My Weekend Vibe

It's the last day of January. We might as well boogie and be glad it's over with.

Michael Steele is the First Black RNC Chairman

I would like to congratulate Michael Steele on this historic accomplishment. Before I get too excited for the brother I need to know if the other members of the party got permission from Rush Limbaugh before making this decision. The way things have been going lately, if he starts going off about this pick on Monday the party will get together and take another vote to put someone else in this spot. It's going to be very interesting to see how things go as Mr. Steele tries to open the party up to other people. I just hope no one says anything too crazy or insensitive about a man that stuck with his party even when they didn't seem to care about including his own people in the discussion. That has to make him a true believer right? I sure hope Mr. Limbaugh finds it in his heart to allow Michael Steele to lead for whatever length of time it takes to groom Sarah Palin to become the face of the party.

Peace to Mr. Cerasoli

I think Robert Cerasoli had the best intentions when he took the job of Inspector General. I am sorry to see that he had to step down. I think once everyone really got a chance to know him outside of being pulled in every direction between the mayor’s office, the city council and the media they would have learned that he actually had no agenda at all besides trying to help the citizens do the right thing for themselves. I’m sorry he wasn’t feeling well enough to stick around. I hope the next inspector applies the same outlook that Mr. Cerasoli expressed here and here. I also hope that everyone would just be quiet, let the new person do their job and stop stirring up emotions on either side. The end result should be about the numbers and making sure our tax dollars aren’t being wasted. Let’s get the information out there and then we can form opinions after that. No one that I know is living that great in this city to dismiss what the inspector general can provide. We should be welcoming someone to take a look at things. I mean, all you have to do is ride around the city and know that something isn’t right. It may not be criminal or underhanded but even the things with good intentions haven’t worked out the right way. I realize some people have a vested interest in keeping things the same but personally I am tired of feeling like my local government can’t do the right thing on my behalf. I wish Mr. Cerasoli well with his health issues and hope we find someone with the same good intentions.

Blogging While Medicated

I have been under the weather this week because my body and Mother Nature can’t get in tune. There’s a virus going around and it found its way to me. I left work today and burned one of my 20 weeks of sick time. I never take off from work. There are some new strains of virus out here. It’s like one person gets sick and 10,000 other people get it. I have to get right because I don’t want to be the sickly looking dude on the Beyond Jena Panel Saturday morning.

I just got through watching Governor Blagojevich’s press conference. That guy is entertaining. If he gets a radio show I am listening. He’s a little crazy but it all appears to be so natural that you start liking the guy. I wonder what’s worse, getting impeached by a vote of 59-0 or having the entire state senate stand up and cheer after the vote was announced. The governor was standing outside listing all his accomplishments as governor to reporters. I was thinking if he could do all of that and still be improper than he can run for office here. At least he did some things for the citizens and himself. Our leaders get in trouble and can never rattle off that many good things.

I went to a parental involvement meeting down at the school yesterday. There were thirty parents there and only four men. Brothers, we can have a black president, governor, mayor and the entire city council can look like Wesley Snipes. It won’t mean anything unless you get involved with your own kids and family.

I understand Republicans have basic principles and that the new administration wants an end to old politics. Everybody’s trying to pass this stimulus bill and judging by the numerous reports of layoffs everyday they need to do something soon. I just want to tell all the republican senators and congressmen and women that if you guys are so weak that Rush Limbaugh actually scores a personal triumph and gets any official meeting with someone in government about the stimulus, none of you should get re-elected. I know you need votes and campaign funds but that should be embarrassing.

No matter how much money we give the banks and the auto industry the stock market is still dropping and people are still being laid off. When you factor in the fact that President Obama ended up hiring some of the same people who caused the problem and put them in charge of fixing it, isn’t it time for everybody to just admit that no one knows what to do about the situation? When are we going to call the Wal Mart people up and put them in charge?

