Fighting Back Against 'Community Traitors'

I mention my 1990s enlistment in fighting back against those I call 'community traitors.'

It's to remind folks things weren't always this bad.

Treasonous members of my Generation X looked at the stable, largely safe Black community bequeathed them, raised by Greatest Generation grandparents and Boomer parents, and coldly decided to open fire on it.

Their opening fire decades ago is done by younger turncoats, with mass shootings at urban parties, outside bars and historically Black college and university (HBCU) homecomings in weekly rituals. They've even turned our roads into the high seas where carjackings are done by Millennial and Gen Z street pirates.

Joining inspirations like the Black Muslim 'Dopebusters' of the 1980s who took on violent drug dealers, and anti crack cocaine crusader Herman Wrice leading neighbors against crack houses, I had to fight back against this bloody selling out of our safety and survivability.

Since the end of the 20th century I've been actively involved in public safety advocacy, volunteer safety escorts of female friends and professional 'safety creation' for venues and small businesses.

I've never accepted that Black people with sense are supposed to let ourselves get beaten senseless politically-and literally!-by those without sense.

Here's a recent example:

I spent the last year chasing off nocturnal trespassers from the front stairs of where I used to live.

They lurked from the nuisance bar next door that wasn't a nuisance until a Black lawyer leased it to fulfill a ghetto superstar fantasy, complete with a craven cast of characters.

The 'community traitor' mindset is one that doesn't respect boundaries. If allowed to go unchallenged this disrespect destroys safety for persons and property in the immediate vicinity.

Dispersing them is the best policy before they take root and residents find themselves hitting the floor at home during inevitable gun battles this mindset manufactures.

Black excuse makers will say intrusion is 'the culture' of inner cities. White liberal gentrifiers desperate for acceptance blather about how we shouldn't fight back.

These same gentrifiers are willing to get beaten or robbed to 'fit in'- I'm not!

Fortunately, fighting back against 'community traitors' is second nature to me.

I do it because it's the right thing to do.

It's done in remembrance of a childhood where we didn't have to run from drive-by shootings.

It's done to honor the good community my folks gave me before it was largely destroyed.

It's done in the hope that we can turn things around, no matter how bleak things seem.

Black people with sense didn't ask for 'community traitors' to declare war on us.

But Black people with sense have to win it.

Otherwise, 'the struggle' older activists talk about was for nothing.