The Shawn James Black Group Economics Challenge

My name Is Shawn James. And I’m issuing a Challenge to the Black Community: Spend money at Black owned businesses like mine.

Every year $3.3 trillion dollars in cash and credit flow throough the Black community. And 97 percent of that money winds up in the hands of Whites and nonblacks making them richer. Allowing them to send their kids to private schools and private Universities and live a middle class lifestyle.

All While Black people remain the poorest in the industrialized world.

The Black Group Economics Challenge works like this: Spend money with a Black-owned business like mine. Then tell your friends about that Black-owned business in your community. Then get your friends to spend money with that Black-owned business and other Black-owned businesses in the community.

What’s the goal of this challenge? To get Black people to start supporting their own businesses. To get them see the direct impact Black dollars have on Black people when they’re spent with other Black people. And to start getting Black people to start putting Black first when it comes to spending their money.  

If thousands of everyday people and hundreds of celebrites can go out and pour buckets of ice water on each other to raise money for ALS, how many Black people can spend as little as 99 cents to support a business or two in our own community? We’ve got time to march and protest, but we take no time to invest in ourselves and put money in our own pockets.

Then we scratch our heads as we struggle to make progress.

If the Black community is going to move forward Black people have to start paying themselves first and putting themselves first. Economic power is the only way to get social change in America. Show the world the power of your money in 2015. 

2014 Year in Review (Progress Report)

I’ve been really busy on a couple of projects. So I haven’t had much time to blog. More on those next year! But here’s a rundown on 2014.

One of my BIGGEST Accomplishments of 2014!

2014 was a rough year for me. I ran into a lot of challenges and a lot of obstacles in my efforts to keep SJS DIRECT afloat. But in the face of all those challenges and obstacles I had to learn how to adapt and try new things in order to work towards achieving my goals.

Due to quality control issues I was forced to pull back on the number of titles I published this year. In 2013 I published a record 13 paperbacks and eBooks. This year I published half that number of books. The titles I published for 2014 included:

Isis: Wrath of the Cybergoddess (Paperback & eBook)

Isis: Power of the Princess (Paperback & eBook)

E’steem: The Beast From the Bowels (eBook)

E’steem: Faerie Tale (eBook)

All About Nikki-The Sensational Second Season (eBook)

The Thetas (paperback edition)

Why 70 Percent of Black women are single (eBook)

In an effort to continue to improve the quality of the books I’ve published I began taking more time to line edit my manuscripts, and even read passages and dialogue aloud to make sure they sounded right. And the results of more delibate editing have led to better quality. Isis: Wrath of the Cybergoddess and Isis: Power of the Princess were two of the cleanest books I’ve ever published. Almost error free. Almost.

In an effort to improve the quality of my covers I contacted Bill Walko of the webcomic The Hero Busine$$ (great strip I never miss) to commission a cover. Bill did a GREAT job on the Isis: Wrath of the Cybergoddess cover. He captured the spirit the characters in his art I’d love to work with him again in the future. I just need to get the funds together. If I can find a day job…

It was a lot of work to get the funds to pay for the Isis: Wrath of the Cybergoddess cover. That project taught me a lot about perseverance in the face of adversity. When my Kickstarter failed, I had to regroup to get the money to pay for the cover. I searched my closet and put parts of my action figure collection, toy catalogs from the American International Toy Fair and even a vintage Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Pie wrapper up on eBay to raise the funds to pay for the cover.

I had to sacrifice a lot of my childhood collectibles to build towards my future as a publisher, but if you want anything in life you have to give up what you have to get what you want.

While I made a lot of progress on quality control it’s been a struggle to sell paperbacks and eBooks these days.

I recently had to discontinue the Lightning Source editions of All About Marilyn and The Temptation of John Haynes. You can still buy paperback copies of those books on Amazon through CreateSpace now, and those editions are pretty much the same as the original.

I’m in the middle of a sales slump and I’m trying to regroup. Recently I just put The Temptation of John Haynes and Isis: Wrath of the Cybergoddess on Kindle Unlimited in an effort to get people buying books. If you have Kindle Unlimited, you can borrow those titles right now. With every borrow I get royalties.

Due to the sales slump I had to delay Isis: All About the Goddess going to Smashwords. Quite a few eBook titles had to go back to Kindle Unlimited like The Thetas. I hate making books Kindle Unlimited exclusive, but I have to go where the money and the readers are. You can still buy those books in paperback at Barnes & Noble, in order for me to take an eBook to other online booksellers like Smashwords or Nook, I need sales in those venues!

