Mel Hopkins

Pioneer, yes! This has been my reason to vote since before I left Brooklyn in the 90s... EVERYTHING happens at the local level. Thanks to the Republican party in Illinois, I saw this from the field...They put me in the game. And that game is brutal and those dudes are gangsta. I mean, drive-by gangsta too. It just so happen I was in the right place to be appointed a precinct committeemen for the Republican party..Precinct committeemen is an elected position but you can also be appointed by the State's county party chairman. I was appointed to the position in 2006 and I held until I voted for President Obama in the 2008 primary. (you cannot be a republican precinct committemen and pull a democrat ballot :heavy sigh:) In Illinois and I suspect most everywhere, as a precinct official, you are responsible for registering the people in your precinct (right there in their homes) and campaigning for the candidates you believe in..The candidates are beholden to you, (kinda). In this position you can literally stop a candidate from making it to the ballot or even to office. I made sure I did my best to make sure one millionaire didn't get on the ballot because he wanted to be involved in too many bedroom issues. But I digress. That is how much power is in the hands of the precinct committeeman at the local level. It was a great learning experience and although I'm a swing voter who votes mostly on issues - I still appreciate the Illinois Republicans for giving me that opportunity. I'm a huge advocate for voting in every single election even those off-off year elections. There are so many referendums on the local ballots that affect everything in our communities from how long judges can serve - to whether state workers can keep their pensions or have the state treasurer raid them (I voted on that one in Illinois before I left) to who sits on the school board to penny taxes that will put lights on our highways (commissioners discussed that last night in our local meeting)... I vote presidential simply because they are on the ballot when I go to vote.

YES! YES! YES!!! I hadn't noticed it until now but I usually review self-help styled books and my reviews are reviewed favorably... those who had the best reviewed-reviews of my book were fans of the genre.. thank you @Cynique for that excellent observation!

Has anyone noticed that most of our policies that regulate education, banking, crime & punishment, security, et al have not changed much since the Reagan administration? If there was a change, it made the law more corporate friendly? I don't think a Hillary Clinton administration will make broad sweeping changes. I imagine the same players will have a seat at her table. I haven't watched closely enough to see who is aligning themselves with Trump.

Critical reviews are important especially to writers who want to bring their very best to audiences. There are very few people qualified, or of those qualified, willing to review books. When I read reviews it seems that most people are writing about whether they liked or hated a book - but it doesn't go any deeper. The reviewers rarely talk about themes, motifs & symbols. They rarely talk about narrative structure (or lack thereof), arguments posed in the story or even if it was an original novel or category fiction. When I offer a review, I often talk about how the book affected me emotionally but I also do my best to include some of those elements. Call me a spoiled academic, but I expect "critical reviews" to read a little like college papers. Sadly, most aren't educated on how to write them. Too bad too, because better reviewers just might produce better books. BTW, I've never reviewed any of Dyson's books because I haven't read them.

We, as a society, don't respect elders because we are becoming increasingly ignorant. Simply put, it is ignorance that causes us not to revere our elders. When we look at the origin of the word ignorant, notice the root word ignore - from Merriam-Webster Latin ignorare, from ignarus ignorant, unknown, from in- +gnoscere, noscere to know While "ignore" is now considered "obsolete" for defining ignorance we still see it's apropos in describing our behavior towards the elderly today. Further, words like unknown and not knowing screams of our society's current status. Therefore, our disrespect and lack of appreciation of the elderly is just one of the symptoms of our society's socially-constructed hubris. Some call it "dumbing down of America” which I define as having population that is unaware of what they don't know .Unfortunately, in every scenario 'hubris' ultimately leads to failure; especially when you only possess facts but don't know how to use those facts. Knowledge is not power but use of knowledge equals wisdom. An ignorant population, however, is easy to control. So, it makes sense to hide or ignore the elderly. The elderly are usually wise. Yes, they know facts but they also know how to put those facts into use. Unfortunately many of us don't recognize information when it is put into use. We may dismiss Big Mama's or Pop-Pop's wisdom when it comes in a form of apologue. Now for some reason, those who are successful no matter what age; is always a stone's throw from someone who is way beyond the retirement age. Case-in-point, check out the board of directors on any fortune 100 company. While they may not make the day-to-day operations decisions, they're there to guide the company. Heck Sumner Redstone CBS Network chairman just stepped down from The Tiffany network (and not without a fight) and he is 92 years old!

