Tuesday, November 20, 2007

MisGivings and ThanksTaking



I think of the holidays as a perfect time to meditate/reflect on where you stand. Believe me, you do have a choice and you are making choices everyday. Every moment you make choices that either contribute to oppression or tear it down. When you don't know yourself - who you are - your purpose in life - your destiny - you are subject to contribute to and even defend oppression.
BLACKOUT FRIDAY is the day after ThanksTaking/MisGivings. It is the day that our folks have set aside to demonstrate how much buying power we have in this country. I have heard it said that the Black person is the "new consumer". My friend emailed me today to give me the stats on our wealth - here is what she said:
"Think about this, WAOK host Rob Wilson gave these statistics. Black buying power in the greater Atlanta area is $68 Billion. Dekalb county $9 billion alone. Fulton county $4.2 billion. In addition to focusing our own dollars Back to Black, we should get together and figure out ways to bring much more of those billions of Black dollars back into our own communities and to the businessess we know to be worthy of receiving them."
WOW!!! Imagine if we took all that money and build our own schools preK to university level, invested in Africa, healed ourselves from the wounds of enslavement, etc... To be honest I always knew something was up with us because we are the only people who can live in a classified poor neighborhood and have people drive in and set up businesses and thrive. Again, we need to know ourselves -who we are and our destiny...
I don't think BLACKOUT FRIDAY is going to end racism (as some emails tout) but it may help us realize the potential of our economic power. In case you have forgotten here is the clip to remember... yes, a sistah wrote this movie! (if you get my email go to blog to see clip)

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jambo im writing to support your blog and all of the right-on commentary!!!! our people need to step up and everything youve been saying is on point! cant wait for the discussion of what we talked about with Shango, Joe and Noble...i wanna start a blog too....

- Kweku
(just writing to add your official first comment. thanx for everything today...peace)