CITY|year: day.8

This ain't the glorified, just painting the street picture /
There's no guidance or Bibles, just blunts and swishers /
Gillettes cut 'caine in kitchen /
Now every rapper wanna claim he hang with Kenneth "Supreme" Griffith. //
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the genesis...i officially have a team (altho my heart is still with the lighthouse). i am a member of the young heroes team based out of IS 204 in long island city (he-ROES!), which means i'll be developing service projects and saturday programs for middle schoolers to engage various social justice issues. this will be the FIRST young heroes team in LIC so we're setting the foundation for years to come (no pressure). oh, and for those that feel as tho youth are a nuisance, PLEASE come to MLK Day in january 2008 so i can prove you wrong. please. honestly. say we can't reverse demises and turn falls into rises...

however, this blog is more than just an affirmation of what i'm currently doing, i'm gonna flex philosophic too. my team is eight strong; we vary in age, leadership experience, and character yet are unified by our desire to serve. no lie, it's gonna be a challenging year...we've got some competitive folk who are blinded by correctivity that they cannot accept feedback; we've got some folk that aren't the most socially apt, but they're getting there; we've got some folk that need to step up and grab the mic and others that need to practice their back-up dances. but it's early in the game so i'm just making my mental notes, remembering that this is big leagues and when needed, i gotta step in and make sure what we're doing is beneficial. but where do i draw the line? when does my guidance become pompous? should i develop some sort of internal gauge and keep myself outta the red zone? my heart says yeah...i'm now a part of something much larger than myself in city year and i'm always one to put the community before me, now i just hafta be adamant about our direction when i feel we're heading down a treacherous path.

in any case, i'ma be assessing my adopted hood over the next couple weeks before we get our serve on. therefore, if you see that city year logo in astoria, LIC, queensbridge, or ravenswood, holla at us...we're here to work with you to make the changes you wanna see happen.

still representin' like the last track of illmatic....

PSs: shout to the homie ray m. for being the ONLY person to even attempt to guess the tracks (q-boro!) \\ if you want to get involved in some service days with city year (come out, plant some flowers, clean a park, paint a mural), drop a comment and i'll get back at you...city year is NATIONWIDE, as is our service \\ and if you wanna see city year: NYC in action, come to union square at 8:15a every mon. and fri....you'll see me there.