The latest attack from Fox45 on Eric Brown and the Peace Team gives us a window into their vision of the world.  Generally, reporters, staff, and executives from Fox45 are not in community with any of the major organizations in the violence prevention ecosystem in Baltimore.  This is extremely clear based on the nature of their coverage of this work.  They disingenuously claim to be looking out for the community, but what they are actually doing is peddling propaganda to stoke fear that resonates with a viewership that is conditioned to see Black men as scary and violent.  

Fox45 chose to invoke Eric Brown’s past in order to advance a narrative that there is something criminal about his organization’s work with the Department of Juvenile Services (DJS). His convictions from more than 15 years ago have no observable implications on the quality of his organization’s ability to prevent violence. In fact, to the extent that there is an implication it is in a positive direction because of his credibility to reach people that the Fox45 demonstrates their contempt for on a nightly basis.  His organization participated in a program called the Thrive Academy, which is a program of DJS that takes the young people who are identified as the most likely perpetrators and victims of gun violence and provide them with extensive supports and services to prevent them from being hurt or hurting others.  What Fox 45 didn’t report are the outcomes of this program that the Peace Team participated in.  Only 12% of the youth who participated in Thrive were arrested during their enrollment in the program over the last two years. This is objectively an extraordinary set of outcomes that DJS and the Peace Team should be proud of. This is evidence that the methodology of anchoring the work of addressing violence amongst youth in an ecosystem of credible messengers works.

Fox45 doesn’t provide its audience with reporting that helps its viewers understand the work of Eric Brown and the Peace Team.  And that is a feature not a bug. If the public has a greater understanding of the work that credible messengers are doing to prevent violence this would undermine David Smith’s political agenda.  His agenda is to support the MSAA and FOP, for whom their social and economic currency is projecting the need for traditional law enforcement as an occupying force that is needed to incarcerate our community into cultural submission.  These are right wing institutions that don’t care about making our communities safe, they care about using our community’s suffering as an effective vehicle to peddle their right wing political agenda.

Attached to this article is a video from brother Delmont Player from an organization called WeOurUs who provides an important insight into the work of credible messengers that Fox 45 will never report on.

Western Civilization is a euphemism for the 500 year project of European domination of the world.  White people make up approximately 10% of the world’s population, but occupy a position of political and economic dominance in every arena of civil society, globally.  This was the goal of “Enlightenment” or what is also called in mainstream world history text as the “Renaissance.”  This goal was couched in language of benevolence, ie the white man’s burden of civilizing the world into the advance forms of technology and systems of human organization.  But it is not an accident, or a coincidence that white people exercise so much power over the resources of the earth.  In defense of the Western Civilization, folks often say things like, other societies engaged in slavery and forms of systematic violence.  The problem with this defense is two fold.  First, chattel slavery that reduced Black people, as a people, to chattel is a distinct form of enslavement that is a unique form of slavery that has never been practice at any point in human history at the scale that it was practiced in the US.  Frantz Fanon in “Wretched of the Earth” characterized the assault on the humanity of African people from European colonization as a metaphysical attack.  European colonialism didn’t just attempt to enslave Black people into a perpetual state of servitude, but Western Civilization embarked on an attempt to wipe Black people from the record as producers of advanced civilization. This was necessary to develop a societal logic that deems people of African descent as non-human, and therefore worthy of enslavement.  Secondly, the current society and all of the luxuries that are currently being enjoyed by the primary beneficiaries of Western Civilization are based on the historical, and ongoing forms of societal domination by white people.  This means that the luxurious quality of life that folks in the so-called developed world enjoy (including many Black people who are interested in being let in on the benefits of this settler colonial society) are coming at the expense of the billions of people around the world (and formerly colonized people in the west) that live in squaller, poverty and indignity.  If our society was not so deeply propagandized, it would strike many of us as bizarre to live in a world where white people have so much power and dominance.  But their political and economic domination of the world is normalized through societal propaganda, like the document produced by the state department that is a political attack against Cuba’s position as a an important revolutionary force against the global system of white supremacy.

Communism and socialism are systems of economic and political ideas, that have been used around the world to support the struggle for colonized people to fight back against the project of European domination of the world.  Whereas capitalism has been the economic system that has undergirded the project of European domination of the world.  Surprisingly, the document accurately differentiates communism practiced by the former Soviet Union, from the application of marxism by the global south who used it to fight against European colonialism.  You will not find on mainstream right wing media, or even mainstream liberal media platforms a serious conversation about communism/socialism because this would actually require a rigorous and serious discussion about the nature of Western Civilization.  Since most people have not been exposed to substantive knowledge about non-western civilizations, most people don’t know that the ideal we call “democracy” has been practiced more humanely by non-western societies.  In fact, what we call democracy was practiced in the US before white people even got here.  The European colonist studied the governance practices of the Iroquois Federation in what is currently the north east region of the United States, and much of the US constitution is based on what they learned from that system.  But because of the mythology propagated by the project of European domination of the world it is unfathomable to most people that there is any system of technology or human organization that is better than anything white folks have produced.

The only way that the political and economic dominance that white people occupy in this society makes sense is if we believe that white people’s culture and history is objectively superior to non-European cultures.  This is a thought that is lodged deep into the collective American subconscious, but is very present in every substantive political discussion.  The reason that right wingers are opposed to “CRT” (which is really white people’s ignorant catch all for Black people’s fight against the political status quo) is because it would require them to confront the horrors of the society that they have built in service of their own edification and power.  Liberals and even progressives (mostly the white ones) will acknowledge oppressive nature of western civilization, but even in their professed sympathies for our condition, they are more committed to figuring out how to achieve equality within the context of Western Civilization, instead of standing in solidarity with those of us who are interested in Liberation from this settler colonial regime because it world require them to give up the comforts they receive from this society.  In a world where the advanced forms of technology and systems of human organization in non-western societies were a part of the dialogue about what an ideal society looks like, the entire ideological enterprise of Western Civilization falls apart.  The attacks on socialism, communism, and on Cuba are not about liberty and freedom, but it is about defending the inevitable fall of Western Civilization that is being caused by the fights for liberation happening around the globe.  #HandsoffCuba

With the political civil wars that have been brewing in both major political parties, Maryland has an opportunity to lead the country on the path toward what a multiparty system looks like.  Within the Democratic Party, there are a vast range of policy positions and worldviews that, in a multiparty system, would not exist in the same party.  The most radical policy proposals end up being a causality of having such divergent political views in one party, given the obstruction from the corporate, establishment wing to ensure the Democratic party does not move on the policies advanced by the left wing of the party.  Even in a place like Maryland that has a sizable Black population, and is a Democratic Party stronghold, more radical policies are not viable. Policies like a wealth tax on wealthy corporations and individuals, elimination of the practice of automatically charging youth as adults, divestment from Israeli government and corporations, divestment from and community control of traditional law enforcement, and a ban on data centers are a few examples of policies that have strong support, but are not viable in this state because of the structural political exclusion of these policy ideas due to the constraints imposed by the two party system.  Having a multiparty system in Maryland would provide an opportunity for a wider range of policy proposals to be viable, and would give voters the opportunity to have elected officials that more closely represent their political beliefs and interests.

The bill we worked on last year to expand access to the statewide candidate debate stage is just one small step toward developing a multiparty system.  Maryland Public Television (MPT) in a recent exchange with a Green Party candidate for governor of Maryland, Andy Ellis, declined to commit to including him in a candidate forum for governor.  They have an arbitrary standard that a reputable poll has to indicate that a candidate has at least 10% support in order for them to be included in a candidate debate.  Additionally, they communicated that they do not have a process by which they solicit the community’s input on their standards regarding how candidates are able to access the debate stage, except for an email that people can send their ideas to.  But there is no process outlined regarding their approach to meaningfully considering community input.  While this is not outright exclusion of 3rd parties from mainstream political discourse, MPT’s policies structurally exclude non-principle political parties.

Usually, conversations regarding the expansion of viable political parties happen in the context of elections where Democrats are anxious about how these kinds of efforts may hurt important imminent elections.  That is not the context for this effort in Maryland.  I am not a person who says that the two major parties are the same and that it doesn’t matter which one of them wins.  In an overwhelming majority of cases, Black people are better off in the policy arena with Democrats in office than Republicans, even though both parties are instruments of maintaining the settler colonial project that is the foundation of, so called, American Democracy.  We just happen to have more leverage over the Democratic party because they are so reliant on our votes for their electoral viability.  As a captured electorate it is important for our community to support the work of building viable electoral infrastructure outside of the two party system, while also strategically engaging the Democratic Party and pushing to advance policies that are more progressive in order to delivery more meaningful policy to our community.  Governor Wes Moore, the Democratic nominee of governor is running against the Republican nominee for governor, Dan Cox for the second time.  In 2022 Wes Moore electorally annihilated Dan Cox by 30%, which is an indication that there no chance that Cox can win.  He is a Trumpy Republican, and therefore not viable electorally in Maryland in the way that a more mainstream, old school Republican would be, like former governor Larry Hogan.  This means that people who are on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, independents who choose not to affiliate with either party, and members of non-principle political parties have an opportunity to do three important actions in Maryland over the next year that can become initial steps to building a multiparty political system.

The first action people in Maryland can take is to reach out to the board of MPT and demand that they invite all candidates for governor that appear on the general election ballot to participate in a candidate forum.  This will serve as evidence that there is a desire from the public to hear the perspectives of candidates from non-principle political parties in Maryland.  Furthermore, the exclusion of non-principle political parties violates MPT’s own policy that says that “The facilities of the Commission [the Maryland Public Broadcasting Commission presides over MPT] MAY NOT be used for, and the programs may not be devoted to presenting biased or one-sided aspects of partisan politics.”  MPT may say that they are not engaging in partisanship because they are including both of the major political parties, but bi-partisanship is not the same as non-partisan.  MPT’s policy on the inclusion of non-principle party candidates is functionally a bi-partisan bias against non-principle political parties.  The instruction for the action alert to reach out to the board of MPT is below.

https://lbsbaltimore.com/mptdebatestages/

The second action that the aforementioned groups can do is vote for Andy Ellis for governor.  Not because he has any chance at winning, because he does not.  But because if a 3rd party candidate receives 5-10% of the vote, this would serve a concrete message to the Democratic Party that they’re a real appetite for a multiparty system.  The largest percentage of the votes that a 3rd party candidate has ever received in Maryland is 3%, so exceeding that is a political message that will be heard by the political status quo.  Given the fact that Wes Moore has no serious change of losing the election, the political hostage holding posture that the Democratic Party typically deploys when people advocate for folks to vote 3rd party is not applicable in this circumstance. 

