different levels, I don't even know where to start. It should be said that Art as an Agent for Change did start at Georgia and College State University, a school that is 90% white....and one can no doubt feel the whiteness of the campus.

It goes without saying that a tour that focuses on exploring systems of oppression was likely to spark some discomfort not only amongst attendees but anyone that was aware of the tour stop. That didn't stop us from trying to get folks in the room. In fact we shut down the dinning hall in an attempt to create last minute buzz, check out the video below!

AAC did their thing well as usual, rocked the crowd and John caught a little footage I'll
share with ya'll.


During the performance we all noticed that there was a man in a nice suit sitting in the back of the room. After the performance he approached Paul and I. After telling us he enjoyed the performance and supported our alternative views he let us know the AAC was not welcomed to perform at the upcoming fall fest that they had been asked to perform at. He said that it just wasn't the right crowd and that there were elements in the admissions office that were not ready for AAC's message. It suddenly became painfully clear why Milledgeville is over 50% percent black and GCSU is 90% white. Good luck on "diversifying"!



After that mind numbing experience we hit my favorite coffee joint in Milledgeville, BlackBird coffee, and got a honey latte to take the edge off before hitting the road to Statesboro.

Photos by,
John Reynolds
www.curiousjohn.com


Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee

Day Three: Athens

So we actually rolled into Athens the night before Wednesday just in time for dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in Georgia, the Grit! Mmmm...stuffed peppers and gravy with a side of succotash!

We were lucky to have several local folks that were down to put us up for the night, thank you Allie McCullen and Laura Estrada for being such gracious host:)
......although Mike was stalked and attacked by a cat who went by the name of Falcor, he's still recovering for the trauma.

Wednesday presented all of us on the tour an opportunity to have half a day to chill, take care of personal stuff, catch up on emails, and check out Athens. John got to catch up with sleep, Tameka got some studying in, Mike caught up with school work, Paul did some work work, and I got to check out the best comic shop in Georgia(that's right, Athens has the best restaurant and the best comic shop), Bizarro.

We also received some pretty troubling news. The Board of Regents decided to check the immigration status of all college students in the Georgia college system. Undocumented student already have to pay out of state tuition and have difficulty receiving. The move by the BOR will not only mean an end of higher education for thousands of youth in Georgia, it will also add another layer of bureaucracy to the school system that will cost tens of thousands of dollars to implement. It's a move by the BOR that appears to be purely punitive and racist in nature.

When it was time for us to head over to the miller learning center at GSU and set up we noticed a ton of buzz in the area. Apparently Ludacris had been hired to headline a concert for homecoming week. His sound check could be heard all over campus.

Turn out to our Athens stop was not our biggest crowd but it was a spirited one. There was no extra credit provided for attendence so we got only the most committed folks, folks that were for the most part actively engaged in campaigns on campus. Students fighting against education budget cuts, poverty, gender inequities, racial inequities, and more. The event actually ran longer then any of the other cities so far.

After the event Allie and Mitch Roper took us out for Jamaican food. Toward the end of our meal we somehow ended up going around the table sharing our stories of how we each have felt called speak out against oppression and exploitation in our perspective communities. What was it that opened our eyes to problems in our neighborhoods, in our world, and what are we doing about it.

Here's some footage of Mike Scott talking about his artistic process:



After dinner we said our goodbyes and hit the road to Milledgeville. When we pulled into Paul Place, which is part of the GCSU student housing(where Paul is on staff), GCSU student flocked around Paul with warm greetings for him, which thankfully extended to us as well!


Photos by,
John Reynolds
www.curiousjohn.com




Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee