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amysgiantbees · 5 years

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Noone knows me personally on tumblr so I feel safe releasing my thoughts on Christianity into the void.

I grew up Christian. Not in “seriously” Christain family that I associate with Americans more than New Zealanders. I just see New Zealanders as overall more casual and laid back people. Not that I’ve ever been to the USA, this is just my judgment call from stereotypes, TV and the few Americans I do know. But back to the point, my family were Christain but not particularly zealous in their beliefs, my Mum would go to Church on Sunday my Dad wouldn’t bother. Both my parents were Christain though. My Dad just sees Church and regular praying as optional as long as he keeps the faith and follows the Bible to the best of his abilities. My Mum enjoyed the social aspects as much or more so than she felt that it was an important part of her faith. Likely she went more for socializing than seeing it as vital and shares my Dad’s philosophy because once we moved she stopped going because Church didn’t have her friends and was too long a drive. After our third move now and she attends Church again, the same one as my Gran who has always been the most devote person in my family, but that’s likely because she’s looking for a cure for my brother’s sickness. My brother has been ill for two years now. He had to pull out of university two weeks into his first year and has since been plagued with headaches and hypersensitivity.

I believed as a child in no serious way, it was just what I knew. After our second move, I sometimes would attend Youth Group in town at my Gran’s church and this introduced me to some very devout people. It also leads to my first and only trip to Easter Camp. Easter Camp is a camp over Easter weekend and it involved multiple Concert like events after sermons in the evening with fun non-Christian activities and very Christain talks/lectures during the day. It was packaging Christianity as fun and “hip” so it isn’t surprising now that the band named after and associated with the very problematic and homophobic Church known for having a high appeal among young people, Hillsong, played all of the concerts at night. This was where I was confronted about how serious I wanted to be about Christianity in a big way because on the second day I think there was an event in the day where the pastor invited the Holy Spirit to be in us. He meant this very literally. Our youth leaders warned us beforehand about the reactions people have and true to word people started wailing and crying. I didn’t have any such reaction. Which just left me feeling hollow, guilty and wrong. I didn’t believe enough clearly. This was later reaffirmed when after Easter Camp I attended for the special “After Easter Camp” service lead by the Youth Group. During this (or maybe a few weeks after actually) an elderly woman in the audience during prayer time said that there was a person feeling ill and that they didn’t believe enough but God was giving them a chance to do better, or something along these lines I can only remember the general gist’ of it now barely. But this sent little thirteen years old me crying after the service because I had been feeling a little ill during the service.

I had a tonne of gilt so I eventually tried reading the Bible myself. My Granddad (who had by then passed away. Rest In Peace) was one of the most devoted people I’ve ever known. He and my Gran would read the Bible at least once a day. I thought doing the same would help. I have had to work on my Feminism and personal activism a lot through my life I started out very ignorant when I was younger and I’d like to think I’d improved a lot by the end of high school which I was in my last year of when I started trying to regularly read the Bible. I’m still obviously working on my feminism a lot but by seventeen it was a personal interest of mine and still is. Thus unfortunately for Christianity, I was no longer in a place where I would be swayed by homophobic or sexist writings or be able to easily look past it. I started highlighting parts of the Bible I found confusing, troubling or problematic in orange and parts that I loved in particular in yellow. The parts in orange quickly outweighed the yellow.

I’ll get back to the rest of my story later I need to go to bed but I just wanted to jot down before I forget this. I find it confusing that when I point out the parts of the Bible that discourage wearing clothes of different materials, eating shellfish and describe marriage as an arrangement between a father and a fiance over property, that this can all be described as products of their time or that I need to remember that this was written by regular men, not God but other parts like anti-homosexuality passages should be taken completely seriously. I have never met a Christian who does not interpret the Bible in their own way. And I’ve never met a Christian who is willing to think in-depth about this. I just see a lot of hypocrisy and unwillingness to ever even attempt to interpret the Bible in new ways.

This is all to say that I recently became comfortable with no longer being Christain and being something along the lines of Agnostic. But my Dad told me about a miracle that happened to him and he’s a very honest man, so now I’m all confused. And I just wanted to vent about it all I suppose.

