Daughters of the Dust and KJM3: Dispatches from a Culturalpreneur - Part 2

We didn't realize, however, how much infrastructure was needed and the fact that we, as a community didn't have it. Except for the top cities in the top media markets like the East Coast corridor from Boston to DC, there were no Black publicist that knew anything about film or the people involved or the language of the trade. There were certainly no Black owned daily newspapers, or competent weeklies for that matter, that were relied on by any significant audience of Black people that we were targeting. Even in NYC, we had to rely on general market dailies like the NYT, Daily News and the notorious NY Post to get the word out about the insurrection. We were naive, but enthusiastic about the cultural momentum that we seemed to be part of: small films getting big attention, the Spike Lee thing, the Hudlin Brothers, we were absolutely part of a Zeitgeist and everything we did or said became a trademark or service mark: we had a new fangled "marketing system", that we used to stir up the natives called "SMM", or "Surgical Marketing Model"; we created new fangled pithy sayings and slogans as a way of overcoming, in one quick slash of the pen, some deep seeded structural and psychological deficiencies that plagued our tribe. And for the most part, it worked to contribute to the success of Daughters, and it operated to keep us climbing the mountains of tribal competitiveness. "We Can Do This Thing," was a rallying cry and war chant designed to ward off the bogeyman of reality, for a time.

Moi, Kathryn, Michelle, Mark

The deal to do Daughters was our first project. We had all screened the film together at the Anthology Archives on Second Avenue and Second Street, a bastion of "out" films and other visual arts and a popular screening venue for all of the indie distributors in town. We were pretty excited about being there as a "company"'. We weren't just bystanders or the cinephiles that usually weaseled their way into these industry screenings. We were "industry". I can remember a wistful feeling of pride and joy in the quality of the accomplishment that was Daughters. It had won a Best Cinematography Award at Sundance and the lush settings, the elegant costumes and the lyrical quality of the camera work, certainly demonstrated why. You didn't see many films, independent films, that stood out like this. You could screen 200 films and not see one with this level of visual artistry, and a story that made you cry. It made you wistful and it made you, in the end, proud. It was the story of African Americans making a choice about how they wanted to live their future. They were contemplating in a setting that was theirs, on a time frame that was theirs. It was idyllic, it was the beautiful in us. We knew immediately this film was a hit. We could barely contain ourselves when we left the screening room. This had to be our debut project.

The screening had been arranged by the distributor, Kino International. Michelle had been talking to Julie for sometime about the film and when the deal was done with Kino, she knew Julie was not happy about Kino's distribution plans. Apparently, Kino was having a hard time booking the film at some of the premium arthouse screens. In particular, the Film Forum in New York City. In my mind, this was not surprising. White folks, by and large, particularly those in the boutique cinema world, didn't understand the significance of the images, the poignancy of the story, the existence of a “Cultural Grassroots”, and how famished it was for the psychic nourishment that comes with seeing shimmers of what your authentic self might look like, on the big screen of life. That's what movies and culture are all about, telling your story in bigger than life ways so as to anchor your identity to a true representation of who you want to be, to the center of social consciousness. Daughters had won a significant production award from the most prestigious film festival in the country, but sat on Julie's shelf for almost two years. When Don Krim of Kino stepped in, it was almost as a favor to someone that he knew that knew Julie or Joy Huckaby or both. Don knew the film was a worthy film, he just didn't know who would value it or how to get them to see the film.

Don Krim was a stand up guy who ran a solid company with a good reputation and good people working for him, Jessica and Gary, his two main employees. Don himself had film pedigree. His uncle or cousin was Arthur Krim, a co-founder of United Artists, and he attended Columbia University Law School. Don was a player in the steady-money-is-plenty-money world of non-theatrical distribution. Colleges and universities and media centers were the market for all of the product coming from a nontheatrical distributor. Occasionally, they would get a film that would open one of the subsidized arthouses that existed largely in the biggest cities in small towns all around the country, and naturally, in all the big cities like New York and Los Angeles. The "Film Forum", "Coolidge Corner", "The Detroit Institute" etc. These were small venues for small films. It was not the venue., in the first instance, that a film as powerful as Daughters deserved. After we all saw the film at Anthology, the next day we met and discussed the film. We were all very excited and that excitement and the little bit of knowledge that we each had, was enough to really sup us up. We felt like we knew the answers to Don and Julie's question: how do we get people to discover this great film?

In actuality, we did have the answer: our collective intuition was the answer. Between the four of us, we had the answer to many of the questions that would come up over the next six years. Except, for the one big important question: where is the money coming from? Our individual experiences and training was a well balanced mix of arts administration, non-theatrical film marketing, media sales and contracts. And there was plenty of "insight" and so-called connections to go around but not one road led to money and back to KJM3.

