 
Delivered fresh on November 3rd, 2014
Greetings!
When so much talk in this world is cheap and while people still enjoy the priceless privilege of free speech you have the right to remain silent but you also have the opportunity to talk about something that really matters! You are inarguably entitled to keep your convictions all to yourself, but, when keeping quiet comes as a direct response to the fear of retribution and our "rights" and "entitlements" undermine the possibility that we might become who we really are, can we authentically claim to be free? There is definitely something to be said for quiet contemplation, especially when we pause to consider the consequences of the words that we choose to use, but when we allow ourselves to be silenced because we believe that to behave is to be left alone, and to be left alone is to be allowed to keep on getting by, we lose a little bit of our precious humanity, and humanity loses out on the contribution that will only be as a result of our courage and as a product of our sacrifice. Words will inspire and words will also provoke with the power to create and with the ability to destroy; to give life to something or to cancel out its very existence. Allowing others to hear the words that we have yet to say, the words that long to linger in our collective consciousness, graciously responds to that horizon that so generously offers itself up as the space for change with the hope of a better day. Dana DANA DELIVERED! User's Guide: 1) Open up your Dana Delivered! email. 2) Choose an article from the menu on the left hand side or just start from the beginning and read all the way through. 3) If you are reading an article and want to finish, Click on "Read More..." and you will be taken to our website. You can finish reading and while there, have a look around. Note: Dana's Dailies changes, well, daily so come back often. 4) Click on any of the words highlighted in red and you will be taken right to our site, DanaRoc.com. In INSPIRING PEOPLE: Dana talks with Documentary Filmmaker and Activist, Nancy Schwartzman. Nancy's film, Where Is Your Line, is a must see for every woman, every mother or father of a daughter, anyone who cares for or about a woman or girl in any way. Enjoy Dana's EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW with Nancy and find out one way in which women are redefining the rules. Take a minute to read DANA'S WEEKLY INSIGHT and make sure that you listen to the AUDIO VERSION as well. There may be someone who needs you to pass that along. Check out DANA'S DAILIES for no other reason than to hopefully smile. And come back and visit the blog all week at www.danaroc.com/dailies. The special article FROM DANA'S GUESTS: This week is Antiracist Essayist, Author and Educator, Tim Wise. Check out AUGUSTE ROC'S MY TWO CENTS (For Whatever It Is Worth). There is something in it for YOU! While it may be "Two Cents" but you'll find it's worth a whole lot more. Feel free to email your comments to Auguste at auguste@danaroc.com. This week's THE GOOD LIFE : BOOKS selection is What Are You Optimistic About?: Today's Leading Thinkers on Why Things Are Good and Getting Better by John Brockman. Because it's time to shift gears and get happy! Something useful in THE GOOD LIFE : WEB SITES is HollaBack this week. Check it out! And there's more so sit back, grab a cup of coffee, relax and enjoy. As always, thanks for reading! Stay cool. Be hungry. Never look back. Always reach back. Fear not. Believe always, Dana We're Not In Kansas Anymore
We've all heard it said before that "you can never go home again", because once you leave home you can't help but grow up. As a kid I can remember looking forward to the welcoming embrace of home. I can recall relying on its consistent ability to reassure, to soothe and to restore, and yet I was convinced sometimes that I was missing out on something better somewhere else. Growing up, home existed for me as both a monumental burden and as a respite from an unkind world. Always falling short of my private expectations, never coming close to satisfying the need that I had to feel like I was part of a bigger place, home would remain forever faithful and I, in return would spend night after night peering out of my bedroom window resentfully wishing that I could be somewhere far, far away and fantasizing that one day - I would finally be able to leave. I waved goodbye to my parents, reluctantly, and