#myanalysis #christianity #christian religion

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penderworth · 3 years

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The (first of more, probably) religious trauma entry

For a very, very long time, I’ve been putting off writing or talking about this, let alone remembering it. Because as much as I love nostalgia, I hate remembering things. Why should I? They’re gone. Remembering them sounds like an unproductive way to spend time. No wonder I have such a hard time with therapy: There’s a lot of remembering things in therapy, and my dad’s voice is what said that last sentence, not mine. But we’ll get to that.

My struggle to find belonging the past few years makes complete sense in the context of my church experience. It’s a very common one, in fact, for anyone who leaves church. I hear about it often, like earlier today on The Sunday Thing. I mostly left the church when I turned 21, but all this started way before that, when I was 14 or so and Church on the Mountain split. Friends and all the other younger people started going to Lighthouse, where they had night services and it was edgy. Charismatic! They had flags! Fuck flags, man.

Originally though, when the church split, I stayed at COTM because it was tough to get up to Mammoth. Then the youth group moved up there as well, so I started getting rides from friends. And slowly, unconsciously, to their disappointment, I drifted away from the religion of my parents. But it’s okay, the new church had flags! Only for a little bit, though, then the old church got some again too. The ouroboros of church trends.

The new church also had dancing, louder music, and all the other things one finds when they Google for “charismatic church”. We just lacked Benny Hinn, Sith supreme. Fascinatingly, though, in the past few years, I find myself drawn to many of the things I spoke against in the church. But was it ever me speaking? No. It was the judgement of my parents, carried on habitually, as all family opinions are. The genes of one’s ancestors must not just make up our bodies; why not encode some opinions, traumas, and other chaos in there as well, triggering it at just the right moments? But worry not: You can avoid all this by continuing to play the game of your parents’ child.

Back to the dancing. The only relationship I’d ever had to it was that one time I asked Kristen out at a wedding, hosted at our second house in Mammoth. But wait, let’s deconstruct that real quick. Why did I ask her to dance? Someone told me to. Either my parents or my peers, probably the former. Someone said that asking a woman to dance is the key to her heart. And my adolescent mind immediately said “Yes, please, the key to those boobs! I mean, oh wait, heart. Yes. We must get married first, then the boobs shall be available.” And even the very young me sought much success in the world, so pursued what he wanted.

Then other ideas floated into my relationship with dancing. “Men only do that at weddings.” “Well, see, that makes you gay...” “Oh that’s just something they did in the 60s.” “I don’t know man, I think you might suck at it. I mean, do you even have hips?” So when Lighthouse introduced this new physical experience of church, I repeated what I’d heard my parents say, in the way one does when they’re afraid of the other: “This is getting a little weird.” To which a child for whom the world is entirely made up of wonder and mystery should reply, “Yeah! And let’s try it out.” But that child was dying. His parents and culture had killed him with their occupations, marriages, gods, and ideas. So many ideas.

Of course at this point, dancing wasn’t enough, so they added extensions to their appendages by gathering sticks with thin, colorful fabric attached, that flowed weightlessly as they spun them around, praising God. For some reason, though, if gay people wanted to celebrate a part of themselves in the same manner, that was different. And if we asked why, it was complicated.

I grew disillusioned and judgmental with all of this. Part of me – the one who was becoming someone – wanted to belong here, to be a crucial part of this community. That’s why I would plant roots, serve on their teams, play on the worship team. I wanted them to see that I wanted to be there, that I was dedicated, that I wouldn’t leave. I was seldom returned this effort. Church seems to attract many wounded souls who also don’t know how to love, hence the desire for an unconditionally loving God. I mean it’s in the marketing, right? Makes sense.

