Is Donald Trump’s New Deal for the Black Community A RAW DEAL?

During his campaign for the 2016 Presidential Election Donald Trump promised to give the Black community a new deal. Jobs, safe streets, and an alleged new beginning for the blighted urban centers where they’ll finally be cleaned up once and for all. However, this New Deal could just be a raw deal that screws black people over the same way the Welfare state did back in the 1970s and so-called Gentrification did in the 1990s.

Donald Trump is a businessman. And what most Black people don’t understand about business is that no one does anything for free. If someone has to do something for you, they’re going to expect something in return for it. Unfortunately, most Black people are so Spellbound by the attention they’re getting from a rich White man they aren’t asking what price they’ll have to pay for his New Deal.

Every time Black folks make a deal with White people to “fix” their communities they alter the deal and Black folks wind up with a Raw Deal years later. After Democrats established a welfare state that brought crime and drugs turned Black comminities into urban war zones in the 1970s, many Black folks didn’t ask what the price was when Democratic politicians, many of them Black started their so-called Gentrification plans for inner city areas like Harlem and the South Bronx in the 1990s. And that deal cost many residents their homes and their neighborhoods. Yeah, a lot of corporations and wealthy landlords got tax breaks and tax credits at Black people’s expense, but most poor residents got forced out of their homes when those same business owners and landlords started raising their rents to appeal to middle class Whites and nonblacks to turn those blighted urban areas into trendy spots for hipsters and their ilk.

And eighteen years after those business owners got their tax breaks and tax credits from things like Bill Clinton’s Empowerment Zones, businesses like PathMark, Rite Aid, The Body Shop, Krispy Kreme, Hue-Man bookstore and the Chevrolet/Cadillac/Saturn of Harlem that were supposed to improve the quality of life for Black people are now shuttered and the areas are back on their way back to being blighted. At the end of 18 years, they created huge holes in the economic infrastructure of inner city neighborhoods when small businesses were forced out for big chains stores. Big chain stores that left the neighborhood when they went bankrupt, the tax credit money ran out, or when they proved to underperform when compared to other locations in the region.  

The Clinton era Empowerment Zones proved to be nothing more tham tax shelters for White liberals and big business. Yeah, they created low-wage jobs for a handful of residents (If big business could get a tax credit on their salaries) but didn’t improve the quality of life for most inner-city residents long term. Blacks became poorer as nonblack and foreign businesses built wealth with Black dollars and the last vestiges of Black-owned businesses left the community. And outside of most of those foreign-owned businesses in those so-called Gentrified areas of Harlem the same criminal elements such as junkies, prostitutes and drug addicts remained stand outside of those businesses getting high or begging for change.

Is Trump’s New Deal going to be a tax credit haven for big business? Or an actual fresh start for poor Black people in Black communites? And do we really need Donald Trump to give Black people a New deal? When it comes to this New Deal with Trump, are Black people gonna go out like Lando Calrissian on after he made the deal with Darth Vader and the Empire to protect Cloud City?

The way I see it, the power was always there for Black people to do what Trump is promising to do. So was the money. Brownstones in places like Harlem’s Sugar Hill and 125^th Street were going for under $20 in the early 1970s and 1980s. I always found it funny how Black folks like bus drivers and postal workers who lived in the projects could find money to pay for brand-new Mercury Cougars, Cadillacs Eldorados, Jeep Cherokees, and Air Jordan sneakers, but could never find the money to invest in Black business or buying up old abandoned brownstones into affordable housing for other Black people. Even with all the money flowing from the Rap game, Pro athletes and even the illegal money from crack cocaine. Why do we need a White man like Donald Trump to give Black people a new deal for the Black community when the Black man could have made his own deal on his own terms?

The resources and tools were always there to rebuild a strong Black community. Unfortunately most Black folks were too busy chasing social currency to create social change in their communities.

Most Black folks don’t understand that when it comes to this New Deal they’re not coming from a position of strength, but a position of weakness. Trump’s new Deal like Bill Clinton’s Empowerment Zones won’t be a deal on our terms, it’ll be a deal on his terms. And when a deal is on Donald Trump and the Government’s terms it’s not going to be a deal to benefit the average Black layperson. Those streets aren’t going to be cleaned up without a cost. Sadly most Spellbound Black folks aren’t asking how much the price is.