I started a new novel, and I’m building towards plot point one on it. I also am in the middle of an E’steem series story and an Isis series story. If you like Goths and Vampires, next year’s stories will be chock full of em!  

Still working towards a REAL All About Nikki Sitcom. Stuff is in the works. Due to poor sales on the eBooksI had to stop at Season 2. But I did start a Season 3 episode. I may just finish it and release it. If the response is strong, there might be a season 3…But right now I’m in the middle of the Isis series. Ten books in and I’m just getting started on the run. Wonder Woman fans…these would have been some of the kinds of stories you would have gotten in my proposed run!

Next year I will be doing more blogs on on Fantasy, Sci-fi and comic books. I’m redoubling my efforts to get Black children to start reading African-American science fiction and fantasy. I believe the earlier we get kids seeing Black characters in fantasy and science fiction stories they’ll start seeing themselves in those kinds of careers when they get older.

And there will be more blogs focused on comic books. The recent feature on Simpin & Trickin in Archie Comics and John Walker the Crazed Captain America were a test of a new feature I’m planning.

The new feature will be about Comic storylines that meant a lot to me as a kid growing up. A Marvel 80’s feature comparing and contrasting all the changes to DC’s New 52 is finished and ready to go and all I have to do is take the picture.

Pictures are a new feature I’m adding to blogs in the hopes of getting readers’ attention.

I’ve been doing a lot more videos on YouTube as well. Some have been about the African-American community, but what I’ve seen from the stats is that the videos I do talking about Black fantasy and science fiction get a lot more hits than the ones I do on Black issues. That’s going to be my primary focus for 2015. Again, I want to do more to get Black children reading Black fantasy and science fiction. There’s a growing audience for those videos, and I’ll be creating more content to get people focused on books like the Isis series and the E’steem series.

I did a video about how Salli Richardson-Whitfield’s acting influenced my work and she favorited on it Twitter! It was also shared by friends in her network! That made me smile! One of the high points of my year. Salli Richardson-Whitfield is the inspiration for E’steem and I’ve always wanted to tell her how much her work influenced mine, and I finally met one of my personal lifelong goals.

Oh, and the blog is getting closer to the millionth hit. Avergaing between 2,000 and 3,000 hits a day. Some days are at 4,000 to 5,000 hits, but that’s a long way from the days of just 100 hits five to six  years ago.

2014 was filled with a lot of challenges. However in spite of all my struggles I continued to make progress. Every goal I set at the beginning of the year I accomplished, and that meant a lot to me. I’ve been working on a shoestring for the last couple of years and doing my best to make something out of nothing. Don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this, but I’m going to do what God says and Keep going…

 

CHRISTMAS eBOOK FREEBIES ON KINDLE AND SMASHWORDS!

From Christmas Day to December 26th I'll be offering several ebooks for FREE on Amazon's Kindle and Smashwords!

The Temptation of John Haynes

Isis: Wrath of the Cybergoddess

Isis: Power of the Princess

Commemcement 

School of Hard Knocks: The Re-Education of Jim Reid

John Walker…The Crazed Captain America!

All images © Marvel Comics. Used in Fair Use of Copyright Law.

Before Jean Paul Valley...there was John Walker.

And Before Knightfall, there was Captain America No More! (Also Known as The Captain on trade paperbacks)

Back in the mid-1980s at Marvel Comics it became fashionable to put a new character in a veteran superheroes’ boots and see if they could fill them. After the sales success of Jim Rhodes as the new Iron Man a few years earlier, Marvel decided to give it another try with Captain America. With a master craftsman like the late Mark Gruenwald penning the story comic fans were in for a treat.

Yeah, Mavel was all about change in the 1980s. Wolverine’s Brown costume. Spider-Man’s Black costume. Iron Man’s red and silver armor. Thor’s beard and later his armored look. The Joe Fixit Gray Hulk. And because the stories were just AWESOME the reaction to the changes at Marvel was mostly positive. Most Marvel fans like myself back then just went with the flow. And I’ll have to say we got some of the best Captain America comics in the history of the character.

One day in 1987, (Captain America Vol.1 #332) The Commission of Superhuman activities decided they wanted to control the actions of Captain America. And Steve Rogers being the freedom-loving All-American patriot that he is wasn’t having it. So he gave up his Red, white and blue costume and shield.

