Mass Alliance to Reform CORI (MARC)

MASS ALLIANCE TO REFORM CORI (MARC) invites you on Thursday, November 3rd at 6:30 to Haley House in Dudley Square (Roxbury, MA).

In the past 3 months MARC's work resulted in:

• City of Boston passed an ordinance requiring all entities doing business with the city (50,000 employers!) to adopt fair CORI hiring practices or their contracts will be cancelled!
  
• City of Cambridge unanimously passed ordinance (similar to Boston) requiring city vendors to adopt fair CORI hiring practices
  
• Boston City Council unanimously passed a CORI Reform Resolution urging the state legislature to reform CORI
  
• Development of MARC locals in Brockton, South Boston, Chelsea, Amherst, and cities and towns across the state
  
• Organized a major conference bringing together legislators, social service provider and folks with CORI to lay groundwork for statewide campaign...
  

SO, WHERE ARE WE GOING FROM HERE? Join us on Thursday night and help develop and become part of the strategy that will win CORI reform!

Drama. Don't Start None. Won't Be None.

The movie was aiight while still being kinda wack, but What's The Worst That Could Happen are some truly scary words. So in the midst of trying to make some moves, the Mazda got towed tonight. And for some good awfulk reason, the geniuses that come into the Boston area near the Fens will end up towing your shT all the way to Charlestown. Fuqing Charlestown?! You've got to be kidding me, son. Add to this the fact that while the piece of shT car is on its last legs and i am heavily contemplating getting rid of the bTch, sis (BOS) has been using it. It works out on both ends, she pays for gas and whatever tickets she gets and doesn;t have to worry about car notes or isurance. Me? I get semi-on-call child care assistance. Aunties come in handy, yo. Except when they're retarded. And yes, BostonSis has a tendency to relapse. Man I tell ya...I won't even let this even be about women drivers. She's just an anomaly. I can't even explain it. I'm still waiting for basketball season to start and for me to show up and see her suited up for the first game like 'Surprise! I was just fuqing wit ya!" But alas, that scenario seems less and less likely. But hey, she's about to graduate soon, so I get to get down wit the getdown and throw a party like I used to a few years back on some legendary status shT. I'll miss the relative in close proximity, but I damn sure won't miss these relapses. I just hope the retards in Charlestown didn't do any extra damage to my whip. I think I'm gonna have to make a collage and start archiving all of the parking violations I've amassed over the last eight years. Geesh. I need a drink.

Each day's another chance to do the things I could've...

Done the day before, but I didn't and I known I should've
So I say a prayer for the gone for gooders
Who left this world, then kiss my girl "good mornin', shuga"
Another sunrise, and as much as I would love
To roll over on you I cannot do it because
The good Lord, I prayed to him
And he said, "N!ggaz is listening now"
So I better have something to say to 'em
-Phonte, Beautiful Morning

This quip from my man Phonte and some other mentions of bourgeois brothers got me to thinking about DuBois' notion of the talented tenth and how it corresponds to modern times. There are few folks who take the late 80's t-shirt "i am my brother's keeper' to heart. Of course, the phrase was not coined in those times, but if you feel me, then you feel. You feel me? So anyways, if you ever rocked one of those shirts or the malcom/martin/malcolm/mandela joints then come and take walk with me. take a walk with me. see what only i can see... [can you name that tune?]

How do you best balance life's tug-of-war when faced with questions of morality and integrity. Do you 'go for broke' irregardless of risk or do you hedge your bets on the hopes that someone else will falter first and you will then be better prepared having learned from their mistakes and missteps?

The LP pictured above is a bona-fide classic in my book. You probably will never hear Chubby Chubb or Funk Flex drop 'em as bombs though. Just To Get A Rep is one of illest street parable storytelling tracks ever. No frills, just some real shT. When I said that hip-hop was my pops, I ain't lying, yo. This here music served as my conscience and held me down plenty of times in the face of strife, struggle, and stress. So I find it amusing when you see it being pilfered by muthafuqas who themselves seem to be getting played by a larger demon. Cash may in fact Rule Everything Around you, but not Me, dunny. And yes, that is the same Phonte from Little Brother tha I quoted. yes, the same Little Brother I've been pumping for a few months now. It's just that real though. Sometimes, you just cannot go with the flow, but instead have to go against the grain, even when folks try to make it seem that you were originally going against the grain, but it was still the same ole bullShT. Feel me? That's why I can dig it when Phonte says he'd rather get one mic in The Source than three. And I'll be damned if the logic don't make sense. BTW, that article is a bit old, but I just read it yesterday, so oh well. So today's moral? Make up for lost ground by staying on your Ps and Qs and making good on pursuing your passion.

I never sleep, cuz I may never wake up

Just zoning out tonight; listening to some good music and trying to bang out some web work at the same time. Plus, I'm preparing for the first round of some interviews we are conducting starting bright and early tom...this morning. And we already have one position filled. So yippee. It still doesn;t mean I'll have any less work to do. And let me let you in on a little secret. Being a self-employed consultant is and has been such a great experience thus far. The schedule flexbility is truly a keeper, but of course, with the good comes the bad. As much as I like spontaneity and all that jazz, there are definitely some stability issues that I am simply not able to stomach much.

Just enjoying some gems like Cormega's above-quoted "R U My N!gga" and Akrobatik's "U Got It."`Just trying to get my mind right for the other four days of this week. Hopefully, the road to pderdition won't be as bumby as I'm anticipating it will be. Plus, I need to think of something creative for the midget and I to do tonight. Maybe we'll hit up a pub a throw one back for former Red Sox GM Theo Epstein, who got done in on some foul shT. I wonder if Theo was listening to Cormega priot to that final meeting before he backed off...