Cannabis Is Black Business Opportunity

Wanda James and her husband Scott Durrah, first-movers in the birth of Colorado’s recreational cannabis business, just a short time ago were talking and writing about the dearth of Black folks participating in what has now emerged as the Cannabis Industry. Well, judging by the number of Black participants at the recently concluded “Cannabis World Congress & Business Expo” trade show held at the Javits Center in New York City, Black folks have heard the message.

(Reprinted from CulturalGrassroots.com 7/2016)

There are more of us than was expected preparing to participate in this new, still highly volatile and unpredictable industry being plagued by a patchwork market built out of a patchwork of legal minefields spread throughout these not quite united states, where in some localities, those with a particular penchant for the “good ole days” that have never quite faded away as we’ve learned from the Prison Industrial Complex where the 13th Amendment simply ain’t relevant, Black people are still more likely to be arrested or harassed for possession of what everyone now reliably knows, is actually quite good for you personally, and judging by Wanda James’ and her fellow Coloradoans, society as a whole. Who knew? Well, We Did!

When an activity gets to the point of having trade shows, you know the boat has sailed on an industry and every enterprising entrepreneur on the planet is going to have a look to see what opportunities are there and how their existing strengths and infrastructure can be adapted to reduce the cost of entry and increase their chance of first-in success. In attendance, there were people in on-line education now giving classes on every aspect of the cannabis industry; there were food processing companies with their latest and greatest tech for extracting, mixing and consuming cannabis extracts, the key form for the medical industry; there were brokers and dealers on the run from the algorithm monster conquering the trading floor on Wall Street, repurposing all of their financial wizardry into new-fangled schemes to get around hostile tax and banking laws. And naturally, the people that know the most about growing stuff where there with their neat, clean and efficient indoor growing operations known as greenhouses that promise a steady, reliable and, depending on your access to knowledge biological, whole new custom strains of cannabis that will blow your mind. Or, my personal favorite, the guy with the vacuum sealer used with plastic food storage packaging now repurposed to keep your weed oxidation free!*

I made it my business to talk with every Black person I saw at the expo. I met students from southern agricultural colleges, successful small business people from more traditionally available “black bidnesses” like office and residential cleaning operations, a baller or two from the record industry, a Corporate Black Guy with all the right connections, an avantgarde couple of sistas with a vertically integrated, horizontally connected, strategically timed tactical plan that transported them from east coast urbania to the mid-west where the laws and attitudes were open for business. There were diverse angles of attack that included some who were planning growing operations, others planning for distribution and sales , and still others contemplating the direct pipeline from seed to dispensary. And while money is always an issue, legal status, banking regulations and federal fickleness were bigger problems for most. The corporate brother had raised over a million dollars through a group of Black investors; the brother from the record business was walking with his own dough from his Brooklyn based pancake franchises, and a couple from the DC area were looking to transition some of their loot from the cleaning business.

What’s at stake here? Well, the legal cannabis industry is made up of three parts: industrial hemp (a wide variety of uses including as paper, fabric, biodegradable plastics, paint, insulation biofuel and more), extracts used in the medicinal industries (50% of medicinal market uses eatables, not smokables), and recreational use. According to a Wikipedia entry, globally, in 2013, 60,400 kilograms of cannabis were produced legally. In 2013 between 128 and 232 million people are thought to have used cannabis as a recreational drug (2.7% to 4.9% of the global population between the ages of 15 and 65). There are now 26 states (including DC), half of the United States, where there is some type of legal framework for using and selling cannabis, with the promise of more to come and, not sooner than we all hope, a federal law decriminalizing the drug is inevitable. Once that happens the financial people are estimating that $45 billion in yearly recreational demand is ballpark, and the overall industry will explode when the big boys storm the beaches with their marketing prowess and inclination to dominate the supply chain.

Back in the early 1990’s scientist cloned what they call “endocannabinoid receptors” that are located in the human brain and throughout the body and are part of the “Endocannabinoid system” (ECS), which is involved in a variety of physiological processes like sleep, appetite control, immune system functions and pain management. The psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol, “THC”, is attracted to these receptors and when they interact not only do you feel good, or, “high”, turns out these chemicals are responsible for keeping critical biological functions in balance. When stress throws those functions off, the endocannabinoids move in to restore balance. Voila! The medical cannabis industry now had the science to back up the reported experiences of so many pain sufferers, cancer treatment patients, and seizure victims. Advocacy groups shot up like wildfire and before anyone could blink, big dog social engineer George Soros was funding advocacy umbrellas like, Drug Policy Alliance, and other billionaire evangelist including former Facebook founders, Sean Parker and Dustin Moskowitz, insurance mogul now deceased, Peter B. Lewis, and Pay-Pal founder, Peter Thiel, were all involved in providing much of the money that has gone into the professional organizing effort responsible for the legalization/decriminalization wins on the state level.

