In The Old Testament, In the Book of Ecclesiastics (Chapter 3), It is written” To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven”; getting inside these words of truth, is not now time the Black community come together with a plan that offers greater protection for our children, while emphasizing building trust in working together creating new jobs and building new infrastructure throughout Black Folk America?
There is such a plan available under the name ‘NAAFRA Saturday School Program’ that will make it possible to place our youth in close relationships with more male adults, that can only result in a win-win situation for both, with the community gaining the greater benefit. Getting our children away from street gangs, along with putting space between them and the trigger happy cops, and other gun nut Amerikans. Plus, we need our churches and families that make up the congregations, working in support of this plan to add strength in protecting our children as we build trust among our people.
In our country, there are those that feel they can hurt our people and avoid punishment. Much of this mindset is caused by our failure to come together as a solid body. Which sends out mixed signals that can cause the death of innocent people, and in far too many instances our courts let them get away with murder. Our unwillingness to come together in a Marcus Garvey like number sends a message to others to commit evil acts against us, caused by our negative behavior. It is extremely important that we stop transmitting this idea to others; as we endeavor to keep this false assumption out of the minds of our youth throughout Black Folk Amerika. Saturday School is the place to begin changing the mindset of our youth, our families, our people, and most of all our country.
Our President sent out a clarion call for the people to do more to eliminate all impoverished conditions, throughout our nation; spoken into reality at the eulogy for our murdered brother, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Emmanuel AME church, Charleston, S.C. For me, it was a very touching speech having my ‘Commander in Chief’ (I’m militarily retired ), struggle to keep his emotions under control, knowing in his mind nine innocent family members had been murdered, in what should have been a safe place. Not only did it touch me deeply, it gave me added strength to redouble my mission to rid our nation of all poverty for our people. Having this man as our president is motivation enough, but having him put it into words— drives the point home to a deeper depth.
We must stop distrusting one another while participating in the blame game, because, of our condition as a people deeply affected by many negative factors beyond our control. The hindrance in building our strength base, is due in part to our inability to trust forging an organization of size which will afford greater leverage power, for positive change. There is no way we can avoid the fact we must come together, in order to aggressively seek to solve our problem of distrust among our people.
Here in the upper delta looking eastward from Greenville in the West, along highway 82, across to Columbus in the East, and North to the Tennessee border are many families trapped in poverty. Our Church/ Family based movement are being asked to begin working together in support of our Family Movement to begin the body of work to change this negative lifestyle as a permanent fix. The state of Mississippi is listed as the number one most impoverished state in the nation, and a large percentage is in this area that will receive full attention from our Black Church/Black Family Movement; working together in a powerful witness of trust and togetherness for positive change.
To build trust among our people, we must get busy doing, not continuing to give lip service to what should be done, and get busy doing whatever is needed to bring about positive change. If we are unable to trust one another, how do we plan to teach our children they must learn to love and trust one another? By our behavior of working together, under a plan that is a daily example trusting in our faith as New Afrikan Families that love our children so much, and want to be about building a better future for them, makes trusting one another a small price to pay for positive results that reward a better tomorrow for our children.
Change is more about doing, more talking is unnecessary. Now is the time, now is the season for action, now we know our purpose; that was born when the last shot was fired at the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. Let those that will step forward into doing , let those that prefer talking instead of doing, continue to give lip service to change. Trust is within our grasp, let those of us with courage step forward into doing to earn it. Our family movement NAAFRA, www.naafra.org invite all congregations throughout the Upper Delta Region of the state of Mississippi and register their families as an example to Black Church Amerika, and let’s get busy.
SOURCE: Dr. Donald R. Evans, Sr., Founder/President
The National Afrikan Amerikan Family Reunion Association (NAAFRA)
website – www.NAAFRA.org
email – Dr.DREvans@aol.com