The third action is to support our work during the  2027 Maryland General Assembly to pass legislation that would require every candidate that appears on the ballot in statewide general elections to be invited to participate in candidate forums.  Maryland’s legislative session goes from January to April, so sign up to receive LBS’ newsletter and follow us on social media so that when it is time to contact legislators to urge them to pass this bill, that we have the force of the community be successful at passing this bill.  These are initial steps toward moving Maryland to becoming a state with a functional and healthy multiparty political system can emerge, that can lead the way to a national multiparty system.

The thought that comes me when I think about our community’s collective vulnerability to state sanctioned violence is not something that I hear very often in political discourse about how to impede our community from being victimized by these systems. That thought is, I wish that there was an independent African nation, that was not bound by or controlled by western imperialism that could impose sanctions on the US government on behalf of Black people. What if there was an independent Black nation that could prevent US imports of essential goods as leverage to force the American political system to respect the humanity of our people? 

Unfortunately almost all of the African nations in the world have their economic infrastructure controlled by American and European powers. The global capital markets, the mechanisms of global trade, the military forces etc are controlled or at best confined by American and European imperialism. The countries that stand up to US imperialism and its economic domination of the world are deemed “terrorist” and demonized by western media, exacerbating our alienation from our family on the continent of Africa (ie the Alliance of Sahel States in west Africa). Also, nations that stand up to American global domination are economically starved (ie Venezuela and Cuba). 

The reason that I bring this up in the context of the two cases that I mentioned before is that if we are serious about protecting our community from state sanctioned violence we have to have a long term strategy of leveling consequences against political forces that harm our community. We need to build the capacity to make it politically and economically hurt to kill our children. That means building independent Black political power so that we can have organized and effective mechanisms of offense against those political forces that harm us. This power should be in service of the overarching goal of a free and independent Africa that can be a source of power that can impose political consequences on any nation in the world that engages in oppressive policies and practices against our community. All the other solutions are short term and fleeting. If global African sovereignty is not our political north star, then we will be relegating ourselves to a status of permanent disempowerment.

Modern day Zionism emerged as a 19th century movement in Europe that was striving to establish a Jewish homeland. Theodor Herzl, one of the ideological progenitors of the modern Zionism movement, appealed to European nations to buttress the establishment of a Jewish state. In his 1896 text “The Jewish State” he says the following:

“Should the Powers declare themselves willing to admit our sovereignty over a neutral piece of land, then the Society will enter into negotiations for the possession of this land. Here two territories come under consideration, Palestine and Argentine. In both countries important experiments in colonization have been made, though on the mistaken principle of a gradual infiltration of Jews. An infiltration is bound to end badly. It continues till the inevitable moment when the native population feels itself threatened, and forces the Government to stop a further influx of Jews. Immigration is consequently futile unless we have the sovereign right to continue such immigration.

The Society of Jews will treat with the present masters of the land, putting itself under the protectorate of the European Powers, if they prove friendly to the plan.”

He was appealing to European colonial powers to enlist them to support the establishment of a Jewish homeland. He even emphasizes the importance of using colonial violence to establish this state, using the euphemism of having the “sovereign right to continue such immigration.” It is this specific 19th century iteration of Zionism that forms the basis of the state of Israel that currently exists in occupied Palestine. Opposition to the state of Israel and to Zionism is consistent with the fight against US and western colonialism and the global system of white supremacy that it buttresses. The instillation of the brutal regime of the Shah in Iran by US and European powers, the food for oil policy that starved 1 million people (mostly children), the installation of Sadam Hussen by the West who engaged in ethnic cleansing of the Kurds, the support of the apartheid regime in South Africa and numerous other acts of colonialist violence has invoked justifiable hostilities toward the west, which includes Israel.

Those of us who oppose the right wing force that Zionism is in American politics is not an opposition to Jewish people having a homeland. It is opposition to the global system of white supremacy of which the state of Israel is an extension of that. Former senator Zirkin is a right wing Democrat that I had to do battle with in the legislature due to his support of mandatory minimum sentences and sentence enhancements as his approach to public safety. These are the policies that are the architecture of the prison industrial complex that tracks millions of Black people into the brutality of the criminal justice system. This brutality is normalized by a society that conditions the American collective consciousness to see Black people as inherently prone to violence. Mr. Zirkin’s commitment to Zionism, and his policy agenda that aligns with the tough on crime agenda that fuels mass incarceration is a perfect example of the right wing leanings of political organizations and political figures that have an explicit commitment to Zionism. This is not hate, this is a political analysis. 

This kind of analysis of the Holocaust and Jewish peoples’ proximity to (and successful incorporation into) whiteness has often been suppressed from public discourse. This is because institutions like the American Defamation League (ADL) and the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) represent themselves as advocates for the Jewish people, and have engaged in decades long propaganda that has conditioned the general public to believe that any criticism of Israel, or of Jewish people is antisemitic. It is important to be clear that there are many Jewish people who do not support the state of Israel and that do not identify as Zionist. It would be bigoted, perhaps antisemitic, to assume that all Jews are aligned with Zionism (an ideology that is rooted in the support and maintenance of the theocratic Jewish state of Israel and its occupation of Palestine). The tough reality is that Jews of European descent have been able to receive the societal benefits of whiteness, while also using the charge of antisemitism to avoid accountability for their complicity in the global system of white supremacy.

An example of this is evident in a May 29, 2026 article that appeared in a publication called Jmore, a Jewish publication in Baltimore, written by Jay Bernstein. He is urging people to press the governor of Maryland to discipline former senator Jill Carter, who currently works in the Moore administration as a member of the Maryland State Board of Contract Appeals, for a comment she made on my video where I am explaining the political impact of Zionism on the politics of the 41st legislative district of Maryland. He described a comment she made about members of the orthodox Jewish community trying to control the politics of a majority Black district, and that we know who controls the media as examples of antisemitic troupes. He is saying that based on those comments, she should have an action taken against her by her boss governor Moore (like firing her). 

Bernstein’s quote of Jill Carter is grossly taken out of context. The part of the quote pertaining to members of the orthodox Jewish community trying to control the politics of a majority Black district is referencing the race for seats on the 41st legislative district of Maryland Democratic State Central Committee in 2022 when councilman Yitzy Schiefler (an orthodox Jew and Zionist) led a 7 member slate vying to be elected to this 8 member committee that was comprised entirely of members of the orthodox Jewish community. The establishment of this slate represents a clear and obvious attempt at seizing political power in a majority Black district. One can agree or disagree with this perspective, but it is an observation of a specific set of political events in the district that Jill Carter use to represent, not an antisemitic troupe. The part of the quote regarding people who control the media is a reference to Sinclair Broadcasting who is a political ally of senator Dalya Attar who was endorsed by Ivan Bates (who recently kind of unendorsed her). Senator Attar’s opponent, delegate Malcolm Ruff is supported by former senator Carter, she is also running for a seat on the Democratic Party State Central Committee in that district, which explains why she has been very active engaging political dialogue about the district. David Smith, who is the executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcasting and majority owner of the Baltimore Sun is a Trump aligned Republican who is using his media empire to drive the local media ecosystem toward right wing propaganda. The demonization of Black led organizations engaged in violence prevention work, pro-Zionists justifications for genocide of Palestinians, the demonization of Black youth, an anti-reparations posture are examples of the political agenda of David Smith. Senator Attar and her Zionists political networks are aligned with Smith and Ivan Bates in major aspects of their right wing policy agenda. When former senator Carter is referring to knowing who controls the “so-called media” she is referring to David Smith, not Jews. 

It makes sense to me that someone like Mr. Bernstein, who I once heard him begin testimony in Annapolis by describing himself as a proud Zionist, would read senator Carter’s comment and interpret them the way he did. And he is entitled to his opinion, but anyone who has known senator Carter and has actually talked to her would be clear what she meant by her comments on my video. Im sure he could have asked her to clarify her statement and she would have laid out the explanation that I just gave about what she meant by those comments. But it’s clear that the point isn’t actually to understand. The point is to attack those who are on the other side of his political perspective. To cross a line like writing an article urging people to press the governor to discipline her is an attack on her livelihood for political purposes. Again, that is his right to do, but he and his community don’t get to pretend to be victims of hate because their political opponents are saying things that make them uncomfortable. They are engaged in the kind of political warfare that deserves direct confrontation. 

Additionally, a gentleman named Barry published an article on a Substack page called the Maryland Wire on May 29, 2026 that characterized her comments as hateful and demonstrative of “religious scapegoating.” He is also calling on the governor to discipline Jill Carter. He begins his piece by presenting a narrative about the role that Jews played during the Civil Rights Movement to support Black people. There are two fundamental problems with his analysis. The first is that his comments demonstrate a sophomoric understanding of the history of Black people’s struggle for liberation. There were certainly Jewish people that participated in and supported the various wings of the Black freedom struggle. From the mainstream traditional Civil Rights wing of our freedom struggle, to the militant revolutionary wing. Even though there have been a handful of areas where Black people as a whole benefited from the mainstream Civil Rights Movement, a serious analysis of the last 60 years of American political history demonstrates that the biggest beneficiaries of the Civil Rights Movement have been the Black middle class and white liberals. The Black middle class has been able to abandon working class Black people in search of personal, professional and financial aggrandizement by being incorporated in white mainstream institutions. This has left the masses of our people in worse shape than we were before the 60’s. The Kerner Commission, a federally commissioned study of inequality in America that was established by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 concluded in a reconvening of the commission in 1988 that working class Black people were poorer in 1988 than we were in 1968. This is objective sociological analysis. 

