Nonetheless, we can grow our own food. There are various companies online willing to sell you saved non-GMO organic seeds. Start growing your own food right now.
I will be addressing this topic in my book next March.
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Monday, January 12, 2015
Ugh! Organic does not mean Non-GMO?
Nonetheless, we can grow our own food. There are various companies online willing to sell you saved non-GMO organic seeds. Start growing your own food right now.
I will be addressing this topic in my book next March.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
"Boxing as Veg: The Tao of Plant-Based Training"
THE VEGETARIAN CHAMPION BOXER
This year is an exciting year
for me! In January I set my course to win the Golden Gloves, a major boxing tournament.
Last year, in my first time entering I lost in the quarterfinals. However, this
year I feel stronger and I’m more knowledgeable. I won my first match this
month by 3rd round stoppage. Yeah!. As I train for my next match I am also planning my international tour Boxing
as Veg: The Tao of Plant-Based Training.As a vegetarian who boxer, there’s a lot at stake in this tourney. I want to illustrate the importance of eating healthy and exercising regularly. I want to teach our youth and adults that monitoring our blood pressure, insulin levels, and the intake of saturated fats is crucial to our wellness. Therefore, when the opportunity was presented to me I decided to fly with it. I’m making stops from NYC to the Bay Area and from India to London this year at over a dozen veg festivals.
OMOWALE ADEWALE “WALE”
This is Wale’s third tour
since 2005, including a leadership tour and artist empowerment tour. In 2004
and 2006 he was requested by congress to give live testimony on the poor
health of artists and poor communities at the HR 676 Universal healthcare
hearing. He has appeared in XXL and the Source and numerous publications and
media around the world on topics of health, politics and Hip-Hop. Wale is a champion
boxer who began learning at 18. Wale is a USA Boxing certified coach. As a teen
he was a former NABBA finalist and ranked 5th in the state among track and
field athletes. Wale co-founded Grassroots Artists MovEment (G.A.ME) in 2001
and developed its youth program, R.E.B.E.L through his FAR Fund/Fund for Social
Change fellowship in 2005. Before he turned 30, upon stepping onto the ground
of Africa for the first time a G.A.ME banner flapped high surrounded by a few
dozen people welcoming him to the continent. With virtually no assistance
outside of G.A.ME he has organized doctors to treat those in the US and
traveled with medicine to Nigeria. Wale managed and helped lead successful
political campaigns in NYC. Wale is certified by Family Support Systems &
ACS in foster care parenting and a Phoenix House trained youth mentor.
THE TOUR…THE PRESENTATION
striking, agile footwork and various punching combinations. One or two partners assist me. Lastly, I ask volunteer attendees to grunt through a variety of abs routines for 7-minutes.
R.E.B.E.L BOXING CLINIC
THE REACH
You have the unique
opportunity to stand on the side of good health and wellness and assist
thousands of people internationally through this amazing tour; not to mention
empower youth through long-term leadership development. As
it stands, there are 12 confirmed stops on the tour. The very first stop in the
Bronx will be led by young leaders. I will directly engage close to 5,000
people through speaking engagements, tabling, phone conversations and in-person
conversations throughout this international tour. My hope is to touch 10,000+
people. The marketing and promotional push by all the organizers connected to
each festival and conference will reach over 100,000+ people in the vegan, vegetarian and veg-curious arena.
Many are awaiting better health.
