One of our Heroes

"Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever touch him or have him smile at you? Did you ever really listen to him? Did he ever do a mean thing? Was he ever himself associated with violence or any public disturbance? For if you did, you would know him. And if you knew him, you would know why we must honor him: Malcolm was our manhood, our living, black manhood!" Ossie Davis

In the spirit of such people who were unafraid to dream of a new world. In the spirit of such people who worked for a new world. May the spirit of such people reincarnate themselves in the activists of today to Transform America.

One of Tranform America's first actions. It was a very different organization, but still retained the same principals of justice

Release Date: 07/01/2006

“Seeds of Change”

Why we must retell the past to change the present and the path to our future.

The East Harlem Youth Council & Action Network, has joined with Transform America in a campaign to change the name of Thomas Jefferson Park and Community Center located in our community, between First Avenue and the FDR Drive, from 112-114^th Streets. Thomas Jefferson Park/Center, operated by the NYC Department of Parks, represents and acts as a tribute to a person whose deeds and words upheld the lasting legacy of racism in America.

Thomas Jefferson’s racism comes down to us in his writings. In the early 1780s, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, he writes:

“They [African-Americans] are more ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation

In the same publication, Jefferson goes on to speak about African-Americans’ “disagreeable odor,” their inferior intellect and inability to write poetry or produce works of art, and his racist ideas that the “improvement of the blacks in body and mind, [is noticed] in the first instance of their mixture with whites,”

It would be inconceivable to dedicate a Park and Recreation Center in a Native American community to Martin A. Van Buren, the man responsible for the “Trail of Tears” in which over 4000 Cherokee died. Nor would the Jewish community tolerate dedicating a Park and Recreation Center to Henry Ford, an unremitting anti-Semite, who wrote The International Jew: the World’s Foremost Problem.

Should we honor Jefferson, who said, “blacks are inferior to whites in their endowments both of body and mind?” Should we continue to honor him by allowing his name for a Park and Recreation Center in the heart of El Barrio-East Harlem, a Latino and African–American- community?

America expects us to tolerate the aftermath of a Katrina. America expects us to tolerate lower life expectancies, poorer quality health care, poorer education, police violence and profiling, racism where it shows its ugly head, discrimination, dehumanization, and poverty. America expects that we will tolerate memorials to racists.

America must change! We must start to change America now, starting in our own community. Thomas Jefferson’s name must be removed from our Park and the Community Center with a name that reflects the struggles and aspirations of its people.

Join the campaign! Get involved. Contacts:

Say you’re interested in change at: chester@transformamerica.org,

Chester Asher at 646-918-4616, or William Gerena-Rochet, gerena339@earthlink.net

In the beginning

Haby and I were just some seriously peeved college students. We were dismayed with poverty, with the government's response to Katrina, with the murderous war in Iraq, with the lack of educational opportunity for Blacks and Latinos, and a canyon of other injustices which plague our country. We were both part of organizations that did really meaningful work. My organization, the Gentlemen of Quality, led four mentoring programs for students in Harlem and the Bronx, we volunteered to clean parks, distributed food at homeless shelters, and wraped toys for kids. We wore ourselves thin and still had a burning desire for greater more systemic social change. Call us greedy, ambitious, or idealists, but we wanted more. We wanted to Transform America. We saw other organizations like ourselves doing really good work, making little ripples of social change. We started to think, what if all these ripples came together? Could we make waves? Could we initiate a tsunami? Could we make the type of change that movies are made about, the type of change that changes ways of thinking, the types of change that changes how people treat each other, the type of change that changes us in the process and produces a better tomorrow? From these questions sprung Transform America. A group of social justice organizations that realize their own power, and the power of like-minded, committed, unapologetic, sincere organizations. By working together we will Transform America.