Remember when everybody thought that Richards and Metro Disposable were over billing the city for sanitation? There was almost a riot about wasting money on sanitation. Remember all those blogs that listed how much money Richards and Metro had contributed to certain members of the city council? Remember when the report surfaced that these two companies were actually under billing the city and it appeared that SDT, the company that takes care of downtown and French Quarter was actually over billing the city? How do I explain to all my angry black friends the reasoning behind not only no one being that upset about SDT’s over billing but we are about to go to court to force the mayor to keep paying them every dime? People have been coming to the French Quarter for decades and it smelled like vomit and old garbage. Tourism has been down lately so maybe we should let Bourbon St. go back to smelling bad. I don’t care as long as no one tries to take away my big black garbage can provided by Metro that seals in all smell between pickup days.

At the same time, it’s a shock to the system to hear Councilwoman Stacy Head on the Home Team morning show taking questions from citizens and engaging them. When she first did it I thought she was just going to do it one time to take the heat off the people thinking she was a racist. She’s been on a few times now and she’s not patronizing at all. I respect her for that. Now it’s time for the two ladies who run the area I live in to come on and take some questions.

I’m taking another happy pill and I’m going back to sleep.

Can't Nobody Ruin My Day

If you want to see joy and hope in a person talk to your neighbor who just had his first daughter.

If you want to be reminded of what your role is in everything help a five year old read a book or have a conversation with a three year old about how every time she goes to sleep she gets bigger!

If you need to be reminded that things are possible, talk to a brother older than you that is doing great things in spite of coming from rough circumstances.

If you just want to feel normal call your boy and let him crack a joke about something really stupid all in the middle of having a serious conversation about life.

Living in the city is a delicate balance of joy and pain. It’s a dance between hope and despair. You have to find signs of the good things in order to deal with the bad or you will drive yourself crazy. I am sorry but I can't let the actions of a few knuckleheads define me and my whole community. I have put too much work in to get back to this point to be mad all the time especially when I am doing the right thing. You shouldn't either if the right things apply to you.

Now, I am going drink this big cup of coffee, run some reports, chat with my friends, and continue the Jay Electronica movement. I hope you all have a good day because I am.

What Else Can I Say About This Crime Thing

Crime is the big issue in the city right now. It always is actually. All the local bloggers are talking about it. I was just sitting here reading some of them and couldn't think of one new opinion about the topic. This topic is an old issue for me. I have lived it forever and wrote about it since I discovered that I knew how. I decided to search my own page for references to crime and murder. I don't want to be out of the local blogger loop on this so I thought I would go a little retro and present.

This link

and this one

and this one

and this one.

This one was ten days before the hurricane and might be the best one of all.

This one is my favorite.

Just for an added bonus, here's a short one before Hurricane Katrina in April 2005 back when I was a blogger puppy trying to learn how to express myself.

I don't see myself as some kind of hood messenger or anything. I come in contact with black people all day and 90% of them have no idea I do this. I also don't get paid for anyone clicking on these old links. All I have invested is concern for my city and my community, a little bit of ability to explain what's going on and absolutely no idea how to fix it besides doing the right thing myself and making sure none of my people contribute to the problem. If correspondence and statistics are true, there are more people reading what I have to say now. Someone might find this and use it to help them understand some things that are not always on the news to work towards an idea that might change it. I might have something else to say later on. Right now I think I have said everything that one brother can say.

