Daily Inspiration: Meet Cynthia George

Today we’d like to introduce you to Cynthia George

Hi Cynthia, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Sure! It has been an interesting journey! Currently, I am a PhD level social worker and an Associate Professor at Tennessee State University in Nashville, TN where I teach courses on research and public policy. I am a member of United Campus Workers Local 3865. I am an award-winning artist, educator, and evaluator with more than twenty years experience working with groups from across the USA to engage in prevention science in areas including substance abuse, healthy relationships, teen driver safety, inclusion of people with disabilities, and crime prevention. Performing as Dr. CynCorrigible, I also write and sing for the punk band Dr. Cyn and the Graduates Rise (www.GraduatesRise.com). Through the band, I use music as a tool for education and a rage outlet for self-care. I formed the band in 2015 as I was completing the final year of my doctoral studies while living out of my car. My debut album Math is Hard! received academic peer review in 2017 from the Working Class Studies Association. I was honored with an International Safety Media Award at the 2022 World Safety Conference for my band’s COVID safety campaign integrating social work theory and punk music. I am very proud of where I am at in life. However getting to this point was certainly challenging, especially given I am a first-generation college student from a low income family and a person who manages disabilities.
I was born into 1970s Nashville at the old Baptist hospital that was adjacent to the historic Rock Block along Elliston Place. It was a traumatic birth and I almost died but was rushed to Vanderbilt Medical Center where there was a specialized team that was able to save my life. While my father was quite intelligent, he had significant mental health issues and was unable to maintain steady employment or housing and we moved around a lot. Despite this, I was a gifted student and always did well in school. Neighborhood kids used to come to me to “play school” and I would set up a mock classroom and teach them things like “you don’t really have to color in straight lines.” I was quite precocious and drove my teachers mad. They quickly moved me up to first grade. I was bored there too though and spent much of my time reading on my own. I was labeled as disablingly “gifted” and had Individual Education Plans (IEPs) all throughout grade school and I received speech and handwriting therapy. I understand now that all of this signifies that I am autistic, although my mother did not tell me about this diagnosis until she was on her deathbed in 2019. But it makes sense. I was and still am very intense about things I really like or care about. For example, I loved to twirl the baton and march in parades, so I won a trophy when I was four years old for marching in more parades than anyone else in the state.
My parents separated when I was seven and I went with my mother and older sister. My mother did not have any job skills and we slipped even deeper into poverty. We eventually stabilized after we were able to secure an apartment in a subsidized housing complex located in Madison, Tennessee. I witnessed a lot of crime and bodily injury and responded by becoming very safety oriented. Starting in middle school I joined the Just Say No Club. I would always challenge the program leaders by saying that things for kids aren’t as easy as just saying no. I knew what the problems were because I was watching them develop as the War on Drugs escalated around me in Nashville’s low income communities. I constantly challenged my teachers and advisers to do better. I must have been exhausting! But I also have blonde curls, blue eyes, dimples, and I usually kept such a kind disposition that the teachers wanted to do better when I asked them to and many tried. I appreciate the truly great educators and social service workers that have helped me throughout my life. Just before I started high school, my mother inherited a small amount of money from the sale of her childhood family home after my grandfather died. She used this money to purchase a home for us in Gallatin, Tennessee and she got us off public benefits. She started working at Wal-Mart and continued to work there until she died. She would later have this home foreclosed on and lose it, but this move enabled me to attend Gallatin High School. Here my guidance counselor, Ms. Ellen Kirby, along with all of the amazing faculty that were assembled at this school at that time, helped me to figure out what college was, how to get to there, and how to get it paid for with scholarships. I earned a Brock Scholarship to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga as well as several other smaller awards. I went off to college with all the hope in the world.