Steve, not discouraged by the Comission taking his costume decided to keep fighting the good fight even without the Captain America costume. Donning a Red, white and black costume and continued fighting crime as The Captain.

Hey, heroes in Black were the in thing in comics in the 1980s. Black costume Spider-man sold a kajillion copies. Black Iron Man sold a kajillion copies. Gray Hulk sold a kajillion copies. So a Black Costumed Captain America would sell just a kajillion more.

And after Steve left the Comission decided that Captain America was just a costume. In their eyes anyone could be Captain America. So they chose John Walker, formerly known as Super Patriot. Walker was the new n’ improved super soldier more in line with the grim n’ gritty Regan era 1980s. Complete with a hardass attuide and no-nonsense approach to crimefighting Walker’s personality was much more relatable to fans of 1980s action heroes like Rambo, and Joe the American Ninja.

And thanks to strength augmentation by the Power Broker he had enhanced powers ready to take right on those rougher, tougher grim n’ gritty 1980s badguys. With super strength, a higher resistance to injury, and training from the Taskmaster, he was twice as dangerous as that old fart Steve Rogers.

Besides, who needs truth and justice when body counts are the in thing?

Along with came a new partner Bucky, Lemar Hoskins. Unfortunately writer Mark Gruenwald had no idea that “Buck” was a racist term regarding Black people. And the idea of a Black man who was bigger and stonger than Captain America dressed up in a child’s costume was offensive to many Black readers. But with Gruenwald being a man of character, owned up to his mistake, and dealt with the issue in a later issue in the storyline. In a few issues, Lemar changed his costume and got the new code name Battle Star. Shame we haven’t seen much of Battle Star in the last few decades. He had a lot of potential as a character. 

For all his new powers and new partner, Walker unfortunately lacked one thing: HEART. Yes, he was a responsible, conscientous man. But his approach to crimefighting was NOT that of Captain America. Walker like Jean Paul Valley was emotional, aggressive and downright brutal. He was the kind of guy to throw Captain America’s mighty shield and decapitate a guy. Yeah, this kind of thing was considered “cool” back in the grim n’ gritty 1980s but at the end of the day many comic fans realized it’s just not heroic.

On his first mission as Captian America John Walker beat supervillain Professor Power to death. And that little incident of excessive force only foreshadowed the future carnage Walker would get himself involved in. After having his identity revealed by his former friends Left Winger and Right Winger, he and his parents are kidnapped by the Watchdogs, a terrorist organization. In the cross fire, he witnesses the murder of his parents. Seeing his parents die in front of him in such a gruesome fashion, Walker snaps, murdering most of the Watchdogs in an extremely violent and brutal ways.

But in spite of this traumatic event and Walker’s mental breakdown, he was allowed to keep working for the commission. Head Comissioner Rockwell said he’d invested too much money in Walker and he just didn’t want to lose it. So On the day of his parents’ funeral Walker is sent to shadow Freedom Force as they plan to capture the Resistants. Enraged, Walker compromises the by brutally beating and murdering several of the mutants.

 After this incident, Walker terrorized Left Winger and Right Winger’s parents telling them he’s going to kill their sons. This leads up to a brutal confrontation at an oil refinery where he brutally beats both men and leaves them to suffer before they’re blown up.

Wolverine boasts that he’s the best there is at what he does…But with the body count John Walker racks up during his term as Captain America I’m thinking he could give Logan a run for his money. When the bad guys see that smile…Things are just not gonna end well.

Walker continues to leave a trail of bodies in his wake like a 1980s Cannon Group action movie until he botches a mission to catch Flag Smasher. As he screws up this mission, Battle Star is forced to call in The Captain Steve Rogers (missed that issue at the newsstand,) to salvage the mission where D-Man unfortunately is lost and Walker loses Cap’s shield to Steve. It’s after the botched Flag-Smasher mission that some Commission members realize they might have made a mistake. That maybe not anyone could be Captain America.

But the head Comissioner Mr. Rockwell takes his orders from a mysterious man behind a red screen and he’s just LOVING John Walker’s work. So Walker is STILL allowed to keep working as Captain America in spite of NUMEROUS fuck-ups that would gave gotten anyone else fired.

