Bernie Sanders leaves Seattle stage after event disrupted by Black Lives Matter protestersSanders was the final speaker on a long program held at a city park. Shortly after he took stage, a small group of protesters from a Seattle chapter of Black Lives Matter took the microphone and demanded that the crowd hold Sanders “accountable” for not doing enough, in their view, to address police brutality and other issues on the group’s agenda.
After sharing a few local grievances with the crowd, including school disparities and gentrification in Seattle, the protesters asked for a period of silence to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown being shot and killed during a confrontation with a police officer in Ferguson, Mo.
I will believe in the legitimacy of the #BLACKLIVESMATTER ‘movement’ when I see concrete evidence that according to the group, Black lives really do matter, but to-date, I have seen no evidence of that.
Disrupting Bernie Sanders as he speaks at an event in Seattle is not going to prove that this group really believes that Black lives do indeed, matter. Au contraire! When the group, instead of disrupting political events, begins to focus on SOLUTIONS to the problems that plague Black lives in America, then and only then will I take the group seriously and again, as of yet, I see nothing to make me take this group seriously. Au contraire!
When #BLACKLIVESMATTER begins to hold Blacks accountable for the $1.1 trillion dollars that flows through our hands each and every year straight to the whites, Koreans, Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, etc., and to hold Blacks accountable for instead of pooling our money together to build and open our own grocery stores, banks, medical institutions and start other businesses that are Black-owned, Black supported and that lift up Black communities, we take that money and AGAIN, give it to the whites, the Koreans, the Chinese and every other group and then we wonder why we need Section 8 vouchers, I will start taking the #BLACKLIVESMATTER group, seriously. We wonder why we need food stamps. We wonder why we need Medicaid. We wonder why we need someone to wipe our nose for us. If we didn’t take our money and run right out and buy that new pair of Timberland boots, run out and buy the latest Nikes to come down the pike, run right out and buy designer label after designer label, run right to the Chinese Carryout, run to the Korean liquor store, run to the Korean nail and hair salon, and instead invest our dollars in building up our own communities as in starting food co-ops, housing co-ops, credit unions and the like, we would have something. We would not need to show our ass to get attention from those that we insist should do our fighting for us. We have got to fight for ourselves. It should be crystal clear by now that no one is going to fight our battles for us. No one is going to make us matter until we start acting like we matter. And we are not doing that. We are doing the opposite. All Black people are not ignorant. We have the potential to become doctors, lawyers, judges, bankers, franchise owners. It is not that other groups are smarter than us. It is just that we look to movements and marches and groups and organizations like the NAACP to do for us when that is SO not happening.
A ‘movement’ is not a hash tag, nor is it spouting off at the mouth and displaying your ignorance. The group’s collective ignorance is not hard to see. This group is nothing more than a joke and not a very funny one at that; it is a travesty and the tragedy is that many Black people are falling in line with this joke because #BLACKLIVESMATTER is just a diversionary tactic, set in place to divert Black people from what really matters. If Black people woke up to what they could collectively do on their own, they would be a force to be reckoned with but if ‘the powers that be’ continue to write the script and pound it into us daily that if instead of realizing and recognizing what we should be doing, we instead allow ourselves to be sidetracked by some made up hash tag with a hidden agenda that has nothing to do with Black people making gains in America, we will continue to never realize our potential. And this is all done by design. Find out who is sponsoring the group; financing the group. Find out why the group is only making noise, but is lacking in any substance. Why is the group focused not on building up Black people, but instead seems hell bent on solely getting a message to, I really don’t know who, that #BLACKLIVESMATTER. Black lives are never going to matter to the whites, that should be well understood by now. It is time that Black people took a stand and stood up and came together to help Black people. No one can solve all of our problems for us. We have to take some responsibility for what becomes of us. We know the white man is hell bent on trying to eradicate us and since that is a fact, why would a group, #BLACKLIVESMATTER continue to tell Black people to march to the same whites that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and all the other Black people marched to in the 1960s? What has been accomplished if Black people are still to this very day, marching to the same group that they’ve been marching to for over 50 years? What is wrong with you? Why is it that the Koreans can come to America and work together and open up their own businesses? The Pakistanis do it. The Chinese do it. Every other group can get their act together, but we cannot. I do realize that we got our start in America as slaves, but our ancestors had it worse than we do and we know this and yet, we make a mockery of their memory because if they could see how far we have not come as a race of people, they would be outraged and ashamed because as many of us that the white man kills, we are also on the streets doing his job for him. Is this really necessary? By now, we should not still be marching to the white man, begging for some relief or joining some jumped up ignorant screaming fools that simply crave attention and only manage to make themselves appear ridiculous and yes, ghetto. Will we never get it?