It was a real pleasure working with Don Krim and his crew, Gary and Jessica. They were laid back, confident professionals, knowledgeable and a bit off-beat. They admittedly knew nothing about the Black market, and were glad to have us around. They treated our knowledge and ideas with respect and deference, but were masters at not reaching beyond their own capacity. You were not going to talk Don into anything his business instinct was against. He had good instincts. And his people skills were dry, straight forward in a passive kind of way. Don carefully managed relations with mercurial filmmakers that were Julie and A.J., and four very different personalities in KJM3. Kathy and Michelle were in charge of the day-to-day relationship; they spent a lot of time working with Jessica and Gary shipping prints, setting up press and publicity in each city, etc. Mark and I were doing various and sundry things to help get the word out. Mark's connection to the NBC morning host, Bryant Gumble, was big; my working of a clergy network for group sales and announcements was significant. Each of us found ourselves doing a little of everything, with all of us digging deep into our social networks in order to penetrate as broadly as we could into the Black grapevine. It really was a Zeitgeist at work: this film, this collection of activist entrepreneurs, in this City at this time. There wasn't a city in the country that the film needed to be in that we didn't know someone who in some way or another was connected to the Cultural Grassroots grapevine.

Just like that, we were in business. Well, it wasn’t just like that. We spent a considerable about of hours drawing up a marketing and distribution plan for Kino. We didn’t know for sure what Kino’s capabilities were, and we were really concerned about overplaying our hand. We focused on what we knew best first: NYC. We didn’t know enough about the business to put together a plan for a 3-5 city rollout. Sure, we knew something about publicity, marketing, and we had knowledge of many of the bigger city film programs and institutes through Michelle and Kathy’s work. But this was our first experience with what was clearly a hit film. Even so, we did maintain our composure, and our focus when finally meeting with Don and his crew. I remember the meeting being casual as we all sat around the conference table. I kind of remember saying something that I thought lawyers were suppose to say, but Michelle did most of the talking with help from Mark, who had a nice, low-key corporate persona, the kind of disposition that seemed appropriate for a Black guy in the very White corporate world.

Without much fanfare, the meeting was over and we had a deal. Don drew up a contract and faxed it over to our temporary office the next day. Within a few days, we were leaving Don’s office over near Hell’s Kitchen with a check in hand for the first installment of our retainer fee. We were in business. These were the best moments during my time with KJM3, when things were going well. Kathy was such a genuine and passionate person who had seen it all and probably done some more, but who had the enthusiasm of a little kid, and when things were going our way, she really bubbled. The kind of youthful optimism and wide-open belief that makes some parents get three jobs. I didn’t want to see her disappointed. I felt responsible for her happiness but not just her happiness, it was everyone’s happiness. It was the beautiful sista that I met at the Black film screenings at the Adam Clayton Powell state office building with the natural hair, luscious lips and juicy butt, who had come to NYU’s film school feeling like an African princess, only to have her choices ridiculed by the circumstances of wealth, and race, and the feeling of being on your own, without a Tribe, without a place. It was for the many regal sistas, my mom, that were being forced to humble the selves that they knew in order to get a job taking orders from some lesser being who meant you no good, who was in fact intimidated by your unwillingness to conform.

(final installment, shortly).

Daughters of the Dust and KJM3: Dispatches from a Culturalpreneur

An Autobiography

To Be Young, Gifted, Black and Committed: 

The story of a young Black man's rise from the

impoverished ghetto to the impoverished elite

Prologue:

I was surrounded by Black fear and White indifference. Black people feared the consequences of challenging the status quo. White society was generally indifferent to the counter narrative of a sub-national malcontent. As a young man, it was really hard to appreciate or understand this fear. I didn’t feel it deep down. I wasn’t concerned with making a living; wasn’t ready to accept that I would need “them” for a job down the road. I was a job: I had useful skills, I was resourceful, knew how to get things done. I knew nothing of the dependency. I didn’t understand low finance. I took serious the rhetoric of the day about the equality of our existence, the righteousness of our struggle to equality. I was sure it was just a matter of defining our own ‘I’s and T’s’ and that if people like me, “young, gifted and Black”, would just commit, we could end the dependency, claim our own voice, project our own power.

Passing information along about experiences that you will not read in magazines like, "Black Enterprise" is a service because of the truths they reveal. There is a price to pay for being an "unsanctioned" Black Advocate and we need to hear about it so we can stop all of the rhetoric and get down to work or just leave it alone.

If I recounted the activities of J.Edgar Hoover and his COINTELPRO program to sabotage Black people involved in the Civil Rights/Black Power movement of the 1960's, you would nod your head and dream about how it would've been different with you; how you would've seen through the lies and half-truths and supported the Righteous! Well, you don't have to dream about what it would've been like back in the day. 

The Black Lives Matter social activism is as much about protesting the police killing of unarmed Black people and the system that protects them, as it should be about the silent killer of Economic Marginalization, which is like a massive radiation leak, you can't see it, smell it or touch it, but it kills nonetheless. And the reality of this economic marginalization is that solutions to problems big and small become complicated and philosophical because so much is at stake. Simply advocating for a better Black future puts you on the wrong side of today's Job-Bots, the algorithms that scan resumes, analyze names, and life histories to eliminate undesirable, or "incompatible" people. And in a world that feigns indignity at the mere utterance of the phrase, "White Privilege" a Black advocate is automatically dis-qualified, meaning, 'you were qualified until we found out where you are coming from'.

We need to prove to ourselves that information like this, efforts like this, will not lead to individual despair; that we value genuine efforts by genuine and capable people to go forward, leapfrogging off the shoulders of those that came before and building the missing pieces that lead to the next level of progress.