Eventually we get a big clue into who the Mysterious boss of bosses with Steve Rogers’ face is during a morning workout where he takes five a day…lives, that is. The opening first four pages of Captain America #350 are some of the most chilling a comic fan will ever read. Watching the man with Steve Roger’s face make light work of those Taskmaster henchmen stil sends a chill down my spine 25 years later.

One panel in particular will eerily seem familiar to Batman fans. Yeah, that’s where I think DC got the idea for Batman: Knightfall. I’m just sayin.

Further along in the CLASSIC Captain America Vol 1. #350 Walker gets a call telling him to come to the Smith Building to get his shield. And the man with Steve Rogers face is ready to reveal himself to Walker, the Crazed Captian America. On seeing the numerous terrorists working for the mysterious stranger and being told the man with Steve Rogers’ face is Steve Rogers, the Original Captain America, Walker loses it. At this point you feel for the bad guys. Why?

Because when Cap says it’s Party Time…Shit is about to get Real.

Steve Rogers in his Captain garb has seen Rockwell, the head commissioner die a horrible death that gives us a hint to who the big villain of the storyline is. Steve heads down to the Smith Building where the Crazed Cap has brutally slaughtered all of the henchmen. And now Steve Rogers has to face the full on fury of John Walker, the CRAZED CAP!

Thankfully Steve is up to the challenge. And after a battle with his replacement he shows that brains always over come brawn. Once he dispatches of the Crazed Cap, Steve has a confrontation with the mastermind of this whole mess: The Red Skull. But before the Skull can attack Steve, Walker makes one last heroic action as Captain America and throws his mighty shield making sure the Skull takes a face full of his own dust of death. But because he’s a clone he doesn’t die from it. So he’ll be back to terrorize Cap another day.

With the Skull defeated, The Captain and the John Walker head back to the Comission to find out what’s to come of the mantel of Captain America. Realizing that Walker is just too dangerous to have operating in the field.

 But Steve ain’t taking no orders from the Comission. So he leaves in his cool ass new red, black and green costume. But Crazy John Walker has a moment of clarity and realizes that he’s just NOT Captain America. That Steve created the morals, ideals and code of conduct that make Captain America an ICON. And that no one can do the job of being Captiain America better than he does. So on Walker’s concession, Steve takes the costume back and goes back to being the Living Legend Captain America!

While John Walker fakes his death, goes out to get some meds, some psychotherapy, and would return to crimefighting in Steve’s red white and black as the U.S. Agent. The Agent would make SHIT EXTRA REAL for the West Coast Avengers before fading into obscurity. Trust me, the less said about Walker’s later career after the West Coast Avengers the better.

FORCE WORKS *SHUDDER* Maximum Security *FACEPALM* New Invaders…*DOUBLE FACEPALM*. Gamma Flight…Good Gravy.

And what happened to him in The Siege…Damn. Just Damn.  

Yeah, I hear he’s back with all his limbs after being healed by a lobotomized Venom symbiote from a pocket dimension (Damn, that’s convoluted), but someone needs to just give Mr. Walker a good story where he can be a badass patriot and not a joke. Maybe even team him back up with Battle Star, another character who fell off the map. Walker is too good a character to get screwed the way he’s been the last 25 or so years. I’d hate to think being the Crazed Cap was the high point of his career.

Captain America No More/The Captain reinforces a cardinal rule about replacement heroes: No matter how New N’ Improved things are everything always goes back to classic. And there’s a reason why everything always goes back to classic: It’s not who wears the costume, but what they stand for.

In Knightfall, the breaking of Batman was the climax of the story. We saw how much Batman could take from the bad guys before his body broke. But in Captain America No More/ The Captain, we see the contrast. The breaking of Steve Rogers is the inciting incident. When he’s stripped of Captain America’s costume we see a powerful internal character transformation begin as the man behind the mask rebuilds his character and resolve in his mission to continue fighting to protect the country that he loves. And as he rebuilds his character and resolve to adapt to the challenges put in front of him, we see it’s the values of the man behind the mask are what makes him a hero time after time.

Most of today’s modern comics just can’t compare to Captain America No More/The Captain. When there’s a PERFECT Buildup of a storyline and the payoff delivers in HUGE dividends the way this one does it’s just SO WORTH IT. I mean, Gruewald took 50 ISSUES to build to the Red Skull’s comeback after his death in the 300^th issue! And he took at least TWO YEARS to build from Steve losing the costume of Captain America to his eventual return to the red, white, and blue costume. When you consider that most comic series can’t even GET to the 25^th issue these days building into this kind of storyline in a slow, organic fashion is a FEAT that shows the SKILL and CRAFT of the writer and the creative team.

