Black NATIONAL leadership today is basically non-existent and/or up for sale to a corporation’s highest bid of leftover crumbs.
It is no wonder we are seeing the highest tide of Black violent deaths since 1921. In 2021, the rate of Blacks killed by firearms became the highest number on record.
Black mass incarceration is the New Plantation, and the 13th Amendment doesn’t help. Black Americans make up only 13 percent of the population but 38 percent of the prison population, and Blacks compose of nearly half of those serving life, life without parole, or “virtual life” sentences.
Fair and impartial due process is nowhere to be found – not even at NAACP Headquarters as more and more of the NAACP’s own civil rights workers claim they were suspended and/or punished without due process as the National NAACP President & CEO has taken on a more aggressive top-down and internally oppressive form of hierarchical leadership/punishment that is proving to be dangerously UN ”civil” and NOT “right.”
– The “Moral Movement” may have been “Moral” for a MOMENT, but the individual “Moral Movement Architect’s” agenda has taken ownership over what was once thought to be “The People’s Agenda.” The “WE” has dangerously become “HE.”
– Black businesses continue to close as Black displacement succumbs to White gentrification.
– There are no HBCUs being built, but many are in trouble. The latest sad story comes out of St. Augustine University, founded in 1867.
Law Enforcement” has become more and more UNLAWFUL as it “enforces” deadly “force” toward more and more unarmed Black Americans.
The “Black Church,” has become more like the “White Church,” in how they have moved from C-H-R-I-S-T to choose the money-greedy ways of the C.E.O. and the oppressor. In general (not all, but far too many), the Black church has gone from the ministry of “The Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep,” to become the sinistry of the “Hireling” who takes the money, and “fleeth to leave the sheep to be scattered by the wolves.” See John, 10th chapter.
Then, there is the dangerous rise of the known criminal and fraudulent Donald Jack-wagon Trump,” as “Genocide Joe” Biden and the Democrats not only become too “soft” on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war crimes but continue signing blood-stained checks that give the terrorists, which is now comprised of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), the weaponry used to commit genocide and take land from the Palestinian people.
Meanwhile, there remains not a penny set aside for Black American Reparations as the interests on these past due payments accumulate and as the American Government uses more and more tax dollars to kill rather than build; steal rather than heal; to obliterate rather than liberate.
But will we ever learn from our mistakes?
We must build from the ground up; we must allow our FAITH to be driven by ACTION and our ACTION to be driven by FAITH.
We must STOP giving an individual the power from what was supposed to be “power to the people;”
STOP letting an individual’s (hidden) agenda replace what was supposed to be “the people’s agenda;”
STOP letting an individual spokesperson’s voice of “charisma” become that individual’s invitation to con artistry of self-exalting corruption;
STOP letting an individual’s ego take control or ownership of what was supposed to be “the people’s movement!”
STOP allowing individual “leaders” to feast from the oppressor’s crumb pie, then they gain selective amnesia; they look the other way as we die.
If we let the above scenario repetitiously happen, then don’t complain when you have nothing but one so-called “validated leader” using the same playbook of the oppressor – doing PRETTY WELL as the Black masses of “The People” or either dying prematurely or packed in jail, or retrograding deeper in an uglier living-HELL.
Rev. Curtis E. Gatewood