I just had a very refreshing conversation with my brother Erik Bothazy, who most of the natives know as Preach. I originally called him to get a feel for the energy in South St. Louis since #ZemirBegic was murdered. That tragic situation has been on my mind and I just wanted to educate myself not so much as to what happened, but what the reaction has been. Ive seen many comments on threads from unfamiliar faces; mostly outsiders asking where the #Ferguson protesters are, media coverage, etc. I just needed to talk to someone I know personally who is closer to that part of town than I am. What ended up happening was that we had over an hour long conversation about a number of topics that Im going to list here and try to revisit more in depth later, separately. At the end of our phone call I said In a way I feel like we wasted this conversation on just our own ears. This is dialogue the whole world should be having. My memory is trash but these are some of the topics we discussed: - The murder in South St. Louis, the reaction from the community, and how it correlates to whats been happening in Ferguson - The relationship between residents of North St. Louis and South St. Louis and each ones perception of the other - The consequences of a race war/having a mob mentality - How St. Louis was the best place for the Mike Brown murder to happen because of how well-suited we were to respond to it - The + and - of social media - Musicians using their gift, stepping up to be the voice of the people - Voices of hate being louder than voices of love, providing the deception that hate is the majority - The need for people to give more positive feedback and be less passive, to overcome the negative feedback - How those last 2 topics affect what the media shows us - How classifying people by ethnicity, birthplace, etc is practiced less and its becoming more about our character and mentality - The new minority - How people generally wait to see someone else take action before they take action themselves - The many examples of humans being egocentric without realizing it - Friendships lost and friendships gained since the events in Ferguson - How division can be necessary in some circumstances, as long as its done by character and mentality, and not age, race, gender, etc - The need for us to spend more time having conversations with like-minded people than we do arguing with strangers Its going to be hard breaking some of these up because they transitioned into each other seamlessly, but theres no way I could hold your attention long enough to get you to read it in one sitting. We thought about doing a video but Preach and I only see each other once or twice a year if that because were so busy so that would never get done lol. I love that dude though. Im looking forward to getting into these in more detail.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 03:50:45 +0000
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