Signal Boost - Series

Signal Boost Project - I am sick of the white supremacists getting too much airtime. I want to signal boost the lives of people of color and Jews to combat white supremacy. I want to do this to push myself to learn more, and to do it through more than just listening to amazing podcasts. This project is mainly for me, but if you get something out of it great. But if you're pressed for time, don't read my blog. Instead please explore some of my favorite podcasts: Another Round with Heben and Tracy - created by BuzzFeeed (two Black Women interview amazing people and their podsquad puts together a fabulous Newsletter - read that instead); Code Switch on NPR with Gene Dempsy (Black Male) and Shereen Marisol Meraji (" a native Californian with family roots in Puerto Rico and Iran"). These Podcasts, along with their guests will say smarter things than I ever will.

Who am I?
If you somehow stumble across this blog and you are not one of my friends who found it because I mentioned it on Facebook, allow me to tell you enough about myself so you can understand where this project is coming from.

In the wake of election and particularly the rise of white supremacists being granted far too much airtime I have wondered what I can do. I have been passionate about social justice issues for as long as I can remember. Despite being white, I have also been aware of the festering problem of white supremacists groups. I read some of the Turner Diaries in high school - I cannot remember why, just that the overall project was about how this was horrifying and they were based in the PNW, where
I'm from, so any notion that racism was a Southern Problem was completely shattered).

In high school, we had a section of "hicks" that believed they should be allowed to fly the confederate flag in their trucks pretending it was some sort of "state's rights" statement. They refused to listen to people telling them how uncomfortable and how unsafe it made them.

In college, I took Women As Revolutionaries in college and fell in love with Angela Davis. I took minority Women Playwrights and fell in love with the way that art can connect us for a moment in the lives of those who are different from us and connect us to our overall humanity. I remember learning about intersectional feminism and altered the motto that thread it's way through my women's college from remembering to always ask, "Where are the women?" to always asking "Where are the women of color?"

I have had children in my life who are kids of color. I have realized that if I am going to buy books for my nephew, nieces, or step kids that I cannot just show up at a book store, I have to go to library book sales (okay, I love library book sales, so this is only a hardship because I've never been a prior planner), I have to go online. I have to do research.

Having been married to a Jewish woman and her having the most amazing little Black boy, I also learned that world is organized for straight haired people like myself. People would literally stop my ex-wife to ask her about what products she used. Even in all my attempts at being woke, I never had an understanding of the daily issues of not having the products for your body/hair readily available. One of those moments where the ivory tower part of my mind got better context. I had read cases about Black Women not being able to proceed with an employment discrimination case because of how they wore their hair (braids) and understood that it was a biased decision to say that black men couldn't do it and white women couldn't do it, so it couldn't violate non-discrimination laws to say that black women couldn't do it, but I never understood just how complicated hair can be on a personal level.

I heard a judge speak at an event once, she was a woman of color. She said that it isn't that people of color on the bench make better legal decisions, it's simply that they have a better understanding of a different set of facts and you can only properly apply the law when you fully understand the facts. I cannot understand the facts by living any different experience. I can however, work hard to educate myself about the lives and struggles of others.

That is the reason for this project. Signal Boost is going to be a project where I do 365 blogs (I'm not saying a year's worth of blogs, because I may not do it every day, life happens, but I want to do what would be a years worth of blogs).  The focus of the blogs is going to be to learn more about people and organizations that do work for racial and social justice. The focus is going to be on people of color and Jewish people. To do one thing that continues to push me to never stop working on myself and to add at least one more idea in the market place of ideas to make it so racism and antisemitism are drowned out. So that ideas of social justice and equality rise to the top and stay there.

I have also added a page to keep track of Podcasts, Books, Movies, etc. that I would like to signal boost. You can find that page here.