@Troy, After you mentioned Erica Kennedy died by her own hands; it touched me in ways that I didn't expect.I tried to find anything that would explain why. Of course, nothing can ever explain why someone takes their own life but I'm glad she made a difference while she was here. Prince, did a lot with his celebrity and his talent. He was and is a leader by example! I'm not a celebrity but I can make requests, such as Prince did, when it is within my power to do so. I will too.

I'm not trying to be contrary but anything "socially designed or demanded is constructed and thereby unnatural. But yes, what you're suggesting indicates natural law and environment demand how our families are structured. Which also may be the key to healing our pathology. For example, procreation is one of the eight biological life functions but marriage and/or child-rearing is a social construct. The human species tend to care for its young but not necessarily in a two-parent model but a community. I would have to dig up my notes but I read there are some uncontacted tribes- who still follow the hunter-gatherer model such as Cynique mentioned. Some have existed for 60,000 years untouched by the West. The hunter-gatherers as we've come to know through their artifacts existed as a community. According to some researchers, hunting-gathering depended on the environment, not necessarily the sex, but it was wholly communal. Along with men, women fished and participated in wild-game hunting when they could.(See: Alphabet vs Goddess by Leonard Shlain, MD) The environment also played a huge part in why some of us left Africa and moved out to other parts of the world but again, they left as a group. In fact, here in the present, Malcolm Gladwell, in his book “Outliers" talked about how a strong community and environment assisted new immigrants to maintain health and vitality even when money was low. Once they left their community, however, they first suffered poor health then they died. The family structure that would “win” out, if it was necessary for family to have a main structure, would be “community”. Living in close-knit communities is the one structure that allowed us to grow a “healthy” civilization for the last 3 millennia. We've been moving away from that structure and we're suffering.

"Child worship" thank you so much for this phrase @Cynique ! This is a topic within itself. Not sure when this practice started but I've fallen victim to it. I remember my girls, telling me, "if you love 'Harvard' so much, you should apply and go." That was when I realized I was about to begin the practice of what's you have labeled "Child worship." Looking back now, I can see why I fell victim. My child worship moment happened when the girls were applying to college. I didn't go to the school I wanted to go to because my mother objected. She didn't want me to go away to school. It is only now, I see I was about to repeat the practice but luckily I had raised them to think for themselves. "Generational curses" come to mind. I think @CDBurns alluded to this but solving problems may begin in the home too. Still I believe this all goes back to solving our personal problems first.

Thinking is overrated if your thinking controls you... However if you control your thinking then it is a resource, a luxury reserved for those with time and money

As I posted on Linkedin Rulers need subjects. The why I would attempt to answer is why do so many black people keep them in power. I just read when Prince did an interview with InStyle he demanded it be with a black writer... They didn't have one so a newbie, Erika Kennedy, got her big break. http://www.thefrisky.com/2009-12-03/frisky-qa-erica-kennedy-author-of-bitch-lit-novel-feminista/?utm_source=share-email&utm_medium=button

No need to replace the "nuclear family" as an ideal or standard. Simply make room for other structures. One structure doesn't fit all. I'm not interested in marriage and sorry I did it in the first place. I'm better suited as a single. But I digress. I was my daughters' custodial parent - and I co-parented with my daughters' dad. I didn't need to live in a home where a marriage wasn't conducive to everyone's well-being. Today, I have a peace of mind; my daughters are happy, healthy and successful adults. I'm still not a grandmother, but oh well. My daughters were more concerned about letters behind their name than in front of it. I say this to say - non traditional families are not the source of the downfall in society nor are non-traditional families the downfall of black people in America... According to the U.S. Census there are still more white people/families living below the poverty level in America than black people. (Not sure, however, if money will make a difference in this scenario) And single black women on average make more money today than they did as 1/2 of a nuclear family. By the way there are more single people today of any race than there are married couples, so there's that. Here's what I believe is plaguing society... Lust. Not sexual lust but lust in the real sense of the word. Most of society wants to satisfy an unmet emotional need. Many of us only want to feel pleasure. No rejection, no longing, no hurt. No one wants to experience any emotion other than "good". Even me, as I mentioned. Why should I experience the aggravation of marriage when I don't have to... I found more pleasure in backbreaking labor pains, child birth, including a caesarean section and raising my daughters to adults than having to live with and struggle with someone who was raised differently. Therefore, in an effort to become problem solvers, collectively, we need to grow a vagina. I was going to write "grow a pair" but then I realized testicles are too delicate - only vaginas can take a licking and keep on ticking. Seriously, though it takes grit, fortitude and confidence to solve our own personal problems. Then and only then can we become problem solvers to change the world. And right now we are in short supply of people who are emotionally ready and available to do it.