When it comes to Trump’s New Deal it’s just the same game with a new political party. Black Pastors, Black politicians and other social and political parasites and scavengers are going to help turn that deal into a Raw deal. And once they alter the deal, most Black folks will be praying they don’t alter the deal any further.

Most Black folks still don’t understand when someone does something for you, they aren’t doing it for your benefit, but their own. And when you ask someone to do something for you that you won’t do for yourself, you are giving away your personal, economic and political power and putting them in control over your life. Black folks need to stop asking the government to do things for them and start doing things for themselves. A lot of this stuff is easier to do than we think.  

Changing My Writing Technique

For the last few stories such as Spinsterella, Spellbound, Isis: Bride of Dracula Isis: Samurai Goddess and E’steem Little Girl Lost I’ve been applying a more traditional approach to my writing technique. Writing an outline and synopsis of the story before I write the story. 

In the past when I wrote novels like The Cassandra Cookbook, The Temptation ofJohn Haynes and The Thetas I usually just winged it when I wrote. After I wrote a simple mission statement for the story, I’d start writing the book. Working on a chapter a day translating the pictures in my head into words, I’d keep writing until the story was finished.

I liked using that approach because I thought it’d keep the story fresh for me. I used to believe if I saw what the ending was in the outline then I wouldn’t be as motivated to write an inspired story or finish the book.

However, things changed when I was writing Spinsterella. For that story I decided to write a synopsis detailing all the events of the story from beginning to end. And to my surprise it didn’t ruin the story for me or my readers. Spinsterella has been received positively by readers and is one of my more popular titles.

I’m starting to prefer using outlines and synopses because they provide me with a road map to see where the story is going from a panoramic perspective. While I enjoyed the journey from the winging it approach to writing, the outline and synopsis model allows me to see what direction the story is going in and what I need to do if I have to correct course when things aren’t working. For example in Spellbound, when I looked at my outline and saw that the course to the first plot point wasn’t working, I decided to change it so the storyline could flow more organically.

And sometimes I still deviate from the original outline. For example in the upcoming E’steem: Little Girl Lost I wound up changing parts of the second act midway because I got some ideas that’d build up to a stronger climax. But after working those ideas in, I went back to the plan laid out in my original outline for the finished story.

Working with an outline and synopsis is a lot easier than trying to write scenes by ear. On some books like Isis: All About The Goddess I’d get stuck in between chapters and I’d have to take a day or two to figure out what direction I wanted to go in. However, with an outline and synopsis I know what direction to go in and what chapters to write. So when I sit down to the keyboard I just start writing and pick up where I left off.

Working with this new technique has it’s challenges, but I’m finding it’s a lot easier than the technique I used when I first started writing stories over twenty years ago. Does it improve the quality of my stories? Only my readers probably notice the difference.   

Donald Trump is President...And it’s All Barack Obama’s Fault

Donald Trump is President of the United States. And it’s all Barack Obama’s fault.

Why is it Barack Obama’s fault? Because Hilary Clinton said she’d work towards preserving the legacy of Barack Obama. And what was Barack Obama’s legacy?

Promising Hope and Change for America.

Unfortunately, most Americans like myself didn’t get any hope or change from Barack Obama’s presidency over the past eight years. All most Americans got was apathy and indifference from an aloof politician who was completely disconnected from the people he served.  

The nails were being put Barack Obama’s political coffin back in the spring of 2009. Back then he put his legacy above the needs of the American people. When it was time to sign legislation for an unemployment benetits extension he had the chance to show what kind of leader he was. But instead of standing up for the American people against his own party during one of the worst economic periods since the Great Depression, he let the Democratic Congress and the Senate he was in charge of go on vacation for two weeks while unemployed American people like myself struggled to make ends meet. 

Sure they came back and passed the unemployment benefits extension two weeks later, but the damage was done. Obama showed that the needs of the American people weren’t a priority, just establishing Barack Obama’s legacy in history as the first Black President.