The highlight of this biography for many will be the time I spent with KJM3 Entertainment Group, Inc., a film distribution and marketing firm started by four Black folks with an undying and visceral commitment to changing the dynamics of our existence. This is the story of the business behind the success of the film, Daughters of the Dust, and the people driving the business. In the heady days of Daughter's success, we traveled the world as the tip of the spear of Black redemption. We weren't just people in the film business, we were advocates for three-dimensional images and stories from the African Diaspora, which was like challenging Hollywood to a knife fight.

For others, most interesting will be my African exploits, particularly in Zimbabwe during the heady days of the Mugabe administration, complete with infiltrating US intelligence operatives, agent provocateurs, and other opportunist, but also including creative and enterprising and successful Zimbabwean entrepreneurs with vision and commitment.

And for some, the work I've been doing around the Next Iteration of Human Existence will be the most interesting because there is no one else talking about Transhumanism and a positive Black future! The Genetic, Robotic, Artificial Intelligence and Nano processes revolution is now and the implications for our survival are such that the Transhumanist community has been uncharacteristically quiet on the topic, save for the dystopian science fiction writers, and we all know how that ends for us. The Next It is a brilliantly conceived near-future drama featuring a Black scientist trying to flip the script on our demise through the secret distribution of advanced human enhancement technologies. Brilliant because it allows us to project a plausible, heroic Black future! Plausible because of the convergence of our biology with our technology and the ubiquity of the knowledge of how to manipulate matter and processes.

Well, anyway here we go with my KJM3 moment, the first of three planned installments.

KJM3
My early accomplishments in life had nothing to do with the amount of money earned by the films I distributed or how crafty I'd been in negotiating a client's music publishing deal. I internalized a different standard, one based on what needed to be tried, what needed to be said. As an educated 20th century Black man who has chosen to stand on the shoulders of runaway slaves who drew strength on the shoulders of kings and queens that weathered the defeat of Kingdoms, I was compelled to be about us, our growth, our self-sufficiency. KJM3 was the right thing to do, and the historically right time without being that moment. In historical terms, the effort to own our images and the scenes of our future was not new but resurgent in KJM3, yet another determined effort to take a big swing at the challenge of ascribing value to the stories and images that reaffirm our existence.

"Daughters of the Dust" was a beautifully shot celebration of our mythic selves. The us not consumed by them. A community of semi-free slaves living in limbo on the outskirts of the main engine of domination; people who defined themselves in relation to themselves and not to the crushing day-to-day pressure of physical and mental subjugation. This film also represented an opportunity to draw attention to the possibilities inherent in controlling the process and mechanisms for ascribing value to our images and stories. The story, the virtuosity of the production, KJM3’s involvement all conspired to elevate this whole experience into a cultural event.

Daughters experienced this flurry of success because theretofore, nothing like it had been popularized for this audience unknown to the mainstream movers and shakers. Daughters was like a cultural clarion call for the spiritual, intellectual, aesthetic and economic awakening of this subset of Black folks -- the Cultural Grassroots – that completely surprised the gatekeepers of Black “middledom”, and certainly shocked the indie media movers and shakers. This film, this company and this effort, was galvanizing a whole community of quiet resisters: proud people woven uncomfortably into the fabric of Black accommodation, a nappy head in a crowd of perfectly coiffed perms.

The Cultural Grassroots community in late 20th Century New York City represented some of our best and brightest committed to the social competitiveness of our own tribe. This is the place where regular people were creating and legitimizing whole lexicons, putting the drum to work in popular culture, spreading the word of not revolution, but of re-creation, a bastard creation – “my nigga” -- a mutation born out of an inclination to resist, but also to survive the here and now. I remember the scorn heaped upon those folks in the South Bronx with all those Q’s in their names, wearing those big, fake ass gold stenciled earrings, and those fly, fly hairdos that only the Ghetto-fabulous would dare wear to a job interview. And while the new be-boppers were leveraging their bare-asses to the masses, the sisters and brothers on the blocks of Brooklyn were locking their hair in the never ending struggle to unlock the subtle and complex realities of who we were, who we are now, and hoping like hell that somebody would say something about who we are going to be tomorrow. Out of this cauldron of cultural resisters came KJM3 Entertainment Group, “a distributor of Three-dimensional Images and Stories from the African Diaspora.”

In KJM3, you had four very distinct personalities, each a different but similar experience with the Great American Experiment. We had all been part of a concerted effort by post 60's America to acculturate and expose Black kids to the normalcy of White community life. An innocent enough social experiment meant to bring young people together and increase understanding. I suppose. Some folks reacted to this type of stimuli by becoming exactly what was presented to them; some of us, driven by the "why" in these circumstances, headed for something more reaffirming, something that didn't require so great a transformation. “Too Black, Too Strong”, is often how it is referred to on the street.

The Gang's all here: Moi, Kathryn, Michelle, Mark

It could only happen in NYC. The four of us had a lot in common. There was only about a ten year age difference between the youngest, me, and the oldest, I believe Kathy. We were all educated at prestigious educational institutions and we all had the experience of dealing with White people as "exceptional" members of our race. The other significant thing we all had in common was our worldviews, more particularly, we shared in a certain rootlessness; we were abstract creatures uncomfortable in the Black world of mediocrity and "place sitting" that was the Black church and our employer of first resort, the “gubnit”.

Of course, for me, it didn't start in college. No, it started in third grade when my mom put me in the local Catholic school, which at that time, late 1960's, was still a place where the White middle class sent their children. I got to see then the stark differences in how we lived. Not just the large ranch house out in the suburbs, but the cosy neighborhoods and little single family houses in the city. Contrasted with being in a public housing project in the forgotten part of town, or even "moving up" to a semi urban "garden" apartment located on the fringes of White ethnic neighborhoods, where I began to meet more diverse groups of White people, those that lived in apartments and had only a mom or a dad. Yes, I had grown up in a transforming America where Black folks were now being "integrated" into mainstream White society. The experience left many of us feeling socially malnourished, but energized about the possibilities for self-transformation.

By the time I got out of college. I was like the Sidney Poiter character in "Raisin In the Sun", "White boys are doing big deals, Mama!". I was determined to take my shot. All of us, this "post affirmative action" crowd of Black folks wanted to take our shot, defined by most of us as working in Corporate America, or getting a good government job. However, out of this critical mass of newly ambitious Black folks, came another crowd that defined our ambition not in terms of getting a job with Corporate America but in terms of what we might contribute to the uplift of the race -- not out of altruism but out of self respect. We live on the fringes, unable to form a countenance comforting to the integrated mainstream. We reek of insurgency, noticeable even through the mask of glistening teeth and Pollyanna banter.

We were very conscious of what we were trying to do. It would be unprecedented for Black folks with such different dispositions, so we thought, to form a cohesive business. While our backgrounds were very different, what we shared was a collective sense that as a community, we had to be stronger and that our coming together was part of what needed to happen: the Corporate Negro, the Light-bright Bourgeoisie, and the Urban Angry Man, if we could make our collaboration work, then we could in fact, do this thing!

We Can Do This Thing!

"We can do this thing" was more than a company slogan, it represented an attitude, a mantra that would help us through the myriad of race-based distractions that make it hard for Black folks to collaborate: lack of access to investment capital, getting past our individual "specialness" enjoyed in the White social circles in which we each traveled. ‘We Can Do This Thing’, meant that we could get over all of the social-political-ideological baggage that stands ready to separate us. It meant that we could actually take what we learned from our individual mediation of mainstream society and combine to successfully challenge its control over our images and stories, both lived and recorded.

The idea of getting involved with the dissemination of this material was something Kathy and Michelle were actively working on before they met Mark and I. In fact, Kathy and Michelle already began talking with their friend, Joy Huckabee, who was also an attorney about starting a company. They felt strongly that a lot of Black talent and projects were not getting the marketing and promotions support that could help them succeed at the theatrical level. This was a time when there was a lot of activity from little, idiosyncratic boutique film distribution outfits that were cropping up with interesting films and creating a scene, along with Sundance, for indie films. People like Bingham Ray and the Lipsky brothers at October Films; Ira Deutchman and Lizz Mann at Fine Line, The Wiensteins at Miramax, and free agents like John Pierson, who wrote about a number such deals in which he was involved in the book, “Spike, Mike. Slackers and Dykes”, were spearheading a whole industry out of lower Manhattan and we were right there in the middle -- of Manhattan -- in proximity to their business. Kathy and Michelle, out of the four of us, were the senior people in this world through their work at two indie support organizations, Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers, and Women Make Movies. Mark and I were relatively new to the world of film making, although both of us were working around it, Mark in television syndication and me just getting started working in entertainment and getting most of my clients from the Columbia University run non-profit legal services group, "Lawyers for the Arts". In fact, it was Michelle Materre that referred my first paying client, video installationist, Shu Lea Chang, who had just received a half-a-million dollar film grant from the new PBS funding arm, the Independent Television Services Corporation (ITVS).

New York City was electric with film buzz in the 1990’s. All of the east coast based indie film startups were working right there in lower Manhattan, and even as a young company, we felt as legit as the rest of the lot because the indie film business is mercurial and unpredictable. One minute you are trudging along unknown, ignored, the next minute you’ve got the hot shit. What fundamentally separated us from the indie infrastructure that existed at the time, was our focus on the three dimensionality of the images and stories coming out of the African Diaspora. The fact that all of those companies making their mark, driving the early stages of this new thing called “Indiewood”, would opportunistically look for “Black audience” product that fit their self-serving understanding of the Black ethos, you know, those Coon Comedies, the Urban Malaise, and the Up-from-Slavery Panegyric, was affirmation of the business sense that it made to be in this space at this time just because of the attention Black film was getting. The films Indiewood would produce, however, were a direct refutation and in conflict with the consciousness of the effort we were making, serious differences that inevitably showed up when serious discussions about money were being had. What we understood as a competitive advantage, the Cultural Grassroots as an energized market opportunity for three dimensional images and stories from the African Diaspora, was a silent deal breaker in most meetings with money. Indiewood films, underwritten with Hollywood money and co-written by Black folks hawking a black ethos Hollywood understood and valued, set an inflated standard of financial investment and success that only their money and business infrastructure could facilitate. Smart people had a hard time thinking ouside this box, in particular, Black folks with money.

