Donald J. Trump will become the 45th President of the United States on January 20, 2017 and Millennials are rising into power. What will all things mean for the outlook of our local Black LGBT entrepreneurs? Take a look at these articles and then share your ideas on our facebook page.
This month, we are proud to feature Nicholas Mayberry of ND Life and Entertainment Group, a local caterer within our community. He and his business and life partner, Dexter share the styling, catering and event planning firm in Atlanta. We explore his transition from a love for cooking and entertaining to developing a business around his passions and how any of us can do the same.
Services:
Image Consulting, Personal Shopping, Makeovers & Event Preparation, Home Interior Design Planning and Execution, Holiday Design & Custom Artwork, Event and Wedding Planning, Private Dinners, Daily/Weekly Meal Plans & Full Service Catering
As the holidays are coming upon us with Thanksgiving on November 24th and lasting through to New Year’s Day brunches, please consider this guy if you would love to take the stress off of cooking for many this year and still wow your guests. You might want to book him quick. To give you a sample of what he can do, he has provided us with a simple yet savory dish an 8 year old could prepare. There’s more where that came from.
Maple Bourbon Bacon Mashed Sweet Potatoes:
Yield: serves about 4
Duration : 1 hour
Ingredients:
6 sweet potatoes
4-6 slices thick-cut bacon
10 sage leaves
1 tablespoon butter
1/3 heavy cream
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons maple bourbon
1/4 teaspoon pepper and salt
Preparation:
Add the potato chunks to a large pot of water and bring to a boil. Cook until they are fork tender, about 20 to 30 minutes. While the potatoes are boiling, heat a large skillet over medium-low heat and add the chopped bacon. Cook the bacon until crispy and fat has been rendered.
Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and place it on a paper towel to drain. Remove about 1 tablespoon of bacon fat from the skillet and set it aside in a bowl. To the same skillet, add the butter and heat it over medium heat. Add the sage leaves and cook until they are crispy, about 1 to 2 minutes per side. Remove them with a slotted spoon and place on a paper towel to drain.
Drain the potatoes thoroughly and add them back to the pot. Mash with a potato masher. Once mashed add in the reserved bacon fat, the heavy cream, the bourbon and the butter. Whip the potatoes with a hand blend until everything is combined. Taste the potatoes and add the salt and pepper, seasoning more or less if desired.
Heat the oven to 325 degrees and top the potatoes with the bacon. Bake them for 25 to 30 minutes, then remove them from the oven and crumble the sage over top.
Downtown Atlanta between University Center and the sporting and convention district is situated a gem in the history of Atlanta Black Businesses. In 1947, brothers: James and Robert Paschal opened a 30-seat diner on West Hunter Street, now known as Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to serve “down-home” soul food cuisine to Morehouse, Spelman, Clark, Atlanta University and Morris Brown students. It was their way of providing them a home cooked meal away from home. Very soon, their crispy fried chicken became their hit feature dish alongside other soul food staples: collard greens, macaroni and cheese, candied yams, black-eyed peas and sweet tea.
At this time, The City of Atlanta was thoroughly segregated. Jim Crow was the law of the land, and the Paschal brother’s new restaurant, “Paschal’s” shortly became one of the few venues where “coloreds”, as was the term of the day, could dine with dignity in an establishment created from resources within their own community. Imagine what this did for Blacks who had to endure humiliating treatment while shopping downtown at Rich’s Department Store now part of the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center. But the Paschal Brothers just wanted to open up a restaurant and somehow Jim Crow happened to serve their bottom line and the provide them the opportunity to serve something more than just food. They served dignity. Throughout the 1950’s Paschal’s became an established feature in the social life of Atlanta’s Black community leaders, pastors, Atlanta University Center faculty and members of the business community.
In 1959, they expanded into a motel lodge and restaurant to host visiting parents of Atlanta University Center students. In 1962, a young man walked up to James Paschal and told him that his name was Martin King, and he was trying to find a place to meet. He said he didn’t have any money to really pay for a room or pay for anything, but he wanted to start a coalition. He asked if he could bring his team members and guests to Paschal’s to eat, meet, rest, plan and strategize. By this time, the young man had made a name for himself as one of the primary ring leaders of the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott and son of locally renowned and respected Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. “Daddy King” of prominent Ebenezer Baptist Church. With honor, his requests were obliged. Right there, some of planning of the 1963 March on Washington took place at Paschal’s. As sit-ins and demonstrations among the youth led by C.O.R.E and S.N.C.C. began to ramp up throughout the 1960’s and young nonviolent soldiers “filled the jails”, after they were bailed out, they were safely put up in Paschal’s motor lodge rooms and fed until they could be reunited with their parents. But the Paschal brothers only wanted to open up a restaurant.
In addition to becoming Patron Saints of Atlanta’s local civil rights movement, the Paschal Brothers also took many local youths under their wing whom they employed and not only taught them how to prepare savory soul food dishes, but also disciplined them in work ethic and business acumen. Many where Atlanta University students working their part time for spending cash and others paying their way through school. The Paschal brothers did not want to just use their labor in exchange for cash that would be fleeting. They wanted to pay them back with something more powerful, meaningful, valuable and lasting and that is an understanding of the workings of a business from all aspects, even down to management and accounting. Their community investment was in believing that their employees should not just work to earn, they should also work to learn.
Paschal’s still stands today on 180 Northside Dr entertaining every day folk up to Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter with delicious Southern Soul Food Cuisine. Atlanta Mayors, Kasim Reed, Shirley Franklin, Andrew Young and Congressman, John Lewis are regular patrons throughout the year along with members of the King family and a host of notable local pastors and faculty members of Atlanta University Center just like in the beginning. Stop by for a taste of history and it is guaranteed that their fried chicken will bring you back again and again.
Entrepreneurs put those spectacles on and take another look see at our community from yet another perspective for your market studies. Hopefully, we'll always surprise you.
Many thanks to Miko Evans, our local Black Gay Historian for giving us firsthand history lessons on how Atlanta's Black LGBT Qummunity rose out of obscure shadows within the broader African American community to not fully integrate with its White LGBT neighbors but create an identity of its own and put the city on the national and international map as a flagpost for others of their kind. Once establishing a niche market, Evans describes the trial and triumphs of those who have attempted to build an economic infrastructure for this community on the road to self-sufficiency. Key Chapters: HIV/AIDS Prevention & Healthcare Advocacy, Olympics, ITLA and the current budding of a Neo Renaissance.
For this segment of “History Class” we capture the inspiration of Black Excellence exhibited during the period which has become known as the Harlem Renaissance and in its heyday, “The New Negro Movement”. It situates itself between the bookmarks of the end of World War I and the end of World War II 1918-1945. The nearly 30 year period spans over The Great Black Migration North (1915-1960) and The Great Depression (1929-1939). It captures the boom of "The Roaring Twenties", the organized crime of "The Prohibition Era" and the rise of Pan-Africanism led by Marcus Garvey. This Renaissance is believed to have been birthed out of and fueled by the aspirations of Southern Blacks fleeing the heavy oppression of the South and its prolific feature being choked off by the hardships brought on by The Great Depression. Within it, we have some of the richest periods of Black creativity in art, business and social organizations led independently by Blacks for Blacks. While Black Southern refugees did not find welcoming arms in the North, what they did find was opportunity and a safespace free of the harassment and terrorism of the Klan and an enveloping White Society hostile toward Black achievement. In this period of History and in tiny insulated enclaves of Northern industrialized cities like New York’s Harlem, Blacks found fertile ground to be and create for themselves, to independently identify and express themselves like never before. After The Depression choked the life out of this Renaissance, these tiny insulated pockets inhabited by Blacks and largely controlled by Blacks were left as urban wastelands which created what we know today as the “ghetto”.
Harlem was not the only location experiencing a Renaissance at this time borne out of these forces. The Southside of Chicago, Detroit, Tulsa’s Greenwood, Baltimore, Washington D.C., West Philadelphia and even Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn in the South were also having theirs as well. But Harlem situated itself as the North Star of this movement bringing together icons like Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Lena Horne and many other stars in close proximity of just a few blocks in Uptown Manhattan. Hughes led a literary consortium of writers under a publication titled “Fire” and the Duke featured this jumpy new rhythm known as jazz with his big band at “The Cotton Club”. Within this dynamic social backdrop, James Baldwin was born in Harlem in 1924 and experienced his youth and it deeply affected him. This is why we call him the “Native Son” of the Harlem Renaissance. He was a student schooled in poetry by Countee Cullen, another one of the literary greats of this era and was mentored by Richard Wright who wrote, “Native Son”. What’s more is that these three men had something in common besides being Black and legendary writers. They were all gay or some variation of SGL “same-gender loving”. Not only was Blackness for the first time given freedom to be identified and expressed, for the first time the experience of same gender love and gender bending expressions also began to peek its head around the corner to be seen through the works of Langston Hughes, Zora Neal Hurston, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. See article, “The Gay Harlem Renaissance” wherein celebrated historian Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. admits it “was surely as gay as it was black.” The drag performances of Gladys Bentley in top-hat, waistcoat and cane became a showcase, and the cultural phenomena of drag balls got it start. All of this could be said to have created James Baldwin, a man who was proud and unapologetically Black and Gay in a broader society which shamed both parties.
Like it must have done for James Baldwin, The Harlem Renaissance inspires us, the founders of The Baldwin Project, LLC to use our four lines of businesses to in invest in the richness of Black creativity in art, business and social organization, to launch a Neo Renaissance almost 100 years later. When the Black and LGBTQ get together in one person, and a community is created among these people, we are not lacking in originality, imagination, creativity, genius and magic. This ingenuity is indeed capital and a real commodity. Starting in Atlanta, touted as The Black Gay Mecca we could not have found more fertile ground. We have only to cultivate it, and that is what we intend to do with our four lines of businesses, (Marketing, Investing, Networking, Education) to M.I.N.E. these resources as if they were gold, because indeed it is. We are sitting on a G.O.L.D. M.I.N.E.
Grow- Stay in the mode of expansion, progression, innovation and evolution.
Organize- Unite all stakeholders under one common concern for mutual benefit and be orderly.
Lead- Be original and lead with excellence. Teach others on how to follow your gold standard.
Discipline-Master your craft through ongoing education and training. Keep your skills sharp and cutting edge. Be self-regulated.
It was such a treat discussing the very real threat of gentrification with Laban King, CEO of Millennial Global Investments. If you have lived in Atlanta for at least the past 5 years it is difficult to miss. Do we just allow it to take its course or do we take actions to ensure that our community has something to gain from this redevelopment boom going on in Atlanta and not get shut out and shut down? Let's here it from Laban King. He's got lots for us. Pen and paper out, twitter up so that you can catch these tweetable moments:
"Failure is not the opposite of success, it is the stepping stone."
-Harold Leffall
Harold is the author of the business course we will be offering through The Baldwin Project. Harold Leffall recently left Atlanta and now lives in Oakland, CA. He is an empowerment specialist, author, speaker and entrepreneur with 20 years of experience who has been featured in Black Enterprise, Essence, and Entrepreneur magazines. He has held senior management positions with Atlanta Center for Self Sufficiency, Vehicles for Change and United Way of Metro Atlanta. He founded Leffall Employment Agency, a full service staffing firm in Oakland that reached revenues of over $3 million in two years. He holds an M.A. in management and a B.A. in political science.
