I made it. I dropped my daughter off for her last day of school, and then fought my way through the insane morning traffic, against all odds, like I’ve done every day since September, until I arrived safely in my very own driveway. Making it home every school day is always such a welcomed relief, as school zones in Los Angeles are the most dangerous places to be in in the mornings. It’s such perverse irony - children on their way to school in the mornings endangered by the very people who are supposed to care the most about them. I drop my daughter off at the safest time of all – before the gates open. I’m one of the first parents to arrive and I’m one of the first to get the hell out of there, just before the daily insanity starts: Moms who are late, talking on their cell phones, cutting people off, making three point turns in the middle of the busy street, letting their kids out on the opposite side of the street and then waving them into traffic (ignoring all posted signs that say don’t do that), dads who text while driving with people everywhere, cars speeding through stop signs, inconsiderate jerks parking their cars right in front of neighbors’ driveways, blocking them in. The list goes on and on. It’s the same story at every school.
School zones, which should be trusted safe zones, are dangerous in the mornings, because of parents. They’re more dangerous than the last call bar flies who hit the freeways after closing time at 2 a.m. because there are so many of them.
A reasonable person could deduce that anyone caught in the act would be ashamed of themselves, but quite the contrary. This is Los Angeles, where people look out for Number One, and all bad behavior can be rationalized or blamed on someone else. It’s nuts. Bad parents are rarely ever confronted. If they’re so willing to blatantly break the law and put lives in danger (including their own children), what do you think they’d do or say to anyone who actually calls them out? I’ve seen that happen and it never ends well for the confronter. I remember watching the evening news a few years ago where a local news crew parked themselves outside of an elementary school in an affluent neighborhood (I mention this only because the elite are so big on appearances) and filmed parents breaking one law after another. When confronted, on camera, many of these parents got so defensive they threatened the reporters and camera operators! One of them was still in her pajamas!
The other irony in all of this is that you rarely ever see any cops in these danger zones. It’s a well known fact that school zones are extremely dangerous. So where are the cops? Are they making drug busts and chasing gang members at 8 a.m.? With the city in such dire financial straits, I don’t get why the cops aren’t planted at every school site, writing tickets left and right, bringing in lots of money for the city first thing in the morning while keeping our school zones safe. Seems like a no brainer to me, but then again, this is Los Angeles.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Let Someone Else Do It
When I started a nonprofit organization twelve years ago, I wondered to myself, “Why is it that this has never been done before? There is an undeniable need in my community, a sleepy little town of over one million people. Surely this has already been tried, and if so, why did it fail?” I feared that I was entering into some forbidden territory where nobody dared go, because it was too dangerous and impossible to achieve. Was I naïve? What was it that everybody else knew that I was doomed to learn?
It's been a long time since I asked myself those questions, but I know the answer. It wasn’t that what I was attempting to do was an impossible, unrealistic dream or not feasible. It’s that in my region of over one million people, the average resident is perfectly content to “Let someone else do it”.
I live in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California, where people stay in their houses and venture out to make a living, get their kids to school, or go to the grocery store. We don’t have a vibrant civic life or cultural center where people gather, appreciate good food, company, art, music, or learn anything new. It doesn’t exist. There is no reason for people to leave their houses, and the average Valley resident likes it that way. Even the celebrities. They move out here so they can be left alone and only leave their houses to further their careers (their housekeepers or personal assistants go to the grocery store for them). After Los Angeles became a boom town in the earlier part of the 20th century (oil, land development and the movie industry), the farmlands of the San Fernando Valley got gobbled up by tract housing, a chunk at a time, to make way for a new suburbia for Los Angeles. The original homeowners of the average home bought in to a suburban lifestyle where the people matched the houses – they were all the same. The subdivisions of the Valley haven’t changed much (except for gigantic mansions that have been built along the edges), but the demographics have changed dramatically. Original homeowners are getting older and passing away. The public schools at the end of the block where all the kids in the neighborhood went are now over crowded with children from people from all around the world. There are certain zip codes in the Valley (in areas where the homes are worth more than $600,000) where kids still go to the neighborhood public school, because the parents there have done enough fundraising on their own to turn their average school into a decent school. If they’re not satisfied with that school, and they can afford it, then they send their kids to private schools. The rest of us poor schmucks are left to apply to magnets, charters, or hope for open enrollment to get out of sending our kids to the neighborhood school. It’s not a fair or balanced system. But it’s the only system there is.
My oldest child attended our neighborhood school from kindergarten through fifth grade. There were two blonde kids in his entire kindergarten class and he was one of them. I was fearful of this school when we first moved into the neighborhood, because I paid way too much attention to the negative news reports and what everybody was saying at Mommy and Me and at my son’s preschool. Los Angeles moms are neurotic! The school system has made us this way. The message I got, loud and clear, is that good mothers do not send their children to LAUSD schools.
After snooping around our neighborhood school when my son was about four, I started to let go of the paranoia and started thinking for myself. My husband and I decided to give that school a shot. Contrary to popular, paranoid belief, I didn’t subscribe to the theory that every moment spent in kindergarten was going to determine the quality of the rest of his education or life. It was only kindergarten and if we didn’t like what was going on there, we’d pull him out. Seemed like a reasonable, sane plan, and a relief from the frantic Mommy Talk.
Soon after my son entered kindergarten, I started volunteering in the PTA and teaching art in his classroom. I learned right away that this school, and all schools, were dying for parent and community support, but that they had all been abandoned. They were left alone to try and educate a diverse group of children, with limited funding in a dysfunctional system, set inside a lifeless, disinterested community. That really bothered me. I could see that I could make a significant contribution to this little school by volunteering to teach art. The school was delighted to receive my help.
Soon after I started teaching art in my son’s classroom, I was approached by other teachers who asked if I’d teach some lessons in their classroom. How could I say no? But how was I going to be able to afford the supplies, etc., on my own? At the same time, I learned from my involvement in PTA that if schools didn’t have a PTA, their kids couldn’t go on any field trips. I was so naïve as a kindergarten parent I thought that buses came with schools and if you wanted to go somewhere you just called up the Bus Barn and they sent one out. But no, that’s not how it works. Everything costs in LAUSD – usually triple what you’d pay outside of the system, because everything is padded to maintain the top heavy status quo (a well known fact to most people who had been around, but a shocking revelation to me as a new parent). It didn’t seem morally right, or even believable, and I was outraged.
So I started doing some research on what I could do to raise money to purchase supplies for me to volunteer teaching art at my son’s school, and what I could do to raise money to take the kids on field trips to art museums and other cultural institutions (we have a lot in LA). I didn’t want to propose such trips to our tiny PTA because it was already committed to funding buses for every grade level for traditional field trips that enhance an “academic curriculum”. I may have been a naive kindergarten parent, but I wasn’t naïve about how people viewed the arts – they are the first thing to go when money is tight and I wanted to figure out a way to make these things happen without being weighed against other needs when money runs out.