So part of me wanted to belong there. But the parental voices within said something different: This scares me, this is weird, make it go away, I don’t want to talk about how I feel. Because that last one is really it, isn’t it? You don’t want to talk about your feelings. Even you, mother. You, who feel so deeply in moments I can’t, yet freeze in many of the ones that matter to me. And that is how behavior and habits pass down to one’s children. I like to imagine we do that to our children because there are many problems in our lives that we just won’t get the chance to solve before we die, and they demand to be worked out. So we procreate to create new chances for these issues to be resolved. We’re dedicated coders staying on top of our repo.

Of course at this point, I do wonder where we are going if this is indeed the course of the universe. What would become of us if all our issues were to be resolved? A question for another time.

I remember the first time I went to Lighthouse, at their older location. I felt cool. There was such potential in this new place. It was NEW. Sparkly. They had a cool sound system, lots of drums, and a hip worship leader. This seemed like progress. I’d learn new songs, meet bandmates, find myself playing the House of Blues one day. The dream! Also there were new girls I hadn’t met before. The girl who’d rejected me previously was behind me – this was a new slate, the first of many in my life where I could recreate who Jacob was, until I eventually lost him entirely.

For someone who was homeschooled, all this was exactly what I needed. I got to meet other people my age twice a week now: Youth group on Thursday and church on Sunday. I’m sure none of my passion was driven by the sexual urges of an adolescent. No, I would never have such thoughts during my special singing and praying time with God; who, by the way, I did not understand, but was told C.S. Lewis would explain to me one day when I’m older. And all this time, they thought I wouldn’t come back one day to bite them with a joke, like the serpent who didn’t get to taste that juicy apple.

There was one other time I saw other people my age: Swim team. But I never wanted to be there. Not like I wanted to be at a mini rock concert, singing loudly and pretending to have spiritual experiences, sometimes playing on the stage myself. I was also pumped up on all the Dr. Pepper and Mambas I could buy with my allowance. If the church and educational systems focused more on embodiment, I may have made better choices. Or maybe I would have rebelled and eaten even more sugar – who’s to say.

What’s unfortunate is I never truly felt at home at Lighthouse, because there was a war going on inside me the whole time. My family was telling me it was bad, sinful, even evil and “demonic” at times. They believed more in the God than the Holy Spirit part of the trinity, and rarely talked of the Son, Yeshua. But another part of me was just happy to be among peers; my parents’ church was mostly old people who never seemed to be listening to me when we had conversations. Eventually I left Lighthouse because I moved. The first of many moves.

In examining my experiences finding community since then, they’ve slowly declined into what is currently an absence of it. My most recent sustained experience of community was in Isla Vista. Everything fell into place for me to move there. It felt like where I was supposed to be – I took it as a sign from God, because it happened so seamlessly, unlike other life transitions I'd forced.

I had incredible housemates that first year in 2014, each of whom challenged me in more ways than any of my classes ever could – I’ve always been more fascinated with relationship and the human condition than I was with any subjects. One of the most memorable things of that first year was the beginning of a more substantial deconstruction for me. Getting into deep, circular, and unreasonable arguments with my housemate Tarra would leave me cursing God, quietly and ashamedly, for how he had failed to show her what love truly looks like within the heart. Love isn't trying to convert someone to your beliefs, which felt more like someone trying to prove to themselves that what they believed was good for them by marketing it to other people as such.

At this point, I still listened to my heart. I still felt it often. When I passed a homeless person on the street, I felt the pangs of their hunger, loneliness, and disconnection from the rest of us. But I was told that’s not what we do when we see a homeless person, so I had to block that feeling to prevent myself from becoming overwhelmed, especially after moving to a larger city. This became a habit for me: Assimilating the emotional and behavioral patterns of the people around me, often without a second thought. I still had a critic within me who challenged things, but most of its energy was spent at AppStorm, finding flaws in the creations of others. Because that’s the role of a critic, I was told: To be an asshole.

Toward the second half of 2014, my faith in this God began to shake until it shattered. Breakups with another person are terrible, but try breaking up with the morals, community, and afterlife package you were given upon your arrival in this world. That fucking sucks. No one likes it. Which is why it took me years, from ages 20 to 24 to finally file for divorce with my church, my God, and my afterlife insurance plan, as Pete Holmes would say. And after all the sex I’d had while traveling, it felt freeing for a bit – maybe I hadn't greatly sinned after all, maybe I could listen to my body. But breaking up with someone usually guarantees their voice will return to haunt you for a while. And this was a 24-year relationship, so there’s a bit of history.