The day I remember most during our incipient stages was the day we were all sitting in the conference room belonging to the primary tenant of an office share that Mark was using. By this time we had all spent some time talking and had developed a good sense of each other’s style and temperament. Everyone was in the room except Joy Huckaby, who was the "J" in KJM3. Joy was rolling in the big leagues as general counsel to Maurice Starr, the maestro behind then boy group sensation, "New Kids On The Block", and ended up part of the company in name only, although she was the key figure in bringing Kino together with Julie. But we were there to talk about incorporating and finding a name for the company and to talk about what the company was going to be. Without a lot of fanfare, the initials of our names emerged as the choice for the company name, Kathy Joy, Michelle, Mark and Marlin (M3), primarily because it had a nice hip-hop flavored ring to it, giving us some connection to the then current cultural phenom that was hip-hop. The conversation about what we wanted to be took a little more time. Michelle and Kathy had envisioned a company in the nonprofit mold reflected by the companies they worked for. Mark and I were absolutely certain that we wanted to compete in the for profit marketplace. I was new to the business world but I knew I didn't want to get caught up in anything that reeked of begging for money, playing on White folk sympathy for Black under achievement.

Looking back at the experience of trying to raise Black money, going nonprofit would've been the smart thing to do. It would’ve put us in a mindset that would've appealed more to the sensibilities of both the commercial and philanthropic White world. They understood "helping" Black folks trying to "help" their plagued communities pick themselves from the floor of destitution and underdevelopment. They had no reference point, however, for "investing" in Black business people committed to making their communities competitive, turning our objective relationship into currency, the currency of independence and relevance; currency you could spend to influence the minds of men, women and children that had become accustom to seeing themselves as victims or perpetrators of pitifully small social no-no's.

Good example of what I'm referring to is a deal we were asked to be part of involving, ultimately, the Rockefeller/Ford Foundation. They were interested in some type of video diversity initiative and were apparently talking to a number of media companies that were in the space as potential partners, at least that is how it was sold to Michelle, who knew a Black woman high up in the world of philanthropy and who always seemed to be on the scene, particularly when we were overseas. In any event, we attended this meeting with high hopes of being in on this philanthropic foray because this money was untethered to the burden of a strict financial return. Mark Walton, our master of corporate presentation speak, would be our lead presenter, with Michelle adding color commentary. Kathy and I both tended to be reserved and quite frankly, not that interested in talking with these folks always looking for some "good minorities".

We arrived at the offices of, I believe, an established video distributor that was one of many at the time stocking the legion of video stores that occuppied every neighborhood in America. The job of being a video distributor was not rocket science, and most of these so-called distributors were, in reality, using a handful of essentially "rack-jobbers", operations that accumulate product from everyone calling themselves a distributor which can range from someone with a extensive library of titles to an independent video-maker trying to distribute his personal opus. In addition to the people from the foundation, our team and the host, there were two other people, both "ivy league", who were starting a new video group. So far so ok, but there is something about this meeting that doesn't seem consistent with what KJM3 came to do, which was pitch our services to be considered for this grant to distribute a new video line featuring classic films from the Black filmmography like, "Nothing But A Man". This room is set up for a workshop type of interaction, complete with an elaborately catered food table and butcher paper and markers, etc. This is not a "business meeting", this is a brain-drain!

As Mark went through what was a masterful presentation of our backgrounds, accomplishments and vision for this project, weaving in personal stories and references incorporating the college and early professional experience of certain members of this vain crowd of decision makers and money people (yes, we researched their backgrounds), it was starting to become clear that the decision had already been made to give the deal for this philanthropy funded video label intended to target a "diverse" marketplace to the two "other people" at the table. KJM3's contribution was to be this meeting and what could be gleaned from us about the Black market; our compensation: being in the room with the Masters of Culture and Money. The other folks with the startup video label would get the contract to release the first of these "diverse" classics, which helped them leverage that infusion of money and capacity to pick up the contract to distribute the biography series by Arts and Entertainment network.

It was very clear to the people assembled in the room that KJM3 did not think of itself nor was it involved in remedial education. We were a company with a sophisticated understanding of the business of images and stories that had succeeded in talking to a large audience of Black people the mainstream didn't know existed and in language they did not understand. By the time we took a break from all of the passive-aggressive jousting over issues of culture and hegemony, they had clearly gotten the message that KJM3 was not there to be brain-drained, that we took polite exception to the attempt to pat us on the head and pass the money onto their chosen few.

Kathryn and Michelle both knew the limitations of the non-profit world. They understood that the same thing that stands in the way of success for so many Black business plans, is the same thing that would hamper growth of a non-profit: the absence of capital, vision and courage from the Black elite. The money was really not the hard thing; the hardest thing was vision and courage. The Black elite simply do not have the courage to envision a world without a White paymaster. So many business ideas generated by Black entrepreneurs are ideas that are rooted in solving some aspect of the Black malaise. Black people like any other group, do want to make their communities strong, give their children better opportunities. These social-preneurs are not motivated by business for business sake. KJM3 was certainly no different in that respect. We were different in that we were not "scurred" to take on the task of infrastructure building. We were about to house a strategic asset; plotting to jack into the broadcast apparatus and operate a forward strategic offensive outpost in the high intensity war on the minds of Black folks. ... Part II.

Here is a link to a good video of the 20th Anniversary Panel Discussion with KJM3 and Julie Dash -- I can be found about one-hour and six minutes in?

Failed States and Failed Cultures: The Death of their N@#!

