What to do, what to do...

In September 2001, I was an International Relations major at The American University's School of International Service with an intended concentration in International Development and an area concentration in Africa. However, I realized that I could never go into the Peace Corps. I'm honest with myself. I'm prissy (or pritzy as my stepdad said it). I don't get dirty. I'm not too fond of kids. or animals. or the outdoors. So the Peace Corps was out for me. In March 2002, I changed my major to marketing. It was more realistic with my actual aptitude.

But every once in a while, my youthful optimism returns and I have a yearning to make a real difference. To live up to the American University slogan of ideas into action, action into service. I want to change the world.

Last time I got this big push was Fall 2004 - I was living in DC and there was a series of murders of young people in Southeast. I didn't know them, but for some reason, I allowed these murders to completely rock my world. The senselessness of someone the age of my cousins dying left me in tears for weeks. My mother was concerned, but figured it was my trademark oversensitivity. She wasn't so amused later in February when rather than focusing on applying to PR firms, I threw all my energy into applying for the Teach for America program. Then, in April when I was rejected, I was catatonic. My plan for changing the world - for working in education, then in community nonprofit then going to get my MBA (at Stanford, naturally - focusing on strategy and marketing and nonprofit management), working in consumer products just long enough to get street cred and opening my own firm in social issues marketing - was shot to hell. What's a woman to do?

So I redirected my energy. Took a series of bad jobs in sales then moved to the Bay Area to work as the marketing manager for a training and consulting company.

However - the pull - the magnetic pull to change the world and make a difference and add value to society is starting to pull again. After a year of pretendng that having a job is enough - I'm dying to do something substantive.

While I still would love to do something in the area of educational equality (I know that it was te Grace of God that put me in good schools from day one and made sure that I got an good education), I am also feeling Africa pulling on my heartstrings. After watching Hotel Rwanda, I called my mom sobbing uncontrollably. I am OBSESSED with (Product) Red - the company founded by Bono and Bobby Shriver to take money from consumer products to buy antiretrovirals in Africa. I think it's brilliant on so many levels. I would kill to work with them. Add to this that the last book I read was A Long Way Gone, it's the tale of Ishmael Beah - a young man (ok, he's older than I now,...but at the time he was in his early teens) who was drafted into being a soldier in the civil war in Sierra Leone after several years of wandering too avoid the war and surviving starvation. A family friend's son is in Liberia with no hope (at least not in the near future) of getting a visa to come here. It's been 10 years sense she saw her son...and who knows when she will see him next. I hear about the atrocities in Darfur and how they're moving to Chad. I haven't yet seen Blood Diamond or The Last King of Scotland - and it's probably a good thing...who knows...I may just join the Peace Corps after all.

That said - I'm yet to figure out what to do. Where, when, how do I volunteer to make a difference in educational equality? To do something constructive to help the continent of Africa. Then don't get me started on my back up priorities of feminism and GLBT rights and ending racism and just general being a democrat (so healthcare equality. I'm so overwhelmed. I want to do so much - but there's only so much time.

So I putting this out there for the 3 peoeple who read my blog. Find something for me to do. Or at least give me direction. I checked volunteermatch,com (this is a great resource throughout the US, but none of the opportunities in the Bay Area align with both my strengths (planning, development, press relations) or my interests.

Advice greatly appreiciated.

Plus ca change...

Before Babel

Before Crash

There was Do The Right Thing.

I'll admit it - I just saw it tonight. I know, I know, I know. I'm a modern African-American woman who hasn't seen one of the key black movies of the last few decades.

I'm still digesting the movie. There's a lot. But first impression is that I'm amazed that so many people live in denial that racism continues today. So much of the poo-pooing of Crash was that peeople felt it was "contrived" or that it made too much of an issue that isn't important anymore. Mais, plus c'est la meme chose, plus change - but the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I think the most resounding theme of both Crash and Do The Right Thing is the concept of powerlessness and frustration in your situation. It's kinda late - I can't quite elaborate and I have another post in mind - so I'm going to let this sit. I'll revisit it eventually, but for now...

People read this?

As I'm sure anyone who stumbled on this knows, I haven't logged into blogger in about forever. So I was amazed today when i saw that there were 4 comments that needed to be moderated. A thousand apologies and a couple hundred promises to try to keep up the posting.