And the fact that Gruenwald dug DEEP into the Captain America mythos and repackaged obscure villains in his rogues gallery like the Mutant Force into the Resistants and made us CARE about D-listers like the Serpent Society and D-Man shows how great a storyteller he is. His kind of craftsmanship when it comes to storytelling is something that lacks in a lot of today’s comics.

Captain America No More/The Captain was the second big comic storyline I got into when I started collecting comics seriously at 14 in 1988. And I’d have to say enjoyed it MORE than Armor Wars, the storyline that got me HOOKED on comics! All the build up over a dozen or so issues led to an AWESOME payoff. I never saw that Red Skull twist coming!

I’m gonna go on record saying we really need an Omnibus for the late Mark Gruenwald’s Captain America. As a writer, the late Mark Gruenwald is one of the greats in the comic book industry. His legendary knowledge of Marvel Comics history, The Marvel Universe of characters and skill at weaving a tale were all on display during his legendary hundred issue run on Captain America. Gruenwald’s storytelling skill is something that needs to be preserved in one volume so that aspiring comic book writers can see the skill and craft of comic book writing. I’d say he’s just as much a visionary at Marvel as Chris Claremont, John Byrne, George Perez, Walt Simponson, David Micheliene, Bob Layton, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. If you see a copy of The Captain in the trade paperback section of your local comic shop pick it up. It’s one of the best comic storylines of the 1980s.

WHAT DO YOU WANT WHITE PEOPLE?

In the aftermath of the Eric Garner and Michael Brown Grand Jury decisions I have a question to ask:

WHAT DO YOU WANT WHITE PEOPLE?

Ever since we got our freedom from you in the so-called Emancipation Proclomaiton all you do is give Us grief. Seriously, what do you White folks want?

When we started trying to make our way across Your country after your Civil War You establish the standard of Separate but equal in Your Courts.

But when we try to make things equal for ourselves You insist we take substandard.

We start showing we can be the equal to you in terms of education, businesss, and social status. We start competing with you.  You create propoganda depicting us as Coons. Brutes. Mammies, Jezebels Tragic Mulattoes, and other caricatures meant to demean and degrade Us.

But when We stand up for ourselves and speak out against and your hate-filled racist rhetoric You lynch and murder us.

You say you don’t want niggers working for you.

So we try to build Our own businesses so we can work for ourselves. But you send Klansmen to terrorize Our business owners and burn them down.

You say you don’t want niggers in your towns and cities.

So we try to build Our own towns so we don’t have to live around you. But you come and burn our towns down.

You say You don’t want niggers around your children in school.

So we try to build Our own schools and colleges. But when we try to use Our education to better ourselves, You tell us we’re not smart enough unless we go to Your schools.

You say You don’t want niggers around You.

So we try to leave You and your racism behind and you come and try to take us off trains so we can’t leave.

You say You want us to fight in your military in Your second World War.

But when come back from fighting YOUR enemies and protecting YOUR Constitution, and we ask for Our Civil Rights we were PROMISED as a so-called citizen under YOUR Constitution by YOUR 13^th and 14^th Amendments, your police brutalize us, your courts railroad us, and you imprison us oftentimes for crimes we didn’t commit.

And when Our free citizens we protest the unjust treatment under Your unfair legal system, Your police spray us with fire hoses, and attack Us with dogs. 

In the face of being shown to the World in Television and the Press as the Hypocrites You are You say You want us to integrate into Your society.

But you send your undesirables like White Feminists and CIA subversives to destroy our families and undermine our family values. You flood our communities with drugs. You kill our Black men in your Vietnam War. Then you con our women into buying into your Welfare State and its vicious cycle of co-dependency.

And when Our women take the welfare You insisted on giving them You say You niggers are taking all Your taxes.

Then when Our fathers and sons try to start businesses so We won’t have to take Your Taxes and pay Our own way, You undermine those plans by denying Us loans from Your banks.

And when We try to get jobs, Your managers refuse to hire our Black men for jobs that will allow them to take care of their families.

You make promises of equal opportunity through your affirmative action.