White liberals benefited from the emerging industries of which non-profit and human service agencies emerged in order to “fix us.” In essence, there is a network of non-profit and human service professionals who develop programs structured on the societal notion of Black people as inherently pathological and the impact of this has been the development of programs that manage our suffering instead of empowering our community with the instruments necessary to be a self determining people. I have written more extensively about this in other places (ie When Baltimore Awakes & Cracker Democracy: The Emergence of the Progressive Mainstream), but the point is that white liberals benefit from the way that the nonprofit and human service sector profiteer off of the suffering of Black people by providing jobs and professional accolades to a multiracial, but mostly white middle class workforce to manage Black suffering. Poor and working class Black people often receive just enough to survive in poverty, while nonprofit and human service professionals make careers off of “helping us.”

Jewish people are not unique amongst white liberals who have been complicit in the white supremacist configuration of the nonprofit industrial complex. White liberals generally, including Jews, have participated in this dynamic. There are also many Jews who have been supporters of LBS’ and others who have been pushing back against this dynamic. This brings me to my second point regarding Mr. Barry’s disingenuous (or painfully misinformed) narrative about the role that Jews played during the Civil Rights movement. The public dialogue that Jill Carter was engaging in is not about the entire Jewish community, but about a particular group within that community. A group of orthodox Jews who are Zionists in the 41st district who have conservative, right wing perspectives. This is a group that is connected to, and an ally to David Smith who was mentioned earlier. Again, instead of actually engaging the political analysis, it is easier to accuse her and folks like me of being hateful instead of actually engaging the arguments that are being made. Unfortunately, mainstream Civil Rights organizations have been complicit with the project of Zionism. Many people in the Black community are tremendously disaffected from these organizations because of their role in hustling off of the suffering of Black people in conjunction with their dependence on, and complicity in the nonprofit industrial complex. There have certainly been notable exceptions within the traditional Civil Rights wing that have done good things for Black people, but generally, our community are not huge supporters of these organizations that Mr. Barry is inferring were supported and funded by some Jews. The networks that are proximate to organizations that are aligned with Zionism among the Black community are generally seen unfavorably by working class and more politically militant folks. Reminding us that some Jews supported these traditional Civil Rights organizations is actually a mark against that community’s commitment to helping Black people. But in order to know that would require a deeper understanding of Black movement history beyond a surface level understanding. Barry describes a small but “loud” group of people espousing the perspective that I have laid out here (clearly an indirect shot at LBS and our networks). What Mr. Barry misunderstands is that the majority of working class Black people agree with LBS’ perspective more than the mainstream Civil Rights moderate approach to politics. This explains why LBS is a more politically impactful organization in Maryland than any of the traditional Civil Rights organizations. This is not a diss to them, because we work with these organizations regularly. But I am sure that representatives from these organizations would say that we are actually representing the voice of many Black people in ways that they are not able to. They are limited from saying what I am saying because they are more vulnerable to the kinds of attacks on their livelihood, like the attack on Jill Carter’s, than LBS is. 

The dialogue about the impact of Zionism on the 41st legislative district in Maryland is not about religion. It is about ideology and political worldview. An analysis of Christian evangelicals commitment to a right wing policy agenda is not an attack against Christianity, it is political analysis. The observation that large elements of the Muslim world are anti-Zionist is not an attack against their religion, it is political analysis. There are organizations like the ADL and AIPAC who publicly describe themselves as representatives of the Jewish community who are engaged in public political activity. If you step into the political arena, you are subject to the same scrutiny that everyone else is subject to. Again, describing the dialogue about the impact of Zionism on politics as hate is a convenient way to avoid being responsible for the political consequences of this political force on my community. We will not be bullied into silence.

It is important that our community contacts the governor’s office to urge them to leave Jill Carter alone, and to ensure that she is not punished for speaking up for the people of her district.

Senator Attar’s indictment is astounding because it does not seem to have impacted her campaign. There were a few news stories that were produced when the indictment was first announced, but other than that there has been virtually no ongoing coverage of her case. Companies like Sinclair Broadcasting have not done the level of consistent reporting on Dalya Attar’s case as they have on Black elected officials. I have written in previous pieces about the right wing political agenda of David Smith who is the executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcasting and majority owner of the Baltimore Sun. Fox 45, which is owned by Sinclair Broadcasting and Baltimore Sun are right wing political advocacy institutions, masquerading as media companies. This is more than just a case of white people (particularly white women) getting to occupy the societal space as innocent until proven guilty in ways that Black people aren’t afforded.  This is an example of Sinclair Broadcasting protecting an elected official who is a vehicle for its right wing political agenda.  I want to be clear that I am not advocating that a person that is charged with a crime get treated like a criminal.  That would be hypocritical given the way that the criminal justice system is often weaponized against Black people in order to get our people to be treated like criminals.  What I am saying is that the fact that Senator Attar is being treated like she is innocent by David Smith’s media empire is evidence that they are selective in using their characterization of corruption of Black elected officials as a vehicle for their political agenda. 

Furthermore, white women have historically been projected as the paragon of innocence. White women occupy a position in this society as perfect victims due to societal propaganda that locates the veracity of white masculinity in their capacity to protect them from the the contrived threats of uncivilized others. We don’t have to look much further than the first motion picture film to be screened in the White House in 1915, Birth of a Nation, which depicted white women as endangered by inherently brutish Black men that were depicted as savages. This is consistent with the way that law enforcement and right wing media use images and narratives of white women as victims of crime beyond their actual representation among those in places like Baltimore who are victims of crime. It would be naive to believe that this doesn’t play a role in the favorable, disparate treatment that Senator Attar is receiving from right wing media in Baltimore.

The coverage of Black elected officials like Brandon Scott, Marilyn Mosby, Jill Carter, and others who are considered folks who are on the left flank of the Democratic Party is different from Sinclair Broadcasting’s coverage of Ivan Bates.  Bates has a right wing, tough on crime policy agenda that is aligned with David Smith, which explains the overwhelmingly positive coverage that he gets from Sinclair Broadcasting and the Baltimore Sun. The absence of any serious coverage of Senator Attar’s federal indictment is a combination of white women being able to be treated as inherently innocent of crime, and Attar being a useful political ally to right wing forces that want to impose their racist political agenda on Baltimore.  Voting for Malcolm Ruff for state senate in the 41st legislative district of Maryland is not just a vote for a person whose policy platform is more aligned with advancing justice in Maryland, but is a vote against a person who is an extension of David Smith’s right wing political agenda.

Before 2016 there was mass incarceration, an average Black family has 1/16 of the wealth of a white family, that Black people are three times more unemployed than white people, that infant mortality is 3 times higher among Black people than white people and I can go on and on about our condition in this country before 2016. Feelings of extreme urgency that white liberals and the Black middle class feel today about Donald Trump, those of us with radical politics felt like that about America before Trump became a force in politics. An objective assessment of Black peoples’ material condition in this society establishes that America is structured based on the system of white supremacy that is currently dehumanizing Black people. This system, as it exists, is not capable of producing a just society for Black people. What is needed is revolution. It will not happen in our lifetime, but we should be advocating and building toward Black sovereignty. We should be engaging these systems in order to stop the harm they cause our community, to extract resources to bring back to our community, and build independent institutions so that we can create the power we need to be a sovereign and liberated people. The Republican and Democratic have both been hostile to people who espouse revolutionary politics. 

Democrats/Liberals want to have a more inclusive and compassionate system of white domination and control of the political, economic, social, and cultural institutions that manage this society. They want to make room for more Black people in a system that prioritizes the collective interests of white people at the expense of our community. They want to make law enforcement more friendly toward Black people, instead of giving the community mechanisms of control of the police. They want to allocate public dollars to social programs that fund white mainstream human service agencies to address the challenges we face in our community, instead of reparations that would be an investment in our ability to meet our own needs without relying on white institutions. They want the US government to be friendlier in its relationships with foreign governments instead of slashing the enormous military budget. This core divergence in perspectives between liberals and Black radicals helps us to understand why the institution of the Democratic Party has been an active counter revolutionary force. Liberals want to include more non-white people into their suburban fantasy space, but want the systems that produce police brutality and mass incarceration, the systems that cause housing insecurity and food insecurity and all the other systems drive this settler colonial society to remain intact.

While the MAGA movement is an extension of an iteration of white nationalism that is a threat to the humanity of Black people and other oppressed people around the world, it should not be treated like the only major threat.  Democrats/Liberals have presided over political regimes that have expanded the prison industrial complex, cut social programs, provide tax breaks to corporations who perpetuate gentrification and environmental denigration, opposed reparations, authorized military intervention to advance US imperialism, and many other policies that have done tremendous damage to our community. Liberals' approach to white supremacy is about absorbing us into a prettier and more inclusive form of white colonial domination of the world. One important distinction that was best articulated by Jacob Carruthers in his book Intellectual Warfare is the distinction between fighting for justice and suing for peace.  Fighting for justice is about confronting this existing political status quo, not just the Republicans, to produce a world where Black people collectively control and operate the institutions that are necessary for a people to thrive.  People who take up this kind of work are taking a huge risk because of the intensity of the system's tactics to maintain its power.  Unfortunately people confuse this for suing for peace. People who are suing for peace want to reach an agreement with this society in order to secure peaceful co-existence with this settler colony that is called America. Many people who are suing for peace are looking for a more comfortable space on the American plantation instead of fighting to overthrow it.

