Vision Circle

Three years ago approximately, Michael Bowen came to me with an idea. He'd just announced that he was a Republican, and he was interested in creating a space that would bring together Ellisonian style ideas....old school ideas...and Republican party politics. Oldschoolrepublicans.net was what he called it.

I was down with the program, for a few reasons.

1. I have come to recognize that however many political parties we have, it is important that they be integrated. The competition makes the country better, and it leaves black people better off. Given the fact that the Republican party has been pretty much hijacked by idiots and ne'erdowells, I figured that we needed more people like Mike IN the GOP making moves. Best case we could use the blog to take black policy platforms and give them market-oriented spins.

2. I've spent most of my adult life collaborating on behalf of black people, beginning with my years at Michigan. In as much as Mike and I had done tag teams before, whether on Salon's Table Talk or on Gravity, or on Cafe Utne, I thought this was a natural segue into bigger and better things.

3. Mike asked me. And while we disagree (often!), I still consider him one of my closest partners on the net.

We changed the name from Oldschoolrepublicans.net to Vision Circle, and sometime later added a trio of brothers. Craig Nulan we knew from the Afrofuturist list. Jamal Young I've known personally for some 15 years. He was part of the Michigan crew that had such a powerful influence on my own intellectual development. And Darkstar I'd known through email circles as long as I'd been on the internet, going all the way back to the SCAA days.

I never thought of myself as a blogger....still don't. But when we were on, I don't think there were many people--bloggers or not-- who could roll with us. We weren't really about taking on other bloggers...we were really on our own search. For better answers...for better questions.

And to a certain extent this search is what caused me to leave. I recognized that my real writing--my book, my academic articles, my commentaries--had to take precendence. That was the only way I could find those answers and those questions that I was looking for.

I want to thank Mike for putting me down. Craig and Jamal for accepting our invitation and making the site fly, and Ed for bringing in new traffic by being a vocal tsetse fly on other blogs. I want to thank those of you who came in day after day and stuck your head in, or linked us (even when we may not have returned the favor). I was truly blessed to have had this opportunity.

Oh. Where to now? Here's where you'll find me if you're looking. I don't imagine I'll be doing anything more than putting up content--my academic papers, my commentaries from Africana.com and Blackvoices.com, my radio commentaries, probably my blog entries from here. But we'll see.

Gametime.

Dr. Lester K. Spence

Posted by at December 10, 2005 01:37 AM | TrackBack