As Publisher of the Westside Gazette, I have witnessed enough attacks on our communities to recognize a dangerous pattern when I see one. Right now, that pattern is showing itself in the academic arena of our Black universities which are supposed to be the very institutions that have carried us through centuries of exclusion, disrespect, and marginalization.
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So, the question isn’t only why we give him so much power as well as how long we’re willing to keep doing it. Power doesn’t disappear; it shifts. The same energy used to prop up a failed bill can fuel movements that center people, not personalities. It can lift communities, not walls.
While our children were sharpening pencils, lacing up new shoes, and stepping nervously into classrooms on the first day of school, President Donald Trump was sharpening his political blade and aimed it squarely at Washington, DC.
As the publisher of The Westside Gazette, I’ve long believed that the media has both a responsibility and a power: to inform, to uplift, and when necessary, to challenge. When I was invited by the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) to moderate their Presidential Townhall; The State of Black America: A Public Safety Perspective, I didn’t see it as just another speaking engagement. I saw it as a call to purpose.
As summer comes to a chaotic and blistering end scared and marked by hurricanes churning in the Atlantic, wildfires tearing through island communities, and floods swallowing entire neighborhoods we must face a sobering question: What kind of school year are we sending our children into?
There’s a saying we’ve all heard, and it goes like this: “All politics are local.” But if that’s true, then we need to take a long, hard look at what’s going on right here at home. While the national headlines scream about the rise of authoritarianism, the erosion of truth, and the brazen glorification of hate, the real question is: What are we doing about it right here, in our own backyards?
We are rocking and reeling all of us, not Black folks, not just Brown folks, not just our LGBTQIA+ siblings, not just the poor, the immigrant, or the voiceless, even those who are trying to “pass” but all of us. All of us who still have a heart, a conscience, and eyes to see what is unfolding right before us.
Under this administration of Trumpets, a return of the same ol tired, dangerous energy of dried dung that has long tried to silence us proud Black people are once again under attack. We are being criminalized in our communities, ignored in crises, damn near erased from history, and exploited on every front. And yet, many of us remain hesitant to stand together, unsure of who to follow or who to trust.
Donald Trump calls it “big” and “beautiful.” He flashes it like ILL-gotten gain at campaign rallies, the massive, multi-billion-dollar legislation packages he brags about. Infrastructure, border security, policing, tax cuts. To Trump, these bills are monuments to his greatness. To us, Black, Brown, Indigenous, poor, queer, immigrant, these bills are reminders that this nation still sees us as expendable.
Is this selling out the Black cause for a few dollars—or is this the kind of awakening that stirred Nat Turner from silence to sacrifice?