Unfortunately, this has been the mode of operation during the past several decades here in America for many involved in politics, business, healthcare or other areas of our modern society. Many have overlooked petty thievery of office supplies by coworkers who took a few “extras” home. Others have overlooked the cash paid to workers that did not have the required taxes deducted by their employer. Several have chosen not to see the infractions of infidelity made by leaders who were elected to stand up for family values. Some businesses have chosen not to see the impact of poorly constructed products or policies that have gouged or taken advantage of their customers. Still others every day have closed their eye or even eyes to the injustices around the world so long as they don’t affect them personally.

What happens, however, the minute an injustice does affect someone personally? They complain about it, they scream and holler if necessary, they draw attention to it, but if others continue to turn their blind eye to the situation then nothing more happens. Its usually only when many are affected that their combined complaints, screams and hollering finally draws the attention of those who can not help but see their plight and begin to address it so that things can quite down and get back to business as usual (which is another great topic for a different blog).

Here is an interesting thought to ponder: Several centuries ago, physically blinding your enemy was the chosen method of victorious kings to ensure that the enemy would not be able to rise up again and combat them. Even if they did, now the enemy would be at a tremendous disadvantage and would be easily conquerable once again.

Well, I have news for you and here it is: We have an enemy of our souls! Yes that is right, the devil, satan, the evil one or whatever you want to call him is out to destroy us. He’s is waging war on us and trying to blind us.

However, the good news, as scripture tells us, is that we are not unaware of his strategy. “Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.” (2-Corinthians 2:11 KJV) That simply means, if we are observant, we can tell what he is up to and his biggest tactic is that he wants us to destroy ourselves because the truth of the matter is that he can’t do it himself. In other words, he is stifled in his attempts because of our free will. However, if he can cause us to surrender our free will or the power to choose, then he can begin to influence us in ways that suit him.

One of the greatest ways we surrender our power to choose is simply not to choose. When we know of something we should do that would set situations right or would be the right thing to do but we choose not to do it or even choose to do nothing, we have sinned and surrendered our free will. “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” (James 4:17 KJV)

Did you also know that over time, this type of blindness leads to other sensory losses and eventual disheartenment? While it may be true that the physically blind develop heightened senses such as smell and touch, it is only when they make the concentrated effort to do so in order to make up for the loss of sight. On the other hand, if nothing is done to compensate for the impaired vision, the opposite is true, the other senses become dull and as a result, a depression or disheartening emotion takes over through an attitude of “woe is me” or “nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen,” which becomes self-defeating. When we get to this stage, it’s as if the enemy has won the battle.

Finish story here; Devout Christians: Turning a Blind Eye Comes With a Spiritual Cost.

There were many Americans, we are talking millions of Americans, who when they first heard about the attempted assassination at Butler, Pennsylvania were left disappointed. These were patriotic, faith believing individuals who would never take to the streets in celebration like many would if the assassination had been successful.

They would find it personally repulsive even to acknowledge to themselves that they were gleefully exuberant if it had been successful. For many they would have felt shame for such happiness.

They clearly would have understood the reasons for the celebration. They never believed they would witness their country descend into the very depths of hell. They never believed they would be so betrayed by their government.

Nonetheless, they would be relieved and embarrassedly happy if the assassin had been successful.

In some ways, they are no different from the many Americans, we are talking millions of Americans, during the eight years when President Barack Obama served as Commander and Chief. Individuals who went as far as praying that ill would befall him and his presidency.

They hoped and some prayed that he would be unsuccessful in bringing the country out of the Great Recession. A recession which he inherited. Wishing that he would be unsuccessful just to be able to point fingers and say he was not qualified to be president. They didn’t care if other Americans suffered. In fact, they hoped other Americans would suffer proving their point of view was correct.

They hoped, some prayed, that President Obama would lead the nation into reckless foreign policy adventures in which American lives were lost. The more lives lost the greater their rejoice. It would provide them ammo to rise holy indignation criticizing his holding the title of president.

This is the state of the union.

There were many Americans, we are talking millions of Americans during the four years that President Joe Biden strolled the Oval Office who found delight in seeing the price of food and other goods rise due to inflation. The higher the prices the more discomfort and suffering that Americans would experience. Such pain and discomfort of other Americans served their political narratives.

They are not that much different than the many Americans, we are talking millions of Americans, today that hope the current regime’s war with Iran backfired. That the US suffered a huge humiliation. That the current regime ended up in another foreign military quagmire as the number of American soldiers’ deaths and oil prices rose.

Convinced that the current regime’s leadership is so incompetent, unholy and just plain evil, there are many Americans, we are taking millions of Americans, who now find themselves hoping that world leaders will openly mock and deride the current leadership. That people from other countries boycott visiting the US and purchasing US made products.

That American college and professional championship teams refuse to visit the White House as long as the current occupant resides there.

Hoping that the nation experiences some natural calamity and is unable to efficiently respond to tragedy because of the current regime’s funding cuts and other policy decisions.

This is the state of the union.

America has had problems in the past. In fact, it almost didn’t survive its civil war that occurred less than a hundred years after its founding.

Nevertheless, there were many, we are talking millions, who believed and were willing to make the nation a more perfect union. Who were willing to believe that as a people and a nation, we could and we would do better.

That America could indeed be a “shining city on a hill.” A place where American exceptionalism was on display. A nation among nations in which it served as a beacon of freedom, hope, and opportunity. “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

A place which allowed dreamers to believe, and believers to dream.

For many Americans, millions of Americans, the US is no longer that place. Instead, it has become a miasma of hate and evil. A place where the enemy of the people are the people themselves. A place in which “In God We Trust” has been replaced by handguns and assault weapons, hateful and divisive rhetoric.

