We’ve Created The AfroSpear, Now What?
Consider this a public brainstorm – a global brainstorm within the Black Diaspora. How can we who use the Internet change the world – OUR WORLD.
What strategies and tactics should we use to liberate ourselves?
What pitfalls do we need to avoid?
What should be our initial first steps? Gimme FIVE!!!!!
afrospear.wordpress.com 
“What strategies and tactics should we use to liberate ourselves?
What pitfalls do we need to avoid?
What should be our initial first steps?”
OK FS, here are some of my ideas:
1. In terms of strategies I think we should start focusing on economic equality (such as fairer credit laws,debt forgiveness etc), as opposed to civil equality. Black folks need to stop trying to intergrate with the majority population and start focusing on strengthening our own communities. We should also start trying to focus on educational oppurtunities by demanding better schools etc. I also think securing the family structure is important. These brothers have got to stop going out here and starting two, three, and four families. It drains us economically, and destroys the social fabric of our communities.
2. We should avoid being afraid to call each other on our own crap, and start doing more networking on the web and in other areas. I think web sites like this is a great first step, and a meaningful exchange of ideas and open dialogue will at least let us know that there are like minded individuals out here who are willing to come together.
3. We are on our way with our first steps now. This is a good start, and we should start expanding our message in our neighborhoods, on our jobs, and in our social environment.
I have more, and I will drop them on you later.
Nice opening my brother, I look forward to more responses.
1. Our current “leadership” likes decrying false representations of black people but sometimes falls into the trap of reinforcing false representations of other groups. I think we should start looking for areas where our concerns intersect with other minority communities’ concerns — like healthcare and education, for example — and work with those communities to build up a strong infrastructure for changing those conditions. There are some experiences that are cultural that we won’t have in common, but we should bond with others surrounding the things we do share.
2. We desperately need to address misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and ablism within our communities and ignore the myths about how we’re the poster children for ignorance and bigotry. Our handling of these problems is always a backlash to some media representation, or perhaps that’s the only time when the serious discussions are highlighted. It’s going to be hard to combat racism if we don’t discuss other forms of marginalization that expose our vulnerabilities.
3. We need to broaden our scope and studies of what black history is and translate it to mainstream and educational discourse. Good and bad. All eras. Social, political, and cultural — these aspects need to fully integrate instead of being presented piecemeal. We don’t have to forget history because certain other people would better benefit if we remained ignorant of our past and its impact on our present and future.
meant to say:
1) Once we know what issues we want to work on, perhaps we should break it up into pieces, come up with a strategies and plan recruit volunteers and interns in college (some of them need internships) and have the interns and volunteers assist with reasearch . out the interns to do research into things such as .
* Talented activist already working in these areas to network with and learn from.
* Other orginizatioin that fund and assist programs such as the one we will be doing.
* Research into groups and intellectuals working on the same thing we are perhaps we can learn from thier ideas and successfuls practices to combat specific issues we are working on.
2) Perhaps we should create a committee to analize all of our major leaders and social orginizations with the purpose of creating strategies to make them accountable to black people. The Naacp, The Churches all of our social orginizations work for us and they out to be more creative and proactive into getting health care, education oppurtunities and after school programs for our youth.
3) Creation of community service, mentorship programs and individual empowerment programs greatly assisted by the church and our social service orginizations
Continuation from my previous comment
4) Create a leadership academy, were dynamic and new leaders can be developed to help in the struggle for black freedom equality. Leaders should be trained to work and improve areas of black economics, business development, education, social issues, racisism and discrimination, community service.
(1) I am convinced we need to study, study and more study on the true expanse of past events of Black people worldwide and the great works we have wrought. And mold this information into a fashion that can be incorporated into the daily lives of Black people in the Americas, then internationally, as we are the people lacking in this knowledge and wisdom. With this we will divest our people of the “victim” mentality that infects our psyche, crippling many of us.
(2) We must educate our population on the advantages of the laws on the books in our perspective lands, so that we can take advantage of what is rightfully ours as citizens, residents and participants in our localities. Example; Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale educated themselves on the California gun laws and many other existing laws in California at the time, in order to successfully walk the streets with guns and implement free breakfast and medical programs.
