SRO Research & Announcement:

I included supplementary info about the SRO program in my toolkit.

I have also decided that this is the last public thing I do. I will be deleting my twitter on July 1.

Reasons + additional info below https://www.bashirmohamed.com/blog/2020/6/2/edmontontoolkit

In short, I hate the idea of being a public figure. I am just a random guy and I’ve only built this following by accident.

This is hypocritical because I believe nobody should benefit from social justice work (i.e. benefit from Black pain) - either financially or personally.

But I’ve benefited. I’ve received praise and a weird public platform and I’ve also personally benefited financially from articles I have written and content I’ve produced.

No more. This is the end of the road for me.

I wanted to delete my account for over a year now. To be honest, the reason I didn’t is rooted in ego.

To me, I viewed this account as a strategy tool. For some reason, racist orgs fear my follower count (lol) and will sometimes stop being shitty if I roast them.

This may sound silly but we filed a freedom of information request with the catholic school board and they had over 300 + pages of tweets + a near constant fixation with this account and my ‘following.’

So I kept this account up to keep this tool.

However, this reason is no longer relevant.

Before I felt like I was alone but many more Black people are talking about local systemic racism and are working to change this system. They are the moment. And I am not really needed anymore.

I told someone about this and they thought I was crazy. They asked why I’d “throw away” 18k followers. But this is what's wrong about social justice.

So many involved in activism seem to be more focused on aesthetics/follower counts than trying to understand the real problems.

I also understand that I am not a perfect person and many disagree with my work over the last few years. Maybe you thought I was too radical, heated, or whatever.

That’s fine. I only ask that people try to understand why I do what I do and to understand my motivations.

In addition, I realize that I have benefited as a Black man while others in my Black community haven’t. I want to fix this.

So @optimisticoumar and I spoke about our @isthisforrealca project and the major success we've had in such a short period of time.

For context: @isthisforrealca is not "my project." It's ours and Oumar is the lead journalist and editor.

In addition @isthisforrealca is the umbrella name for the project. We envision multiple seasons looking at issues the Black community faces. Season 1 is policing.

Our plan:

In season 2 of "IsThisReal" we have decided to fully transition editorial control and patreon funding, which is currently at $76,000 per year, to journalists/podcasters from Edmonton's Black communities that are women, trans, gender non-conforming, or non-binary.

This plan is for season 2 but our work begins now. All additional paid work on @isthisforrealca will only feature writers / journalists / audio editors from these communities.

We will be unapologetic about this.

We will release an official road map on @isthisforrealca that goes into more details. This will put our commitment in writing.

I will be deleting my account after the roadmap is posted and after the school board meeting.

Anyways, that's it. If there is one thing you can do for me now then it's to register for Tuesday's school board meeting. Demand the end to the SRO program.

The program being suspended on Tuesday would mean the world to me.

https://epsb.ca/ourdistrict/board/meetings/june302020specialboardmeeting/