Not to get to deep in the woods with the scientific (Wikipedia provides a good overview), but there are three species of Cannabis: Indica, Sativa and the less significant, Ruderalis. On average, cannabis indica has higher levels of THC compared to CBD (Cannabidiol); and Sativa has lower levels of THC to CBD. CBD is the other active ingredient that plays a balancing role in the psychoactive effects of the leaf. Generally speaking, the Indica high has been described as a “body buzz”, whereas, the Sativa high has been described as “spacey, stoned”. Manipulating these levels produces different types of highs. Remember the Acapulco Gold from Mexico that energized you and the Kush that was heavy and drug like, well, those are examples of the differences between Sativa and Indica.

This kind of differentiation could be the only way for the mom and pop to compete when the big dollars are unleashed. Microsoft is in with its inventory tracking and transactional systems being peddled through a software company named, “Kind Financial”; and Philip Morris is in with, believe it or not, a marijuana cigarette marketed under the brand, “Marlboro M”; Big Pharma led by Monsanto and Bayer AG, are in trying to lock down any and every patentable product they can conjure. In some ways, the longer the feds take to decriminalize, the stronger the foothold the smaller entrepreneurs will be able to establish. One guy is unlocking the genetic sequence of the cannabis plant in order to keep the big guys from flooding the patent office with bogus claims on natural sequences and admixtures. As the middle-class continues to try and claw back bits and pieces of the economy of its existence from the rapacious corporate dogs -- the buy local movement, coops and urban gardens, anti big-box zoning, craft beer movement, crowdfunding and cryptocurrencies -- the opportunity may be in the localization of the ecosystem, like the neighborhood bartender, local green garden and the milkman. I can see the possibilities of developing localized boutique brands that compete with the bigger corporate brands that will become household names (“Marlboro M’s”, a reality, not a dystopian projection).

But, it will take money. Once upon a time (pre-2009), the average homespun entrepreneur would have to rely on friends, family and personal business associates in order to raise startup funding for a new venture. Today, crowdfunding has unified this “friends, family and business associates” network into a large, interconnected, efficient and effective funding juggernaut accessible to all of the thinkers, tinkerers and entrepreneurs looking to create and innovate.

Silicon Valley has been the biggest winner in the crowd funding space because they have enough self-confidence to create a whole new solar system! It’s a small group of self-confident and capable people that are getting together to encourage the best and brightest to innovate and create the world they envision. These Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and their supporters are not trying to proselytize the whole world, they aren’t waiting until every last man, woman and child has joined hands, or waiting on that one big-dog angel investor to anoint them into the club of the rich and infamous. Through crowdfunding, the Silicon Valley crowd has essentially moved on from Wall Street and their last in most out predatory predilections, and have empowered themselves to achieve great and useful things. Kickstarter and Indiegogo did not exist in 2008 when Obama won the presidency. A mere eight years later, they are now responsible for billions of dollars in transactions that Wall Street has nothing to do with. Crowdfunding has liberated the brainiacs from the sociopathic money men whose motto is: “Too Much Is Not Enough!”

And crowd funding can liberate “Black folks with a self-centered, historical view of the world” from their terminal dependence on this same political and economic elite that will exploit its own shadow for being slightly behind. In a surreptitious and brilliant way, Barack Obama has handed the collective Black community a mechanism that can be utilized to accomplish tactical and strategic goals aimed at making our community more competitive across the globe. Title III of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, Section 4(a)(6) creates a securities-based crowdfunding market. What that means is that instead of getting a t-shirt proclaiming your status as a "donor", you can now get an ownership share in the company -- equity -- and share financially in its potential success.

Here we have two pieces of a business infrastructure emerging contemporaneously -- Cannabis and Crowdfunding -- that are heretofore unencumbered with the traditional barriers to entry, which gives us an opportunity to be competitive. This is big for us!

“When the script is written about this particular time in history, the fact that the first Black president of the United States was the one to usher in this revolutionary piece of legislation won't seem at all coincidental. It will, in fact, be looked at as a master stroke of strategic and tactical planning and execution in the never-ending competition for civic efficacy amongst social groups. Obama will look like a genius in 50 years ... but only if we seize this moment, this opportunity, to turn our collective pennies into investment dollars to Fund The World We Want To See!”

