State Of the Black Union 2009 Morning Recap

Here's the video from C-Span of the 1st session with my comments to follow below:

You do have to watch the video because some of the panelists were simply amazing! They are also talking specifics of how we can take steps to hold officials accountable AND to make sure we get our portions of the stimulus $$$. It's worth the time!!!

Iyanla Vanzant  (2:00-2:15 on the video) gets the gold star of the first session (Michael Eric Dyson gets a shout out as well). She has a book titled Acts of Faith. There are quite a few authors who use this as the title of their books. I realize there's a bit of religious connotation that may cause some people to pause when they see the title of my blog, but that's what an individual brings by assuming something has a particular meaning. When I was thinking about what to name it I was going in a completely different direction but the title jumped out at me. 

My name is Faith and yes there's a story involving a religious epiphany where my grandmother declared that was to be my name. Believe me I have in fact struggled my entire life to live up to my name and what faith symbolizes. I've always thought God (Universe/Great Mother) has a wonderful sense of humor. I also think from the perspective of Black Americans and our traditional religious traditions that we've always been called far beyond our comfort levels and it's been up to us to take steps into a greater destiny than one we may envision for ourselves. 

This was really about me declaring my own journey and one that I wanted people to undertake. How do you define taking risks, striving to live outside the box of expectations and finding your voice? It's an act of faith (belief). It's believing in yourself and your purpose and that YOU have validity. It's a declaration of your independence from the shackles of society, your family or any who'd put limitations on your person by telling you that you're less than - even if it's YOU. So that's why I named this blog Acts of Faith...In Love and Life. If we don't give back to the world we will be less than what we were meant to be. If we don't think we can, we never will.

So this year's SOBU is very important in continuing that dialog of what Black people are going to do now that there's a Black President. If he believed, strategized, sought out allies and put the work into his life to get himself to this position and he's not even the best what does that say about us as individuals and the "Black collective"? This is no swipe at #44 either. He did his best, but he's not the be all end all of what we can achieve. So 2009 should be a continuation of our journey and hopefully the start of an effective coalition where people work together and where individuals really fly.

There's a Twitter Feed of Posts using hashtags #SOBU2009 #STOBU as well