then I watched them peel off down the hot and dusty road that led back toward civilization. Buyer's remorse had already begun to set in. I had patiently listened to his sales pitch and with an open mind, so it didn't take long for him to reel me in. The promise of fun, fresh air and sleeping outside in a tent was appealing to me but it was in fact my father's description of the roasted marshmallow sandwiches with Hershey bar pieces melting inside that ultimately convinced me that Camp Bethel Horizon was the opportunity that I couldn't afford to miss. Suddenly I was looking forward to the adventure and I day dreamed about exactly what it would be like as I counted down the days. Little did I know however, that the day dream would almost immediately turn into a nightmare once the reality of being far away from home would sink in. Recalling my father's sales pitch as I emerged running and offended from the menacing outhouse, convinced that the grasshoppers and wasps were hot on my trail, I realized that there were a few little details that he had conveniently failed to include and I felt as though I had been deliberately misled: "What the hell has just happened here and who do I have to lobby to go home"!? My endless begging and my persistent pleading continued to fall on deaf ears and I had to deal with the fact that there was not a phone call to my parents and not a conversation with any of the grown ups in charge that was going to result in my early release. I was destined to serve out my full sentence and so I would have to find the resolve to somehow make it through. In hindsight, it wasn't that Camp Bethel Horizon was so bad, rather it was that I had failed to realize just how good that I had it - a warm bed, real food and a proper toilet without bugs, people who loved me and the luxury of just being able to be myself. Out there in the world and on my own for the first time, all I wanted was - to go home. They may say that you can never go home again because once you leave you can't help but to grow up. As a kid I figured that much out the hard way, but what I have also discovered as I have developed and as I have evolved, is that home is not merely a place that we can be separated from but rather it is a state of mind that we can choose to access from wherever we are. Imagine. I have struggled for most of my life to reconcile who I am and where I belong convinced sometimes that I am missing out on something better someplace else, but I have never been confused about the fact that where I come from is a constant source of strength. And you? Out there "on your own", in a world that can often feel so unkind, don't you wish sometimes that you could just go home again? When you are missing the familiar, while you are resisting the unknown, can't you appreciate now all the stuff that you used to resent? It is so much more than where we live and where we leave, it is where we discover our best and worst selves. It's greater than where we try on, occasion, to return, it's where we can make fools of ourselves and where we can always be exactly as we are. Home is where we belong! And I believe that you can in fact go home again because home has never really been about the place where we reside. It is, more than anything else, that forever faithful place that resides within our willingness to remember that - where we came from will continue to inform who we can become. Dana Have a great week!
  Filmmaker and Activist, Nancy Schwartzman
DR: Tell me about your project and about how you came to pick this as a subject. NS: I knew I wanted to make a film and the subject matter kind of fell into my lap. The film is about my own experience with sexual assault. It wasn't my intention to make a film about my own story, which is complicated. It's complicated because it's laden with sexual politics and this notion that, as an American woman, we are sexually liberated and we are encouraged by main stream media to be as sexual as possible without really understanding what that means and the politics of it and who we are being sexual for and all of that. I came up in the early ?90s in New York City with a lot of Gay friends and they were very sexually free and promiscuous and that was great with me. That was the crowd that I was in. I had no judgments. I didn't come with shame in my background around sexual behavior. Then I was assaulted and it was really confusing... DR: What happened?...
