Literary Pixie

By Sammy Ginsberg

This morning, I am all over the place. I have so much work to do. I took the risk, I resigned as a full-time teacher, and now I have to do the work.

I am creating a new life for myself. I am building from what I have learned, I have communicated, and now I have some exciting opportunities ahead of me, but I need to do the work.

I need to prioritize my health and my work in order to become stable again. In the past, I have prioritized other people’s needs over my own to the detriment of my health. I have tried to do too many things trying to live up to our cultural expectations of what a good woman is in Los Angeles. Are the expectations of a good man and a good woman different? What about a good person? I have prioritized community service over my own stability. It is hard though to not act, when people I love are being directly harmed. When I am listening to those people I love, hearing their agony, and want to do something, want to help, to support.

I have been told that I am taking on too much responsibility. It’s true I am compensating for the corporations that take no responsibility, whose metric for success is profit for their board members not the quality of life for the customers they serve.

Their customers are my students and their families. Their customers are my friends and their families. Their customers are my family.

Most nonprofits use the profits of corporations to compensate for the harm caused by the business that donated the profits.

Take Coca Cola for example. We know that their products are harmful to the environment and to people’s health, especially children with ratees of obesity and diabetes at record levels. In the US, 41.64% of people are medically diagnosed as obese. In 2024 Coca Cola made $47.1 billion in net revenue (aka after paying everyone’s salaries and expenses!!) Who gets that money???? Then, they create a foundation where nonprofits (you have to be a registered 501C3 to access the money) can apply to receive funding.

What Coca Cola provides the world is literally net negative for people’s health and quality of life, and yet $47.1 billion dollars net positive for whoever gets those bonuses/controls the foundation who chooses the nonprofits. Can you see why this nonprofit network has been called the “White Savior Industrial Complex”. The corporations literally make money from the problem that they created AND get to be the hero who saves people by funding the solution.

How do we get more people to take responsibility for the harm they have caused? For the consequences of their actions. How do we get them to listen and learn! To change their metric for success?

And more relevant to my day to day survival, what’s my role in this and how do I make sure I have the resources I need to sustain myself while doing this work?

I have identified what I believe my role is, and I have gotten three amazing opportunities to do this work.

I believe my role is to support people in developing 21st century literacy skills.

I believe in the 21st century literacy is not just reading and writing, it is:

• Financial literacy
• Health literacy
• Social literacy
• Emotional literacy
• Digital literacy
• Media literacy
• Information literacy
• Scientific literacy
• Civic literacy
• Cultural literacy
• Physical literacy

Reading, writing, listening, and speaking are the four core tools we use to acquire knowledge and learn. But they are not enough to thrive in the 21st century, unless they are used intentionally.

More than that, to master these 11 different literacies, they must be developed in community and are different depending on your physical place and status.

For the last 100 years, corporations and the government have been consolidating power. We have been creating massive international infrastructures creating a ruling elite that no one knows by name. We have consolidated wealth instead of distributed it. According to Oxfam, The World’s top %1 own 43% of all global financial assets. We are living in a global oligarchy. The USA controls $67 trillion of that Global Asset, making it responsible for the spending of 32% of all the money in the entire world!!! Aka 1 country controls 32% of the wealth for all 195 countries. Aka 340.1 million people control all of the money for 8.142 billion people – 4% of the people control the money for 32% of the world. And of that 4% – how many people actually control this money???

According to Inequality.org, it’s 801 people. 801 people control the money. We know the top 5 [Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffet], but who are the others? If anything, these are self-made billionaires who only acquired their wealth in this generation. What about the other 796? Who are they? How did they get their money? Is what they are selling even good for people and the planet?

And more than that, where do these 801 people live?

I write all of this to contextualize my personal experience and justify why I feel the way I do, to root my feelings in data.

This is why I feel an immense responsibility as an American as well as someone whose family has been in California for three generations. Most of these people live in California. The impact these minority people are having on the global majority is tyrannical and a violation of basic human rights.

This is why as a teacher whose salary is basically the same in every state in America, I will never be able to afford to live in California on my single income.

This is why I feel so powerless.

How can we take back the power from them? How can we stop giving power to billionaires? And give power back to people?

How can we get people to stop attacking each other and start attacking the people who control the system? And even then, we can’t attack these people or they will only get defensive and attack us back and win, as they have been doing for decades.

As the Civil Rights Movement showed us, we can only do this with love. We must be the bigger person. Interesting? What does it mean to be a person? What does it mean to be the BIGGER person?

We must lead with love, not hate.

How do we do that on an individual level? Since we can’t control others, we can only control ourselves.

As Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

I am working on that. I am a big picture person, and struggle with the details – but I need to do the work.

I need to stay stable and stop focusing on the ocean, and focus on my little piece of the beach, and empower, and trust others to focus on their piece of the beach. I need to stop compensating, because when I compensate, I get overwhelmed, as well as prevent another person from being the leader, from being the hero, from being a civically engaged human being, from being a good person. What does that mean? In theory and in practice?

Okay.

Here’s my little piece of the beach: I am focusing on improving the infrastructure of support for writers and teachers of writing in America and the United Kingdom because I believe that by all people being strong writers, they will have the strength to reflect, think critically, imagine, and communicate effectively to develop trusting, healthy relationships with themselves and their communities.

I am doing this by:

• organizing the first ever Los Feliz Writers Festival
• serving as the co-director of the CSUN Writing Project
• serving as the engagement specialist for Writing Partners
• substitute teaching to help teachers
• organizing Thrive for Teachers California, a group coaching program for teachers led by Lynn & Jared
• offering tutoring and coaching for students on their writing for their classes, as well as college applications

That’s it! That’s all I can do! Everything else is a no. Although – this is already too much!! But the festival will be done by the end of the month, and so will the organizing for the Thrive for Teachers group. Then it’s just four things, that are all part time. I’ll figure it out!

And I am figuring out the finances. It will happen. With subbing and the co-director role, I can pay my rent and most of my living expenses. We will figure this out. An English degree really does not prepare you for surviving in an economy! HAHAH. Really requires a husband!

Oh well, I’m learning how to be my own husband.

This month is just intense, and I need to do the work.

Would love to hear what role you want to play in stepping into your power and improving the system we live in? Very happy to discuss and bounce ideas off of if you are confused or trying to figure it out.

We’re in this together!!

We’re all on the same boat!!