To answer a question about the coverage of Nuvaring under Kaiser Permanente. What I can say is that while in DC/NoVA/MD, I was only able to get Nuva ring partially covered under the KP Flexible Choice plan. This was at a rate of $25 a month. I did, however, just move to Northern California to work for a company with KP Classic coverage. With a treatment failure exception, I only pay the standard copay $5/month's supply. I have been very lucky to join an organization with this level of coverage. However, the KP Flexible choice plan is billed as the plan that is cost effective for both small businesses and patients - which means that the treatment that anyone under this plan receives is suffering.

I'm not sure what the answer will be to this. The best we can all do is to continue lobbying insurance companies and employers to cover a full range of contraceptive options.

Just say no...

To legalized discrimination:
http://www.hrc.org/voteno/voteno/video.htm

There's gotta be more than this...

I've been absent for a while. But not quiet...not in the least. My mind has been racing with a million and one ideas about a gazillion different topics. I'll try to separate each topic into different posts. But just to warn you - there' s definitely more than this...

Sell out with me...Oh-Yeah!

I want to work in politics.

I spend no less than $5 a day at Starbucks.

I drive a 2005 car.

I live in North Arlington.

I shop like crazy.

So.....I don't work in politics. I work in sales because it pays me the necessary salary to afford my lifestyle.

I am a sell-out.

But why is it like this. Where is it written that in order to be a great campaign staff person you should endure being poor. Um, hello....I have $80K in student loans....I can't work for free.

I am writing this after receiving an email about Barack Obama's PAC HopeFund America's "Yes we can" program. It is supposed to introduce young minority Americans to politics and campaign work. Which means that if I applied and got into the program, I would need to quit my job and move somewhere random to fulfill my dreams of working in politics.

But I'm a sell-out. And I'm materialistic. So that won't happen. Though it's a great opportunity.

And this strikes me as grossly unfair. Can't I be activist minded and materialistic? Why do those things have to be mutually exclusive? Because maybe I'm not a sell-out. Maybe I'm realistic. Maybe I don't see the connection between being a brilliant political strategist and living a life of abject poverty.

For those of you who like poverty - check out the program....it really does kick butt: http://hopefundamerica.com/training//

Love Matters

Today is Valentine's Day. A day when couples around the nation (world?) celebrate love and happiness and other gushy stuff that I couldn't care less about.

That said, I feel compelled to use today to post about Marriage Equality. This is the day of the year that is about love (ok, and chocolate) and the greatest manifestation of love is marriage and dedicating your life to 1 other person and building a family with him/her. However, in 49 states in the nation, 7% of the adult population (15 million) is not able to legally marry. Yes, this nation that is currently fighting for equality and an end to religious oppression in other nations denies a significant portion of its citizens this fundamental right. Why? Does their love matter less than everyone else?

No. But this isn't about love. It's about fear. It's about discrimination. And it's about hate.

Because if everyone thought about the benefits of granting equal rights of marriage regardless of gender or sex, they wouldn't have an argument against it. But thinking about the benefits - I can find several arguments for it:

Continued discrimintation is un-constitutional: Beyond the arguments about church and state, is the fact the Supreme Court has already ruled that marriage is an fundamental right that all people in the United States are entitled to. In the case of Loving v Virginia, 1967, the court held that, "The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men." In the majority opinion, Chief Justice Warren writes that

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival...To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law.

Going out on a limb, I would not just apply the due process clause of the 14th ammendment, but I would also use the lesser regarded "privledges and immunities" clause. As a refresher, the 14th ammendment reads:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws

By narrowly defining marriage as being between a man and a woman, you are depriving people of their lives and the priviledge afforded to all citizens to get married. Only in the circumstance of bigamy is marriage otherwise hampered. You can get married while on death row for murder - when stripped of most other rights, but you cannot marry if you will be marrying someone of your same sex.

Further, marriage discrimination is anti-competitive. States that want the edge on attracting the best and brightest workers should start recognizing all marriages soon. 211 of the Fortune 500 and 3/4 of the Fortune top 50 companies offer "spousal equivalent" or domestic partner benefits to their lesbian and gay employees. Because states currently have a patchwork of rights (or denial of rights) afforded to GLBT citizens - ranging from legalized same-sex marriages in Massachusetts to basic domestic-partner benefits in other states and an explicit denial of all rights in Virginia - companies with wide-spread offices face challenges in offering benefits and face the possibility that some of their best workers will avoid or refuse transfers and promotions to states that are hostile to their families.

I suppose first we should step back and solidify the argument that these benefits are good for business. In the most basic of terms, its a case of equal pay for equal work. Benefits can be up to 40% of total compensation. Because they are often based on marriage (although discrimination based on marital status is illegal), employees who are married technically make more than employees who do not. At the same time, because most states have not legalized gay marriage, benefits based on marriage are unattainable for gay workers. Further, Domestic partner benefits are a generally inexpensive enhancement to overall compensation packages that play a large part in recruitment and retention of employees. In fact, they are the #1 most effective recruiting incentive for executives and #3 for managers and line employeeds. Finally, one could use this arguement from the Human Rights campaign in regards to the increase in productivity for offering domestic partnership benefits.

A domestic partner benefits program will also improve employees' productivity by alleviating personal stress that may keep them from focusing fully on work. At least one workplace advocate has employed a simple formula to measure the dollar amount of increased productivity created by a fair and inclusive work environment for GLBT workers. The formula conservatively assumes the number of
GLBT employees in any workplace to be 5 percent and the amount of productivity associated with a safe and equitable workplace to be 10 percent. Using these figures, you can illustrate how much money a company might lose by not providing a safe and equitable workplace. (For example: A company with a workforce of 1,000 employees would have 50 GLBT employees [1,000 x 0.05=50]. If the average salary is $40,000, the average loss in productivity per GLBT worker per year is $4,000 [$40,000 x 0.10=$4,000]. Thus, the total annual loss to the company in productivity would be $200,000 [50 x$4,000=$200,000].)

Jumping back to the original argument of the anti-competitive nature of marriage discrimination, companies that make the smart business decision to offer such benefits should - and will - choose to not do business in a state that, based on descrimination, causes the financial and logistical nightmare described above.

Finally, love matters. In a time when 50% of marriages end in divorce, it doesn't make sense to punish anyone who wants to be in a loving relationship. The Human Rights Campaign has a beautiful homepage up today that shows the relationships that our GLBT friends, loved ones and neighbors are in - in spite of discrimination. How many of us can say that we have found the person with whom we want to spend the rest of our lives? And how many of us would accept that we cannot marry that person because a few people are uncomfortable or find a moral objection to our relationship? I think most of us would be pretty flipping mad.

It's time to support marriage equality. GLBT couples in 8 states are currently in legal battles to fight for their rights. Show the courts and the legislatures that love matters - not discrimination. Visit www.hrc.org or www.lambdalegal.org to learn how to make a difference.

Happy Valentine's Day!

What I mean is...

Re-reading my last post about the public policy ministry at my church, I realized that it was a bit rambly, and I didn't quite get to the point I had hoped to make. So let's try it again...

What I meant to say is how excited I am to be part of a congregation that values the impact that the church can make in the community...without resorting to politics in the pulpit.

There is so much that churches can do without making huge policy statements. They can be involved in their local communities through providing educational opportunities, health care, and other services. They can serve as communication channels that funnel information to their congregations that may not be reached otherwise. They can promote social equality and justice that are in accordance to their spiritual beliefs.

For example, the public policy ministry that I have joined has this vision and mission:

Vision Statement--To edify and lead the members of our church and community in learning, affirming and strategically advocating public policies, practices and systems that can improve our quality of life, promote social justice and undergird our church’s commitment in “becoming the Kingdom of God on earth."

Mission Statement--To serve our church and community as a change agent which conducts research, produces timely relevant information and maintains linkages with other entities so together, we can initiate strategic actions that foster improvements in those secular systems on which we rely.

No where does it say that the church will endorse specific candidates or positions. Or that the pastor will be politicking in the pulpit. Rather the focus is on taking advantage of the opportunity to lead the congregation in being informed and active citizens and in taking the steps to make improvements in the community. Think of the impact that the spiritual community can have if the focus shifted from issues that don't affect them (gay marriage, abortion rights, stem cell research) to those that do (education, health care, civil rights). As Ghandi said: "The difference between what we are doing and what we are capable of doing would solve most of the world's problems". If churches made up the difference of their fruitless actions in moral policing and invested that in actual change - my what a world we would have.

It's a shame that it's too "progressive" for a church to care and to make a difference, rather than just making noise.