Now that Project 2025 is set to launch full force here directly, more and more Black people are awakening to the SOS (Signal of Self-Determination) to which we must respond if we’re going to survive and thrive. To be all we can be individually and collectively, we’ve got to write ourselves and each other an IOU – a reminder that “It’s on Us.” What? Everything!
Our “allies” left us hanging. The governmental supports that have undergirded so much of Black life (economically, educationally, politically, etc.) from 1965 to 2024 are as good as gone. So, again, “It’s on Us.” What? Everything!
To that end, here are five Black Community New Year Resolutions to live by.
FEED OURSELVES
The nationally famous Black Church Food Security Network (check it out; it’s a blueprint that every major urban city should copy and/or join) was born in Baltimore after the police killed Freddie Gray and the people rioted. One of the first things the “powers that be” did was close down the grocery stores. If Blackfolk in Baltimore didn’t know it before that moment, they realized it after those grocery stores shut down that power resides not in money or titles, but in institutions. The neighborhood food institutions were not owned and controlled by the Blackfolk in those neighborhoods. The folk who owned and controlled them shut them down. Because they wanted to. Because they had the power to.
If we’re going to have a prosperous 2025, we’ve got to invest heavily in any activities and entities (co-ops, urban gardens, community food pantries, classes, area Black farmers and ranchers, Black-owned restaurants and food trucks, etc.) that help Black people feed Black people. If not, what happened in B’more will go down in a city near you… whenever those who own and control those institutions feel like it.
DEVELOP OURSELVES
If you want to take the spiritual route, developing yourself to your fullest ability is literally a divine charge. That’s the moral of the Bible’s “Parable of the Talents.” The “Great I Am” expects us to develop and multiply and grow whatever “talents” we’ve been given. Additionally, the most spiritually disrespectful thing a child of God can do is sit on their potential and do nothing with it.
During this season when all “allies” and supports have left us high and dry, we will need to tap into the myriad skills, talents, and abilities that are abundant in our communities. We will also need to grow those talents and pair them up with other individuals and institutions so that their impact can be magnified. The more we grow and develop ourselves individually and organizationally, the more we can contribute to our collective efforts to create the world we need and deserve.
PROTECT OURSELVES
In the PE classic “Louder Than a Bomb” from the greatest hip-hop album in history (“It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back”), the Hard Rhymer Chuck D said this: “I never walk alone. I never live alone. My posse’s always ready and they’re living in my zone.” He was talking about the power and importance of community, especially in dangerous times. For 2025 and beyond to be prosperous we’ve got to rethink our habits of just jumping in the ride and rolling out to wherever. Whenever and wherever possible, we need to consider avoiding “rolling solo” and choosing rather to squad up. This isn’t about living and moving in fear, but rather living and moving with common sense. It’s about putting into practice ways to move in this world that allow us to best protect ourselves and our loved ones.
Additionally, our communities might benefit from instituting Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s back-in-the-day (early 1900s) anti-lynching plan. Wells-Barnett’s plan: set up a community alert system so that if one home is attacked by anti-Black folk, neighbors come ready to lend “aid.” That plan was successfully utilized by the Deacons for Defense and Justice out of Louisiana during the 1960s. We would do well to revive it now.
EDUCATE OURSELVES
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sZMFmY6b40
Basically, teaching Black history and Black perspectives on contemporary reality to K-though-college students has been declared illegal. States and the school districts therein are already moving to whitewash even more what was already a whitewashed existing curriculum.
Black parents, teachers, school administrators, religious leaders, retired educators, civic leaders, business owners, and any entities that depend on Black dollars and Black votes cannot allow this madness to stand. Already, in Florida, members of various Black communities are setting up grassroots educational networks to make sure that Black children are equipped with knowledge that affirms their humanity and gives them the ability to push back against the white nationalist indoctrination wave that will come. The intellectual integrity, sanity, and mental/emotional well-being of our people depend on it.
LOVE ON OURSELVES
And speaking of our mental/emotional well-being, one way to protect it is to put maximum energy and effort into loving on ourselves and each other. We have to create an environment, an expectation, a standard of support and celebration to counteract the assaults we will face on all fronts (politics, education, criminal justice, economics, healthcare, etc.).
From the days of slavery, Black people have been conditioned to distrust and demean one another. That conditioning and its after-effects called many things over the decades (i.e., “niggerization,” internalized oppression, post-traumatic slavery syndrome), has become so ingrained in us that we consider that negativity to be a natural part of Black culture. However, that negativity might best be described as creating for us a “Slave Culture,” a way of negatively interacting that keeps us enslaved to a life of unrealized growth and potential.
That won’t do moving forward. We have to train ourselves to look for the best in ourselves and others and go out of our way to celebrate any victories, big or small. We’ve got to make cheering for, loving on, and lifting up each other the norm. An African proverb teaches, “We can go further if we go together.” Celebrating each other will help us do that.