We have adopted and will be launching his program for the target date of November 3rd this year. We asked him about some of the things prospective students can expect from this course as opposed to investing thousands of dollars into an academic program filled with theory just so that one can get a degree working for a company that one does not own. Just research the curriculum vitae of the many of the founding CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and you will find that a majority, over 70% of them did not hold business degrees. While we believe that formal education has its place, we refute the notion of it being a requirement of going into business and being a success. We like how Mark Twain put it, "Don't let schooling get in the way of your education." Once your business is up an running and you want to sharpen your skills with whatever the top business schools have to offer, by all means go for it. But by then you will have gained some core concepts and frame of reference which will help you understand and appreciate the more heady material given in colleges and it will not be about getting a degree to impress anyone but to add to your knowledge base to help you expand nationally and/or internationally or become publicly traded. However, before you get to that level, our focus is on helping the novice to get started on sturdy footing with the core basics from turning that first dollar to hiring that first employee, the startup phase. There is a lot of danger in this phase that good guidance could help you avoid, saving you time, money and embarrassment. For many, the most difficult phase in developing a business is getting started in the first place. For those of us not coming from business owning families, those hows are elusive and hard to come by. The Baldwin Project aims to change that.
Let's hear straight from the author, himself:
"When I started my first business, Leffall Employment Agency, I had no idea what I was doing. I did not have a business plan and although I had two college degrees I had no training in entrepreneurship. I read all the books I could find on entrepreneurship but none of them prepared me for what it really takes to start and grow a business as an African American. I simply had a dream and drive with no real strategy of how to make it happen. As a result my first year in business was spent making the same mistakes most new business owners make, from not really understanding my market to underestimating the value of relationship building. By trial and error I eventually figured out the success formula, growing my business to close to $4 million in annual sales in just two years. Like every other entrepreneur, your journey will likely be filled with tremendous challenges, disappointments and setbacks – accept these experiences as a part of the process. The Baldwin Project’s intensive entrepreneurial training will provide you with real tools, information and resources that you can use immediately to start or grow your business. This course explores how to identify and develop solutions to the most common leadership and personal challenges faced by entrepreneurs when starting new ventures or growing an existing one. You will learn step-by-step how to use market analysis, operational plans and financial projections to create a comprehensive business plan. After you complete this course you will be on track to realizing your entrepreneurial dreams."
James Baldwin, to those who have the faintest awareness of our great black literary artist of the 20th century, was a profound and fiery intellect during the Civil Rights Movement. He is more widely recognized as an author, but his legacy is just as influential as a teacher, debater, social critic and activist. He was openly homosexual at a time when the bare mention of same-gendered romance was not only taboo and immoral but psychotic and freakish. He was blunt and unapologetically lived in his truth.
But whatever happened to Jimmy Baldwin? Well for the man, we know he expired in a struggle with stomach cancer in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France on December 1, 1987 at the age of 63. But, nearly 30 years later, James Baldwin, The Legend is just getting his wings alongside his contemporaries, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. In fact, his views often places him somewhere right between the ideologies of both men. He favored the Non-Violent philosophy of King, but also subscribed to the agenda of cultural independence, self-sufficiency and self-reliance among Black Americans promoted by Malcolm as the best approach to removing ourselves from the abuse of the oppressor. He often collaborated with King and debated Malcolm. Let’s take an overview of the curriculum vitae of his posthumous legacy:
Per Wikipedia:
In 1986, within the work “The Story of English”, Robert MacNeil, with Robert McCrum and William Cran, mentioned James Baldwin as an influential writer of African-American Literature, on the level of Booker T. Washington, and held both men up as prime examples of Black writers.
In 1987, Kevin Brown, a photo-journalist from Baltimore, founded the National James Baldwin Literary Society. The group organizes free public events celebrating Baldwin's life and legacy.
In 1992, Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, established the James Baldwin Scholars program, an urban outreach initiative, in honor of Baldwin, who taught at Hampshire in the early 1980s. The JBS Program provides talented students of color from underserved communities an opportunity to develop and improve the skills necessary for college success through coursework and tutorial support for one transitional year, after which Baldwin scholars may apply for full matriculation to Hampshire or any other four-year college program.
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante included James Baldwin on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
In 2005, the United States Postal Service created a first-class postage stamp dedicated to Baldwin, which featured him on the front, with a short biography on the back of the peeling paper.
In 2012 James Baldwin was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display that celebrates LGBT history and people.
