(ThyBlackMan.com) “Who’s On First?” depicts Abbot and Costello going in circles attempting to communicate simple answers to simple questions. In a similar respect, black people have been faced with this daunting task. Since the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation claimed to have freed 4 million enslaved Africans, black people in America have been attempting come up with a solution to the suffering, poverty and hopelessness present in our communities. Many black leaders have offered solutions, suggesting everything from education, voters’ rights, and civil rights, to more jobs, better wages, equal rights, and health care.
At the end of the skit, the question of “Who’s on First?” is answered, but never really understood. The black nation ends up asking the same questions year after year, not realizing that the solution begins with black people starting to do for self, instead on depending on others. The Black Agriculture Survival Expo [B.A.S.E.] aims to help the black nation recognize that there is a simple solution.
B.A.S.E., founded by a husband and wife team who were born in the north and migrated to the south, was divinely inspired after they took the journey to Tuskegee, Alabama for the 18th anniversary of the Million Man March. Laurence Muhammad, of Laurence and Arabia’s Best and a Growing Power’s Commercial Urban Agriculture Program graduate, and his wife Chaava Muhammad, an event, promotions, and marketing coordinator of Dress The
Garden, revisited a really simple answer that has been tried and tested, yet rejected.
“We need land wherein we can build our own society free from the tension, hatred and violence that have accompanied our race relationship with the white race of America. Do not expect your former slave masters’ children to give you the privileges to do as you desire in his own house. According to the Emancipation Proclamation, we as a people were proclaimed free to go for ourselves. In other words, we were on our own to build a nation of our own, regardless of our hardships and barriers.” – Elijah Muhammad’s Message to the Blackman in America
Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint and the pooling of resources to purchase millions of acres of land, is the base and only solution to the ails of the black man in America. As promising as this idea is, it led Chaava Muhammad to a troublesome thought of who would work this massive acreage of land. In an Instant, as a solution, B.A.S.E was born. B.A.S.E. would be a platform where black farmers, manufacturers, distributors, students, educators, consumers, and patrons would meet to study, teach, train, learn, present all ideas, methods, products, and services that relate to agribusiness and ensure the survival and success of our (black) national life.
On December 6th – 7th, B.A.S.E. will host its first Black Agriculture Survival Expo that will include a youth career day and a hands-on survival boot camp themed, “Declare Your Independence”. The topics for the workshops and seminars include soil production, composting, vermin composting, building a hoop house, husbandry, beekeeping, solar energy and generators, living off the grid, disaster preparedness, canning, grazing, land usage, and more.
The future of the Black Agriculture Survival Expo includes a greater awareness of black families returning to the base, which is the owning and science of cultivating land to become producers of our own products, building economic wealth, and become an Independent and self- sufficient nation.
B.A.S.E is building a team that is rooted in the concept of pooling resources and working together in the interest of a common goal.
If you are ready to put an end to a never ending cycle of Who’s on First questions concerning the State of Black America and want to get in the game and win, meet us at home B.A.S.E.
To attend and learn more about Black Agriculture Survival Expo, visit http://www.blackagriculturesurvivalexpo.wordpress.com or contact Chaava Muhammad at ABSeeds411@gmail.com
Excerpt from Economic Power – The Original Plan of Booker T. Washington Volume One
Q. I think somebody gave testimony here to the effect that the Negro race had been injured to a large degree by a large number flocking to cities.
A. Well, if we were shrewd, if we had had judgment and sense, we could have bought up all the land when the white people were discouraged after the war. We could have been rich today, but we did not have the sense enough to do it at that time. We regret very much that we did not take hold of the farms shortly after the war, when the white people were discouraged, and bought the plantations; we would have been the rich people today.- Testimony of Rev W.J. Gaines – Bishop , A.M.E. Church Atlanta, (given before the United States Industrial Education Commission Washington D.C. February 2nd 1900
“Everyone can give 35¢ a week as an investment in their future. It would be painless.”
— Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan – http://www.economicbluepring.org
Staff Writer; Laurence Muhammad
Official website; http://www.blackagriculturesurvivalexpo.wordpress.com