Occupy Wall Street protesters join a labor union rally in Foley Square in New York's Financial District. (Jason DeCrow/AP)

The Occupy Wall Street protests that have now turned into a global movement have been an interesting development. Through the movement, we have seen that people are so fed up with corporate greed—backed by the complicity of Wall Street companies—that they have decided to speak out and attempt to shame the corporate giants into submission.

I don’t know if that will ever happen, but I do know this: Throughout all of the demonstrations, camping out at parks and challenging the status quo, it seems as if the Occupy movement has missed one very important thing.

A few weeks ago, my pastor, the Rev. K.R. Woods, of Covenant Worship Center in Berkeley, made it all clear in his sermon when he touched on this very subject.

The title of his sermon was simply “Occupy,” and he based his sermon on Luke 19:10-26, also known as the Parable of the Ten Minas, in which Jesus tells a story about a king who gives his servants ten talents and tells the servants to make use of them.

The point my pastor made, which is so profound, was that folks in the Occupy movement are directing their frustration at other people instead of recognizing that the problem—greed—is, in actuality, a spirit. Greed is not a political issue. It’s not even a financial evil. It is a spiritual problem. And you can only fight something spiritual with spiritual weapons. The only spiritual weapons I know about come from Jesus Christ.

“The word occupy to those who are out there in front of City Hall, the word occupy for those who are camped out in Oakland, the word occupy to those who are camped out in London and France—it means to seize in order to bring to a halt,” my pastor said. “But the word used here in the text for occupy means the exact opposite. It means to seize in order to advance.”

He went on to say: “They’re trying to deal with a spiritual problem by occupying it in the natural. They can camp out, riot, burn stuff. But the demon that is behind the chaos only becomes more emboldened. It takes believers, you and I—the people of God—to tell the devil enough is enough.”

You can hear more from the sermon in the clip below.

So wouldn’t the Occupy movement be so much more effective if, instead of occupying a park or a bank, people occupied the rows of a church where the power of Jesus could set folks and their debt free?

On that same notion, wouldn’t it be so much more inspirational if churches occupied the cities in which they reside so that more souls could be saved?

If a church couldn’t do that, then why not occupy the block surrounding the church so that at least the people in that area could be blessed?

And if that couldn’t be done, then why not just occupy your family so that you and your loved ones could prosper in God’s love.

The gist of the film is that there is still a deep-seated bias and negative attitude about beauty toward dark-skinned black women. Most black folks are aware of the divisions that have been created in our community because of slavery and the construct of race, which tries to place a value on skin color and causes all kinds of frictions among men and women (“Looks like light-skinned brothas are coming back…” You’ve heard them all before.).

I spoke to two of my aunts about the film, and they shared their experiences of being treated differently because of their darker skin.

I’m sure most people have also heard about the article evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa published in Psychology Today in May titled, “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?” You already know how that one ended.

I asked some of my Facebook people for their thoughts on the film, and the response I got from one of my former Cal classmates was so on point that I wanted to share it in its entirety. From April Brown:

Many cultures have similar issues with darker skin tones being undesirable, and while I do think this is an interesting topic to explore I hope the conversation is not about Dark skinned girls V.S. Light skinned girls, because we truly don’t need any further division. The last comment about the lack of a Black Community as a result of lack of language and other cultural aspects is what I would like to hear a dialogue about, and how this void is being filled by others who do not have our best interest at heart.

April also added:

and something else came to mind after thinking about this for awhile. Why is it a “popular belief” that lighter skinned women are more attractive, but not that lighter skinned men are more attractive. Is it just because in society at large women are judged based on beauty and men are judged by other criteria? I really can’t think of many women I know who prefer a lighter skinned man for any reason other than having children who have hair with a loosened curl pattern?

I’m sure that when it comes out, this film will bring out a lot of deep-rooted emotional pain. But let me repeat the comment I made after I first saw the preview of this film, just to make a point here.

I know this is an issue in our community and in America, but it’s still unfortunate that blackness is still too often viewed as not being beautiful. I never understood that. My grandma always taught me that there are 21 shades of blackness, and we’ve got a lot of them in my family. So I have never associated beauty with skin color, although I guess many people still do that.

The issue for me here is this: why are we focusing so much on these skin color extremes when the real battles are outside of our community? It seems like this film is more about the problem with black relationships (i.e. marriage, dating, raising our kids). If we’re talking about real issues in the black community, I think a bigger issue is this thing of being black enough (something I’ve had personal experience with, even though both of my parents are black [I actually have had to explain that to people]).

Or perhaps the bigger and more important issue is just self-esteem and mental health (check out allhiphop.com).

Either way, it seems like there are just too many people who haven’t heard enough about what the Bible already tells us: that we’re fearfully and wonderfully made.

