Thembi Speaks

Go ahead. Redeem Your Gifts!

Diane Jordan-Grizzard — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 04:01:41 +0000

A 2010 consumer report highlighted that $8 billion was lost in unredeemed gift cards. Over half of those consumers surveyed indicated that they did not have time to redeem their gift card. The next highest group said they forgot they had the gift card, followed by those whose gift card was lost or expired.

After hearing this story on national public radio, I rifled through my collection of gift cards hoping than none were expired. Whew! I was safe. At that precise moment of financial relief the metaphor hit me. What is the numeric value of unredeemed, forgotten, lost, and expired talents and gifts embodied in the men, women, and children in our communities?

One thing I know for sure is that a dream and a calling require an answer. Likewise, an unused, forgotten, lost or expired talent is as much a waste in our communities as is condemned tenement housing.

There is need for change at the very core of Cincinnati urban communities, a change in how we think and see the possibility of cultivating the untapped and extraordinary potential that lies in every man, woman, and child.

If consumer reports can quantify $8 billion in lost unredeemed gift cards, I am audacious enough to believe that there is $16 billion in lost, unredeemed talents and gifts across Cincinnati’s urban core.

In this unleashed potential, there are homeowners business owners; there are youth organizers and mentors, football coaches and Girl Scout leaders. There are students eager to learn, high school and college graduates, and quality child care in the form of seniors. There is employment and health. There are concerned, voting, and tax-paying citizens.

This quote by E.E. Cummings speaks to the opportunity we have in helping others to see their own value:“Many do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that something deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, and sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”

On February 17-19 at the Millennium Hotel in Cincinnati, CoreChange will engage citizens from every walk of life in the possibility of a future in Cincinnati’s urban core where talents and gifts are unleashed and potential is redeemed. Log on to http://www.corechangecincy.com/ to register for all three days. I’ll see you there!

The Art of Listening

Diane Jordan-Grizzard — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:02:03 +0000

By Diane Jordan-Grizzard

Of all the lessons I learned during my years in Liberia, West Africa, the art of listening is the lesson that was most transformative.

In Ohio I was used to the night urban sounds of barking dogs, blaring automobile horns, and sirens. The deafening sound of the 17-year cicada brought fear and dread.

However, on my first night in Liberia, I lay restless listening to a deep, dark quiet that was chilling. It was then that I realized that the urban noise of my familiar was like a strange chorus that had actually lulled me to sleep.

The lesson came the second night as I lay in bed listening into the night at the sound of a mating bullfrog and later a distant drummer. There are sounds in the still of a rural African night just as there are in the bustle of an urban city. I simply had to turn off the expectation of one sound in order to hear the possibility of another.

It wasn’t exactly instantaneous, but I soon understood that when we are in conversation with others, there is often anticipation on the part of the listener about what the speaker’s next word or sentence will be. One of my friends calls this practice ‘already listening’ meaning the listener is already listening for the space to start talking whether or not the speaker is finished.

Listening is an imperative for positive change, and it is an art. I’ve been studying Appreciative Inquiry as a method of exploring and discovering individual and collective strengths and hearing the dreams of possibilities that exist in communities. Just as I had to retune my ear in a foreign land in order to anticipate the possibility of a new and different sound, I am practicing the art of listening deeply (as if into the night) for that profoundly new dream or vision that someone is called to share. Join us in Cincinnati February 17-19, 2012 as we bring together residents and leaders who don’t know each other to create bold new solutions that will bring prosperity and health to our region. Learn more about CoreChange at http://www.corechangecincy.com/. Read more about Appreciative Inquiry and David L. Cooperrider at http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/intro/IPOD_draft_8-26-10.pdf.

Egypt’s March of Millions by Diane Jordan Grizzard

Diane Jordan-Grizzard — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 12:14:07 +0000

As I watch the March of Millions in Egypt’s Liberation Square, I wonder what risks you and I might take for what we believe. This perspective does not advocate one political view or another about Egypt. There are lessons, however, that we can garner from the range of doctors, engineers, paupers, the sick and the well who are gathering in unison to cry out for change.

In the documentary, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, produced by Abigail Disney, we learn that Leyma Gbowee, an ordinary woman who makes a living in Liberia by selling in the market, awakens from sleep with a dream for peace. She can’t believe this dream is a message for her to lead a peace movement for she was uneducated and had never organized anyone nor led a movement of any kind.

