MF GALAXY

Whether you're holding a rally or a progressive social gathering, your #1 mission must be organising the people who show up. It's a lot of work to get all those people in one place, but if they don't DO anything afterward, so what? You just taught them that gathering together doesn't solve or produce anything. Or you made them believe that the purpose of gathering is to have a party, and that, magically, just gathering will solve their problems because "They" will understand and take action (whoever "They" are).  So figure out your S.M.A.R.T. * goals as early as possible, long before game day. Once you know WHAT you hope those people will do, and HOW MANY of must act to be effective, you can figure out HOW you will measure whatever they do. That's the only way to know if you're successful. Realistic goals about productivity followed by stats! And your goals must include building the power and vision of participants to improve th...

Below is a feature conversation recorded for Up Close, an interview progamme on Canada's Christian Television Service. The interviewer is sketch comic and independent filmmaker Neil Grahn. We met at CJSR and then reconvened at Sharifa's Sambusa House, a mainstay in the Somali community here, to discuss religion, spirituality, politics, social justice and human rights. PART ONE PART TWO PART THREE PART FOUR PART FIVE PART SIX

James Brown. The hardest working man in show biz. Together with Five Percent Islam and P-Funk, his gravity shaped hip hop in its earliest form and thus set it on its course. I loved Brown's work... I even paid cash money for the rights to print just a few lines of his classic song "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" in my first novel, The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad: "This is a man's world, this is a man's world But it wouldn't be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl "You see, man made the cars to take us over the road Man made the trains to carry heavy loads Man made electric light to take us out of the dark Man made the boat for the water, like Noah made the ark "This is a man's, a man's, a man's world But it wouldn't be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl "Man thinks about a little baby girls and a baby boys Man makes then happy 'cause man makes them toys And after man has made...