Goodbye For Now Sweet Pigskin

This was the first weekend since late August without a football game. Every year I exercise my right as an American to not engage in any non emergency or non parental activity until after football season is over. I am sure it’s not healthy to watch at least six college football games every Saturday but I don’t know how to stop. It takes lots of dedication to the sport to shut down every weekend for four months in a row. I have gotten better as I have gotten older. I used to watch every football related show on television for seven days a week during the season. Now I can survive by only watching half of them. The first weekend without football is a withdrawal period. The next week is Super Bowl week and I don’t follow any of that until the kickoff of the game because my home team is one of five teams never to play in the game and every year the number gets less. That’s a very deflating feeling.
I guess I have to go back to doing stuff like getting dressed or doing yard work on the weekends. I went in the back yard today to access the landscaping needs that I have been neglecting. Since Katrina there have been many strange looking bugs flying around New Orleans that I can’t identify. There’s also a bunch of strange looking plants and weeds that sprout up when you don’t cut the grass for awhile. I have to break out the boots because I am scared to touch some of them. I also have to start returning phone calls on the weekend that don’t pertain to the games and also start paying attention to people again without yelling “watch out for the blitz!” in the middle of the conversation. The good part about football season ending is that I always lose a few extra pounds because I am a lot more active. Of course, I just gain it all back when the season starts but I consider that balance. At least I can take part in some fun weekend activities before next season and the Saints magical Super Bowl run. I can see it now. 2009 is our year. I can’t wait for training camp to start. When is the draft? September can’t get here fast enough.

Sitting On My Porch Part Twenty One

It’s been a week full of hope and pride as well as a week full of aggravation and frustration. I don’t know what happen to these young cats when the clock struck twelve on New Years but we need to figure it out. Maybe there’s something in that baby’s diaper that they drop on top of Jax Brewery for the New Year. We got to do better because tension is thick and it’s not even hot outside yet.

For years black people have made fun of parents that gave their children names that we didn’t think would help them get a job interview like Taquawandana and Alterdarius. Now that mainstream America has an elected a man named Barack Obama anything goes. I don’t have a son so I am depending on one of my brothers to name their son Kareem Pharaoh Bamboola Harris. With a name like that he may get invited to join Skull and Bones in 25 years.

Have you ever had a person say something to you so disappointing you went from being happy to see them to never wanting to again in seconds? My favorite instance of this is when I ran into my friend Stacey from high school and the first words out of her mouth were “Damn Cliff! What you been eating? Everything?” …….I have not seen her since.

You what I can’t stand? I can’t stand people who rhyme their New Year’s resolution with the sound of the year. You know “Doing fine in 2009” or “Everything’s divine in 2009”. You can’t get any cornier than that.

I totally support the move to block multi family developments in New Orleans East. I’m just sitting here thinking about our low insurance rates, world class dining, smoothly paved roads, state of the art schools and medical facilities, great family recreation, and last but not least our great shopping areas and entertainment venues. Why would we want to share this paradise with renters? How did people know about our great way of living anyway with our sound wall protecting us from the noise of the interstate? We have to protect our high quality of life.

The country may be in a recession but I know one group who is not hurting at all. Who ever is making those bootleg President Obama t-shirts and paintings that people are selling in the hood is making so much money they can’t count it fast enough. The one hazard when buying anything bootleg is that sometimes things are not what they seem. I saw a guy selling President Obama t-shirts with Michael Evans from Good Times on the front. I know Mike was the smartest kid in the projects but I don’t remember the episode when he made it to the White House.

Next Saturday is the Beyond Jena forum at Xavier. There are a handful of tickets left. I just want to tell all the people who told me they registered when I sent them the link that you better show up. Mr. Everson deserves a good turnout. Because of that I will spend the next week blogging about absolutely nothing related to local issues, politics, crime or anything of that nature. I’m getting all my fresh material together for the public. In the meantime I will waste some time and try to expose folks to the hip hop talents of Mr. Jay Electronica. I had no idea the brother was from New Orleans. I have checked out a few songs and I think he’s going to be next cat from New Orleans to make it big. That will be cool since he’s sort of the opposite of Lil Wayne. This is an old song I am posting but since I just heard it, it still feels new to me. Guys like this always seem to have to leave New Orleans to make it.