However, the support that I had was not enough and I would fall short before the end of each semester. This was in the early 1990s when they put ads for credit cards like bookmarks into every textbook you purchased in the bookstore, and they gave out free food and t-shirts if you completed an application for a card. I completed the applications to get the food and then when they actually gave me the card, I of course took it because I was eighteen and naive and really had no other choice. But I did not have some wealthy parent somewhere to bail me out. I was on my own. I would use the credit cards to fill in the gaps when my student aid ran out. Then when the new semester started, I would use my excess aid to pay off the credit cards. It was a vicious cycle that left me paying a lot of interest on almost every single household expense, and of course I was incurring student loan debt on top of the consumer debt. So while I was very academically prepared, I was not financially or socially ready for college. I also did not want to return to my mother’s home where I had been abused as a child, so during school breaks I would sleep in my car when the dorms closed. It was not long before I had to start working more and was studying less and eventually I had to drop out after my grades fell and I lost my scholarships. I became quite depressed and even considered suicide, specifically related to adjusting to the weight of knowing how much debt I was going to have to take on to successfully make it through college. It was during this time that I found the queer community. These are the people that originally taught me how to love myself and how to be myself. I dug in and decided to do whatever it took to get myself to where I felt I needed to be. It took me some time, but I stabilized financially and emotionally and I did eventually complete my undergraduate degree in Sociology from Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, TN. While my use of credit has been brutal, I am proud to be among the first generation of women legally allowed to have credit cards in our own names. And I am thankful for that right as it has been essential.
I then worked for a few years in the Upper Cumberland as a Case Manager supporting aging and disabled people who were living in the community using the new Medicaid Waiver for Home and Community-based services, now known as the Choices Program in Tennessee. I lived in a real 1800s log cabin on the top of Sheep Bluff Mountain surrounded by nature. It was a beautiful time in my life. I loved the clients I worked with and my life in Cookeville, but I knew I could do more. So in 2005, I decided to pursue a Master’s of Science in Social Work (MSW) from the University of Tennessee (UT). They have a campus in Nashville that offers MSWs and I was accepted. I worked my way through the extended study program over three years as a case manager serving people with developmental disabilities who were transitioning from being held in Tennessee’s notorious Cloverbottom Institution to live in community settings. Just before I completed my MSW, I started a small business named Open Mind Consulting (OMC) offering program evaluation and grant writing support to nonprofits. One of the first grants OMC was able to secure for a nonprofit was from the Christy Houston Foundation to serve the capital building project that created the Fisher House that still operates to this day to serve military families in need of housing during inpatient medical treatment on the grounds of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Murfreesboro, TN.
After I completed my MSW, I took a two year position working on special projects for the TN Governors Highway Safety Office (GHSO). This project was housed within the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions Across TN (CADCAT), an organization that worked to mobilize coalitions in all ninety-five of Tennessee’s counties, many of which continue to exist to this day. I spent some of my staff time serving these coalitions to help them implement the Strategic Prevention Framework-State Incentive Grant (SPF-SIG), and the other part planning teen driver safety programs with GHSO. The SPF process is a data driven community engagement model grounded in public health principles designed to guide coalitions in the provision of evidence-based prevention services, especially to underserved communities. Originally designed around alcohol and other drug issues (https://www.cadca.org/resource/handbook-community-anti-drug-coalitions/), the SPF skill set offers prevention planners a comprehensive approach to understanding and addressing other community issues too, such as preventing suicide, violence, and crime. I served as the Evaluation Specialist and worked to adapt the SPF process to create the state’s first GHSO-funded teen leadership program, parts of which are still in operation today at www.ReduceTNCrashes.org. I also supported GHSO to build a statewide network for Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) and I served as the founding Director for the National Safety Council-funded TN Teen Safe Driving Coalition. Both of these programs still operate to promote teen safety in TN to this day. I received the Tennessee Lifesaver award from GHSO in 2010. I left this work in 2011 to pursue my PhD in Social Work at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond, Virginia, but I continued to support TN efforts by completing my dissertation with GHSO and teen driver safety leaders.