A place where distrust, alienation and anger is at an all-time high. A place where more people play the lottery than vote. Where the pursuit of the latest technological idol has replaced the American Dream.

The US celebrated its 250th anniversary. For many it was more like a wake than a celebration of life.

It is highly unlikely if the state of the union remains as it is that it will last another 25 years, perhaps not even two and a half more years.

If so, future historians and social scientists will be compelled to proclaim that America was not destroyed, not overrun or defeated from the outside. America died because too many Americans, millions of Americans, saw each other not as fellow Americans, but as the enemy.

Staff Writer; Al Alatunji

Question or comment regarding this article? Feel free to send a message to: Alatunji@ThyBlackMan.com.

They can look instead to the World Cup, where the performance of the U.S. Men’s National Team is renewing the patriotic pride and national solidarity of a free people — led by players whose diversity and citizenship stand against the anti-immigrant bigotry of the current regime.

At a time when Trump and his xenophobic henchman Stephen Miller shriek incessantly about immigrants “poisoning” the nation — and just vowed to continue their unconstitutional crusade against birthright citizenship — the USMNT is a living testament to true American values.

Under the motto “One Nation, One Team,” their roster is one of the most diverse in the world. The 26 players on the World Cup squad are not just interracial, with 12 Black and three Latino players, but include six born overseas to military families, and a dozen with immigrant roots in eight other countries around the globe.

Team USA, like the nation it represents, features an extraordinary global array of languages and cultures, with players who learned the sport in their home country like Gio Reyna, raised in suburban New York, and team captain Christian Pulisic, who grew up in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and Malik Tillman, who spent his boyhood in Bavaria on a German youth team.

And then there is the instructive case of Folarin Balogun, born by accident in Brooklyn when his Nigerian mother, on her way back to England, was told by airline officials that her pregnancy was too advanced for her to fly safely.

Like so many of his teammates, the hugely talented Balogun chose to join the USMNT and feels a special responsibility in doing so. Having scored three goals for Team USA before he got a red card in last week’s victory over Bosnia-Herzegovina, he has said, “To represent the United States means a lot. I just hope I can bring that prestige and winning mentality over into soccer.”

While American fans thrill to the play of Balogun and his teammates, lovers of the beautiful game flocking to our shores have found an America starkly different from what Trump’s vulgarity and rancor led them to expect. Or what the dimwits at the Department of Homeland Security try to convey when they post ultranationalist “OUR SOIL” memes on social media ahead of World Cup matches.

No, people from all over the world are discovering a generous and inclusive kind of American greatness — not in the blustering and domineering Trump style but in the beautiful welcome extended to the global visitors and their teams, from sea to shining sea. It could be seen in the boisterous hospitality encountered by the Scots in Boston, where they emptied the taverns of beer, or the joyous crowds who greeted the Japanese in Nashville.

But perhaps the most poignant example is the Algerians who found themselves in Lawrence, Kansas, a heartland city that welcomed a team from a nation that Trump himself had once stigmatized. The residents of Lawrence embraced Team Algeria with astonishing enthusiasm and grace.

Indeed, it was the Kansans who expressed sincere thanks for a moment on the world stage brought by the visiting Algerians. “We’re very grateful to Algeria,” said one Lawrence resident as the team departed for a match in Canada. “We’ve loved getting to know your country, and we wish you all the best.” During their final group-stage match against Austria, the Algerians unfurled a big banner behind their goal: “Thank You Lawrence.”

That is the America of our better angels, the city on a hill we have longed to become in our highest aspirations, the nation of ideas and ideals that the crooks and criminals now ruling us have aimed to suppress. The joy and the honor brought by this World Cup tournament will be remembered long after Trump’s ludicrous “Freedom 250” is mercifully forgotten.

Written by Joe Conason

Official website; https://twitter.com/JoeConason

The numbers and facts around the decline in youth participating in sports are eye-opening. 62 percent of children, ages 6 to 12 do not play sports regularly and the average age at which children quit sports is just 12 years old. Some of the biggest names through the world of sports are part of this campaign including NBA player Stephen Curry, WNBA player A’Ja Wilson, and NFL player Lamar Jackson among the ambassadors to encourage and promote youth sports participation.

It is the low 38 percent youth sports participation rate that is one of the reasons for this initiative. Sports ambassadors and ESPN anchors and personalities participated in a different ads and promos, which ran across ESPN platforms, that addressed critical youth sports issues. One of the biggest issues for getting kids to play sports is affordability. Over 900,000 youth received support to participate in athletics through grants and the YMCA was among the avenues for those youth to participate. This is the second year of the Take Back Sports initiative and there were good results.

There has also been some volatility in youth sports leagues with the behavior of adults. It is not uncommon to see local news clips that highlight the parents of some young athletes who are harassing each other or verbally abusing referees or officials for youth sports leagues.  Youth coaches also feel the anger from parents sometimes as well. A recent national survey named “the challenge of managing parents ranks among the top reasons coaches have considered leaving or decided to quit”. Unruly parents in youth sports deters from the enjoyment for all kids who are participating in that particular sport.

The impact of youth sports is multilayered from a health, wellness, stress relief, and teamwork aspect. There are many lessons to be learned from kids and teenagers who play and enjoy sports. According to ESPN Vice President of Corporate Citizenship Kevin Martinez, “Sports have the power to shape confidence, character and community at an early age, but with only 38% of kids playing sports on a regular basis, ESPN recognizes the critical need to build systems that make those opportunities accessible to more young athletes.” It’s not about finding the next great young athlete but the importance of youth sports be part of the childhood experience to become more of a team player and working together as an adult towards everyone’s success.