Gosh, it's been 12 years since the dawn of what was suppose to be in my mind, the age of another "New Negroe" (Alain Locke recognized the "new Negro" of his day in a 1925 article*). I was thoroughly convinced that the rapid development of the Internet, as a symbol of the age of great social transformation that is consuming every aspect of what we know about our social selves, would be the Enlightenment for Black folks. It would be our chance to communicate directly, to establish viable connections with communities across the globe and to build a tapestry of consciousness that would lead to action, a spontaneous eruption of intellectual infrastructure and capacity building that would free us of our terminal dependence on everything White.


While it's not over, we don't have much time and there is an impossible amount of work to be done. Think of the biblical tale of Noah's Ark, then add quantum to the thought and you can sense the magnitude of the challenge. Tough under most circumstances, not doable when there is no community consensus around the need to address Terminal Dependency, which has to be understood in such stark terms because the 20th Century idea of "human equality" clashes directly with the accelerated evolutionary trajectory that the upper echelons are now pursuing. "It ain't fair, but it's so." In the 21st Century, the inherent value of every "human" life is being calculated and weighted by each social stakeholder equipped with the latest algorithm. In these personal and institutional calculations, Black folks are coming up short on the list of human relevancy, and over weighted on the many lists and indications of dysfunction and degeneration: joblessness and chronic underemployment, anemic per capita wealth, frayed and fractured nuclear and extended families, truncated life expectancy with political, social and economic underdevelopment standing out all across Africa and the Caribbean. Whether you are on the continent of Africa, Europe, South or North America, the Black Tribe as a nomenclature is on the run. Under these conditions, the notion of failed State used most often in connection with states on the African continent, has to be expanded to include "failed cultures" within the ambit of Western domination, which would help to explain the emergence of Barack Obama as the long awaited Pope of Absolution that White Conquest has needed to quiet it's collective dissonance about the morality of enlightened oppression, particularly in the face of what everyone can see is the absolute collapse of the "Black Community", and the corresponding flight by the Black economically viable away from any notion of unity or challenge to the debilitating status quo.

But, let's, for a moment, agree with White folks in America that the election of Obama signaled the end of their culpability, all achieved with the election of their notion of the quintessential "African-American", the product of a Black African and an American White, acculturated in the "Ways of White Folks." Of course, then, I would argue, Obama's election represented the end of the black culture, and the concomitant goals of assimilation and integration, that conquest and oppression created. So, yes, their black culture is dead. And in its place, we the Cultural Grassroots -- die hard resisters of the notion of Black obsolescence and subservience -- intend to rebuild Our Black Culture based on the simple principle of Self-Sufficiency in an interdependent world. The same principle that kick-started China's rise from "humiliation to redemption".

So one hundred cheers for the demise of an era characterized by our total dependence -- The End of Black Culture that White Supremacy and Domination Created.

Now, for those of us that find ourselves on the outside of Liberalism's glorious achievement -- a tame and impotent civil service mediocrity, the permanently unemployed and chronically under-employed, the victims of social guerrilla warfare herded in private prisons for the crime of needing a living-wage job, the terrible waste of minds languishing in the big city public schools (queing up for the prisons), and our perpetually broke "black bidness" people, with their small ideas about [their] economic freedom swimming around in the confined spaces established to remind them of their dependency (the "set aside" class of Black business people co opted by an insincere appeal to their "specialness" concocted by Tricky Dick Nixon in the rebellious 60s/70s to separate them from the activist on the street), etc. -- the question is, what next? Do we need a consensus agenda or is it simply every man, woman and child for themselves?

I am a die-hard realist and realistically, the option to pursue the every MWC for themselves strategy is available to a small clique of Black folks that have joined the Empire's economically secure club: superstar professional athletes, major entertainers, government contractors and the handful of corporate and institutional apparatchiks that survived the cultural purges that have corporate Blacks denying their own kids' job opportunities in order to prove their allegiances [ see: "Race to the Top: What Minorities Do When They Arrive"]. If reaching cultural consensus about the next stage of our struggle is the only option, then it's not an option at all. Without a consensus, we will default into an ugly scramble for whatever crumbs that fall off the table of White largess, all of us, ultimately, ending up on some type of list moralizing the ravages and isolating the threats.

Building a community consensus agenda is essentially a job for boots on the ground Activist and Grassroots Intellectuals, both of which we have plenty: remember the saying, "each one teach one"? well, it is an old-school acknowledgement that our thoughts and ideas don't need to come from an ivory tower in order to be successful. The job before us is not complicated but does require building an intellectual consensus. The civil rights and African Independence movements that peaked simultaneously in the late 1950s and 60s were driven by this type of consensus. It was simple and direct. European lead capitalism and oppression was an easy and obvious target. Contrasts today's not so obvious targets: economic marginalization and pauperization (a low-level grind, something akin to the frog in the water that slowly heats up. The frog never knows what hits him, he just turns into soup) through the transference of wealth from the 80% to the 20%, using economic schemes, dreams and outright frauds; taking the people out of the work equation but not revising the social contract to reflect a new model for measuring social and economic worth (in this smoke-and-mirrors economy there is value in being a "consumer"). While this new target seems to be without prejudice in the application of this tales-I-win-heads-you-loose economic model, Black folks - with our overwhelming concentration in the ranks of the employment-challenged -- are the canaries in the mine shaft, or, more probably, the cannon fodder buffer zone shielding, for the time being, the White middle class still trying to cash those dispensation checks which are now starting to bounce back stamped "insufficiently socially capitalized", as their ranks of made-men begin to wither from the winds of global competition being stirred up by erstwhile dependents rebounding from the middle-ages.