Black folks have long been associated negatively with weed, from the abusive arrests that fed the cheap labor needs of corporations and municipalities throughout the United States, to the local weed dealer that always seemed to be a Rastafarian with a record store. Can that negative association be transformed into a strategic asset? Does the rush to legalize being funded by these billionaire social engineers mean that the business opportunity train has already left the station? There are a couple of indicators that I will be monitoring to determine whether we can flip the script on the negative association and turn it into a competitive brand that can fuel opportunities to build an infrastructure of self-sufficiency. First and foremost, money. We will have to take serious the ole’ adage, “you’ve got to pay the cost to be the boss.” Crowdfunding via the Internet is a game changer; equity crowdfunding is a nuclear strike against the house of Wall Street. I am personally promoting the crowdfunding proposition, CulturalGrassroots.com, as the best approach to building a portal focused on increasing Black competitiveness worldwide. If we can get past asking ourselves questions like, “Why Do We Need a Black Crowdfunding Portal?”, that will be a significant sign that important segments of our community are thinking strategically about our collective progress.

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*List of industries represented at the Cannabis trade show: Accounting & Insurance Services, Advertising & Marketing Agencies, Banking & Payment Processing Services, Botanicals, Containers, Bottles, & Packaging, Dispensing & Vending Machines, Displays & Fixtures, Grow Lights, Hemp Products, Hydroponics & Cultivation Products, Infused Edibles & Beverages, Inventory Tracking, Lawyers & Legal Resources, Licensing Services, Medical Resources, Paraphernalia (Head Shop & Smoke Shop Goods), POS & Management Software, Private Equity & Investment Resources, Professional Training & Education, Security Services & Equipment, Seed Banks, Testing & Lab Services, Tinctures Tonics & Topicals, Vaporizers.

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?

Black Church to the Rescue?

The new civil rights movement for Black people is the Self Sufficiency Movement. Will the Black Church once again provide the primary leadership in this new civil rights struggle?

I've got to say, I am a little uncomfortable with the idea that an institution whose main purpose and reason for being is to pray and "serve God", would be the focal point for Black economic survival. But that does seem to be the case. The Black Church, once again, is coming to the rescue of the general Black public.

We all know about the church's role in the civil rights movement, and in providing a place of solace and activism during the long march out of slavery. But now, in contemporary America, when so many of us are skeptical about the role of religion in civic life, and who bristle at the thought of an institutional interloper in our spiritual space, is this a model that can do justice to the church and our social survival simultaneously? What about all of the charlatans that gravitate to the church for the purpose of making a living? And what about all of those zealots whose every other phrase is "praise God"? Are we giving them too much power over our secular selves?

These are some of the conundrums that are part and parcel of a movement that depends on the institution of God as its primary impetus. But the evidence doesn't' lie. The Black church remains the only example of Black people working together in large numbers to achieve broad social progress.

Over the last 20 years or so, Black churches of any significant size have built an economic development operation. These ECD's are involved in everything from housing and credit unions to owning supermarkets. If you are a Black person with a penchant for self-sufficiency, these ECD's are pretty much the only game in town with regard to being employed by Black people, working on a Black agenda. That's the good news. The bad news is that these organizations can't employ nearly enough of the Black talent that is ready, willing and able to devote itself to the cause of Black self-sufficiency, or can they?

Another concern I have has to do with where these ECD's get their money. Many of these organizations are getting money from the government, and private corporations run by the usual White suspects. Naturally, there is a price to pay in terms of how far they can go in representing the true interest of Black people when their money is coming from White folks with their own agenda. However, from what I can tell, there seems to be a number of progressive Black congregations and ministers out there that really do understand the survival challenge that Black communities face across the nation, and they are stepping up to provide jobs and opportunities for Black people in response.

It is worth mentioning a few of the efforts that, in my mind, deserve to be highlighted because they are charting their own course and using their own money and talent to get there. In Meridan, Mississippi, Bishop Luke Edwards started off with a small group of members who were all on welfare. By pooling their food stamps they were able to start selling groceries out of the basement of their church. Eventually, they elevated their game and opened more than one restaurant, a bakery, an auto repair shop, a cattle farm and a plant to process the meat. Now that's a vertically integrated business infrastructure!

