19
O.G., What Up With That? Part I
Posted by | Posted in Inspiration, Social Justice | Posted on 19-01-2007
On day 19 of 2007, many of us are beginning to discover for the first time that digging deeper will reveal the main reasons why the excruciating bite Pain takes keeps growing stronger and lasting longer. As we help each other climb higher, it may also surprise you to discover that you can feel another person’s pain. Only God know why some people can see another person’s tears long before they begin to cry and know what’s wrong with their lives. Intuition. Discernment. Empathy. Call it what you may, but pray that God gifts you with the wisdom and understanding to know how to help heal the broken hearted. What I saw inspired me do what I could to help make a difference. Since I’ve had been tagged as one with the “gift of gab,” I began to volunteer for career day events.
Spending my free time learning how to work with the children who lived in an urban environment so violent made me cry in my secret place after many of my speaking engagements. I remember how I felt upon discovering that one too many children living in South Central L.A. found no safe place to play. I can’t begin to imagine how little children must have felt when forced to find a safe place to whittle away their time after the O.G.s, “Original Ganstas,” came back to reclaim real estate their blood stained hands never built. The children in L. A. taught me more about myself than I thought. So I wasn’t surprised when my precocious 2-1/2 old daughter started doing the same thing once she started to speak.
Today’s revised message was originally penned in ‘93 to challenge the O.G.s who thought “gangstas could stack enough cheese to make the world go round.” To avoid losing, the real “menace to society” will hit a red button that will split the atom of humanity’s global village in half to ensure nobody else can gain control of the real estate human hands never built. L.A.’s O.G.s didn’t have to tell me why they kept forgetting that their never-ending bloodletting wouldn’t stop until they had cancelled each out. Only God knows if the insanity of an O.G.’s win-at-all-costs slave mentality drove Donald Trump and Rosie O’Donnell to start railing on each other while our ailing society is failing. Only God knows why both Trump and O’Donnell began to funnel so much wasted energies and the “lost dignities” they tossed like a bad hairdo down a dead end street.
O.G., WHAT UP WITH THAT?
Excuse me sir, but please explain why strong men like you still believe that “busting a cap” is what you call “fundamental?” Do you really believe that killing each other during a drive by or joining a street gang is the only way to survive in South Central? Do you feel no shame when you blame exploitation films and “gangsta rap” for glamorizing street life or are we just too dumb to recognize a strategic setup? Can it be that your need for money, power, and fame became the mental poison Greed designed to keep strong men like you from comin’ up?O.G., what up with that?
Can it be that “O.G.” is also an appropriate title for the “powers that be” who believe all men with skin darker than a brown paper bag are up to no good? Why aren’t there enough strong brothers like you with enough influence and common sense to stop shooting up each other’s neighborhood? Imagine what will happen once streetwise gangstas like you realize where great things and big dreams always start. Why not put your heads together to create the spiritual synergy needed to transform street knowledge into the wisdom that will still the wheel of the self-destructive behavior that’s tearing our communities apart?O.G., what up with that?
“Living large” doesn’t give streetwise O.G.s any right to disrespect wise women, shoot innocent children, kill real men with vision, or slang kilos of deadly blow. Why not check yourself instead of laughin’ at that nice lady in that “white house” who didn’t know children needed a reason to “Just Say No!?” Since O.G.s like you didn’t cry when children kept dying for nothing, Buppies refused to justify their decision to abandon their drug-infested community. Since drug money only escalated the violence grandparents hated, the Black elite stopped reaching back and giving back to the scapegoated “boys in the hood” who never got diplomatic immunity like the wealthy, white collar O.G.s could.O.G., what up with that?
Can it be that many of us are just like that thirsty horse who, when led to fresh water, stubbornly refused to drink? Can it be that money, power, sex, and the material things success brings make O.G.s like you refuse to raise the level at which we all must think? Can streetwise warriors like you drop some street knowledge and explain why you still “kill against God’s will” and refuse to begin within so that no child of God has to do without? Besides, the children “Crumb Snatcher” deceived believed they wouldn’t live to see their twenty-first birthday unless they can push the red button “first” and cancel each other out.O.G., what up with that?
— To Be Continued —
©Copyright 1993-2007 by Roderick O. Solomon. All Rights Reserved.