Staff Writer; Mark Hines

This strategy is commonly known as “driving for dollars.” It involves looking for properties that may need repairs or appear to have been neglected. Common signs include overgrown landscaping, damaged roofs, boarded windows, accumulated mail, faded paint, or homes that have clearly been vacant for some time.

Driving for dollars became an important part of how I built Kernvestors and eventually completed more than 100 home flips.

Bakersfield was an ideal place to learn this business. The city contains a wide variety of neighborhoods, property ages, and housing styles. Some homes only need cosmetic improvements, while others require substantial repairs to plumbing, electrical systems, roofing, foundations, or interiors.

Taft also presented opportunities, although it required a different approach. It is a smaller community, so understanding local prices and renovation costs was especially important. In a smaller market, spending too much on improvements can quickly make a project financially unsuccessful.

The goal was never simply to locate the most distressed-looking house. The real work involved determining whether a property could be purchased at a fair price, repaired correctly, and resold at a price supported by nearby comparable sales.

Over time, driving through Bakersfield and Taft taught me how to recognize construction problems, estimate renovation costs, and understand the differences between neighborhoods. It also taught me patience. Many properties I identified were not immediately available for sale. Sometimes months or even years passed before an owner was ready to have a conversation.

Homeowners often face complicated situations. Some inherit properties they do not want to maintain. Others own rentals with difficult tenants, deferred repairs, unpaid utilities, or years of accumulated belongings. Some simply want to Sell your house Fast in Bakersfield without preparing it for a traditional listing.

As the company grew, people also began finding us while searching for Home buyers in Bakersfield or a Company that buys houses in Bakersfield. However, the foundation of the business remained simple: understand the property, communicate honestly, and avoid making promises that cannot be kept.

The same lessons can apply in other Central California markets. Someone researching how to Sell your Your house Fast Santa Maria may be dealing with many of the same concerns, including repairs, inherited property, moving expenses, or an uncertain closing schedule. Home Buyers on Santa Maria

Written by Joy Gebarah

Joy Gebarah

Miramar Real Estate

661-777-7774

Joy@gebarah.com

I came up in a sterner time. Back then your word was your bond, and how you carried yourself when the heat was on told folks more about you than any speech ever could. My father, God rest him, used to say you find out who somebody really is when the trouble shows up, not when the cameras are being kind. That old line has been sitting on me lately. Keeps walking me back to the same door.

My mind goes to the days right after Sandy Hook. All those babies, gone. A whole country sucker punched and not even sure how to breathe. He came to that podium and you could just see it sitting on him. Jaw tight. Eyes wet. That long pause before he could get a single word out. He didn’t dress his grief up for us. He let it be what it was, and in doing that he gave everybody else a little room to hurt too. Plenty of leaders will tell you they feel your pain. Not many will stand up there and let you watch them carry it. That’s a whole different animal. I caught it every single time.

Now hold on, don’t get me wrong. Nobody around here thinks he walked on water, me least of all. Had my fights with him. There were days I wanted him to hit back twice as hard, dig his heels in, quit reaching across an aisle that kept smacking his hand away. We said as much down at the barbershop most Saturday mornings, coffee going cold, everybody talking over everybody. But not once in eight years did he make me ashamed of how he talked to the world. And brother, that’s a low bar we didn’t know we’d end up missing this bad.

Obama had a way with words that I think we all took for granted while we still had it. Spoke in whole thoughts. Trusted you enough to actually build the argument out, let a sentence breathe, figure you were sharp enough to walk with him clear to the end of it. He wasn’t trying to shout you down. He was trying to reason with you, which is a lost art if there ever was one. When he got on television to talk to the nation, it felt like sitting across from somebody serious who understood exactly how serious the job was. Didn’t matter if you liked his politics. You knew he’d read the briefing and lost sleep over it.

Think about the ugliness they threw at him, and Lord, there was a mountain of it. The birth certificate mess. All that whispering about where he was really from, what he really believed down in his chest, whether he even belonged in that house. A whole cottage industry got built just to tell this Black man he was a stranger in his own country. And through the worst of it, he mostly kept his cool. Used humor when he could. Swallowed insults that would’ve cracked a lesser spirit clean in two. My generation knows that particular discipline in our bones. Twice as good, half as loud. Eat the disrespect so nobody can turn around and say you lost your composure. Watching him do it up on the highest stage there is, I felt two things at the same time. Proud he could. Sick that he had to.

Whoever came after showed us the other road a president can walk, and the contrast couldn’t have been starker. Donald Trump didn’t swallow a thing. Said the quiet part out loud, was widely condemned for appearing to mock a disabled reporter, attacked John McCain’s status as a war hero, and turned the office into something closer to a cage match than a solemn trust. Some folks ate it up. Called it authentic. Called it fighting back. They can have that opinion, it’s a free country. All I know is I watched the temperature of the whole place change right in front of me. The meanness that at least used to hide itself came out and pulled up a chair at the head of the table. Once that dam broke, it’s been awful hard to build back.

That’s really the center of what’s been eating at me. It isn’t just that I miss one particular man. It’s that his absence threw a hard light on how coarse everything’s gotten. Politics now is loud in a way that leaves you wrung out. Everybody hollering. Everybody performing their outrage for a phone. Half the people we ship off to Washington seem more interested in going viral than in doing the actual work, and Trump didn’t invent that fever so much as he gave everybody permission to run it hot. In all that racket, the memory of a leader who’d drop his voice to make a point stands out like a porch light on a black country road.

Let me be careful here, though. Nostalgia is a slick trickster. It’ll sand off every rough edge and hand you back a fairy tale. Obama years had their failures, real ones, and history’s going to weigh them the way it should. The drone strikes bothered my sleep. Wall Street walked off too clean for my liking. That hope he was selling back in ’08 was always bigger than any one fellow could deliver, and some of it soured into flat disappointment for people who needed a good deal more than a beautiful speech. I’m not asking you to forget one bit of that. A grown assessment holds the good and the bad in the same two hands and doesn’t drop either one.

But temperament is its own kind of substance. How the person at the top behaves ends up shaping how the whole nation behaves. Children were watching. My own grandbabies were watching. For eight years one of the most powerful people on earth showed them patience, curiosity, and self-control. He read to kids on the floor. And down in a church in Charleston, packed wall to wall with grieving people, after a young man had walked into their Bible study, sat among them for nearly an hour, and then murdered nine souls who had welcomed him into their prayer circle, the president stood up and sang Amazing Grace. That one lives in me. A sitting president, up there singing, because plain words just couldn’t hold the weight anymore. Wasn’t a poll tested thing. That was a human being reaching for the only thing left that might do any good at all. I’ve spent enough Sundays in enough sanctuaries to tell a performance from a prayer. What I saw that day was a prayer.

What I’m really grieving, if I’m being honest, is a whole idea. The notion that decency and strength can live under the same roof. Somewhere along the line we got sold this lie that kindness is weakness, that you’ve got to be cruel to be tough, that a leader who stays calm must be soft as pudding. It’s the whole gospel Trump preaches, and a lot of good people bought it. He put that lie in the ground just by being who he was. Firm as they come. Made the hard calls, sent people into harm’s way, carried the weight of every one of them, and never once turned into a bully to do it. He showed you can be steady and strong at the same time. That composure isn’t cowardice. That you can hold your ground without spitting on the fella standing across from you.

The young ones coming up didn’t really get to see any of that in real time, and it eats at me. A whole generation’s being raised to believe political life is nothing but combat, that the loudest, nastiest voice takes the whole pot, that contempt and conviction are the same thing. They flip on the television and watch grown adults act worse than middle schoolers, and they figure that’s just how the game is played. It is not how it’s played. It wasn’t always like this. There was a stretch, and not that long back either, when the person in the highest office carried himself with a dignity you could point a child toward and say, there now, be like that.

I’m not saying any of this to make a saint out of him. He’d hate that, and he’d be first in line to rattle off his own shortcomings. I’m saying it because we’re living through a mean, bruising stretch of American life, ugly enough that we’ve halfway forgotten the other thing ever existed. And remembering matters. Remembering is what keeps a people from just settling for the mud. Let cruelty become the water we all swim in, let shouting become the only tongue that power speaks, and we’ll have handed away something we might never get back.

Old preacher I knew a long time ago said grace isn’t weakness dressed up in Sunday clothes. It’s strength that has finally learned how to hold itself. That always rang true to me. Takes a whole lot more backbone to stay measured when the world’s poking at you to snap than it does to just blow sky high. He had that backbone. Showed a country a president could disagree without demonizing, could lose without whining, could win without gloating. Reminded us the office was always bigger than any one ego, that whoever sits in it is meant to be a servant and not some kind of king.

I’m an old man now. Seen enough presidents come and go to know not one of them is perfect, and every last one will let you down somewhere down the line. But every so often one of them shows you the very best of what the job can be, and he did. Not through the laws alone. Through the plain, almost radical act of behaving like a decent human being while half the world sat there openly hoping he’d fall flat on his face.

We shouldn’t need a former president to teach us how to treat one another. But if that’s the one lesson we’re willing to carry out of those eight years, then let’s carry it and let’s carry it seriously. And let’s not wait too long before we start expecting it again from the people we pick to lead us.

Staff Writer; L.L. McKenna

Politics explained through the lens of justice and equity. Offering perspective that informs, challenges, and empowers.

One can contact this brother at; LLMcKenna@ThyBlackMan.com.

How prophetic was the brilliant American sociologist, writer, historian, Pan-Africanist, and civil rights activist, Dr. Du Bois? As we witness the backlash from the Democratic Party’s leadership, as well as President Trump’s response to the success of democratic socialist candidates in the New York City and Washington, DC primaries and anticipate backlash from the democratic socialist victory in Colorado, a couple of important questions come to the forefront. Are we witnessing the development of a new politics in America? If so, what should the response of the African American community and electorate be?

It is important to understand that changes in the political landscape take time. Events such as Democratic Socialists winning over Democratic Party-backed candidates do not happen in a vacuum. One must understand the history in order to understand “the now”.

In the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primary Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) decisively defeated Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire. During the 2016 campaign Senator Sanders “came out” as a “democratic socialist (DS)” during a speech at Georgetown University. He told the crowd that democratic socialism is not a Marxist ideology calling for the abolition of capitalism. “I don’t believe government should own the means of production, but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a fair deal…” Democratic Party leaders were initially alarmed and strategists suggested the party distance themselves from Sanders. They feared that the label “democratic socialist” would be politically radioactive. Hillary Clinton said his ideas were economically unfeasible and politically unrealistic. Republicans seized on the “socialist” label to frame his campaign as a radical shift toward government control.

In the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primary, Senator Sanders gained more traction as his message of free tuition at public universities, campaign finance reform, and single-payer healthcare resonated with more voters across the electorate. In Iowa, Sanders won the popular vote, while Pete Buttigieg narrowly led in state delegate equivalents after a chaotic and heavily criticized caucus count. Sanders won a narrow victory in the New Hampshire primary, and won in the Nevada caucuses. From 2016 forward, Democratic Party stalwarts and elites watched Sanders and his message take hold. They see the growing crowds, growing energy and enthusiasm, favorable polling data, and growing fundraising from small and large donors. The concern for them has shifted from “will he lose to Republicans?” to “what do we do if he wins?” It’s no longer the messenger; it’s now the message. And other than stating the obvious, that Trump is, as Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has told us, “Trump is a ‘race-baiting, xenophobic’ bigot”; what’s the Democratic Party’s message? How are they going to make the lives of Americans better?

Building upon the momentum created by Senator Sanders, we now have “The Squad” — four congresswomen of color who were sworn into Congress in 2019. While some refer to themselves as democratic socialists, they all express support for DS policies. Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, the first Somali-American member of Congress, Rashida Tlaib are the first two Muslim women ever elected to Congress. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan challenged the Democratic Party agenda when she publicly supported the pro-Palestine BDS movement. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts is very clear in her support of immigrant rights and has said, “The people closest to the pain should be closest to the power.” They have motivated the “progressive” ranks within the Democratic Party to varying degrees. These women have articulated support for ideas such as Medicare for All, a $15-dollar minimum wage, debt-free college and have called for abolishing ICE.

In last year’s Democratic Party mayoral primary, then NY Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, 56% to 44%. The Democratic Party establishment was not pleased with the outcome. Cuomo said, “Extremism, division and empty promises are not the answer to this city’s problems, and while this was a look at what motivates a slice of our primary electorate, it does not represent the majority.” After the primary former NY Gov. David Patterson called upon Democrats (members of Mamdani’s own party) to work together to defeat him. Democratic leadership held meetings to discuss their options in the general election. Mamdani went on to defeat Cuomo who ran as an Independent and Republican Curtis Sliwa in the general election. To that Trump said (as Dr. Du Bois projected), “Look, we don’t need a communist in this country…”

Based upon this brief history of fits and starts we now come to the current day. Three congressional candidates in New York City won their primary races with the support of Mayor Mamdani and his allies. In Washington, DC, Councilmember Janeese Lewis George, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist won the Democratic Party primary for mayor as well. In Colorado, democratic socialist Melat Kiros, 29, ousted longtime Denver Rep. Diana DeGette, a liberal incumbent who had served for roughly three decades, 51% to 42%. The Washington Posted reports, “After three candidates endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their congressional primaries in New York last week, establishment Democrats felt angst. Democratic socialists looked to Colorado, and the money followed.”

In New York, Brad Lander, a Mamdani allied candidate defeated incumbent Congressman Daniel Goldman, 66% to 34%. Goldman received over $320,000 in contributions connected to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for the 2026 election cycle. Claire Valdez defeated Antonio Reynoso for an open seat, 58% to 33%. Darializa Avila Chevalier, another democratic socialist unseated five-term incumbent Congressman Adriano Espaillat, 49% to 46%. Espaillat’s campaign directly received $5,000 from AIPAC itself, with an additional $140,000 to $376,000 in individual contributions earmarked or bundled by the organization. Additionally, United Democracy Project—AIPAC’s super PAC—poured $650,000 into another PAC (BOLD America) that spent $2.8 million supporting Espaillat.

Are the democratic socialist politics of Mayor Mamdani and the candidates he supports proving to be the next iteration of a progressive movement within the American body politic? If so, why is the Democratic Party establishment, including many of its African American leaders, so afraid of this shift in politics?

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) says Mayor Mamdani is going to have to smooth things over with congressional Democrats. Why? The candidates he and his allies backed won the primaries fair and square. Unless as Dr. Du Bois stated, “I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no “two evils” exist. There is but one evil party with two names…” NY AG Letitia James (who formerly supported Mamdani) said, “Some of the candidates that he (Mamdani) has supported are individuals who do not understand the politics of New York City, the cultural differences from district to district, who have not been part of the history and the struggle of some of these districts, and are relatively new to the body politic…” Oh, so the voters are stupid and were fooled? Does she honestly believe that establishment politicians who fill their coffers with AIPAC money know what’s best for voters more that the actual voters themselves? Really? These are the racist tropes usually used by white politicians to explain votes cast by “colored” voters.

The voters are not stupid, but many are confused. I wrote a piece entitled, He Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune, wherein I wrote, “Many voters are confused. They can’t understand why in so many instances the individuals they elect to represent their interests, get to Congress and represent the interests of outside forces.”

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) have received millions of dollars in campaign funding from AIPAC. According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, AIPAC-backed members of the caucus have received at least $3.6 million—and an estimated total of nearly $9 million across several election cycles.

Specific leading recipients include:

Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY): At least $950,331.
Shontel Brown (D-OH): At least $1,028,686.
Glenn Ivey (D-MD): At least $775,199.

When AIPAC boasted that it was committing $100m to defeat Democratic Party incumbents in order to fight back a wave of progressive dissent over Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, did Rep. Jeffries complain? No!  When AIPAC money helped a pair of Black pro-Israel Democrats defeat progressive Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.), did AG  James or Rep. Jeffries demand an apology or claim that representatives of AIPAC were, “going to have to smooth things over with congressional Democrats.”, as he has demanded of Mamdani?  No!  They went along to go along.

What is it about affordable housing, a living wage, and the growth of unions, that is causing establishment Democrats such consternation? What’s wrong with the idea of working people running both the economy and civil society? Why won’t the Democratic Party clearly condemn Israel for the genocide in historic Palestine? Aren’t these the policies and politics of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, Ms. Ida B. Wells, Dr. King, Dr. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Malcolm X, Ms. Ella Baker and so many others? Are these not the policies and politics of the original members of the CBC, the original corps of lawmakers dedicated to safeguarding civil rights and known as “the conscience of the Congress”? Is the conscience of the Congress now unconscious?

How prophetic was Dr. Du Bois? “If a voter organizes or advocates a real third-party movement, he may be accused of seeking to overthrow this government by “force and violence.” Anything he advocates by way of significant reform will be called “Communist”” No matter what you call it, no matter what you call them, those who are championing civil rights, workers’ rights, equal pay for equal work, an end to these senseless, illegal and immoral wars of choice should be listened to.

There is a new politics developing and members of the African American electorate should be paying attention because the constituents are not being paid by AIPAC to vote against their own interests and the interests of their community. Too many so-called people in positions of leadership are. Remember, it’s not the messenger, it’s the message.

Written by Dr. Wilmer J. Leon, III

Official website; http://www.wilmerleon.com

One may also purchase his book, entitled Politics: Another Perspective.

My mama had Off the Wall spinning on Sunday mornings while the greens cooked, and back then I was small enough to believe that voice lived somewhere inside the walls of the house instead of inside a body with a hard father, impossible expectations, and a heart built to break. That is the first lie fame sells you about a star. It says he is only sound and light. It swears he came out of the womb glittering, that he never once bled on the floor like the rest of us.

He bled plenty.

Long before the surgery jokes, before the papers turned his features into a national sport, there was a little boy in Gary being corrected, measured, rehearsed, and shaped until childhood had no room left to breathe. Joseph Jackson did not raise a singer so much as manufacture one, the way you weld a machine together, with discipline, fear, correction, and a belt always close enough to haunt the room. Grown, Michael would speak in that soft careful voice about how the sight of his own father could make his stomach turn. Boyhood got taken from that child before his hands were big enough to hold it.

That is the ugliest math in the whole story. The thing stolen from him became the thing millions of us cherished. His stolen play paid for ours. We danced on the grave of his childhood and called it a good time.

So when the man grew rich past counting and went and built an amusement park with a Ferris wheel, animals, a train, a theater, and a candy-store kind of fantasy that never seemed to close, half this country pointed and cackled. Weird, they said. A grown man playing with toys.

Run it back, though. What does anybody do after being charged admission to his own life at nine years old? Neverland was not just spectacle. That ranch was a receipt. It was a wounded soul trying to buy back an April that Motown, show business, and family pressure had already sold off wholesale. Many of us could not see it because seeing it meant admitting we helped sign the bill of sale.

There sits the ache under all of it. The public worshipped the glove, the fedora, the white socks, and the way Michael could fold gravity clean in half, spin like a top, then glide backward like the earth itself owed him a favor. What that same public did not want was the tired, damaged, ordinary human standing behind the trick once the building emptied out and the last scream died in the parking lot. Folks fell in love with the illusion, then turned around and resented the magician for being mortal enough to sweat, ache, hide, worry, and need rest.

The punishment for changing shape was savage. His skin lightened, and overnight the whole nation played amateur dermatologist, hollering that Jackson hated his reflection, that he was scrubbing the Blackness off himself to please white folks. Vitiligo was real. His health struggles were real. But set every diagnosis aside for one second and stare at the trap he was born inside. A dark-skinned Black boy came up in an America that never, not for one lousy afternoon, told a dark-skinned Black boy his face was the measure of beauty.

Mirrors surrounded that man for his entire working life. Cameras studied him. Critics dissected him. Magazines enlarged him. Jokes followed him. Every feature became public property. Whatever got done to that face happened inside pressure, not outside it. Yet we treated his body like it belonged to the ticket holders. We felt entitled to inspect it, roast it, judge it, and autopsy it while blood still moved through him.

The papers sniffed out something profitable and rotten early. They figured out that the same crowd that would weep at Man in the Mirror would also pay money to watch a Black genius get turned into a sideshow. Bubbles the chimp. The oxygen chamber stories. The nicknames that stuck like tar. They fed the public a cartoon, and the public gobbled it because a cartoon is a whole lot easier to hold than a lonely thirty-year-old millionaire who could not sit right around regular people, on account of never once being regular a day in his life.

We wanted the man strange so we would not have to feel the shame of how alone we helped make him.

Nobody prints that part on the poster. Fame at that altitude is solitary confinement with room service. Michael could not walk into a corner store. He could not sit on a bench in a park. He could not fall for somebody without cameras, lawyers, managers, reporters, and opportunists circling like buzzards. Everybody in the room seemed to need a cut, a signature, a favor, a photograph, a percentage, or a piece of meat off the bone.

Picture every relationship you own arriving with an invoice stapled to it. Picture trusting nobody while needing everybody all at once.

His closeness to children became one of the most painful and disputed parts of his life and legacy. Jackson denied wrongdoing, and in 2005 he was acquitted in a criminal trial. Later allegations kept the argument alive, and people will continue fighting over what they believe happened. I will not sit here and try the whole matter in one paragraph. I know only this much. Whatever answer a person reaches about those accusations, the loneliness underneath the man was flat real, and this country mocked that loneliness right up to the second it stopped being a punchline.

June of 2009 arrived, and Michael Jackson was found unresponsive in a Los Angeles bedroom after his doctor administered propofol, a surgical anesthetic, in an attempt to buy him a few hours of sleep. Chew on that. One of the most famous entertainers breathing could not purchase the one thing a broke teenager gets for nothing, which is rest.

And the instant that heart quit, the entire planet pulled a shameful stunt. It grieved.

The same outlets that had barbecued Jackson for twenty years ran wall-to-wall tributes. Folks who had cracked wise about his nose stood in candlelight singing his catalog. Records flew. Vigils bloomed. Radio stations went deep into the albums. Strangers cried like they had lost kin. All that love, that ocean of devotion, showed up on the exact afternoon the man could no longer feel a single drop.

There is the tragedy stripped naked. Not that Michael was misunderstood, since plenty of people go misunderstood and survive it. The wound is that the affection was real and gigantic and aimed dead wrong the whole time. We dumped it all on the performer, the product, the phenomenon, the moonwalking ghost we could summon off a screen anytime we craved a hit of wonder. We never poured enough of it on the person, the shy, generous, terrified soul who wanted, to the last breath, to be held by somebody who did not want one thing back.

He gave us joy that outlived him and will outlast us too. I still play the records. I still catch my breath when that bassline drops. I still know what it means when a room full of Black folks hears the right Michael Jackson song and everybody’s age falls away at once. The music still works because genius does not expire.

But the innocent way I heard those songs on that kitchen floor is gone for good. Now I hear the price tag. I hear a child who never got permission to be a child, singing his lungs to shreds so the rest of us could shake something loose and feel alive.

We got the miracle we hollered for.

Michael got the bill.

Staff Writer; Jamar Jackson

This brother loves poetry, music, and the culture that raised him… His words come from somewhere honest, and they speak to everyday Black folks just living their lives… Reach him at JJackson@ThyBlackMan.com.

The Connection Between School Quality and Neighborhood Vitality

Research consistently shows that the quality of local schools is one of the top factors families consider when choosing where to live. When a neighborhood earns a reputation for excellent public education, it tends to attract and retain residents who are deeply invested in the long-term health of that community. Property values stabilize, local businesses benefit from consistent foot traffic, and civic organizations gain the engaged membership they need to function effectively. This dynamic creates a virtuous cycle in which strong schools produce informed, motivated graduates who go on to become the teachers, entrepreneurs, and community leaders of tomorrow.

In Los Angeles specifically, this pattern plays out across dozens of neighborhoods. Families who once felt they had no choice but to relocate in search of better educational options are increasingly finding that high-quality public schools exist closer to home than they realized. Identifying those schools, and understanding what makes them successful, is the first step toward making informed decisions for children and communities alike.

What Sets the Top Public Schools Apart

Not all schools that perform well share the same formula, but the most consistently successful institutions tend to share a few core characteristics. Strong instructional leadership, a stable and experienced teaching staff, high expectations for all students regardless of background, and genuine family engagement are recurring features of schools that outperform their peers. Equally important is a school culture that treats students as capable individuals rather than passive recipients of information.

For parents navigating the complex landscape of public education in Southern California, resources that aggregate and contextualize school performance data are invaluable. A thorough look at the best schools in los angeles reveals that high performance is not limited to any single zip code or demographic. Charter schools, magnet programs, and traditional neighborhood schools all appear among the top performers, which speaks to the diversity of educational models that can succeed when the right conditions are in place.

The Role of Community Investment in School Success

Schools do not exist in isolation. Their success is deeply intertwined with the communities they serve and the broader networks of support that surround them. Parent-teacher organizations, local business partnerships, nonprofit foundations, and city government all play meaningful roles in determining whether a school can sustain its performance over time. When these stakeholders align around a shared commitment to student outcomes, the results can be transformative.

Community investment also takes more tangible forms. Volunteer tutoring programs, after-school enrichment activities, mentorship initiatives connecting students with working professionals, and fundraising campaigns for technology and arts programs all contribute to an educational environment that goes beyond what standardized test scores can capture. Schools that thrive in Los Angeles are almost always embedded in networks of community support that extend well beyond the classroom walls.

Education as an Engine of Economic Mobility

The economic argument for investing in public education is compelling and well-documented. Students who receive a strong foundational education are significantly more likely to complete high school, pursue post-secondary credentials, and enter the workforce with the skills employers actually need. Over a lifetime, the income differential between those who complete a quality education and those who do not is substantial, and those individual outcomes aggregate into measurable effects on local and regional economies.

As Pew Research Center has documented through decades of social and economic analysis, educational attainment remains one of the strongest predictors of economic security and upward mobility in the United States. In a city as economically diverse as Los Angeles, where the gap between high earners and low earners is among the widest in the nation, the stakes of educational access are especially high. Every student who gains access to a quality school represents not just an individual success story, but a concrete contribution to the city’s long-term economic resilience.

Looking Forward: Building on What Works

The encouraging news is that Los Angeles has no shortage of models worth scaling. Schools that have managed to close achievement gaps, raise graduation rates, and send first-generation college students to four-year universities are demonstrating every day that the obstacles are not insurmountable. The challenge now is ensuring that the lessons learned in those high-performing environments can be applied more broadly, and that families across the city have the information they need to advocate for their children effectively.

Policy conversations about school funding equity, teacher recruitment and retention, and the expansion of successful school models are all part of this larger picture. So too are the quieter, less headline-grabbing efforts of individual principals, counselors, and classroom teachers who show up every day committed to making a difference. Progress in public education rarely arrives in dramatic leaps. It accumulates through sustained effort, honest evaluation, and a willingness to learn from both successes and failures.

Los Angeles is a city with enormous potential, and its schools are both a reflection of that potential and one of the primary means of realizing it. When communities rally around the goal of educational excellence, the benefits extend far beyond any individual student or classroom. They ripple outward into neighborhoods, economies, and generations, shaping the kind of city Los Angeles is capable of becoming. The work is ongoing, but the evidence that it matters could not be clearer.

Staff Writer; Walter Jones

That’s the thing folks miss when they hang the word genius on him like it explains the whole story. Yes, the man could play. Yes, the tone was unlike anybody breathing, that lonely, vulnerable, muted cry that sounded like a grown man admitting something he’d never say out loud. But plenty of people can play. What separated him from the pack was refusal. A flat out unwillingness to stand still long enough for the world to put a frame around him and call it finished.

Go back to the beginning. A youngster raised in East St. Louis, the son of a dental surgeon, shows up in New York chasing Charlie Parker like the man was oxygen. For a while, he is a bebop soldier, standing next to Bird on those Savoy and Dial sessions, trying to keep up with a hurricane. Now here’s the truth nobody wants to say plain. In that setting, Miles was not the fastest gun. He did not have Dizzy’s stratosphere range or Bird’s terrifying velocity. A lesser mind would have spent his whole life trying to outrun people he could not outrun. Instead, he did something wiser. He asked himself a different question. Not how fast, but how deep. Not how many notes, but which ones. That instinct, choosing space over speed, would define him for the next four decades.

So by 1949, he is already bored with the very thing he came to master. He gathers Gil Evans and a nonet, brings in a French horn and a tuba, and cuts the sessions that later became known as Birth of the Cool. Slower. Rounder. More breathing room where bebop had crammed a thousand syllables. He basically walked out of the loudest room in America and started whispering. That whisper became a whole movement. West Coast players ran with that softer, airier feeling for years. Miles had already gone by then.

People think of the fifties as his golden stretch, and in a way it was. He kicked heroin, cleaned himself up through pure stubbornness, and put together a band that had no business being that good. John Coltrane on tenor. Red Garland on piano. Philly Joe Jones behind the drums. Paul Chambers holding it down on bass. They swung hard, burned through standards, cut Round About Midnight, and knocked out those marathon Prestige dates that still sound alive today. Any normal artist plants a flag right there and builds a career on the hard bop mountain. You know what Miles did instead.

Kind of Blue happened in 1959, and to this day it might be the best selling jazz record ever made. But understand what it actually was. It was a rebellion against the very sophistication he had helped perfect. Bebop and hard bop had gotten so busy with chord changes that a soloist was basically running an obstacle course, thirty two bars of hairpin turns. Miles said forget the obstacle course. Let’s build the tune on scales, on modes, give the man two chords and a mood and let him live inside it. So Coltrane stretches out, Cannonball Adderley testifies, Bill Evans lays down those impressionist clouds, and the whole thing floats. Modal playing changed how everybody after them approached improvising. Miles handed the future a doorway and, naturally, strolled through to the next thing.

Now the second quintet. This is where I get emotional, because for my money it is the most quietly revolutionary group of the whole run. Wayne Shorter writing tunes from some other galaxy. A baby faced Tony Williams behind the kit, rewriting what time could even mean. Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter operating on telepathy. E.S.P., Miles Smiles, Sorcerer, Nefertiti. That band took the freedom the avant garde was chasing and made it swing without ever tipping into chaos. They played so loose it felt like the music might fall apart at any second, and it never did, because underneath the looseness was iron. Most bandleaders would kill to lead one group that important. Miles had already led three or four, and he was staring at the door again.

Because the sixties were ending and something loud was happening out in the streets. Sly Stone. Jimi Hendrix. James Brown teaching everybody about the one. Young Black folks were plugging in, and the concert halls were emptying out while the arenas filled up. A lot of the old lions sneered at all that, called it noise, guarded their tradition like a museum. Miles did the opposite. He plugged in too. In a Silent Way, released in 1969, stretched two side long meditations over Fender Rhodes and electric guitar, patient as a sunrise. Then Bitches Brew dropped in 1970 and split the room clean in half.

You have to sit with how bold that record was. A double album, murky and swampy and menacing, electric keyboards stacked deep, bass lines locked in a groove, the horn cutting through the storm like a warning. The purists lost their minds. Said he had sold out, betrayed the tradition, chased the young dollar. Miles just kept walking. On the Corner in 1972 went even further, all rhythm and repetition and street funk, with sitar and tabla mixed in. Critics hated it at the time, but years later, hip hop and electronic producers would dig through it like scripture, hearing something in those grooves that the jazz gatekeepers had missed.

That’s the pattern, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it. He was never where you left him. Every time a movement he started grew comfortable enough to have followers and a rulebook, Miles was already three rooms down the hall building something those followers would have to catch up to. Bebop, cool, hard bop, modal jazz, the electric brew, the funk. Six or seven lifetimes of innovation stacked inside one restless man who apparently could not stand the sound of his own yesterday.

He paid for it too. The reinventions cost him. Old fans felt abandoned. Critics who had crowned him kept trying to drag him back to whatever era they personally loved best. Health broke him down, and he vanished for most of the late seventies, silent, sick, worn out. When he came back in the eighties, he even put his horn on Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time and Michael Jackson’s Human Nature on You’re Under Arrest, then pushed deeper into the synthesizer heavy, studio shaped world of Tutu. Some of that later work does not carry the same untouchable glow as the classic records, but look at the spirit of it. A man in his sixties, a legend who could have coasted on Kind of Blue royalties forever, was still reaching toward whatever the kids were making. Still refusing to become his own tribute act.

That’s the lesson buried under all the accolades. We love to make our heroes into monuments, freeze them in their prettiest moment and light a candle. Miles would have hated that. His whole life was an argument against standing still, a forty year sermon on the danger of letting yesterday’s applause become today’s cage. He understood something most of us never do, that the reward for mastering a thing is not the right to repeat it forever. It is the freedom to walk away and start over as a beginner, on purpose, again and again.

So no, don’t just call him a jazz genius and leave it there. That word is too small and too still for what he was. The man was a shape shifter, an escape artist, a restless spirit who treated his own legend like something to be outrun. He kept changing before the world could catch him. And every time we finally caught up, we found the same thing waiting. An empty chair, still warm, and the faint sound of him somewhere up ahead, already playing something new.

Staff Writer; Jamar Jackson

This brother loves poetry, music, and the culture that raised him… His words come from somewhere honest, and they speak to everyday Black folks just living their lives… Reach him at JJackson@ThyBlackMan.com.