(3) It is imperative to be Teachers in our community on every level for the true education of our people. Educating them on politics, economics, I mean their personal daily financial education as I have met many that cannot tell you what was the gross amount on their last pay stub. Teach on religion and relationships and love of self.
Just a few to start
I think that we need to have small things that people can do just to get involved. This is called the ‘foot-in-the-door’ technique in psychology. If you want to get people to commit to becoming active and devoting large amounts of time to an endeavour, you get them to make a small effort first. Then, when you ask them to do something more, they will remember their initial contribution and will be more likely to comply with the larger requests so that that can remain consistent with their past behaviour. So I have provided some small ideas that can help us reach people who are not yet ready to make a large committment. I think this is necessary because some people may want to help but they may be unsure of what they have the time or desire to do, and whether or not their efforts will be helpful. These small things can actually help. Plus, the more people we get involved the better, and the more they see that their efforts are actually helpful, the more likley they are to help in the future.
1) We can start petitions and advertise them using sites like Care2.com and and other petition sites. Then we can advertise the petitions. I think that there is also a way to have ready-made letters that people can send with the petitions. Then it will be very easy for us to get support on any issue without people having to make a big sacrifice.
2) With some petitions and causes we can even make up blog buttons that link to information sites or the petition site (I have one for One.org to fight poverty, and one to a Darfur petition). This will also help to spread the word about the issue. Colourful buttons or advertisments may also be more effective at drawing attention than blog posts if they are permanent parts of websites.
3) We can tell people how to subscribe to Afrospear sites to keep up to date with news by using a newsreader like Pageflakes. By using newsreaders I have been able to keep track of the latest news as soon as it is printed on blogs. If everyone has a news page then we can all get the same news. It is even possible to share newspages with people so they don’t even have to go through the work of selecting sites! I actually think that this is REALLY important. Just like the Black newspapers in the past told people what was going on, Afrosphere blogs can do the same. In fact, the U.S. government realized the immense power of Black newspapers and tried to shut them down! Every Afrosphere must have an RSS subscription button (you can use feedburner to get one) so that people can subscribe.
4) We should all try to find Black bloggers and tell them about the Afrosphere. Its easy to just think up a search term like ‘Shaquanda Cotton”, ‘white privilege’, or any other current issue, do a google search, and come up with the Black blogs and websites of people concerned with similar issues. Then, we just send them an invitation to look at the Afrospear site! This worked really well during the Vote for Kiri Davis campaign. In that situation we got so many people involved that it may have unfortunately ruined the contest. People kept asking why we didn’t get so riled up about other issues, so here is our chance to do just that! We find people who already agree with us and are knowledgeable about the issue and then we invite them to participate even more. It gets those who have already converted together.
5) My last idea is to make a variety of Afrospear buttons, even tiny ones, in a variety of colours so that people can show their support. Linking buttons would be best. We can even have an Afrosphere newsreader button. When people notice the buttons they will become curious and maybe come to the site.
Thats all I can think of for now.
I love them all! BronzeTrinity, I am really feeling #’s 2,3, &4.
I am taking notes, this stuff should be put in a how to book.
Great Idea, Field!! We should put these responses in a Word doc and organize it fo’ so’!!
OMG you have got to read about Moveon.org and what they have become! Read about it HERE on Wikipedia! This sounds like what the Afrosphere could become!
Check it out, I made all of these Afrospear buttons!
I love the ideas from BronzeTrinity, and I have been wondering how to get an Afrosphere newsreader, how to share it. I agree that each of us who reads a new blog that ought to be part of the Afrosphere should then take the initiative and invite the Black blogger to join us.
What pitfalls do we need to avoid?
We are already doing an excellent job of creating our own Afrosphere culture rather than cutting and pasting any etiquette from the whitosphere. For example, we allow pasting of links into our blogs and we provide links to all Afrosphere blogs, to involve as many people as possible, instead of trying to corral audiences and inculcate them only with the ideas of a few select people.
However, there are some blogs in the Afropshere that don’t allow pasting of links into comments and that don’t allow copying of text from one blog to be pasted into another. Although this is surely well-intentioned, it makes it harder to quickly share information, which is a fundamental purpose of the Afrosphere.
Anyway, this is a great work that’s going on here and I want to congratulate everyone for working so diligently and quickly to make it all happen! All of the ideas above are very important.