HAVE A WONDERFUL NEW YEAR TOO, @Troy!

As are you, @Cynique and Thank you!

Thank you ! @CDBurns ! I've been buried so deep in my projects I haven't come up for air yet! I did get a chance to put the AALBC events widget on my site! I put it in the sidebar for now 500px - I do have some affiliate stuff I have to add at a later date but for now I like this Events widget. It keeps me focused on my writing projects.. Check it out when you get a chance http://theleadstory.org/

Just one more way to connect our community! Wonderful work! @CDBurns , thanks! Waving hello to you from, Jawja!

LOL! No @Cynique didn't run me off. I'm working two projects, plus an essay that I absolutely have to finish! I am a published author/writer/journalist/filmmaker (short documentaries 48 hours class of 2000, the battle of fort henry and a few mini-docs relating to the new millennium) and have been for a minute. And I'm still here. I really enjoy my time here at AALBC...and because of my "hoarding" tendencies personality, I tend to spend too much time on the board. So it's best that I don't log on. You're right @Sara I am non-confrontational because I get to learn from so many perspectives when I don't "fight". As a writer, I started reading and listening more and what I found was while I may not agree initially; in the long run I do find something in the discourse that is agreeable. The latter helps me garner "mental real estate" - and that is something writers like us desperately need if we're going to have an audience. Anyway " sticking my head in for a minute to say "hi"!

@CDBurns it seems as if you have an interesting story there! Have you already written a book about your service?

Done and tweeted it too!

As for email lurker... Join in filmmaker! The water is fine!

Agreed. Kinda. The mtDNA doesn't change (my particular mitochondrial DNA's haplogroup is estimated to be about 84,000 to 104,000 years old and now my daughters have it...) Still I have adapted to the conditions of being a North American...

I really like this perspective too! It forces us to all deal with the dynamics of who we are now... while my mtDNA is said to be the same as the present day North Africans ...my paternal lineage, the climate, isolation and a whole host of environmental contributors might make it extremely difficult for me to survive in East Africa today (where my maternal line is said to have its origins.) What is true for me - is true for the rest of the hyphen-Americans . We North Americans are a new breed. And despite the color of our skin we are as unique to the gene pool as was the first ascendant of the woman who left Africa to set up shop in what is now called Europe and Asia. Keep pushing us out of comfort zone @Cynique ... I may not like it but it is so very necessary...

do I have to come over there? (hand on hip; tapping my foot ) I wrote that it IS NOT cool! See below. I, too, have seen the poorest of poor white men and women... I used to do most of my news reporting in Appalachia. In fact when you look at the poverty statistics and do the math - there are more white families in poverty than black families. Our percentages look worse because there are less of us here in America. There more white people living below the poverty line than blacks. Yes! We have to toss this caste system that is presently operating in the U.S. I recently read that money was set up as a means of exchange for goods and value - not something to accumulate and hoard.. Our current social & economic system, however, makes it easy for people to monopolize at the expense of ourselves.

