Plethora of Good Black News

Dr Marc Lamont Hill was in Buffalo October 26^th and it was a great night for good black news. Organizations like ECC, Buffalo Believe, and Open Buffalo along with a myriad of groups fighting for racial, social and economic justice were tabling and giving out information. Open Buffalo’s Franchelle Hart was the MC for the evening. Let me pause right here to tell you what Open Buffalo has promised to do in the face of a hostile federal government pushing to undo many years of progress

ü  Create innovative systemic reforms to combat epidemic poverty and Buffalo’s affordable housing crisis

ü  Create equal access to economic opportunities

ü  Bring training and civic engagement opportunities to marginalized communities

They also will be having an annual fundraising breakfast on Tuesday December 5^th at 8am. Please support them in their mission by visiting openbuffalo.org

After the MC opened and got things rolling, we were treated to Jillian Hanesworth’s Little Black Boy, I will recite the first poem, I wish the 2^nd part had been written down so I can share it with you. Ms. Hanesworth is a 2017 Open Buffalo Emerging Leader

Now to say black women rock would be an understatement here because the next part of it had 7 black women on stage. School Board Members Paulette Woods, Dr. Teresa Harris-Tigg and Sharon Beltman-Cottman all presented awards to three young ladies who were top finishers in “Youth Community Builder” Contest.

The ladies names are A.A  a Junior from Performing Arts who wants to start a community start-up to address community health disparities. The project will include setting up a public meeting space and creating innovative resources for community members to learn about and embrace healthy living

Next is K.H a Junior from Hutch Tech whose community project will seek to create meaningful job and skill building opportunities, connected to beautifying neighborhoods and landscaping upgrades for youth on Buffalo’s East Side namely 14215 and an aside here, 14215 I believe had the highest rate of fires because a lot of the housing there is old. However, there are beautiful pockets of neighborhoods in the Kensington/Bailey area

Rounding out the 3 is J M who seeks to create a peer youth mentoring programs with stipends for mentors. It also will provide vital peer support, character building, and an introduction to the world of work

The ladies after receiving their awards, a tablet, some money toward their community initiative and 1 year of mentorship toward making their dreams a reality the three introduced Dr. Lamont Hill

Dr. Marc Lamont Hill is a man I’ve often seen on CNN defending Black Lives Matter and putting forth the message that Americans need to hear. That this needs to end, this brutality, the dog whistle racism, the racism in credit, education and other civil spheres. To begin, he talked about Michael Brown and how he got a call from BET News to get to Ferguson. He talked about life the days he was there and how Palestinians reached out to Ferguson protestors and showed them how to do makeshift gas masks. He railed against the Israeli occupation, and the apartheid of Gaza and West Bank, which frequently have power outages. He spoke glowingly of the BLM movement and saying that it has agitated and pushed aggressive change in the criminal justice system and says that he believes firmly that it will be sustained. He spoke against cash bail and the prison industrial complex that is at its heart slavery. Right now I’ll cut to me, because while I can’t recount all that he said…I hope someone has the video out there I can tell you how he made me feel

I didn’t know if I wanted to go or not…well the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. I wanted to go but I decided to go home and get some things done then head over to Bennett. When he began to speak I felt like images were flashing before my very eyes of Black Wall Street, lynchings and police involved deaths of black unarmed men and women. I thought about persons who were incarcerated in the County Jail and were so hopeless that they took their own lives. Took a look at how the system is made to protect the privileged and afflict the afflicted. The fact that Flint doesn’t have clean water but if ISIS had diverted pipes to toxic waters, we’d be hanging them extrajudicially but because it’s a white governor he is somehow absolved of being called an environmental racist. I then found out that many poor places in the country have elevated levels of lead higher than Flint, MI. How I had to become an adult and learn about stellar black men and women who had to run from the places they were born because of lynchings and the courts were made up of the lynchers. How today lynching is going back in the past and saying “He robbed a store, so he deserved to die” but no white male who’s robbed a store has been told he deserved to die. I’ve seen white men fire on cops and still get  handcuffs while Philandro Castile got shot and killed

John Singleton said that after a man watched Boyz N Da Hood a couple approached him and she said “I’ve been with him for years, but I’ve never seen him cry before” Singleton said it simply “He saw someone who told his story” I felt like that crying man. Like I am not the only one who possibly has this reality and is tired of it. How I am tired of the race card being in the deck and people telling Trayvon Martin that he had no right to defend himself from a man who was following him and had no idea what Zimmerman was up to. How Tamir Rice had no right to play with a toy gun in an open carry state, and I read a story about a white male beat a black man who had a conceal carry license in a store. I felt like I am not the only one worn down to a nub and telling people like Mark Ruffalo in The Normal Heart “People are dying out here and you don’t give a damn!” I also liked how he defended our trans brothers and sisters, as well as defending LGBT rights. I am black and LGBT and I feel that neither of them should be reasons I’m discriminated against. Some black folks don’t feel that way and it is a damn shame, like those white gays who are shocked when they had an Asian picture on Grindr and got racist messages. How it is to have colleagues that don’t hear you when you speak of racism and are seemingly tired of hearing it, then you say “If you hate hearing it, I live it everyday” I am so glad I went (I knew I was going to go but was really mulled about not going) because for me it was a shot in the arm to continue doing my Youtube videos, to keep going to work and pushing social justice and racial justice. It made me seek everyday ways of fighting for Civil Rights and upholding the dignity of people of color.

Thank You