The wonder of that child I mentioned earlier has, at this point, really begun to disappear. I see glimpses of it some days. If he were a roaring fire at the start, he’s now a barely glowing ember. The optimism of even the 22-year-old self has been replaced with a stagnant disinterest in what life could possibly have that won't lead to more unnecessary suffering. And without people to win over, he’s unsure that he’ll ever be able to procreate, to pass at least a few of his problems on to the next great programmer who starts a branch on this vast repo. Plus the fear of all the things above, as well as those of his ancestors, and the shame of being white, having a job, and living what most would call a really great life, haunt him daily. Without the balancing optimism of others in his life, he feels as if he’ll collapse under the weight of all this. It truly is too much for one person to bear, yet in the words of Ella Wheeler Wilcox:

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

Weep, and you weep alone;

For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,

But has trouble enough of its own.

So he’ll run off now, to find some alternate realities in his dreams, where things are different. Perhaps those dreams are a future of this very timeline.

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ralphmorgan-blog1 · 7 years

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Get ready for a more militant and ‘woke’ NAACP

(CNN) The NAACP has described itself as the "oldest and boldest" civil rights group in America, but it may soon tack on another word to its billing: "woke."

The slang term, used to describe an unaware person who has become socially conscious, is how one national NAACP leader described the group's recent metamorphosis. Others talked with unabashed excitement about the civil rights movement becoming "more militant" and "back to the streets."

In-your-face rhetoric is not usually associated with the venerable NAACP. The 108-year-old organization has been like the Cadillac of civil rights groups -- its name still has cachet, but people prefer newer models of activism. It's been overshadowed by Black Lives Matter and accused of being obsolete.

But something changed when a local NAACP official recently found a way to catapult the group back into the national spotlight. He issued a travel advisory for the state of Missouri, urging "extreme CAUTION" for any person of color traveling there. The advisory evoked the Green Book, a pamphlet that guided black motorists across the treacherous terrain of Jim Crow's America. Reporters started asking if Missouri is the new Mississippi. And NAACP leaders seemed delighted.

Learn more about the storied history of the Green Book

"We were built for this moment," says John Gaskin, a spokesman for the group's St. Louis branch. "Cadillacs are built for the highways."

Yet the story behind the story -- why the NAACP came up with the advisory and what it says about a potentially seismic shift in the group's philosophy -- is as interesting as the advisory itself.

Over the top or on the mark?

Start with a basic question: Is the advisory really necessary, or is it a bit over the top?

Consider the history. This is the first time the NAACP has issued a travel advisory.

It was founded during a period of widespread lynching in the United States and didn't issue one then.

It didn't issue one after four black girls were killed in a church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963.

It didn't issue one when Medgar Evers, one of its most prominent leaders, was shot to death in front of his Mississippi home that same year.

It didn't issue one when riots erupted across America after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. five years later.

Why now?

Nimrod "Rod" Chapel Jr., president of the NAACP's Missouri State Conference, says he decided to issue the advisory after the state's Legislature passed a law in June making it more difficult to sue for housing or job discrimination. The full NAACP subsequently adopted his advisory at its national convention.

Chapel says the Missouri law "is worse than Jim Crow in some ways." As justification for the advisory, he also cited a report that said black motorists are 75% more likely to be stopped by officers in Missouri than white drivers.

"I don't think we could have responsibly done anything less," Chapel says. "We have a society in Missouri that has turned its back on morality. You cannot legalize discrimination and harassment, and they've done that by giving immunity to people who do it."

Then there's Missouri's peculiar history. It's where race riots erupted in 2014 in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson after a white police officer shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black youth, to death.

None of that, though, is enough to merit the group's first travel advisory, one critic says.

Rick Moran, an editor with American Thinker, condemned the travel advisory in a recent column. He says it was much more dangerous driving while black in Jim Crow Mississippi than contemporary Missouri.

