By Lucius Gantt
About a month or so ago, I was in Tallahassee, Florida to take care of some banking business and to visit a few friends.
I was sitting on the porch at Perk’s Bonding Agency waiting on my friend Billy Perkins who was taking a phone call inside his office.
Suddenly, a stringy haired, hippie looking dude rolled up to me on a bicycle and said, “We’re having a march on the Florida Capitol and we want everyone in the Black community to show up!”
“Personally, I don’t relish marching”, I replied. “Why?”, the modern-day overseer asked.
I said, “I came up during the times of The Weathermen, The SDS and The Black Federation Alliance. Others marched but they blew stuff up!”
Today, “Black Lives Matter” folk are getting credit for many, many things both good and bad.
I don’t know what the BLM strategy is. I don’t know what the BLM plan is. I don’t know what the BLM goals are for African Americans that continue to be oppressed, exploited and played!
I know every day someone is representing BLM on network news where they give sound bites rather than sound advice to the masses of Black people.
But that’s OK. We all have our roles in efforts to bring about justice, peace, equality, and progress. The roles of youthful activists are, in most cases, different from the roles of the world’s Black elders that have been through freedom rides, armed struggles, and vigorous opposition movements. They have been there, done that and have their Black Panther T-shirts!
Right now, the majority of BLM supporters and sympathizers are being falsely accused of being anarchists, terrorists, outlaws and hoodlums instead being peaceful protestors.
The devil is tricky. Orange satan is trying to make peaceful protestors look like criminals and unidentified dictatorial militia members look like defenders and protectors!
Nationalist, supremacist, and race hating law enforcers have always been infiltrators in progressive Black organizations. SCLC was infiltrated. The Nation of Islam was infiltrated. And, The Black Panthers were infiltrated, for examples.
If you don’t know, there are infiltrators in Black Lives Matter too!
Who tried to break out windows at Atlanta’s CNN headquarters with a skateboard? Who set an Atlanta Wendy’s fast food restaurant on fire? And who was riding around on a beat up bicycle in in Tallahassee trying to get Blacks to provide cover for Trump supporters that desire to incite police violence against Black people?
Young people, don’t be fooled by puppets and pirates dressed in protest clothing asking you to provoke the police into using deadly force on you.
Don’t go to sleep and dream that the Boogaloo Brothers and Proud Boys that put on a BLM t-shirt and encourage you to commit violent acts are your helpers and benefactors.
They are the devilish perpetrators that would put “Moms For Justice” in the cross-hairs of secret police armed with tear gas, pepper spray, automatic weapons and Blackhawk helicopters!
In a march or rally attended by thousands of people opposed to police violence and murder only a small, small number of people are encouraging you to violate laws, damage property and challenge people with weapons of mass murder.
If you want to believe in something, believe in God, believe in yourself and have faith in the Black people that risked their lives, risked their careers and stood up and spoke out for you and your community for years and years and years!
If you don’t, you’re not headed for progress, you’re headed for self-destruction.
Lucius is a contributing columnist to NNPA newspapers around the nation, and the author of “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing,” available on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere.