$2.3 Trillion Train To Black Wall Street… ALL ABOARD?

TRUE OR FALSE: GENERATION ALPHA -- What did we learn about virtual and real from COVID-19 school?  (1) As a U.S. Senator, Joe Biden traveled between Wilmington, DE and Washington, DC by train; (2) “Uncle Joe” is either a character from Petticoat Junction or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s worst nightmare in a proposed $2-trillon infrastructure bill;  (3) No AMTRAK train has ever arrived on Black Wall Street.

By Eric Stradford, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired

AMWS May 8, 2021, Muskogee – A virtual Presidential whistle stop marks the 100^th year since white “settlers” devastated Black Wall Street.  The “Frisco” is one of many information infrastructure projects considered for a Learning Journey back to the future.  The railroad tracks just south of North Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood community is but one haunting reminder that American infrastructure does not necessarily sustain “One Nation Under God” on both sides of the railroad track.

Fact:  “Uncle Joe” is not the 46^th President of the United States.  He’s the character played by American Actor Edgar Buchanan in a 1960s situation comedy. “Petticoat Junction” in no way references two California women behind the man at his first address to a joint session of Congress.  And, The New Stradford Hotel Upon Black Wall Street might never geographically co-exist within a White Supremist’s vision of America’s future.

Give or take a trillion dollars or so, the cost for “healing the soul of America” is racking up a whole new set of zeros.  Today’s new math calls for the youngest living generation to reconcile virtual and physical reality in a quadrillion dollar economy. 

$1,000,000,000,000. The next named number after trillion is quadrillion.   

Anybody planning quadrennial events in 2021 will need to adjust from a single to multi-generational mindset.  Funding decisions made now will ultimately fall on Generation Alpha and two to three generations beyond.

Biden Administration Infrastructure envisions Economic Inclusion for folks who are ready, willing and able to #PlayTheGame.   There’s at least $80 billion on the way to AMTRAK.    There is significantly less on the way to Muscogee for misappropriated infrastructure resulting from the “Indian Removal Act.”  AMTRAK will need to backtrack beyond its half century dependency on federal aid to a time when railroad infrastructure promised Economic Inclusion for all.

With the right balance of faith and science, governments, businesses, communities, and individuals can work together to create infrastructure linking the world's telecommunication and computer networks together.  In the United States, public policy is finally catching up to the Clinton era idea of information infrastructure, enabling the transmission of every conceivable information and communication application.

President Biden’s passion for choo-choo trains may move a $2.3 trillion infrastructure bill closer to public law. But, in Red vs. Blue politics, compromise almost never produces purple.  Rather than funding more dead-end jobs at minimum wage, why not just seed a $1 m trust for every low-income citizen in Generation Alpha?  If we ensure more of them grow up whole, they might produce 3D printers or the next technological evolution to maintain their infrastructure.

A half century ago, Pullman porters rode the rails to inclusion.  It was not their job to learn on behalf of the disenfranchised, but the information they shared empowered friends-n-kin with a glimpse of what is possible...still.  

From across the tracks, America received porters as their on-ramp to mobility.  Pullman porters served American railroads from the late 1860s until the Pullman Company ceased operations on December 31, 1968, just three years before President Richard Nixon’s infrastructure vision saddled America with a quasi-public corporation that, by now, should have ended poverty.

The National Railroad Passenger Corporation (AMTRAK) receives a combination of state and federal subsidies but is managed as a for-profit organization.  The United States federal government through the Secretary of Transportation owns all the company's issued and outstanding preferred stock.  Amtrak's headquarters is located one block west of Union Station in Washington, D.C. 

There is no AMTRAK service to Tulsa, Oklahoma.  There is little infrastructure investment north of the railroad tracks.  Throughout AMTRAK’s fifty years of government operations and appropriations, political compromise has ignored one major cornerstone for American infrastructure.  So, why is this important?

For 100 years, planes, trains, automobiles, and banks have run on tax-payer subsidies. According to the Tulsa Preservation Commission, the Curtiss-Southwest Airplane Company was the nation’s first commercial interstate air freight shipping business.  They opened an airfield in Tulsa near Apache Street and Memorial Drive in 1921.  On May 31, that same year, white “settlers” bombed Black Wall Street from airplanes.  Where did they come from?  Where did they go?

On January 6, 2021, almost 100 years after the attack on Black Wall Street, the United States Capitol met a domestic terrorist attack with familiar confusion and disbelief.  However, the outcome was all too familiar outcome.  The FBI is still investigating, “Where did the attackers come from?  Where did they go?”  

Commercial airplanes, AMTRAK trains and automobiles may offer some hint of how we go.  But in getting there, we’ll need to imagine affordable landings at a yet to be determined destination, “Where Do We go From Here?”

 

On The Right Side of a Just Economy

 By Eric Stradford, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired and Stephanie Walker Stradford

AMWS February 5, 2021, Tulsa, OK -  The United States House of Representatives voted yesterday to strip Marjorie Taylor Greene of committee assignments, rendering the elected official useless to her Georgia constituents and worthless to shared values for the Party of Lincoln.

Honorable Republicans generally value President Ronald Reagan’s vision of “a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere” as #equity in One Nation Under God.  But attitudes and actions by a dwindling minority will ultimately land them, their constituents and prospective beneficiaries on the wrong side of history.

