You say you want a revolution, well you know we all want to change the world.

My annoyance right now stems from the idea of leadership, and how my definition of it has changes vastly everyday. On the one end, I wanted to believe I was a leader. I do my part as a teacher and motivator for my kids, and even the students who’ve graduated and tell me how much their lives have changed as a result of my teaching. That’s all well and good.

Yet, I’m at a struggle with the term leadership because unfortunately, we often have people in leadership positions who are more concerned with how they look than the actual cause, and that can only spell disaster for our movement. Everyone can instantly point to the very top like Dubya and Co., whose company seems to get smaller by the semester. It’s bad enough his party often complains about the lower class being lazy; their leader takes vacations like they’re going out of style.

I even throw shade at people like Al Sharpton for his backing of Bill O’Reilly of all people. I’m having a hard time with the idea that he’s so ingrained in the history of the African Diaspora that it’s like the man can diss everyone but Malcolm and Martin and still be a point of discussion.

After all, the younger version of himself, along with Jesse Jackson, Nikki, Lennon, Gil-Scott, Cesar, Che, and the like all call us back to a time when people really looked at themselves and decided to make a conscious decision to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others. My girl once said we should be ashamed at the complacency we’ve reached in our society. Yet, that self-sacrifice isn’t always a prosperous journey: some of these very leaders came to the point where they gave in to their own vices, thinking they had lost their souls after so many losses.

So in some ways, I guess it’s only right that we have a form of revolutionary talk that’s self-aggrandizing. It’s easy if you don’t have to do much to look revolutionary, speak it, dress it, or play the part, so long as you don’t get hurt or it doesn’t interfere with your business, whether that business is women or profit. If you could write a poem about how you are the conduit to the aforementioned greats, get a bunch of points from random people not based on quality but performance, and become popular all over America for it, wouldn’t you? If you could write a blog about how evil Republicans are, win a bunch of web awards, and continuously point at how revolutionary you are, couldn’t you? If you could sit down and spit blurbs with a media head so you’re made into the saving face of a major incident, would you take that chance?

This isn’t to say that anyone with communication skills isn’t tempted to try it. I’ll admit to having forgotten my purpose for writing sometimes, but that’s only led to trouble. In my former weblog community, that’s exactly what happened. Many of us were a little more concerned about comments and responses than thorough feedback and honest writing. Not to say that weblogs should be these awesome pieces of literature, but I do think they need to be fresh and real.

That died though, and now no one’s writing as much for it anymore. And a lot of the writers who I considered thorough either left or just stopped blogging. The movement I thought was building up there slowly drifted, because there was more concern about rank and pomp than real dialogue. So in this new age of communication, I wonder how much more concerned we are with the actual movement we’re trying to create instead of rankings, listings, and widgets, for the only purpose that serves is really ephemeral. A real revolution will come from the peoples’ hearts and minds.

Until then, peace is what I’m after more than anything. The road to the revolution is paved with good intentions, too, but too many people are quick to dishonor the bodies that went with it.

… because you know it’s gonna be, alright …

jose, who’s honestly disenchanted with a lot, but I keep on keeping on …

p.s. – Check my “about me” page. If you know me personally, it might even be about you.