While in Richmond at VCU, I took classes and served as a Graduate Research Assistant. I was also working as OMC and preparing program evaluation reports for ThinkFast, an interactive game show operated by TjohnE Productions that travels around the country engaging young people with health and safety information. I also did some work developing evaluation tools for the What do you consider lethal? teen driver safety program managed out of Sacramento, California, and some work with Virginia’s Partnership for People with Disabilities supporting young people to plan new ways for schools to celebrate disability inclusion. I then had some health conditions flare up that put me in a situation where I was unable to work full time. Thankfully, this was just as the Affordable Health Care Act was passing or I might have died. I had not had health insurance as a doctoral student for several years. I was not eligible for Medicaid and in order to qualify for coverage through the new Marketplace, I had to work to earn just enough money to be able to file taxes so I could access the tax credit, but not so much that it would flare my health conditions. It was a delicate balance. I was able to find work as adjunct faculty at VCU that paid $3000 per semester, which was just enough to help me reach the threshold to get health care, but it was nowhere near enough to live on. With no family support, I decided to sell everything I owned and live out of my car until I could complete my degree. I was just a few months away. But then I had an incompetent interim program leader make a decision that held up my ability to collect data for my dissertation. My dissertation committee had approved me to not submit my study to the Institutional Review Board (IRB) as it was a psychometric study to develop and test a survey as an evaluation tool, not to make generalizations about teen drivers. I was still working with TN’s GHSO and the Reduce TN Crashes program and the project had already been approved by relevant TN IRB processes given TN high school students were the ones I was developing the tool for and they were collecting the data in TN for me to use. I wish I would have just told the incompetent leader to shove it and gone ahead and collected my data anyway and let it play out because time did prove him wrong. But he for sure lorded his power over me at the time and told me that what I was doing threatened not only me but the members of my dissertation committee as well. I knew he was the incompetent one, but he was also the one in the position of power and I gave in and stalled the project.
He did not realize it, but his poor decision meant that I would have to live out of my car for another year instead of for just a few months. It also meant me paying another year of tuition to wait out the bureaucratic process to correct his mistake. Long story short, I now have it on VCU letterhead that he was wrong and I was right and I in fact did not need an IRB review. The teens collected the data the following school year and the survey we created is still in use to this day. But that poor decision he made forced me into a situation where I had to either completely change my entire dissertation topic or else wait until the next school year to have students collect my data. I refused to give up and waited it out. Thankfully I am quite charming and was able to find enough friends and family with couches or guest rooms that I did not have to spend many nights out. I even found one great friend that allowed me to set up a room and store some of my most prized possessions and receive mail at their home. I was careful to move around and make sure to never wear out my welcome. I travelled around with a printer in my trunk and would take it in coffee shops and libraries to do consulting work that kept enough money coming in to maintain car payments, insurance, my cell phone, and the medical expenses you still have to pay when using the Marketplace. Thanks to the social safety net and many amazing family and friends, I really had it quite well for a homeless person. But my body still got so worn down that I developed a squamous cell carcinoma out of nowhere. I felt terrible every day. It was exhausting and I began to become so irritable that I was becoming unfit to work even part time. I had been going to student health services and they were not concerned about the skin growth or my other complex health conditions, but I knew something was wrong. Getting that cancer diagnosed and removed was the first thing I did once the Affordable Health Care Act passed and I was able to get health coverage. It was on my nasal bridge and thankfully we were able to remove it before it got more serious given it was so close to my brain. But it was an indicator my doctors could not ignore and they began to take trying to diagnose my other conditions more seriously. I also entered into an intensive physical therapy program during this time trying to regain my mobility after the onset of several disabling conditions. It was a full time effort to try and regain my health.
Being this broken down, I had nothing to do but die or rise. I rose. It was during this time that I emerged into what I was always supposed to be, a punk singer. Back in the 1980s and 90s, I hung out at the all-ages venue Lucy’s Record Shop and I would sneak into shows while underage at other classic Nashville venues like Springwater and The End. But I never had any plans to be in a band myself. But the universe had plans for me it seems. While I missed Nashville the Music City very much, I also loved Richmond, which is also a music city. Nashville’s music scene was full of so many professional artists that I never felt capable of being a musician. I was happy just being a fan. Richmond’s music scene however was much more “locals only,” very queer punk, and not at all about making money, all of which made me feel confident enough to imagine myself on the stage. I realized early on in my doc program that even though I was at a rebel school of social work, the higher education process was largely still serving to brainwash me into becoming dull and irrelevant, mostly to uphold the illusion of what a “scholar” was supposed to be. It was midterms of my second semester in March of 2012 when I shaved my hair into a mohawk in resistance. I