"The whole thing is nonsense," Moran says. "It's a fundraising gimmick. It just seems like that's something you do when you're sitting around the table and someone says, 'Gee, we're kind of low on fundraising, what can we do to goose that number?' "

Gaskin, of the St. Louis NAACP, acknowledged that the type of racism in contemporary Missouri is not as lethal as other eras in American history. He cited the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers ambushed on a rural Mississippi road, which was depicted in the movie "Mississippi Burning."

But that doesn't mean the travel advisory isn't merited, he says.

"Racism here in Missouri is hidden, and that can be the most devastating racism," Gaskin says. "We're not talking 'Mississippi Burning' racism. We're talking about the sort of racism of being pulled over and asked additional questions that you might not be asked in Illinois. Folks on your street might not be so welcoming."

The advisory may have done its job. It focused national attention on the state of Missouri and brought publicity to the NAACP, which only last month had been publicly blasted by a powerful group of black ministers for verging on irrelevance.

"The work of the NAACP is more important than ever before," Gaskin says. "If it wasn't relevant, this wouldn't be the leading story of the last couple of days. That's why this made the headlines -- because this is the NAACP."

And at least one historian who is an authority on driving while black during those "Mississippi Burning" days wasn't offended by the travel advisory.

Calvin Ramsey wrote the play "The Green Book," which traces the rise of the unofficial travel advisory that many blacks and Jews used during the Jim Crow era. He says he wasn't surprised by the NAACP's actions.

Calvin Ramsey explains how travel has changed since Jim Crow era

"I guess they'd rather be over the top than under the radar," Ramsey says. "There's a lot of raw nerves since [President Donald Trump's] election. I thought that we had passed this in a lot of ways, but I was never totally convinced that we passed this completely."

The notoriety the NAACP's advisory attracted is a sign of progress, he says.

"We didn't have a CNN before and people were out there on their own," he says. "A lot of things happened that were never reported. The Green Book was our AAA guide because we couldn't belong to AAA. It was a lifesaver."

Glimpses of a new NAACP

The travel advisory also may hint at the NAACP's new direction.

The group has gone through a rough patch. In May, it announced it would not renew the contract of its then-president, Cornell William Brooks. Its leaders called the decision part of a "transformational, systemwide refresh and strategic re-envisioning."

In June, the group held its annual national convention, where leaders talked openly about trying to remain relevant. One writer, Michael A. Fletcher of ESPN, while covering the convention said the group's traditional approach of working within legal and legislative channels for social change can now seem "ponderous or even irrelevant" because of the "raucous" demonstrations of groups like Black Lives Matter.

And just weeks before the convention, a group of black ministers released a blistering open letter demanding that the NAACP change.

The African Methodist Episcopal Church's Council of Bishops called on NAACP leaders to "restructure the organization" to avoid irrelevancy. The A.M.E. Church is a pillar in the black community and has provided many of the NAACP's best-known leaders.

"Longevity alone is not proof of relevance," the statement read. "For the reality is that today the NAACP is smaller and less influential than it has ever been in its history."

How would a new NAACP look if it answered the challenge by the A.M.E. Church?

It may look a little more like Black Livers Matter.

Traditional civil rights group have been wary and critical of Black Lives Matter activists. The movement, which gives prominent places of power to women and members of the LGBT community, is run very differently than many civil rights groups. Traditional civil rights groups evolved out of the black church, which tended to be led by autocratic men who condemned gays and lesbians and didn't see women as equals. Even today, some black churches still won't allow women to preach and few officially affirm gay and lesbians.

Some of that wariness also may be rooted in generational differences. There have often been clashes between older civil rights leaders and the young folks they condemned for moving too fast and being too aggressive. Andrew Young, a close aide to King, once apologized after calling Black Lives Matter activists "unlovable little brats."

Now, however, at least some NAACP leaders are talking about Black Lives Matter activists as potential allies, not rivals.

Chapel, the Missouri NAACP official who issued the travel advisory, says he admires Black Lives Matter.