Those of us who are interested in revolution are clear that it won't likely happen in our lifetime, but our current political activity is governed by this as a long term objective.  This is the defining frame that distinguishes mainstream Democrat/liberal policy positions from more revolutionary policy advocacy that was mentioned earlier. Donald Trump and the MAGA movement allows those whose political project is ultimately about suing for peace, to cast themselves as revolutionaries without being honest about the fact that they actually desire peaceful co-existence with the existing system.  They can espouse rhetoric of Black freedom struggle, but their political activity are fundamentally attempts at more inclusion into the American political mainstream.  The reason that large segments of our community are disengaged from politics is because they sense this disposition among those who are typically the most visible proponents of voting for Democrats, even if they don’t have the precise language for it. They can tell because the leaders of the past, like Malcolm X, instilled fear amongst the political establishment.  They were not celebrated and lifted up by mainstream corporate and political elites.  The Congressional Black Caucus for instance is completely captured by corporate forces and has rendered it as a cultural rubber stamp of the Democratic Party.  The CBC is known more for its gala than its policy agenda.  We don’t see political bravery from the CBC that would instill any belief that they are fighting for freedom, but in fact are suing for peace. If we want people to vote who typically don’t vote, then the folks who are urging our people to vote must demonstrate that they are serious about fighting for justice, and not just another person looking to make a comfortable space for themselves and their network on the American plantation.

In their latest piece they just restate their claim that my comments are anti-semitic based on a IG live video that I did in response to them.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYVDxcvpC5M/?igsh=bnNmeGdyZmhkbGl6

They argue that anti-Israel commentary is inherently anti-Jewish people. This is an intellectually lazy argument that is not responsive to what I actually said. I make clear that Zionism is often associated with right wing politics and the evidence of that is the political behavior of the Zionist institution AIPAC and its proxies going after progressive members and candidates for congress. In Baltimore a former chair of AIPAC, Howard Friedman, served on the board of the right wing media company, Sinclair Broadcasting and if you watch their coverage of issues related to Israel and the genocide against Palestinians the pro-Zionist bias is extremely clear. Furthermore, I make clear in the video that I posted that I am criticizing Zionist who are people who have ideological commitments to the state of Israel. This should not be understood to be synonymous with all Jewish people. These are arguments, and it’s clear that the Baltimore Scoop and their supporters are not capable of serious rigorous political dialogue where you actually have to respond to what the opposition says. 

What is even more hilarious is that they prove my point by urging their supporters who are registered as Republicans to switch their registration to Democrat to vote for senator Attar. They actually say that they have a right wing political leaning. Again providing more evidence to my argument about Zionism being a right wing political force in our local political environment. This is not demonization, this is political analysis. As I say in the video, I challenge the Baltimore Scoop, or any of the supporters of senator Attar to a public dialogue about the impact of Zionism on the 41st legislative district in Maryland. They can pick the moderator, and the platform. My only condition would be to structure the dialogue so that I have equal time. Let’s see if they will take me up on that.

People’s lived experience has two primary elements of importance regarding the evaluation of knowledge and the development of solutions for the challenges our community faces. The first is that people’s lived experiences provide an important basis to take ideas and theories and test their practical application. When an organization, scholar or advocate believes that they have developed a solution to challenges that a community faces, the lived experience of the community serves as an important check to ensure that the proposed solutions are applicable to the experience that the community is having. Otherwise those proposed solutions are merely thought experiments. Secondly, people’s lived experience serves as a mechanism of accountability to those who are tasked with operationalizing proposed solutions. I liken it to the relationship that a patient has with their doctor. While a doctor has rigorous training on the human body and how to address illness, ultimately the patient is in charge and must approve of whatever medical procedures are performed on them. While these two elements of people’s lived experience are important, this should not be characterized as the same as knowledge.

White people have colonized the idea of knowledge. They have conditioned the world to believe that credentialing that emerges from white institutions equates to having a meaningful understanding of the world. The exclusion of Black people from these institutions has been described as excluding Black people from gaining knowledge. What Black people have been actually excluded from is access to white peoples’ designation as learned. This designation, in this white settler colonial society, comes with economic and social benefits. Black people have been producers of knowledge outside of white mainstream institutions, and ultimately we don’t need access to white institutions to get access to knowledge.

Knowledge is a system of ideas that are useful in constructing analysis of the world that can improve our quality of life. One of the impacts of the system of white supremacy on the collective American consciousness is that white people have systems of ideas attributed to them.  Freud is the father of modern psychology. David Hume is the foundational scholar of empiricism. Hegel the progenitor of phenomenology. Black people are often cast as magical, exceptional and heroic, but not as producers of systems of ideas. Frederick Douglass is often characterized as an exceptional orator. What gets emphasized is his passion for freedom for Black people, but what is understated is the vastness of his scholarly output. We should treat Douglass as a producer of a system of ideas that should be applied to our political analysis. Douglass did not graduate from any white academic institution, but his scholarly output and political activity and his impact on the world demonstrates the richness and veracity of his knowledge. His importance should not be reduced merely to his lived experience, but as a producer of knowledge that should be taught to help us develop the political analysis we need to be effective advocates for our freedom. I am often frustrated with the way that these major luminaries in our tradition are talked about in broad ceremonial and emotional terms, without much reference to the bodies of knowledge that they produced. For instance, Fredrick Douglass gave a speech in 1876 at the Lincoln Memorial where he gave commentary about Abraham Lincoln’s legacy. His commentary is very instructive on how those of us interested in revolution should engage the formal political landscape. He says:

“He was preëminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country. In all his education and feeling he was an American of the Americans. He came into the Presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own race. To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the states where it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other President to draw the sword of the nation. He was ready to execute all the supposed guarantees of the United States Constitution in favor of the slave system anywhere inside the slave states. He was willing to pursue, recapture, and send back the fugitive slave to his master, and to suppress a slave rising for liberty, though his guilty master were already in arms against the Government. The race to which we belong were not the special objects of his consideration….

When, therefore, it shall be asked what we have to do with the memory of Abraham Lincoln, or what Abraham Lincoln had to do with us, the answer is ready, full, and complete. Though he loved Caesar less than Rome, though the Union was more to him than our freedom or our future, under his wise and beneficent rule we saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood; under his wise and beneficent rule, and by measures approved and vigorously pressed by him, we saw that the handwriting of ages, in the form of prejudice and proscription, was rapidly fading away from the face of our whole country; under his rule, and in due time, about as soon after all as the country could tolerate the strange spectacle, we saw our brave sons and brothers laying off the rags of bondage, and being clothed all over in the blue uniforms of the soldiers of the United States; under his rule we saw two hundred thousand of our dark and dusky people responding to the call of Abraham Lincoln, and with muskets on their shoulders, and eagles on their buttons, timing their high footsteps to liberty and union under the national flag; under his rule we saw the independence of the black republic of [Haiti], the special object of slaveholding aversion and horror, fully recognized, and her minister, a colored gentleman, duly received here in the city of Washington; under his rule we saw the internal slave-trade, which so long disgraced the nation, abolished, and slavery abolished in the District of Columbia; under his rule we saw for the first time the law enforced against the foreign slave-trade, and the first slave-trader hanged like any other pirate or murderer; under his rule, assisted by the greatest captain of our age, and his inspiration, we saw the Confederate States, based upon the idea that our race must be slaves, and slaves forever, battered to pieces and scattered to the four winds; under his rule, and in the fullness of time, we saw Abraham Lincoln, after giving the slaveholders three months’ grace in which to save their hateful slave system, penning the immortal paper, which, though special in its language, was general in its principles and effect, making slavery forever impossible in the United States. Though we waited long, we saw all this and more.”

What is beautiful about this excerpt is that he is giving what some people might experience as an extremely harsh critique of a former president at a ceremony commemorating him, while also being accurate about what was accomplished under Lincoln’s time as president. This models for me how to engage in mainstream political space while being true to a radical political perspective. There are many prominent figures who talk about Frederick Douglass as an inspiration, but would never publicly deliver anything close to that kind of analysis of a beloved white mainstream political figure. This is the result of treating our prominent figures merely as exceptional heroic figures instead of producers of systems of ideas. And honestly, this happens in large part because many of the people who are deemed leaders and prominent figures don’t actually take the legacies of people like Douglass seriously. If they did, many more of them would actually emulate and implement Douglass’ system of ideas in their own political behavior.

Allowing lived experience to be the equivalent of knowledge allows those so-called leaders, scholars and advocates to be acknowledged as such without actually having to be an expert at anything. If their job primarily is to validate and affirm those with lived experience to be recognized by professionals as valid sources of knowledge, they don’t have to have any rigorous knowledge about Black people except maybe the sociology of our oppression. The job of those leaders is to supplement people’s lived experience with rigorous knowledge of our methodologies of freedom struggle so that we can advance an agenda that makes us a source of power, and not an object of someone’s charity. The existence of this dynamic is a huge disservice to Black people because our community deserves and needs world class scholars, leaders and advocates. White people who are in position to curate which Black figures to elevate often choose Black people with “lived experience” instead of Black people with rigorous expertise in bodies of knowledge that live outside of the academic/intellectual mainstream. People with “lived experience” quench the thirst of white liberals’ missionary zeal to feel like they are doing right by people that they regard as their pet projects in their subconscious. Black people with liberatory bases of knowledge are a threat to white people and their institutions' control of the academic, intellectual, institutional and economic architecture that they preside over as thought leaders. 