I think we need an one-click page-ready HTML list of Afrosphere blogs so that new members can paste the one clumpt of HTML code into their blogs to make the whole Afrosphere Blogs list appear, with one click, instead of having to compile the list manually. I think people will be more willing to join the Afrosphere this way, and I’m experimenting with such a list.
Hey Francis, I am in the process of making an Afrosphere page in page flakes that will be public so anyone can see it and bookmark it. I also used Firefox’s ‘copylinks’ add on to copy all of the Blackosphere links from African American Opinion. I was in the process of adding html code but I haven’t finished yet. Then the code can easily be pasted anywhere. These are projects that I am working on and I’ll try to get them done as soon as I can. I am really excited about the newsreader because then it will be like and Afrospear newspaper of politics, news, world news, art, entertainment, African Diaspora history, comedy, maybe comic strips, sports, and everything a regular newspaper would have just with an Afrocentric point of view. I’m getting on it!
I also encourage the idea of posting links, especially if someone else inspired what your post is about because then we can all get to know eachother better. It should not be a popularity contest, just sharing as many ideas as possible and encouraging interaction and engagement.
I have finished the Pageflakes Afrospear paper. You can view the pages HERE.
I still need to work on it and get more sites, decide if the sites are on the appropriate pages, and decide on the format but at least its a start. The most subscriptions are from political opinion blogs so maybe I’ll have to figure out some other way to sort them. I might make a page of women’s social commentary or pop culture commentary. The pages are public on Pageflakes and I encourage others to make public pages in other newsreaders. I haven’t decided on which blogs should be included and where they will be placed so please don’t get too concerned about that. Please take a look and send me suggestions!
“What strategies and tactics should we use to liberate ourselves?
What pitfalls do we need to avoid?
What should be our initial first steps? Gimme FIVE!!!!!”
I am going to sum it up in two words: Stop snitchin!
Bygbaby
I couldn’t come up with five, but I thought of four.
1) We should try and figure out what our long term goals ought to be (in rough form), since wouldn’t our strategies and tactics depend on what we’re really after?
2) Perhaps a list/network of black contacts that can help us out for various things, whether tutoring, or job recommendations, or general advice?
3) Figure out some way of defending or redundantly backing up the Afrospear, because when it truly starts becoming successful on a large scale, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if white people try to shut us down.
4) Related to mark bey’s suggestion earlier, perhaps create some kind of system of assessments for black leaders so that way it becomes easy to track down who’s doing what-and just as importantly help convince other people that are uninvolved/disengaged who is and isn’t working for us as a whole.
Bronze Trinity (and all others) gave good suggestions.
Finding like-minded bloggers is important.
The Afrospear must also decide what key areas it wants to focus on in terms of pushing for change, since resources & time are not endless. I would say that one of the main issues has to be our image to the world as Black people…. the negative images created by hip hop & by corporations are not doing us any good. The thinkers here should look at issues impacting us from within as well as from the outside.
The Afrospear must also think of creative ways to engage and inject itself. Letter writing campaigns are good, petitions may work as well, although I have never been a big fan of petitions. A letter writing campaign is much more effective IMO…. especially when you are dealing with a private business like a radio station or an advertiser to a media business that we want to impact. If we use letter writing campaigns…. we should stay away from form letters (that tells the recipient that it is from the same group). As a small group, we have to make the recipient think that he or she is getting letters from random citizens who are acting on their own and are pissed off. We have to make them think that they are dealing with a much larger movement. Although we could suggest to people how these letters could be written…. but they all should not say the same thing. If someone gets 40 or 50 form letters…the whole campaign gets discounted pretty quickly.
Letter writing campaigns are good for small groups like this, because, if used correctly and creatively, they can be powerful tools…and it doesn’t take 10,000 people to get involved. 50-100 letter writers can be very powerful.
Once they see a swarm of 30, 40, 50 letters…. they may be forced to act. Companies will sometimes cut their losses early to protect the reputation of their businesses and avoiding future hassles…. “I just got 40 letters on this issue….and I wonder how many other letters are on the way and how many citizens feel upset about the particular issue?”. This is what they ask themselves. “For every person who sits down to write a letter…..there may be a hundred other people also upset about the same thing. Let me cut my losses now”.