did this so that I could tell my teachers what they needed to hear on the papers I had to turn in to them, but then every time I looked in the mirror I would have a visual reminder to stay true to who I was. I also began writing poems to cope and they came out in the form of punk songs. I had no intention of singing them in public when I originally wrote them, but then I used the extra year while I was waiting out needless IRB processes to make an album. I think having that rage outlet may have been the main thing that kept me sane. To compose the melodies, I would meditate on the concept of the song and ask the universe to send me the sound bosons that would tell the story the way it wanted to be heard. The original compositions are my voice alone, singing out the melodies the universe would bring me. A friend at the time would take my voice recordings and convert them to demos with a guitar accompaniment. I then pulled together a band, named it Graduates Rise, and secured a studio and an engineer. We recorded my first ten song album Math is Hard! on 8-track tape over a weekend in the Spring of 2016. I was downstairs typing my dissertation while the band was upstairs recording the music. I released the album the same day that I defended my dissertation. I moved back to Nashville shortly thereafter when my mother suffered an injury and needed my help recovering. I took a tenure track faculty position at Tennessee State University (TSU). I continue to work as a consultant and manage my band. While I do miss Richmond, I am truly enjoying the ready supply of amazing and talented artists available in Nashville that I get to work with. I enjoy being challenged in new ways and am having a blast as I continue to grow as an artist. I also absolutely love working at Tennessee State University (TSU) and I could not be more proud of my students. I am honored to support them to grow.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Honestly, I have gotten here by the skin of my teeth, and only with help from a lot of great people and the ongoing support of the tax payers. There were times in my life that were excruciating to live through. But thankfully, there have also been times where I was so full of joy that I nearly burst. Overall, I made it and have accomplished some great things and helped a lot of people along the way. And it is primarily the helping other people part that keeps me going. It is the exchange, loving the people that I cannot wait to see again, and receiving love from those that cannot wait to see me. Beyond my friends and family, I am so thankful for my amazing students and colleagues at TSU, my comrades from the labor movement, the queer community, and especially the disabled community. Having disabilities hurts very much and it is quite expensive, but it has made me a better person. I have learned so much from my disabled peers. While I have been autistic since birth, I did not truly identify as a person with a disability until after the car wreck caused so many physical issues that I began to require accommodations to get through adult life. While the adjustment phase was quite difficult, now I am proud to identify as disabled. And I am honored to be able to work as an advocate for disability rights and justice. But beginning with my birth, my life has been a series of traumatic events and recovery processes. Trauma has shaped my life and who I am. This is unfortunately quite common among low income and disabled people. Those of us that make it are called “resilient,” but know that many of us resent this word. We are proud of ourselves for surviving, but we also want to see system change so things are not so needlessly hard for others. I want people who read my story to feel inspired to persist through challenges. But I also want them to feel inspired to proactively advocate to prevent such harsh conditions for others.
I will say that the main trauma that I have not been able to fully recover from was a car crash in late 2009. I was on my way to GHSO to plan an event called Operation Teen Safe Driving when an eighteen year old driver ran a stop sign and caused me to t-bone her car. I suffered a concussion as well as multiple traumas to my head, neck, chest, back, hip, ankle, and foot. I have never been the same since this injury. The injury was complicated by the fact that it has taken me more than a decade to secure adequate health care services to confirm the correct diagnosis and treatment plan for this injury. Women with chronic pain conditions are not always treated well by medical doctors and I have encountered more than my fair share of this sort of provider. Thankfully, I also have found many amazing providers that have literally saved my life. But to this day I manage complex disabilities related to this injury including vestibular migraines, fibromyalgia, and several complications from musculoskeletal injuries. I am also a cancer survivor and a stroke survivor. I have dynamic disabilities, which means that some days when conditions are good I can still get around and appear quite able-bodied. However, other days I may struggle to open my eyes or lift my limbs. It is very important for me to avoid stress and conserve my energy. I use a rolling walker in most environments to help me get around. If you ever see me out in public, know that it is likely taking all that I have to be there, and please help me secure the closest parking spot and most comfortable seat available. Beyond the wreck, my body has had a lot of injury and wear and tear, things that no one should have to withstand. For example, I started working outside the home as young as nine years old, doing hard work in convenience stores and restaurants. And I would walk to work though harsh environments and wearing cheap shoes. I was physically abused as a child. I have had an ill intentioned gun pointed to my head. I have been beaten. I have been robbed. I have been stalked, threatened, and harassed. I have endured retaliation and witness intimidation. I have experienced more than my fair share of injury, stress, and trauma. And while all this scar tissue makes my physical body weak, it makes my spirit strong. I keep going for the people I love and for those that love me. I keep going for the good that one passionate person can do in the world.