What I learned, in my initial research, was that I should probably get set up as a nonprofit organization so that I wouldn’t have to spend most of my time “earning” and running a small business. And since the children that I hoped to serve didn’t have any money, it didn’t look like that would be possible anyway – I didn’t want to charge kids for art, nor did I believe parents or schools should have to pay for it. The arts should be offered in public school along with all other subjects. If parents were expected to pay, that would mean that some kids would get left out, most likely the kids who needed it the most. So I needed to learn how to set up a nonprofit corporation (501 c 3) so that all kids could benefit from an arts program, without burdening the school or their parents with financial requests.
I talked to a number of people who had already done it and then I purchased a copy of the NoLo Press’s The California Nonprofit Corporation Kit and did everything it said, a step at a time. I found a fiscal receiver, opened up a bank account and started fundraising. I learned very quickly how to write grant proposals and conduct various fundraisers. I taught the art lessons myself, adding 100 new kids every year (a new grade level) at my son’s school, fine tuning the curriculum that I wrote. As the money came in, the programs expanded and in a few years we adopted another school, and then another school. We put on festivals and art shows that benefited the entire Valley. We donated supplies to many other new schools and partnered with almost every arts organization in Los Angeles along the way. Los Angeles foundations have been the most generous with us – most of our funding has come from them. But our own residents and the business community of the San Fernando Valley? Very, very few have taken an interest in us, or any other local charity, because the average Valley business and eligible individual is not philanthropic. We have a lousy reputation for being civic minded, culturally astute, or community based (except for a few annual galas where the same old people who give to the same, popular causes, get the same old pictures taken and are published in the Daily News). Other regions of Los Angeles have a lower median of income (like portions of the Hollywood area) yet their residents are active in their communities and donate time and money to causes they believe in. Then there are other areas like Pasadena, which are flooded with generous donors who fully understand how critical it is to support education, arts and culture, and many other causes in their community. And it shows. So what’s up with the Valley?
The Valley mentality hasn’t changed much since it was first developed as a post war suburban utopia. The people may have changed, but the “Let someone else do it” attitude is alive and well. The sleepy suburbanites cocoon themselves up in their own little worlds and send their kids anywhere but to the neighborhood school, if they can. Then the large immigrant populations are content to let the neighborhood schools take care of everything and do it all. They don’t support their children’s schools the way they should. The answer to my question twelve years ago “Why hasn’t this been done before?” has to do with priorities. To fight for something, you have to value it first, then you have to make the time for the fight. It’s not enough to say you care about something. That just makes you look good. For communities to be healthy, vibrant and active, we all have to make some sort of personal contribution by doing it ourselves. "Someone else" left the building a long time ago.
It's been a long time since I asked myself those questions, but I know the answer. It wasn’t that what I was attempting to do was an impossible, unrealistic dream or not feasible. It’s that in my region of over one million people, the average resident is perfectly content to “Let someone else do it”.
I live in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California, where people stay in their houses and venture out to make a living, get their kids to school, or go to the grocery store. We don’t have a vibrant civic life or cultural center where people gather, appreciate good food, company, art, music, or learn anything new. It doesn’t exist. There is no reason for people to leave their houses, and the average Valley resident likes it that way. Even the celebrities. They move out here so they can be left alone and only leave their houses to further their careers (their housekeepers or personal assistants go to the grocery store for them). After Los Angeles became a boom town in the earlier part of the 20th century (oil, land development and the movie industry), the farmlands of the San Fernando Valley got gobbled up by tract housing, a chunk at a time, to make way for a new suburbia for Los Angeles. The original homeowners of the average home bought in to a suburban lifestyle where the people matched the houses – they were all the same. The subdivisions of the Valley haven’t changed much (except for gigantic mansions that have been built along the edges), but the demographics have changed dramatically. Original homeowners are getting older and passing away. The public schools at the end of the block where all the kids in the neighborhood went are now over crowded with children from people from all around the world. There are certain zip codes in the Valley (in areas where the homes are worth more than $600,000) where kids still go to the neighborhood public school, because the parents there have done enough fundraising on their own to turn their average school into a decent school. If they’re not satisfied with that school, and they can afford it, then they send their kids to private schools. The rest of us poor schmucks are left to apply to magnets, charters, or hope for open enrollment to get out of sending our kids to the neighborhood school. It’s not a fair or balanced system. But it’s the only system there is.
My oldest child attended our neighborhood school from kindergarten through fifth grade. There were two blonde kids in his entire kindergarten class and he was one of them. I was fearful of this school when we first moved into the neighborhood, because I paid way too much attention to the negative news reports and what everybody was saying at Mommy and Me and at my son’s preschool. Los Angeles moms are neurotic! The school system has made us this way. The message I got, loud and clear, is that good mothers do not send their children to LAUSD schools.
After snooping around our neighborhood school when my son was about four, I started to let go of the paranoia and started thinking for myself. My husband and I decided to give that school a shot. Contrary to popular, paranoid belief, I didn’t subscribe to the theory that every moment spent in kindergarten was going to determine the quality of the rest of his education or life. It was only kindergarten and if we didn’t like what was going on there, we’d pull him out. Seemed like a reasonable, sane plan, and a relief from the frantic Mommy Talk.
Soon after my son entered kindergarten, I started volunteering in the PTA and teaching art in his classroom. I learned right away that this school, and all schools, were dying for parent and community support, but that they had all been abandoned. They were left alone to try and educate a diverse group of children, with limited funding in a dysfunctional system, set inside a lifeless, disinterested community. That really bothered me. I could see that I could make a significant contribution to this little school by volunteering to teach art. The school was delighted to receive my help.
Soon after I started teaching art in my son’s classroom, I was approached by other teachers who asked if I’d teach some lessons in their classroom. How could I say no? But how was I going to be able to afford the supplies, etc., on my own? At the same time, I learned from my involvement in PTA that if schools didn’t have a PTA, their kids couldn’t go on any field trips. I was so naïve as a kindergarten parent I thought that buses came with schools and if you wanted to go somewhere you just called up the Bus Barn and they sent one out. But no, that’s not how it works. Everything costs in LAUSD – usually triple what you’d pay outside of the system, because everything is padded to maintain the top heavy status quo (a well known fact to most people who had been around, but a shocking revelation to me as a new parent). It didn’t seem morally right, or even believable, and I was outraged.
So I started doing some research on what I could do to raise money to purchase supplies for me to volunteer teaching art at my son’s school, and what I could do to raise money to take the kids on field trips to art museums and other cultural institutions (we have a lot in LA). I didn’t want to propose such trips to our tiny PTA because it was already committed to funding buses for every grade level for traditional field trips that enhance an “academic curriculum”. I may have been a naive kindergarten parent, but I wasn’t naïve about how people viewed the arts – they are the first thing to go when money is tight and I wanted to figure out a way to make these things happen without being weighed against other needs when money runs out.
