Leadership is indispensable to our youths. They need guidance
to walk the streets in peace
Nowadays, the community needs to take charge of its own destiny, and the significance of the recent ruling in favor of the BCQ racial profiling collective class-action lawsuit cannot be undermined in back-door discussions that do not take the suffering of the victims into consideration.
It is unacceptable to liquidate a struggle that took a generation to be actualized for a few cents.
Particularly, it would make no sense to take some change from the hands of politicians that never took a stand in support of our murdered youths and denounce the crimes when it was crucial to express their discontent in the face of injustice.
How many wounds can a few dollars heal? How many years of suffering can a few crumbs erase? This collective class-action lawsuit is a mere iota of all that had been stolen from us. Our lives were destroyed.
Our ancestors were displaced, and our lands are still being looted until today. Justice is not simply a word for generations who know nothing but the agony of western racism and social exclusion. We have been fragmented by long terms imprisonment and shattered by incessant killings by the police in our neighborhoods.
It is our time to rise and begin the process of healing our own; our children also have human rights, they are watching us. Do not betray this great moment simply to forge a vacuous legacy; the truth will be unveiled in due course. Allow them to breathe a different air.
As a people, we are distinct. Make that a pledge to shape who we are and what we must become in society. The impossible is already behind us; let’s now march on to a brighter future. We’ve already earned our pass to embark on this journey, so what’s holding us back? Greed!
There is no room to build a legacy based on connivance and deception. We need true leadership to advance our cause and to claim our time with pride and confidence. Our wealth must not be accumulated as a result of our own destruction and the demise of a new voice in the community.
Leadership is indispensable to our youths; they need guidance to walk the streets in peace. Our collective development is above all, and it is time to focus on the necessity to become self-sufficient. Striving as beggars in the system only creates pathways to betray our own struggle and to sell our own in the slave market for a mighty naught.
Without a doubt, division takes no one far in life, the divide must now reflect nothing but unity and the sagacity that has helped [us] to reach thus far since a house divided can never stand on its own. Let’s look ourselves in the mirror before we shred this formidable team like a piece of paper that must be forgotten and erased from our memories.
We are more worthy than we have learned how to value ourselves.
The rise of a new leadership must be included in the process of self-assertion in society. The light that is shining has not been that bright since 1664. It is understandable that most of us have no idea of that date, but it was the very moment we as a people became a piece of property, chattel slaves, and it is our dignity that we have claimed with that historic victory on August 7, 2019.
In truth, the movement for our liberation was not in vain. It is time to hear the voices of the victims and to put the old ways to rest. We are a generation that has had enough, and we demand change.
Change must become the language of the new leadership. Leeches have no monopoly on deciding the future of generations to come. Let’s not make this moment a missed opportunity to stand for a greater cause than ourselves, those who are selling their own for a few dollars are no longer welcome in a time that requires a higher level of racial consciousness and intellectual capacity to lead the flock to freedom.
In fact, there is no turning back. “The Negro know mountains,” James Baldwin would say.
“Where is our own propaganda?” W. E. B. Dubois would ask.
We have a language to speak our own truth. We need to hear ourselves and to feel somehow that our cry for justice in the face of injustice is heard.
Where are the people? Where is the community in the dialogue? We need to hear the voices of the voiceless.
The struggle is in vain in the absence of the people’s voice. Their grievances are yet on the table. What are we serving the public? The victims have no need to mainly whisper from behind closed doors. Now is not the time to benefit in their absence. Their inaction must be viewed as a sign of revolt against certain practices. We have to innovate and to renew ourselves in a way that fits this era of unexpected change and incredible success.
The community has been put on a different path with this historical victory, and that monumental time ought not be wasted as a result of someone else’s pettiness and oversized ego. No man can reach the Promised Land all by himself. He would die of thirst, hunger and fatigue in the desert. We must remember that reality, in order to build a different environment for our own. That sort of attitude is now unacceptable in the community.
At this juncture in our history, Black people need to recognize the magnitude of such an achievement and to recognize its significance. It is now the responsibility of the community to go out there and restructure the dialogue. We have an obligation to stand tall and firm in the face of systemic racism and police abuse, to question the legality of that practice. We have to compel society to question itself and to recognize its wrong from a legal perspective.
It is no longer necessary to beg for our rights when we have the ability to march as one to the courthouse in order to impose the need to apply the law in its entirety. The spirit of the law must mean the same to every citizen in society. There is no need to shy away from what we are.
Phony leaders must go; they have to make space for a new set of ideas and new strategies that are essential to revitalize the Black experience in North America, and that moment has to take place now.
As a people, we need change, and that historical aspect must not be compromised in order to meet one person’s financial needs and personal ambitions. The collective has to remain a unit that is tightly sealed with the glue of unity.
Destiny bounded us together to experience the brutality of white supremacy; this manufactured term has done enough harm to our community. We were put on this boat to sink as one, and it is together that we must swim to reach the shore of justice. Freedom is not impossible when betrayal and envy are removed from the frontline.
Keep in mind that this collective class action lawsuit is no longer a dream; everyone alive now is breathing that reality, and it is a great pleasure to be a part of it. To be basking in this moment of undefined grandeur is everything a visionary has ever dreamed of.
Tomorrow can only be a better day. Twenty-five years were finally worthy to sacrifice in order to live that dream. History will vindicate all the wrongs. Let our children grow to become great characters in society. While money is a factor in the coming weeks, do not fail to realize that racial profiling is still a part of policing in Montreal. Bureaucrats and politicians are not doing their jobs.
Having been a victim of racial profiling in the past few days and having witnessed a friend profiled by the police a few hours later, it is imperative that the community takes this issue to the highest level. Unfortunately, some voices are not being heard.
In this election year, while racial profiling is a big problem in the Black community, no capacity to make this great victory political is seen.? There seems to be no desire to politicize this victory; Ottawa and Quebec are still silent? Why is that allowed to occur in such a determining period of social change? We need to figure what we are not doing right to assure that the community benefits the most from our efforts.
It is time for the voiceless to have a more powerful voice in the system.