But primarily, I am alive today because of public service programs funded by public tax dollars. So if you like people like me, then please advocate for maintaining and strengthening the social safety net. Like it or not, we are all in this together. And we are stronger together. So, thank you tax payers for programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that provides food stamps, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) that provided welfare checks to parents, subsidized housing, Medicaid, and student loans. I would surely be dead without these supports. I am deeply grateful to the many advocates who came before me and set up these programs and services that I have used to get through my life with independence. It is because of accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 that I am able to continue to work to this day. I also exist as faculty-in-debt, meaning I am a sort of indentured servant working in public higher education so I can be eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) after ten years. PSLF is the only hope I have for being able to pay off my student loans and retire. I can only pray that my body holds up long enough for me to get me there. Sadly, people in their 60s are the fastest growing demographic of homeless people and I am certainly at risk for joining them if anything goes wrong. But I am doing the best I can to avoid that and give the public a solid return on their investment in me. I am a part of the generation where public social spending has been drastically cut and shifted to private, often for profit endeavors such as payday lenders and car title pawns. Let me assure you that the increased material hardship that children had to endure during this time period absolutely did damage to my body, and it very much did reduce my overall life outcomes. It also trained me to be a punk singer. Maybe that part is cool, but my body is worn out and no one should have to do the things that I have done in order to get a college education, be proud of their job, and not live in poverty. With everything that I have accomplished in my life, I assure you that I would have been able to do more had I been properly supported throughout my education with adequate meals, housing, healthcare, and other basic supports. What would the world be like if everyone had these things?? I think we would be amazing!! Many of my wealthy friends that know my life story see child abuse and neglect. Many of my low income friends see white privilege. I know that both are true. I believe that humans will be better when we can manage society so that we create cool, humble people without breaking their bodies and spirits first through chronic systemic trauma from poverty and resource deprivation. Some level of work and stress does lead to growth, but everyone needs adequate nutrition, healthcare, shelter, education, the ability to create, and the freedom from being abused. So if you are inspired by my story at all, I hope it will be to never give up advocating for policies that support healthy development consistently for everyone with equity.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
While I am quite existentially concerned about society and the environment, I am very happy with where I am at in life. I love being an Associate Professor in Social Work at Tennessee State University (TSU). There is really nowhere I would rather be than right here supporting the amazing students that come to TSU. I am an engaged Professor that uses high impact practices. I was named Social Work Educator of the Year in 2023 by the Middle Branch of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Tennessee Chapter. Social workers follow the NASW Code of Ethics and are dedicated to promoting social and economic justice for everyone. Some social workers do this by providing clinical care to individuals such as psychotherapy, crisis intervention, or medical case management. Others, like me, are macro social workers focusing on the environments individuals live in. Macro oriented social workers engage in activities such as community organizing, policy advocacy, and applied research. In my research course, I support students to utilize the Preferred Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol to conduct a literature review aimed at solving a problem occurring in a real world social services practice area. Students identify and study a specific issue occurring in their practicum setting and then they review the literature to identify evidence-based solutions. I encourage students to use their critical lens to identify gaps in the current knowledge base to find a niche where their ideas can push things forward. While no one can solve the world’s problems in a three month undergraduate research course, I can help my students understand viable pathways where they can continue to use research to improve social service delivery systems and advance their careers.
