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  • Politics Is Like Hiring A Hitman
    by Scott Woods inPolitical on2020-08-13

    For me, politics is like hiring a hitman. I have values and things I care about. I care enough about them to at least bother voting for 5 minutes every year for one issue or another. And because I care at least that much, I vote for people who align with the ability to realize the things I care about.

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  • Punching Above Our Weight
    by Roger Madison Jr. inPolitical on2020-07-24

    I believe our vote is the punctuation of our voice. Without that resounding exclamation mark, I believe our voices are just incoherent noise.

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  • BLACK PROGRESS AMIDST SOCIAL CHAOS
    by Roger Madison Jr. inPolitical on2020-06-16

    Recent events have raised the profile of historical injustice and inequities here in the USA. The entire world has taken note of the fact that BLACK LIVES MATTER.   We invite all of our friends to engage in actions that result in the greatest movement for change in our history. It is imperative that we take advantage of this opportunity to affect a positive change by ACTING IN OUR SELF-INTERESTS.

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  • Living in a Black No-Man's Land
    by Roger Madison Jr. inOur Community on2019-10-28

    There are many narratives that define the Black experience in America in this 2nd decade of the 21st century. Our striving over the centuries of our sojourn in this nation is a tapestry of every human experience -- oppression, enslavement, forced assimilation, dehumanization, exclusion, segregation, isolation, struggle, perseverance, achievement, excellence, celebration, mourning, despair, progress, setbacks, lynching, assassination, genocide, terror, self-hatred, low esteem, pride,...

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  • Fighting Racism
    by Scott Woods inOur Community on2018-10-25

    I had a boss who was racist. Not an outright bigot, of course; her toolbox was more subtle than most. We bumped heads a lot over inconsequential things. She frequently couldn’t keep my name out her mouth. Lot of gaslighting. You know…2018 style. I tried a lot of ways to combat or navigate her issues. None of them worked, and that’s saying a lot because I’m really good at fighting racism. But at the end of the day – every day – she was my boss, I had to deal with her, and that was that. Finally I...

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Christopher Wallace The Notorious B-I-G, Don’t Go

I had the opportunity Sunday to see the Movie, "The Notorious" based on the life and times of Rapper, Biggy Smalls who was shot dead in Oakland California several years back.  Myself, I was also born in Brooklyn but raised in Queens, New York. I could relate to Chris's dreams and music.  To my way of thinking Christopher Wallace was the Langston Hughes of Gangster Rapp from Brooklyn. There was something special that Christopher added to rap music that made his stories more convincing to me. He sounded authentic and one just knew Biggy had experienced it all, though, Christopher's Mother in a recorded interview said, "My son went to private schools and he had a middle class life, he was not raised in the streets as one might think from his music." He was the total opposite of his lyrical Improvisations.

This film also played to the myth of a" Big Poppa", you know what I mean, Big Poppa, the Man, that spends his whole life in the effort of helping others at the neglect of his own happiness and well being.

If critical thinking is something this generation of young people needs to do, then the subject matter, The Notorious B-I-G is a great place to start analyzing.  For starters why were Christopher Wallace and Tupoc Amaru Shakur assassinated, does anyone know? Who was behind these murders? Do these killings connect to Kennedy, King, Malcolm X and numerous other American pro-black leaders' assassinations? What happened to the investigations by the authorities, have they also become part of the national security loophole for withholding information from the public?

It is my opinion that Hollywood has managed to produce another tragic story about life in Black America without pointing any fingers at itself and those who bank roll the music industry.   Hollywood still finds a way to make a profit off a dead man's life, like that of Christopher Wallace, The Notorious B-I-G.  I would not recommend seeing this film until we gets some indictments and convictions in the Wallace murder case.