Letter placement or targeting is also important. We may have to hit folks in the place that hurts most….. the wallet. Sometimes writing directly to an individual or company is not the best way to go…. often it is better to write his/her boss or parent company or his/her advertisers, etc. It all comes down to good strategy.
So I prefer letter writing campaigns, e-mail campaigns, spreading the message across the wider blogosphere, contacting advertisers, and things of that sort rather than petitions, because petitions require much much higher numbers, take much longer, etc.
Just getting a message out over the black blogosphere (and the wider blogosphere) could have a big impact, if we have to highlight an issue or an individual. I have figured out ways to get heavier traffic for a particular issue, by getting linked to certain blogs, cross-posting to larger sites, etc. Several of my postings have gotten picked up by bigger sites & larger national publications…. If we all did that simultaneously, and also did letter writing campaigns, and got others in the black blogosphere to do the same, we could at least put an issue on the map….
If we could shame (highlight) folks by keeping an issue in the blogosphere, we may (on occasion) get a particular person to modify their behavior.
Pitfalls?
I would say not to fight every single battle. There will be some things that will happen that the group just can’t deal with. Although that doesn’t mean we can’t write about the issue….. we just can’t go into operations mode on every issue.
I would also say, concentrate on the issues that most of the group agrees with… poverty, better education for black folks, black introspection, establishing a voice within the wider blogoshere, etc. Stay away from any issues that create a lot of divisiveness among the group. It is good, however, to debate within the group…. Just don’t let an issue become a strain. Move on to something that the group collectively shares the same general view on… that way….you will have synergy at all times…. that’s a powerful thing. How can I describe synergy….hmmm…. I would say when Malcolm X gives the fist analogy. Something to the effect “If I slap you with an open hand, I won’t do too much damage…. because my fingers are divided. But when I pull these fingers together and make a fist, I can knock you into next week”. He was talking about unity and synergy. All forces coming together…..moving in the same direction….all parts of a machine working in unison.
The Afrospear must also take on issues that a small group could have a big impact on….. where a letter writing campaign would be effective. We can’t always take on Goliath. It may be better to take on Goliaths helpers and enablers one by one….until we weaken Goliath enough that we get his attention and he decides he wants to talk.
The Angry independent said: ” Letter placement or targeting is also important. We may have to hit folks in the place that hurts most….. the wallet. Sometimes writing directly to an individual or company is not the best way to go…. often it is better to write his/her boss or parent company or his/her advertisers, etc.”
Mark bey: When I mentioned volunteers and interns these are the type of things I think they could assist with. Things such as
1) Research into the individual companies, goverment agencies that produce whatever products, images or law we find destructive or harmful or unacceptably offensive.
2) Research into orginizatioins that have a proven track record into what we want to do, no need to reinvent any wheels.
3) Research into methods used by our forefathers in past struggles only as they can be used in 2007 or course.
What about an online Afrospear black bloggers forum held every so often to get a broad slice of the general world black communities oppinion about innitiatives that we create or partake in. Some of these forums could be held in a online grassroots townhall concept. Im thinking an online bloggers town hall meeting to get the averaged african and african americans oppinion about possible solutions for thngs such as
Business delevopment in poor, lower and middle class black communties.
A robust and vibrant educational program for blacks folks. Featuring tutoring, homework clubs, agressive lobying for for funding of progressive educational programs.
Workable things we can do to decrease the crime rate , specifically the murder and incarceration rate amongst black people.
Ways we can began to instill pride within the african american community through communty service innitiatives and campaigns.
I supect that from this process would come across some brilliant ideas as well as the introduction of further brilliant people to the Afrosphere.
Now one way we could make this work is by using private blogs where we give out an code # in order to allow the participants to participate in this in the online town hall meeting debate for a lenghth of time that we choose.
Once thats done take the best, creative and most powerful ideas and I believe we will be moving in the correct and an extremely production direction. This is just an idea of course to be taken for its worth to be utilized when and if needed.
Lastly I know for a fact that some highschool and college students need volunteer hours. Some of them in college are even in school for some of the issues I suspect we will be working on. I have expierence in the past recruiting volunteers from the community and college using the Washington Dc City, Paper, The Washingtin DC Community Web Site, Craigslist and by going personally up to Howard, American and Cahtholic Universities in Washington DC.
The interns and volunteers I have worked with in the past have truly, truly held things down on the research side of things. Thier research truly made a difference in our overall efforts.
