The battle rages on

3rd August 2015   ·   0 Comments

By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor

Long after the quick secured loans online murders of Yusuf Hawkins, Michael Griffith, Levon­Jones, Justin Sipp, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Henry Glover, Ronald Madison, James Brissette and all the others killed by those interested in maintaining the status quo in America, why are we still singing the same songs and organizing the same kinds of marches? Why haven’t more of us committed to doing whatever it takes to secure equal protection under the law and economic justice? Why haven’t more of us put aside distractions like reality TV and second lines to focus on the issues at hand?

The battle rages on and it’s time for a renewed commitment to liberating and empowering ourselves by any means necessary. That liberation and empowerment begins in the mind with fertile thoughts and a vigorous debate about the issues we face as a people. With every rising sun, we need to focus on the challenges we face as a people and the many games people who do not look like us or share our priorities continue play with us.

Let’s talk about and be about it, beginning with a steady best way to make some fast cash diet of conscious debate of all of the issues on our minds. Here we go:

• How does the Republican Party expect anyone who values justice and equality to take the party seriously when it continues to attract presidential candidates like Bobby Jindal, Donald Trump, Rick Santorum and Dr. Benjamin Carson?

• How long is the U.S. Department of Justice going to let mostly white grand juries across America get away with letting cops who shoot unarmed Black and Brown men, women and children go free?

• In this day and age of cops of all colors killing unarmed people of color, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court stripping people of color and the poor of their constitutional rights and the U.S. Department of Justice acting like it has no power and authority to guarantee equal protection under the law, how can any white person living in the United States think that Black people are running things in America?

• How many people who short term loans pueblo co lost loved ones who could have benefited from Medicaid expansion in Louisiana think Louisiana Gov. Piyush Jindal is doing a good job and would make a fine president?

• Why do so many people see nothing wrong with GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s vilification and criminalization of our Mexican American brothers and sisters?

• Who believes Donald Trump when he says he gets along very well with “the Blacks”?

• How does a mayor who considers himself “eco-friendly” do and say absolutely nothing about the Recovery School District’s plans to build a new school for Black children atop a toxic landfill where Booker T. Washington Senior High School once stood?

• Why does City Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell care so much about the harmful effects of cigarette smoke but doesn’t care at all about the harmful effects that at least eight toxic metals will have on the children who will attend the new Cohen College Prep school?

• Who are the people in the business community who apparently have plans for the land on which the current short term loan san diego Walter L. Cohen Senior High School sits and why is the recovery School District so adamant about not rebuilding the school at its current Garden District site?

• Who are the legislators who refused to cast a vote to block the Recovery School District from building a school on toxic soil and what are we going to do to let them know how we feel about them and their voting record and priorities come election time?

• In a nation where it is painfully evident that a quiet war is being raged against people of color, women and the poor, why are so many people placing so little value on their freedom of speech, right to vote and right to peacefully assemble to voice their disapproval of the government?

• When has the so-called 1 percent not called the shots in America?

• Why is it still so hard for so many people to understand that without struggle and sacrifice, there can be no progress in America?

• Nearly 10 years after Katrina, why has there fast cash fallout new vegas still not been an honest discussion about wage discrimination, the inequitable distribution of wealth, educational apartheid, widespread housing discrimination, unconstitutional policing and unequal justice in the criminal justice system?

• In a city with such strong African cultural continuity, why do the people of this city continue to allow local elected officials and the business community to get away with keeping “Negroes on retainer” to do their bidding?

• With property taxes, energy bills and Sewerage & Water Board bills going through the roof, why are the people of this city and state legislators still allowing Tulane University to get away with not paying property taxes?

• Who thinks Jackson’s statue should be removed in order to honor someone who didn’t own enslaved Africans, break his promises to Black people after the Battle of New Orleans and propose giving blankets used by smallpox patients to Native Americans to exterminate them?

This article originally published in the August 3, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.