Rev. Hoodwinker & Baboozle 2008

Ramadan Mubarak to my Muslim brothers and sisters. This will be my first blog. In this blog I will be sharing my thoughts and ideas on various subjects. As the name indicates, this blog will share viewpoints from a Black urban community perspective. Of course, the Black community is not monolithic in thought so this is one man's perspective. It has been my experience that a brother cannot get his views heard unless he is a preacher, on death row or translating for a White audience an incident or event that stemmed from the Black community. As I travel through the hood, I find that brothers have a lot to say. The thoughts and feelings of the many brothers and sisters I meet in the course of the week shape what I will be sharing in this blog. So let us begin this journey.

Rev. Meeks Call for a Chicago Public School Boycott

It just does not make sense. Families and children should have an intelligent reason to boycott a school such as a racist administrator, brutality, unqualified teachers, poor building conditions, curriculum that does not provide culturally specific education or a lack of programming that will prepare them for the next grade. Of course, all of these situations exist currently in Chicago Public Schools and have existed for quite some time. However, Rev. Meeks and his band of sycophant preachers have not chosen to lead a boycott on those issues. They have chosen to request parents keep children home from school because of the inequity in funding for Chicago Public Schools in comparison to affluent communities. This is a serious issue of course, but the target for this issue is the policymakers not the schools. Meeks of course is an elected official who ran on a platform that he could get things done. I guess he found he could not do his job. In addition, to a ridiculous request that the students boycott their schools by not attending on the first day, Meeks is going to transport students to a suburban school to register. So basically he and other pastors have made a decision for parents on where their child will attend school without any regard to the impact for the student going through that process simply for ceremonial purposes. So what is the word from the street? We ain't with it. The children need to be in school. I have a nephew who will beginning his freshman year in high school. He is so excited to be going to the next level. It is hard enough to motivate some of children who are struggling with school to go. Meeks is creating an out for them.

Meeks has had other opportunities to step to the plate. Each time he has chosen grandstanding over getting justice. When he had a brush with the police that highlighted police harrassment and brutality of the citizenry, Meeks could have used his experience to leverage the difficulty people of color face by the misuse of police power. Instead, he chose to "shake a hand, make a friend" by inviting the White police superintendent to his Black church for a photo-op. C'mon Meeks that ain't gangster, that is prankster.

At some point, Black people have to begin to hold our leadership accountable for politicizing our challenges and selling us dreams that they are fighting for us when in fact all they are doing is brokering land deals, government contracts and support for political campaigns. Rightfully so we have been passing out fliers encouraging that children attend school and parents and grandparents have informed us that is what they plan to do. If the pastors thought that action was necessary they should have come to the community to gauge what parents wanted to do and what they were willing to do.

The Chicago Public Schools are not withholding the money. The folks in New Trier are not denying Black students access to their school If there was ever an action to be taken, it should be to have busloads of parents go down to Springfield and demand that the people have been elected to serve us do their damn jobs. It is time for us to stop being so damn passive and allowing preachers to use our faith in God and desire to fellowship as a tool to enrich themselves and their political cronies.