"Some may say there goes a bunch of crazy kids," he says. "These are young folks who were concerned about their community, and they did something about it. That's called activism. In the NAACP, there's room for everybody, whether it's Black Lives Matter or other people of conscience."

Anthony Davis, national coordinator for the college and youth division of the NAACP, is a fan as well.

"I love it," he says. "As a result of the Black Lives Matter movement, the social justice and civil rights movement has been able to become more militant. It's OK to be back in the streets. We would love to partner and work with Black Lives Matter because we appreciate them for what they do."

Davis says the NAACP is already adjusting its outreach to younger people. He says it's creating more engaging platforms on social media to attract youth and touring with hip-hop stars to register voters for the 2018 midterms.

"Over the last year, we've done a good job branding ourselves as not only this historic civil rights group, but the youth and college division is more hip and, I hate to use this term, but, 'woke,' " Davis says.

Becoming more like Black Lives Matter, though, might not be good for the NAACP, one sociologist says. He says the group lacks structure and long-term vision. The Black Lives Matter movement has also been weakened by infighting.

Learn about divisions within the Black Lives Matter Movement

"The NAACP has lasted a long time for a reason," says Shayne Lee, a sociologist with the University of Houston. "There's a risk when you copy the latest flavor. You risk losing your core constituency."

The Missouri travel advisory may mark a new direction for the NAACP, but the kind of leader the group chooses next may serve as the ultimate proof of a new "woke" NAACP.

Gaskin, the St. Louis NAACP leader, sounds confident.

Some in the black community, he says, were asleep during the last eight years while Barack Obama was President. Now they're in the Trump era, and they're taking a second look at the NAACP.

"At that time, they didn't think they needed us," he says. "You don't miss water until your well dries."

The next few months and years will show if the group can not only be "bold," "old" and "woke,'' but do something else:

Adapt.

Read more: http://ift.tt/2vqXcBy

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2vV16p1 via Viral News HQ

#IFTTT #Viral News HQ

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forextutor-blog · 7 years

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New Post has been published on Forex Blog | Free Forex Tips | Forex News

!!! CLICK HERE TO READ MORE !!! http://www.forextutor.net/creating-a-comic-book-for-social-justice/

Creating a comic book for social justice

Pow Wham Zap! Meet a real life comic book hero

As a child, Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez turned to comics to help him escape the poverty and crime that was right outside his door.

Now, the 45-year-old Puerto Rican activist and artist has created his own comic book, hoping to raise awareness about social justice issues, like pollution and discrimination, in Puerto Rico.

Entitled La Borinqueña, the comic features a Nuyorican superwoman who acquires her powers — like superhuman strength and the ability to control weather — while visiting some caves in Puerto Rico. Using story lines that infuse Puerto Rican history and culture, Miranda-Rodriguez wanted La Borinqueña to be a symbol of hope for the hard hit island.

Related: From shelter to startup: One Egyptian immigrant’s success story

So far, the response has been overwhelming. Miranda says the first printing of La Borinqueña has almost sold out. Legendary illustrator George Perez, known for The Avengers and Wonder Woman, will create a new cover for the book’s second printing in February.

“[La Borinqueña] is an icon, and Latinos are recognizing her for that,” said Miranda, who self-published the comic.

Born in New Jersey, Miranda lived in Puerto Rico for eight months when he was eleven years old. There, his artistic ability was nurtured and his Puerto Rican pride grew.

He eventually headed back to U.S., where he graduated from high school, and later attended Colgate University on a full scholarship, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1998. He has since gone on to found his own design studio, Somos Arte, and he has co-founder of graphic novel publishing company Darryl Makes Comics.

Miranda hopes that La Borinqueña will inspire more Latino artists seeking to make it in the comic book world. He plans to introduce his comic and tell his story at various youth conferences across the U.S.

Here is Miranda-Rodriguez’s American Success Story

Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez as a child.

What was your life like growing up?

Family was just the three of us, my mom, older brother Axel and myself. My younger sister Marisol would be born later.