Photo by sfbike (via Flickr)

A story in the LA Times this past week (“UC Irvine says fried chicken and waffle dinner on Martin Luther King Jr. Day was insensitive”) immediately caught my attention not just for the obvious reasons but also because it brought up memories of a similar incident that happened when I was a student at UC Berkeley.

As background, the LA Times story was about a last-minute decision by the dining hall staff at UC Irvine to serve chicken and waffles for a Martin Luther King Jr. symposium organized by the school’s Black Student Union, which sparked an uproar among the school’s minuscule black population (only 2 percent of the school’s entire undergrad makeup).

Without being there and being in those UC Irvine students’ shoes, it’s difficult to come to any definitive conclusions about what the correct reaction should be. But for the sake of this post, I’m going to do just that because I know exactly how they feel, having had a similar experience.

On the last day of Black History Month (Feb. 28, for those who have forgotten) in 2001, the Daily Californian printed a full-page ad by prominent conservative writer David Horowitz titled, “Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea-And Racist Too.” Needless to say, the black students at Cal saw this as a complete slap in the face and raised issue with the campus paper and university (check out my bio on my portfolio website to understand the connection this incident has with my career in journalism).

But incidents like these aren’t just limited to happening once every blue moon. You remember what happened last year at UC San Diego, right? A student hung a noose in the school library like it was a joke during Black History Month. That was preceded by an off-campus party that was labeled the “Compton Cookout,” which mocked black culture and, of course, also ignited racial tensions.

So the question I pose about all of these incidents is this: How are black people most appropriately supposed to react? As expected, are we supposed to complain about the fact that someone basically said, “Hey, these black students are celebrating their culture. I know what will make them happy. Let’s serve them some of that good old-fashioned soul food because we know they’ll like it and all we serve throughout the rest of the year is that un-ethnic cafeteria food.”? Or should we just bite our tongues, be ourselves and enjoy the fact that, on at least one day out of the year, someone was considerate of our interests—even if it makes us a little self-conscious. Because, let’s be honest, there’s nothing like soul food and it does taste good.

The answer is both. Black folks have a right to be upset about this, and the fact that someone made the decision to serve chicken and waffles—one of the greasiest kinds of soul food—is just down right insulting, no matter what the person’s intentions might have been. On the other hand, this didn’t have to be blown out of proportion because, let’s be honest, it’s not every day at a majority white and Asian university that you get to enjoy soul food. Bottom line: W.E.B. Du Bois’ observation that African Americans live behind “the veil” and have double consciousness still rings true. And despite the U.S. having a black president, most Americans don’t get that concept.

Moral of the story: Serve more greens and cornbread.

My master’s project, “A Seed is Forever,” recently won an award at the 2010 Online Journalism Awards. It won the “Best Student Multimedia Feature Presentation” award, of which I’m very proud. This is what the judges said about my project:

“The judges decided that this was a winning entry because we were really impressed by the quality of the production of this piece. We were also really impressed that it was all put together by a single journalist. The reporter did the reporting, did the programming of the flash site, did the design work, the video editing, without really compromising the quality of any of those different elements. The story allows you to follow two different threads using guides. We thought that this is something we’d like to see more of generally in the news industry–helping lead the reader through the story, and this is what this piece managed to do very well.”

Now that the project has gotten some recognition, I need some help getting it published somewhere so that it can accomplish what I originally set out to do: bring awareness to the subject of my project, youth and agriculture in Sierra Leone. Got any ideas?

In the first video, for example, I started off the story by fading out of a blur to reflect what many people in Richmond wake up to see every morning: a constant plume of smoke coming from the Chevron plant. In the second video, I overlapped several sets of B-roll to compliment what the speaker was saying about population growth.

And in the third video, I experimented with Motion to make use of a map I created to relate to the subject of the story: “mapping” out Richmond’s health and wellness plan. I was also able to infuse some of my own style into each story by using subtle hip hop tracks to compliment the mood in each story.

There’s Something in the Air

There’s Something in the Air from Martin Ricard on Vimeo.

Water for Life

Water for Life from Martin Ricard on Vimeo.

Richmond’s Health Plan

Richmond’s Health Plan from Martin Ricard on Vimeo.

For our final class project, we came up with an experiment (we were thinking Pandora…BTW, there have been some interesting pieces done recently that look into how the model behind Pandora could be applied to the other industries. Check out this New York Times Magazine story and this post from eMedia Vitals.) looking at how journalists can better measure the engagement of their readers.

With the help of my classmates, I put together this Prezi presentation to show our results. Hopefully, the J-School paid attention (and I know they did…hopefully).

Christian Nymphos

Although the name sounds like a bad idea for a porno, there’s no need to get your mind out of the gutter with this one. This is a website for married women dedicated to “teaching saints how to walk in sexual freedom with their husbands.” Although sex mostly doesn’t get talked about in the church, believe it or not, Christians do know how to spice things up (under the right circumstances, of course).