Reaching a consensus on how to focus our financial resources, and best engage our intellectual resources, is a bigger challenge, ironically, because the success of those earlier days of political activism freed up most of our critical intellectual activism which quickly proceeded to get neck-deep in the muddle of rights advocacy and the tenure shuffle ("asking" for rights is a game that benefits the bestower and never increases the power of the asker), rather than using our successes as a spring board to a deeper understanding of power and the foundations for it's pursuit, acquisition and management. The example of the Chinese is instructive because, like Blacks, they were an exploited people, and like Blacks they are an identifiable, foreign tribe. Unlike Blacks, however, the Chinese, even in America, fought back against the notion of "non-ness" (as in "non-White"), and most importantly, they never relinquished their inclination to live by their own value ascriptions: they retained their language, cultural and tribal affinities and imperatives. Chinatowns all over the US are thriving enterprises where English is not spoken as the first language and the unemployment rate is not a topic of conversation.

Certainly, any China watcher will tell you those enterprising entrepreneurs that habitate the Chinatowns throughout the Western world are not on their own but that mainland Chinese money is providing the straps and the strategy for acquiring and pulling on the boots of economic opportunity. Makes sense. The tribal connections are transnational even if the diaspora members would rather play their role from outside the political mainland. The African continent, however, is besieged and infected with globalization schemes to siphon off the natural wealth of the indigenous without paying a price commensurate with the value of the resource and the real cost of extraction. And it really isn't about the money. It is about the power to ascribe value to the particular resource and to the whole system of valuation governing their "market" economy. The money the West passes on to this or that African strongman/dictator and his community of sycophants and enablers euphemistically called the "African elite", is besides the point. Without something akin to China's "cultural revolution", the odds of reversing the downward trajectory of African people's on the continent and throughout the diaspora, are slim to none. China's cultural revolution was about their tribal survival; Mao Zedong recognized the need to shake off all of the former colonial masters bad habits and culturally corrupt practices and ideas designed to strip the Chinese of their power and a Culture steeped in greatness that preceded the fading Anglo empire.

Sound familiar? Today, China is about to colonize the moon. "From humiliation to redemption" is not a motto, it's a goal they set for their Tribe, while Africans all over the world are trying to walk the talk of the White Western world, slithering around trying to look colorblind mouthing platitudes like "why can't we all just get along", vainly attempting to appropriate some sort of glory by implying that Black mainstream leadership have actually been trying to resist the complete cultural beat down post 1200 b.c., as opposed to absorbing head shots, body blows and dog bites for the "right" to accept the interchangeable packages of the franchise that the Empire decides to offer.

No one will argue that the alternative course is easy. There are many stories of progressive initiatives being assassinated by the prospect of a success that would challenge the Empire, but China, and Venezuela and Brazil and other Latin American countries long victimized by the voraciousness of Western imperialism, stand as an example of what a successful effort looks like. And now, for better or worse, China has taken its place and is having its say as to how humankind will develop. Africa, as proxy for Black people -- the Black worldview -- has to figure out how it will take its place at the hearth of humanity.

Africa is an essential land mass and key asset base from which to manage this rise from humiliation for the Black world. It is the image and has the substance of power capable of symbolizing and resourcing our best efforts. The Black sub nationals operating within the western world will never be able to muster the cohesiveness to effectively mobilize the resources necessary to disseminate a post-Dependency Black Worldview. I remember when the anti-Apartheid Movement came to prestigious private and Ivy League campuses across America in the late eighties. As a student leader at NYU, I was part of an information network that disseminated the raw data coming from South Africa that drove these information campaigns, and which hosted the live bodies that were dispatched all around the world by the ANC to provide first-hand testimony, political comfort (not communist, or anti-white), and inspiration to the many student activist and volunteers that were attending rallies, sit-ins, teach-ins and take-overs. It was a well run campaign designed to win friends and influence enemies by demonstrating efficient organization, showcasing dedicated people and pursuing a compelling purpose. It worked. Africa, as the situs of that story, the place of origin, the Continent, was an image that indeed carried the weight of all that it symbolized. Think about it, "NAACP", "Black Panther Party", "DNC", they simply don't compare to the Continent, as the image and substance of power capable of representing the whole Black nation.

But for all intent and purpose, Africa is a no-go zone for those with a progressive vision of our future given the levels of cooptation, corruption and re-colonization besieging the Continent in the name of the latest 'war' on something, and the competition for colonial contraband being waged between newcomer China and the usual imperial suspects. Where are the countries, companies or compatriots with a vision for African redemption and the financial wherewithal to put a plan of action in motion? Wasting away are vast human resources that are spread out all over the world sharing in only two things: the objective identifier of having black skin, and the "groundhog" experience of reliving the same story of underdevelopment and dependency over and over, country by country, ad infinitum.