My mom collected public assistance. We were already so poor and then someone stole my mom’s Social Security number to work. Since the system showed her as working, she was blocked from collecting food stamps for about a year.

We didn’t have any money. We would sometimes eat just warm water mixed with Adobo seasoning. I wrote a poem after college describing the experience called Adobo Soup and performed it at the Nuyorican Poet’s Café.

I lived in a different neighborhood almost every year. One neighborhood in the Bronx was so jacked up that my mom said, “you don’t have to go to school while we look for another apartment.”

Related: Teacher returns to his Bronx high school to help kids succeed

I stayed at home for about three months reading comics and watching PBS. When I finally went back to school, I found that I had been discharged and held back. That crushed me. I was a very good student.

“I often wondered what would my life be if my parents had stayed together,” Miranda-Rodriguez said.

[Comic books] were my escapism. I’d collect bottles and cans to buy them. My mom always yelled at me to get rid of them.

I stayed home reading and drawing. I’d create my own characters and kids would ask me to draw stories for them and I’d sell them.

When I was about 14, we moved to Puerto Rico.

My stepfather had trouble getting work in Puerto Rico but he had family in Reading, Pennsylvania, and wanted us to move there. My mother and him went to Reading and left me behind with my uncle Joaquin.

Related: NYU dean wants to teach low-income students ‘how to fish’

That was fun because I was around all my cousins. I got into church and I was drawing a lot. My uncle and aunt would buy me paints and art supplies. My cousin Jonathan still has the original painting I did of Wolverine when I was 14. Then, in late November, my mom brought me to Reading and I started school again.

But my mom soon left my stepdad and we moved to Syracuse, New York. I arrived for freshman year at Fowler High School, graduated with honors and got a full scholarship to Colgate University.

“Before college, I went by Edgar and then I changed it to Edgardo to embrace my Puerto Rican heritage.”

La Borinqueña deals with a range of social justice issues, from contaminated water to LGBTQ rights. How did you get involved in activism?

I started college in 1989 and became a campus activist. We wanted diversity in faculty and a Latino-studies program.

In 1992, I met Iris Morales, a community organizer in East Harlem who had been a leader in the Young Lords, the 1970’s Puerto-Rican political movement. She was a lawyer and I was in awe. In essence, she became my mom.

That year I helped organize the first conference produced by the Latin American Student Organization at Colgate. It was a Young Lords Party reunion. Morales was slated to be my keynote speaker, but after a family emergency she suggested I ask Luis Garden Acosta, who ran the El Puente community center in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to speak in her place.

Acosta described the fight for access to healthcare, free school lunches and equal rights for Puerto Ricans that the Young Lords led and he talked about the work in education and other initiatives that he was doing now in the community.

I left college to work with him as a community organizer and art teacher.

How were you able to bridge your passion for advocacy with creating comics?

My passion for community activism became real when I started working at El Puente, but it didn’t pay much so I also worked at a Latino web magazine called Mi Gente where I developed my graphic design skills and wrote about comics. There, I met Joe Quesada who became chief creative at Marvel.

Joe is of Cuban descent and he had created a comic based on Santeria gods called “The Santerians.” I did a show about it at the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute. So I went from collecting comics to curating an exhibition about comics with Caribbean roots.

Excerpts from ‘La Borinqueña.’

Why did you decide to create La Borinqueña?

I co-wrote my first Marvel comic book, Guardians of Loisaida, in 2014 with my partner, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels [of hip hop group Run-DMC], which received critical acclaim.

Related: Daymond John on hip-hop, his mom and making it big

My wife’s photo of me holding the comic book on Instagram went viral. It was all over Puerto Rico’s news outlets. There I was, a Puerto Rican, writing for Marvel comics.

Puerto Rico was in dire straits, what with the debt crisis and environmental issues affecting the island and I thought, “What if I gave Puerto Ricans a hero that gives them hope?”

I took this responsibility seriously and developed an original character that spoke to my experience as a Nuyorican and a Latino.