In Robert B. Hill’s book “The Strength of Black Families” he provides an analysis of the strengths of Black families. Typically, Black people are looked at primarily as recipients of programs and services. To the extent that Black people are understood to be an asset, it is often broad allusions to our creativity, or insight into the nature of our oppression. What Hill does, using his skills as a sociologist, is observe and document the strengths of Black families. He argued in 1972 that there are 5 major strengths of the Black family, they are:

-Strong kinship bonds

-Strong work orientation

-Adaptability of family roles

-Strong achievement orientation

-Strong religious orientation 

Black families have strong connections to extended families that help to nurture kinship bonds that have been crucial to our survival in the face of our oppression. Contrary to societal stigmas, Black families often have deep intrinsic motivation to work hard in order to give people we love an easier life. Our families often have uncles and godparents who stand in as fathers and mothers when biological parents are not around. Black families, particularly elders, strongly encourage the importance of getting an education, even if they don’t have any academic accomplishments of their own. And the Black church has historically played a role in being an anchor for meeting the needs of our community when other public systems fall short. This is just a snap shot of Hill’s analysis of the strengths of Black families, but I can almost guarantee that very few of the professional non-profit leaders or mainstream academics have actually substantively engaged scholars like him for two reasons. First because the institutions that train mainstream scholars don’t respect bodies of work that don’t affirm the centrality of Eurocentric institutions because of their beliefs (however subconscious the belief is) in the notion that Black people are intellectually inferior. Second, because acknowledging scholars like Hill would challenge the position of thought leader held by white people (and their POC henchmen) which would disrupt the normal functioning of their missionary enterprise that profiteers off of the suffering of Black people as financial and professional stepping stones. What Robert Hill does in his book is take the experiences of working class Black people and develop systems of ideas that can be applied to developing solutions to the challenges that we face that affirm our ability to be the solution to the problems that we are confronted with. This is a contrast to the kinds of solutions produced by people who equate knowledge with lived experience that produce solutions that are based on getting people outside of our community to acknowledge our humanity as the basis for improving our quality of life.

This is not an attack on the importance of incorporating people’s lived experience into the development of ideas and interventions that our community needs. Distinguishing lived experience from knowledge is important because our community needs warriors to seize power away from those people and institutions that are currently positioned as thought leaders, and that will require lived experience AND knowledge. You are born with lived experience, but knowledge you have to work to gain it. And that work makes you more capable of presiding over institutions that impact the lives of our community. This is not elitism, this is a call to shift our mindset from wanting a voice at white peoples’ institutions by urging them to regard our lived experience as knowledge, to the development of our own thought leaders that can go toe to toe with the most credentialed thought leader of any mainstream institution in order to contest for power.

On a few occasions I have heard people describe a career in teaching at a public school as a job you pursue if you can’t find a better job. Anecdotal evidence of the pervasiveness of this belief is reflected in my own story of being a classroom teacher. I was teaching a group of 6th graders and on my wall was a picture of me and my college debate partner with a trophy. I never really talked about the picture, I just had it up in my classroom. One day one of my students asked me what the picture on the wall was about. I explained that it was a picture of me and my college debate partner holding the trophy we won in 2008 after winning a national debate championship. I explained that we were among the best college debaters in the country at the time. One of my students said “Mr. Love, why you lying?!” I laughed and asked “why do you think I am lying?” And the response I got back was extremely profound. My students said “because if you are all of that why are you here with us?” This comment illustrates that Black youth are socialized to see themselves as having little value and that by extension, those around them have little value. The unspoken societal consensus is that Black youth are of no value. This opens the door for white people to come into our community and create industries predicated on the notion that they are saving us from our own communities that are often characterized as inherently pathological. Additionally, this societal conditioning cultivates an unspoken belief that the mere presence of white people in Black people’s lives inherently adds value. The presence of non Black people in the lives of Black youth is often treated as inherently a positive force in their lives. The ridiculous notion that just being a caring adult in the lives of Black children qualifies someone to establish organizations and programs for Black youth often goes unaddressed. The fact that this dynamic is so rampant is proof of the white supremacist notions that are baked into our societal collective consciousness.

What is needed is large scale investment in positioning Black organizations with a liberatory, culturally rooted methodology of youth development, as thought leaders in the youth service space. Organizations like the Baltimore Rites of Passage Initiative (BROPI), Tendea Family, and Baltimore Brothers are designed by people who have deep knowledge and experience implementing youth programs that address themselves to enhancing the self love and self knowledge needed for Black youth to see value in themselves and in their community. Particularly, their approach to youth development is at odds with the mainstream approach that socializes youth to aspire for proximity to white people's sympathies, legitimacy and recognition as the basis for endeavors to make themselves and their communities better. 

LBS has been working on reducing the practice of youth being automatically charged as adults. This is a policy change that many people and organizations have been working on for many years and during the 2026 Maryland General Assembly the legislature reduced the number of charges that automatically put youth in adult prison. There is a coalition called the Maryland Youth Justice Coalition (MYJC) that has been focused on this policy change for the past several years. It is a coalition that has a wide range of organizations who are formal members of it. But its leadership and those who are the actual drivers of the activity of the coalition are not people who have rigorous engagement with the traditions and cultural technologies of youth development that emerge from our community. While they may be well meaning and sincere on advancing the policy change that ensures that less (Black) youth are in adult prison, a coalition that addresses themselves to an issue that primarily impacts Black youth should have as a prerequisite serious immersion in liberatory and culturally affirming approaches to youth development. The absence of an explicit commitment and practice of liberatory, culturally rooted methodologies of youth engagement demonstrates an unspoken acceptance of white people maintaining control of the socialization of Black youth. This is a particular kind of benevolent colonialism that uses charitable activity toward Black youth to maintain the industries that make jobs for white people (and folks of color proximate to their networks) to be white saviors. This trades off with investments in our community taking back control over the socialization of Black youth, so that we can produce youth who can be effective and honorable managers of power on behalf of our community. 

Mainstream formations that have an expressed commitment to youth in places like Baltimore where a majority of the youth are Black, should be required to develop deep knowledge of methodologies of youth development that emerge from our collective movement history. Unfortunately, most youth serving institutions only pay lip service to the development of this kind of expertise. Even Black people that I may like personally don’t take seriously the study of the work that our community has done historically to effectively socialize Black youth in healthy and culturally affirming ways. We accept well meaning adults that are able to entertain Black youth, or who develop strong interpersonal relationships with youth as a substitute for having an approach to youth development that produces youth that are self respecting, and effective advocates for themselves and their community. The “youth justice” landscape in Maryland and in many places across the country are dominated by white people (largely white women) who have very little knowledge or regard for the movement history of which Black formations have been fighting back against the violence of the criminal justice system. MYJC is an example of a formation that needs to be terminated, and replaced by formations that are led by folks who have a practice of youth development that is informed by Black movement history. People who are students of Mama Kay Stancil of the Maarifa Center that produced Nsoroma and Community of Academic Scholars, students of the historic Soul School, the students of Eddie Conway who trained many people over his 44 years of being a political prisoner in Maryland to fight back against mass incarceration, folks like Leo Burroughs at Roots of Scouting, and Mama Rashida at WombWork Productions are just a few examples of those who represent a methodology of youth development that is grounded in Black movement history. The mainstream youth service sector has expertise in sophisticated ways of managing Black suffering, but very little in the kinds of spiritual and psychological decolonization that is necessary to produce Black youth that can be warriors for their community. 

-Thomas Jefferson on Black men

A foundational mythology that shapes the American collective consciousness is that Black men are uniquely prone to violence and criminality. We are often deemed the least civilized group in the human family. A key narrative that is at the center of this mythology is that Black men inherently pose a threat to the safety and virtue of white women. The patriarchal white supremacy that governs the structure of how this society operates frames white women as a prized possession of civilization. Even though white women experience forms of oppression as a result of patriarchy and sexism they are also beneficiaries of this white settler colony that is called America. Violence against white women (from non-white men in particular) is a threat to the patriarchal masculinity that is central to white peoples’ collective (false) projection as the most civilized people in world history. In traditional mainstream historiography they are rendered as the perfect innocent victim. And Black men are the perfect bodies to project as the greatest threat to these perfect victims. In Howell Baum’s book Brown in Baltimore he documents the implementation of Brown v Board in Baltimore. There were a flurry of letters sent by white parents to the school district opposing Black children being integrated into white schools because they had deep anxieties about their white daughters being in close proximity to Black boys. Many lynchings of Black men historically were justified by making false allegations of sexual violence toward white women. The underlying logic of these phenomena did not go away, it still remains a significant aspect of the collective American subconscious. 

Black people, particularly Black men are 7 times more likely to be wrongly convicted of a crime than a white person according to a 2022 report from the National Registry of Exonerations. When a Black man/boy is said to have a firearm we are conditioned to automatically assume that they intend to do harm. It doesn’t occur to many people that maybe they feel danger or are afraid and that’s the purpose of having a gun. When a Black man has been engaged in a violent altercation, it is assumed that it is an expression of their proclivities to violence in ways that are not attributed to white men who destroy property and get in fights after college sporting events. These societal stigmas result in Black men being assumed guilty until proven innocent resulting in policies and practices that pull men into the criminal justice system. HB 336 in the 2026 Maryland General Assembly changes a long standing practice that uniquely endangers Black men. Currently, anyone can go to a district court commissioner and make an accusation of wrong doing. This often results in the accused person being placed in jail for a few days without any evidence of wrongdoing. This can result in loss of employment because of unexpectedly missing days at work and the stigma that comes from the charges that are documented on a person’s record.

Many of the biggest opponents of changing this policy are elements of a domestic violence lobby that is deeply inflected with a brand of feminism that is complicit with the societal assault on the humanity of Black men. This brand of feminism borrows heavily from the eugenicist analysis of someone like Thomas Jefferson who believe that Black men are a semi-primitive species that is animalistic in the way that is characterized by the Jefferson quote in the epigraph. We can acknowledge the need for Black men to be held accountable for harm that we cause (just like any other human being) while also acknowledging that Black men are often treated as if we are guilty until proven innocent. The only reason that this dynamic can persist within the mainstream domestic violence service ecosystem without substantive engagement of the unique problems that Black men face within these systems is the normalization of Black men as prone to criminality. The disproportionate burdens of child support, limiting access to their children, and having no viable recourse for violence committed against Black men are generally unaddressed by the mainstream domestic violence ecosystem because Black men are illegible as victims of violence, and are most able to be recognized as perpetrators of violence. HB 336 is one step toward changing a practice that results disproportionately in the criminalization of Black men.