I also teach two graduate level policy courses. At the foundation level, we study bottom up change by analyzing social movements, and in the concentration course we study top down change and create lobbying materials. I am a leader in the practice of how social workers teach social movements for policy change. I have spoken about this several times at local, state, and national conferences and I am working on a publication to present best practices for teaching social movements in social work. In my course, students have to select and analyze a social moment and then prepare a paper, an oral presentation with PowerPoint slides, and a zine. Zines are a radical form of free press that have served as a popular way of disseminating information for social movements across time, including Riot Grrl and the Civil Rights Movement. Students break down how their selected movement developed over time and discuss its impact on policy and public life. This high stakes assignment presents publication as an option from the start, using dissemination channels I have cultivated over the years to share my students’ work. The primary dissemination channel is Creating Change: The online journal of zines about social movements (https://digitalscholarship.tnstate.edu/creating_change/). This online, open access journal features student-created zines and papers about social movements. I founded the Creating Change journal and publish it each spring in Digital Scholarship @ Tennessee State University through a collaborative partnership with the Department of Social Work and Urban Studies and the Tennessee State University Library. I also support students to present their findings in real world settings. Student regularly present internally at the TSU College of Public Service Research Series, and externally at events such as the Social Work Symposium held annually by the University of Memphis. The TSU Social Work Program also participated in Nashville’s Zine City Fest 2024, which is a component of the Free Nashville Poetry Library and Artville, a community arts festival held each September. TSU students joined me in giving away free zines during the zine market on the first day and then I gave a panel talk on the second day that explained the theories of social movements that students learn in my course. I will moderate a panel at the 2024 Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) Annual Program Meeting where two of my graduate students will present their papers and zines to this national audience.
I am also an undergraduate adviser at TSU and I serve as the Chair for the Dr. Hollace L. Brooks Memorial Scholarship Committee that provides financial support to TSU students each year. The Brooks family also supports me to conduct the annual Dr. Hollace L. Brooks Policy Symposium that gives students an opportunity to present policy analysis projects they have completed aimed at improving Tennessee laws. I am also the Chair of the College of Public Service (CPS) Social Media Committee and I manage the CPS social media pages (follow us on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/cpsua). I also serve as a Faculty Senator representing CPS and I Chair two Senate committees. The first is the Faculty Senate Benefits and Welfare Committee where I lead a team of colleagues who are working to improve working conditions for faculty at TSU. I also Chair the Fair Funding for TSU ad hoc committee. This is a special effort where I am leading a team of colleagues to examine the impacts on faculty related to the chronic underfunding of TSU as a public, land-grant, Historically Black College or University (HBCU) and to identify advocacy solutions. According to a recent series of letters issued from the US Secretaries of Education and Agriculture, using data from the National Center for Education Statistics, TSU is the most underfunded public, land-grant, HBCU in the country (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/2023/09/20/states-underfunded-black-land-grants-13b-over-30-years). I grew up in poor communities and I attended poorly funded neighborhood schools. However, I was gifted and also got to attend well-funded predominantly white schools. The disparity in these environments have always been vast and very clear to me. But I will tell you from first-hand experience, the disparities that TSU has endured over the years is far greater than any educational disparity I have ever seen. For example, I have been unable to access my 3rd floor office since 2019 when lightning struck the power grid and the elevator in Elliott Hall stopped working. The grid is so old it cannot be repaired properly. TSU is currently working with the state to get things refurbished, but it is going to be a long road. And while I wish this disparity had never happened, it did happen. And people need to know about it. I am honored to be part of the team working towards achieving equity and justice for TSU and all public, land-grant HBCUs. If you would like to support TSU, the TSU Foundation offers a secure website where you may make a tax deductible donation. We need as much as possible right now in our unrestricted/greatest need fund (https://epay.tnstate.edu/C20204_ustores/web/store_cat.jsp?STOREID=1&CATID=1&SINGLESTORE=true). If you want to donate directly to the Dr. Hollace L. Brooks Scholarship fund to help social work students at TSU, it is in the process of being listed under the College of Public Service. Until then, you will need to go to “Other Areas,” then select “Other Fund Not Listed,” enter your donation amount and add it to your cart, then you will be shown an option where you can enter “Hollace Brooks scholarship fund” in the designation line. We are trying to raise $20,000 to fully endow the fund so the Dr. Hollace L Brooks scholarship lives forever.
Beyond TSU, you can catch me rocking out with my band! This is my primary rage outlet and mechanism for self-care. Dr. Cyn and the Graduates Rise just released our second full length album titled Canary. I am so honored to have been able to assemble an amazing team comprised of some of Nashville’s greatest indie artists to bring this album to life! Canary features artistry from Jerry Campbell of Nashville’s classic 1990s rock band Spider Virus on guitar, backing vocals, and piano; Bingham Barnes of Nashville’s Electric Python and the owner of Grand Palace Silkscreen on bass; D. Patrick Rodgers, from classic Nashville indie band And the Relatives and current Editor in Chief at the Nashville Scene on drums; and then synthesizer and canary sounds were created by G. Seth West, aka Gray Worry. The album was recorded and mixed by Grammy-award winning engineer Jeremy Ferguson at Battletapes and mastered by Patrick Damphier. I created the album artwork using Midjourney with the support of human artist Marilu Herrera who created the Dr. Cyn as Canary image and the Dr. Cyn brand mark. I love this team so much and I am so deeply appreciative of all the hard work they put into this project! We truly hope you enjoy listening!
