Baseball Bat Brigades & Urban Gun Clubs?

Has the time come for good people in the inner city to go their local retailer and buy baseball bats en masse in preparation to give thugs a visual while telling them their destructive services are no longer needed in the Black ( or any other ) community?

By Nadra Enzi



Has the time come for good people in the inner city to go their local retailer and buy baseball bats en masse in preparation to give thugs a visual while telling them their destructive services are no longer needed in the Black ( or any other ) community?

Must we form urban gun clubs with the express purpose of hunting not Bambi or ducks but punks who terrorize the Good Many who comprise inner city populations?

My STREET TEAM OF AMERICA motto: Drawing a line in the concrete is symbolic of how fed up and determined some of us are in not becoming hostages to the least evolved members of our (or any) peer group.

Floating just the notion of baseball bat brigades and urban gun clubs should let those on both sides of the law understand that a new generation of stakeholders lives in the inner city and while we respect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness we draw the line at the pursuit of these goals at the cost of innocent lives.

Negrophobes, liberal and conservative alike unused to Black folks who actually, actively consider ourselves citizens should take note that we intend to secure our living spaces with at least the same seriousness as you do yours. Past generations of civil rights activists have overlooked the Threat Within our inner cities in favor of begging for more scraps uptown while downtown becomes a free fire zone.

Since our civil rights organizations have decided street crime ( once labeled Black-on-Black crime by some who tried to fight this battle ) isn't a problem, those of us who see it up close and personal have no choice but to lawfully mobilize in the name of survival and safety.

The same presumption of security one feels in the suburbs is the same presumption we seek for the inner city. We refuse to allow violent, misguided minds to shape the reality in which we live. This has been whispered in bedrooms and discussed at dinner tables/barber shops and beauty salons long enough. The time has finally come for us to lay the gauntlet down and tell the world that civil order is what we want and we won't settle for less!!

Once we start telling bad actors how to behave and arranging all expenses paid vacations for those who won't behave is when the tide will change in our communities. Instead of hiding behind burglar bars and peeping through closed blinds we need to openly tell urban terrorists that we refuse to be hostages and invite them to either change their ways or face daily opposition to their criminality. Civil order activism forces Black communities to look at own troublemakers and organize against them for our survival and safety.

Waiting for mayors and police chiefs to do this is as futile as waiting for the President to solve each one of our individual problems all by himself. Promoting civil order means we finally have left the low expectations of the past behind and have become free men and women who demand the best treatment where we live. Survival and safety are basic givens in society. If high income people don't have to worry about drive-by shootings and intimidating groups wandering their streets, why should we or anyone else?

So much in life is determined by what individuals and groups accept. Once we accepted the proposition that Black folks who harm other Black folks are somehow secondary to distant racists who don't even know we exist, a serious strategic error was committed.

Any strategy that doesn't prioritize survival and safety where you live is a worthless strategy and sadly many of the national civil rights organizations platforms fall in this category. Begging for money from Washington has overshadowed the thug factory stuck on overdrive nationwide. Jockeying for favors from corporations trumped making sure little old ladies in the inner city don't have to sleep in their bathtubs to avoid being hit by stray bullets. Our failure to attack street crime has led to a coup being waged from coast to coast by violent young men and women who feel they are our new rulers.

While some may have even voted for the first time last national election cycle, this feelgood moment didn't stop them from returning to making their neighborhoods unsafe. Anyone who thinks forming baseball bat brigades and urban gun clubs is going a step too far should take a leisurely stroll through the 'Hood one fine day. I don't want things to sink to vigilantism but if we don't fight street crime by the book and in large numbers, some future generation may feel extreme measures are the only measures they have left.

NADRA ENZI AKA CAPT. BLACK promotes firsthand conflict resolution and self-development. Black means: BROTHERHOOD-LOYALTY-ABILITY-COURAGE-KINDNESS.

NADRACAPTBLACK@YMAIL.COM and http://www.myspace.com/nadrasw1