Follow-up to Our Need for A Black Agenda

By BaBa Omowale

BaBa Omowale

Following through with an Agenda where the only focus is on the needs of the Black Community, can we also talk about our demands for justice when it comes to the lives of men and women and even children in our community who fall victim to the snares of entrapment that this society has set for our people.

You know the snares of the so-called criminal justice system with unjust traffic stops and  wanton murders of black people on the streets of America, to the prison system where they still gang up and murder our young men and women, like India Cummings and Robert Brooks. Yes, I have to look to history for the answers to what we see happening right now. Like we know from the so-called emancipation proclamation to the decree by the next President, after President Lincoln was murdered,  annulling the 40 Acres and a Mule that we were promised to compensate African people enslaved on Plantations throughout America and who had been terrorized into submission, after we ingested that brief taste of Freedom, in the hoax of emancipation,  still  we resisted on plantations and fought in the civil war with the hope to obtain the freedoms that we enjoy today, that Oh so long ago had been kept from us in broken promises and misdirection.

So now,  right now,  after the election being stolen a second time by the same white nationalist  that stole it before with the help of his Russian and billionaire friends, we see the murders of Black people also increasing on our streets,  and in the prisons where our families are tortured and murdered as what I see as an emboldened prelude to the opening of Guantanamo Bay for so-called immigrant's where they will continue to torture and murder at will unless we make the protections of our men, women and children a part of the Black Agenda that is non-negotiable.

To me, when we say non-negotiable that means that there is no talking when there is a murder that we discover after the fact. We demand accountability of those responsible for the death, In the case of Mr. Robert Brooks, we demand that the correction officers caught on video participating in the assault, or standing by and letting it happen. be fired immediately. Governor Kathy Hochul must order the immediate termination of all corrections personnel and anybody else involved in the murder of Mr. Brooks, including the watch commander who assigned the c.o.s, or allowed them to transport Mr. Brooks,  as well as the doctors and nurses who stood by while the murder was happening. Every person in a position of responsibility and authority on the shift when this murder happened should be held responsible for his death. Each of them gets paid for the safety of their ward’s, care, custody,  control and well being because medical staff were present is the official definition that they all must be held to. We need to be calling our elected officials at every level to have them weigh in to Governor Hochul about the murder Mr.Brooks.

Next, we come to our local responsibility to a Black Agenda that looks to what has been happening and continues to happen at our local detention facility which is the Erie County Holding Center. We know that murder, rape and brutality has happened far too much in the last two administrations. We know there is a toothless “Advisory Board”, mostly consisting of people either hand-picked or at least approved by the same Sherriff's office and jail management  that they are charged with holding to account. That is the Corrections Specialist Advisory Board whose job it is is to protect the interest of our community and all citizens of this County,  in particular who find themselves in the Holding Center as detainees or sentenced prisoners serving terms of up to two years. Ethically, there should be no conflict of interest for any person who serves on that board and even the appearance of impropriety should be investigated immediately because we know from past experience that people who have been in position in this county for years have had  a vested interest in protecting the status quo, like the Sherriff and the Jail administrators and even c.o.s who violate their oaths of office and refuse to activate their body cameras when an assault takes place. But, none of that means anything if we, the community fail to raise our voice when we see something that we know that just ain’t right.

We do know from history that it is often times those very assaults that end up with a detaineelosing his or her life. The community has a right to demand that the selection process for The Corrections Specialist Advisory Board include members of the community who are qualified by education and experience to serve; and no one should be dismissed or removed from The Corrections Specialist Advisory Board without a hearing where proofs of infidelity and/or unethical behavior and actions must be established beyond  a reasonable doubt.

Now, as many of the rights that we have taken for granted are being stripped away,  we must look to our Board of Education and ask what we can do to assist in protecting our children from further miseducation in the schools and violations of their rights as young people. How do we make sure our youth are protected from unnecessary and improper disciplinary procedures in the schools that we know happen every day.  How do we insure that our youth are loved and given the correct information about themselves and the world that they are growing up in. Our community has an obligation to make sure that our young people receive better in terms of identity education so that they understand the truth of the racist world we live in and can make their own decisions as to how they will conduct their lives in this world. Not some make believe honkie dorrie world where we are bamboozled into believing that  all things and all people are treated equally and with equity.

Then, how do we talk about a Black Agenda if we don’t have adequate housing in our communities to provide safe and affordable housing for our people. No one should be able to come into our neighborhood and rent gouge people for accommodations that are not up to par. Just as  local government is able to provide subsidies for others coming to our community from other countries. We need our Black attorneys who are willing to go up against the city’s real estate barons and property monopolists who buy up properties and without even fixing them up, flip them and charge unaffordable rents to our people, like many Bangla property owners do and legally force them to abide by the laws of ethics and morality that says all human beings deserve to live in affordable, decent housing.   I know there has to be some attorneys who really frown on incompetence and also frown on other lawyers who just don’t care. We need Lawyers who are willing to go against the status quo.

We need a Black agenda that says that residents who are born in America,  should have the first choice in terms of rent adjustments and other subsidies that ensure some level of equity.

Then, as a part of our Black Agenda,  because of all the known and unknown accumulated trauma’s endured by people who identify as Black,  descendants of Africa, we can’t have a Black agenda without providing for our mental health and emotional well-being. We must build clinics throughout our communities,  staffed with qualified mental health workers who also identify as Black, there to serve other people who identify as Black.

This is just a beginning/continuation of the conversations/talking about a Black Agenda that we must engage in,  if we are to overcome this onslaught against our very lives.  I look forward to hearing your voice as you join us at the Johnny B. Wiley Community Center, Jefferson and Best Street,  from 7 to 9 on the last Monday of this month or anyway you decide to communicate relative to a Black Agenda.

Thank you for allowing me to speak with you,

Hotep, your servant,

 BaBa Omowale