“I told them, we’ve been talking too long and every time we get up we got a plan, but when we walk out the door, the plan stops,” he said. “We’ve got major groups, major people—people with more letters behind their names than anybody—doing a lot of talking, but then they’re asking me for $10 to get home. So, I said, we’re going to have to do something for real. I don’t want to participate in another meeting if we don’t find something we can do collectively.” Having attending a couple community meetings myself, I understand completely what Mr. Crawford is talking about.
I am of the mindset that Black folks quest for liberation, respect and equality could somewhat be achieved through economic unification. “African Americans hold a trillion dollars of the Gross Domestic Product [GDP] [but] 97 percent of that goes to somebody else,” Crawford said during a Feb. 22nd meeting held in Chicago. It is true that in most Black communities around America, our people buy from merchants who look like somebody else. In the Bible, God mentioned one of the curses bestowed on Back folks for their disobedience would be economic distress. “He shall lend to you, and you shall not lend to him: he shall be the head, and you shall be the tail.” (Deuteronomy 28:44)