A new blogger, a new me

Hey fam - First let me apologize for being AWOL lately. I wish I could say that its simply a result of me being ridiculously busy. Although I have been, without a doubt (New Orleans, New York, Denver, Oakland, etc.), the real reason that I haven't logged on is because...drumroll please...the blog intimidated me. There, I said it. See, when I speak, I rely on passion. Talking about politics and social justice and the world around me is so much easier than throwing myself into a written world dominated - much like mainstream media - by snide, liberal white men (and this "world" that I'm referring to is the progressive political blogosphere). I would write and be riddled with self-doubt, so much so that when one of my posts was "discovered" by a group of my political peers online, I was mortified and did not log back on for nearly two months. 

Although thoughts, observation, commentary and recommendations flood my mind on a daily basis, popping open my laptop and putting fingers to keys has always been a challenge for me. I struggle with how to make my blog something that I would actually read...and therein lied the problem... and the solution. I am not Matt Yglesias. I am not Ezra Klein. Nor do I want to be. I am not all political, or all cutlural, or all black, or all woman, or all young and trying to find the voice of my blog reminded me that a category just won't work. I am a full woman who believes that politics are both policy and culture...that everyday injustices are found not just in state legislatures and prisons but in movie theatres and ipods and fashion magazines. Because injustice in all of these areas is what put out that beautiful fire that Sonia Sanchez talks about in her poem (one of my favorites)  "Catch the Fire":  

Where is our beautiful fire that gave light to the world? The fire of pyramids; The fire that burned through the holes of slaveships and made us breath; The fire that made guts into chitterlings; The fire that took rhythms and made jazz; The fire of sit-ins and marches that made us jump boundaries and barriers; The fire that took street talk and sounds and made righteous imhotep raps. Where is your fire, the torch of life full of Nzingha and Nat Turner and Garvey and Du Bois and Fannie Lou Hamer and Martin and Malcolm and Mandela. 

Well I believe that the answer is right here in this generation. I believe that I and my peers are a spark in that beautiful fire, and that my blog doesn't need to be the Huffington Post to show it. 

So from now on, the posts on this blog can be culture and political and public and personal and earnest and cynical and long and short and wordy and pictoral and whatever else they need to be to show the potential, and the hope, and the righteous anger and the hypocrisy and the frustration and the silliness and the innovation and the reality of the America that I see and the journey that we are walking through together in this next phase of American history. 

So welcome to the re/launch. And thanks for reading.