ObamaCare and the legacy of health care reform was more important to Barack Obama than twenty million unemployed people like myself. With a recession going on and a Democratic majority in both houses, two weeks vacation for Congress and the Senate shouldn’t have been a priority. But Democrats in the House and the Senate put themselves above the American people. And that’s why they lost the House in 2011.

And the fact that his Secretary of State Hilary Clinton completely destabilized the Middle East showed how inept Barack Obama was at keeping on top of international politics and foreign policy. ISIL wouldn’t have been allowed to establish its roots if the inexperienced Commander-in-Chief hadn’t gloated about killing Osama Bin Laden early on. While he was celebrating that minor accomplishment, the Hydra of Islamic terror was growing a new head as Al-Queda in Iraq became ISIL and expanded its reign of terror over 28 countries. Any regular Joe who took a Global Studies class or just read a newspaper regularyly since 2001 knows Islamic Terrorism is a Hydra. And when you cut off one head, two more grow in their place. But Barack Obama and his secretary of state Hilary Clinton were such novices on foreign policy they couldn’t understand how to slay this beast. Once Barack Obama got Bin Laden’s head as a trophy to put on his wall and a bullet point for his resume, he could care less about the needs of all the people in countries terrorized by the spin-off terror groups like ISIL.  

The only thing that mattered was Barack Obama’s legacy. As the first Black President he was obsessed with accomplishments for himself like reforming health care. Even though experts told him his reform policy ws flawed and wouldn’t work, he and his Democratic Congress insisted on using their super majority to push through that flawed piece of legislation known as the Affordable Care act in the face of numerous warnings it’d be a complete disaster.

And while Barack Obama rammed his Affordable Care Act down the American People’s throats, his administration continued to ignore many large voting blocks that were his base such as Black men. While Black men like Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and Keith Scott were killed by police and sociopaths like George Zimmerman, Barack Obama just sat back and did nothing to stop the racial powderkegs from ignigting across the country.

Sending a message that Black lives didn’t matter to him. Even though 98% of Black people voted for him in 2008 and 93% voted for him in 2012. His first Black Attorney General Eric Holder tendered his resignation when pressed by Black people to do something about the cases of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. Then his second Black Attorney General Loretta Lynch just took knees in the cases of men like Eric Garner, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and Keith Scott.

 Democrats thought American people were supposed to keep supporting Hilary Clinton based on the track record of Barack Obama. Unfortunately, Barack Obama’s record was a rickety platform to stand on. Barack Obama is the worst President in American history surpassing Herbert Hoover, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter.

Instead of hope and change, All Americans got were excuses and bullshit from Barack Obama. It was always someone else’s fault that he couldn’t get anything done. The Democrats in the House. The Democrats in the Senate. Republicans. Conservatives. White men. White Women. Black men. Black Lives Matter. Even though he had control over both houses for two years from 2009-2011, the fact that he couldn’t even get an unemployment benefits extension in the first few months of office passed showed how weak and ineffective a leader he was. Americans were always LAST with Barack Obama.

Even though he promised the American people hope and change. Change they never got.

All Barack Obama has to show for eight years in office is an Affordable Care Act that’s no longer affordable to the average American. That so-called Affordable Care Act he passed in 2009 is now so expensive now most healtcare providers are abandoning the program and next year it’ll cost the average American $16,000 a year. It would have just been cheaper to just extend the existing federal Medicaid to people and families making under $150,000 a year, but Obama had to do things his way and cost struggling families money they just didn’t have to spend.

Hilary Clinton said she was out to preserve Barack Obama’s legacy in her administration. Running a campaign that proved to be just as elitist, aloof and disconnected as Obama’s the arrogant Hilary Clinton took the people for granted in her obsessive quest to establish a legacy as America’s first woman president. And because she took the American people for granted she wound up losing the election.  

Hilary Clinton put the legacy of Barack Obama first. And when she did that she sent a message to the American people they’d remain LAST. Letting everyone know that there’d be no hope of things changing for them in her administration.

Plain and simple, the American people are tired of being put LAST. They’re tired of being put on the back burner while elitists like Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton focus on maintaining their legacies instead of serving the needs of WE THE PEOPLE.

