How The Black Church Survives Pandemic

In post-pandemic virtual reality, a former president for the Black Public Relations Society of Washington, DC partners with a retired U.S. Marine Corps “Gunny” to journey where few have gone.  They cross a “Trail of Tears” via an INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY on a $2 trillion mission to discover “America.”  The Black Wall Street friends-n-kin rate is your key to HEALING THE SOUL OF AMERICA. Reservations required for HEADQUARTERS HOTEL luxury accommodations hosting the 1st Quadrennial Session of the General Conference of Meeples.

 

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

AMWS, April 22, 2021, Muscogee –  For whatever reason, some “good people” seeking to heal from COVID-19 tend to value other “good people” as less than equal.  The term, “minority” so freely and habitually woven into our beliefs, reveals a remnant cause of a deadly effect on American lives.

Experience as equals among brother and sister warriors of all races uniquely equips veterans of the United States Armed Forces for service in the national defense.  Those who were raised in Black Church augmented military discipline with an inherent value of “double portions.”  But, too often, they return to hometowns that once seemed so big to a hometown mindset that’s just too small to “provide for the common defence.”

May 31, 2021 marks the 100^th year since terrorists attacked the Greenwood community of Tulsa, Oklahoma.   The attack on that community, dubbed “Black Wall Street,” was perhaps as unimaginable as the senseless murder of George Floyd.  And yet, almost no one will imagine the 121 old story sleeping beneath the sheets.

If anybody needs to be blamed for the wake-up call, it’s Eric C. Nelson.  The attorney for now convicted murderer Derek Chauvin impregnated an emerging global generation of jurists with an unacceptable version of reality.  Nelson’s attempt to exploit the last 9 minute 29 seconds on George Floyd’s Chronos timeline may have triggered a reset from Chronos to Kairos. 

The Reverend Dr. Robert Richard Allen Turner pastors the Historic Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Greenwood community.  He has been pounding the pavement at City Hall seeking reparations for the 100-year-old attack on Black Wall Street.  In his generation, a Black Lives Matter movement trods the stony road of social justice, paved with blood of folks who said they believe that “trouble don’t last always.”

Planners for The First Quadrennial Session of the General Conference of Meeples have been looking at “church” through a whole new generation of eyes.  What started as intentional, prosocial action in pursuit of “economic justice” for Black Lives across America has inspired a declaration for #EconomicSecurity.

The difference between “economic justice” and #EconomicSecurity is that one is granted by those with perceived power and the other is decreed and declared through sovereign authority.  #ManifestDestiny was a widely held cultural belief in the 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand across North America. The current #EconomicSecurity reality for historically disadvantaged Americans stems from three basic themes of manifest destiny. 

Social action by “good people” has promoted “special virtues of the American people and their institutions.”  The concept, according to historians was born out of "a sense of mission.”  A perception of mission for the United States was to redeem and remake the west in the image of the agrarian East. 

It worked—for a season—just not here.

Survival for a growing number of #BlackLivesMatter supporters now drives an “irresistible destiny to accomplish an essential duty.”  Before COVID-19, there was already a racial-wealth gap, and this pandemic has exacerbated it,” states BLM. “Since the beginning of the pandemic, the United States government has never done enough to support Black people, leaving too many in survival mode.”

HEALING THE SOUL OF AMERICA justifies compromise on $2 trillion in U.S. government infrastructure spending.  The clarion call for healing frames a news cycle around an anticipated Kairos moment on a Chronos timeline.   Journalists, broadcasters, public relations practitioners, preachers, teachers, advertising executives and every beneficiary of a minority anything may qualify for credentials to right an historic wrong by writing the story of how America’s soul got healed.

“How To Reach The Masses” is one question on the minds of 2.4 billion believers.  Good people across “the nation” and around the world are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Good news is, there is a balm.

HEALING THE SOUL OF AMERICA will require sustainable information infrastructure. When you explore information infrastructure projects such as the Underground Railroad and the Trail of Tears, it’s not hard to see where $2 trillion in infrastructure spending might be needed most.  

The Black Church was “born in protest against slavery – against dehumanization of African people, brought to the American continent as labor,” according to The Right Reverend Adam J. Richardson, senior bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Inc.  The Black Church was unique in that, “It rejected the negative theological interpretations which rendered persons of African descent second class citizens,” stated Richardson. “Theirs was a theological declaration that God is God all the time and for every body.”   Let’s be real. Not every body trusts the government.  Perhaps that’s why “Everybody” hasn’t gotten a COVID-19 shot.

A. J. Richardson is the 115^th elected, consecrated bishop of a unique body of believers in 39 countries on five continents.  The terms, “every” and “body” does not necessarily mean the same as “everybody.” The Black church, regardless of denomination, carries out the spirit of the original Free African Society which values any “body” as a whole “somebody.”