Maybe This Is The Final Straw

By all accounts Wendy Byrne was a great person. Her life was taking after an armed robbery went bad. Just like the stories earlier this month, the community should feel down when things like this happen. The beginning of the year has been a rough one for stories like this. The assailants were three 15 year old boys. They will be tried in court as adults. The two boys that are already in custody were turned in by their mothers after seeing their sketches on TV. Although people are dogging the mothers on messages boards and comments(That's why there are no links on this post.), maybe those ladies are just tired of the violence and decided to do the right thing by making their sons accountable. The person that gave the description of the teenagers to the officers had to be scared but maybe they wanted justice and decided to overcome the fear and talk anyway. Our police chief Warren Riley said the kids should never be allowed to walk the streets again after killing an innocent woman. Maybe he’s finally had it with all the violence and is going to speak out like this all the time. The district attorney had a press conference earlier to keep everyone updated about the status of the case just to ensure the public that justice will be served. Maybe dangerous criminals won’t get out after 60 days because the cases against them weren’t together. Maybe Ms. Byrne’s unfortunate passing and the reaction to it will encourage every witness, parents, the police chief, the district attorney and the press to react to every case like this all year long no matter who the victim is so we won’t have to read about 200 more murders. I’m just trying to keep this hope thing going surrounded by all this drama.

Rest in peace Ms. Byrne and all the other victims.

Now The Fun Part Starts

All of the pageantry and speeches are done. The weight of the world is on Barack Obama’s shoulders and now we get to see who among the mass of support is going to stay engaged and pay attention to what’s going on. People in my generation can be real trendy. It’s hard to tell exactly what our agenda is sometimes as even as I had people sending me email after email with stories about Barack Obama’s campaign, most of those same folks couldn’t tell me one thing going on in their own district and city. I hope all those folks realize that now is the time to be even more diligent and engaged than you were during the campaign. Everyone got mad at Tavis Smiley but he was right. If you can’t apply leadership to your own agenda then it’s worthless. That applies to Americans of any race, class, or location. When President Obama comes to your area you better be ready with ideas you want to do and how much it’s going to take to pay for them. As great of a leader he may possibly be, he still can’t sit in on your city council, school board meetings or at your house with your kids. We have to do all the ground work, the volunteering and the lifestyle changes ourselves. If there are any local officials in place that want to stop that kind of progress then get rid of them too. If we do all of that then maybe he can sign a bill to send us the funds to move forward.

The other thing people must do is very important. Please do not let your love and support for him lead you to convince yourself that everything he does is right. If you do, it may make you and him feel good about your ideals but in the end people are going to pay for it. I think if you ask a George Bush supporter who is willing to be honest they will tell you that they could have pulled him back in on certain issues before things spiraled out of control. They got too concerned with validating the principle and they forgot to think objectively. Now they are struggling too. That’s why his approval rating was so low. Many of those people were mad at themselves for not speaking out. It’s easy for a person to dismiss his enemy’s critique. It’s another thing for the people that love you to say you are screwing up. That forces you to look at yourself harder. There may be a decision or two that is not so good and you have to tell the truth and call him out on it. If we don’t call him out then who will? Everyone else will just sit there and watch him fail. It’s not hate if you challenge him. That’s what you are supposed to do to people you want to see succeed. That's why his administration has so many different kinds of people in it. He doesn't need you to kiss up to him. He needs you to speak openly and honestly even if you think he's wrong. That’s how I am going to approach this new thing. Let’s actually do something so in four years we can say things are better because of this moment.

There is Still Time to Register

You have four days left to register for the Beyond Jena Forum and watch the look on my face as I try to figure out how I am on a panel with other people from New Orleans and managed to be the only one with an accent this thick. Who can pass up a chance at that?

The Bush Years Got A Jazz Funeral

If you click this link you will see the best celebration of the end to George Bush's time in office.

I have to start hanging out more in the hood again so I can catch wind of stuff like this. I would have rather watch the oath of office out there in the cold with them than with some of my co-workers and their attitudes (Louisiana is a red state for real.) I guess the people didn't dig his response to Katrina so much after all. I wonder if they brought the casket to Mt. Olivet Cemetery.

