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BUD'S EYEVIEW
ON:
Acting nice is a problem
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By Bud Johnson
The "Old African Warrior" |
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Woebeit an
unpleasant exchange with my beloved momma still bothers me, I fully
understood why she asked me, "I don’t see why you have to be the only
one writing about our church mess." For sure, I had chosen a career that
got Jesus the Christ and several of his disciples crucified and/or
stoned to death (for spreading the good Lord’s truth that cut like a
double-edged sword.) My momma just wanted to keep her man-child out of
harm’s way. Square business, most mothers in the pre-civil rights era
were like Rev. William Paul Fonteno’s oldest girl-child Winnie Mae. They
knew how much trouble an outspoken, made in America African warrior’s
mouth could get him into. Especially since she realized both of my
clan’s "bucks" were fearless fools. |
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Generational curse notwithstanding, instead of being
nice to stay out of trouble, they were trouble. Especially when somebody
was crazy enough to mess with them, or their stuff. So you can queue up
The Twilight Zone
theme now, because I’m definitely going to soar
into The Outer Limits
of naming. blaming and shaming Black faces in high
places who’re messing with one of my favorite people. I'm talking Madge
Bush, who I heard on KCOH radio with Gerald Womack, sending out a S.O.
S. for her struggling Martin Luther King Center. I adopted Gerald when I
was Counselor of Troubled Youth at Rev. Ray Martin’s Progressive Amateur
Boxing Association (PABA, an inner-city, juvenile delinquency, crime
prevention and youth development program), therefore I knew he was too
nice to explain why the MLK Center was in such dire straits since Madge
retired.
Perish the thought that Gerald was a delinquent.
Instead, he was a 14-year-old participant in PABA’s very first Summer
Program, at that old storefront at 3212, Dowling @ Elgin, in the heart
of Third Ward. History records that the rich White folks gave the old
edifice to "The Fighting Preacher" to stop him from begging them ad
nauseam. Hey, I remember how hard Rev. Ray and Madge begged and worked
to get their inner-city programs started-- when nobody else gave a damn
about the kids-- in their underserved, improvised communities. Cutting
to the chase, Madge came up with the idea of giving young, stressed out
"Babies raising babies," relief from their woes without getting the
White folks in their business. She begged and spent her own money to
make her splendid idea a reality.
The program was so effective until the Anne Casey
Foundation gave her a grant and she thought she was home free.
Unfortunately, Houston's City Council started messing with the grant and
ended up funneling it through their Community Development Department.
Naw, make that funneling it to their political connected friends. Shazam!
All of certain the Urban League, Windsor Village, and others that still
swill from the public troth went into the childcare business and damn
near eliminated all of the struggling programs that were founded by
Black folks. Hell, the poor and needy were responsible for getting the
grants and federal funds to target Houston. I don’t know whether or not
it was a conspiracy between the cities and the elitist Black
organization, but they surely are responsible for grassroots Black
organization's demise.
Madge Bush was too stubborn to yield and Rev. Ray
learned to play the game and even got Marvin Zindler in his corner,
until God sent his Angel George to watch over him. Oh, you didn’t know
that. Did you? If you did, you probably would want to tar and feather
elitist "brothers" like the National Urban League's Marc Morial. Hark! I
ain’t nothing nice, but it would be unfair to name. blame and shame Marc
alone. The "greedy vultures" who’re mostly responsible for MLK’s current
dilemma is hiding in a tax funded bureaucracy as wew speak. Space
precludes naming the well known churches, agencies, city and county
officials (White, Black, Brown and "Others"), who're co-conspirators.
They cleverly changed how federal funds and grants (targeting our
inner-city, underserved minority communities) are distributed. This
enables the politically connected organizations to steal from the poor
and give to the rich. But the guilty "Outstanding Citizens" must wait
until next week to exhale. Meanwhile, to answer my momma’s question: The
fact that I’ve always been trouble myself is what makes me good at what
I do. Square business, nice is a problem for sho’ nuff-- tell it like it
is-- journalists. I wonder if anybody knows where I’m coming from?
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