In addition to the musical release, I am also creating music videos for each song using an artificial intelligence (AI) tool, primarily Neural Frames (https://www.neuralframes.com/?via=cynthia). I will release one video each month aligned with an awareness event on our YouTube page starting September 4, 2024 with Nondisparagement, which is about the #MeToo movement, to align with World Sexual Health Day. October’s video release is Not Today Exploitation in honor of World Mental Health Day and USA Olympic gymnast Simone Biles who the song is about. My Drummer has a Fear of Success, released on November 15, 2024 for National Drummer Appreciation Day, is in honor of Keith Moon, the legendary drummer from The Who. Baby General’s video, an indictment of so-called bargain markets, will be released in December to help balance consumerism during the holiday season. Dr. Cyn and the Graduates Rise are planning a live show in Nashville, TN for January 2025 as an album release party and to celebrate my birthday. The video for In Love will be released in February 2025 to celebrate American Heart Month and Valentine’s Day. March is National Credit Education Month and I will share the video for Tranche Warfare which is about the credit default swap market. April brings World Autism Month and I will share the video for Devolution Revolution, which presents my neuro-divergent solutions for people in organizations that have been abandoned by privatization (it’s rock and roll of course!). The video for the album’s title track Canary will be shared in May in honor of International Workers Day and the ongoing struggle for safe and fair working conditions. June is Elder Abuse Prevention Month and I will share the music video for Stupid or Cruel? which features live performances from the band and is being edited by Jason Gilmore at Queen Ave in Nashville. I wrote this song in the hours after being deposed as a witness in the wrongful death case where my mother died from nursing home abuse and neglect. I had been asked why I thought the home abused my mother. The video depicts me struggling to perform activities of daily living that my mother was unable to secure assistance for in the home such as tooth brushing, eating, toileting, and bathing. The set features medical supplies from the United Cerebral Palsy Foundation Equipment Exchange, including old crutches that were artistically repurposed into The Aluminum Throne by Chris Simpson of Eco Bits and Bots. Just Don’t will serve as the final video release from the album, scheduled for July 2025 to celebrate Disability Pride Month and the birthday of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which guarantees accommodations for people with disabilities to ensure equal access to public spaces.
If you would like to support my band Dr. Cyn and the Graduates Rise, you can stream our music on any major platform. Our old stuff is currently listed under the artist profile named Graduates Rise, our new stuff is listed under Dr. Cyn. The content is merged on YouTube, bandcamp, and Soundcloud. Be sure to follow us on social media to stay connected and hear about new releases and performance dates. Likes and comments actually mean a lot to independent artists so I will appreciate any algorithmic support you want to provide me please! You can also purchase digital music or merch from our website at www.GraduatesRise.com. If you do not have paid streaming services and are low income, please do not hesitate to go to our bandcamp page where we have a pay what you can model and enter zero dollars to download the music files. If you have funds to spare and are so inclined, you are also able to pay more here if you like! Additionally, I have a RedBubble shop for print-on-demand merch (https://www.redbubble.com/people/GraduatesRise/shop?asc=u) where you can get album covers and band logos on items like t-shirts, pins, totes, and journals. I especially like the spiral bound journals and I love all the tote bags. These will make great gifts for your graduates as you send them off to college! At our RedBubble site you will also find a #DisabilityPride shop where you can purchase items with the Disabled to the Front design I created with artist Marilu Herrera that features me using my rolling walker with pride. This is a play off the old Riot Grrl statement of “Grrls to the Front,” used when riot girls fought for safety and inclusion in music venues in the 1980s and 1990s. There is also a Not Today Exploitation image that goes along with the song of the same name and serves as an accommodation request sign for activating Spoon Theory. I am also available to consult on your artistic or scientific project. I work as a songwriter, curriculum developer, project planner, evaluator, or technical assistance provider. Due to my disabilities I do not tour like a traditional band. However, I am receiving interview requests and booking inquiries for speaking engagements and band performances, both virtual and in person.

Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
Stay true to yourself and be persistent about the things you really want. It can be a brutal world out there, but it is also beautiful and amazing. And if you are relentless, you can get ahead. The biggest mistakes I have made have been around money. I carried a lot of guilt and shame over this for years, but I now understand that the system is set up to prey on people like me from poor families by creating the barriers I had to get over. I wish I would have known how to protect myself better and how to better manage my credit score. Not because I like the way the FICO system works, but because it is essential to survival and getting ahead. There are a lot of young people embracing socialism or looking for ways to check out of the USA’s economic system because they believe it is corrupt and/or unjust. I for sure agree that wealth disparity is completely out of hand. But I cannot tell you I know how to fix it. I personally think humans need to work to skillfully blend all of the economic systems with more intention and transparency so that the system serves everyone more equally. But in the meantime, the best advice I have is to say “Even if you do not believe in capitalism, it believes in you.” And if you live in a capitalistic world, you better learn some coping skills at minimum or you will get eaten alive. For example, as an artist, you should copyright your work. Should you get offers one day for licensing, you will need this registration to protect your rights to monetize. Retirement has also been privatized. You may not like it, but if you do not develop some sort of retirement account such as a 401K you may find yourself in trouble, especially if the social safety net continues to be eroded. But you must take risks to get ahead, and these risks are going to be scary. You just have to do your research and ask for advice. Be sure you know which direction you want to go in and create a solid plan to get you there. Then take the calculated risks you need to take to get to where you need to be. And do not be afraid to reassess and pivot. It is your life and you are the one that has to live it.
Whether we end up with a public or private –dominant system or some hybrid world, I hope it is one where all of us are able to work less and meditate more. We should eat more healthy food, and we need to demand it from our food systems and that it be made affordable for everyone. We need better transit and more walkable communities that are accessible to people with disabilities. Everyone deserves healthcare and safe housing. Human rights are about rights holders and duty bearers. Everyone has rights, and everyone has a responsibility to stand up for their rights. But standing up for your rights or the rights of others can be very hard to do. Sometimes it can get you harmed or even killed. But we must keep doing it. We need an age of accountability where we work to actualize the public policies that are on the books. Groups of people have been working to undermine much of the historic progress humans have made, including the Social Safety net created under the New Deal, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Even the Morrill Land-grant Acts that date back to 1890 and were supposed to ensure racial equity in the way public, land-grant HBCUs were funded have not been fully complied with for generations. Freedom and democracy are not automatic. We must stand up and demand it. We must engage with civic society and hold our systems accountable. But be warned, our accountability and monitoring systems have been gutted and it is not going to be easy. The offices where we are supposed to report rights violations have seen so many funding cuts many of them are barely operating these days. Offices are overloaded and struggling to respond to the reported human need. Younger folks should listen and learn enough from older folks to not to repeat the mistakes of the past, but it is time for a paradigm shift and things need to change. All my faith is in the young people of our world. Stand up for what you think is right, but always be prepared to listen to wisdom from others and always be willing to change your perspective with education. Compromise is needed for peace. Peace is very important in order to maintain the power grid which is essential for modern life. Peace is important both in regards to preventing damage to the grid from war, and ensuring a collective response to natural disasters that may threaten it. Communication is just as important of a tool for survival as fire or shelter in today’s world. The internet and technology are very important but just like anything else, can be dangerous. Data rights are human rights. We need to examine who is controlling and profiting from human data and work to ensure equity. We need both mechanistic evolution (as in trans-humanism and robotically augmented human bodies to make us more durable) and organistic evolution (as in improved connectivity through the collective unconsciousness to make us even more human). So let’s please avoid binary debates and work towards solutions that serve the complex and beautiful future that humans and the universe deserve.

Pricing:

• https://www.graduatesrise.com/merch
• https://www.redbubble.com/people/GraduatesRise/shop?asc=u
• https://graduatesrise.bandcamp.com/album/canary

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.graduatesrise.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/graduatesrise/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GraduatesRise/
• Twitter: https://x.com/GraduatesRise
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Dr.Cyn.GraduatesRise
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-664422339
• Other: https://linktr.ee/GraduatesRise