Right wing conservatives have engaged in an interesting tactic of interest convergence with a segment of our community that I will refer to loosely as the manosphere. Black men who experience feelings of deep alienation, emasculation, and insecurity have found a community online to bond with one another. One core aspect of this community is the belief that traditional American values ie the nuclear family, capitalism and rigid forms of masculinity are essential to empowering our community. I understand this perspective, even though I strongly disagree. What I understand is that a central feature of the system of white supremacy in this society is the characterization of Black men as inherently criminal and violent. Black men who are assertive, self respecting and are effective wielders of power (that are not controlled by white people) are often demonized in mainstream society. Dr. Tommy Curry in his book, The Man-Not, explains the unique forms of societal violence that are geared toward Black men, which explains why Black men are three times more likely to be killed by police than white people, are over represented in prison and among those killed by homicide. The lack of serious engagement on these issues by the mainstream, liberal, academic, nonprofit, activist establishment is a real phenomenon and has contributed to the alienation felt by Black men regarding many of the major institutions and public figures that claim to be advocates for Black people. I have direct experience with this. Over the years I have had what I would describe as a complicated relationship to the Movement 4 Black Lives (M4BL). Without getting too deep into my engagement with M4BL, I participated briefly as a member of the Electoral Justice Project (EJP) which was one of the subcommittees of M4BL. Folks in EJP did very good work that was impactful and I was glad to have been involved in that work. A group of sisters approached a group of brothers who were affiliated with the M4BL (including me) to address the problem that Black men were not feeling welcome and affirmed in movement spaces. There was an acknowledgment that within the movement spaces that were established in the last 10 years, there was an over correction on important questions of gender and sexuality that alienated working class Black men. As a result a group of Black men, with the support of Black women, formed Black Men Build (BMB), which is an organization that engages Black Men to revolutionary political activity. I mention all of this to verify the reality that many of the most well meaning contemporary Black social movement spaces have done a poor job of addressing themselves to the concerns of working class Black men.

What I understand about the beliefs at the core of the manosphere is that the forces that many of them have seen have a material impact on their community have been traditional family values, capitalism and rigid forms of masculinity. They observe Black men with a wife and kids as a blueprint for individual success. They experience entrepreneurs or Black corporate and political elites give out scholarships and donate to nonprofits. They observe Black men who practice rigid forms of masculinity to be influential members of their families and communities. These observations are undeniable, but are tremendously incomplete. In the world as it currently exists, the core beliefs of the manosphere are attempts at empowering Black people by avoiding confrontation with the global system of white supremacy. While there may be individual Black people who are able to become successful in this system, all of those individuals’ success is reliant on powerful institutions that white people control. If we actually want to be a people who truly control our own collective destiny, it requires political combat with this current system where those in power use public policy to enhance their wealth, make rules that benefit their institutions over others and impair the capacity for non-white people to compete for power in this society. Family is important, but the hetero-patriarchal nuclear family as a standard for effective child rearing disincentives the centrality of community mothers and fathers outside a person’s immediate biological family that are necessary for child development. Capitalism and doing business are not the same thing. As a community we need to be doing business that does not feed the existing system of imperialism and exploitation that has left billions of people around the world with very little, while a small few has an unconscionable concentration of the world’s wealth. A socialist economy does not mean that people don’t work, it means that people are not making minimum wage and working 70 hours a week, while people at the very top barely work and have more money than they could ever spend. And rigid forms of masculinity are often harmful toward developing the kind of depth of relationship with ourselves and community that is needed to be a healthy community. There are other places where I go much more in depth about the arguments made here, but I wanted to provide a brief overview of these perspectives to address the beliefs of the manosphere that has found an audience with the white, right wing conservative political ecosystem. 

Tim Black’s commentary often has a lot of overlap with right wing political perspectives. His analysis on immigration is a prime example. His argument is that the influx of immigrants coming into America takes jobs from working class Black men. The jobs that immigrants are often employed to do take jobs away from working class Black men, is his argument. This argument is only valid if you believe that the existing political and economic system, and the policies that buttress them are legitimate. Many of the jobs that Tim Black used as examples are construction jobs, janitorial work, food service etc. Instead of focusing on the economic competition for crumbs that his analysis renders as inevitable, we should be advancing public policy that challenges the economic exploitation of the corporations that exploit immigrants, and Black people who were born here in the US. Establishing living wages, more humane work conditions, community benefits agreements that require corporations that do business in our community to make substantive investments in our neighborhoods is a line of policy proposals that are more beneficial to both communities than focusing on right wing immigration policies that harm immigrants and don’t help American Africans in any serious meaningful economic way. The loss of a few service sector jobs, or low paying construction gigs pales in comparison to the economic benefits of a policy agenda that focuses on extracting the excess wealth accumulated by those who are benefiting from our community’s colonial relationship to this white settler colony. His analysis relegates working class Black men as inevitable subjects of this American plantation where white people and their institutions own the economy. In this arrangement a handful of us are junior partners who benefit from this global system of white supremacy, and the rest of us are wage slaves who at any time can be starved into political submission by those in power.

He is often critical of people like Roland Martin, who he describes as a shill of the Democratic Party. Roland Martin’s platform has value as a space for Black people to engage in political dialogue that you won’t find on other mainstream outlets. I find Roland Martin’s political perspective to be that of a mainstream liberal Democrat. This presents serious limitations for his platform to be a space that is useful for revolutionary Black political activity and at times even hostile to it. But I don’t describe him as a Democratic Party shill, this is too reductive. I think that Roland Martin has a strong sense of his own political beliefs as a liberal Democrat and that he is more useful to the Democratic Party establishment than a more radical Black platform like Black Liberation Media. Tim Black representing himself as a spokesperson for working class Black men and contrasting himself with Roland Martin demonstrates a lack of deep political analysis. His perspective on immigration, that leaves the existing white dominated economic arrangement intact makes him less of a voice for working class Black people than Roland Martin. While Roland Martin’s platform represents a perspective that favors Black inclusion into the American mainstream over a revolutionary challenge to white settler colonialism, at least his perspective is more of a challenge to the exploitation of American Africans and immigrants than Tim Black. He isn’t actually speaking for working class Black men, he is speaking for white corporations and right wing political operatives that want Black men to fight immigrants instead of fighting them.

This is not a new or original observation. But I find it astounding how little direct conversation there is about it in public. My explanation of the political implications of this observation will also make sense of why there isn’t much public conversation about this dynamic. 

The emergence of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has coincided with the increase of college educated folks, non-profit professionals and folks generally in what some would describe as the professional managerial class in the party. Academic and philanthropic adjacent environments are often culturally more liberal/progressive. These people’s sympathies for “marginalized communities” are based on an intellectual and professional engagement that typically lack deep social and cultural engagement. While intellectual and professional engagement have some utility, the absence of deep social and cultural engagement diminishes the ability to implement progressive policies in a way that does not normalize the deep seeded underlying vision of the world where white people are an essential feature of Black peoples’ ability to thrive in this society. Investments by (white) progressives in social programs that they would generally support affirm a vision of the world where it would be legitimate for an institution that is responsible for supporting Black boys to be operated by,  designed by and controlled by white people/institutions. In other words, progressives are often advocating for investments in the careers that are adjacent to their social and professional networks. The thought of the presence of self-sufficient Black institutions operating, designing and controlling the implementation of progressive policies is disruptive to the previously mentioned dynamic.

Amongst Black people these folks are often assumed to be poverty pimps, or academic types who have a voyeuristic relationship to communities of Black people. Also, Black people don’t have nearly as much access to the networks that bolster the professional managerial class, whose livelihoods are reliant on the existence of marginalized communities that need help or “fixing.” With this structural arrangement those who are leaders of the political vehicles and containers of the progressive movement can ascend to spokesmanship regarding issues that acutely impact our community, without actually having to deeply engage our community. With this dynamic progressives are methodically incapable of mobilizing large scale bases of Black people necessary for increased electoral and legislative power toward a leftist political agenda. This structural arrangement and the lack of serious cultural engagement with our community results in the inability to think the thoughts one would need to think in order to effectively execute on and operationalize a strategy to engage Black civil society.

Culture sets the structure for how human beings relate to each other. Activities like where we eat, where we go to hang out with our friends, what clubs we join serve as containers that structure who we interact with. When I deploy the concept of Black civil society, I am referring to a social, cultural and civic world that largely (not entirely) drives Black peoples’ collective movement in this society. Entities like the Divine Nine sororities and fraternities, the Black church, marching bands, barber shops, Black restaurants, Black bookstores etc deeply penetrate sturdy networks of Black people within our community that are best able to mobilize those networks into political and civic action. Because progressives tend to lack deep social and cultural engagement with Black people, they have real trouble respecting that such a thing as Black civil society even exists, much less develop an effective strategy to mobilize it toward advocacy for progressive policies. There are recent studies that characterize the Black community as being more conservative than progressives. There are folks who say that historically Black people have held conservative views as a result of the outsized cultural impact of the Black church. While there is certainly some truth to this, I believe that this is too reductive. 

There are people in our community that are deeply impacted by the conservative political underpinnings that are embedded in traditional mainstream (white) approaches to Christianity. This subset of our community is not really worth deep base building and engaging because they are explicitly anti-revolutionary (ie Clarence Thomas). I believe the presence of this in our community is over stated. Only about 12% of our community in 2024 identified as Republicans according to Pew Research Center, as one way to substantiate that claim. I believe that most people in our community are open to ideological and political persuasion, especially if the pitch is rooted in a commitment to collective Black uplift. We need to do deep consistent engagement with Black civil society to mobilize our community toward progressive and even more radical politics. Too often Black people with a radical political sensibility get frustrated with navigating the conservative elements in our community and gravitate to those progressive networks that are more like minded to cultivate a base of support. To the extent that these leaders are propped up by institutions that have a largely white base of support is the extent that they are not truly representative of the community that they may authentically socially and culturally belong to. At best, good sincere Black leadership of progressive institutions who is most agreeable to and legible to white progressives, at worst, self hating Black people who are able to get white people to anoint them as leaders of people that they actually don’t like.

