What To Do?
Very interesting post. I agree with your points. However, my problem had always been, what to DO? I realized the place to start is with my home and family. It just seems like we live in (as you say), a virtual reality, and one where no real leader has emerged...not Sharpton, Jackson, etc. I am so not into politics or these candidates. I mean once you get past all the superficial stuff. At times I feel like rare politicians started out with your sentiments and attempted to be accountable. However, I really feel that at some point along the rise to them actually getting a foothold and getting heard, it all transforms to what we see of them today. It's almost a catch-22. In order to move beyond just "talk," you have to navigate a certain way but it's that navigation that destroys your initial purpose. -- comment from JWL reader Safa
What to DO? That seems to be the million-dollar question asked by Afrikans who want change, but seem inundated in confusion as to how to go about not only being change, but the catalyst for change.
But what to DO? What to DO? DO, a term that provokes action—that requires action on the part of the DOer. A question that were it not for Safa posing in her comment, I would not be performing an action provoked by its sheer mention.
So, again, what to DO? When we think on that question for any length of time, with that thinking comes a host of possible answers, more questions and that dirty old word: accountability.
In what way am I accountable to my people to DO something? In what ways DO my people depend on me to not only be accountable but to be in service to our greater good?
The DOism Factor
And what, in the end, will make me and others who feel we must DO something any different from leaders Safa has pointed out, who seem to have fallen victims to their DOism?
Did their failures come from their DOism being twisted and turned to the point of coming unDOne, or was it because their DOism wasn’t that stringent a requirement of their agenda in the first place?
But I’m sure Safa doesn’t want to beat around this issue anymore—and, frankly, I can’t blame her. She wants to know what to DO, differently. So differently that we’re not still hashing this out another 50 years from now as we’ve done 50 years past, and 50 years past that, and on and on.
I say to Safa that we must not only build the home in which we live, but we must build our extended family’s home (the Afrikan community). We must stop thinking that if we’re hired into, voted into or appointed into their systems that will lead to change.
History has proven that the only thing that leads to is assimilation of those members of us that were hired in, voted in or appointed to another man’s house. So, if that hasn’t worked and isn’t working, isn’t it time we reevaluated that concept?
Take for example, a friend of ours wants to get to the other side of a moat. He has two choices: he can swim across the moat and risk being attacked by crocodiles, or he can walk around the moat, which while safer, will require a long, strenuous trek.
Our friend decides to swim the moat and is quickly attacked and eaten by a crocodile.
Knowing very well the dangers of this moat, we then convince ourselves that the crocodile was probably just hungry and that just because our friend was eaten, doesn’t mean we will be, too.
So, we jump into the moat, completely ignoring the fate of our comrade and are promptly attacked and eaten. Rinse and repeat this scenario and you have the Afrikan presence in Amerikka.
Our failures come in choosing to swim across what we know to be a deadly moat. Many of our self-appointed leaders have failed because they felt compelled, in a half-hearted sort of way, to try to change the hearts of those who use our fears, our incorrect approaches, our need to be inclusive to continue their self-sanctioned domination over us.
Not only do they use our fear projections, low self-esteem and lack of trust and love toward each other against us, but they subtly hand us the fear, the low self-esteem, the lack of trust and love toward each other to further divide and conquer us. In the end, we become dazed and confused—some of us wanting to make change, but too confused as to how to make that change.
The greatest slave and liability is he who vows that “I don’t answer to nobody,” yet each day he wakes up to go to a job he hates, to sit around people he can’t stand and don’t doesn't feel comfortable with, to receive a paycheck that’s lower than everybody else’s, which is then used to buy rims that aren’t needed, luxury cars that tell lies, clothes that don’t appreciate, music that clutters the mind, and cable and an assortment of other mediums that are filled with propaganda and subliminal messaging.
I Can Change for You
I can change. At least that’s what Legend seemed to think. But can we really? Can we wake up one day and say enough is enough? Can we rise on that day and say no longer will I come to you for my sustenance, I’m going to tend my own garden?
Can we fling off the chains binding our feet, our hands and our MINDS and say I’m going to sit down with my brothers and sisters at the table and not only put our heads together to work out a plan of action, but our dollars as well?
Can we say that whether we are Christian or Muslim or Buddhist, or no religious affiliation at all, we will come together to DO this and this and this about our situation?
Back on Track
I seem to have gotten off-track in some ways, because Safa’s question was WHAT TO DO?
Safa, if I had even half the dollars that many of those with the power to do something “big” had and less than a quarter of a mega church’s congregation that were truly dedicated to change, you wouldn’t be asking that question. Instead, you’d be seeing the results.
We wouldn’t be trying to get them to vote us in, hire us in or appoint us to anywhere, because we’d be making our own laws, producing our own food, our own clothes, our own shelter, our own building equipment, our own technology, our own science, our own research.
But as it stands, those with the fortitude and determination to get things done are usually the ones who have an arduous road ahead of them when it comes to making things happen. To make it more difficult, we’re more likely to run into people who are not truly serious about making change and the sacrifices that come with it, than we are to find somebody ready to get down in the trenches.
They’ve programmed us to fear making enemies of them, but take pride in alienating and making enemies of our brothers and sisters. That’s why it’s not unusual that we don’t speak to each other on the streets; that we defile our women on television; that we defile ourselves through our music, books and movies; that we fight about whose church is better when the majority of them aren’t doing anything on a wide-scale level that benefits the whole of our parts; that we can’t admit to the truth when it’s staring us in the face; that we are in denial, in denial, in denial about our place in this country; and that we almost always choose a living death than one we can feel honored by because we died fighting for something we believed in like those rare real leaders who came before us.
Our oppressors have turned us into cowards and our children into disobedient, self-destructive, angry little people. Even those of us who know this oppressor for who he is has to fight a constant battle to prevent our children from becoming victims of his politics, his propaganda, his oppression, his destruction.
Every day I wake up to fight the oppressor—who I have aptly labeled my enemy—to share with others my fight against this enemy, this machine, in hopes they’ll be able to use some of my same strategies and the strategies I’ve learned from others to defeat him, to bring him to his knees and return him to his Ice Age and his Dark Ages.
Then, one day, it dawned on me that the enemy had moved in with me. That each day, I feed this enemy. This enemy knows my schedule—my likes, my dislikes. This enemy knows that I am working diligently to extract him from my home, so he fights just as diligently to remain there in the unassuming form of television, music, MySpace, Black Planet, magazines, electronics, mind control, distrust, demeaning of my role as a parent when I am not there to defend my position (e.g., school, day care, home).
If I do not continue to wage a battle, he will condition my children into everything that is a reflection of him and his domination: promiscuousness, irresponsibility, liars, non-linear thinkers, materialistic, underachievers, self-conscious, self-haters, murderers, etc.
Vigilance is the Answer
So, the most significant thing I can say in response to your question, Safa, is that you must practice vigilance, in everything you DO. We are not at a point of rest, or a point of play. We have work to DO.
The book of ancient truths and distortions (as I refer to the bible) says that for six days God labored. It wasn’t until the seventh day that he rested.
I’d like to say that while some of us might not be Christians or believers in this book, we can take a working message from it. That being, we must work and build and change things, especially our way of thinking, until we have completed the task at hand, until we have shaped the heavens above and below, until we have created the earth that lies between and the flowers and the trees, until we have the sun and the moon and stars to guide our way, we must DO.
And then, Safa, we can, like God from this book, say that “it is GOOD.”