In 2014 128th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues in New York City, was named "James Baldwin Place" to celebrate Baldwin's 90th Birthday. He lived in the neighborhood and attended P.S. 24. Readings of Baldwin's writing were held at The National Black Theatre and a month long art exhibition featuring works by New York Live Arts and artist Maureen Kelleher. The events were attended by Council Member Inez Dickens, who lead the campaign to honor Harlem native's son; also taking part were Baldwin's family, theatre and film notables, and members of the community
So why in 2016 has James Baldwin become the spirit animal, inspiration and namesake of an urban business and economic development firm seeking to institutionalize group economics among Black Americans with an initial concentration on its SGL-LGBT margins? Could it be for the fact the Baldwin was Black and SGL like its founders? That’s a start. But mainly it is because he understood and often lectured on the connection between systematic oppression and group economics. You can not understand systematic oppression without understanding group economics. Economics is the method by which oppression operates. Yes, much of oppression is psychological which Baldwin lectured on as well, but its designs are executed through economic policies which cripple the stability and independence of Black communities. Ignorance of these strategies and the lack of economic organization among Black communities keeps the systems working toward our detriment.
If you were to take the time to understand the core theme of Baldwin, you will readily see that the man was deeply more a sociologist and social historian at heart, who only used his literary genius, oratory and keen debate skills to highlight critical features in the designs of oppression with the hopes of once awareness of them reached critical mass within the oppressed class, a true and effective revolution would break out seemingly overnight in comparison to the length of the history of that oppression. An oppressive regime lasting over 500 years could be checked within a matter of 5 years, once those who are oppressed began to understand how that oppression works and decided from that moment to no longer choose to participate in it. While Baldwin’s tongue was a stinging lash upon White Supremacy and Homophobia, he also did not allow Black Americans to sit as innocent victims absolved of any responsibility in playing a very crucial part in their own oppression.
Martin Luther King adopted the Nonviolent Philosophy from an Indian attorney, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, “The Mahatma”. Gandhi is credited as the principal leader who led India to break from control of the British Empire without violent militaristic conflict. While not even Gandhi authored the philosophy of nonviolence, he did however organize the philosophy into a sort of effective grassroots strategy, a sort of formula for its demonstration. He fashioned it after the same strategy by which an attorney prepares a brief to argue a case, though instead of it being based upon man-made policies, it is rooted upon the eternal laws of justice which are found in nature and upholds the basis of physics. This field of philosophy is called Jurisprudence, from which the field of Ethics is derived from. Gandhi’s understanding of violence is anything which violates these natural rules. His strategy consisted of researching and collecting facts of instances of these violations to begin to bring justifiable charges against an oppressor, just like Martin Luther had done with his 95 theses against the Vatican and just like the authors of Declaration of Independence had done against King George III. The next step is to begin educating the oppressed class about these charges and their passive participation in it. Bus seating segregation was allowed to continue primarily because Southern Blacks complied with its unjust policies and thus shared some responsibility in their own oppression, the responsibility to defy injustice. “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all.” -Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”. Third step is after you have caused the sentiment toward defiance to reach critical mass is to begin efforts to negotiate with the oppressor to reach some understandings of how these injustices are harmful to all involved including the oppressor and gain some agreements toward actions which will rectify whatever the said injustice is and record them. Once a sort of contract between both parties has been reached for cooperation toward a more just state of affairs, if any line in these agreements are violated on the part of the oppressor, the next and final step is, Confrontation. Confrontation comes in the form of direct action, or mass defiance of unjust statutes thus overwhelming the oppressor with the complicated responsibility of having to put down a non-violent rebellion in order to maintain the authority of their regime with only having violent force as a tool, because through the violation of their agreement they have forfeited their power of moral force. This brings the injustice within the regime to light before the jury of the people. Usually despotic regimes operates through the tactics of divide and conquer. They skillfully and intentionally sow discord among the public in the form of classism, racism, nationalism and partisan rivalry, when the true enemy of the state are but a handful of men at the top. The Nonviolent method helps to blow their cover and bring them to judgement before the public and it is then the hope of the nonviolent practitioner that given the true facts of the matter and appealing to their sympathetic and empathetic connections among all human beings, for we are all more alike than we are different, that the populous will side against the injustice and simply by numeration defeat the oppressor at once.