Some contemporary leftist attribute conservative elements in our community, particularly the views and civic activity of Black social and political elites, to naked opportunism and corruption. This is overstated. With the absence of independent Black electoral and political infrastructure, most Black elected officials are reliant on the traditional, white dominated networks of donors and king makers for their political viability. Many of our people go into politics because they see it as an opportunity to do something good for our community. There are certainly crooks and opportunists, but most of our people are socialized into a theory of change that normalizes settler colonialism. Lacking a revolutionary political analysis, our people are conditioned to render complicity with major drivers of white monopoly capital as essential aspects of mature political engagement. In other words, liberal reformism is all that many people engaged in Black politics have ever seen work to make an observable impact in their community. While I strongly oppose the way that someone like congressman James Clyburn is buttressed by big Pharma to maintain the dominance of the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, describing the networks within Black civil society as “fatback and biscuits” as professor Robert Pascal does (a phrase that implies a deep pathological proclivities to corruption), undermines a serious approach to the structural political limitations that Black people are contending with. Some of these people have an unclear political analysis that I mentioned a few sentences ago. Other Black folks who are lumped into fatback and biscuits are navigating financially tenuous circumstances that genuinely limit their ability to take radical political stances without jeopardizing their livelihood. We have to have complex political relationships that allow for us to push hard toward a revolutionary political agenda in our community without completely alienating people in our community that might be open to finding ways in their politically compromised state to support revolutionary political activity. Operationalizing these complex relationships to politically self aware compromised Black political leaders and those who are politically unclear is both art and science. There is no exact formula on how to execute this tactic in a way that does not lead to radical political advocacy being co-opted by liberals, but it is certainly possible, and will be expounded upon later. But the point here is that there are times when the conservatism that is attributed to Black civil society is actually an expression of our collective financial and material vulnerabilities. For instance, there are many Black people who work within the human/social service sector that is heavily influenced by Zionist. There are a lot of Black people that may have sympathies for Palestinian resistance, but are too financially and materially insecure to jeopardize their livelihood within industries that have observable Zionist influence. This should not be read as conservatism, but because progressives tend to read this in that way, this alienates them from being taken seriously in Black civil society.

Given the fact that anti-Zionism is increasingly becoming a central litmus test for being designated a legitimate contemporary leftist/progressive, addressing the problem that progressives have with effectively navigating and mobilizing Black civil society is a politically existential challenge. This is why revolutionary pan africanism/Black nationalism is an essential methodological framework for leftist political activity. It provides a political framework that prioritizes organizing networks of Black people deep within Black civil society as the basis for dramatically enhancing the political viability of successful leftist and progressive policies. In fact, with my work in Maryland, a few years ago a group of folks came to me and wanted me to support the formation of a progressive caucus in our state legislature, similar to the progressive caucus in congress. I was opposed to the idea because the formation of a progressive caucus would allow non-Black elected officials to have undue levels of power over policies that overwhelmingly impact Black people. I urged them to join the work of my organization, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS), in pushing the Black caucus further left and making it pursue more progressive policies. I have real political advocacy experience being a central force in successfully moving policies in the Maryland state legislature that are left of where the core of the Democratic Party is. Repealing the Law Enforcement Bill of Rights, Reparations for the War on Drugs, resentencing for people with cannabis related convictions & prohibiting police from using odor of cannabis as the basis for a search or traffic stop, the establishment of a Maryland Reparations Commission (and overriding the veto of a Black governor) are examples of policies that were left of where the Democratic Party was comfortable going. Our ability to mobilize the Black caucus to take up these kinds of more progressive policies was essential to successfully passing them. 

In order for anti-Zionism to be an effective political litmus test for progressives/leftists, the contemporary leftist/progressive movement has to become more willing to engage Black civil society. This will require engaging Black people who are not the typical Black folks who spend lots of their own social time in progressive political and social networks. This will require a genuine commitment to investing in Black controlled containers for political activity that are both ideological left and observably taken seriously in Black civil society. This will also require the establishment of complex political relationships that make space for those who are too financially and politically insecure or ideologically unclear to have a role in advancing a politically radical agenda that does not jeopardize their livelihood. Leftists have to substantively engage traditions of radical Black nationalism and revolutionary pan africanism in order to develop the tools needed to effectively navigate and mobilize Black civil society toward progressive/leftist and even radical policies. 

The sub title uses the notion that the Reginald F. Lewis Museum cost $91 to tax payers per visitor as a way to promote a right wing political frame. This frame is an affirmation of the widely circulated mythology that Black people are living off of hard working (white) tax payers. This is a right wing political tactic that is reminiscent of the message of the conservative revolution who stoked white resentment after the social movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s. They framed government support for Black people as an unfair punishment to working class white people. This contributed to many in the white masses who felt that Black people were given too much because of the Civil Rights Movement. This resentment was the basis for the emergence of Ronald Reagan in 1980 which was responsible for some the most radical right wing policies that devastated our community. From the war on drugs, taking funding from health care and investing in prisons, support for Apartheid in South Africa, anti-affirmative action, union busting, and numerous other policies that did enormous damage to our community. McCauley is using this classic right wing frame to stoke white (and those who wish they were white) resentment to characterize the Reginald F Lewis Museum as giving Black people too much.

The analysis in the article does not contextualize the disparities in access to wealth between Black and white institutions. The average white family has 16 times the wealth of an average Black family. That staggering wealth inequality gives white people and their institutions a tremendous advantage, so much so that comparing them to the Baltimore Museum of Art or the Walters Museum of Art is intellectually unserious. It makes sense that large private institutions are less of a “burden on the tax payer” because they have access to more wealth. The logical conclusion of this frame is that only wealthy white institutions should have museums in order to reduce the tax burden on hard working tax payers. That is, by definition, advocating for a system of white institutional control over Black life.

Additionally, because this article doesn’t address racial wealth inequalities between Black folks and white folks, it omits a historical dynamic where many Black institutions needed public investment in order to exist. Many of the long standing HBCU’s are land grant institutions that were made possible by enormous investment of federal dollars. That should cost tax payers more money because this society owes us for the 246 years of free labor that made the wealth that the BMA and the Walters have access to possible.

What is even more sinister is that the owner of the Baltimore Sun, David Smith and his wealthy family (his family is married into the Paterakis family, founder of H&S Bakery), according to a May 2, 2024 Real News Network article written by Stephen Janis, have received $115 million in tax payers dollars between 2012 and 2022 to the Harbor East development that they own. Why should the majority of the tax payers in Baltimore (who are mostly working class and Black) subsidize the profits of companies that cater to wealthy white people? That money is better spent investing in communities that have historically been disinvested in. That $91 per visitor pales in comparison to the $115 million to subsidize wealthy people’s entertainment. 

If we are being completely honest, some people read that Baltimore Sun article and thought to themselves some version of “here we go, another Black institution being run poorly.” Even though, a cursory high school social studies level understanding of the world should lead a reporter to contextualize the social economic inequalities that shape the challenges that faces the Lewis Museum, the decision not to demonstrates one of two things. Either an explicit political agenda to damage the reputation of the museum, or a stunning lack of social, and historical awareness, in both cases make that article a right wing attack on Black cultural institutions. The article gins up racialized stereotypes of Black people leeching off of white people, and that becomes political currency that could be used to attempt to reduce funding to the museum.

The Baltimore Sun reeks of David Smith’s right wing, white supremacist political agenda. 

Go support the Reginald F. Lewis Museum!

We all remember sayings like “it isn’t what you know, but who you know.” Or being encouraged to make sure that white people don’t perceive us as being “ghetto.” We are encouraged to focus on being familiar with white intellectual traditions and regard them as more rigorous or advanced than our traditions. Success is often implicitly understood as synonymous with being deemed valuable or acceptable to the white mainstream. While these are insights that are helpful to navigate this society as it currently exists, these are not impulses toward liberation. These are survival strategies. And our problem is that many of us have only been exposed to narratives about Black people that projects high levels of functional survival on this American plantation. We confuse this with liberation. A world where we experience liberation is a world where Black societies own and control all of the life preserving institutions needed for a people to be self sufficient. The water systems, food distribution, waste management systems, telecommunications, energy production etc being produced by our communities to meet our own needs is truly what it means to be a free people. What we are often exposed to are communities of individual Black people living well, within a white society that ultimately controls their access to the life preserving institutions necessary for a people to live. In that world our quality of life is reliant on the benevolence of white people. Any arrangement where a people is reliant on the benevolence of another for their survival, there is not true ability to wield power. There can be shaming, persuasion, enticing, and these tactics may be situationally effective, but should not be confused with wielding power. Because when the benevolent force decides to stop being benevolent, shaming, persuasion and enticing has no impact. Another way of thinking about this is another Amos Wilson quote. He says that we know that we don’t have power if we say no to the following question, if white people decide they wanted to eliminate Black people from the earth, could we stop them? Unfortunately the answer is no. Black people do not control enough military force, wealth or political power to stop an all out genocide against Black people. What keeps us alive is that white people find it in their interest to have us around. In a world of Black Liberation, we control and own the institutions necessary for us to truly control our own destiny.

This vision of Black Liberation creates a new set of eyes for looking to construct a political strategy for our freedom. Instead of seeing power through the lens of seeking white validation, backing, and legitimacy we envision it through the lens of how to operate in a way where you don’t need white people for anything. That doesn’t mean that we don’t accept help from others, but that we don’t need it in order to be self sufficient. It means that we see that our community is truly our source of power, and not just people that you have to convince to like you. There are blueprints for the construction of institutions and programs needed for us to achieve liberation that only resides in the bodies of work that our community has produced. But we are conditioned to see the solution to our collective struggles in the efforts to get more access to what white people have, instead of working to build a world for ourselves. Most of us cannot fathom a truly free and independent Black world. As a result, this lends itself to folks confusing survival strategies for liberation. Survival strategies are important for us to meet our immediate needs in this global system of white supremacy. But survival strategies are about staying alive right now. We need another mindset to develop approaches to Black Liberation. My challenge to Black people is to decolonize our view on what it means for us to have or build power. Are we building power, or are we working to get access to the sources of power that white people control? If the answer is the latter, that is not Black power, that is white power in Black face.

