Here, your belonging is not in question.
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The Time to Shine is Always Now
The time to shine is always now. If people are surprised to see me rapping now, there’s more to the backstory you don’t know. A lot of people don’t know this. But my mom was basically a part of early hip hop. She used to be called JoSi, The Queen of Rhymes and she had…
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Disconnected: Lessons Learned From Social Media Silence
At 8AM on October 12th, I started–what was meant to be–a 24 hour social media fast. But, if you follow me online at all, you know it was for much longer. I was initially calling it an “intermittent fast”. But once I crossed the three week mark, I think intermittent was out the window. And…
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Take This Life (w/ Lyrics)
Originally posted on It's All In Me – Poetry Blog: https://youtu.be/pMVTFt5cYk4 Updated on December 4, 2022 I am grateful that after more than a 4 year journey, Take This Life has finally made its way out into the world. It has been a blessing to me. I hope it blesses everyone it comes in contact…
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Giving Up a Dream to Receive a Vision
Dreams are overrated and not for everyone. In fact, after living a life where I have worked in almost every type of organization with almost every type of person, in numerous different cultures and backgrounds, I can affirm that for most of us, a dream for our lives is a distraction to living the reality…
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If We Can Laugh Together, Maybe We Can Last Together
I need a reasonably decent sense of humor to do the work I do, bringing people together across differences and helping people discover their capacities to affect positive transformation in their communities. I have to see the comedy in everything even if not all of it can be turned into a joke. That is because,…
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Fear of an Equitable Workplace (FEW) and the Quiet Quitting Deception
By now, you’ve probably come across a plethora of articles aiming to explain this seeming phenomena being touted as “quiet quitting” or “quitting in place”. As I see it, this label attributed to folks who–for the most part–have failed at QUIT QUITTING, is a way of adding fuel to the fire known as THE GREAT…
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I Work For Your Organization. And You Can’t Stop Me.
In Mandarin there is a phrase that goes, 水涨船高 (shuǐzhǎngchuángāo)–literally water rise boat high–which basically comes down to the often expressed wisdom that we hear in American economics, “a rising tide lifts all boats”. A lot of people attribute the saying to John F. Kennedy. But it turns out he got it from his speechwriter,…
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What is Worth Knowing?: From a Knowledge Economy to a Know Less Economy
The fact is that many of us get overwhelmed trying to keep up with all of the information that is thrown at us. It’s challenging to figure out what’s worth knowing. So, many of us just decide to limit our sources to those that challenge us the least. We then convince ourselves that our limited…
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Two Ideas One Mind: The Vices and Virtues of Cognitive Dissonance
Originally posted on The Roofless Church: I sometimes wonder if hypocrisy comes from a person’s inability to harmonize the seemingly divergent awarenesses that arise as a result of them experiencing cognitive dissonance. Take for example someone like the segregationist Senator, Strom Thurmond who, despite adamantly advocating against civil rights for Black Americans and pushed for…
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Responsible Free Speech: Context, Content, and Why They Matter
Many Americans want to express their right to free speech. But, it seems that very few people want to be responsible for their right to free speech. There is a bit of wisdom that has been attributed to Abraham Lincoln that goes something like this, “Better to remain silent and thought a fool than to…
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