Left Behind: Eternal Forces

This Christian video game became an instant hit when it came out in 2006. It allows players the choice of either mowing down enemy soldiers or conducting warfare using prayer and worship as weapons rather than guns.

Scripts Footwear

Although these just look like Chucks with Bible verses on them, you gotta give it up to the marketing people at Scripts Footwear who thought of creating a brand of shoe that is both good for the soul and sole.

Ursula M. Burns (via The New York Times)

I know the honeymoon period over President Barack Obama seems to have passed in the eyes of most Americans (his approval rating is now 44 percent). But in the black community you’re still likely to hear talk about how much Obama’s election has meant to African Americans–particularly, young African Americans.

The notion is that now that Obama has become the most important person in the land, black children all across the United States finally have been shown that they can do anything. To me, that thinking is still too small.

Let’s look at some examples of other black folks who have achieved legitimate HNIC status. Despite how you might feel about the economy or executive compensation, we can look no further than the five black CEOs (yes, these are the only ones) who are running Fortune 500 companies:

• Clarence Otis Jr., CEO of Darden Restaurants, which runs Olive Garden and Red Lobster
• Kenneth I. Chenault, CEO of American Express
• Rodney O’Neal, CEO of Delphi Corp., one of the world’s largest automotive parts manufacturers
• Ronald A. Williams, CEO of health insurance giant Aetna
• Ursula M. Burns, CEO of Xerox

So does this mean President Obama’s election should not hold any historical, racial or emotional significance to the black community? Never. What this does mean is that when we now tell our kids that they can become anything they want, let’s expand the horizons of their occupational dreams by showing them there are plenty of tangible opportunities for black people in America. Just a thought I wanted to share.

For one of my classes at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, I had to use the grid to design a homepage for a site. I chose to revamp the site I helped design for our school’s Africa reporting class. A little ambitious for a beginner, but I thought I’d give it a try because, hey, I’m down for trying new things. Or, at least, that’s what I initially thought.

I wanted to take this (built using a WordPress template):

And turn it into something like this (designed from scratch):

This is what I ended up with:

As you can see, it’s not an exact replica. I had the most difficulty with getting everything to line up on the grid and work (it’s an easy concept but takes a lot of thought and care). On the other hand, I’ll admit, I had the most fun with creating the header, which is a compilation of several background images and CSS (thanks to my other instructor Josh Williams).

If I had more time, I would have liked to build out this map page prototype for the site as well:

Maybe another time, I guess.

Before I share my recollections on my last night in the country, I wanted to share something I forgot to mention in the last entry.

On the night we got back from Pujehun, after everyone had dropped off their bags at Sahid’s place, I was sitting in the foyer of the house just outside of the living room waiting for the Internet to load when Augustine, the teenager who stays with Sahid and his family in Freetown, approached me very quietly. I could tell he was connecting with me since we first began talking about hip hop in America.

So when he approached me, he was very honest. Standing against the wall, he told me that his views about agriculture had changed since I had arrived. A few days ago, he was explaining how he, like many youths in Freetown, felt agriculture was not appealing to him. But he said he had witnessed my commitment to my assignment and how I had traveled to each youth farming group in the provinces to hear what they had to say about agriculture. That effort, he said, had inspired him to perhaps go into farming after he finishes secondary school.

That statement right there should be an indication that youths’ attitudes about agriculture in Sierra Leone are indeed changing.

My last night in Sierra Leone was a memorable one. I guess I made such an impression on one of the youth groups that I interviewed in Waterloo that they decided to show their appreciation by hosting a send-off party for me and my guides. Mind you, these are youths from a rural part of the country who often can’t afford to finish school, who don’t have anyone supporting their organization, who have to struggle for everything. Yet they plan this big celebration just for us. We ate, danced and perspired until about 2 in the morning.

They put so much effort into it. They cleared out a room in their multipurpose center and had a few lights hanging from the ceiling. They got chairs for me, Sahid and Theo to sit on, a table and a table cloth, plates, glasses, silverware, napkins and plenty of Fanta (for me, of course), beer and palm wine, and a D.J. These were all rare sites in most of the places we have visited at night. As I’m writing this, I can still hear LRG’s “Money in the Bank” and everyone jumping to the middle of the room and dancing in a circle when they hear it.

As I was traveling back home, I stopped at Heathrow Airport in London for one of my layovers. I walked through the airport to my gate, and what did I see? A Tiffany’s store with the best of the world’s diamonds on display for all of those passengers who just can’t leave London without a piece of high-class jewelry in their suitcase. I want to qualify this by saying that I have no problem with Tiffany’s or anyone who shops there. But, at that moment, I couldn’t help but be reminded of that 25-year-old guy I met in Kono who was in that mining pit, knee-deep in the murky, sewer-brown water, working for meager wages and searching for a diamond he may never find.