Buy Black Wednesdays

by Paradise Free Jahlove

Buy-Black-Wednesdays, Buy Black Wednesdays, Culture Currents Please join our national and worldwide movement to support Black businesses and Black people financially by going out of your way on Wednesdays to spend your money in the Black community. The goal is to support our own businesses every day, but especially on Wednesday! On Black Wednesdays, let’s try not to spend one red cent outside of the Black Family Circle. And, almost as important, let the Black business person you’re supporting know that you support Buy Black Wednesdays.

On Black Friday, we literally trample over each other to give our money to others and build up their communities at the expense of our own. Let us run to each other and build our own communities on Black Wednesday! There is no reason we should be a poor Trillion Dollar Nation, which is about how much African Americans make annually. The problem is we integrate our dollars too swiftly when we would be better off segregating them; i.e., keeping it in the family!

Why Wednesday? Because Wednesday is Hump Day. Also because Wednesday is the fourth day of the week, and Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) is the fourth principle of Kwanzaa. So you can also call this Sikujamaa or Cooperative Economics Day.

And in order to include everybody, you can also call it African Reparations Day – a day to give reparations to ourselves – Give Back to Black Day! – but also a day that allows and encourages any non-Africans with a sense of human decency, who realize that Africa is the heart, birthplace and breadbasket of the world and she and her people have been disproportionately disenfranchised, taken advantage of and abused, to give back to the Motherland and her people and help level the world’s playing field for all.

Also, as you may know, economics is one of the major issues in the Black community. Most Black male/female relationships are broken up or strained because of money problems. Most Black on Black crime and homicide is related to money.

The reason why we have so little clout in the world community is because of lack of unity and funds. Black artists who could uplift the whole community often languish in an obscure purgatory of poverty and desperation. Africans around the world suffer and die because of lack of money.

And we Africans in America who have money rarely keep it in our communities long enough to change our impact on the world and our living conditions. So let us begin to change all that through this coming financial revolution called Black Wednesday – and INTERNATIONAL Buy Black Wednesdays!

Celebrate this new International Black holiday and Black History Month every week on this Black History Day: Black Wednesday! Do it in association with Paradise’s Summer of 2012 Cultural World’s Fair in Oakland.

Paradise is president of the International Black Writers & Artists in Oakland, Local 5, and was recently honored by the City of Oakland with “Paradise Day,” on Oct. 6! He may be reached at oaklandworldsfair@yahoo.com. Paradise also facilitates the Buy Black Wednesdays Facebook page and group, hosts the Black Wednesday Show every Wednesday at 6 p.m. on www.harambeeradio.com and will soon be posting a blog.