On William Wymsatt, Erasure, Whitley Heights, and Changing the World.

William Upski Wimsatt wrote No More Prisons in 1999.
Ostensibly, the text is about the disparity between American class systems, which he has delineated mostly according to race, i.e. rich whites vs. poor blacks.
His thesis suggests that the prisons in question are both literal and a metaphor for the way so many American imprison themselves, “…in nation based on a culture of fear.” This book is based on observations and lessons learned while hitchhiking to America’s “worst” ghettos while trying to promote his book Bomb the Suburbs, which in turn, was an effort to “breakdown cliques in American life.”
In addition to writing these books, Wimsatt’ s methods to change the world revolve around hip-hop culture, which he addresses at lectures, readings, developing an inner-city youth center, tagging trains and subway cars with graffiti art, and breakdancing competitions et al.
While Wimsatt claims a vast number of mentors including former Black Panther Eddie Ellis, who earned his degree in prison and later headed the Community Justice Center in Harlem; Phil Villers, a Harvard graduate who made more than $80 million and then gave it away; and writer and home-schooling advocate Grace Llewellyn. Drawing inspiration from these (and innumerable others) he hopes society can be changed for the better, thus, he offers this book as a “Hitchhiker’s Guide to Community Organizing.” addressing five key issues:
1.) Urban Life
2.) Home schooling and Self-education
3.) Hip-hop leadership
4.) The Cool Rich Kids Movement
5.) Why Philanthropy is the Greatest Art Form of the Twenty-first Century.
Inasmuch as Wimsatt holds certain values, he acknowledges that life is not static. Things change. Neighborhoods change. The walls of suburbia expand and contract, yet the prisons remain or worse, actually multiply at a furious rate; again, both literally, as well as in the sense that worries perpetuated by the American military-industrial complex have reached a terminal velocity such that freedom has become a vague and purely hypothetical notion for most people.
We have become imprisoned by our fears.

I have long held these very same convictions, and yet I have not been able to find a means of effectively countering the downward spiral of this nation into one of apathetic, ostrich-ing, gated-communities.
Taking a cue from the band Erasure, I once sent out invitations to all the tenants of my old apartment in Hollywood to have a getting-to-know-your-neighbors brunch on our communal deck.

How can I explain, when there are few words I could choose?
How can I explain, when words get broken?

Do you remember, there was a time...?
When there were open doors,
An invitation to the world!
We asked to talk about the weather,
making friends together,
days would last forever...

Chorus Come to me!
Cover me!
Hold me!
Together we’ll break these chains of love!
Don’t give up...
Don’t give up, no!
Together with me and my baby,
We’ll break these chains of love!

Do you remember once upon a time...?
When people on the street,
Were walking hand-in-hand-in-hand!
They were falling in and out with lovers,
looking out for others,
sisters and our brothers...

(Repeat chorus)

Sound familiar? It seems like this is what Wimsatt is shooting for—what all community organizations are shooting for—this idyllic, nostalgic sense of better days; safer days; the Norman Rockwell prism in place of Aldus Huxley’s prison.
Nobody showed up, however, because the management company got word we were going to have an unsanctioned tenants party and ordered the janitors to secretly and swiftly yank all the invitations from our mailboxes.
I had to do a lot of deep breathing afterwards, but eventually it occurred to me to broaden my scope and meet with my neighborhood council.
At the first meeting I attended, I opined that there were quite a number of ways our 5-block radius of Whitley Heights could be improved—from planting trees to collecting the piles of broken furniture abandoned on the sidewalks. My enthusiasm led me into that year’s elections, and before I knew it, I had become the Chair of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council of Whitley Heights Committee on Housing.
Initially, I thought this an honor, but soon I learned the (unpaid) job offered constant headaches and no rewards. My constituents thought my ideas were great—just so long as they didn’t have to do any work, and since I had no budget to hire anyone else, if I wanted to see my campaign promises enacted, I usually had to do them myself, although sometimes my boyfriend pitched in.
Grassroots became a four-letter word, and this has often been the case for most of the non-profit organizations and charities with which I have tried to become involved before or since—from UCLA’s LGBT newspaper to a series of lectures I gave at an adult-education center to inspire people to travel overseas.
I get props for being so gung-ho about creating change, but when it comes time to fill in the roster, most folks shuffle their feet.
What I have concluded is that I have come up with any number of ways to make the world a better place in my eyes for other people, but that in and of itself is rather like playing God—the furthest thing from what I want, and apparently not what they want either.
Humbled, disillusioned, and jaded, I have come to understand that many, if not most of my efforts have gone or will go in vain, and that is a bitter pill to swallow, indeed.
To ask me about passion, one had better expect a grimace or a sneer, and it is something about myself I acknowledge, hate, and am working on in therapy.
Right now that is just the best I can do: plug away at securing my degree and hope someone else will make the world a better place. For the time being, I have to focus on the man in the mirror.