Yet, after fourteen years of civil war, torture and death for more than 200 thousand Liberians, rape of boys and girls as a weapon of war, and the conscription of child soldiers all orchestrated by president Charles Taylor, Leyma dreamed of peace. Her vision of peace touched the spirit of other women–Muslim, Christian, and those of tribal ideologies and beliefs–who were also sick and tired of being sick and tired of the war and the loss of their future. Together these women banned together first with a warning to their husbands, “No Peace, No Sex.” Then they peacefully confronted Charles Taylor with one request: Stop the war.

The peaceful demonstration led by Leyma and her band of women ended the civil war and ushered in the first democratically elected female president of any African country, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia. Let’s hope that the uniform cry for change in Egypt also ends in peaceful change.

To read more about Leyma, log on to http://www.praythedevilbacktohell.com/.

To read more about the history of Liberia, log on to http://www.thembispeaks.com.

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Naomi Campbell to Testify in Charles Taylor Trial

Diane Jordan-Grizzard — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 03:22:17 +0000

Charles Taylor was president of Liberia from 1997 to 2003. As soon as he exiled from Liberia in 2003, President George W. Bush sent American troops to Liberia to help bring peace to the region. It didn’t work, through, because the country continued its downward spiral of violence and suffering until Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became the first democratically elected female President.

Charles Taylor seems to bring trouble to everyone he influences. He is embroiled in what promises to be a two-year trial at The Hague for eleven counts of war crimes against humanity in Liberia, and other serious violations of international humanitarian law during the time he was warlord and president.

In 2009 his own son, Charles Emmanuel (Chucky Taylor) was sentenced to 97 years in prison. The trial of American born Chucky Taylor marks the first test of a 1994 torture law that makes it a crime for a US citizen to commit torture overseas.

Today, prosecutors summoned Naomi Campbell to testify whether Charles Taylor presented her with a large uncut diamond. Prosecutors say Ms. Campbell’s gem is a ‘blood diamond’ mined in war zones in order to fund insurgencies and crimes carried out by rebels in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

I lived in Liberia from 1979-1984, a time when I fell in love with the land and the people. We’ve seen the incredible acts of cruelty exacted upon the people by warlords like Charles Taylor. Where are the incredible acts of generosity and kindness by everyday people that will restore this land to its original greatness?

All Hail Liberia, Hail!

Diane Jordan-Grizzard — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 11:54:12 +0000

Today, Liberia celebrates 163 years of independence. It is Africa’s first independent nation. However, there is irony in the fact that free blacks from America, financed by the American Colonization Society, ‘settled’ Liberia and dominated the indigenous people for the majority of those independent years. There is also irony in the fact that the first eight Liberian presidents were American-born blacks.

The dominance of those known as Americo-Liberians created a century of class division that became so rooted and oppressive that in 1980 the people rose up to overthrow then President William R. Tolbert in a bloody military coup. I was living in Liberia at that time. I experienced the country transitioning from a beautiful paradise to a community of conflict as Men of the Soil tried to establish government for the people. Unfortunately, Liberia devolved into twenty years of savage conflict and civil war, which was primarily funded by blood diamonds.

There is irony, too, in the fact that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, once jailed while staring down the barrel of an AK47, emerged to become Liberia’s and Africa’s first female Head of State. The people I knew and loved in Liberia are resilient. With the force of reckoning that President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, an Iron Lady, brings Liberia will be restored to its original greatness. We are already seeing signs of reconciliation, recovery, and restoration.

To learn more about Liberia, log onto www.thembispeaks.com or purchase FREE SOIL by Diane Jordan-Grizzard.

Liberia is Full of Iron Ladies

Diane Jordan-Grizzard — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 02:25:13 +0000

A March 5, 2010 New York Times article The Nation Full of Strong Women describes Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in 1980 when she was held by rebel soldiers who vowed to bury her alive. She pled for her life believing there was one common denominator that would reach the soul of her captors. The then forty-something Johnson-Sirleaf said, “You can’t do this. Think of your mother.”

After the 1980 coup d’état that killed President William R. Tolbert and thirteen of his cabinet, Liberia devolved into a bloody 14-year civil war. However, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf emerged victorious in 2006 and became Africa’s first democratically elected female head of state. Liberians call her Iron Lady.

