Who is Ready to Stop Talking?

Alright! We've heard the statistics, we've read the bad news, now who is ready to get something started?

This is a call to start a Self-Sufficiency Movement. It has to be about the dough-re-us! Which means that we have to begin to put in place an infrastructure that allows us to communicate with each other immediately, and this infrastructure has got to lead to an ability to finance our activism, and eventually put people to work. Information is money. It's called "content", and we've got to begin harvesting the content of our lives for the purpose of ensuring our survival.

I figure that there are about one million Black folks out there that are ready to take action, and another one million that will get on board once the ball is rolling. We are starting with information because without relevant information about how we are living today, we can't build a cohesive effort to ensure our survival. This isn't going to be about selling Avon, or telling people how they should wear their hair. This has to be about increasing our competitiveness and decreasing our dependency.

The first step is to create a consciousness about our conditions around the country and the planet. No, I'm not talking simply about writing smart articles about what ails us; or conducting a high profile "State of the Black Union" talkfest SPONSORED by everybody but us. I'm talking about creating content that breaks down, community by community, how we are really living. What this will do is lift the heavy burden of self-blame from around our individual necks. It will expose the sharecropping relationships, the misinformation about the origins of certain publicly hyped successes, and put the lie to the pervasive idea that Black folks ain't trying. Most importantly, an information infrastructure that disseminates the truth about our real condition will encourage and support the many warriors that are out there on the front line because it will bring all of those individual efforts together in a way that inspires collective action.

This doesn't have to be depressing. There are plenty of folks out here trying hard to do for self. We simply don't hear or know enough about who these people are and how their efforts will contribute to our self-sufficiency. Stories about P.Diddy are useless. The story behind the success of films like Sankofa, or Daughters of the Dust, are much more useful because they talk about the reality of doing business for ourselves and how to plow through the inevitable roadblocks, information that would scare the pants off the advertisers in Black Enterprise.

The kind of information I'm talking about won't be brought to you by Palmolive, or Verizon. It is a different game when you aren't relying on corporate sponsorship; Tavis Smiley, Tom Joyner or Spike Lee aren't going to tell you about that aspect of their success because they've become successful feeding us corporate sponsored Blackness. The system of White supremacy needs them niggas as much as they need Sprint to pay their bills, and Time Warner/Comcast, et al, to carry their broadcast signals. Tavis and company's job is to provide a safe catharsis for the frustrations of the vast Black middle class that toils away in low paying jobs, sending their kids to low performing schools that prepare them to replace their parents in those low paying service and administrative jobs, as well as to encourage the next generation of "Black elite" that see themselves in those panelists that populate the stage, to continue pursuing this corporate soma (the social anesthesia from the book, a Brave New World).

I ain't hate'in. I'm simply putting it out there so that those of you who think you're ready will know what type of efforts are really just part of the problem. Likewise, those of you that think this is a "kill whitey" movement, don't waste your time. We as a people are about life. This movement will simply be about the prosperity of OUR lives. We don't have time for all the misplaced anger. We don't have time to get caught up defending ourselves from the Black and White folks that would love to get us sidetracked with that retrogressive discussion.

In this blog, I've talked about different aspects of the problem, and some of the tactical things we can do to get started. I encourage you to read through the articles, and follow some of the links. The first thing is to simply be counted. Raise your hand and say I'm in! And then let's get busy.

So whose ready?