Picture
Downtown Birmingham's historic Alabama Theatre.


Letters from a Birmingham Boy
Founder's newsletter about "Diversity, poverty, humanity, community and other things that matter to me."

"...Today, I’d describe myself as many things," he says in the publication's "About" section, "...an author, activist and storyteller, a crazy combination of Southerner, Sooner, San Franciscan and New Yorker, southpaw and INFP, LGBTQ+ and American of varied ancestry, social scientist, artist and minister -- and proud to be all of the above.

"But, more than anything, I’m a Birminghamian, born and raised in a time and place that got a 50-year head start on learning the same lessons that the nation as a whole would have to learn about becoming a land made for both you and me. And learn those lessons they did.

"Despite 1960s Birmingham’s well-earned reputation for bigotry and cruelty, the people I’d meet in my growing up there in the 70s and early 80s, people of all backgrounds and colors, men and women, straight and gay, the devout and the non-religious and of all ages would, through their kindness, do far more than gift me an unwavering hope in humanity. They’d make me forever proud to be a Birmingham boy."

April 10, 2026 Letter
"Keep Your Hand On the Plow, and Hold On."
What the People Jailed in 1963 Birmingham Teach Us about Saving America from the SAVE America Act.
And from Itself.

"Paul and Silas locked in jail. Didn’t have no one to go their bail. Keep your hand on the plow, and hold on.
Noah said, “You done lost your track. You can’t plow straight and keep a-looking back.” Keep your hand on the plow, and hold on.
Hold on (hold on), hold on (hold on). Keep your hand on that plow, and hold on." 
Hold On — Anti-slavery Spiritual and Civil Rights Freedom Song
It was in 1964 that Martin, along with help from people like Bayard Rustin, the person who’d insisted that the Civil Rights movement must, in every way, be both faith-fueled and nonviolent, published Why We Can’t Wait, a rearticulation and further exploration of the arguments laid out in the Letter from Birmingham Jail, the year prior, on April 16, 1963.

That letter was written while Martin and thousands of fellow protestors were crammed into every nook and cranny of Birmingham’s overflowing jailhouse. My mother, Bernice, 13 years old at the time, was among them. She talks about the experience as nothing short of glorious. So much of that was because of the singing, from We Shall Overcome to Hold On.
"No one, no one let me come in. Doors are fastened and the windows pinned. Keep your hand on the plow, and hold on. Hold on (hold on), hold on (hold on). Keep your hand on the plow, and hold on."
By the time they were singing it behind bars in the Birmingham Jail, the slavery-era code-phrase “hand on the plow”, which meant staying the course once one had committed one’s self to vying for freedom, no matter how hard things got, had been slightly revised to “eyes on the prize.” Something that often happens with communally written songs. Though the imagery changed, the meaning remained the same – finish what you’d started.

I once saw a man start to go the wrong way across the Golden Gate Bridge. Realizing his error, he tried to back up. “Sir,” the bridge agent said through the loudspeaker, “You have committed yourself to the bridge. Now, go forward.” I’ve always remembered that.

In 1963 Birmingham, everyone incarcerated had committed themselves to the cause, and even children like my mother were determined to go forward. They knew what was at stake, all they were risking by being there. And yet they deemed it worth it. They grasped that, just like in slavery days, the entire societal infrastructure had been built to secure their failure, to break their spirits, to discourage them so severely that they abandoned the plow, took their eyes off the prize...
Continue reading 

March 26, 2026 Letter
"Power to the People"
This Coming Saturday Marks the Third No Kings Day Rally. Showing Up Has Never Been More Important.

As many of you know, I lead two different groups committed to direct activism across our nation, training them in the same kind of generative resistance I learned from growing up in a family of activists, who were members of an entire community of activists in 1960s Birmingham.

One group is comprised primarily of young, LGBTQ+ identifying people, many of whom are already veteran activists, having been part of the 2020 uprising. The second is an interfaith contingent of clergy, encompassing pastors and elders, priests and rabbis, monks and nuns, imams and prophets, among others, spanning the faith spectrum from fundamentalism to Universalism, from Catholics to humanists, many of whom, after careers spent caring for people’s well-being, feel called to engage in direct activism for the first time.

Both groups are engaging in the same work, doing, as Civil Rights icon Bayard Rustin, both Quaker and LGBTQ+, described, when he said, “We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers. Our power is in our ability to make things unworkable. The only weapon we have is our bodies. And we tuck them in places so wheels don’t turn." My primary role has been formulating strategy that allows both groups to do the most good in the places where they live, work, go to school and minister... 
Continue reading 

Live your Diversity.
Enact Democracy.
Reform Society.
Elevate Humanity.

.
a