It’s almost November 2018 but you will not have to stay up until midnight on voting day to determine how the elections this year will most likely turn out.
Please get out and vote. Your parents, grandparents and ancestors faced beatings, whippings, attack dogs, water hoses and jail time while risking their careers and their lives to fight for your right to cast ballots for the candidates of your choice.
Now, let me tell you about what impact your vote will have on African Americans and Black communities in the United States.
I hate to say it but white Democrats and white Republicans love each other far more than they love you!
How do I know that? I know how they feel because I know political history. I know Americans switch political parties like women switch outfits before the big dance! Political devils make you think you’re voting for a Democrat when you’re really voting for people with a Republican mindset.
You think you are voting for abolitionist John Brown when you’re really voting for Lester Maddox or Bull Connor or some bigoted state attorney that arrested your child for wrongful reasons. Politicians will prey on you just like a bloody-jawed wolf wearing lamb clothing preys on unsuspecting Black sheep!
If candidates of either major political party spends millions to elect candidates for four years and comes around to you, your internet site, your newspaper or your Black owned radio station to make the smallest media buy they can four weeks before election day those candidates show clearly that they think your votes have no value or that you are too politically dumb to figure the political thing out.
If candidates and political parties that you love believe their white friends, their white classmates or the white children of their campaign contributors can influence and deliver more African American votes than your community’s most experienced and successful Black political professionals that is a crazy political concept that will never work and should be discredited and abandoned!
2018 is the year of the “political pirates, puppets, parrots and ballots”!
The state and federal politicians you’ve always voted for have watched Political Captain Morgan, Captain D, Long John Silver and Blackbeard conspire with Communists from Russia and other nations to steal your political narratives and your elections. Columbus, Vasco Da Gama and Cortez were colonial pirates but they never stole political hopes, dreams and elections like the political thieves of today. The next “Taken” movie should be about how Black votes continue to be robbed, burglarized and stolen by major party charlatans, clowns and crooks!
Lamb Chops, Lester, Kermit the frog, Howdy Doody and other puppets have their strings pulled by puppeteers but you are guided, pulled and strung along by internet lines controlled by political liars that feed you Tweets and Facebook posts that are as phony and fake as a three dollar bill!
Oh, but those political parrots! Too many politicians don’t care about what you want or what you say, they repeat what Donald Trump says, they do what Trump tells them to do and they vote the way Trump tells them to vote. Do the politicians you love vote for you, vote for your district or vote for your community? After election day you’ll never even see certain politicians again until the next election cycle begins!
You know, everybody loves the new football coach that’s hied when the team has a poor season. However, when the games begin, all bets are off! The new coach has to deliver. He has to coach your team to victories. He has to get the job done or out he goes like the previous coach.
In politics, in order to get Black votes all you have to do is say “I love Martin Luther King”, “I love the HBCU” or “I eat watermelon and listen to Michael Jackson songs”!
Politicians take you for granted, believe you have no value, believe you deserve no respect and swear to you that white political ice is colder than Black community ice!
How sick can you be?
Yes, there is Black voter purging and Black voter suppression but there is mostly Black voter indifference because smart Black voters feel the same way that politicians feel about Black people.
No one will tell you but politicians feel that Black voters and Black political professionals are both incompetent and inferior. They think you can’t create a political message, can’t print a leaflet or brochure, can’t produce a TV or radio spot, can’t create a direct mail piece, can’t do a poll, can’t set up robo-calls or put up a campaign sign in front of the local trap house or whore house the way that conservatives put up signs in front of the truck stop or at klan rallies and cross burnings!
Black people must exercise their right to vote.
Malcolm X was described an election time as the year of “The Ballot or the Bullet”! In 2018, it’s the year of the ballot or the booty!
Your behind is on the line! Vote for truth. Vote against lies! Vote for righteousness, vote against wickedness and evil!
If candidates don’t respect you, support use, patronize your businesses or hire you during the campaign, they won’t do any of that when you vote them into office but you still must go to the voting booths!
Booty in this column is not the booty you see at Magic City or some other strip club, booty here described pillage and plunder of treasure taken on land from Black communities as opposed to booty taken at sea from a merchant or slave ship.
This election should be about a beautiful, bountiful and good life for everybody or good lives for nobody!
One day, after I’m long gone, someone will say, politically speaking, that once was a columnist that was not afraid to shoot “Liberty Valance” in the street on election days!
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.