(Part I of a series on Leadership, Liberation & Loyalty, as told to Bernice Elizabeth Green)
“No Progress Without Struggle,” said Frederick Douglass, the fierce, outspoken 19th century activist who, during his lifetime, advocated for 3.5 million enslaved people of African descent. As a leader, Douglass immersed himself in their struggle using every available tool, craft and skill he possessed, could harness or muster for the purpose of the liberation of his people. He also acknowledged that he did not do it alone. The question regarding leadership of today is: How many leaders are loyal – fierce in the face of “power” – on behalf of their constituents? According to Job Mashariki, those numbers are “shallow”.
There must be realism about what’s going on today and what you think about what’s going on. I try to share my thoughts, but expressing my thinking and views won’t make a difference if people are not listening and hearing. But if they do, they may see value in what I say: there is work to be done in our communities. Educating and upgrading our masses so that they can understand certain things impacting their lives is not on the agenda of our leadership. And it should be.
As a leader, I learned to become more sensitive to this, when I began applying certain directives shared with me in my youth to the complexities that I faced. Like the importance of reading-between-the-lines. Essentially, it’s knowing to get references from those who can distinguish between what’s going on and what’s being said or not being said about the health, well-being and longevity of this place we call community.
Unfortunately, our references are very shallow at this point in the community. I understand this because we’ve had this in the past: a low operating political force that basically didn’t communicate with themselves or sometimes even with their staffs. So, very little got done, unless it benefited the individual.
We talk about a lot of the external things we see but we don’t consider a real, introspective analysis of ourselves. If we did and we were honest, we would see that we need to make changes with how our leadership leads, starting with broadening our scope to include an analysis of our involvement and engagement with each other, respect for ourselves and appreciation of the Creator — in terms of the blessings we already have been given. Social engagement, caring, paying attention to constituents’ concerns — these things are essential to good leadership and how leadership leads, and what actions conditions or circumstances concerning the community that the community should decide they will receive or not accept. Sounds ol’ school? It is, and that is what we may need today — grassroots learnings.
Our ancestors always said, “You don’t really understand another person until you step into their shoes.” So, I do see a lot of people criticize “the system” publicly and loudly. But I also see them, turn around and work for the enemy consciously or unconsciously.
We’re not creating … nor being encouraged to create — the type of interpersonal communications and learning from each other. Probably because some leaders are not actively engaged in this natural skill, and that may block our development as a community force more than an enemy ever could.
Besides honest, real talk and respect for each other, our community misses out on things like understanding time, and time sequences. Understanding time, in terms of our misuse of it, and the effect of that misuse over time on the individual, personally. In my case, I am just now starting to understand what I did not listen to in the past. If I had been a little bit wiser when people said to me, “Always get enough sleep. Always be concerned about your health. Don’t do certain things that may affect you down the line, even if they’re not affecting you now.” Right now, I’m trying to address some of those things. I have consciousness and, therefore, I feel blessed.
Introspection is important; people should develop it. The leadership — and I’m not a fan of a lot of politicians although I like a lot of them, and most of them are good people, smart people – miscue when they talk about the “broader” issues.
Elijah Muhammad, Marcus Garvey, Queen Mother Moore were strong and fierce leaders. Mother Moore is known nationally and internationally. She was one of the four liberationists who travelled throughout the South stopping white folks from hanging our people — that was her and her sisters’ mission. Then she did more, yet she never got the kind of recognition from her community she deserved. The poet Sonia Sanchez is another great leader in her field. A book was supposed to have been written on her behalf. Never got done.
There’s a lot of leadership that went beyond their personal lives making the sacrifice to contribute to helping our people liberate themselves in many ways, including confronting the oppressors.
Because of the depth and the nature of our oppression, many of our people who can be helpful always arrive at the conclusion – not the best even though I understand the rationale — that we need to help people alleviate their pain; we need to help people feel good and show them that they have not been abandoned. Not only do I understand that I participate in it, but I don’t think that’s always the answer.
An example is the State’s legislation passing marijuana laws that allow access and freedom in terms of its use. I understand that some people must utilize it for medicinal purposes, and even if they enjoy it, they know how to interact and handle themselves in certain situations that may occur while being high. On the other hand, I know that the research is not conclusive, and I think its use is more popular amongst black people and not as popular among white people.
My feeling is that we need to be able to say no to the use amongst and for the masses of our people, because our masses are distracted enough. They need nothing to stimulate the body for good rhythm and good approach. They need something to stimulate the mind, in terms of thinking, processing and analyzing what’s real, and what’s not.
We need to try to sort out these choices to get to where we need to go. The pressure is not on completing a big list to get to where you want to go. History will record it’s not the length of the list, it is the obstacles to the efforts to complete the list. Many people have not achieved liberation for themselves or our people because they have created meaningless goals, getting high or being petty.
They may have been involved in some joyfulness that slowed down their efforts, but in many instances, those efforts were eradicated. I learned early that people should be patient in achieving their goals because it takes time and usually soon after you give up on them come into fruition. If I have been able to fulfill my goals, it’s because I have ruled out drugs as a part of my life.
It’s that kind of history that has taught me that a good leader must make unpopular choices. Sometimes, maybe the choice is not good for the individual, but it may be best for the masses. It could range from managing their own money, time, pleasure and families in terms of selective kinds of decisions between things like that, being on point with the masses.
Liberation is going to take time and energy. It’s going to take learning continuously. It’s going to take evaluation continuously of self. It’s going to take giving up of self, a lot of sacrifice to benefitting self.
One of the biggest blocks that I see is that the masses look at themselves individually first, and then derive their decision-making process from that, and that’s not always in its best interest.
A lot of politicians to me — although I’ve been interacting with them and they’re good people, honest people — just miss the point. They don’t understand that they must learn how to utilize power to help their constituents. And they must learn when to utilize it, and not just utilize it because they can.
