Leader Teachers-Are You One?

Leader Teachers-Are You One?

"The most important thing to remember is this: To be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become."
__W.E.B. DuBois

     As a life-long political activist and teacher, trainer and leader, I know first-hand that my education includes an unusual upbringing, over four decades of community work, and the culmination of three successful university degrees. In Northeast Detroit, I took part in intense teachings and trainings by my community's pro-active leaders following the 1967 race riots through the 1970's. This education became a necessary means to freedom's better ends. What the schools didn't teach us, our leaders taught us. What the textbooks didn't teach us, our leaders taught us. What we didn't know ourselves, our leaders taught us. Our leaders were many teachers of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as individuals who lead politically aware lives. One of my early teachers used to tell us that she had a "Ph.D. in Life" and she did. She was and is wise, celebrating now 84 years young.

     Detroit, during these turbulent times, imposed the controversial STRESS (Stop the Robberies and Enjoy Safe Streets) program, especially prominent in use among Black males, Vietnam War protestors, and community people who began activating to address local social, economic and educational issues. Keeping good people out of trouble became a major concern for our community. In efforts to organize and unify community people towards better ends, we were taught by the leaders of a newly developed non-profit community organization. North End Concerned Citizens Community Council (NEC4). They provided us with free lectures, seminars, retreats and other functions intended to uplift people's hopes and realizations. They offered conversations and sharing of experiences, applied to our local community, our nation, and the Civil Rights Movement. Their intentions were to educate and activate positive change. Irrespective of race, we took part in strategies to offset the unfair limitations that were imposed through a wide variety of racist and prejudiced systems. Self-education became part of the lexicon of our plans to create change, allowing us to believe we can gather knowledge and exercise wisdom, giving us the power to break our economic, educational and self-imposed bonds.

     A lot of students didn't finish school in my neighborhood. The paths of formal education dwindled over time, especially among the schools serving the impoverished people of color. The majority of young people often fell into only a couple of categories. They 1) joined the military, 2) went to jail, 3) moved away, and/or went to college, or 4) died, often violently. It was necessary for community leaders to stem the tide of failure and help us recognize our real potential as young people who took part in our own life decisions. All too often, there were others that decided for us that we were "locked in a poverty cycle." Poverty and civil rights issues have been around for a long time, but we have to ask ourselves, and answer ourselves, whether or not we can do better than to embrace the limiting ways of poverty's traps, racial traps, gang and violence traps, drug traps, or any other crooked roads laid before us. As young adults, we were taught to become aware and informed, and to step out of the suppressions, oppressions, and depressions we faced. We were taught to recognize the limitations and learned how to define ourselves as capable, and our goals as attainable.

Education comes from schools, yes. But it also comes from parents, mentors, from community leaders and church leaders, and volunteers whose work furthers community goals. We all can learn from books, from essays and poems, from experience and from others' experiences. We can learn from President Barack Obama whose community organizing skills LEAD our nation, in more ways than one. As a nation, we continue to learn from each other in our continued walk towards full citizenship, endowed with full citizenship rights and responsibilities.

During the Civil Rights Movement, I benefitted from the teachings of my community leaders, my community teachers, who taught us that we could advance ourselves by following effective strategies, to develop an understanding of “self-awareness, self-determination and self-respect to attain self-sufficiency.” These became the goals that we were taught—to offset the limitations imposed and perpetuated by racism and classism in America. We learned that we do not let others keep us ignorant, define us, or convince us to lower our opinions of ourselves, no matter the race, or culture, or religion, or creed. What I came to realize is that the beautiful individuals that our youth are can only lay down all the arguments against success—by growing success anyway. Education plays a key part of success’ growth.

Educating our communities can be accomplished by efforts of leaders and teachers, by reading, thinking and communicating, witnessing and steering yourself toward worthy goals. It is important to come together in unity and strength when creating strategies for positive and effective change. Self-education can be improved by each one assuming the responsibility of being their own first teachers. It can be improved by taking counsel from those who came before us, and are with us still, that share valuable lessons learned. Literacy allows the book learning necessary for us to prevent mistakes made from happening again, by not repeating them. Historical and future reference points can be constructed through knowledge gained. Ask yourself, “What has your solid education showed you that are worth sharing?” We automatically become teachers when we have learned, hopefully helping each other to achieve and practice self-awareness, self-determination, self respect and attaining self-sufficiency.

Although education does not guarantee absolute success, not learning takes you nowhere and keeps you there. Learn and learn how to lead, and you will become a leader who is a teacher.

“Ignorance is a cure for nothing.”
W.E.B. DuBois

About the Author: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nancy-bell/30/231/855

Working with Vulnerable Populations in Chattanooga

As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I first moved to Chattanooga, I took a job living at a motel and worked in exchange for my room. I may have sought other work when I first arrived, but my decision to take the job at the motel was twofold: One, it was meant to help me to better understand the vulnerable populations in Chattanooga by living among them, so that Two, I could determine how to better help them challenge a rampant spread of HIV/AIDS contagion in the U.S. South. Although I have been exposed to impoverished people through previous community work in the Greater Detroit area, there were definitely some obvious cultural differences between them and those I learned from and lived with in Chattanooga.