If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times, you cannot expect to get different results by continuing to do the same thing over and over again. You are going to get the same results. Stage another protest and what has that accomplished? Petition City Hall to close down some more streets and parade all up and down the streets of America and what has that accomplished? I’ll tell you what it has accomplished. It has accomplished tired, aching feet and shoes with worn down soles and that is all. Your limp ass protest signs dating back to the 1960s are just as irrelevant today as they were back then. What has changed? Jim Crow? Jim Crow is throughout this land. Where do you live, Black folks? Are you rubbing shoulders with the whites? Or are you segregated in Black communities? Are your children rubbing shoulders in school with their white counterparts? How many Black-owned businesses are you entering? Can you not easily tell when you have entered a so-called ‘white neighborhood’? And why is that? It is because you are still just as segregated today as when Jim Crow laws were first put on the books. Still think that you can drink out of any water fountain? Take your Black ass inside an exclusive country club asking for a glass of water and see what you get for your troubles. Walk by a ‘gated community’ and see how fast the cops show up either before or after some vigilante has mucked up your day or night.
Black lives will only matter when Black people finally decide that their lives really do matter. We should not need Black lives to matter to the whites. That is never going to happen. We as Black people must first matter to ourselves and we don’t. We don’t like our hair. We don’t like our own people because their skin is too dark or their skin is too light or they talk too ‘white’ or too ‘Black’ or they don’t have the ‘cool’ clothes or the ‘cool’ smartphone or some such nonsense. When will that shit cease to matter? When Black lives really matter and not just junk that we buy, then and only then can we go about the business of accomplishing something worthwhile. And the #BLACKLIVESMATTER group matters not, nor is it helpful or relevant to the awakening that must first take place in the heart of each and every Black person in America. You’ve got to matter to you. It is not about how much you matter to someone else. Matter to yourself and maybe then, you will change your perception of what is important and realize that it is not about Timberland boots and Nikes and rims and fake nails. And remember, the reason why we are doing so poorly as a people in America is because we are divided. And you know the saying. “Together, we stand, Divided, we fall.” And that is why Black America, we are falling. It is because we do not stand together!
#BLACKLIVESMATTER cannot stop you from falling. That movement will not catch you because that is not what #BLACKLIVESMATTER is all about. Do your own research. Educate yourselves and stop listening to the lies. Stop reading the script of others and write your own. Make your life matter and in the process, maybe then, you will understand that if your life matters, then so does your neighbor who is also more than likely Black, and together, you can start a ‘constructive’ movement. You will not need a Section 8 voucher that pays some unconcerned white landlord hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to house you in the poorest section of town, the “Black section.” Is #BLACKLIVESMATTER addressing this issue? Is #BLACKLIVESMATTER addressing the inner city school-to-prison pipeline? Is #BLACKLIVESMATTER addressing the Black child poverty rate? The Black unemployment rate? Is #BLACKLIVESMATTER using its donations to build safe, decent, affordable housing because that government backed HUD mess certainly isn’t working. HUD doesn’t give a damn where you live or even if you live. Why do you think congress takes more money from HUD each year? It is because HUD is a failure. It is a gigantic black hole that swallows taxpayer money and there is no return on that investment. Don’t believe it? Don’t take my word for it. Read this!
I say, “Black Lives don’t even matter to Blacks!” Make a liar out of me, I dare you!
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