I learn from everybody because I try to be a learner. It doesn’t matter about labels although I have my ideological stands. But nobody has a monopoly on intelligence. But we’ve got to seek information for the people. If we hear something that’s good and meaningful, and it’s benefitting, we need to put it into a suitcase or a bag to utilize it when we need it and when it should be utilized.
I learned all of this from the military and working with other people. I’ve always said, I’ll work with anybody if they’re working towards the goals that are important to the community. Sometimes, I would compromise if I heard them analyze how the wisdom behind the compromise will move us into the future to get what we need. Not easy. A lot of work.
Speaking of work, I got the name, Job, in the sixties, from sisters coming into New York City Community College and needing directions on what they should do to get a degree. They were Hebrews; they stopped me and asked me a question.
Back then, counselors weren’t about counseling black people at what is now called New York Technical College. They had 98% white folks, one or two black teachers and a few other blacks, most of the blacks that went there, went in the evening and paid to go for their credits. I helped these sisters, and they came back and said, “Brother, you’ve been a huge help; you remind us of Job in the Bible; we’re giving you the name Job.” At that time, I had my slang name.
I told them “No, I can’t take that. I’m not about patience and all that stuff. I want to turn this place out” (which we did). The head of the college was cool and wrote up things they were going to do, trying to work with us as best he could. We got some things accomplished then, nothing earth-shaking but it laid the foundation for more to be accomplished.
They said, “Well, brother, it’s not that you might be the person. It’s something that you might want to work towards.” I was like, “You work towards patience. I’m impatient.” I had just come out of the military. I thought I could basically change the world and I wasn’t taking anything from anybody. They tried it in the military, calling us the “N” word until they got their butts busted. Still, we came together to organize and do some things.
I’ll digress for a minute: me and my friend got together, and we challenged the Red Cross and the authorities for raising money from the military soldiers, coercing them to give to the Red Cross.
We started organizing for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the time he was doing social development things and confronting the power structures.
Army Intelligence Division (AID) or something to the effect, was called in to investigate us. That made me even more conscious of when we want to do and help ourselves, how other people see us and how other people would do things to stop us from just peacefully working together on behalf of our people. Later, Preston Wilcox, a brother from Columbia University, raised the question “Is Black power against the white power structure, or is it an assertion of oneself?”
Just when I heard that, it radicalized me even more because I understood that it’s about our people getting something that they could have to change things in their life and then in the community’s life.
That it wasn’t about concentrating everything in terms of debating to try to get back at the enemy. It was about finding out who we are and asserting the kinds of things that we need to have to build our people into the frame of mind which Malcolm used to always say, “You left your mind in Africa.”
Malcolm said it because people thought that if they hooked up with white folks per se or anybody with some power, that the problems would be resolved. And these same folks were out there hurting and doing more damage sometimes than the enemy could ever do.
The challenge is to educate the masses of our people so they understand what is being talked about internally. What certain goals should be on the black agenda. People would say, “Well, we’re doing the black agenda.” They don’t even know what the black agenda is. They don’t even know where it came from, how it got derived.
But they know that’s something that would help them attract people because that’s something people have heard about in various ways. So, let me put this out there to help my candidacy. Let me put it out to let people think I’m more progressive.
People need to do some research and talk to folks who have been involved in the development of the black agenda or paths to liberation. You don’t – when you’re working with people, you don’t tell them what to do, you ask them, “What do you think needs to be achieved?” Because most people have ideas about what needs to be changed.”
Leaders must understand that our people have been surviving in all kinds of ways.
So how can you even going to think you can educate them on how to survive? No. I doubt that. Because that’s what we’ve been doing, and that’s what our fore parents have done, and our ancestors have done. Survive.
I think there’s a lot that goes in the leadership, but I think humility and appreciation of what you can learn from them, and how you learn from the people is important to the leader. You won’t learn everything, but you learn to learn, and learn there’s a lot to learn. The artist Jim Dyson used to say that all the time: Learn to learn. That’s about listening to people. Evaluating their relationships, needs and life around them. I’ve always been a grassroots learner.
The echelons try to get away from the mass, not help the mass. But if you do not want to deal with them yourself, put some money into the people that want to deal with them. The sixties brought a new kind of approach– grassroots organizing.
If you don’t want to do it, put some money into grassroots efforts, because there’s brothers and sisters out there, who want to do the work because they see themselves in the brothers lying out on the street or some sister not getting medical coverage and having a baby. You understand what I’m saying?
I’m going to tell you something. Back in the day, Brooklyn, particularly Bed-Stuy, was richly and culturally integrated. We had Polish kids, a Jewish community on our block — Clifton Place between Nostrand and Marcy. We played at Tompkins Park where I worked, and that park was so horrible they used to call it The Graveyard. It’s how far I go back to this stuff. On our block, there were Latinos.
They had their bikes with their little rabbit fur coming out of each end; Italian boys selling the Italian ices. Their father had a horse-drawn Italian ice truck, and I worked with him. The block was more harmonious. We fought and argued with each other, but we learned from each other. It was considered one of the poorer communities in Brooklyn, but I learned from all the families on the blocks. They built scooters, I was right there building scooters, too.
I recognize the blessings, because my mother shaped us that way. The rationalization of how to get to the blessings is no longer there to address time and the multitudes of people who need to learn how to appreciate it, and step forward in terms of doing for self.
We were poor but we were not spiritless.
Speaking of leadership, Rev. Karen Daughtry mentioned the other night how much is lacking even with all the technological tools. She said, “I don’t know what happened with our people. We had no social media, no video cameras. We didn’t have too much of anything. Nothing. But when we called a demonstration, we had people there.”
(To be continued)
