Taking care of business
29th September 2015 · 0 Comments
What are you doing daily to improve conditions in your community and to ensure that things get better for people who have been systematically and historically locked out of the American Dream? Are you reading books that feed your mind and embolden your spirit? Are you teaching underserved children and those dealing with illiteracy to read and write? Are you attending community forums and keeping yourself informed about issues of critical importance to communities of color? Are you engaging elected officials to make sure they do the things that they were elected to do and letting them know that you and other taxpayers are more than capable of “firing” them when they forget that they are public servants?
Whatever it is you are doing, make it count. Part of making it count entails sharing critical information and passing along ideas and strategies that move communities of color forward. And asking the kinds of questions that shed light on the things that continue to hold us back and stand between us becoming a city, state and nation where economic justice, democracy and equal protection under the law prevail. To that end, here are some of the questions on the minds of the people of this city:
• How many well-paid executives and elected officials does it take to screw up the city’s water system?
• Who thinks it would be a good idea to re-elect Board of Elementary and Secondary Education member Kira Orange Jones after she said and did nothing about the RSD’s plans to build a school atop a toxic landfill and has conveniently not shown up to vote on issues of critical importance to Black people in New Orleans?
• If the Pope had come to New Orleans, would anyone in local government have told him about the Recovery School District’s plan to build Cohen College Prep atop the former Silver City Dump or the fact that the New Orleans City Council already green lighted the construction of a community center for Black senior citizens atop the same toxic landfill?
• How many people were shocked by FOX News’ investigative report that alleged that Louisiana Gov. Piyush Jindal has been trading seats on state boards and commissions for presidential campaign contributions?
• How many Black and white state legislators who refused to support State Rep. Joseph Bouie’s bill to block school systems from building schools on contaminated soil will have the audacity to ask Black people, or anyone who cares about environment safety, to vote for them this fall?
• If the Confederate statues in the city came down tomorrow, would New Orleans be any less of a bastion of white supremacy?
• Why couldn’t the police find a gunman hiding inside WBOK radio station on Sept. 19 but the employees could?
• Does the NOPD look and feel like a police department that has undergone two years of implementation of the federally mandated consent decree?
• If it weren’t for integration, how afraid would the University of Alabama and LSU be to meet Southern University or Grambling State University in a game of football?
• Why do Black people keep letting mainstream society get away with telling people of color that our culture is worthless while utilizing that same culture to sell everything from cars to dog food?
• Why isn’t anyone talking about the fact that more than 200 years after the Haitian Revolution, the Western world is still following France’s lead in blackballing and ostracizing the Republic of Haiti, the first independent Black nation in the Western Hemisphere?
• Why don’t we hear a lot of Black people talking about reading a good Black history book the way they talk about watching “Empire” or “Scandal”?
• Who thinks “Black-ish” is better than Blackness?
• What would happen if Black people with educational training, marketable skills and resources at their disposal started believing that they could accomplish great things without the permission, approval or acceptance of white people?
This article originally published in the September 28, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
