black lives matter

Humanity Club -- Live Again

Humanity Club: Summer 2021

We’re back! Our acclaimed Humanity Club program is working with kids again … in person! No Zoom, no frozen video or inaudible audio. And it’s great!

Yes, some things are still different than when we last were live. Masks are needed for instance — worn by everyone in the room but lowered or removed briefly when the moment seemed safe. And all of us on the Humanity Project team of course are fully vaccinated. We’re doing our best to make sure the children, their teachers and our own Humanity Project folks all stay healthy.

Take a look at a few pics from yesterday’s first non-Zoom Humanity Club session in 16 months. This was at Reverend Samuel Delevoe Memorial Park, beside the African American Research Library in Fort Lauderdale. We began teaching these smart girls of color what we mean by “Equality For Each, Respect For All,” using art projects, games, music, stories and more to connect with their young minds. We plan to help them build a Humanity Garden by the end of the summer: a lovely spot that celebrates our collective humanity by expressing respect for each individual. Check out the photos below. The kids seemed just as happy as we were to be back in the classroom again.

Notice the car… respect even on our roads!

And notice the rainbow with two girls… Equality For Each, Respect For All!

Having fun, all together again!


Petition For Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter!

The Humanity Project just began a new petition drive that will contact every official in South Florida’s two most populous counties to let them know many of us believe Black Lives Matter. That’s more than 300 police chiefs and other officials in Miami-Dade and Broward counties who will get our message. We’re asking for a ban on chokeholds, mandatory de-escalation training and more. And we need you to add your voice. Sign the petition

Here’s how you can do it: Just go to the link, read the petition and then give us your name and email and zip code. Then click, Add Your Name. That’s it. We’re not going to bother you with emails asking for money or anything else after you sign. But you will increase the number of people demanding changes in a society that remains permeated with racism. Sign the petition

The Humanity Project’s BLM campaign is part of our work for social equality and respect for all individuals. Our efforts focus on often marginalized communities including the LGBTQ population, African Americans and other racial minorities, religious minorities and women. We believe our petition drive for Black Lives Matter can make a difference … if enough of you will help by signing the petition. The more signers, the bigger the impact on those officials. Please do sign. And share the link on your social media. We’re grateful for your support.

Black Lives Matter!

Look at the kids in this Humanity Project photo. And ask yourself: When they are adults, will they face the same systemic racism and police violence as their parents and grandparents?

At this moment when the Black Lives Matter movement has gained wider acceptance, our nonprofit group reaffirms our commitment to “equality for each, respect for all.” That is what we stand for. It’s what the Humanity Project has always been about.

We recognize the racism embedded in our American culture. We acknowledge the realities of white privilege. We see the antagonism toward people of color that too often drives the actions of police officers locally and around the nation. Oh yes, we have seen the videos, the final agonizing moments of George Floyd and so many others. Far too many others. Like you, we also have wondered as we watched: “How can anybody be so callous? How can one human being treat another human being in this way?”

At the Humanity Project, we believe the answer lies within each of us. At the core of the human psyche.

As we grow through childhood into adults, nearly every person learns to strongly doubt ourselves at times, acquiring a deep insecurity and self-contempt as part of our coping mechanisms in a competitive and often hostile society. To widely varying degrees most folks feel lacking somehow, as if we’re not good enough, as if there’s something wrong with us. For some people, those feelings are less intense and more manageable in daily life. For others, such feelings become forces that power many of their thoughts, beliefs and actions.

We think this is what happens when people adopt virulent racist opinions. They are looking for ways to feel better about themselves, to justify a sense that, “I’m better than this person because of the color of my skin.” Documents from the mid-1800s prove this attitude was prevalent among slaveowners and other whites in the American South. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. noted the same attitude in his own time and called it “the drum major instinct.” At the Humanity Project, we feel sure it’s still the fundamental problem today. Racism is the bitter fruit of self-loathing.

A desire to exist in meaningful ways, the need to love, appear hardwired into our individual personalities from birth. There is an innate goodness in each human being. But that goodness can be pushed so far into the mind’s background that it seems to disappear completely in some individuals. Only immediate self-interest matters to them. For those who suffer the disease of racism, their attempts to prove themselves superior to people of color are required to relieve their self-loathing. Their relief is brief, though — and soon they need the next racist thought, comment or action.

Not to get too entangled here in heavy psychological analysis. But we think it’s very important to have some grasp of racism’s profound emotional roots. Yes indeed, we live with a system that perpetuates racism. But ask yourself why. Why has that system not been dismantled and reinvented by now? Why do police so often continue to target blacks for harassment or worse? We would not need to call out systemic racism if enough white individuals truly wanted change, if enough police believed in the value of every human being. But that’s clearly not the case … which returns us to the origins of racism. The need by some individuals to believe they are superior to other individuals. “The drum major instinct” again.

Working from this perspective, the Humanity Project creates innovative programs, writings and materials that help individuals better understand their own value and that of everyone else. This allows more of us to treat each person with respect as an equally valuable member of the human race.

Humanity’s problems are the problems of the human heart. “Equality for each, respect for all” emerge naturally from within the healthy, well-balanced individual. No one who feels good about who they are needs to put anybody down to lift themselves up. The Black Lives Matter movement is a reminder that blacks in our society remain mired in a system that treats them as inferior. And that the time is horribly overdue to change that — finally teaching many more people to acknowledge the obvious. Each life of a black person is valuable, each life is important. Every black life matters.