While this method contains some merit, it is still rooted in the hope of an oppressor class to save an oppressed class, which given the history of privileged oppressor classes may only make sense in theory and the hope for common altruism among the human species. Malcolm X saw the approach as entirely inappropriate and out of priority to the needs of Blacks who were continuing to suffer by depending on Whites for anything. Those who have served you poison from the beginning have nothing good or nourishing to offer you, Malcolm ardently believed. In this, Malcolm not only served as a prosecuting attorney against White Supremacy, in order to break free from its abuse altogether, he called for the need of Blacks to rediscover their rich and powerful identity and heritage pre-colonialism and begin doing for themselves things by which they can, ought to and by right should be doing instead of depending on the so-called “White Devil” who has nothing good for them. He believed we should educate ourselves on ourselves and our powerful place in human history, that we should transcend Paganistic Christianity and return to our ancestral conceptions and relations to the Divine which predates and informs Christian philosophy. He believed that we should practice cultural nepotism, just as any cultural minority does in our country and through it though smaller are prospering ahead of Black Americans. He believed that we should also begin producing for our own needs instead of continuing to use other people’s stuff and thereby giving up our monetary power to the very people who oppress us.
Now what is startling to many is that Malcolm X’s philosophy is actually the other half of Gandhi’s philosophy. Non-Participation is a very important part of the Gandhian Nonviolent program. In order to break India’s dependence on British textiles for clothing, he taught Indians how to spin their own spools of yarn and make their own clothes called “Khadi” and sell it to their own. Through this and the majority of the Indian population, he was able to bring India’s income back home to its own people and out of the hands of Great Britain. He did the same with the market of salt. Indian shores were rich in mineral deposits and Gandhi saw no need in dealing with the British in order to use such an important commodity which could be easily found in their own backyards made by Indian hands. Salt was used to give food flavor and pickle and preserve food in areas which had no refrigeration not widespread in India in the early 20th century, the time of Gandhi’s career (1894-1948). Thus salt was heavily tied to the commodity of food itself, a vital necessity. It plays a vital role in water retention in desert areas, provides electrolytes, it helps keep meat from spoiling and produce edible through droughts and famine. In hot areas like India, salt is ranked right under food and water. If economics is the method by which oppression is primarily practiced and perfected, then withdrawing economic support from the oppressor and using it to fortify and stabilize your own welfare is one of the most effective actions an oppressed people can take. Having your own resources to turn to allows the ability to really practice non-participation and the methods of boycotting. You can effectively run away from an abusive household if you have a house of your own to run to. You don’t need to sweat yourself out waiting your oppressor out to come around to their senses. You can really tell them to kiss your… should you be really done with their crap.
The reason we choose James Baldwin, this native son of the Harlem Renaissance as our mascot is because he is the man where both of these philosophies came together in one mind for the cause of Black Folk in the identity of a Black Same-Gender-Loving man. He knew who he was and he wanted for all of us to know who we are. He understood the power of economic protest. His philosophy centered on self-determination for African Americans; to know and connect with our heritage and govern our own community affairs in a self-sufficient and defiant manner. To do this effectively requires the economic infrastructure gained from enterprise, entrepreneurship, intra-commerce and cooperative economics as often practiced by Jews and immigrant communities as a method of survival and preservation of their minority cultures. Baldwin often preached on this in collaboration with Malcolm X. In 1963, James Baldwin alongside Ossie and Ruby Davis, John O. Killens, Odetta, and Louis Lomax formed the Association of Artists for Freedom, which called for a Christmas boycott to protest the church bombing which killed four girls in Birmingham, Alabama, and asked that, instead of buying gifts, people make Christmas contributions to civil rights organizations. In 1968, Baldwin signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. Baldwin thoroughly understood the power of the dollar and its effective uses in the fight for social justice and the causes of minority groups.