Creating a comic book for social justice Creating a comic book for social justice http://rss.cnn.com/rss/money_news_international.rss $inline_image

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Get ready for a more militant and ‘woke’ NAACP

(CNN) The NAACP has described itself as the “oldest and boldest” civil rights group in America, but it may soon tack on another word to its billing: “woke.”

But something changed when a local NAACP official recently found a way to catapult the group back into the national spotlight. He issued a travel advisory for the state of Missouri, urging “extreme CAUTION” for any person of color traveling there. The advisory evoked the Green Book, a pamphlet that guided black motorists across the treacherous terrain of Jim Crow’s America. Reporters started asking if Missouri is the new Mississippi. And NAACP leaders seemed delighted.

Learn more about the storied history of the Green Book

“We were built for this moment,” says John Gaskin, a spokesman for the group’s St. Louis branch. “Cadillacs are built for the highways.”

Yet the story behind the story — why the NAACP came up with the advisory and what it says about a potentially seismic shift in the group’s philosophy — is as interesting as the advisory itself.

Over the top or on the mark?

Start with a basic question: Is the advisory really necessary, or is it a bit over the top?

Consider the history. This is the first time the NAACP has issued a travel advisory.

It was founded during a period of widespread lynching in the United States and didn’t issue one then.

It didn’t issue one after four black girls were killed in a church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963.

It didn’t issue one when Medgar Evers, one of its most prominent leaders, was shot to death in front of his Mississippi home that same year.

It didn’t issue one when riots erupted across America after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. five years later.

Why now?

None of that, though, is enough to merit the group’s first travel advisory, one critic says.

But that doesn’t mean the travel advisory isn’t merited, he says.

And at least one historian who is an authority on driving while black during those “Mississippi Burning” days wasn’t offended by the travel advisory.

Calvin Ramsey explains how travel has changed since Jim Crow era

The notoriety the NAACP’s advisory attracted is a sign of progress, he says.

Glimpses of a new NAACP

The travel advisory also may hint at the NAACP’s new direction.

The group has gone through a rough patch. In May, it announced it would not renew the contract of its then-president, Cornell William Brooks. Its leaders called the decision part of a “transformational, systemwide refresh and strategic re-envisioning.”

In June, the group held its annual national convention, where leaders talked openly about trying to remain relevant. One writer, Michael A. Fletcher of ESPN, while covering the convention said the group’s traditional approach of working within legal and legislative channels for social change can now seem “ponderous or even irrelevant” because of the “raucous” demonstrations of groups like Black Lives Matter.

And just weeks before the convention, a group of black ministers released a blistering open letter demanding that the NAACP change.

“Longevity alone is not proof of relevance,” the statement read. “For the reality is that today the NAACP is smaller and less influential than it has ever been in its history.”

How would a new NAACP look if it answered the challenge by the A.M.E. Church?

It may look a little more like Black Livers Matter.

Traditional civil rights group have been wary and critical of Black Lives Matter activists. The movement, which gives prominent places of power to women and members of the LGBT community, is run very differently than many civil rights groups. Traditional civil rights groups evolved out of the black church, which tended to be led by autocratic men who condemned gays and lesbians and didn’t see women as equals. Even today, some black churches still won’t allow women to preach and few officially affirm gay and lesbians.

Now, however, at least some NAACP leaders are talking about Black Lives Matter activists as potential allies, not rivals.

Chapel, the Missouri NAACP official who issued the travel advisory, says he admires Black Lives Matter.

Anthony Davis, national coordinator for the college and youth division of the NAACP, is a fan as well.

Learn about divisions within the Black Lives Matter Movement

The Missouri travel advisory may mark a new direction for the NAACP, but the kind of leader the group chooses next may serve as the ultimate proof of a new “woke” NAACP.

Gaskin, the St. Louis NAACP leader, sounds confident.

Some in the black community, he says, were asleep during the last eight years while Barack Obama was President. Now they’re in the Trump era, and they’re taking a second look at the NAACP.

“At that time, they didn’t think they needed us,” he says. “You don’t miss water until your well dries.”

The next few months and years will show if the group can not only be “bold,” “old” and “woke,” but do something else:

Adapt.