Second Person Murdered @ Same Atlanta Train Station In Less Than A Week - Yet More Outrage Is Likely To Be Raised Over The "Disrespect" To The "ML King Portrait Upon The Wall In The GA Capitol Building", The NAACP Infighting Goes To Court

If it is unfair for me to connect these seemingly unrelated factoids, please let me know.

On Saturday January 1, 2011 at 12:15am a Black man was murdered in Atlanta's MARTA Five Points Station.  On Friday, January 7, 2011 the same train station registered its second murder of the young year.  If a person expresses fear and trepidation about entering into the Five Points Station and "Underground Atlanta" which is connected to it - is this an irrational set of thoughts that they hold?  Is the news media's coverage of these two events part of the problem?

The City of Atlanta contributed 4 entries into the "The 25 Most Violent Zipcodes In America" list a few months ago.   Some people counter that homicides in Atlanta and other big cities are on the decline and that focusing on individual incidents are merely a stealth political and ideological attack against the machines that are running these places and a subtle attack on the race that the victims and assailants are disproportionately from.

These same people can't see how they are playing the role of the "establishment defenders" from the past.  Their counterparts that always sought to diminish or obfuscate the murders that were transpiring in the town while "favorable people" were on watch.  Sadly the common denominator is that Black people were the disproportionate victims in both eras in the wake of this protection racket.

As the news of the murder as seen on local television triggered me to go to the local newspaper's web site I could not help but notice an event that is more likely to trigger the curious eye of the "old Black guard" of Atlanta.   The news that the portrait of the great Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr being moved from its fixture just outside of the Georgia governor's office to another place in the state capitol.  In its place a portrait of the immediate former governor being hung in its place.

It is highly likely that the building curator had called up the "Old Black Guard" to tell them about the planned relocation of this "portrait upon the wall".   If they had any foresight about them they would know that if the first read of the relocation by this "leadership" was from the newspaper that a protest rally demanding respect might be gathered together on the capitol steps.

I have no doubt of the powerful symbolism that the King portrait hanging within the Georgia state capitol represents.  It was the first Black man and the first non-elected official to receive such a tribute.

My grievance is with the void in connectivity that exists between the struggles endured by the mass of people who operated in the Civil Rights Movement (of all races) and how today the problem with the higher than normal murder and violence that transpires in our community goes unmanaged because resolution does not fit nicely in a "struggle" milieu.

When given the chance to engage this deadly problem we see the choice to advocate on behalf of jailed "Street Pirates", the "Fight The Power" activists expressing the opportunity again to stand against the system.   The brick and mortar of the system provide a more definite target than does the amorphous boundary of the Black Community Consciousness who's neglect form is causing the action of violence against another for a threat that is promoted to be worthy of their adversary's life.

If only those who stand against the death penalty because "human life is valuable" could teach this principle to the people who's faces or mug shots are appearing too frequently on the news.  The shame of yet another melaninated face on the news triggering the activists to find some counterpoint to cleave to.  Their hope is to gain solace in the notion that "Black people are not VIOLENT.  We are OPPRESSED PEOPLE - look at what the prison guards have done to us as you lock us in your jails!!!!  (Just ignore the Black prison guards and sheriffs for they are working for 'Da man'). "

Absent the human resource management skills and realizing that the tales of the "Mystical Magical Culture that was STOLEN from us in Africa" might suffice as an INDICTMENT but certainly not a productive controlling agent for the DEVELOPMENT of the masses - these loud voices are left to demand UNITY if not SILENCE from the rest of the community as they continue their STRUGGLE.   Struggle, they say, for our community.

The present lawsuit by the NAACP .........................AGAINST another faction of the NAACP is emblematic of where the model of "civil rights" as a vehicle for our development going forward has come to an end.   Today's NAACP fights over "chairs".

• Chairs in the corner office that the president of the chapter will sit in - just as their sister organization the SCLC is ensnared in
• Chair - occupied by White students in North Carolina.  The NAACP fearing that the loss of these "superior students" will imperil the academic opportunities of the Black students who will be all by themselves as a result.

Instead of making note of how being "all by ourselves" proves the failure of infrastructure to afford COMPETENCY DEVELOPMENT -they attempt to resurrect the old rituals of the civil rights movements and attempt to make them stick to the challenges of today.

If only they pretended that the CCC had murdered 2 Black men in downtown Atlanta 2011, just as they reenact the Atlanta race riot of 1906 annually.