It is our hope that through The Baldwin Project that we will finally be able to accelerate toward that critical mass understanding of what James Baldwin understood and bring about that boiling point revolution which can and will be executed without malice but with the power of self-reliance. And when this is done, the influence of the Black SGL-LGBTQ leadership and involvement can not and will not be erased from the history and narrative of the liberation and establishment of the descendents of the African Diaspora. This is our intent and direction and it all comes together in the legacy of James Baldwin, to project the legacy of James Baldwin forward. May we pick up his baton and carry it to the next stage. We feel the best way to honor his legacy is to carry it forward and not antiquate him and what he stood for into a bronze statue but to make it live and breathe in 2016 and beyond. He ain’t done with us yet. May his ghost oversee, bless and guide our work. Ase’
To really get a sense of the mind of James Arthur Baldwin, take the time to view this video of Baldwin at his best debating how The American Dream has been accomplished at the expense of the American Negro.
Lastly, we close out this issue with 5 stats which will begin to give us a scope into the promises and challenges of organizing an economic infrastructure within our community.
The agenda of The Baldwin Project is only recreating what we once had before. Perhaps since 1921 we have lost our way and got drunk off the integration punch, but if we've done it before, we can do it again. I imagine we have more cause to succeed in 2016 or 2021 than our ancestors had in 1921. While racism is still with us, we now live in a society where it is possible to elect Black presidents. We have Black senators, congressionals, governors and mayors. We are many times more educated than we were in 1921. There where no cell phones, laptops, email or social media in 1921. So lastly, technology coupled with our program, we will democratize the business industry in our favor, whereas banks will not have the final say so on whether or not you get to start a business with just a great idea. We will prove that great ideas can launch, survive and thrive by support of our community. We have only some work to do on the community portion and we are going to fly.
The Baldwin Project, LLC is an urban business and economic development firm organizing community wealth, production and trade among Metro Atlanta's Black SGL-LGBT community to boost economic power to drive collective solutions.
Lack of organized capital among Metro Atlanta's Black SGL-LGBT community has placed us in vulnerable conditions maintaining us in sup-par positions to other Blacks and White LGBTs without adequate resources of our own to address them. Examples: HIV, poverty, youth homelessness, lack of access to mental and physical health care, lack of relationship support, unemployment, lack of life-skills support, lack of ethnocentric socio-recreational spaces for social enrichment, community building and affirming and strengthening our individual and collective identities as a double minority.
The wealth of a community is based upon the rate of commercial transactions within it. If personal economics is about saving money, group economics is about holding money within a community by trading among your own with companies in partnership with organizations giving back to your community and thereby enriching its condition. If personal economics is about how much money you have in the bank after all the bills are paid to then save and invest, community wealth or group economics is about how much of the money we collectively earn is kept in our community to then generate resources for our non-profit organizations in service to our community to effectively carry out their missions. If we were to ask any of our non-profiteers in our community about their struggles to receive monetary support from the community they serve, we ought to be prepared to sit a spell and hear the litany of their woes.
Is it because our Black LGBT businesses do not support their work? Is it because our Black LGBT businesses are struggling themselves to stay afloat and can not afford to give back? Do our businesses struggle because our community does not support them? Do our community fail to support our businesses because we are not aware of them, and/or spending our dollars with businesses outside our community is more convenient and/or personally economical? Is it because after satisfying our basic needs by doing business outside of our community, the individual is not left with much to purchase "luxuries" from our community? Why are we not in the business of serving our own basic needs (housing, food, clothes, transportation, utilities)? Our nonprofits which are surviving and getting work done, who is paying their bills? If not us, you mean to tell me another community is dictating the extent to which we serve ourselves? Would our nonprofits prefer do more under their own direction and authority but dare not bite the hands which feed them? What reason have we to trust anyone else but us to give ourselves what we want and need in they way that we want it, as much as we want?