The strength of the human spirit when it has had enough, like iron sharpening iron, produces hundreds of Iron Ladies. Mothers grew tired of watching their children die of hunger and dysentery. They wept when their elementary-aged sons brandished AK-47’s and joined the rebel forces. In 2002, Christian and Muslim women banded together. “We must shame the mothers of the marauders into shaming their sons, into demanding an end to the marauding, an end to the rape, and an end to the atrocities. We must refuse sex with our husbands until the violence and civil strife ends.” The Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace created a peace movement with clear vision, persistence, and patience, and ended the Second Liberian Civil War.

To learn more about Liberia’s complicated history and read excerpts of FREE SOIL, go to www.thembispeaks.com

Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, visits Washington, DC.

Diane Jordan-Grizzard — Sat, 29 May 2010 10:27:57 +0000

African and Liberian first female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, met with President Barak Obama in Washington, DC May 28, 2010. In their meeting, President Obama ‘reinforced the US continued relationship of close friends and longstanding partners’ as Liberia celebrates its seventh year of peace under the leadership of president Sirleaf’. In my breakout novel, Free Soil, I discuss the longstanding partnership between Liberia and America.

The ties that bind Liberia to America began in the early 1800s when two opposing groups created the American Colonization Society. The first group, abolitionists wanted to free slaves and their descendants in America and offer them the opportunity to return to Africa. The second group, slave owners wanted to export free people of color because they feared insurrections by free men (such as Denmark Vesey and John Brown) who fought for the liberation of slaves. Both groups agreed that free blacks would never successfully assimilate into American society. Over a twenty-year period, the American Colonization Society exported up to twenty thousand men and women to Liberia. Because of these beginnings, Liberia is often referred as America’s Stepchild.

Free Soil by Diane Jordan-Grizzard and available in bookstores July 15, is a haunting and gripping exploration into Liberia’s complicated history of free blacks from America who settled in Liberia, and the 1980 coup that ended 160 years of settler dominance. Free Soil explains the legacy of settler dominance and the road President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf must travel to establish stability and peace in Liberia.

Thembi Speaks

Diane Jordan-Grizzard — Thu, 27 May 2010 13:33:53 +0000

Visit the official site of thembispeaks.com at www.thembispeaks.com. Sign up on the contact list to receive regular updates of book tour and signings of Diane Jordan-Grizzard’s breakout novel, FREE SOIL, which releases July 14.

Do you have hope in your eyes?

Diane Jordan-Grizzard — Fri, 07 May 2010 04:49:52 +0000

A colleague recently described the 17.4-mile ride from her suburban home to her urban school job. She drove away from the comfort of family, her sense of security and safety. At the 10-mile mark of her drive, the houses seemed built on top of each other. On the street of the school where she would work, she saw broken bottles and a rusted swing set. In the park, a man sipped from a brown paper bag at the foot of a slide that tilted. Her first client, a kindergartner whose sticky fingers left residue on her hand, was referred because he had caused more classroom disruption than the teacher could handle. He had gotten himself to the security of school that morning when his mother didn’t return home after her night out.

What impressed me about this story is not my colleague’s awareness of the distance between her world and the child’s, but her ability to close that distance by seeing the child’s possibility and reflecting that possibility back to him. Yes, she cried inside, took him to the cafeteria, and called authorities. She also affirmed him, hugged his stickiness, and she made sure that he saw hope in her eyes. She tried to burn that hope into his mind’s eyes so that he could repeatedly glimpse it, for where there is hope, there is possibility.

Do you have hope in your eyes?

Is it possible for local news to lead with what is right?

Diane Jordan-Grizzard — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 04:35:33 +0000

I simply don’t want the top stories on the eleven o’clock news to be about murder. The murder of a future leader, teacher, social or construction worker who is somebody’s father, mother, brother, or son happens with such frequency that it is no longer news. I’d rather stick needles into my eyes than to watch another family anguish over their loss. Their loss is also mine, ours. I don’t sleep well with needles in my eyes nor with the anguish I feel over the helplessness of families who can’t seem to circle their wagons to protect their streets, sons and daughters.

What I need from local news are examples of all that is going well in our city: the people who provide leadership and service, the kids who are doing well in school, and the parents who care for and nurture them. Where are the kids whose pants are not on the ground?

Instead of inundating us with all that is wrong, what if local television news changed its format to lead with what is right? I could get a peaceful night’s sleep and wake up knowing exactly where to add my talents. In the meantime, I am curling up with a great book at eleven o’clock. What about you?