TOUR EXPENSES
Event Planning & Preparation, Travel, Lodging, Food, Misc. Fees, Emergency Cost (3) $20,000
Event Planning & Preparation, Travel, Lodging, Food, Misc. Fees, Emergency Cost (3) $20,000
Printed Materials $3500
PROGRAMMING EXPENSES
TOTAL EXPENSES: $25,000
DATES
Brooklyn, NY
Tuesday March 19th Youth Boxing ATI Program
GROUPS & INDIVIDUALS CHAMPION SUPPORT LEVELS
Please donate or sponsor at GO FUND ME
Please donate or sponsor at GO FUND ME
$500+ Champion Community Supporter
*Name emblazoned on RBC’s first uniform
*Name listed in Short Film
*Free Self-Portrait by talented artist
Name on Tour T-shirt (Magnified)
Music Album Dedication
Invitation to RBC Thank You Dinner
Free Polo Shirt
Free Engraved Mug
Name on Free Pamphlet (Magnified)
Free Tour T-Shirt
RBC Pen signed by Wale
Thank you to Community Supporter on Blog
$250-$499 #1 Contender Community Supporter
*Name on Tour T-shirt
*Music Album Dedication
*Invitation to RBC Thank You Dinner
Free Polo Shirt
Free Engraved Mug
Name on Free Pamphlet
Free Tour T-Shirt
RBC Pen signed by Wale
Thank you to Community Supporter on Blog
$100-$249 International Community Supporter
*Free Polo Shirt
*Free Engraved Mug
Name on Free Pamphlet
Free Tour T-Shirt
RBC Pen signed by Wale
Thank you to Community Supporter on Blog
$50-$99 National Community Supporter
*Name on Free Pamphlet
*Free Tour T-Shirt
RBC Pen signed by Wale
Thank you to Community Supporter on Blog
$25-$49 Community Supporter
*RBC Pen signed by Wale
Thank you to Community Supporter on Blog
$10-$24 Supporter
Thank you to Community Supporter on Blog
For Sponsorship packages please contact totalfitnesscp@gmail.com.
Monday, December 31, 2012
To Win: I Offer Youth Boxing
Omowale Adewale
During the last several months,
I have been addressing fear and aggression with youth through the sport of
boxing. Although, this entire year I have been teaching boxing to various people
from Christians to Muslims, Tibetans, Eastern Europeans, Western Africans, Iraqis,
Koreans, men and women, young and old, and queers and heterosexuals, I am
especially devoted to teaching young black boys in low-income neighborhoods.
It’s not just about offering priceless lessons of discipline and self-defense.
Boxers learn how to endure to win under pressure and how to regulate their fear
and channel their aggression. These are transferable lessons in the real world.
Young boxers behave completely
different in the gym than they do anywhere else. I remember last month seeing a
young brother outside of my gym with his pants saggin’ and was amazed to see this
expression. I saw the look of shock when he pulled them up upon my request, although
it wasn’t expressed as a request. There’s a philosophy about boxing and
saggin’. Even folks outside of the ring say it, “You couldn’t defend yourself
with your pants saggin’.”
No young person has ever refused
me and I’ve asked total strangers. However, just this past month I’ve placed a personal
moratorium on asking young men to pull up their pants. While, I think the
gesture is pretty immature and somewhat disrespectful in society I’m done with
asking young people to adhere to my sensitivities. It’s completely unfair to
take my cropped picture of a young person based on their physical appearance
and my abhorrence to it and ask that they conform to what I want to view in a
public or private space.
I did not arrive at this
conclusion as a certified youth mentor, trained foster care parent, or as a fellow
in preventing violence against young people. It was not as an advocate of alternatives
in incarceration or as former executive director of a Bronx youth center.
It all happened last month
shortly after Hurricane Sandy. I found a little time to volunteer at three neighborhoods
hit extremely hard in my home city: Red Hook and Far Rockaway in Brooklyn and the
Meat Packing district in Manhattan. I found myself feeling like a young black
boy again and it was all too familiar. Although I was there to help, I was disparaged
as a thief at two of the locations. In only one incident did the sheepishness
of my denigrators conjure up enough nerve to apologize. I felt embarrassingly
young again and too black.
When I returned home, I thought
about the three times I had been stopped by the NYPD this year. One time I was
in slacks, a dress shirt, shoes and carrying a laptop bag. I can’t tell people
enough, the clothes are completely irrelevant if you’re black.
I halted my pitiful sulking for a
minute to imagine how criminalized black boys have been stolen from their
communities and sent to prisons, made suicidal or homicidal, corrupted by
gangs, labeled mentally ill, or simply murdered. An elected official in 2006 during
his re-election campaign and my campaign to gain support for alternatives to
incarceration asked me, “what about the young recidivists who get into trouble
constantly?” I thought about the disgustingly rich, the very powerful, and the
enormously resourceful and replied, “We should give our youth the same number
of chances the family of George W. Bush gave him.” The former U.S. president during
his younger years had all sorts of problems: poor school grades, run-ins with
the law including a conviction and alcohol abuse. He was president during that
time.