If we create projects that are rich, vibrant and exciting which lots of different people and orginizations can sink thier teeth into (intellectually speaking of course) thier are projects that will fuel themselves into creation and almost completion if managed properly and passionately.
I have launched and Afrospear newspaper on Pageflakes! I look forward to everyone’s imput about what should be placed on the front page. The front page will include a feed to the Afrospear Think Tank and the Black Accused Network, all the links to the Afrospear blogs, as well as whatever else is important to the Afrospear group. Take a look at the page HERE
http://www.pageflakes.com/bronzetrinity
I think that this has great potential to help educate everyone about the Afrospear and issues that concern the Afrosphere and it will be public and available to anyone with a computer and internet connection. It is like a super aggregate blog site/newspaper with hundreds of contributing authors! It also has different sections like politics & opinion, entertainment, and history. You can read more about the pages HERE
http://bronzetrinity.efx2.com/view/89565/Afrospear-Newspaper-on-Pageflakes/
Once we have finalized the content of each page, each page can be turned into a template as well! This means that anyone with a Pageflakes account can add the template pages and then they can decide which feeds to subscribe to and can move things around so that the page is personalized! So they will have the option of having the pages as they are (without the ability to alter the page), or they can use a template that they can alter. Let me know what you think!
All the suggestions and work that everyone is inputting is excellent. Bronze Trinity, the newsreader is a great idea – it will get our message out there which is the crucial thing. The more people talking about Afrospear the better 🙂
There is one excellent francophone Congolese blogger called Le Pangolin and his articles are brilliant. If things get big for Afrospear, we could ask non-anglophone bloggers to write articles and I’d be more willing to translate and anyone else too.
Bronze Trinity, I just checked out your “page flakes” site, and it’s awseome. I encourage everyone to participate.
BTW, I am feeling all the ideas!
I’m going to add the Pageflakes site to our blogroll; thanks so much, Bronze Trinity!
EDIT: I added it as “African Diaspora Online,” under “AfroSphere.”
Bronze Trinity…. I want to commend you on your excellent efforts in regards to Pageflakes and your constructive additions to the discussions here. You make the Canadian Posse proud… lol!!!!
freeslave wrote: What should be our initial first steps? Gimme FIVE!!!!!
plez sez: there have been so many good ideas, i will just throw in my 5 cents and see where they fall:
(1) Education – This has continued to be the bane of our existence (since Brown vs. Board of Education); we now have an excellent forum from which we can research techniques that work, debate theories, and become a LOUD VOICE that pushes to reform a public education system that is ill-equipped to educate our people.
(2) Health – This is another issue that always seems to leave the Black community shorthanded. Every epidemic, pandemic, and moral dilemma that visits our shores seems to hit the Black community worse than the rest of the country (crack, HIV/AIDs, STDs, heart disease, diabetes, etc.). Let’s debate and form a stance that calls for a means to raise the level of health and healthcare for the Black community.
(3) Politics – We are not monolithic politically, but we do have some common concerns that can be addressed via state and national politics. Let’s find those candidates that continually vie for our votes and make them publicly accountable for our votes. And if they do not account themselves to us, then let’s use the POWER of the AfroSphere to replace them with someone who will.
(4) Financial – This is an excellent forum to vet those companies and financial institutions that do not abuse the privilege of serving our communities. Let’s bring these businesses to light, let’s highlight those Black-owned businesses that need our support, and once again, use the POWER of the AfroSphere to remove from out communities those companies that do not operate in our best interest.
(5) History – Last, but not least, there are millions of untold stories of why we are here, who we are, and where we’re going. This is an excellent forum to learn more about us and more importantly document who we are. There is a reason why the palate of our skins run from midnight blue to alabaster… we can begin to not only weave the great tapestry of the Black experience, but by doing so, we can begin to influence the next generation on where to steer our destiny based on their knowledge of our true past.
I understand that these are some very high level ideas that need more flesh, but it’s my nickel for this conversation. I’ll definitely be checking out pageflakes and contributing there as well.
Lastly, I cannot stress the importance of making sure you keep your AfroSpear blogroll updated. That is one way to make sure that we are visiting and supporting each other’s blogs on a regular basis.
Black on!
thanks for adding Le Pangolin 🙂