I’ve been pondering this for a while, where precisely is the leader that I can look to for guidance in this crazy America where little Black boys are gunned down in the streets, and the social contract that was made with my mother and father was tossed out the window to fill the pockets of White men that run Halliburton.

The thoughts have been bubbling within me for some time, yet I’ve been reluctant to talk about it because I have to do things like wipe my mother’s ass.  Perhaps reluctant is not the right word, maybe the word is busy.  As I flesh this out in print I am not yet sure, I can only hope that in 1000 words I will have figured something out.

 

I am what a friend once called a true believer.  My passion exists in what my heart says is right and what my head can figure out is reasonable.   I have not always shared my current world view, but is that not to be expected?  I am no longer a 18 year old girl rebelling against the uneducated rhetoric of a parental unit that simply just did what she was told because it was what had always been done.

I am now middle aged.  I am now a mother.  I must now factor in how to manage a household that contains the oldest and the youngest with special needs, with how to keep the electric on, and how to hold onto the dreams a future while the powers that be struggle to take my present away.  When you look at the chapters of my life, you understand how I evolved.  You might also understand that in 20 more years, I shall evolve again.

In my DNA though, who I am is a woman who believes.  I listen to my soul, and I listen to my universe, and that is what drives my beliefs, and what helps me to sleep at night.  What keeps me up at night though is that I am one soul, confined by circumstance looking out into the world for another of my kind, and finding none.

In this past week the campaign for President picked up, not so much by anything the actual candidates said or did, but by the surrogates that are off to the races…pissing rhetoric into the wind…and talking to themselves essentially because the Memorial Day burgers are in the fridge marinating.

I’ve rarely bought into the people that the public and the press have presented to me to be my leader.  When I say my, I mean the my that is a Black liberal woman in the United States of America.  Yes I said liberal, I am not ashamed of that.

I’ve sat and watched Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  I’ve cringed when locally Wilson Goode and John Street were given to me. I’ve wept nationally when  America rejected a brilliant woman named Hillary Clinton for a juggernaut named Barak Obama.  I’ve almost never been in tune with the leadership that I’ve been told belong to me as a Black woman.

That includes Cory Booker.  I looked at him and realized, like so many of us do that he is one special man.  I simply could not – will not – buy into that he is the future of Black leadership.  I do not doubt his intelligence and I applaud his ability to navigate the choppy waters of running a city, an urban city, a colored city, some might say a dying city.  Intellectually I get that he’s done what he needed to do to put Newark back on the map.  In my heart I reject his methods because as a true believer, I think….I KNOW that we can do better.

Despite my humble existence, I understand what it is that we can do to move this nation forward.  Because of my humble existence I can do little to push this nation ahead, in the size the push needs to be, to restore the hope and changed we were promised.

It is beyond just being liberal, it is more about being human, being connected and connecting us all. It is about embracing that Christian ideal…the golden rule and treating the least of us like the best of us. It is about recruiting and developing a leader, or LEADERS, that understand this, live this breathe this, and execute this.   I may not doubt the beautiful person that Cory Booker is, I do understand that he is not that leader. I understand that leader is not here – NOW and it creates discomfort within me to know that.

When Rick Santorum was the Republican front runner for his 5 minutes of the primary campaign, I feared him the most.  Those that are liberal similar to me did not in the same fashion.  I was told over and over that he was too extreme and too tarnished.  I said then I didn’t fear him specifically, fuck it if he got on my nerves too much I would just toss a porn DVD @ him and he would spend so much time showering off the filth that I could continue what I was doing.  I feared his existence manifesting the worst of humanity, the worst of America.

What’s wrong with a married man that says his prayers and eats his vitamins?

At this time in the nation?  Everything.

The Tea Party & the Occupy Movement both display the discontent of this nation.  I should say, they display the discontent of White America.  It is not to say that Black America is happy, rather historically we – Blacks – have been dealing with these issues for much longer.  Longer does not mean better, just longer.

The discontent of White America though has resulted in a culture of fear and loathing.  We’ve witnessed it in the years post 9/11/01, and not a lot has changed. What needs to change though is the Black leaders need to step up and step out and show out and remind America of what she can be.

President Obama, is a lot of things, but he is not that….at least not right now.

He is certainly better than the alternative, but he is not who we need.  His office is the #1 reason why he is not what we need.  As President there are things that are beyond his ability, and as President there are things that he simply should not do.  I get that, and I want others to get that and allow that knowledge to propel action.

We need leaders that are willing to say and do the unpopular thing and embrace for lack of a better word, welfare.

The recession exists because we are not spending ENOUGH, or supporting ENOUGH.  The recession exists because the race to eliminate the middle class is close to finished and the middle class was left in the dust years ago.  Our future is in jeopardy as long as we keep looking to be Mark Zuckerberg instead of Donte Smith.  Who is Donte Smith you ask?

Donte Smith is the generic, average, not at all exceptional manifestation of a man who works for a living, makes a living wage, has a wife and children and a garage.

I do not mean, don’t dream of wealth.  I mean do not remove the rungs of the ladder to wealth so that it is more difficult for everyone.

The rungs at the bottom of the ladder and the ones at the top of the ladder are there and will not ever leave.  Not in capitalism, not today or tomorrow or ever.  The rungs in the middle though are being destroyed to the point that movement is not at all possible and that is that what we should fear the most.

This is where these fictional leaders will come from unless we erase the place that they can be created.

The leaders are not found in the elite traditionally, well why would they be?  There is simply the push to remain elite and that generates additional generations of being elite.

The leaders are not found in the forgotten traditionally, well why would they be?  The name forgotten speaks for itself.

The leaders are found in the middle, in the masses, the exceptional of the group that jumps the rungs of the ladders, not because they are not there, but because they specifically are built to take them two or three at a time.

If the aliens ever ask me to take them to my leader….I fear what will happen to me when I have to tell them…there are none.