As a teen, I can remember incidents
with cuffs placed on my wrists and police guns pointed in my face. In each
incident I was let go in 15 minutes. Growing up in Brooklyn, before my 14th
birthday I’ve had guns pulled on me and even been shot at. Welcome to limited options,
“zero tolerance”, and no resources.
I read that youth incarceration
in NYC had dropped. I decided to take a closer look at the Mayor’s Management
Report for 2012, focusing on ACS, which began overseeing juvenile justice in
2010. According to the report, recidivism has increased every year for the past
5 years. Weapons and narcotics were up. The daily population maybe down between
2008 and 2012, but the average length of stay has remained the same. The data
showed that a 1,000+ youth had left incarceration during this 5-year-period.
That’s miraculous; because, the subsequent 5 years saw a steady increase in youth
being remanded to detention.
Ok, if it’s not obvious, the
youth have been diverted to less expensive and far safer programs embedded in
the neighborhoods of NYC. The first time I enrolled a young person into R.E.B.E.L
(Rallying, Educating & Building Effective Leadership) was in 2005. I was
not quite finished with my fellowship at that time, but the child was 15 and he
was being sent Upstate. ATI’s are hardly new. However, during that time, not
only was there no money being allocated to support ATI’s or ATD’s (alternative
to detention) the so-called liberal attorneys were not serious about ATIs or
ATDs. In 2006, I presented to the Bronx’s legal aid department. There were about
20 legal personnel present from the juvenile justice division, and not one was
a male of color. During that time, more than ninety-five percent of all youth
detained were black or Latino, the Correctional Association of NY reported.
Family court judges and probation
officers used my number, and parents pushed their attorneys to contact our
brand new ATI. Yet, in the poorest county in the State and in the borough with
the most saturation of youth detention in the city, I was completely shocked and
somewhat embarrassed that not one of those young smiling attorneys ever called
me or returned my phone call.
However, not much has changed in
youth incarceration. The Correctional Association of NY reported in 2010 black youth
were 91% of those incarcerated in OCFS juvenile prisons, 49% in need of mental
health services, and 45% are in NYC.
The same goes for stop and frisk
practices, which according to the NYCLU the NYPD has stopped and frisked
700,000 people in 2011, up from 100,000 in 2002. Ninety-percent of these stops
are of blacks and Latinos. The disproportionate stops of young black and Latino males were more
blatant and egregious as they represent 4.7% of the city’s population but
accounted for over 40% of all stops. In contrast, young white males were 3.8% of the
stops but represent 2% of the city’s population. Of the nearly 685k people
stopped in 2011, 605k was innocent. Forty-three percent of these stops were
young black and Latino males.
The Malcolm X Grassroots
Movement reported that between January 1 and June 30 of 2012, 69% of the 120
black people killed had been between 13 and 31. In both the MXGM and NYCLU
reports they cite that police use phrases such as “suspicious behavior or
appearance” or “furtive movements” as their motives for criminalizing youth.
The criminalization
of young people is something I’ve seen for years in a complete mercantile capitalist
society with the impetus being pure greed, but often race-related. Lieutenants
visit poor community districts espousing their monthly criminal reports at community
board meetings claiming to be “good guys” in our neighborhood of “bad guys”. This
is their first pit-stop in their process of reporting crime. Then they transform
young men into targeted young suspects, create quotas to harass them, produce
numbers of “arrests”, “incarcerations” and “convictions” and then develop more
reports in their requests for State and federal funding.
Not only do
poor and working class neighborhoods fund this policing strategy through their
taxes, these same tactics of criminalizing young people by identifying “bad
guys” by their clothing, behavior, and other appearances is used within our
communities. Our communities are conditioned to criminalize each other. Film
director Marlon Riggs, in his 1986 documentary “Ethnic Notions” had illustrated
during times of Jim Crow and post-slavery society had created unfathomable
stereotypes that would define black people. In one segment, switch blades were
said to be the choice of young blacks during that time. Riggs used various old clips
to describe the great depth policymakers and white media were taking to paint young
black males as too dangerous for their civil liberties. This was all part of an
argument to return blacks back to slavery. Backwards caps used to be what
switch blades were. Saggin’ pants are the new switch blades.