In April 2001, I became an ordained minister and took a vow to do missionary work among the most vulnerable populations in society. Although I thought that HIV/AIDS would be my area of concentration, after living among the transient people in Chattanooga, I changed my focus in my Ph.D. program to homeless people, who are at risk not only for HIV/AIDS, but also for many other public health adversities. My capstone project at Walden University for my doctorate included designing an NIH-based grant proposal for funding to help create a bridge program that would blend homelessness with domestic violence, since the local area did not really have a homeless service for domestic violence, nor did the domestic violence shelter have intervention strategies that could accommodate the homeless.

I moved to Red Bank after that and endeavored to become involved in community work, which I did, including volunteer work. Each of these volunteer activities are chronicled in some way in direct relation to field-based classes at Walden University. In each class the product of the assignments were translated into measureable and explainable data and analysis. No private information about anyone involved in these projects was disclosed without a reason and express permission to do so.

 *  Chattanooga Cares (HIV/AIDS), working health fairs in at-risk neighborhoods and at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga.
 *The Urban League of Chattanooga, where I did pro-bono work by developing a program of computer training classes to help assist job-seekers who were unfamiliar with computer-driven job applications
 *The Boys and Girls Club, where I worked with children living in public housing to develop artistic ways to positively express themselves including photo-mosaics of our sidewalk chalk event, posters with positive messages, and creative decorations to make their gathering place reflect their positivity through individual expressions.
 *ACT-SO program through the Chattanooga Chapter of the NAACP by serving as a judge in the categories of poetry, essay writing, and playwriting for the last two years.
  *Clarence T. Jones Observatory, associated with the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, to help encourage students' interest in science by acting both as a presenter and a hostess for public open nights of sky viewing.
  *University of Tennessee Chattanooga, I coordinated and presented information to the campus population, as well as the community at-large to help inform them about the Extreme Toxic Waste spill that took place in Kingston, TN, approximately 50 miles upstream from Chattanooga. I was able to retain the Director of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation as a guest speaker who responded to questions and concerns, especially from the Society of Physics Students (SPS) who sponsored our event, and a large number of Environmental Science staff and students.
  *Homelessness remained a major interest to me, and I am currently working with a long-time (or contronically homeless) individual who is writing about her personal experiences. I have already published an article on the Walden University blog on how to organize a community collaborated public lecture and gain press coverage and resource information for continued interest. (Over 100,000 current students in the International Laurate have access to these articles).

One of the things I realized with my higher education knowledge is that whether or not I am paid a wage for my work, I can still always contribute to my community and focus on the vulnerable populations I care so much about. Although I do still have in my mind the priority of HIV/AIDS as an ongoing problem, my work in the community helped me to realize that one issue alone will not address the companion issues that co-occur in public health. I am also working on another website, being done in conjunction with a former University of Phoenix Masters student, who is also an MD, so that we can present HIV/AIDS information to people about the virus, the disease, the modes of transmission, testing and screening, and where to turn for assistance and more information, peer-to-peer counseling resource lists and treatment and family response information. That website is still being crafted and is in research and redesign stages of presentation. We intend the website to be dynamic, updating our audience on the latest in medical technologies, the law and policies related to HIV/AIDS in America, and to create a forum for people to be able to become engaged in dialogue with others interested in this pandemic, either personally or professionally at local, state, national or international levels.

I look forward to seeing what my future will bring as I move forward in social activism, environmental activism, producing educational material for health, homeschool or family enhancement of student preparedness for higher education, and publishing more children's stories.

About the Author: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nancy-bell/30/231/855

Unique Jury Duty

I’ve only been on Jury Duty once, but it was interesting enough that I think telling the story is still warranted. I was living in Detroit, Michigan and I was assigned Jury Duty at the 36^th District Federal Court for a murder trial. I was about 25 years old and working as a secretary at Wayne State University, having recently completed my B.A. in psychology. I was surprised by how many people told me they would not want to serve on a jury, or specifically how many more didn’t think they would want to serve on a murder trial. To me, it was taking a lesson out of our government class books and putting it into real life. When the selection for the jurors was made, from a room of people summoned to the courthouse, I was the 13^th juror. It was understood that there would be 12 people who made the decision, but 13 who heard the case, in the event that one member became unable to serve in the deliberations, or judgment. The judge told us it was better to have an alternate than to have to retry the case if a juror became seriously ill, injured or otherwise unable to complete the trial. Just before the trial, I heard several people hoping out loud that they wished they’d be the one eliminated. I figured that would be a great disappointment to me, so I was hoping with them that it was one of them.

