57 years ago, on the day before the March For Jobs and Freedom at the Mall in Washington, D.C., WEB Dubois passed away in his newfound home of Ghana. Disenchanted, disgusted, and dismayed by the treatment of African Americans by his former home Dubois 7 years earlier wrote an article in The Nation magazine indicting the 2 party system of the United States. Fast forward 64 years from that article to 2020 and Dubois would be just as dismayed, disenchanted, and disgusted with the current state affairs of this nation's so-called democracy. Rather than hundreds of thousands of dollars in 1956 to be a US Senator, the cost is now more than 10 million dollars in 2020. It doesn't matter which political party that individual supports. The cost of the presidential campaign runs into the billions, billions with a B dollars. Corporate glad-handing and lobbying is a fundamental requirement no matter whose ticket you support. If you really think that these officeholders are beholden to the populists. You are dreaming. That's why in order to really get any move towards real substantive change we have to be strategic in how we value that vote. Voting for Biden because he's just a little better than Trump isn't a strategy. We need to tell both parties what we want to get our vote or ignore them totally. That’s Dubois could not vote in 56. He was tired of playing this foolish political game.

Please, don't let them do sweep the crimes of white mobs against our ancestors under the rug of ignorance. On August 26, 1874, only 9 years after the end of the Civil War on the border of West Tennessee in a town named Trenton, at 1:00 am in the morning a blood thirsty mob of white terrorists went into the jailhouse and took 16 black men. They either shot, hung, or burned all 16 men. The actual crime these men were suspected of was killing two horses. Yes, two goddamn horses were valued more than the lives of 16 black Americans.

I cannot understand why Black Americans aren't more aggressive in seeking financial reparations for the horrible, sadistic crimes that were perpetrated against our ancestor's men, women, and children. I mean no trial. no jury, no judge, just a mob of vicious white men thirsting for black blood and revenge. I wonder how many more blacks would've died had Jackson's Boys set foot in Trenton after this incident. This deadly incident occurred during the so-called period of reconstruction, or reconciliation after the Civil War. It's horrific white mob events like these that make the fight for reparations all the more powerful and just. Of course today’s Republican Party ignores our plead for reparations. While the Democratic Party games African Americans for their support and then aligns its policies to satisfy other minority groups while ignoring the pleads of its most ardent supporters.