But you make every effort to deny a Black man a job. And when he finally does get a job, at one of Your companies, You make every effort to fire him for the smallest infraction. Then in an effort to emasuclate Black men, You hire Our Black women and make them the leaders of Our families.

All Black people have wanted since they were forced to come to this country is a chance to get our opportunity at the American dream promised in 1865. But everywhere we go there You White people are right there standing in the God damn way.

So seriously White people what do You want?

Do You want Us to remain in a permanent underclass? Do you want a permanent group of serfs who are just supposed to remain at the bottom to sate Your ego? A permanent group of people You have around in your counry just there for You to say You’re doing better than? A permanent group of people You can point a finger to and say You’re better than?

Or is it that You want us to be the god over Us? Do You want Us to worship you like some sort of deity like your White Jesus? 

You allow everyone else an opportunity to achieve the American Dream. Women, Homosexuals, Jews, Italians, Greeks, Slavs, Hispanics, Asians, and even Africans. But when a Black man who was born and raised in this country comes for his slice of the American Apple pie you don’t want him to take his piece. Hell, you don’t want him to come to the table.

WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM?

Is your ego so fragile that you can’t stand the idea of a Black man being the equal to you? Does the idea of a truly equal society scare you?  Are you scared of a truly level playing field? Are you so scared of competing with a Black man? Are you afraid of standing eye-to-eye with a Black man? Are you afraid he’ll actually surpass you? Is that why you keep sabotaging him at every turn?

Are you afraid that once things are truly equal in your land of opportunity you’ll be held accountable for your actions by people of color? That you’ll be called on your bullshit? That people will finally see what a LIAR you are? Or are you afraid someone Black will finally expose all the hypocrisy behind your so-called perfect democracy on a world stage?

Or are you so caught up in your delusion of being some sort of perfect supreme master race that you try to undermine every Black person who challenges it and kill everyone who refutes those ideals?

Seriously White folks this is getting tired. You’re gonna have to make up your minds. What do you want from Black people?

Many of us know what we want from You: All we just want do is live. Live in a country our ancestors didn’t want to come to in the first place. We want our own businesses. We want our own families. We want our own communities. We want our American dream. The slice of America’s apple pie we were promised over 150 years ago by Abraham Lincoln.

And we want it without all the strings, conditions, and ever-changing terms you keep trying to attach to it. We don’t want Your government programs. We don’t want Your handouts. We don’t want Your pity. We don’t want Your efforts to keep maintaining a paternalistic co-dependent relationship where everything remains separate and unequal.

We want the same fair shake every Woman, Homosexual, European, Jew, Arab, Hispainc, Asian, Indian and African who comes to this country gets. You give them equal opportunity. You give them equal protection under the law. You don’t get in their way.

But every chance You get You get in ours. Why?

White people you’re the ones who are confused. When it comes to Black people you say one thing and you do another. Your hypocrisy is the hidrance to our people making progress in your country for nearly two centuries. We only want the rights you give everyone else and an opportunity to stand on our own two feet like everyone else. We want to have life, liberty and the pursuit of our own happiness on our terms, not yours. We do not need you to be the god over us. If given a chance we can lead ourselves and build our neighborhoods into strong Black communities.

We Black people know what We want. But White people what do you want?

Is it time for the Black Community to FIRE Al Sharpton?

 When a Football team has a losing record the owner fires the head coach.

When a Basketball team has a losing record the owner fires the head coach.

When a Hockey team has a losing record the owner fires the head coach.

When a Baseball team has a losing record the owner fires the Manager.

In some cases when things are not going right for a sports team not only fires the manager, the owner goes further up the chain and fire the General Manager. In extreme cases they clean house and get rid of high priced players who are dead weight.

The way I see it Black people need to fire Al Sharpton. Al Sharpton has a losing record when it comes to Civil Rights. What is he 2 for 53? Since 1988 I can count loss after loss under his leadership. 25 straight years of FAILURE.  Look at the number of high profile cases that have ended either unresolved or with acquittals:

Tawana Brawley

Michael Stewart

Michael Griffith

Yusuf Hawkins (won)

Abner Louima (won)

Patrick Dorismond

Amadou Diallo

Sean Bell

Trayvon Martin

Oscar Grant

And now Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

If Sharpton was a head coach for any sports organization he’d have been FIRED a long time ago. If he were a CEO at a major corporation he’d have been FIRED a long time ago. Hell, if he were a manager at a retail establishment he’d have been FIRED a long time ago.