Common vision for the future of Black Wall Street, Tulsa, OK means understanding provisions for #EconomicSecurity.  A “Meeple of Muscogee” may have been a vision of a whole “somebody” once valued as a minority.  

By declaration, the constitution of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, provides for a new reality in Tulsa, and perhaps a cornerstone for a 21^st Century community of whole believers.  “Under the guidance of the Almighty God, our Creator, #WeThePeople of Muscogee, do promote Unity, to establish Justice, and secure to ourselves and our children the blessings of Freedom, to preserve our basic Rights and Heritage, to strengthen and preserve self and local Government, in continued relations with the United States of America, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.

General Alpha Class Leader Development  -- Learn To #PlayTheGame

How America crucified “filabustin”

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

As Delta, Coca Cola and CEOs from more than 100 brands blast Georgia's 'unacceptable' voting law –, activists, including elected officials are knocking on statehouse doors.  Georgia State Representative Park Cannon was arrested after she attempted to knock on the door of Gov. Brian Kemp's office during his remarks after signing into law a sweeping Republican-sponsored overhaul of state elections. Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP

AMWS, April 5, 2021, Muscogee – The United States Congress returns from Easter break this week to face new mercies.

Fifty days out from a credible threat to business as usual, the Biden administration is digging in on HEALING THE SOUL OF AMERICA.  Over the last three days, voter suppression tactics in the state once known as Georgia, rattled economic leaders to a point of “Destroying the temple, and raising it up three days later.” 

Well Georgia, yesterday was day three--Fifty days out from a predictable transformation for #WeThePeople.  Over the weekend, voter suppression tactics enraged believers to new levels of intolerance.  A shot heard across “the nation”, echoed by media reports, signals a credible threat to America’s economic security. Obstructionists have proposed 250 copycat bills across 43 states.

RESSURECTION DAY AMERICA. Yesterday’s #GoodNews reports the beginning of a new era for “one nation under God.”  The contract that crowned “thy good with bother hood from sea to shining sea” is up for renegotiation.”  Judgement day for bad blood hinges on the faith and good works of 2.4 billion believers around the world.

The multi-trillion dollar appetite for spending other people’s money is the first of many procedures planned for #HealingAmerica.  On RESURRECTION SUNDAY, #WeThePeople moved to end #filabustin by decreeing and declaring it not a law and not a real word in the new lexicon for governing.  It has no meaning to Generation Alpha and, therefore, no redeemable value in “one nation under God.”

In the real world, words mattered.  Bad words got your mouth washed out.  “My grandmother washed dirty clothes, and, sometimes bad words from children’s mouths, with nasty soap,” recalled Stephanie A. Walker Stradford.  The key ingredient to the Fels Naptha soap brand was a flammable liquid hydrocarbon mixture.  Naphtha made the soap effective for cleaning laundry and removing the allergen urushiol in poison ivy. But it was removed from the soap as a cancer risk. 

While waiting for the cure from COVID-19, Generation Alpha has been learning about hand washing and reparations.  Purex, a popular brand for hand sanitizer was never intended for human consumption, even though a former president suggested such an approach.  Economically, in 1964, Fels-Naptha, the Philadelphia manufacturer for the brown soap, was sold to Purex Corporation for $5 million.   In 1985, the Greyhound Corporation acquired the consumer products business of Purex (which included Fels-Naptha) and combined it with Greyhound's Armour-Dial division, forming The Dial Corporation.  In December 2003, Dial was sold to Henkel for $2.9 billion.

Over the last 100 years, as money moved from one brand to another, injustices such as the Black Wall Street riot have stood unresolved, unforgotten, unforgiven and unrepaired.  But the violent race war of May 31 and June 1, 1921, was not unprecedented in American history.  

It happened when obstructionists legislated Jim Crow laws, denying fellow believers the right to vote.  It happened when insurrectionists spilled blood on civil war battlefields.  It happened, it happened, and God still shed His grace on thee. 

Under authority of #ManifestDestiny, the vote for 100 current U.S. Senators may need to be suppressed.  This new suppression rule might require a simple majority. It would challenge the rights of U.S. Senators from the state of Oklahoma to vote.  Last year, the United States Supreme Court ruled in McGirt v Oklahoma that the United States should keep its promise to the sovereign Muscogee (Creek) Nation.  Perhaps as a compromise, one of two Oklahoma senate seats might move to the District of Columbia.