The Constitution’s first three words were WE THE PEOPLE. And WE THE PEOPLE had a referendum on government on November 8, 2016. Thomas Jefferson said when an old government that didn’t serve the people, they could put it off to establish a new government. From the results of the election it’s clear that WE THE PEOPLE don’t want a Black president, or a Woman president. They want a President and a Congress that has the courage, character and resolve to serve the needs of WE THE PEOPLE. If they don’t see that with Donald Trump, and the Republican Party WE THE PEOPLE may be repeating this process in 2018 and 2020 until America’s politicians finally get it.

Donald Trump is President WTF?

It’s Time For Archie Comics Classics Action Figures!

Over the last fifteen years practially every comic book property has had an action figure line or an action figure. Marvel Comics has Marvel Legends. DC Comics had DC Universe Classics. Even indie characters like Witchblade, Shi, Dick Tracy, and Monkeyman & O’Brien have had their own action figures. However, there’s been one major comic book character who hasn’t made the transition from comic page to plastic:

Archie Andrews.

Archie and the gang from Riverdale are LONG overdue for a super-poseable six-inch action figure line. Archie is an iconic comic book property that’s been a part of American culture for generations. Kids know who Archie is. Adults know who Archie is. You’d think with every comic book character getting an action figure line and selling like hotcakes some company would have gone out of their way and given us Archie Legends or Archie Comics Classics toy line.

 But for the past fifteen years toy collectors have gotten…Nothing.

I don’t know if it’s a licensing issue. Or if the Archie Comics’ owners don’t want to take advantage the booming action figure market.  Or if toy companies just don’t want to take the risk on Archie. But with smaller toy companies like Super 7 and NECA raking in millions on all sorts of properties like He-Man and even old video games like Contra, I’d like to think someone would have given us an Archie Comics Classics toy line already. It’s money in the bank.

I know there’d be lots of people ready to buy a six-inch super poseable Archie along with Jughead, Betty, Veronica, and Reggie. And lots more who’d buy Josie and the Pussy Cats with their instruments packed in. And even a few more to buy a super-poseable six-inch scaled Sabrina The Teenage Witch with Salem packed in.

And maybe if the line does well over a couple of waves maybe we could get some obscure characters like Lil’ Jinx, That Wilkin Boy, and…Pepper!

Archie Comics Classics is a toy line that probably wouldn’t cost that much money. Tooling up a couple of basic buck bodies wearing casual clothes wouldn’t be that expensive. A smart toy company owner could probably mix and match torsos, overlays, and paints to make variants of characters from different eras in the Archie’s history like 50’s Archie (Classic plaid pants and “R” Sweater), and Archie as Pureheart the Powerful and Jughead as Captain Hero. Even toss in a few swappable heads for different facial expressions and different characters.

The possibilities for Archie Comics Classics are endless. I can see a dozen ways to easily sell Build-A-Figures of larger characters like Big Moose or Big Ethel by mixing and matching Archie characters from different eras. Or diorama pieces like Pop Tate’s Cho’klit shop and parts of Riverdale High. All it takes is for some creative toy executive to have the vision to take the Archie Comics property and bring it to toy stores.

With the TV show Riverdale coming to CW soon, I’d think there’d be some plans to get some merchandise out to to take advantage of the Archie brands’ exposure to the public. With there being six-inch plastic versions of every character out there from Superheroes to wrestlers and video game characters, this is the right time for Archie to launch a toy line. I’d love to have a six-inch scale version of Archie and the gang to hang out with Superman, Batman, Iron Man, Spider-Man, The Hulk and John Cena on my Toy shelf. Make it happen Archie Comics!

Shawn & The Goth Subculture

How does Someone Become A Goth?

How does someone become a Goth?

If you ask five Goths that question you’ll get five different answers.

Some will say they were influenced by the fashion. Others will say they were influenced by the music. However, everyone’s journey into the Goth subculture is unique to them. No two stories about how they became a Goth will ever be the same. What motivates one person to become part of the subculture is different from another. So there’s no one general answer to the question.

Some people discover the Goth Subculture at an early age. Others discover the subculture when they’re teenagers. A few find out about it when they become young adults. And a handful find out about it in their thirties.

Some kids start out darkly inclined. They have an interest in dark things like vampires, zombies, ghosts and goblins when they’re little. They like reading stuff like horror books like the Goosebumps series. Or they like playing with Monster High dolls over Barbies. As they grow up they find themselves comfortable with dark dark themed comics like Batman, Spider-Man, and Daredevil. 

Other kids discover the Goth subculture in their preteens. As they start discoering things like horror movies and vampire novels they start seeing the beauty in dark things.

A large majority of kids discover the Goth subculture in their teenage years. As they explore the darker side of life they find it’s the lifestyle they’re the most comfortable with. That’s when they find Goth music, Goth fashions, and Goth makeup. As they start delving deeper into the subculture they start dressing in black and listening to Goth bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Depeche Mode, London After Midnight, Type O Negative, Sisters of Mercy, and The Cure.

Growing up in the South Bronx, I lived on the dark side of life. As a kid in the 1980s I lived away from the kids in the projects in a rundown building on Park Avenue near the Metro-North tracks. I was the outsider kid who didn’t fit in with the other kids and saw the world from a uniquely dark perspective. Living around rotting abandoned buildings and seeing New York City crumbling around me I felt like I was in a real life horror movie. I saw heroin addicts roaming the streets like zombies in the mid 1980s and crackheads in the late 1980s. However, they were just window dressing.

The real monsters in the Black community as I saw it were the drug dealers and the hoodrat women who were addicted to the power they wielded over the Black community and terrorized everyone who lived there. Living around these tyrants I began to understand the difference between someone who was dark like myself and someone who was  truly evil.

With the Black community being a socially and culturally fascist state in the 1980s I didn’t get to know what the Goth subculture was about until my early twenties. I felt I could relate to a lot of what Goths talked about in their art and music. I grew up watching a lot of dark and spooky stuff like horror movies, and syndicated TV shows like Tales from the Crypt and Tales from the Darkside and Saturday morning cartoons like The Real Ghostbusters and Beetlejuice. And for some strange reasons when I had my first exposure to Goth characters like Lydia Deetz in movies like Beeteljuice and real life Goths in episodes of the Jenny Jones show I felt an instinctive connection to them.

Could I have been darkly inclined as a kid? Could I have been a Goth and not know it? Maybe. However, in spite of the information blackout in the Black community regarding the Goth Subculture, I’ve often incorporated a lot of dark themes in a lot of my stories and characters over the last 20 years. Colleen Anderson the first heroine I created back in 1989 was originally a Black Goth. And many of my novels like The Temptation of John Haynes had a lot of dark themes like a Black man working in a Corporate Hell with demons, vampires and monsters. And the E’steem series is basically just my interpretation of Monster High all grown up. So when I started writing my first novel featuring a Goth heroine Spinsterella last year, it was the easiest story I ever sat down to the keyboard to write. However after I finished Matilda’s story, there was one question that was left unanswered:

What made Matilda become a Goth?

And I wanted to answer that question in another book.

One of the reasons why I wrote Spellbound was to tell Matilda’s story of how she began her journey into the Goth subculture. After I wrote Spinsterella last year I started listening to many Goth YouTubers talk about their babybat years in the Goth Subculture and what motivated them be a part of the subculture. And that’s what made me eager to get to the keyboard to write Spellbound and tell the story of how Matilda Crowley the Black girl next door from Harlem became a part of the Goth subculture in the dark days of New York City in 1989.

 I felt that a story about the babybat period of a Goth heroine was a story that had to be told in Young Adult and teen fiction. So many tweens and teens want to learn about the Goth subculture and there’s next to no stories out there for them to read to see what’s positive about it. Yeah, there are videos on YouTube, but there really needs to be more literature out there so kids could understand what would motivate someone to become a part of the Goth subculture and help their parents understand why they want to be a part of the subculture. I believe if parents read a story from someone like myself who understood the subculture is all about they wouldn’t worry about their kids being a part of it. There are a lot of things parents need to worry about, but the Goth Subculture isn’t one of them.

Every Goths’ story about how they came into the Goth Subculture is unique to them. I’m hoping Spellbound will help people all over the world understand some of the reasons why kids, teens and young adults become part of the Goth subculture.