(FinalCall.com) Holiday decorations are up, Christmas songs ring out in stores across the country, and “cha-ching” sounds emanate from cash registers, but don’t be fooled, because many fed up with injustice, police violence and racism are rejecting spending, commercial overkill and debt this holiday season.
Echoing a call by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, many Black activists and others agreed it’s time to boycott as Season 2 of “Up With Jesus! Down With Santa!” moved forward. The goal is to curb shopping until Jan. 2, 2017.
By strategically engaging in economic withdrawal, Blacks can begin putting power behind their demands and build a new and better reality, Minister Farrakhan stated in the run up to Justice or Else!, the 20th Anniversary of the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. in October 2015.
“The widespread death, rising racism, mob attacks and police brutality on Blacks coupled with economic deprivation and stark poverty, requires that something must be immediately done to address and correct the condition. The failure of the U.S. government to give justice to its former slaves requires that we present ourselves in unity to make the demand for Justice or Else!” Minister Farrakhan stated.
“Let us start by not spending money we either don’t have or cannot afford during the Christmas season. Why should we make the merchants rich by their wicked manipulation and exploitation of the emotions of children, parents, families and those we love, with their pagan practices that have nothing to do with the celebration and observance of the righteous servant of God, Jesus?”
Take the day, the entire season, to give thanks to God for the gift of Jesus, share that great gift of God and what he taught, Minister Farrakhan instructed.
Advocates and organizers had been waging online and on the ground battles for justice with petitions and protests, and those have been effective, but the impact has grown with a focus on Main St. and merchants.
Minister Farrakhan, for example, called on Blacks to pool their $1 trillion purchasing power to build institutions and create jobs for their people.
Justice or Else! demands an immediate end to police brutality and mob attacks and justice for the Native American Indians, the Mexican and Latinos, for women, the poor, the incarcerated, and veterans, and, it means land, said the Minister.
“I personally believe that 2017 will be the best year for Black people, maybe ever, because to me the most exciting part is we have the ability now to communicate with each other without asking for White people’s permission,” said Dr. Boyce Watkins, a Black author, economist, political analyst and entrepreneur.
“I don’t think Donald Trump is going to be as friendly in certain elements of political justice as the Obama administration was,” he explained. “Unfortunately, there are a lot of Black people who are motivated by fear, and there’s almost nothing they’re afraid of more right now than Donald Trump and the Trump administration. So now they realize all they’ve ever had was people like Minister Louis Farrakhan and others, who can provide a type of leadership that’s far more authentic to what Black people are trying to do.”
Economically, Blacks are gaining by leaps and bounds every year, due to the development of technology and awareness, he said. They’re moving closer to a world in which Blacks will spend hundreds of billions more money in their own communities, support each other, and connect emotionally, psychologically, politically and intellectually, Dr. Watkins predicted.
Members of the Fruit of Islam (F.O.I.) the men of the Nation of Islam, form a line in downtown Chicago to form a barrier of protection between protestors and police during Black Friday demonstrations in 2016. Photos: Haroon Rajaee
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Chicago has been a flashpoint of demonstrations against police misconduct and brutality.
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‘Everybody boycotts us’
“I think that we should certainly boycott all the time because everybody boycotts us. Trade is supposed to be a two-way street, and Americans have turned it into being a one-way street. They look at us and say ‘Negroes give us all your money, and we will give you nothing,’ and that doesn’t make any sense,” said Dr. Watkins.
Boycotts are a natural reaction for anyone who has a grievance, Dr. Watkins continued. But, he said, even deeper than that Blacks could consider alternative language that would achieve the same result. Rather than motivating ourselves by rejecting something that other people are doing, we should motivate ourselves by accepting what we’re doing, he argued.
“I don’t really get up every morning thinking ‘I’mma go boycott White folks.’ I wake up every day thinking, ‘I’mma go love me some Black people, and after I get done loving my own people, who need so much love, I ain’t got no more love for nobody else,’ ” Dr. Watkins said.
“It’s like taking care of your own children. Does a mother get up in the morning and say, ‘I’mma boycott babysitting other people’s kids’ or does she say, ‘my kids need the best that I can offer, and maybe if I have something left, I might do something for your children, but I got seven kids myself, and I ain’t got time for all of that.’ ”
Dr. Watkins said, “It’s not really radical for us to do this. … We’re claiming back to normalcy, because we’ve been in such an abnormal, such an abusive, such a terroristic environment, we’ve really endured the equivalent of a Nazi holocaust every year for 400 years, and even people who’ve gone through what we’ve gone through for just five or six years or were traumatized for an entire century, so imagine what we’re feeling?”
Perhaps people could come up with another term for boycott, Dr. Watkins said.
There is one: it’s called the Buy Black Movement.