What I learned, in my initial research, was that I should probably get set up as a nonprofit organization so that I wouldn’t have to spend most of my time “earning” and running a small business. And since the children that I hoped to serve didn’t have any money, it didn’t look like that would be possible anyway – I didn’t want to charge kids for art, nor did I believe parents or schools should have to pay for it. The arts should be offered in public school along with all other subjects. If parents were expected to pay, that would mean that some kids would get left out, most likely the kids who needed it the most. So I needed to learn how to set up a nonprofit corporation (501 c 3) so that all kids could benefit from an arts program, without burdening the school or their parents with financial requests.
I talked to a number of people who had already done it and then I purchased a copy of the NoLo Press’s The California Nonprofit Corporation Kit and did everything it said, a step at a time. I found a fiscal receiver, opened up a bank account and started fundraising. I learned very quickly how to write grant proposals and conduct various fundraisers. I taught the art lessons myself, adding 100 new kids every year (a new grade level) at my son’s school, fine tuning the curriculum that I wrote. As the money came in, the programs expanded and in a few years we adopted another school, and then another school. We put on festivals and art shows that benefited the entire Valley. We donated supplies to many other new schools and partnered with almost every arts organization in Los Angeles along the way. Los Angeles foundations have been the most generous with us – most of our funding has come from them. But our own residents and the business community of the San Fernando Valley? Very, very few have taken an interest in us, or any other local charity, because the average Valley business and eligible individual is not philanthropic. We have a lousy reputation for being civic minded, culturally astute, or community based (except for a few annual galas where the same old people who give to the same, popular causes, get the same old pictures taken and are published in the Daily News). Other regions of Los Angeles have a lower median of income (like portions of the Hollywood area) yet their residents are active in their communities and donate time and money to causes they believe in. Then there are other areas like Pasadena, which are flooded with generous donors who fully understand how critical it is to support education, arts and culture, and many other causes in their community. And it shows. So what’s up with the Valley?
The Valley mentality hasn’t changed much since it was first developed as a post war suburban utopia. The people may have changed, but the “Let someone else do it” attitude is alive and well. The sleepy suburbanites cocoon themselves up in their own little worlds and send their kids anywhere but to the neighborhood school, if they can. Then the large immigrant populations are content to let the neighborhood schools take care of everything and do it all. They don’t support their children’s schools the way they should. The answer to my question twelve years ago “Why hasn’t this been done before?” has to do with priorities. To fight for something, you have to value it first, then you have to make the time for the fight. It’s not enough to say you care about something. That just makes you look good. For communities to be healthy, vibrant and active, we all have to make some sort of personal contribution by doing it ourselves. "Someone else" left the building a long time ago.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Artist’s Statement
It’s been about two years since the nonprofit that I started, Arts in Education Aid Council, was punched in the face by the recession. I felt it at work before I felt it at home……. a very big grant that we were counting on came in at 80% less than we expected, which forced us to put on the brakes for our expansion plans. Eighteen months prior to this, the little nonprofit that I started in our family den had grown so much that we had opened an office, hired internal staff to take care of the daily operations, and paid outside consultants to help with fundraising and board development. I had risen within the arts education and nonprofit sectors as a leader in both fields. I felt like Queen of the World, woo-hooing on top of my little mountain, looking forward to growing and adopting more schools so we could turn more kids on to the arts. And then POW!, through no fault of my own, I was sucker punched in the face and knocked off my little mountain, by forces completely outside of my control, all thanks to a heartless, greedy, elite few.
Heartbroken and very pissed off at those who caused the economic collapse, I turned to the one thing that has always sustained me through the dark times of my life: my own art.
For the past eleven years, most of my creative energy and time has gone into kids – raising my own and providing the children of my community with an arts education at no cost to them or their schools. During this time, I painted some, wrote quite a bit, and cartooned a little. Faced with one of the most difficult crises of my life, I knew that the only thing that would get me through it was to get busy and get creative.
My family and I set a goal to visit as many national parks as possible within one year, as cheaply as possible, and I would paint at least one painting from each park. Most of our plans were built around a planned trip to Colorado for my 30 year high school reunion. We had a blast living out of our car as we toured 14 national parks. I did more than paint one painting of each park (I have about 60 canvases total!), and had a wonderful time escaping in my studio to paint subjects that I truly loved, creating lasting memories for myself and my family, while healing myself by relying on my innate talent – the gift of creativity.
Everything that I have been teaching kids for the past 11 years I applied to myself. I can’t go wrong in my studio. This is the only place where I am truly free, where I don’t think about how angry I am at what has happened to education, Los Angeles, the state of California, or our nation. Yes, in my own little funky art studio in my back yard, I am free, relaxed and happy. And now I have a nice body of work to show for all of my released tension. That’s not just good for my artist’s soul, that’s good for my health and state of mind.
And then there is cartooning……my first art love. I started cartooning as a little kid, drawing characters in situations that were totally inappropriate for my age, but made some adults laugh until they cried. This was the ultimate buzz for me as a kid – smart ass validation! I’ve created many different strips over the years. Some of them published and popular, some not. But I’ve always enjoyed doing it, no matter what. I started cartooning our camping and travel adventures, and then I felt compelled to pick up with a strip idea that came to me two years ago, while attending a dry, redundant, long conference for arts leaders. A few of my colleagues are very smart and funny, and I always try and sit with them at these things so we can keep each other entertained with our silly zingers. I have been to a lot of these meetings, but this one gave me a headache. I grew weary of listening to one person after another talk about the same old thing, using “insider language” that the average person doesn’t use. We sounded like a bunch of artsy-fartsy snobs. We finished up with a break out session where we were all given an assignment to think about our purpose as arts leaders. When our facilitator was done pontificating, one of my funny, smart colleagues (who will remain nameless so I don’t incriminate him with my smart ass synopsis at the end of this), said, “Well, I guess we can see now why people don’t think we are any fun”. I busted out laughing, but I was alone. No one else laughed! Everybody at our table was the stuck up museum type (over educated with no sense of humor). And they all spoke Art Speak.
I haven’t gone to many more of those types of gatherings since then. I can’t take it. Things are just way too bad in California to pretend like they are not, and I refuse to show up to any of these things so I can wag my tail and hope that someone will throw me a bone. No, from that moment on, the notes that I take about the art world don’t have anything to do with spin, strategic planning, branding or bragging rights. I’m not going to show up to any more meetings and compliment the Emperor on his new clothes. I’m afraid I’ll jump up on top of a table and scream, “LISTEN UP EVERYBODY! The Emperor is NAKED!” I can’t afford to shoot myself in the foot over principle these days, so I hide out in my studio as I wait for the recession to blow over, making whimsical observations about the art world, in every day language, with my cartoons instead.