The whole trial took three days, from beginning to end, but they went by quick to me. The jury stayed together and we were instructed not to talk to each other or anyone else before the verdict had been rendered by the court. The young man who was on trial was 19 years old and it was a case that seemed very much a case of self-defense, except for the testimony of one witness who claimed it was pre-meditated. We heard the testimony of witnesses, including the defendant, and we heard the arguments of the lawyers. At one point, a witness answered a question that seemed to contradict something he had said earlier, and since I believed it had a bearing on the case, I expected the lawyers to bring that point up. They did not, and we broke for recess.

As the jury filed out, I told the judge, “I have a question.” He said, “You are not allowed to talk to me during the trial, so please don’t say anything else. I will send a bailiff to talk to me.” It drew some attention to me, but I was bound and determined to ask my question because the answer to that question seemed, to me, to decide the case. The bailiff came out to talk to me, alone, in the judge’s chambers. He said, “The judge wants to know if you question is pertinent to the case.” I said it was. He the judge asks that you write it down and I will bring it to him. So, I described the conditions of my question and posed the conflict in testimony, indicating that I believed it was necessary to making a determination of guilt. The bailiff left with the sheet I had written on and we continued our break. The break was extended after that for just under an hour, with the whole courtroom milling around and none of the jurors being able to talk about the case.

Finally we were called back in and seated and the judge addressed the jurors and the courtroom. He told us that in 26 years of being a judge, he was posed with a situation he had never encountered before. He searched the law books during break and found a precedent for whether and how a juror may question a witness. He explained the procedure to us.

1)      A juror has a question, pertinent to the case, that was not addressed by the lawyers during questioning or argument.

2)      The juror may request permission to submit a question to the court.

3)      The judge reviews the question for relevancy and determines whether or not he will accept the question.

4)      The lawyers approach the bench and review the question and tell the judge whether or not they will accept the question. If they both agree, the court recorder enters the question into the record.

5)      The judge calls the witness back to the stand, and asks on behalf of the court.

Then the judge asked me, “Juror, do you want to go ahead with your question for the court?” I answered, “Yes, your Honor, I do.” He told us, “I accept the question and call the lawyers to my bench.” They reviewed the question and both accepted it, and the stenographer recorded the question. The witness was then subpoenaed. We broke for lunch to give them time to find him since he had apparently left the building.

To make a long story shorter, the witness could not be found and the judge asked me if I would be willing to resume the trial since only the closing arguments were left and the court did not think it was appropriate to spend an indefinite amount of time waiting for the witness to surface. He told us the subpoena would stand because the witness was not supposed to leave the building, being required to be available throughout the testimony portion of the trial. I agreed to let the matter be. When the jury was sent to deliberations, I was immediately elected Forejuror, although I was the youngest person on the jury. They asked me what my question was, and I told them my question and my rationale. We deliberated for only 30 minutes before deciding to declare the defendant not guilty for 2^nd degree murder (his charge), 3^rd degree murder (which we could have downgraded it to), and not guilty for illegal discharge of a firearm within the city limits because we agreed it was a very good case for self-defense.

As Forejuror, I read the decision to the court and it became official, the young man was not guilty. He went home with his family as we went home. Because no one had really faced that situation before in that case, it was not really known that in Federal District Court, a juror CAN, under the described circumstances, enter a question to be asked of a witness. I have not even found this information in any government course books, so I think it is worth sharing with my blog audience. This is a TRUE story.

About the Author: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nancy-bell/30/231/855

Introducing BellWork-InProgress

Greetings to My Readers! I am launching this blog to help counteract...what I see as...a catastrophic LACK OF KNOWLEDGE!

I endeavor to fight ignorance on any subject that I can research, consider/contemplate, or gather new ideas about, to share with those who want to learn. This blog series is mostly going to be fun, it will sometimes be serious, maybe make you angry or sad, hopefully stimulate questions and interests on important American issues. Knowledge comes with a price, meaning now you have to act like you know once you know, or you become part of the problem. The alternative is not the "bliss" of ignorance, but rather the "cost" of it because  in American society, a lack of knowledge can undo us as a nation, can undo families, and can cripple individuals' forward progress in anything!

Today's knowledge seeds start with select quotations from a brilliant American writer, W.E.B. DuBois. In this election year, it is more important than ever that we remember what America IS, and defend our freedoms as citizens of a country that allows freedom, nay DEMANDS freedom for all her people! It is OUR fight to keep it real and to keep struggling forward for what we have not yet achieved as a people...Our Constitution is only a blueprint for the opportunity to be free but we have to understand how to use our citizenship to maintain our freedoms and then DO SO. We set freedoms in motion as America's people, using  knowledge to make choices worthy of such a chance.

“Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.”
“There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.”
“The most important thing to remember is this: To be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become.”
“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”
“Herein lies the tragedy of the age:
Not that men are poor, - all men know something of poverty.
Not that men are wicked, - who is good?
Not that [wo]men are ignorant, - what is truth?
Nay, but that [wo]men know so little of [wo]men.”  ([] brackets added)

About the Author: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancy-j-bell-85523130?trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile