Revised June 8, 2015

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1pxUM-s

Throughout my entire life, I have been speaking out about social justice issues. If your own life is similar to mine, you may remember words similar to those of my late mother’s, Lily Knott Beckman’s, when she would say, “Let’s all pitch in.” She called potluck dinners “pitch in dinners” and was a reliable volunteer for community and civic groups throughout her entire life. Even as I faced the bullying in my adult life, she encouraged me to speak out, to try to change the system, believing in me, believing in my ability to bring about change.

And so, I refuse to stop speaking out.

“…bullies can never take away my dreams, my belief in the ability of people to build communities that are powered and sustained by social justice.“  Jeanne Beckman

Everyone, famous or not, can speak about social justice.

“Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

“There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why… I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

Robert F. Kennedy via QuoteLady.com

Every morning, part of my daily ritual is to spend an hour or so free-associating about the ways in which I can work make the world a better place. Even though my daily life is challenged by the oppression of bullies, those bullies can never take away my dreams, my belief in the ability of people to build communities that are powered and sustained by social justice. My strength to keep going, despite my ongoing challenges, comes from my entrenched belief that EVERY person has the power to make real, sustainable changes.

Today, I stumbled across Rep. Chellie Pingree’s TEDx talk about organic farmers in the U.S.

Her talk started my process of wondering what it would take to create sustainable communities in every neighborhood in our country. Communities where every vacant lot is filled with neighborhood gardens. Communities where every empty storefront can get grants to allow local community members to run pilot programs for benefit of their own community and neighbors within a 6 block area. Communities where every empty house is restored for families to remain in their neighborhoods. Communities where every child at every age has an adult mentor to champion the growing of inspiration, dreams, and entrepreneurial can-do.

Gangs are a symptom of children who have grown up without appropriate, individualized education, without hope, and without options

Gangs are a symptom of children who have grown up without appropriate, individualized education, without hope, and without options. Heads of gangs are leaders who are great salesmen. These gang leaders are convincing children, who are discouraged and discarded by their school districts, that their only path to recognition is by belonging, belonging to a community of similarly-discarded children. It is my belief that children who fall into gang membership have already come to believe that they have no other choices, no other way to demand the respect that every person deserves.

What would it take to reclaim the failure trajectory of children destined by school failure to join gangs?

We need to nurture a sense of belonging to the local multi-generational community from the time each child is born. Instead of having children abandon their natural curiosity by repeatedly subjecting them to inordinate amounts of time cramming for corporate-owned achievement tests, why couldn’t we have them spend a half hour or more each day engaged in locally-inspired social justice programs?

Instead of tithing to churches that use their tax-exempt funds to spread hatred and oppression across America and the world, why couldn’t those who can afford to donate monies use those funds to build sustainable communities within a 50 mile radius of where they live?

Instead of school administrators (earning six figure incomes) making decisions to give up on community children who have not benefited from failed corporate-owned curricula, why couldn’t local parents re-establish their rightful place as the employers of their community teachers, demanding that every child, beginning at the pre-kindergarten level, have full access to meaningful, individualized instruction to help them achieve their FULL POTENTIAL, instead of teaching to mediocrity?

Instead of having our 7 year old children murdered while selling candy, what if our communities could nurture ALL of our children to be entrepreneurs? Maybe some of those empty storefronts in their local communities could house and nurture a consortia of child & community entrepreneurs, sharing their wares, dreams, and knowledge.

What could these programs look like? Please share your dreams with me.

Stay tuned

www.commonsensecommunities.org