After my colleague blurted out the obvious and made me laugh that day in 2009, my notes stopped being about Art Speak, and were more about art for art's sake, artists, the business of art, and arts education, with a satirical slant – the way I see it. I endured the rest of that conference, thanks to the wise crack of a colleague. My headache went away and a new comic strip was born, “ART”. My goal with this strip, at this point in my life, is to make myself laugh out loud. And if I can make myself laugh until I cry, well then, that would make me feel like Queen of the World.
“ART” – that’s my statement.
Heartbroken and very pissed off at those who caused the economic collapse, I turned to the one thing that has always sustained me through the dark times of my life: my own art.
For the past eleven years, most of my creative energy and time has gone into kids – raising my own and providing the children of my community with an arts education at no cost to them or their schools. During this time, I painted some, wrote quite a bit, and cartooned a little. Faced with one of the most difficult crises of my life, I knew that the only thing that would get me through it was to get busy and get creative.
My family and I set a goal to visit as many national parks as possible within one year, as cheaply as possible, and I would paint at least one painting from each park. Most of our plans were built around a planned trip to Colorado for my 30 year high school reunion. We had a blast living out of our car as we toured 14 national parks. I did more than paint one painting of each park (I have about 60 canvases total!), and had a wonderful time escaping in my studio to paint subjects that I truly loved, creating lasting memories for myself and my family, while healing myself by relying on my innate talent – the gift of creativity.
Everything that I have been teaching kids for the past 11 years I applied to myself. I can’t go wrong in my studio. This is the only place where I am truly free, where I don’t think about how angry I am at what has happened to education, Los Angeles, the state of California, or our nation. Yes, in my own little funky art studio in my back yard, I am free, relaxed and happy. And now I have a nice body of work to show for all of my released tension. That’s not just good for my artist’s soul, that’s good for my health and state of mind.
And then there is cartooning……my first art love. I started cartooning as a little kid, drawing characters in situations that were totally inappropriate for my age, but made some adults laugh until they cried. This was the ultimate buzz for me as a kid – smart ass validation! I’ve created many different strips over the years. Some of them published and popular, some not. But I’ve always enjoyed doing it, no matter what. I started cartooning our camping and travel adventures, and then I felt compelled to pick up with a strip idea that came to me two years ago, while attending a dry, redundant, long conference for arts leaders. A few of my colleagues are very smart and funny, and I always try and sit with them at these things so we can keep each other entertained with our silly zingers. I have been to a lot of these meetings, but this one gave me a headache. I grew weary of listening to one person after another talk about the same old thing, using “insider language” that the average person doesn’t use. We sounded like a bunch of artsy-fartsy snobs. We finished up with a break out session where we were all given an assignment to think about our purpose as arts leaders. When our facilitator was done pontificating, one of my funny, smart colleagues (who will remain nameless so I don’t incriminate him with my smart ass synopsis at the end of this), said, “Well, I guess we can see now why people don’t think we are any fun”. I busted out laughing, but I was alone. No one else laughed! Everybody at our table was the stuck up museum type (over educated with no sense of humor). And they all spoke Art Speak.
I haven’t gone to many more of those types of gatherings since then. I can’t take it. Things are just way too bad in California to pretend like they are not, and I refuse to show up to any of these things so I can wag my tail and hope that someone will throw me a bone. No, from that moment on, the notes that I take about the art world don’t have anything to do with spin, strategic planning, branding or bragging rights. I’m not going to show up to any more meetings and compliment the Emperor on his new clothes. I’m afraid I’ll jump up on top of a table and scream, “LISTEN UP EVERYBODY! The Emperor is NAKED!” I can’t afford to shoot myself in the foot over principle these days, so I hide out in my studio as I wait for the recession to blow over, making whimsical observations about the art world, in every day language, with my cartoons instead.
After my colleague blurted out the obvious and made me laugh that day in 2009, my notes stopped being about Art Speak, and were more about art for art's sake, artists, the business of art, and arts education, with a satirical slant – the way I see it. I endured the rest of that conference, thanks to the wise crack of a colleague. My headache went away and a new comic strip was born, “ART”. My goal with this strip, at this point in my life, is to make myself laugh out loud. And if I can make myself laugh until I cry, well then, that would make me feel like Queen of the World.
“ART” – that’s my statement.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Car Pool Lane Rules are for Suckers and Commoners
Every morning, at my daughter’s new school, I’m annoyed by the parents who drop their kids off. It’s not just this school. It’s the same story at every campus throughout L.A. This new school is a lot more efficient in getting kids dropped off in the morning than her former school, for a number of reasons. The first is that it is a magnet school so many of the kids are bused in, which cuts down on the car traffic. And since it’s a magnet school, the kids come with parents who are generally more conscious than the average LAUSD parent. If they’re concerned enough about their kids’ educations to get them into a magnet, then they’re generally going to be more concerned about their children’s safety in the mornings, and more considerate of other drivers, the car pool rules, and will read signs. Even so, though, there are always a handful of parents who could care less about other people, rules and signs. And one of them bugs me every single morning.
I get my daughter to school pretty early in the mornings. It’s a bit of a drive so I like to beat the school and work traffic by leaving before most people get on the road. I like to drop her off and get the heck out of there before the crazies show up. But one car in particular really bugs me. The red Jeep. She shows up every morning, right when the gates open, just ahead of the no parking zone, in front of the rest of us, who are all parked behind the no parking zone, to let her precious, “gifted” son out of the car. She never bothers waiting in line. She doesn’t cut in line. She brazenly passes the rest of us every morning and parks in front of the line. Like her son, she must be “gifted”; special, not like the rest of us, entitled to extra privileges not afforded to average people. I get it. All of us rule followers behind the No Parking Zone get it. We’re just a bunch of commoners and suckers.
She annoys me, not because she is dangerous and careless, like so many other drivers in the morning, but because she’s so selfish. Everybody behind the no parking zone is respectful of the carpool rules, and we teach our kids to wait their turn and not cut in front of anyone in line. The message she is giving all of us, and her son, is that they’re not like the rest of us, and are therefore more entitled. That’s why she bugs me.
After I send my daughter off to school, with a smile and good wishes for the day, I get out of there as fast and as safely as I can, so I can miss the idiots who double park, make three point turns in the middle of the busy street, block driveways, speed, honk, cut into the car pool lane (right in front of the “do not cut into the car pool lane” sign), jay walk (right in front of the “do not jay walk” sign), text, pick their nose in the middle of the street (it’s true – I watched a dad stop dead in the middle of the street to dig a big one out), talk on the phone, or let their kids off at the end of the block and then follow them at walking speed until they get into the gate, just to make sure they aren’t abducted in the three minutes that it takes to walk in to the playground. Sometimes they have volunteers who keep the traffic moving. When they’re there, people tend to be more civilized. I won’t volunteer to do that, though, because I don’t think I’d be too civilized about car pool duty. I’m apt to drag somebody out of their car some day, just to give them a what for because I’m still pissed off about my kid almost getting hit by a crazy mom who pulled up on the curb after making a three point turn in the street a year ago at my daughter’s other school.
To get home, I need to pass by another school - a middle school, and the parents are CRAZY. Many of them cut in line by speeding past the turn lane to make a U-turn to cut in line. I’ve seen three people do this at once, one of them from the far lane. Don’t honk at them, or you’ll get cussed out or flipped off. Parents who do this are bad enough. But with their kids in the car?
As I headed south on my route home today, I got stuck behind two women, in separate cars, who were first in line at a red light. They were BOTH putting on make up. The light turned green and neither one of them knew it because they were putting on mascara. At the same time! It might be funny later, as a cartoon, but this morning, it was just another frightening, stupid moment trying to get my kid to school.
The city of Los Angeles is broke. I don’t get why the cops aren’t at every school in the morning, busting people left and right. They’d bring in some decent revenue for the city while keeping our school zones safe. And they’d get that red Jeep, and everything that it symbolizes, out of my face.
I get my daughter to school pretty early in the mornings. It’s a bit of a drive so I like to beat the school and work traffic by leaving before most people get on the road. I like to drop her off and get the heck out of there before the crazies show up. But one car in particular really bugs me. The red Jeep. She shows up every morning, right when the gates open, just ahead of the no parking zone, in front of the rest of us, who are all parked behind the no parking zone, to let her precious, “gifted” son out of the car. She never bothers waiting in line. She doesn’t cut in line. She brazenly passes the rest of us every morning and parks in front of the line. Like her son, she must be “gifted”; special, not like the rest of us, entitled to extra privileges not afforded to average people. I get it. All of us rule followers behind the No Parking Zone get it. We’re just a bunch of commoners and suckers.
She annoys me, not because she is dangerous and careless, like so many other drivers in the morning, but because she’s so selfish. Everybody behind the no parking zone is respectful of the carpool rules, and we teach our kids to wait their turn and not cut in front of anyone in line. The message she is giving all of us, and her son, is that they’re not like the rest of us, and are therefore more entitled. That’s why she bugs me.
After I send my daughter off to school, with a smile and good wishes for the day, I get out of there as fast and as safely as I can, so I can miss the idiots who double park, make three point turns in the middle of the busy street, block driveways, speed, honk, cut into the car pool lane (right in front of the “do not cut into the car pool lane” sign), jay walk (right in front of the “do not jay walk” sign), text, pick their nose in the middle of the street (it’s true – I watched a dad stop dead in the middle of the street to dig a big one out), talk on the phone, or let their kids off at the end of the block and then follow them at walking speed until they get into the gate, just to make sure they aren’t abducted in the three minutes that it takes to walk in to the playground. Sometimes they have volunteers who keep the traffic moving. When they’re there, people tend to be more civilized. I won’t volunteer to do that, though, because I don’t think I’d be too civilized about car pool duty. I’m apt to drag somebody out of their car some day, just to give them a what for because I’m still pissed off about my kid almost getting hit by a crazy mom who pulled up on the curb after making a three point turn in the street a year ago at my daughter’s other school.
To get home, I need to pass by another school - a middle school, and the parents are CRAZY. Many of them cut in line by speeding past the turn lane to make a U-turn to cut in line. I’ve seen three people do this at once, one of them from the far lane. Don’t honk at them, or you’ll get cussed out or flipped off. Parents who do this are bad enough. But with their kids in the car?
As I headed south on my route home today, I got stuck behind two women, in separate cars, who were first in line at a red light. They were BOTH putting on make up. The light turned green and neither one of them knew it because they were putting on mascara. At the same time! It might be funny later, as a cartoon, but this morning, it was just another frightening, stupid moment trying to get my kid to school.
The city of Los Angeles is broke. I don’t get why the cops aren’t at every school in the morning, busting people left and right. They’d bring in some decent revenue for the city while keeping our school zones safe. And they’d get that red Jeep, and everything that it symbolizes, out of my face.
Friday, April 1, 2011
From Pawns to Players: What if Public School Kids Had Their Own Union?
If I wasn’t so busy running a nonprofit, taking care of my family, and making my own art, I’d start a Kids Union. I have always wanted to do that. I researched this a few years ago because I saw it as the only possible way for kids to assert their rights for a decent education, since the status quo doesn’t seem to really care that much about them. Back in my Burning Mom days when me and my radical public school mom peeps were out on the streets, attending rallies, going to meetings, and protesting on the steps of the capitol in Sacramento with our kids, I learned about the beginning of the Teamsters union and the teachers unions (and some of the negative, unintended consequences of both). I researched Cesar Chavez and his leadership of the United Farm Workers union and was most inspired by them – regular people getting organized and confronting the status quo, and how the El Teatro Campesino, (the farmworkers theater) traveled from field to field and performed on flat beds of trucks to educate the workers and their families about their plight and their cause. And then there was Mother Jones, who fought for children’s rights, and the working conditions of factory workers. I was excited to learn that she led hundreds of kids on a march from Kensington, Pennsylvania, to Long Island, New York in 1903 where President Theodore Roosevelt was vacationing at his mansion with his family, to draw attention to the hardships of children who were forced to work in factories, deprived of an education, paid next to nothing because they were just kids, and were forced to work in filthy buildings with dangerous machines. Even with all the publicity that their demonstration generated, Roosevelt still blew her and the kids off after they walked ten miles a day for 22 days. He blew them off! He wouldn’t talk to them.
Sounds like what most of us here in L.A. experienced two years in a row with our California Children’s Rally at the state capitol, six hours away. Some of us, like me and my kids, were lucky enough to have a successful meeting with our assembly member after our three hour demonstration on the steps of the capitol. Our representative, Lloyd Levine, was a pro-public education legislator with an arts background. The experience was great for our kids who got some face to face time with their assemblyman, but we were preaching to the choir – what we really needed to do was take it down the hall to where the Republicans were. Others in our group were turned away or placated by a 20 year old intern who promised to take their concerns to their bosses. Even with all of our theatre, music, and out of the box demonstration antics starring our kids, we were pretty much ignored. We were organized, we had a clear message, we were entertaining, and we had fun, but the big shots still blew us off. Those two excursions to the state capitol have gone down in history not as the days that changed public education in California forever, but as educational family field trips with very little broad social impact other than our kids all got to see their parents taking action and exercising their American right to free speech, demonstrating for them how to be good citizens by participating in the democratic process. We didn’t shake the hill like we thought we would. State assembly members and senators just walked right past us, or stayed up in their offices. A typical day in Sacramento for most of them is stepping over demonstrators on all four sides of the capitol, with a latte in hand, on their way to “work”.
I am inspired by all of the historical movements and organizations which resulted in dramatic changes for ordinary people. With the so much attention on Wisconsin now, the time might be a ripe to get organized for public education in California – not on behalf of the status quo, but on genuine behalf of kids and the future of our state. The time has come. The teachers have their own union. The administrators have their own union. The bus drivers have their own union. The custodians have theirs. Nobody is at the table who has any real power to speak and act on behalf of the kids, who are getting ripped off by all of the political games the adults in charge play (especially at this time of year), who all use the kids as pawns in a tug of war of "who cares the most", and then drops them on their heads when the game is over. The kids need a union rep of their own who will tell the other union reps, LAUSD, and lawmakers that if the kids don’t get a decent education and are well cared for, that they will go on strike. And if the kids go on strike, then everybody is in really big trouble because they need as many butts in their classroom seats as possible, every day, because butts translate into dollars for the adults in LAUSD. No butts, no paychecks.
I really do believe that if parents got organized and pulled their kids out of school until their demands were met, that we’d see some real action, for we’d be able to choke the dysfunctional beast right where it lives and breathes – in the bank account. Money is the only thing the status quo really cares about. So if we starve it to death, perhaps all of the parasites who feed off of the beast will shrivel up and fall off. If there isn’t any money to pay everybody who is responsible for keeping the system so sick, then they’ll all just have to go away or find jobs in the competitive real world where workers need to do a good job if they want to stay employed. This is not a rant against bad teachers - this goes for everybody employed in LAUSD. Some of the rudest, laziest employees in the city can be found in our schools. Last year I delivered all of my newspapers personally to all of the middle and high schools in the Valley to meet people face to face and go over my mailing list with them to make sure all of the teachers and principals in my data base were accurate. One third of the front office personnel in these schools were professional and courteous, another third completely ignored me, and the final third were so rude to me that in the real world, they'd get fired on the spot. We have all heard stories or experienced for ourselves the dreaded drive downtown to have to deal with downtown employees who give people the run around, or many different answers to the same question. And we all know of numerous administrators, consultants and "coaches" who don't have much to do, but by golly, they have worked their way up the ladder and have earned their rest! They get away with acting like this because they can. Just more symptoms of a very big problem.
LAUSD is not going to fix itself. It can’t. Too many over paid adults benefit greatly by the system staying just the way it is. So the answer is to either organize a Kids Union and beat them at their own game, or outlaw private schools and force the elite to send their kids to public schools. That should do it!
All of the frantic outside fundraising that is being done now, the campaign for tax extensions, and new charters popping up on a regular basis, are temporary solutions and none of them are going to fix the real problems. They aren’t going to change the diseased culture of public education and the way business is conducted in Sacramento. They’re just quick fixes that will keep the status quo running for a little while longer. Parents taking back their schools with The Parent Revolution and the parent trigger law, is that the answer? No, but it is AN answer. El Camino Real High School going charter in order to save itself to maintain what they worked so hard to create over decades? Is that the answer? No, but it’s AN answer. Is home schooling the answer? No – just another possible answer. They are all options that give parents a choice, which they have a right to, but none of these options really fixes the real problem. Parents in L.A. today feel like they have no other choice but to go with some of these options, which weakens the entire system all the more. The majority of students who will be left in LAUSD schools in the very near future will be mostly English language learners and special ed students who are protected by law, and the kids who are stuck with parents who won’t or can’t look for other options. This makes everything that much more stressful and worse for the poor teachers and kids who are left behind.
The entire culture of how LAUSD functions needs to change. It’s so stuck in the past that Rip Van Winkle wouldn’t notice any changes after waking up on his elementary school playground after being asleep for 100 years. The campus would look the same and his second grade teacher would still be there because she has seniority! We’re just plugging up holes on a sinking ship with all of our desperate attempts to fundraise and look for someone or something on the outside to rescue us. By constantly going back to the parents to fundraise to save valued programs, RIF’d staff, or copier paper and supplies, we’re tapping our poor parents out. They can’t afford to keep patching up the holes in the sinking LAUSD ship to prolong the inevitable. The kids need to go on strike.
So concludes my rant against the paid adults in public education and politics. Next rant: "Do nothing parents".
Sounds like what most of us here in L.A. experienced two years in a row with our California Children’s Rally at the state capitol, six hours away. Some of us, like me and my kids, were lucky enough to have a successful meeting with our assembly member after our three hour demonstration on the steps of the capitol. Our representative, Lloyd Levine, was a pro-public education legislator with an arts background. The experience was great for our kids who got some face to face time with their assemblyman, but we were preaching to the choir – what we really needed to do was take it down the hall to where the Republicans were. Others in our group were turned away or placated by a 20 year old intern who promised to take their concerns to their bosses. Even with all of our theatre, music, and out of the box demonstration antics starring our kids, we were pretty much ignored. We were organized, we had a clear message, we were entertaining, and we had fun, but the big shots still blew us off. Those two excursions to the state capitol have gone down in history not as the days that changed public education in California forever, but as educational family field trips with very little broad social impact other than our kids all got to see their parents taking action and exercising their American right to free speech, demonstrating for them how to be good citizens by participating in the democratic process. We didn’t shake the hill like we thought we would. State assembly members and senators just walked right past us, or stayed up in their offices. A typical day in Sacramento for most of them is stepping over demonstrators on all four sides of the capitol, with a latte in hand, on their way to “work”.
I am inspired by all of the historical movements and organizations which resulted in dramatic changes for ordinary people. With the so much attention on Wisconsin now, the time might be a ripe to get organized for public education in California – not on behalf of the status quo, but on genuine behalf of kids and the future of our state. The time has come. The teachers have their own union. The administrators have their own union. The bus drivers have their own union. The custodians have theirs. Nobody is at the table who has any real power to speak and act on behalf of the kids, who are getting ripped off by all of the political games the adults in charge play (especially at this time of year), who all use the kids as pawns in a tug of war of "who cares the most", and then drops them on their heads when the game is over. The kids need a union rep of their own who will tell the other union reps, LAUSD, and lawmakers that if the kids don’t get a decent education and are well cared for, that they will go on strike. And if the kids go on strike, then everybody is in really big trouble because they need as many butts in their classroom seats as possible, every day, because butts translate into dollars for the adults in LAUSD. No butts, no paychecks.
I really do believe that if parents got organized and pulled their kids out of school until their demands were met, that we’d see some real action, for we’d be able to choke the dysfunctional beast right where it lives and breathes – in the bank account. Money is the only thing the status quo really cares about. So if we starve it to death, perhaps all of the parasites who feed off of the beast will shrivel up and fall off. If there isn’t any money to pay everybody who is responsible for keeping the system so sick, then they’ll all just have to go away or find jobs in the competitive real world where workers need to do a good job if they want to stay employed. This is not a rant against bad teachers - this goes for everybody employed in LAUSD. Some of the rudest, laziest employees in the city can be found in our schools. Last year I delivered all of my newspapers personally to all of the middle and high schools in the Valley to meet people face to face and go over my mailing list with them to make sure all of the teachers and principals in my data base were accurate. One third of the front office personnel in these schools were professional and courteous, another third completely ignored me, and the final third were so rude to me that in the real world, they'd get fired on the spot. We have all heard stories or experienced for ourselves the dreaded drive downtown to have to deal with downtown employees who give people the run around, or many different answers to the same question. And we all know of numerous administrators, consultants and "coaches" who don't have much to do, but by golly, they have worked their way up the ladder and have earned their rest! They get away with acting like this because they can. Just more symptoms of a very big problem.
LAUSD is not going to fix itself. It can’t. Too many over paid adults benefit greatly by the system staying just the way it is. So the answer is to either organize a Kids Union and beat them at their own game, or outlaw private schools and force the elite to send their kids to public schools. That should do it!
All of the frantic outside fundraising that is being done now, the campaign for tax extensions, and new charters popping up on a regular basis, are temporary solutions and none of them are going to fix the real problems. They aren’t going to change the diseased culture of public education and the way business is conducted in Sacramento. They’re just quick fixes that will keep the status quo running for a little while longer. Parents taking back their schools with The Parent Revolution and the parent trigger law, is that the answer? No, but it is AN answer. El Camino Real High School going charter in order to save itself to maintain what they worked so hard to create over decades? Is that the answer? No, but it’s AN answer. Is home schooling the answer? No – just another possible answer. They are all options that give parents a choice, which they have a right to, but none of these options really fixes the real problem. Parents in L.A. today feel like they have no other choice but to go with some of these options, which weakens the entire system all the more. The majority of students who will be left in LAUSD schools in the very near future will be mostly English language learners and special ed students who are protected by law, and the kids who are stuck with parents who won’t or can’t look for other options. This makes everything that much more stressful and worse for the poor teachers and kids who are left behind.
The entire culture of how LAUSD functions needs to change. It’s so stuck in the past that Rip Van Winkle wouldn’t notice any changes after waking up on his elementary school playground after being asleep for 100 years. The campus would look the same and his second grade teacher would still be there because she has seniority! We’re just plugging up holes on a sinking ship with all of our desperate attempts to fundraise and look for someone or something on the outside to rescue us. By constantly going back to the parents to fundraise to save valued programs, RIF’d staff, or copier paper and supplies, we’re tapping our poor parents out. They can’t afford to keep patching up the holes in the sinking LAUSD ship to prolong the inevitable. The kids need to go on strike.
So concludes my rant against the paid adults in public education and politics. Next rant: "Do nothing parents".
Friday, March 11, 2011
Rocking My Own Life Boat
I’m a boat rocker. I’ve been rocking all sorts of boats over the past 48 years. Some needed it and some probably didn’t, but I rocked them anyway.
These days I’ve been rocking my own life boat. I’ve been pretty quiet about the imploding public school system, the threats to arts ed programs, and the emergency status so many nonprofits have found themselves in, having to say “No” to the record numbers of people who have turned to them for help during this recession, because they no longer have the ability or resources to help. Through no fault of their own, many have had to shut their doors, leaving more and more people out in the cold.
I’ve been quiet because I’m heart broken and exhausted. I feel betrayed by those in control who are responsible for this whole mess, and I’m angry because they don’t seem to care. I’m frustrated with the masses who seem so numb and indifferent to their plight. In order to make sense of the whole American tragedy, I have turned to my own art to get me through it. That’s what I’ve always done when life has punched me in the face. My painting is my therapy. It relaxes me and makes me happy– letting me forget the never ending BS that plagues my city and our nation. And with my writing and cartooning, I can say things that aren’t really appropriate for me to say in my role as PTA President or nonprofit leader. If I can make myself laugh out loud with a new “ART” cartoon, I rock my own boat, and that’s good enough for me these days. I’m still doing my activism, but from the comforts of my own creation.
Sometimes though, like today, after doing a couple of cartoons on LAUSD laying valuable music teachers off (facing the very real possibility that the music departments in these schools could close) I feel sick……..really sick. This is very personal to me. I am an artist. I am a mother. I’ve dedicated the past eleven years to restoring the arts to schools in my community. I was one of those kids whose life was literally saved by art and music in school. This is too close for comfort for me. I can not believe this is happening. I feel so powerless. It’s so wrong.
So I draw some cartoons to expose the hypocrisy of the LAUSD, but I don’t laugh out loud. I cry. I want to take a shower because the whole thing is so icky. And I wonder, “How much more are people going to take? When are they going to rise up and say they’re not going to take it any more?”
I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle, trying to pass on the gift of creativity, individuality and freedom of expression to kids, because so few seem to care. They’re numb and preoccupied. Why?
The more I think about it, the more I believe that the failing education system in America is by design and that scares me. I’ve taken solace in the fact that I have gone above and beyond what is expected of an ordinary citizen to try and make a difference in the lives of thousands of kids in my community, and I’ve made sure that my own kids are OK. But what about their future? What kind of world will they be moving out in to?
I jumped ship at the end of the last school year. I found a life boat for my daughter and I, and we got the hell out of the way. She is safe in a magnet school for a couple of years. And me? I have survivor’s guilt, watching the sinking LAUSD ship behind me, and the people left on deck who never jumped. I can’t help them. It’s too late.
While I work through this crisis in my own, creative, constructive way, I hope that the masses will rise up and take on the Status Quo. Grassroots activism is the only answer. We need to take a few lessons out of the French Revolution Playbook and quit settling for day old cake!
These days I’ve been rocking my own life boat. I’ve been pretty quiet about the imploding public school system, the threats to arts ed programs, and the emergency status so many nonprofits have found themselves in, having to say “No” to the record numbers of people who have turned to them for help during this recession, because they no longer have the ability or resources to help. Through no fault of their own, many have had to shut their doors, leaving more and more people out in the cold.
I’ve been quiet because I’m heart broken and exhausted. I feel betrayed by those in control who are responsible for this whole mess, and I’m angry because they don’t seem to care. I’m frustrated with the masses who seem so numb and indifferent to their plight. In order to make sense of the whole American tragedy, I have turned to my own art to get me through it. That’s what I’ve always done when life has punched me in the face. My painting is my therapy. It relaxes me and makes me happy– letting me forget the never ending BS that plagues my city and our nation. And with my writing and cartooning, I can say things that aren’t really appropriate for me to say in my role as PTA President or nonprofit leader. If I can make myself laugh out loud with a new “ART” cartoon, I rock my own boat, and that’s good enough for me these days. I’m still doing my activism, but from the comforts of my own creation.
Sometimes though, like today, after doing a couple of cartoons on LAUSD laying valuable music teachers off (facing the very real possibility that the music departments in these schools could close) I feel sick……..really sick. This is very personal to me. I am an artist. I am a mother. I’ve dedicated the past eleven years to restoring the arts to schools in my community. I was one of those kids whose life was literally saved by art and music in school. This is too close for comfort for me. I can not believe this is happening. I feel so powerless. It’s so wrong.
So I draw some cartoons to expose the hypocrisy of the LAUSD, but I don’t laugh out loud. I cry. I want to take a shower because the whole thing is so icky. And I wonder, “How much more are people going to take? When are they going to rise up and say they’re not going to take it any more?”
I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle, trying to pass on the gift of creativity, individuality and freedom of expression to kids, because so few seem to care. They’re numb and preoccupied. Why?
The more I think about it, the more I believe that the failing education system in America is by design and that scares me. I’ve taken solace in the fact that I have gone above and beyond what is expected of an ordinary citizen to try and make a difference in the lives of thousands of kids in my community, and I’ve made sure that my own kids are OK. But what about their future? What kind of world will they be moving out in to?
I jumped ship at the end of the last school year. I found a life boat for my daughter and I, and we got the hell out of the way. She is safe in a magnet school for a couple of years. And me? I have survivor’s guilt, watching the sinking LAUSD ship behind me, and the people left on deck who never jumped. I can’t help them. It’s too late.
While I work through this crisis in my own, creative, constructive way, I hope that the masses will rise up and take on the Status Quo. Grassroots activism is the only answer. We need to take a few lessons out of the French Revolution Playbook and quit settling for day old cake!
Friday, February 18, 2011
“Should I Start My Own Nonprofit?” Another Idealist Asks
People have called me over the years, asking me for my sage advice on whether or not I think they should start their own nonprofit. I’m always happy to share my experience with anyone who is interested, for two reasons: people were really generous with me when I first got started, telling me how they did it, so I consider taking the time to do the same for others as a “pay it forward” kind of thing, and I’m always happy to meet anyone who is passionate, dedicated, and willing enough to try and make the world a better place by starting a nonprofit organization of their own.
All of the information I have collected over the years, all of the knowledge that I have acquired through my own successes and failures, and the psychological hurdles I have managed to jump over (dealing with lots of different people, politics, stress, and my own personal growing pangs from developing as a leader), are good, juicy stuff that should be put down in one single book. I think I’ll write that book.
There are plenty of books out there that cover the logistical aspects of starting and running a nonprofit organization, fundraising, board development, leadership, managing volunteers, marketing, strategic planning, and operating a business. I have read a whole bunch of them. But I have yet to come across a book that alerts you of the challenges that come from going from being “The Mom” (or “Dad”) of an organization, to a mature community leader.......all of the stuff that the experts don’t tell you, or are written down in any “how-to” books you seek out when you first get started, when you’re all starry eyed and ready to right the wrongs of the world.
Like the time it actually takes to get a new nonprofit off the ground. Or how much money you will spend out of pocket. It’s like giving birth to a new child – you have to prepare for its birth, and then when it gets here you have to take care of it, twenty four hours a day. And, just like with raising kids, the job of being “mom” to a nonprofit is a pretty thankless one. You worry about it. You love it. You guide it. You protect it. You wear yourself out taking care of it. But then in return, you get the satisfaction of birthing, loving and guiding your baby out into the world, where it will hopefully make a positive difference.
When I started working on putting my nonprofit organization together twelve years ago, I didn’t know the first thing about starting a corporation, forming a board of directors, or fundraising. All I knew was that the kids of my community needed and deserved to have the arts in their schools right away. Whatever I had to do to make that happen, well, I would just do it. I was determined to right that wrong. I put one foot in front of the other, getting advice, reading, and taking classes along the way as I ascended the mountain. I was wise (more like naïve) to never look up to see how much further I needed to go or how high I would need to keep climbing. Instead, I was focused on each step. When I reached the summit, I thought of two things. If I had looked up and known how far I would have had to climb in the beginning, I may have passed on the whole idea (which most people end up doing). Once I was at the top of that mountain I could really appreciate all of the hard work that it took getting there. It was worth it, I thought, just like raising kids. It’s a lot of hard work. It wipes you out, but you wouldn’t have it any other way.
The first thing I like to ask people when they inquire about whether or not I think they should start a nonprofit is “How pissed off are you?” You need to be pissed off and you need to stay pissed off about the injustice that has inspired you to start a nonprofit in the first place. You’ll need to really believe in your idea, full heartedly, because you will be challenged, non stop, every step of the way, as you climb that mountain. Your anger and passion are what will keep you focused and pointed in the right direction as you continue to climb. Stay angry. Hold on to the passion. If you love what you are doing, really believe in the cause, and are pissed off and passionate enough, then hell ya, do it!
All of the information I have collected over the years, all of the knowledge that I have acquired through my own successes and failures, and the psychological hurdles I have managed to jump over (dealing with lots of different people, politics, stress, and my own personal growing pangs from developing as a leader), are good, juicy stuff that should be put down in one single book. I think I’ll write that book.
There are plenty of books out there that cover the logistical aspects of starting and running a nonprofit organization, fundraising, board development, leadership, managing volunteers, marketing, strategic planning, and operating a business. I have read a whole bunch of them. But I have yet to come across a book that alerts you of the challenges that come from going from being “The Mom” (or “Dad”) of an organization, to a mature community leader.......all of the stuff that the experts don’t tell you, or are written down in any “how-to” books you seek out when you first get started, when you’re all starry eyed and ready to right the wrongs of the world.
Like the time it actually takes to get a new nonprofit off the ground. Or how much money you will spend out of pocket. It’s like giving birth to a new child – you have to prepare for its birth, and then when it gets here you have to take care of it, twenty four hours a day. And, just like with raising kids, the job of being “mom” to a nonprofit is a pretty thankless one. You worry about it. You love it. You guide it. You protect it. You wear yourself out taking care of it. But then in return, you get the satisfaction of birthing, loving and guiding your baby out into the world, where it will hopefully make a positive difference.
When I started working on putting my nonprofit organization together twelve years ago, I didn’t know the first thing about starting a corporation, forming a board of directors, or fundraising. All I knew was that the kids of my community needed and deserved to have the arts in their schools right away. Whatever I had to do to make that happen, well, I would just do it. I was determined to right that wrong. I put one foot in front of the other, getting advice, reading, and taking classes along the way as I ascended the mountain. I was wise (more like naïve) to never look up to see how much further I needed to go or how high I would need to keep climbing. Instead, I was focused on each step. When I reached the summit, I thought of two things. If I had looked up and known how far I would have had to climb in the beginning, I may have passed on the whole idea (which most people end up doing). Once I was at the top of that mountain I could really appreciate all of the hard work that it took getting there. It was worth it, I thought, just like raising kids. It’s a lot of hard work. It wipes you out, but you wouldn’t have it any other way.
The first thing I like to ask people when they inquire about whether or not I think they should start a nonprofit is “How pissed off are you?” You need to be pissed off and you need to stay pissed off about the injustice that has inspired you to start a nonprofit in the first place. You’ll need to really believe in your idea, full heartedly, because you will be challenged, non stop, every step of the way, as you climb that mountain. Your anger and passion are what will keep you focused and pointed in the right direction as you continue to climb. Stay angry. Hold on to the passion. If you love what you are doing, really believe in the cause, and are pissed off and passionate enough, then hell ya, do it!
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