Nantali a.k.a Iam BlackGirl

These days, I’m listening to Bon Iver, the new Jamie Foxx album and Land of Talk. I’m also going back and listening to a couple of older albums such as K-OS’ second album, Erika Badu, and then I always have Q-tip on rotation.

 

 

I usually don’t vote because I believe in the fundamental ideas of democracy which, in my understanding, state that you elect he or she who really represents you. I am more likely to vote on the municipal level than at the federal or provincial level. With regards to my day to day experience, I think the municipal counselors have a little more impact.

Obviously, if I am very concerned with issues like education, I have to consider voting at the top two tiers. But I certainly don’t vote for the sake of voting and especially coming from the Black community, I think that sometimes there’s this argument that we should vote because there was a time in our history (as people of the Diaspora anyways)  we weren’t allowed to vote. I understand that, but I think that what has to be explained is that you vote for who best represents you. I think that ultimately the reason why it’s so easy to tell people to vote because we never voted before because we don’t take the time to explain to people what does that mean: someone that represents you. And in order for someone to represent you, you have to actually have some ideas and that means you have to understand, to a certain degree, your participation in society, your role and your rights as a civilian.

It’s a kind of like which came first, the chicken or the egg? Because politicians and our civic leaders are kind of responsible for having us understand that stuff, but we also have a responsibility in keeping up-to-date with that. I don’t encourage people to vote if they don’t understand why they are voting.

Some people say that when you don’t vote, you can’t complain. But if other people were to think with my logic for not voting, we would actually be making a statement to the politicians who seem to get the impression that the community works for them and fail to remember that they work for us. Therefore if we take actions like that, then they have to ask,  why aren’t people voting? Why aren’t we responding to their needs? And that’s the statement that I am trying to make when I don’t vote. Why should we select the best of the worst? We should be electing THE best overall.

Yes I do think there is a connection because I do think that art is, and should be, used in terms of self-expression. The way I use art is to force people to question anything and everything that makes up the fabric of their actual existence as an individual and as an individual in the context of society. I think in that sense democracy obviously gives the biggest space for that type of artistic expression, because maybe if we weren’t considering democratic systems or methods then our art would be one dimensional in terms of whatever art is created and by whom, it would be coming from one angle, and I think that democracy therefore allows for various platforms of artistic expression.
 

 

I ask myself that same question all the time because I certainly end up seeing a lot more negative things than positive things despite all the work that I do in the community. But I also realize that it takes one good thing or one cool encounter with one individual or one interaction with a child who said something brilliant that brings me back and renews my hope in people. I think I care about community because I was raised that way, these are only values that I’ve known. I’ve never known individualistic values. Every decision in my life or whatever I have participated in has always had that communal aspect to it. I didn’t play tennis, I played basketball, because tennis is an individual sport and basketball is a team sport.  Everything has always been connected in that sense in my life in regards to community.  I think we have to learn to live with each other and if everybody was going on their own beat and not considering the other person’s beat then we end up in chaos, in my opinion. I love harmony, so there’s no coincidence I love singing in harmony.  

 

Someone who is in tuned with the facts and has a critical perspective on the community in which he or she exists; if you are going to represent a population there can’t be a huge distance between you and that population. I know a few people who complain about this issue in Montreal quite often; about community workers who don’t live in a community where they work. And there’s two folds: I think it depends on what kind of community work you are doing, but if you are hands-on trying to address issues of a particular community and the conditions of the actual location in that neighborhood, and the conditions of the people in the neighborhood, I think its important to be conscious of the fact that you live there so you have a direct connect with people. Obviously, that cannot happen every time for a person who works in community.

There can’t be a sense of minions like, “These are the minions and I’m the leader and the minions will follow me.” It can’t be like that. If a person chooses to go into politics it’s because they believe that they can be the best voice for a population and they have the best ideas to help improve the conditions of the people overall to help even out the scales. A politician, in my opinion, can’t contribute to widening the gap between the disenfranchised and the privileged. I think sometimes that’s what I witness a lot among politicians and individuals who are in positions of leadership, that gap widens because their take on things is very much individual. You have to feel out the people who are on your terrain and look at what issues touch the greater majority of that population. That’s the biggest issue for me: whatever your mandate is; look at whether it’s addressing the issues of a small demographic or the biggest demographic.