The right side of history, purely from a Republican perspective, is all about #equity.  Whether you consider unprecedented events of 2021 as coincidental or by divine appointment, the facts on a temporal timeline are indisputable -- even among “wacky” conspiracy theorists. “It's important for us to separate ourselves from the people that are the wacky weeds," according to one prominent Republican senator.

Separation from “wacky weeds” is the process noble U.S. Senators (on both sides) face next week in their “nobles oblige.”  They have been called, anointed and appointed to convict the 45^th President of the United States. One should note that a citizen, elected as President of the United States, does not cease to be accountable after he leaves The White House.  A sitting president and a former president are uniquely and perpetually connected by “nobles oblige” or “The Presidency.”

Reality for the American Republican party is intrinsically reliant on its foundation, its purpose for being, and the people it serves. A believer might assert that God created Democrats with a vision for meeting needs and Republicans with a vision for provision in meeting needs.   In that vision for “a shining city on a hill,” all news and all politics must result in provision to meet local human needs. 

Equity is the one case yet to be made in achieving a  #JustEconomy.   In Tulsa, OK, a #JustEconomy is being quantified by TIME and MONEY.  The timeline within the temporal economy of Free Africans in America is measured in the 100-year period between May 31, 1921 and June 1, 2021 (TIME).  From the local point of view, the topic for the conversation is Reparations for Slavery.

The national action (MONEY) shapes bipartisan inclusion on an unprecedented Act of Congress.  Legislation in the 116^th Congress includes H.R. 41 which might support “reconstruction” of financial institutions owned and operated by historically disadvantaged Americans.  The term “minority” will need to be replaced for the provision to sustain a #JustEconomy.

In 1986, Congress passed Public Law 99-244 which designated February as "National Black (Afro-American) History Month.” This law noted that February 1, 1986 would “mark the beginning of the sixtieth annual public and private salute to Black History.”

In 2021, the 95^th annual public and private salute to Black History builds on the political promise, HEALING THE SOUL OF AMERICA. 

Execution of an historic Reconstruction of American values follows an unprecedented 2^nd impeachment, trial and conviction of racist, xenophobic domestic terror. 

A citizen’s tweet to The White House proposes a regional demonstration project. It invites Senators from “Red State” Oklahoma and Senators from kinda, use-to-be a “Red State” Georgia in modeling a regional approach to #EconomicSecurity

In a #JustEconomy, Red and Blue is PURPLE. If #WeThePeople can see it, #WeThePeople can be it. “Some men see things as they are and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not.” - Robert Kennedy

The first deposit in the brand new Vibranium Bank and Trust of Black Wall Street, USA includes a Living Trust that systemically qualifies and intentionally benefits  American youth in Generations Z and A.  CDFI certification of a qualifying 501c3 public charity will help define the responsible economic entity.  CDE certification of a Veteran/Historically Disadvantaged American social enterprise accelerates substantive engagement by qualifying contractors in and supporting the targeted underserved community.

Reconstruction of American values is hardly a new concept for achieving and sustaining a #JustEconomy.

American Reconstruction gave birth to the “Party of Lincoln.”  As a party, its celebration of #BlackHistoryMonth calls for a review and valuation of some undervalued #equity that got us all to this point.

Hiram Rhodes Revels of Mississippi became the first African American senator in 1870. He got there by reinvesting #AmazingGrace in the Mississippi state legislature. 

Revels prayed, believing that #PrayerChangesThings. 

That prayer—one of the most impressive and eloquent prayers that had ever been delivered in the Mississippi Senate Chamber—made Revels a United States Senator. He made a profound impression upon all who heard him. It impressed those who heard it that Revels was not only a man of great natural ability but that he was also a man of superior attainments.

During Revel’s time and since, Americans of similar attainments have struggled to obtain and maintain trust.  One might recall the undervaluation of #StolenPeoplesEquity quantified throughout #JimCrow, #FreedmansBank, #BlackWallStreet, #TuskegeeVaccinations, #BloodySunday, #EmanuelNine, and a lineage of inequity even older than America itself.  In considering the future of any political party, one must seriously examine the historical foundation upon which the party will exist.

And just when your hope for a #JustEconomy seemed within in reach, the goal posts systemically move just beyond your historically disadvantaged bank account. Closer scrutiny of that historical foundation reveals yet one more dirty little secret. Tulsa, OK sits on land the United States probably never owned in the first place.   “The United States Supreme Court ruled July 9, 2020 in McGirt v. Oklahoma to keep the United States’ sacred promise to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of a protected reservation.

The court’s decision allows the Muscogee Nation to maintain its established sovereignty and territorial boundaries.  That court decision puts Black Wall Street, Tulsa somewhere, perhaps the Twilight Zone between the United States and a sovereign tribal nation.

In search of a #JustEconomy

Source: Wirth Law Offices

 

 

CALL FOR COLLABORATORS:  This collaborative document supports engagement in the NATIONAL LEARN-2-EARN project, Return To Black Wall Street.  The J.B. Stradford hotel was one of 600 businesses destroyed May 31-June 1, 1921.  Our story presents an opportunity for #WeThePeople to approach a 100 year old "sticky problem" from the perspective, "Where do we go from here?"  

APPLY FOR INCLUSION in our ongoing development, and let’s put our expertise and ideas together for a #JustEconomy. This format encourages participation from everyone on a MICROSOFT TEAMS collaborative platform.