The Black community should be hell-bent on “community improvement….”

“We stand at the gates of an important epoch, a time of ferment, when spirit moves forward in a leap, transcends its previous shape and takes on a new one… A new phase of the spirit is preparing itself.” George Friedrich Hegel.
Wednesday March 11, the 71st day of 2020 proved to be totally unlike any other in Canadian and later world history——— the point at which, in a matter of hours uneasiness about the imminent atypical coronavirus changed into a sudden, wrenching nation-altering standstill to daily life and routine.
The World Health Organization, which a month earlier had begun referring to the virus as Covid-19, now declared the disease a global pandemic.
Notwithstanding, as the Black community continues to slowly extricate itself from the woes and throes of the pandemic, it will be to its advantage to pay much closer attention to the existing disparities and strive towards rectification if any degree of progress is to be claimed when it is all over.
The pandemic has laid bare the disparities that have been ravaging Black communities for decades.
We need to discuss all these disparities ——-education, employment, housing, economic development and healthcare and the list goes on. If we have no agenda, what are we going to do today or tomorrow?
We need an agenda for an agenda matters just as our Black Lives matter. .
And it is saddening that our agenda is still completely absent in the public domain.
As is said in AA meetings, the first step to change is recognizing that you have a problem. We cannot afford to take this moment lightly — the door is open so let us use this opportunity to press for substantive changes.
There are basically two kinds of power that really count: economic and political, with social power deriving from the two.
In order for Blacks to control their destiny, they must be able to control and affect the decisions, which control their destiny: economic, political, social. This can only be done through organization, which we somehow lack.
This appeal for unity is not a call for uniformity. There must always be healthy debate. Inevitably there will also be differences of opinion. … but Blacks can differ and still unite around common goals.
We have been oppressed as a group and we must overcome that oppression as a group.
On September 9, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced investments of up to almost $221 million –including up to nearly $93 million from the Government of Canada over the next four years – to launch Canada’s first-ever Black Entrepreneurship Program.
This program will help thousands of Black business owners and entrepreneurs across the country recover from the pandemic and grow their businesses.
Trudeau said the COVID-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on the systemic gaps and economic barriers Black Canadians face every day, and that his government wants a pandemic recovery that is “inclusive and equitable for all Canadians.”
Economically, we should utilize this opportunity to the max, to get more Black people to go into business, and at the same time get more Black people to support them.
A solid economic development strategy is not in any of our communities.
We need to teach our children about entrepreneurship. In school they teach our children how to get a job and go and work for the mainstream culture, instead of teaching them how to open up a business.
Black communities need entrepreneurs and community-workers, and not so much so-called leaders.
Such community-workers will solve the problems which race leaders talk about, and raise money to enable them to talk more and more about.
On a note of repeat is the saying—- old men talk of what they have done, young men of what they are doing and fools of what they expect to do. There seems to be a surfeit of the latter-mentioned.
We must start now without delay to once more organize the Black community, neighborhood by neighborhood to make the community aware of its power and potential.
Of prime importance is the fact that the community must be reminded that not only is there power in the vote, but also follow through during election campaign and even thereafter.
Education is not to be ruled out of the agenda, and being the last item in no way determines its position as regards to importance: Are Black students learning to read and write properly by the time they get to the 3rd and 4th grade? That has to be our focus because there are students graduating from high school, entering college and can barely read or write.
Critical thinking is no longer taught in schools and that is certainly a problem. Parents are called upon to get more involved with their children. Children emulate their parents. If they are not taught properly, you could be doing nothing more than preparing them for the school-prison pipeline.
Experts have suggested that because it is difficult to determine when Covid 19 will end based on the trajectories of other pandemics, a better question instead is “when will the coronavirus peak?”
Instead of seeking answers regarding likely date/ time of cessation of the pandemic, the Black community should instead be forging forward so that the pandemic story would be seen as their era of shining glory. That they were hell-bent on community improvement.

Aleuta—– The struggle
continues.