Considered as a network driven by a consensus, this dysfunctional diaspora could be a powerful tool for mobilizing our world-wide resources and collectivizing individual efforts to improve the prospects for our future. In an interdependent, globally wired world, links and relationships that are multi leveled and layered are necessary to be competitive. We are present in all the major world markets (and a lot of minor ones too), and the networking of that presence and local participation would automatically create a global entity with various expertise all focused on creating a value proposition that can put us in the game. Right now, all of our human resources are fractured and dispersed and struggling for small, individual survival. Despite the accomplishments of many individuals, as a group, we remain economically marginalized. The steps we need to take now are simple and basic: build an economic infrastructure based on the monetization and control of the economy of our own existence. Yes, it's as simple as selling our stories and images on the street in cities all over the world utilizing this network of presence and participation that is embedded within the tribal habitats we populate worldwide. And, yes, any effort that seeks to unwind the complicated relationship threads that intersect and interweave with the White Western World should be ready for a response that will include everything from trying to intimidate a young Black American entrepreneur building bridges between American and African business people, to assassinating the likes of Lumumba, and Sankara, and Malcolm X and MLK.

Put in marketing terms, we have to begin to think of ourselves as a niche market, one with it's own peculiarities of language, style, motivation, worldview. We exist within larger cultural norms that cotermingles with many different niches, each relinquishing (or, selling) pieces of themselves, the essence of their nicheness, if you will, to this mainstream behemoth but retaining the core infrastructure that empowers those that live or desire the full niche experience. The product we are selling is World-wide Black efficacy built through control of the economy of our own existence into an infrastructure of self-sufficiency that can kick-start the differentiation between Our Black Culture and the moribund product of a multi-century cultural beat down that has peaked with the election of Barack Obama.

Leadership will have to come from the body politic of the Cultural Grassroots, the people toiling in the sinews of the Black population centers trying to "keep it real". There is no magic formula for what idea, what story, what song,  will galvanize the consciousness of those ready to be the Vanguard. But it will happen, the opportunity will come about more than once or twice. Think about Apple Computer and how long it toiled in the shadows of Microsoft. It was just one killer app, the I-pod, something everyone wanted to have and socially needed, that turned Apple into the most valuable company in America. Ideas are like that. What turns a good, culturally relevant inspirational vision into something everyone wants and socially needs to be a part of, is the infrastructure that is in place to give that idea value, and that is producing value for all the stakeholders in the food chain: the creator/writer/designer, director/engineer, technicians/manufacturers, graphic artists, marketing and sales people, distribution, and finally the retailer on the street.

I like the brutha, Michael Baisden, who is a popular radio host with an uplifting message of empowerment aimed at Black people in general and Black men specifically. His story is compelling and instructive. Like a lot of ambitious people that don't sit around waiting for opportunity, Baisden made his own by self-publishing books, mostly non-fiction initially with titles like, "Why Do Men Cheat", and "Men Cry In The Dark". Baisden is now head of a multi-million dollar enterprise that includes his own publishing arm, film, radio, live shows, theatre and video ventures. If we have any chance whatsoever of ending our Terminal Dependency and rising from "humiliation to redemption", it is going to have to start with monetizing the goods, services and ideas emanating from the economy of our own existence, and our images and stories are as simple and profound as it gets.

Why I highlight Baisden and the business of images and stories is because the idea that we could write a book, play, screenplay that was more competitive with Black folks than something Simon and Schuster put on the market is a possibility that comes with a high degree of probability. Entertainment is peculiarly well suited for the development of this infrastructure of self-sufficiency; it can happen naturally and gradually, without a lot of public fanfare. We could look up one day and realize that most of the movies we really want to see or books we download to our Tablets are products being created, manufactured and sold not by Simon and Schuster, but by Baisden and Co., a content company with distribution throughout Africa, the Caribbean, South and North America and Europe. That is a lot of jobs. And people with jobs and stability educate their kids in the ways they know, and kids that grow up with stability and ambition go after their own ideas about their future and turn them into businesses, art, and technology. I've distributed Black films that are now classics and been around the Black world taking the pulse of Vanguard communicators. We need a distribution infrastructure that can properly and effectively finance and exploit a film like Baisden's, Maintenance Man, or the socially and politically significant action masterpiece from the Congo, Viva Riva, directed by Djo Tunda Wa Munga, which I know was under appreciated by a Black audience in America that never heard of the film or about the significance of its story of urban African warriors trying like hell to get theirs from whomever it is standing in the way (underneath all the luscious sex and brutal violence).

The point is is that the end of our terminal dependency has to start somewhere and well-meaning people have to recognize that they can be part of a solution that is real, tangible, simple and doable. We are not out to build nuclear weapons, we are out to be in a position to put our people to work and in the process, assert a cohesive and sustainable worldview that we can then call, Our Black Culture. (The bio-cyber-tech hacker division has already gotten underway, shhhh).

1. "Enter The New Negroe", Survey Graphic, March 1925:

"...The Old Negro, we must remember, was a creature of moral debate and historical controversy. His has been a stock figure perpetuated as an historical fiction partly in innocent sentimentalism, partly in deliberate reactionism. The Negro himself has contributed his share to this through a sort of protective social mimicry forced upon him by the adverse circumstances of dependence. So for generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being ⎯ a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be "kept down," or "in his place," or "helped up," to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden. The thinking Negro even has been induced to share this same general attitude, to focus his attention on controversial issues, to see himself in the distorted perspective of a social problem. His shadow, so to speak, has been more real to him than his personality. Through having had to appeal from the unjust stereotypes of his oppressors and traducers to those of his liberators, friends and benefactors he has subscribed to the traditional positions from which his case has been viewed. Little true social or self-understanding has or could come from such a situation."