Original Post Date
2014-05-31 08:55 AM
Original Body
Ask This Old House
If You ask this Old house who built it, it wasn't the three white man from the TV. show "Ask this Old House".....it was poverty scholars with the knowledge and skills who in other spaces never get the credit for building or creating..
This house was built by community effort from ground up, at the Homefulness Project we have what we call "The Revolutionary Construction circle" which is a group of community folks and comrades who help and support the building process where we learn from one another....Each one teach one...
Like thousands of people, we have worked, cultivated and planted seeds, never to see or enjoy the fruits of our labor.
We have made and cleaned the most beautiful gardens that I have seen in my life in the mountains of Berkeley for people with money. Earning $10 an hour, we have built and managed houses with immense beauty, only to never see them again.
In construction where so much supremacy and hierarchy can be found, we move humble and softly, like my carnala tiny would say, to not act like the man in the boss worker mentality, but to built, create and share knowledge with each other challenging the capitalist construction culture here in Amerikkka..I seen it before in job sites where the boss signs the contract and gets the check and throws crums to our Brown and Black folks to built it, and at the end the boss gets the credit because they design the blue prints.
"Change wont come from a savior, a pimp or an institution Change will only come from our own poor peoples led revolution"
Some how some of our folks have bought into believing that we always need some institution or someone to come and save us, when the reality is that we have the power of self determination in our hands and mind and communities, we have many folks in our community circles that have different skills and knowledge that we ignore or don't utilize to strength our communities.
So, if you Ask That Old House who built it, it would answer, Poverty scholars,Super babys mamas,Revolutionary workers scholars, under-ground economic scholars, recyclers, Migrant trabajadores,decolonize architect, Houseless folks,revolutionary comrades, decolonize Academics,youth scholars....
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. indeed, it is the only thing that ever has"- Margaret Mead