2025 The Call And Appeal
The Fractured Black Community
Community Power is strength—the capacity for organizations, groups, and individuals to define the public space we live in, negotiate, broker, and exert political power within the larger community to demand justice, fairness, and equality. The Black community, through collective community action and participation, must establish mechanisms and systems to ensure our agenda is included in all decision-making and planning for what happens in this space.
We must organize and mobilize our natural assets, social capital, and the power of the masses of Black and poor people to systematically address our concrete conditions and move toward full participation, equity in all community affairs, and the ability to control what the future will be within the communities we live in.
The main sources of power are money, public authority, political and private institutions, and people. Unfortunately, we have been deprived of owning, producing, or controlling anything of significant value in the city of Pittsburgh. However, we can organize a strong movement of people's power.
We must build mass and broad-based neighborhood and citizen-driven policy reform and advocacy alliances. Open planning and community meetings should involve a wide spectrum of local people, community groups, and organizations to examine the impact of systemic, structural racial barriers and inequalities that have hindered the social, cultural, and economic advancement of Black people in the city of Pittsburgh.
The Council will work towards building a consensus vision and a concrete, direct action plan geared towards creating an urban environment where families are healthy, and streets are peaceful.
Rebuilding the Black Community one block at a time must be rooted in self-reliance, self-sufficiency, and self-determination.
Pulling together neighborhood groups, organizations, and individual forces can lead to a strong alliance and movement to combat social and economic disparities, as well as the underlying causes that perpetuate community violence.
Let’s make a commitment as a Black community for the New Year to address all fractured issues and differences and forgive one another for past transgressions for the greater benefit of our people.
How has white supremacy and racism impacted your ability to work with other Black people or organizations—or, for that matter, to love yourself?
The hatred and disease of the heart must be eradicated in order to throw off the shackles of emotional, cultural, intellectual, and psychic injuries inflicted through the social engineering of Black people.
We must deconstruct white supremacist and racist thoughts and reconstruct our African-centeredness, purpose, essence, culture, and spirituality.
The struggle is to recapture our humanity, compassion, and love for ourselves and our people.
The humanity of Black people matters!
Yorumlar