Zawadi Diamond Shakur
8/25/13

The Bright Idea Column
Aug 2013

All ideas retrieved from this blog should be followed thru with the wholehearted intent of service, not personal profit or financial gain, thanks.

Hey, happy Labor Day, America. It's the 50th anniversary of the "March on Washington", where the honorable Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. The speech was impactful, and is still regarded as 1 of the most powerful & eloquent in history. I'm sure every one of you understands what an edifying (misspelled?) thing it is to know there is a man sitting as president of the United States of America whose father is a Black Afrikan - African, whose wife is Afrikan-American, with 2 beautiful black children. OK, I've been trying to sound intelligent, but excuse me: This is ----ing awesome!!!

With that said, I now turn your attention to an uncomfortable truth, and all uncomfortable truths is controversial. But one's intention is the thing to consider. I'm gonna talk about another aspect of the George Zimmerman not guilty verdict. Trayvon Martin absolutely had a right - a civil right - to walk home to his father's girlfriend's house unaccosted, period! Zimmerman was clearly out of line for even approaching him - especially with a loaded gun. But I don't believe that Trayvon was killed simply because Zimmerman hates all black people. I do believe that he was actually tired of the crime in his neighborhood, and was a part of the Neighborhood Watch program to make a difference. Whether he was overzealous in his crusade before this incident, I can't say. But, I do know about what's going on in Chicago, and a lot of other cities with large concentrations of young black men (YBM) who are being murdered at alarming rates - by & large by - other Y-B-M. And yes, that does correlate with the crime YBM are responsible for in neighborhoods other than their own.

There are many factors in this equation. And a lot of them have to do with the injustice that Afrikan-Americans still face today, 50 years after Dr. King's speech. But at the same time it is time for a change in the attitudes that promote this kind of self-destructive paradigm. And I don't mean just self-destructive to the individual, but ultimately to one's entire community. I realize that I, too, am an outsider in that I've been incarcerated for over 20 years. And I've not been able to see for myself exactly what these youngsters are struggling against.

But just this past week we had 2 examples of youth gone wild. There were 2 YBM - along with a white teenager - who shot & killed an Australian college student, ALLEGEDLY because they were bored. Then, in Oregon the other day 2 YBM beat an 88 yr old man to death AFTER they robbed him. I immediately want to scream "I do not understand", why the hell these 2 little creeps don't respect life. But, unfortunately, I DO understand. Though these are not my feelings. I can see the cause and effect of it. What can you reasonably expect the outlook to be, of people who have been allowed to conclude that their own lives don't matter. They themselves are not valuable. How could they be valuable when their schools are so grossly underfunded. Again, there are many factors & many variables in each & every situation.

But these are 2 incidents where YBM killed whites. YBM kill YBM all the time. And when Trayvon Martin was murdered, all the marching & protests were not just about Trayvon Martin's death. They were about all the Emmitt Tills & Oscar Grants, Rodney Kings & the 1000s of black men who were legally "lynched" after slavery and be willing to do what you can.

Blacks should never have to march about anything ever again. Barack Obama proves that with the right help black men, young men, boys are just as likely to become productive as anybody else. That's just for anyone who still has a doubt.

I'm gonna bring up one idea at a time & attempt to exhaust it before I move on to another. I do hope and pray that our government will provide the needed help. But this is the D.I.Y. (do it yourself) era. No one should wait around for help from outside without trying to do whatever they can for themselves.

OK, here's my first big idea! I think this will do a lot ultimately, in tandem with a few other new approaches: a mobile museum. ->