Why? Because in all those positions of leadership the leader is held accountable for their actions. They’re held accountable for their performance.

But Because Black people have no sense of ownership in their communities across their country they don’t hold incompetent Black leaders like Al Sharpton and his National Action Network cronies accountable for anything. Since Black folks just eke out an existence in neighborhoods they don’t own or control, they just continue to support him loss after loss after loss instead of calling him to the table and holding him accountable.

Sharpton’s approaches to Civil Rights are rooted in archaic approaches to social justice that are no longer effective today. White Supremacy has adapted to these approaches and is changing its course to counter every strategy he has presented time after time for the last 15 years. Yet he continues to do the exact same things and expect a different result.

The rest of the world calls this insanity, but Al Sharpton and the dysfunctional Black leaders who follow him call this Civil Rights. 

Give this man a pink slip and send him on his way.

Looking at Sharpton’s approach to Civil Rights all he uses the same old defensive strategies with no plan for an offense. All Sharpton knows how to do March n’ protest, shuck n’ jive and Blame n’ shame. Beg for crumbs from White folks. Reacting after things happen instead of responding to prevent them from happening.

In the aftermath of the Grand Jury decisions from Michael Brown and Eric Garner, Al Sharpton is organizing yet another March on Washington. Er…didn’t we just march on Washington last year to celebrate the 50^th Anniversary of the March on Washington? How is another march going to change anything for Eric Garner and Michael Brown? Especially on a SATURDAY when all the government offices are CLOSED?

Someone needs to tell Al Sharpton This is 2014. We need strategies to fight White Supremacy and Racism that will work in the 21^st Century, not the 20^th Century.

When it comes to Al Sharpton he’s just going around in circles doing the same thing and expecting a different result. In all the protests for Eric Garner and Michael Brown there was no offensive strategy to go along with it. The way I see it Black folks need MORE than Justice. We need a comprehensive plan to counter the White Supremacy behind the deaths of these Black men and the culture that is working to destroy Black people mentally, emotionally and socially.

In all of Al Sharpton’s protests for Eric Garner and Michael Brown, Where was the plan for Black Group Economics? A plan to get Black people buying Black and supporting Black-owned businesses on Black Friday would have had a stronger impact than a bunch of Black folks Marching and protesting chanting “No Justice No peace” in nonblack shopping districts or tearing up their own communities like Ferguson. It would have brought some of the $3.3 trillon Black people have in spending power back to Black-owned businesses.  Maybe if Black leaders made this an annual thing it’d allow Black business owners to get the capital needed to hire other Black people like Eric Garner so they wouldn’t be on the street to be a target of police.

And where was the plan to organize neighborhood watch in Black neighborhoods like the Guardian Angels? If we patrolled our own communities it would cut down on the patrols by police that got Akai Gurley killed. If we patrolled our neighborhoods we could deal with the dusty dysfunctional Negroes wreaking havoc in our neighborhoods like drug dealers and gang members. And maybe we could cut down our own crime rate and save a life or two.

Furthermore, where is the plan to establish moral standards for Black people? The Black community lets all sorts of debauchery pass. And thanks to this debauchery it’s a cesspool. Everything goes from Scandal, World Star Hip Hop, Ghetto Gaggers, Gangsta Rappers and movies like Monster’s Ball, Precious, and No Good Deed. Children as young as five years old are exposed to this media. And we haven’t heard a PEEP from Al Sharpton to speak against it. Maybe if we established standards for Black people we could cut an inroads in the birth of all these bastard babies mothers and finally stop the vicious cycle of poverty that’s on its third generation. 

A good Black leader would have a plan for all this. But Not Al Sharpton. No, he only comes out to speak for Black people when a Black man is killed by a White Cop or a nonblack person. The same hustle he’s been running since 1988.

This is why Black people need to FIRE him as their spokesman. Sharpton has a 2-for-53 record when it comes to Civil Rights. In any other part of the world he wouldn’t be allowed to continue speaking for the community. He wouldn’t be considered a leader because no one follows a LOSER. But because Black people don’t own anything in their communities and have nothing invested in them, they’re the only people in the world who continue to reward failure and allow failures to advocate for their cause.

Is it time for the Black community to fire Al Sharpton? Yeah I think it is. Black people in this 21^st Century it’s time for a new approach to Civil Rights, and we need new leaders to apply new strategies to move the Black race forward.