The Supreme Court’s next move might be to retroactively rule Public Law 21-148 unconstitutional.  In 1790, U.S. Secretary of War Henry Knox, in the administration of President George Washington, brokered The Treaty of New York between leaders of the “Creek” people.  Knox had once owned and operated a bookstore in Boston, Massachusetts.  But he exhibited no evidence of literacy on the sovereign Muscogee Nation in brokering the deal for Georgia, Alabama and Oklahoma.

A course in Muscogee culture might have altered the course of American history.  Reality about what happened and when may offer future leaders a second chance to get things right.  If the COVID-19 taught anybody anything, it might be “patient investing.”

 

The People Have Spoken!

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

"Surely, there ought to be at least sixty in this chamber who believe as I do that the four most powerful words uttered in a democracy are THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN!" The Reverend Dr. Senator Raphael Warnock. 

Georgia’s new vision for "One Nation Under God. If #WeThePeople can see #TheColorPurple, #WeThePeople can be #TheColorPurple.

UPDATE!!!! AMWS, March 18, 2021, Muskogee Creek Nation – “Help is on the way,” said U.S. President Joe Biden.  The president and vice president are expected here this week to set the record straight on $1.9 trillion of other people’s money. But by the time Air Force One lands, true believers will be pre-primed (verb), and pumping one of three "seasonably appropriate" memes.

a. #GeorgiaOnMyMind

b. #ThePeopleHaveSpoken

c. #PrayerChangesThings 

Political adversaries seeking to perpetuate historic myths were called out on their misconception of "Manifest Destiny."  As the Biden-Harris Learning Journey moved closer to this historical destination, one U.S. Senator stood on a promise to make business as usual a practice of the past.  

"Surely, there ought to be at least sixty in this chamber who believe as I do that the four most powerful words uttered in a democracy are THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN, said the Reverend Dr. Senator Raphael Warnock in his first speech before the United States Senate.  The senator's holy season "chutzpah" may have miraculously healed a governing body afflicted with filibuster.

Prior to January 5, 2021, the day before a seditious raid on the U.S. Capitol, a majority of voters here accepted a Red versus Blue perception of reality.  Even after witnessing the first Black woman in American history swearing in the first Black U.S. Senator from “Georgia,” only a true believer could see the miracle of Manifest Destiny.  For the sake of some lesser blessed beneficiaries of “One Nation Under God,” some fact-checking may be helpful in simplifying the other obstacle to #HealingAmerica.

GET VACCINATED

FACTCHECK: Public Law 117-2 is the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.  That’s the COVID-19 relief law Joe Biden signed.  Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock is educating constituents on truth vs fiction.

FACTCHECK: Public Law 116-136 is the CARES Act of 2020. That’s the COVID-19 relief law signed last year before the attack on the Capitol.  Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock is educating constituents on truth vs fiction.

FACTCHECK: Red and Blue together supports a #ColorPurple perception of reality.

FACTCHECK: The Reverend Raphael Warnock is the first person of color elected to the United States Senate from a place on Turtle Island perceived to be Georgia.  A Smithsonian study confirms the area around modern-day Macon, GA is perhaps a starting point for Muscogee Creek Nationalists on the historic Trail of Tears.

OPINION: Senator Warnock’s historic ascension tracks as a one in a series of Kyros events on a Chronos timeline. 

OPINION: The January 6, 2021 Day of Epiphany at the U.S. Capitol, ignited flames of “Manifest Destiny.”  Descendants of European settlers who believed in their unconditional entitlement to sovereign land, still hope to perpetuate myths through political control.  

OPINION: A Georgian’s right to vote in the sovereign nation of Muscogee has never been lawfully granted by the Muscogee Creek Nation.  Treaties between the United States and the Muscogee Creek Nation are just now being quantified as American Values.  HEALING THE SOUL OF AMERICA means keeping promises made in the political campaign.

OPINION: Based on the McGirt decision, Oklahoma prosecutors “lack the authority to pursue criminal charges for crimes committed on tribal reservations in which the defendants or the victims are tribal citizens.”  If historic territorial boundaries include modern day Tulsa, Oklahoma, the city and most of the eastern part of the state exists in the sovereign Muscogee Creek Nation.  

OPINION:  #Reparations -- That means the site of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street on June 1, 1921 was in Creek Nation and not the state of Oklahoma in the United States of America.  Oklahoma prosecutors never really had the legal authority to prosecute the Black Wall Street attackers.  State lawmakers have perhaps escaped accountability for nearly a century through this legal loophole.

OPINION: An application for citizenship by a veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces to the Muscogee Creek Nation might establish legal standing on behalf of all African American victims of the Black Wall Street Race Riot. 

