October 2020 Diversity Events
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Action Step: Buy Black
We Buy Black on Netflix: ‘Living Black’ with Killer Mike
By Ramiro Nikodemus Alexander-Duchesne
Trigger Warning
Earlier this month, rapper and activist Killer Mike released a Netflix Original, titled Trigger Warning with Killer Mike. Killer Mike is half of the rapping duo, Run the Jewels. In his Netflix Original docu-series, he addresses topics of racism, classism, sexism, etc. His first episode, Living Black, consisted of a social experiment of sorts. For three days prior to his show in Athens, Georgia, Killer Mike sets out on a self-appointed quest to live completely Black.
Three days prior to his show in Athens, Georgia, Michael Santiago Render (Killer Mike) set out on his quest to conduct business solely with Black-owned businesses. Vikram Gandhi, director of the series, told Killer Mike that his endeavor would be an impossible one. Killer Mike did not allow that to stop him.
While attempting to live completely Black–meaning only spending his money with Black-owned businesses and vendors–Killer Mike came to the Black economic experts. Early on in the episode, Killer Mike consulted with We Buy Black’s very own founder, Shareef Abdul-Malik. During their meeting, Abdul-Malik presented a number of Black-owned products that are currently selling on We Buy Black to Killer Mike. With the help of We Buy Black, Killer Mike was able to complete his mission of Living Black for three consecutive days.
Buying Black in Spokane
Spokane Black Business Directory
Our Black Year
The Afterword – Slate
In 2009, Maggie Anderson and her family pledged that they would patronize black-owned companies whenever possible, so she scoured the Chicago area for black-owned supermarkets, dry cleaners, gas stations, pharmacies, and clothing stores. Our Black Year: One Family’s Quest To Buy Black in America’s Racially Divided Economy is the story of their experiment in conscious consumerism. Anderson discovered that black businesses lag behind businesses of all other racial and ethnic groups in every measure of success. In the Asian community, a dollar circulates among local shop owners, banks, and business professionals for up to 28 days. In the Jewish community, a dollar circulates for 19 days. In the African-American community, a dollar is gone within six hours.
The interview runs about 29 minutes.
Do you know of other minority businesses in Spokane or online? Tell about them in the reply/post comment box below.
What Can I Do?
198 Things You Can Do – Pick Something
Tools For Social Change
This is how you can help to build the community you want to live in. Share with others. Let us know what actions YOU WILL PARTICIPATE IN. Place the line # for the actions you will take in comments.
How I See It : Charles Tuggle
Black Lives Matter
In elementary school when your skin is dark and your nose is broad and your hair is kinky, your peers don’t think your life matters. So you find sanctuary in the library. No one beats you up, no one calls you names, you read. And you discover how much there is that you don’t know and you can find it in a book. A teaching career, a military career, an artist’s career, medical technical career, African history, philosophy, literature, world travels. Information made his life matter. Charles made his life matter.
Charles Henri Tuggle, 80
Information Made His Life Matter
Charles is part of Hunters Point Shipyard Artists in San Francisco California. Examples of his work are available here.
www.shipyardartists.com
A current exhibit of his work is available at the site of a group of 10 Black artists who are with Hunters Point Shipyard artists.
Black on Point
www.blackonpointsf.org/charles-tuggle
Two videos are available at his YouTube channel Charles H. Tuggle
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDk3f18Mvvb7x-6FszXping/featured
BLM Unity in Purpose
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We have many styles but we are uniting. For unity with purpose. Buy a sign place it in your yard or window let us know that you’re with us.
Love vs Hate
Message to the Art Community
People Get Ready In the 60’s artists like Curtis Mayfield used their art to build a movement.
Unpacking the Tension Between Symbols, Systems, and Substance from The Breakdown with Shaun King.
Which Side Are You On? As sung by The Freedom Singers. Words were often adapted to the particular protest and location.
Who benefits from your art? Perhaps you would like to read this article about the art created during the Seattle protests. Saving Seattle’s protest murals
Many BLMs Same Message
It Sounds Like a Symbolic Gesture
Freedom never descends upon the people. It’s always bought with price.
Henry Moore
The five pictures exhibited represent the questions we need to ask ourselves. What does Black Lives Matter mean to you? Whatever the answer is, how will you know when we have it? How will you measure it and what will you do to accomplish it? Our ancestors would have died in vain if we haven’t accomplished it. Freedom only comes after you have economic power. As Dr. King said, America has defaulted on its promissory note. This country’s wealth has been built upon our backs since its inception, for over 400 years, and we have never been adequately compensated. Our wealth should be attached to the nation’s Gross National Product. Freedom will not come until we have political power: One Man One Vote. Freedom will not come until our judicial system is just and disproportionality erased from the highest courts to local law enforcement. Freedom will not come until we own and control our means of communication from daily newspapers to television to radio to cyberspace. Freedom will not come until we have moved from consumers to producers and own the means of production, not just having jobs but providing jobs. Freedom will not come until we have education in the skilled trades, transportation, information, finance, investment, insurance, real estate, professional, scientific and technical services.