The NAACP reports: “A dollar circulates in Asian communities for a month, in Jewish communities approximately 20 days and white communities 17 days. How long does a dollar circulate in the black community? 6 hours!!! African American buying power is at $1.1 Trillion; and yet only 2 cents of every dollar an African American spends in this country goes to black owned businesses.” Laban King, CEO of Millennium Global Investments has reported that in the Black SGL-LGBT community, money circulates for only 3 minutes, quicker than a Beyonce' track and our collective condition and situations correlates directly with this and testifies to its truth.
The problem has a lot to do with a lack of ownership over the industries which provide for our basic consumer needs and then a lack of awareness of the few that do exist. For every consumer need within our community which is not met by our own is a leak in our community wealth. It must flow out of our community by necessity until that hole is plugged. Right now, Metro Atlanta's Black SGL-LGBT community collectively earns $10 Billion annually and our community bank account looks very much like a colander. Money in and money right back out into the coffers of other communities. I am sure at this notice our non-profiteers are scratching their heads trying to figure out where the heck does it all go. (Groceries, housing, utilities, clothing, transportation, employment, healthcare). We must have these things and if we are not serving it, we've got to get it where we can.
The existing businesses of our community struggle to stay afloat to grow and compete against overwhelmingly more resourced competitors in pricing due to the inability to buy goods in bulk, which is caused in part by lack of community support and struggles to access capital from traditional funding methods such as the standard bank lending criteria. Depending on banks often limits capital, credit, contact and collateral challenged entrepreneurs from ever getting their great ideas off of the ground to see the light of day. Secondly, there is a dearth of guidance, education and support assisting novice individuals in our community with ingenious, feasible and perhaps very lucrative business concepts in bringing their ideas into fruition and then to the marketplace to surviving the cut of the first few years in business to then going on to flourish. This for the most part takes experience, wisdom and creativity, and most importantly a plan....a business plan. I imagine I do not lack in connections with members of our community selling "hustling" something, but if I were to ask to see their business plan or who is their mentor if they are just starting out, how many do you suppose would be able to satisfy my query? Wonder now why failures are so prevalent among us which in turn disheartens other aspiring entrepreneurs from ever taking a stab at business?
The Baldwin Project, LLC is launching to provide niche marketing through this journalism media platform, "The Baldwin Business Journal" to build awareness of the entrepreneurs among our community and urge them to sponsor and support non-profits which are working to benefit our community so that they may benefit from an ennobled brand, word-of-mouth marketing and the law of reciprocity.
We aim to pool capital from among our community to support the launching of enterprises operating in the industries which serve many if not all of our consumer needs and then be given an incentive to continue their support thereafter by allowing contributors to share in the profits.
We aim to organize and mobilize an interconnected network of entrepreneurs within our community with monthly mixers to build support and alliances among one another, share resources, refer customers, learn industry best practices, create bartering arrangements, collaborate and trade with one another. Within this community, we aim to build a more cooperative society rather than a cold and malicious competitive one. Competitiveness will only be used to inspire excellence.
We will also provide cutting-edge training and education for novice and seasoned entrepreneurs to assist in the real-world tactics of creating, starting and getting a business off of the ground and then flourishing and developing a workforce to bring gainful employment to our own community.
James Baldwin, the late great Black Gay author and activist so passionately valued the immense creativity, art and ingenuity of our people that he would have probably and rightly considered our minds as our real gold mine and our most effective weapon against oppression. We have only to mine it, and that's exactly what The Baldwin Project, LLC, named in his honor professes and intends: G.O.L.D. M.I.N.E.: Once in business that you stay in the mode of GROWTH, for what does not grow is dying. That your business is ORGANIZED with interest in mind for all stakeholders to move with you as one organism. That you LEAD with excellence and originality in your chosen industry. That our entrepreneurs are DISCIPLINED professionals constantly studying and perfecting their craft. Once these principles are taken to heart and acted on, The Baldwin Project, LLC aims to provide the MARKETING, INVESTING, NETWORKING and EDUCATION(M.I.N.E.) to bring them success unlimited for the benefit of all of us. Let's get this engine started.
"Be careful what you set your hearts upon-for it will surely be yours." -James Baldwin
