OUR TIME IS NOW OUR PLACE IS IN THE STRUGGLE Frank Chapman Our young people have eagerly embraced the tasks of our movement for justice and freedom and have also given us new challenges. They reclaimed Martin Luther King’s Birthday as a day of protest rather than a day of celebration where history is distorted by a ritual of the living telling lies on the dead. Our principal task has to do with survival. I saw it expressed this past Wednesday in the Chicago City Council when we stood up for reparations for torture survivors. I saw it expressed last year on a sign carried by a young Black brother that simply read: STOP KILLING US. This is both a declaration and a demand for justice. The killing of our Black youth by racist cops must be stopped and we are the ones who must stop it and we will stop it, but the youth are right this will be done by protesting present injustices and not by just celebrating past accomplishments. So as we pass through January and enter February we see this youth-led movement turning the bleak days of winter into sun-shinny days of protests filled with chants of “Black Lives Matter” and “We Young! We Strong! We Can March All Day Long!” As for those who want to cling to a cowardly and trivial past filled with platitudes and utopian expectations of a better day driven by wishful thinking we say: Let it go! Our time is now and our place is in the struggle. Come join us this Saturday, Jan. 24, 2015, 12-Noon at HoodHope, 600 E. 61st Street. Corner of St. Lawrence and E. 61st Street.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 08:07:35 +0000
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