LEARNING JOURNEY Destination Black Wall Street --  “What’s the first Black Senator from Georgia have to do with Black Wall Street, Tulsa, OK?”   A study of geographic influences on history reveals that Georgia and parts of Alabama were “settled” as an outcome of The Indian Removal Act.  Tulsa was “settled” between 1828 and 1836 by the Lochapoka Band of Creek Nationalists.  Most of Tulsa is still part of the territory of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. The name "Loachapoka" means "turtle killing place" in Muskogee, with locha meaning "turtle" and poga meaning "killing place."

THE INAILIENABLE RIGHT TO VOTE – Most Black children have never learned about Manifest Destiny—in “school” be it virtual (verb) or in a building (noun).  Our Learning Journey begins virtually in Macon, GA .  It is our point of departure for rediscovering “One Nation Under God.”   

GROUND-ZERO FOR ENDING VOTER SUPPRESSION  To understand the problem of voter suppression, or “irregularity,”  one must consider the perception of Red State rights in the new Purple State model for #HealingAmerica.   When you ask a group of Georgians how their state ended up with 159 counties (second only to Texas), you might hear that “Georgia’s counties were designed so that farmers in a mule-drawn wagon could get to the courthouse and back within the course of a day.”  But, in the age of transparency, the facts speak louder than myth. 

VOTING ON TURTLE ISLAND: Modern day Muscogee County, Georgia reflects a sovereign nation’s westward movement from the area known today as Bibb County.   The 1825 Treaty of Indian Springs bundles acquired tribal lands into Muscogee, Lee, Troup, Coweta, and Carroll counties.   

The Creek Nation declared the land cession illegal because it did not represent the will of the majority of the people.  Did the United States Senate  ever ratify the treaty?  The following year, the U.S. government leveraged its perception of Manifest Destiny to impose another treaty on the Creek. 

Reality of where Georgia stands depends on your perspective of a level playing field.  Before signing yet another treaty, perhaps the Creek Nation will take inventory of its own Manifest Destiny and that of the enslaved Africans who found favor with the Creek along the Trail of Tears.  How else might one explain the rise of “Little Africa” in the era of Jim Crow?

The overall effect of the Creek trail of tears was staggering.  21,792 Creeks lived in Georgia and Alabama in 1832.  Twenty years after the "removal" ended, only 13,537 Creeks remained in Oklahoma.  Some 8,000 legitimate heirs apparently had died. Counted as a percentage of their population, the Creeks and related tribes suffered more deaths than the Cherokee in their own, far better-known routes along the Trail of Tears.

The January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol should have been anticipated.  But, in reality, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is not likely to investigate perceived heirs of Manifest Destiny.  Members of the U.S. Congress are likely to find no fault in their own members for their role in the insurrection. 

Even the president will need to draw on historically underutilized assets to engage all citizens in restoring trust.  Chutzpah, a Yiddish word comes to mind for co-sponsors of The Stolen Peoples Equity Act.  It describes bravery that borders on rudeness.  If you have chutzpah, you say what you think without worrying about hurting someone's feelings, looking silly, or getting in trouble.

The Stolen Peoples’ Equity Act is a governing solution requiring little to no action by an illegitimate government.  Funding is leveraged by two intersecting opportunities for HEALING THE SOUL OF AMERICA -- The Trail of Tears and The Underground Railroad, and models a demonstration for“internal repair.” 

After Sunday School January 6, 2020,  Stephanie and Eric Stradford joined the 39^th President, first lady and their Maranantha Baptist Church family to celebrate a new generation of winners.  “Baby Virtually Alive” made her way from “Plains, GA” to celebrate three new applicants to THE ANNUAL YOUTH ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS.

The 39^th President of the United States reinvested in YouthUSA the value of Manifest Destiny.  During Sunday School at Marantha Baptist Church, Plains, GA, “Uncle Jimmy” revealed a secret to Manifest Destiny in a life-changing lesson.  As an outcome, a new generation of beneficiaries can LEARN-2-EARN their way to #NoPoverty2030 through their inalienable right to #EconomicInclusion.

A ruling on the constitutionality of a Stolen Peoples’ Equity Act may never pass muster in the U.S. Supreme Court.  But, the Supreme Court of the Muscogee Creek Nation might see things from a totally different perspective.  There is a win-win outcome for all sides in a #JustEconomy.  Perhaps now is the time for a change in venue.

 

The L2E Logic Model, a free person endowed with full rights and responsibility of any two believers may claim "Manifest Destiny" as a means of achieving a mutually desired alternative.  

MEME OF THE WEEK -  What happens when you elect two senators at once, one a Black Baptist Preacher the other a Jewish-born believer in possible dreams?  CHUTZPAH!  THE LAXATIVE for FILIBUSTER.  KAIROS MOMENT: Deification has just contacted the rotating oscillator.