One of my LinkedIn connections posted this washington post article that forced me to turn my attention to black males. As a mother to 3 daughters and me being a woman, I tend not to pay a lot of attention to the state of black boys. It is not my emotional hotspot. I believe if you're a man of any color and can't make in a world set up for men, then too bad. My focus is black women; women and social justice. As you will see in this Department of Labor chart Black women in the labor force black women are at the bottom of the economic totem pole. We are doing better but still not as well as our black brothers and white 'daughters' and our white 'sons' who are soaring in this economy. I put my effort in raising the profile of black women; women and I will join in a fight for social justice. So you can only imagine how this article "America has locked up so many black people it has warped our sense of reality" really got my "panties in a bunch". This article on the research of how mass incarceration benefits the economic numbers by specifically targeting black males shows just how far destroying black boys really goes. It's as if the oligarchs say, "Nothing personal but we need to make sure the United States of America, Inc., looks good on paper. So just like we take money out of circulation to make it more valuable, we also need to take black men out of circulation and off the books." The nefarious plot looks like this: First we'll under fund their primary education and create a school to prison pipeline. The black boys (and an increasing amount of black girls) who survive childhood will go straight to prison. Except there's an anomaly; black females are surviving and while it is nowhere near thriving, somehow, economically, black women are filling the spots vacated by black male incarceration. I don't know about anyone else but I'd rather be an AND not INSTEAD OF in the story. But I digress. Back to the oligarchs who say, "There now "we" have tidy accounting books. The U.S., Inc. has a 4.5 unemployment rate... and we owe to the 1.6 million incarcerated who we wiped off the books."

Note: I agree with what both you and @CDBurns mentioned. I also think it is necessary to play the adversary's advocate in an effort to get beyond own biases.

Let's say for now - with an open mind and no barriers (remember I don't even use facebook - but I'm all for making money lol) it is Either, OR, AND... If www.AALBC.com/tc/blogs is already set up as a RSS feed and HTML5 - and you can launch it through mobile - AND AALBC members already post mini blogs on the AALBC.com blog page; and you, Troy, as the AALBC.com founder and owner already have an account on Facebook load the AALBC.com rss feed to Instant articles with your own AALBC ads, it seems as if you will be opening up another channel for AALBC.com online publishing, AALBC.com readers, AALBC.com authors, and AALBC.com book club members. Further, instead of paying writers - writers have an opportunity to pay you to advertise on the AALBC.com/tc/blogs FB instant articles feed. For example, you run a special a 2-fer at $X per month to advertise an author's book on the AALBC.com/tc/blog & the RSS Feed via FB instant articles... Not only can I advertise my book on AALBC.com, I also get to advertise my book via the AALBC.com/tc/blog feed that I've contributed to, which is distributed through FB Instant Articles too! BAM! From the FB instant articles Q & A... (I don't code nor do I have an app, so I can't speak to this from a technical viewpoint - but here's a clip of the Q & A that goes beyond the video ) Choose From FLEXIBLE MONETIZATIONS OPTIONS Ads within Instant Articles load quickly and fit seamlessly into the reading experience. Publishers choose what monetization option works best with their business! Facebook Audience Network maximizes ad revenue per article with demand from over 2.5 million advertisers globally; Publishers can also directly sell and serve their own display ads and keep 100% of that revenue. Q: What types of articles work best for this format? A: Instant Articles works for any type of article, from daily spot-news coverage to in-depth, long form features. Q: Do publishers need to create original content for Facebook? A: No. Instant Articles provides a faster, Facebook-native way to distribute the content publishers already produce for their own websites. We've made it easy for publishers to publish their full catalog of articles each day directly from their existing *MS through an RSS feed with /TML markup, eliminating the need to author articles in a new location. Q: How much effort is required for publishers to reconfigure their content for Instant Articles? A: It's a straightforward process because Instant Articles uses HTML and RSS, standard ways for authoring articles on the web. After some basic setup, publishers can automate Instant Article production directly from their own content management systems. Facebook provides tools so publishers can preview all the items in their Facebook publishing feed and edit or revise content manually. Publishers who wish to embrace new elements like interactive maps and auto-play videos can use simple, well-documented HTML tags to enhance their content with rich-media features. Q: How quickly are articles published and updated? A: Instant Articles automatically loads new stories from the RSS feed as soon as they are published to the publisher's website and apps. Updates and corrections are also automatically captured via the RSS feed so that breaking news remains up to date.