United Peoples of Black America
United Peoples of Black America
“Up you Mighty Race, accomplish what you will.”
-Marcus Garvey
I
The dependence on the U.S. Constitution as the guarantor of rights lacks effectiveness and efficiency given the many judicial reversals on the issues of race and civil rights, particularly those central to the needs and concerns of Black Americans. The United Peoples of Black America assert a sovereign right, to identify and remove barriers to the enjoyment of Human Rights, dignity, and self-determination that are afforded to some but not all people of this world. This sovereign right is not only supported by the Articles found in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is grounded in the history of this land and the more than 300,000 Black Africans that were present before the formation of the U.S. and the ratification of its Constitution in 1776. As the U.S. Constitution was formed without consent or equal input from the African people it would ultimately govern for centuries, it is incumbent upon us as the heirs of that legacy to unite and organize our voice and self-determined agenda in these three long-standing areas of concern: 1) Police brutality/Prison Industrial Complex, 2) Political Disenfranchisement and 3) Economic Deprivation.
This brief Declaration is not intended to address all issues, nor does it include a solution to all problems that the United Peoples of Black America face. To date, the people of Black America have their policy priorities dictated to them by other groups. Those groups range from well-intentioned, niche, special interest groups to duplicitous candidates with an opposing consciousness that merely share similar racial phenotypes with the people of Black America but not our agenda.
This Declaration first addresses the continual collective violence perpetrated by police and law enforcement officers and the ongoing cycle of race related crimes against the peoples of Black America. This devaluing of Black life by those specific entities are part of a long established tradition in the history of the United States of America. That tradition, documented by historians such as Ida B. Wells evident even before the lynch mobs of the Jim Crow South, has continued in the present day lynching of George Floyd, Breona Taylor, Ahmuad Arbery, Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Tamir Rice, Mike Brown and Eric Garner.
The repeated failures of the American Judiciary system to consistently hold racist individuals and organizations accountable for their actions, culminated in the 2015 domestic terrorist attack against Black America and its people at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in South Carolina. It is 2020 and the United States faces a nationwide rebellion in the wake of George Floyd and Breona Taylor's murders by US Law Enforcement Officers. Despite the frequency at which these acts occur, the American Judiciary has only offered symbolic and token gestures of reconciliation and continues to fail to act in a manner which will ensure justice and equal protection of its citizens.
This failure of the American Judiciary is equally present when examining the rate at which the Prison Industrial Complex has incarcerated over 850,000 Black men and 70,000 Black women. Prisoners, who are disproportionately Black, are the only class of US Citizens not protected under the 13th Amendment from slavery. Courts are no longer bound by the US Constitution to give citizens speedy trials in determination of guilt resulting in system-wide cases of incarceration without conviction. In tandem, it is apparent the re-enslavement of Black Americans through the revocation or repeal of certain rights is an existential threat, identified as a clear and present danger to the United Peoples of Black America.
Second, laws have been constructed to discourage and neutralize a large proportion of Black American participation in the US political process, specifically through the removal of voter rights of certain citizens, gerrymandering, and unjust voter registration laws. The self-determined agenda of the peoples of Black America is absent from the four main stages of policy which include formulation, legislation, implementation, and evaluation. The United Peoples of Black America aims to address these concerns through a self-determined BLACK AGENDA.
Finally, there is no formal agenda addressing the rampant economic deprivation and lack of financial mobility of the peoples of Black America. The racial and ethnic wealth gaps are at or about their highest levels observed in the 30 years. The disparity in asset wealth between Black Americans and the rest of the United States is nearly 1 to 10. Nearly 40% of Black women and 20% of Black men receive public assistance (SNAP, TANF, Section 8) in their lifetime. The median income for Black households is less than $35,000 compared to $57,000 in European American households. In 2007, the United States of America entered into what is now referred to as the Great Recession, which lasted through 2011. In that period, the US unemployment rate reached over 10% by the most conservative estimates. Historically, the unemployment rate of the peoples of Black America has generally been double or triple that of the US workforce, essentially resulting in a perpetual state of Great Recession or in some periods Economic Depression.
When White Americans experienced the daily realities of Black Americans with regards to finding employment, receiving loans, and securing accumulated wealth, the US Government responded aggressively with a number of specific redistributive wealth policies including the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This single redistributive wealth policy cost $831,000,000,000, and excluded any pejorative language, assigning blame for unemployment and general economic morass on any American citizens, despite distinct elements targeting the unemployment of White males and loss of economic capital by a small American subpopulation with fewer than one thousand members. The United Peoples of Black America aims to address the daily realities our people face in finding employment, receiving loans, and securing accumulated wealth.
What follows in this space is a specific list of demands ratified by the United Peoples of Black America.