Where do black
youth turn? I offer them boxing. From Jack Johnson to Sugar Ray Robinson to
Muhammad Ali to today’s Peter “Kid Chocolate” Quillin young impoverished boxers
beat down by society rise to victory. Thomas Hearns, who held five world titles
in five divisions reflecting on the impact of the legendary trainer Emmanuel Stewart,
said “He wasn’t just a trainer to me, he taught me about life. Right away I
[saw] my life change. He changed a lot of people’s lives.”
Boxing is my
solace, a refuge in a harsh and often judgmental world. A young person once
said to me implicating the adults who chastise his peers for saggin’ pants, “They
don’t know how I’m doing in school.” We make judgments based on our preference
and fail to see the impact on the lives of young people.
Through boxing,
I offer them will power, resiliency, calmness, self-confidence, strength,
discipline, self-defense, regulation of aggression, a healthier body and
attitude and overall wellness. I teach boxers how to reduce their emotions and
focus on the goal ahead. Stereotypes are prevalent all around black youth, but
if they gain love of themselves they will hurdle their obstacles and smash
stereotypes. Whether they lose in the ring is inconsequential. The goal is not
to become a professional athlete, the goal is learn to overcome and astound one’s
self.
I offer their
parents the keys to connect better with them. In boxing, like all martial arts,
the student is quiet and patiently awaiting self-mastery. Students instantly
recognize the difficulty of combat when immersed in the struggle and slowly become
more receptive to learning the world around them.
In the gym,
boxers always ask me, “What do you eat if you do not eat meat?” and “How do you
‘make’ weight?” I haven’t spoken one word about the political process or how a
bill becomes a law although unbeknownst to most, that’s my more experienced
background. However, as a 19-year vegetarian I am ecstatic to teach them about
the abundance of legumes, nuts, grains and green leafy vegetables that allow me
to weigh 165lbs and bench press 300lbs. I discuss my hypertension issues in the
past tense and educate them on increasing their bananas and reducing foods high
in sodium. I teach them to get a jumpstart on fruit and vegetable juicing.
We discuss fear
and anxiety and then we go confront it in the ring with headgear, padded gloves,
mouthpiece and a protective cup with regulation. The aggression is released in
the ring. A calmness flows over you which is preceded by fatigue. Youth from
all walks of life love the feeling of being in the ring with sparring partners.
They hug their peers and partners, maybe bow, pat their heads or kiss each
other’s foreheads to show respect and gratefulness for the engagement and
encouragement.
I know what it
is to rise off the canvas and prevail. Almost four weeks ago, I won a grueling amateur boxing
match at the Fight Factory gym in Coney Island. My record improved and I won a beautiful
belt. It’s always an incredible feeling to win in the ring, but I am especially
happy about this win. I get to teach my progression. Young boxers always want to
know the details.
My opponent was
strong, fast and had a nine-year age advantage. To make matters worse, he
knocked me down in the first round with a crushing left hook that brought the
crowd to roars. The knockdown was enough time to have a conversation within
myself about my determination, composure, and confront my own fears.
In boxing,
you’re training your mind so much more than you’re conditioning your body. It’s
hard to find serenity in the midst of battle, but that’s where you need it most.
When I teach boxing I watch for errors in their form and make adjustments
consistently. There are always improvements to be made.
It’s been several
years since being a campaign manager, running a functioning organization or
being a paid political strategist. When I would discuss civics to young people,
sometimes it was like pulling teeth. With boxing, it’s effortless. They all want
to learn how to win. Such a task allows me to incorporate anything I think is necessary,
nutrition and dieting, how to throw a jab, how to defend, how to breathe when
you run, how to exercise, how to respect the power you wield, how to control
your emotions, how to respect your opponent, how to remain disciplined, how to
love, how to rebel, how to deal with defeat or rejection, how to be young and
black, how to be yourself and express yourself, how to dress the way you feel
most comfortable, how to face your fears, how to understand civics and how to
win in a society that has you pegged to lose.
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