Before Apartheid
Our 400 years of enslavement began before apartheid. In South Africa the Dutch, the first settlers to arrive followed by the British, forcibly took over the land and made native Africans slaves to work on plantations. Later the Europeans would import more slaves from other areas such as Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Madagascar. Immigrants from India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan would later migrate to South Africa in search of cheap labor and were employed as indentured servants.
50 Years In Chains
The black box in the L in LIVES in the BLM mural represents the difficulties of 400 years of enslavement. The red box represents the struggle for freedom. The chains beneath the feet of Charles Ball represent the multiple times he escaped from slavery and was recaptured. In 1813 while a free man he enlisted in the Chesapeake Bay Flotilla and fought in the War of 1812. The green box represents a future with greener pastures. Curtis Mayfield’s song People Get Ready is calling for us to join the movement and continue the struggle through voter participation.
The Colors
According to the UNIA more recently, the three colors on the Black Nationalist flag represent: RED: the blood that unites all people of Black African ancestry, and shed for liberation; BLACK: black people whose existence as a nation, though not a nation-state, is affirmed by the existence of the flag; and GREEN: the abundant natural wealth of Africa. Designed by: Marcus Garvey Adopted: 13 August 1920.
The Corona
The National Museum of African American History & Culture distinctive three-tiered form known as the corona is in an evocative symbol of traditional influences and ideas that have defined the shape of the African-American experience. In designing the upward-angled shape of the Corona, the architects drew inspiration from Yoruba architecture.
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We Are Doing The Work! We Have Mobilized Now Let’s Organize
Our African Ancestor’s sacrifices will matter!
Only when we have economic and political power!
Life in Slavery
Charles Ball was born as a slave in the same county around 1781. He was about four years old, when his owner died. To settle the debts, his mother, several brothers and sisters and he himself were sold to different buyers. His first childhood memory recorded in the book is his being brutally separated from his mother by her buyer: “Young as I was, the horrors of that day sank deeply into my heart, and even at this time, though half a century has elapsed, the terrors of the scene return with painful vividness upon my memory.”[3]
By way of inheritance, sale and even as a result of a lawsuit, he is passed on to various slaveholders. From January 1, 1798 to January 1, 1800 he is hired out to serve as a cook on the frigate USS Congress. In 1800, he marries Judah. In 1805, when his eldest son is 4 years old, he is sold to a South Carolinian cotton planter, thus separated from his wife and children who had to remain in Maryland.
In September 1806, he is given as a present to the newly wedded daughter of his owner and has to relocate to Georgia to a new plantation. Shortly afterwards, after the sudden death of the new husband, the new plantation, together with the slaves, including him, is rent out to yet another slaveholder, with whom he builds up a relationship of mutual trust. He becomes the headman on the new plantation, but suffers from the hatred of his master’s wife. In 1809, when his dying master is already too weak to interfere, he is cruelly whipped by that woman and her brother. After that, he plans his escape, which he puts into practice after his master’s death. Travelling by night to avoid the patrols, using the stars and his obviously excellent memory for orientation, suffering terribly from hunger and cold, not daring to speak to anybody, he returns to his wife and children in early 1810.
War of 1812 Chesapeake Flotilla service
Charles Ball also served in the U.S. Navy during the War of 1812. In 1813, Ball had enlisted in Commodore Joshua Barney‘s Chesapeake Bay Flotilla and fought at the Battle of Bladensburg on August 24, 1814. An excerpt from his account of the battle, which was a resounding defeat for the Americans:
“I stood at my gun, until the Commodore was shot down, when he ordered us to retreat, as I was told by the officer who commanded our gun. If the militia regiments, that lay upon our right and left, could have been brought to charge the British, in close fight, as they crossed the bridge, we should have killed or taken the whole of them in a short time; but the militia ran like sheep chased by dogs.”[4]
African ancestry
According to Ball’s autobiography, his grandfather was a man from a noble African family who was enslaved and brought to Calvert County, Maryland around 1730.
The 1837 edition dedicates three pages (Pages 22–24) to the description of his religion as the old man explained it to his young grandson. This description has some similarities with Islam, but there are also differences, so it is not clear, if his grandfather was Muslim or not. Other Africans whose religion Ball mentions, are explicitly called “Mohamedans” (p. 165).
The precepts of that religion are contained in a book a copy of which is kept in each house, implying that the grandfather’s African society had a high degree of literacy, whereas Charles Ball is illiterate. This may be worth mentioning because contemporary apologetics of slavery often claimed that Africans had been “civilized” by slavery.[2]
Historical Document
Charles Ball’s narrative: Fifty Years in Chains
1836