If we were really serious about #BlackLivesMatter, for every single atrocity the State or White Aggressors committed against our community we’d:
1. Cancel the following Pro-Sport season, shut that shit completely
down. We would not watch one game, hold one gathering or party, spend
one red cent on any sports memorabilia, for an entire season for every
single atrocity. Every single Black Ball-Chaster that played in a “Shut
Down Season,” would permanently be Persona non grata
in the Black community and culture; permanently. We could also develop
the Pan-African Games, and Black Community Leagues the keep the talent
and resources that emerges around sports within the Black community. We
could do with without even missing out on the athletics we love because
there are countless opportunities to play and watch sports in our local
communities.
2. We’d target the biggest corporation or industry
for any particular product or service for permanent sanctions. We’d, as
a Race stop buying Nike; we could wear any shoe but Nike; then Adidas,
then Puma, and on down the line. As we start our “Trickle Down
Sanctions,” we invest the millions in savings in Black owned
manufacturing infrastructure in Africa and the African Diaspora. We’d
do the same for computers, cell phones, essential services, clothing
brands, furniture, food products, etc. If they keep committing
atrocities we keep adding permanently sanctioned companies, while
preparing to fully replace the products or services with one offered by a
Pan-African, cooperatively owned enterprise.
3. We’d Implement
a Holiday Divestment Program. We would shut down any holiday, refuse
to observe or spend one fucking dime for every atrocity they commit, We
don’t show up for the parades, we don’t buy presents, we don’t buy
chocolate bunnies, or Valentine cards. We shut down and divest our time
and money from any holiday that followed any atrocity. If that means
we have to abstain from any Western Holiday, or Observance day, so be
it; we take the funds we would have spent on that shit and roll it into
building the Pan-African, cooperative manufacturing and service economy.
We can also take that time to develop Pan-African Holidays,
Rite-of-Passage Celebrations, Ancestral Feast and Festivals. We could
strengthen our current cultural festivities and develop even more if we
are not fucking around with European Whole-Lie-Daze anyway.
4.
For every one Black atrocity we can vow to divest from and close 1-10
non-Black owned businesses within our communities and vow to replace
them with a Pan-African, cooperative enterprise; such action would only
cost a few dollars per household.
This would take us from
Protesting in “the street” to disrupting Wall Street. We could give our
list of demands to the nation’s CEOs and they would do our bidding for
us, we wouldn’t even have to face tear-gas, billy clubs, and mass
arrest; we could beat the shit out of this System while chilling at home
with our families. Hell, we wouldn’t even have to bring our demands to
CEOs or politicians, they’d come to the Hood begging us to tell them
how they can “make things right.”
Nothing that I’m suggesting
here is illegal, it would not even cause anyone to suffer any real
losses; you wouldn’t even have to disrupt your daily routines, you’d
save time and money, and such collective actions would build community
solidarity.
The 4 things I suggest here are within the
Liberal Integrationist values and ideology, it’s not in anyway even
militant; there’s not reason why Black from across the political
spectrum who profess to be fed up, or to value Black Lives wouldn’t be
able to do at least this. Even the New Negro conservative who talk that
“personal responsibility,” and “self sufficiency” bullshit couldn’t
justifiably reject such programs.
The real problem is, what I’m
suggesting requires an internal change, a change in our consciousness,
it’s easier to beg a genocidal system to change then to even conciser
changing our consciousness and the social relations within our own
communities.
What I’m suggesting isn’t Revolutionary, it’s not
Militant; it’s actually pretty base level oppositional economics and
politics that have been employed against our community by most other
Races and Ethnic groups within the US and abroad.
People always
ask me what I suggest people do, and they always seem to ignore my
answers, so I’ve taken to ignore that question.
If I was a
Black Leader I would advocate, and organize real strategies, and I’d
only work with those who seek victory, full and total victory.
If we could get 5-25 people in every Black community and population to
adhere to such programs, or the hundreds of other programs and
initiatives available to us we’d see monumental change in our overall
standing within a generation or less; and I have been to a Hood that
didn’t have hundreds of Culturally Aware or Conscious Black folks there,
not one; from the Bay Area to NYC. So WTF is the problem?
I’ll sit back and watch the latest hashtag name: #SandraBland
make its rounds, and people bring out the same damn Reactionary shit
that didn’t stop the last atrocity and will not stop the next one.
I’ll keep waiting for us to truly get sick and tired of this bullshit,
not just sick and tired enough to beg the System to change, but sick and
tired enough to change ourselves.