 Antiracist Essayist, Author and Educator, Tim Wise
Thank God for Tim Wise. His voice provides a thoughtful, humane and decent response to the crass and racist tones that exist in our social and political "dialogue", and that try and disguise themselves as moral. Because They Hate: Health Care Obstructionism and the Conservative MindIt's because they hate. There is no other logical explanation. After all, it's one thing to oppose a piece of legislation and fight to keep it from being passed because you honestly disagree with it as a matter of principle. Decent people can disagree on policy. But it's quite another to celebrate like frat boys at a keg party upon hearing the news that millions of people may now lose their health care, or that their care may become so financially prohibitive as to bankrupt them. Yet that is what they are doing, and by they I mean pretty much the entirety of conservative America. Check out their Twitter spew, where you can see their nearly orgasmic delight at yesterday's 2-1 decision by an appellate court panel to the effect that only persons enrolled in state level insurance exchanges can receive federal subsidies for coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Since most states ? especially those with conservative political leadership ? have refused to establish exchanges, thereby forcing residents to turn to the federal version, the ruling (were it to stand) would mean that millions of Americans may no longer be able to access care under the law. Decent human beings, irrespective of their take on a matter of policy, do not celebrate at the news that millions of peoples' lives could now be made harder. Decent human beings do not cheer and gloat at the news that millions of children could now go without care, or that millions of people may once again be forced to choose between health insurance they really can't afford, or paying a light bill, or buying groceries, or paying rent. Decent human beings don't put such a premium on political victories that they would purposely seek to harm people, deliberately make them worse off, intentionally leave them adrift with no real recourse to obtain care, possibly causing them, in many cases, to quite literally die. But conservatives in America do all of these things. Because they hate. There is no other logical explanation. There is no other logical explanation for why some among them would have even launched the lawsuit that ultimately brought about this result. Again, it is one thing to try and defeat legislation you don't like through democratic channels. They tried that. They lost. It's even OK, one supposes, to try and have the law deemed unconstitutional. They tried that too, and they lost again. What is not OK is to be so committed to the defeat of anything Barack Obama touches ? even a horribly inadequate health care bill that, while better than nothing, is truly a mild reform ? that you will launch a Hail Mary pass to judges you know are in your corner, hoping they will do what you could not at the legislative level. Because that what you're doing when you ask them to block the subsidies (thereby torpedoing the law), because of vague language in the legislation, even when you know that your interpretation of that language is certainly not what the law's framers and supporters intended. The right knows full well that...
 Wax On, Wax Off
"If you want to win, you've got to take what's yours!" I didn't get the full meaning of this, the first time that I heard coach say it. And I really didn't get at all how it would impact my life. I remember, coach laying out what he expected of us. He was used to winning. He was accustomed to success, and his strategy was to transfer that experience to his players. "If you want to win, you've got to take what's yours!" Running sprints or "suicides" as we called them, became part of our everyday life. This drill was designed to maximize your conditioning and instill discipline. Everyone was required to go all out and there would be no exceptions. Everyday, every practice, that whistle would blow and coach would start yelling: "If you want to win, you've got to take what's yours!" That drill went on and on for what seemed like forever; everyday, at every practice, we would run and run and run. And just when we knew we couldn't run anymore, that whistle would blow ? again -- and we would be expected to keep running. "Suicides" became the core of our preparation and our work on the court; and after a while we were conditioned machines. When it was game time, we were ready! We were ready to get on the court and play ALL OUT, from beginning to end. Fourth quarter would come and the opposing team would fall back but we would take a deep breath and blow right by them. Consider that, in the game of your life, you have got to be prepared. You have got to do the work! You've got to do the daily, sometimes tedious, stuff that will discipline you and condition you for success. Trying to be successful in any game you play, without doing the work, without practicing the fundamentals, without the discipline, without the commitment, without the sacrifice -- it's just not going to happen! You've got to take what's yours! Today, I have memories of coach shouting and now I know exactly what he meant, and I've gotten the benefit of that wisdom -- that discipline and doing the work, is a critical part of - what it takes to win. That's my two cents (for whatever it's worth), Auguste Roc
 The 100 Years Project - Jeffrey
Name: Jeffrey Age: 16 years old Where are you from: I'm from Brooklyn. Occupation: I'm a student. 100 years from now what do you want to be remembered for: Oh boy. I mean that?s the thing I don?t know. I guess I just want to be remembered in general. It?s a very sad thought to be forgotten; to think about being forgotten. I want to be remembered for something. For what I don?t know but I have a hundred years.  Hollaback!
Why I am recommending this website: It?s time that women fight back! Street harassment has been plaguing women for far too long! Let?s band together and put an end to this threatening behavior and quite frankly, act of violence toward women. From the Website:
 What Are You Optimistic About?: Today's Leading Thinkers on Why Things Are Good and Getting Better
Why I am recommending this book: With all of the bad news out there these days, optimism is something that we could all use a little bit more of and John Brockman taps some of today's most intriguing minds about what they are personally optimistic about.
Click here to purchase this book. Amazon.com Click here to purchase this book.
 
If you think you can't then you won't. If you think you can then - you just might.
 
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