I am not going all soft on everybody or anything like that but Cliff has a sensitive side. I have to admit, seeing this man loving his wife and dancing with her like this in front of the entire world probably wiped out 20% of the damage Maury Povich, Jerry Springer and the ten o'clock news has done to the black male image. Now we just have to let the world know there are millions of us out here. Today did not suck.

This Moment Felt Better Than I Thought It Would

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent

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Barack is going to get his spotlight on Tuesday. Today let us take a moment to remember the man that paid the ultimate price for a day like tomorrow. I can not put it into words what he must have felt so I will let him do it himself. This clip explains it.

The Life of A Saints Fan

I can't believe the Arizona Cardinals made the Superbowl before the New Orleans Saints.

A Moment of Pride

I will admit that during the presidential campaign I was never overly excited about Barack Obama. I was too aggravated about things going on around my city to really let go of my anger to let the hope movement affect me. Regardless of all of that, I never thought I would see a man that looks like me being elected president and running my country. There’s no way I can not get caught up in watching him take that oath. I am going to work Tuesday but as soon as he steps forward to put his hand on the bible everything is going to stop and I will take that moment in and try not to cry. Since Monday is MLK Day and Tuesday is the inauguration, I’m just going to take this time to be black, proud, and optimistic about what the future could be for America. I think enough dues were paid for everybody to let go and bask in the moment.

There are only two things that you can’t do. The first thing is you can’t get fired from your job trying to take off from work to watch the inauguration. The man has a hard enough task as it is without you adding to the unemployment rate just to watch the speech. Trust me, it’s going to be replayed all day so if you don’t have the time off then don’t do anything crazy.

The other thing is that while he’s speaking you can’t forget the Emancipation Proclamation, the March on Washington, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Think about all the people who sat at lunch counters, marched, and gave their lives just to have a chance to see things like the inauguration. You have to remember that because acknowledging your foundation is how you get the strength to do the things you need to do because Wednesday morning President Obama has the keys to the house and that’s a whole different ballgame. Tuesday is just the beginning and you have to be even more engaged than you were during the campaign.

It's almost that time of year. Learn the culture.

My Personal Apology to Mychal Bell

I would like to apologize to Mychal Bell for wearing black clothes on the day of the Jena 6 rally. I’m not sorry for highlighting the unfairness of justice that was happening in the Jena case. I am sorry for how everyone abandoned the kids involved. See, around the time of the rally I was actually thinking that the Jena story would be a catalyst to spur on a broader look at social injustice and start a discussion about how to improve the situation for people on a broader scale using a grass roots movement that would eventually spread to the mainstream media. That’s what happened in Jena. Who could have known that just four months later Barack Obama would win the Iowa Caucus and black people all over America would forget about you and blindly embrace the same structure they were getting poised to challenge. Everybody started wearing their “Change” t-shirts and chanting Yes We Can! and you had to fend for yourself under all that pressure. The pressure must have been way too heavy because you tried to commit suicide to escape from it.

I have been checking the black blogosphere and visiting the same sites that posted stories about you until the rally. I have seen nothing about the need to send someone to down there to help you deal with all the pressure or to get you some counseling because you were getting in trouble before the Jena incident so it’s obvious you had some other issues. It’s our fault Mychal because we still think it’s 1965 and things are over once we get the symbolic victory. The only saving grace to me is that you didn’t deserve to be in jail as long as you were so it’s good we came down there in that aspect. It’s also a good thing that the presidential campaign was in 2008 instead of 2007 because you would still be in there now and the famous folks that spoke out on your behalf would have been too caught up in the election to talk about it. I hope you can forgive our lack of following through to the end.

P.S.

My friend Lawanda really wants me to call out Michael Baisden for making himself famous at your expense but since we don't listen everyday we can't say you didn't mention it. Although if you had mentioned his personal problems as much as his legal ones when it was popular you could turn your show on at any moment and hear his name.

Sometimes Things Don't Make Sense in a Good Way

How did all these people make it off of that plane alive? That is truly unbelievable. That pilot is a real life Ted Striker.