I want to focus on one aspect of my experience, and that is the lack of acknowledgement from the broader Black community in Baltimore. I remember going to an event in June of that year downtown at the convention center being convened by congressman Elijah Cummings and mayor Shelia Dixon. It was large forum to address how to deal with young men who were caught up in the criminal justice system who had decided to change their lives. It was great to see other Black young adults get support and recognition, but I couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of rejection because there was no such citywide celebration of what I had accomplished. Adults would talk so much about wanting to encourage Black youth to do things besides sports and entertainment, or to stay out of trouble, and here I was a young Black 21 year old man who was a national debate champion and no one seemed to care. This hurt stayed with me for many years. (There were a handful of Black adults that did celebrate what we accomplished, I want to shout out Yvonne Hardy-Phillips who was a tremendous source of encouragement for me). One of the lingering impacts of this hurt is that I have a hard time receiving praise and experiencing joy as a result of it. This is a challenge I work through on a daily basis.

I remember having conversations with people who would hear about me having won a national debate championship and I could tell they were in a state of strong silent disbelief. I looked like a regular young Black man from Baltimore, which implicitly means that there must be some catch. There is a friend of mine who does Black radio/Black media, who is a few years older than me, that would introduce me as having won a national “urban” debate championship. From my perspective a freudian slip that reveals their inability to phantom that I could beat elite white students in intellectual combat. I remember the looks from people that believed that a Black national debate champion should look like someone who didn’t wear fitted hats, throw back jerseys, long tees and graduated from a high school like City or Poly. It was as if me winning a national college debate championship in the most rigorous form of debate that exists made the accomplishment suspect.

Lucky for me, I didn’t do debate for recognition, I did it as a training ground to prepare me for the work that I am doing now. So the lack of recognition didn’t stop me from continuing to advance the work. When I was finished with competitive college debate I sought out Black elders with apparent movement history in Baltimore to deepen my connection and understanding of what it takes to do revolutionary political work for Black people.

I am grateful for the love and support that I get from my community for the work that I do. I don’t take it for granted at all, I know there are many people who do great work that don’t receive the support and recognition that I do. I want to share this story because I want to shine a light on the fact that there are many Black youth who are working to accomplish major things, but their accomplishments are largely ignored by our community. This society has conditioned our collective consciousness to make it difficult to acknowledge the greatness that is in our community because we have been injected with societal beliefs of Black inferiority that are deep and ubiquitous, but often unspoken about. When I think about the hurt I felt, I hope that other people who have this experience aren’t discouraged from continuing to pursue their goals. I also want to encourage our community to seek out these kinds of stories and celebrate our youth so that they feel the love they need to be encouraged to feel committed to giving back to our community.

While there have been significant moments in J .Cole’s career where he was embraced the gimmicky aspects of pop culture in his music, there are very few rappers at his level of commercial success and lyrical ability who have been as vocally critical of the exploitative nature of the music industry as he has. In his newest mixtape, his criticism of how watered down, gimmick laden, and algorithm driven the music industry has become is profound and relevant beyond music. There was a time in hip hop where greatness was measured by your artistic and lyrical capabilities. Additionally, you had to be authentic to the communities that produced hip hop. Whether you liked a particular artist style or not you could recognize who actually had skill and credibility in the community. Now, artists that focus more on social media popularity, and who are great marketers are able to rise to the top. While this assessment of the previous eras of hip hop is a bit romantic, it’s certainly the case that this is a credible and useful way to contrast hip hop then and now.

When J.Cole brings up the use of bots to boost streaming numbers, causing drama as a way to drive engagement on social media, and obsession with fame, he is calling out the way that Black entertainers are pandering to white corporate interests as the basis for their success. He says that he is “leading with skill” which is tremendously important to me. To me, this is a statement of his commitment to being a self respecting Black man. He is refusing to engage in the cultural and digital juking and jiving that has become so normalized in pop culture. This was the central message of the mixtape, and it resonated with me profoundly.

In the work that I do in LBS, there were many opportunities to do the cultural and digital juking and jiving that gets people multimillion dollar grants, and regular access to popular entertainment platforms. This has meant more struggle and no shortcuts for us. What powers our work is our commitment to excellence and the support of the masses of our community. I feel extremely proud of our approach to the work because it has been our commitment to excellence and a base of community support that has made us effective in moving policy in Maryland that benefits Black people. We were not looking for a gimmick as the basis of our power, because that would require us to capitulate to a white American mainstream that wants spectacles of Black suffering instead of Black sovereignty. I am inspired by J.Cole’s approach to this mixtape because in reminds me of my commitment to doing what is needed for liberation, even if it is harder, as opposed to trying to swag our way to political influence.

Our people can benefit from more narratives of self respecting Black men who are not reliant on proximity to power. J.Cole as an artistically self respecting Black man is an important narrative about his mixtape that I hope does not get lost. As a politically self respecting Black man, who is committed to Black Liberation, we need more people to understand that what we need are more of our people that want to truly be excellent in service to our community, and not people who want to dress nice, take pictures with #Blackexcellence captions, with no desire to actually be great in service to our people.

The human service industry is dominated by white control, consistent with the global system of white supremacy. Black people have higher rates of poverty, incarceration, homelessness, unemployment and any other metric of quality of life that you can imagine. This means that we have more contact with human service agencies as recipients of services. And the government is the largest source of funding for human services. Why are systems that mostly serve our communities controlled by people outside of our community? Furthermore, why are they even qualified to serve our community? The reality is that it is often the case that the human service sector is a stepping stone to launch people’s professional careers (mostly white folks and the Black people they find acceptable). White controlled non profit organizations and its thought leaders profiteer off of the suffering of Black people. They are often able to avoid these kinds of public criticisms because they are able to leverage the handful of people that they help to justify their missionary zeal. I have written more extensively on this in “When Baltimore Awakes.” 

The reality is that ending control of the human service sector from white domination is not just an endeavor in economic justice, it is an effort to provide more effective services to the community. Black led grassroots, community based organizations are generally more qualified to provide effective services to our community than the corporate non profits and philanthropy that has dominated the human service industry. LBS and other organizations have waged political warfare against those who dominate this industry so that more of those public dollars go into the hands of organizations run by our community. It is our belief that this political fight over many years resulted in creating political pressure to invest in more grassroots organizations, particularly in the arena of violence prevention. Because of the economic inequities, Black led community based organizations have less administrative infrastructure to navigate the onerous burden of government bureaucracy. This is often characterized as Black organizations being prone to corruption. This notion of corruption is amplified by the societal stigmas of Black people being inherently criminal. This doesn’t mean that Black people don’t engage in corruption or that we shouldn’t hold people accountable who engage in it. It does mean that we need to be careful that criticisms of entities that distribute resources to community based organizations are not weaponized to help maintain white control over the distribution of resources.

Sinclair Broadcasting and its executive chairman David Smith have used their platforms to cast Black led organizations as inherently corrupt. It’s hit pieces through its so called “spotlight on maryland” on We Our Us, Bmore Empowered, the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund and even at one time on LBS is an extension of a political agenda that sees white economic domination of the human service industry as a more trustworthy vehicle for serving our community. Their constant elevation of Isabel Cumming in the Office of the Inspector General and the way that pieces of these reports show up frequently in Ivan Bates letter to Brandon Scott about MONSE and Fox 45’s news coverage is not an accident. The reports of the “cloak of secrecy” that Bates refers to frequently in his letter to the mayor are almost exclusively the reporting of Sinclair and aligned radio personalities on WBAL radio. If you ask leaders from these organizations that are engaged in community based violence prevention, they will tell you what they do to address violence. Holding organizations accountable for responsibly using public dollars is an important role for the public to play. But it is important that those who are engaged in holding organizations accountable are not complicit with the political agenda that would diminish the public dollars available to Black led grassroots organizations.

Sinclair Broadcasting and its executive chairman David Smith are engaged in a political attack on the distribution of public dollars into the hands of Black led grassroots organizations. It is consistent with Trump’s use of withholding federal dollars to entities and initiatives that are understood to be supporting our community (i.e. SNAP benefits, non-white cultural museums, DEI etc). Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates December letter to Mayor Brandon Scott is just another extension of this political warfare that we need to be active in fighting against.  What is even more sinister about this war against Black led grassroots organizations on the part of David Smith and the institutions and people that he controls is their unwillingness to publicly engage in a discussion about the nature of their reporting with those who are militantly pushing back against their agenda.  There are people like Desmond Stinnie who runs the Baltimore City Voters page who is aligned with David Smith’s agenda (and heavily post Fox45 “news stories” in the group) who have a lot to say online, but has yet to answer the call of doing a public conversation on the topic. Additionally, Patrick Hauf who is a so-called journalist who does Fox45’s “Spotlight on Maryland” provides the kind of analysis that you would expect from a Towson frat boy who likely never actually read a serious book about any of the things that he is purporting to be an expert on. David Williams, the frequent guest expert from the “Taxpayers Protection Alliance” provides additional commentary that you could get from reading Youtube comments from Fox45 videos. I am issuing a challenge to David Smith and all of those who aligned with his agenda to a public discussion on their views of the nature of public investments in grassroots organizations. To all of the organizations that they harass with their “reporting,” direct them to engage LBS in a public discussion about their coverage of non-profits that receive public dollars.  Let’s see if they have the courage to actually engage people who will fight them back.

I was talking to my barber, Jabari Natur, about the gratitude I have for the work that him and so many others have done before me in Baltimore to advance Black revolutionary consciousness. I am a beneficiary of that work and as a result, I am likely going to be able to spend the next several years of my life living what I imagine would have been minister Malcolm’s dream, to be a powerful political force for Black Liberation. This fills my heart with such profound gratitude.

This year I plan on sharing more of my reflections on what it’s like to move through the world with such an enormous spiritual and communal responsibility. I have hesitated to share these thoughts because I imagine that it conveys a kind of self importance that can be experienced by others as arrogance. But I am at a stage in life where my track record and commitment is strong and my community often conveys to me their belief in the magnitude and importance of my work. I look forward to sharing more of my internal thoughts about my journey in the work in 2026.