Rise up and shine
21st June 2016 · 0 Comments
By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor
Over the course of history, Black people have been down many times but never out.
We’ve been kidnapped, stored in slave castles along the coast of West Africa and transported in the bellies of human-trafficking vessels during the TransAtlantic slave trade. We’ve been poked and prodded on the auction block, sold like cattle and forced to toil for somebody else from sunrise to sunset. We’ve been hunted like dogs, hunted with dogs in Haiti, lynched, castrated, tormented by domestic terrorists and told by the highest court in the land that we have no rights that whites were bound by law to respect.
We’ve been forced to attend run-down, overcrowded and underfunded schools, treated like lab rats in clinical studies and have seen the towns and communities we established burned to ashes by our oppressors with a lot of help from government and law enforcement officials.
Through it all, we have kept on keeping on, fighting the good fight and knowing that as long as we keep our eyes on the prize and allow our freedom struggle to be fueled by our faith, hope, love and the courage of our convictions, things would get better by and by.
And things have gotten better. They have also gotten worse as far too many of the descendants of our enslavers have decided that they do not want to live in a nation that respects Black people’s human rights, civil rights and right to be.
But that’s alright.
Our Beloved Ancestors assure us , as they assured young rapper Kendrick Lamar, that we gon’ be alright.
And so we shall.
As that young sister Aundra Day croons on the song “I Rise Up,” “All we need is hope — and for that we have each other.”
The faith, hope, love, courage and resilience of our forebears will sustain as we forge ahead in our quest for total liberation, justice and the right to be recognized as free and equal human beings in this society.
Like our ancestors, we will earn that freedom one step at a time.
There is a time for every purpose under heaven and now is the time for us to rise up and get our shine on. It’s time to put aside childish and foolish things like materialism, self-absorption and greed and gravitate toward the kinds of African—centered values and principles that have made it possible for people of African descent to survive one of the worst episodes of injustice in human history.
It’s time to toss out elected officials who have done absolutely nothing to empower or uplift us and replace them with people who have demonstrated their commitment to freedom, justice and democracy.
It’s time to reclaim our children and remind them who and whose they are. It’s also time that we reclaim our own African minds and remind ourselves who and whose we are. And to remind ourselves that “I am because we are.”
It’s also time for us to lose any fear of speaking out against injustice and asking the questions that need to be asked in order for us to move toward becoming a free people worthy of the admiration and respect of our ancestors.
Let’s start with these questions:
• With all of the treachery, political chicanery, back room dealings and economic exclusion of women and minority-owned firms coming out of City Hall, why hasn’t the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Department of Justice taken steps to take over the City of New Orleans?
• What does it say about racial progress in New Orleans that enslaved Africans built the French Quarter not once, but twice after it was destroyed but more than 150 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, French Quarter business owners are hell-bent on preventing Tracey Riley, a Black woman, from establishing a business there?
• Have you heard New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu or anyone from his inner circle say anything publicly about efforts by French Quarter business owners to derail Tracey Riley’s efforts to get her business off the ground in the area?
• What happened to the good old days when teenagers used to be able to earn a little spending money with a newspaper route or a gig mowing lawns and raking leaves?
• If state legislators continue to undermine the TOPS scholarship program, how is that going to impact the City of New Orleans’ struggle to get a handle on violent crime?
• Why is so little being said and/or written about the captain, lieutenant and officer in the Grand Isle Police Department who were recently arrested on a number of drug-related and extortion charges?
• Why do we hear so much about the dealings of alleged drug kingpins like ‘Telly Hankton but never hear about the U.S. Attorney’s Office or any of the region’s law enforcement agencies snagging the big fish that bring heroin, cocaine and other drugs into the region on boats and planes?
• Why are the federal courts, the U.S. Department of Justice and federal monitor Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton allowing the New Orleans Police Department to get away with doing such a shabby, half-ass job of implementing the federally mandated, 492-point consent decree aimed at overhauling the troubled police department and bringing it up to federal standards for constitutional policing?
• Is it just me or has New Orleans businessman Sidney Torres already launched his bid to become the city’s next mayor with his French Quarter-based crime-fighting efforts and high-profile business ventures?
• Why do the Feds allow the City of New Orleans to get away with underfunding Orleans Parish Prison and harshly criticizing Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman for not doing a better job of running the facility?
• Now that the state Supreme Court has refused to hear the Landrieu administration’s appeal of a lower court ruling that the City of New Orleans must pay Criminal District Court Clerk Arthur Morrell’s office $141,600 to make up for underfunding the clerk’s 2012 budget, what is the Landrieu administration going to do next to achieve a little “catchback”?
• If you were the city’s police chief, a deputy mayor or some member of the mayor’s inner circle at City Hall earning a six-figure salary, what would you be willing to do to extend that voluminous salary for another four years beyond 2018?
• If the mayor was so ready, willing and able to submit to house arrest if he continued to be held in contempt of court for refusing to pay a court-ordered settlement, why was he so adamant about getting a state legislator to author a bill to try to prevent that scenario from ever coming up again?
• Why do so few Black contractors get public contracts in this majority-Black city in the 21st century?
• When is Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro going to make a decision about whether to indict former NOPD Officer David Warren for the fatal shooting of Henry Glover less than a week after Hurricane Katrina?
• Whose decision was it to move the overwhelming majority of New Orleans football games to Pan American Stadium while Catholic high school football games were held at the more spacious, better-constructed Tad Gormley Stadium?
• Who thinks back room political wheeling and dealing and pretending to reach decisions at public meetings is the same thing as a transparent, democratic process?
• How many people in the U.S. who know all too well how gun violence has ripped apart families and communities are going to still vote for NRA-backed, GOP candidates?
• Who thinks Donald Trump will be able to convince NRA leaders to even seriously consider any changes to the way assault weapons are sold in response to the recent mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida?
• Why are so few people outraged after the news that the criminal justice system allowed a white teenage swimmer to avoid spending major time behind bars for raping someone because it would ruin his life?
• With self-proclaimed terrorists shooting up nightclubs, random gun violence in the streets and folks getting shot to death after disboarding party buses in New Orleans, where can young people go to enjoy themselves without having to fear for their lives?
• When are we going to get back to teaching children social skills and how to say things like “Good morning,” “Yes sir,” “No mam,” “May I,” “Excuse me” and “Please”?
• Why is it that only a handful of people seem to understand the connection between rising violent crime in New Orleans and chronic poverty, high unemployment and underemployment, an erosion of basic human rights and educational apartheid in the city’s school system?
• What do you tell your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews to help them to avoid becoming victims of gun violence?
• What are you doing this summer to give the young people in your family, neighborhood and community something productive and positive to do while out of school?
This article originally published in the June 20, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