And then there are people like Rev. Gerald Austin, Sr., of Birmingham, Alabama, who founded the nonprofit ECD, Center for Urban Missions, and is involved in an annual conference called the A.G. Gaston Conference, where the specific discussion is about the Black Church's role in economic development of Black communities. This year's speaker was one of my homeboys, Rev. Floyd Flake of Queens, NY, where he has built a formidable economic infrastructure that employs, houses and develops Black human capital. Rev. Austin published a 12 page report for this year's conference, in it he goes right to the heart of the challenge: "the black community faces a new struggle just as daunting as the civil rights struggle - community and economic revitalization," and he challenges the Black church to step up and meet the challenge head on.

Considering the fact that there are so many churches, from storefronts to grand cathedral-like structures, in Black communities all over this country, I can see an opportunity for churches to extend their type of self-sufficiency into businesses that can provide the foundation for more advanced 21st century type opportunity to the cash starved entrepreneurial class of Black folks. I can tell you from my 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur focused on Black self-sufficiency, that there are a lot of Black folks out here with ideas, skills and in-the-trenches experience competing in the mainstream. We all eventually run up against the same brick wall that stands in the way of our ability to build substantial businesses in the 21st century economy (see my article "Managed Mobility" for stats on the pervasive insolvency of Black businesses): capital with a vision for Black power.

The information/entertainment business is a good example. People that invest in companies like New Line Cinema, and now Lions Gate Entertainment, two companies with a history of producing coon comedies and urban malaise movies, are simply not interested in a Black media company that is focused on "three-dimensional images and stories from the African Diaspora" (the motto of KJM3 Entertainment Group, a Black film distribution company involved in Black film classics like, Daughters of the Dust, Sankofa, The Man By The Shore). Wall Street doesn't have a vision for creating a Black business infrastructure that can provide financing, employment and prosperity for the Black community. In fact, they see such efforts as competition for the power to ascribe value to our goods, services and ideas, which they understand is the kind of influence that could change the whole power dynamic in America and the world. The White investor class is simply not interested in relinquishing that kind of power.

Another Achilles heal in church based development is their tax exempt status. When you talk about changing the power dynamic, you must consider that for every action, there is a reaction. How will Uncle Sam respond to a Black business infrastructure anchored by tax free religious institutions? Well, we are already starting to see some push back by the government in its interest in the finances of the mega churches. Creflo Dollar (a Black minister named "Dollar", LOL), along with a number of big White churches have received supeonas from a congressional committee interested in all that money and influence. Remember Marcus Garvey? They finally got to him on a trumped up mail fraud charge. Can you imagine how hard they will come at a tax-exempt, vertically integrated Black business infrastructure capable of disseminating a parallel narrative that can compete with the New York Times and CBS for the hearts and minds of between 40 and 400 million people camped out in major cities around the country and the world (I've been to Africa where they were so thirsty for Black images they sucked up BET like it was water in the desert)?

In some ways, it all seems like a set up. Why is it that all of this economic activity is being led by institutions that regularly deal in the ephemeral? Sometime ago I came across a document purporting to be a National Security Council memo to Richard Nixon. It talked about the rising radicalism in the Black community and ways in which to blunt the efficacy of the radicals' message. One of the suggestions was to sow division in the Black community by appealing to the business-minded Black people with government contracts to help them get started in business.

The idea was that these people represented the best and brightest and could be separated from the lumpen mediocrity with opportunities to build their own wealth. A classic divide and conquer strategy. One very similar to the colonial strategy of identifying a minority ethnic group within a larger society, prop them up with education and privileges not available to the majority, and then let them fight amongst each other over a vision for the future. Naturally, the favored group needed the colonialist's power and weapons to continue to enjoy their artificial advantage over the majority, thereby creating the "massa, our house is burning" symbiotic relationship that Malcolm X talked about. Is there some element of a colonial set-up in the availability of capital and opportunity to all of these individual religious institutions? Does the parochial nature of each individual church prevent them from having broader efficacy? Will a competition for available resources stymie the movement for self-sufficiency and prosperity as it builds momentum? Will secular resentment make it impossible for these ECD's to get beyond their own congregations? Only time will tell.

Right now, though, I am absolutely applauding all of these Black church ECD's involved in the mundane and practical upon which the Black masses live. However, in order to guarantee Black participation in the next iteration of human existence, we will still have to find a way to put together the venture capital to support our entrepreneurs that are trying to keep pace with the evolution of society. We have to play in the 21st Century and a sandwich shop is not enough sustenance to keep our best and brightest minds focused on our future.
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