What You Don’t Know Or Remember Can Hurt You

Submitted By Brotha Baba Omowale

Baba Omowale

Oftentimes, remembering is difficult, for a lot of reasons. Sometimes it is because there is so much distraction going on that some realities take priority over others. When that happens, usually the subconscious takes over and recesses some stuff to the back of your mind. What we call the back burner. That is the subconscious mind making an executive decision.

What makes that a problem is that as soon as it is done, here come those who have been watching and paying attention with a plot and scheme to get over on you and to do their thing, leaving you with the “damn, how did I miss that” blues. I mean that did not happen because we are stupid. They just got over because they took advantage of a whole lot of stuff going on at the same time, and some of us losing focus and some us losing attention. I mean we can only focus on so much stuff at a time, right?

That is unless we train our minds to hold everything at the same time and not lose anything. That takes alot of training! I would say that right now, the situation for Black people in America and throughout the world requires that we pay close attention to everything, so we don’t get hoodwinked and bambozzled all over again.

That means that we have to hold a lot of important things at the forefront of our minds, at the same time, so we don’t miss anything.

Yes, local elections are coming up. National elections are coming up and all the drama that causes havoc in our families and in our community continue to go on; especially like the local drama that keeps playing out at our local county jail, the holding center.

Yes, another human being suddenly turning up dead with no real explanation or reasoning that makes any sense. Yes. Another one! And we have not been told about it.

At the same time, here in Erie County, the City of Good Neighbors, we are finding out that our Erie County Corrections Specialist Advisory Board is being revealed as the sham that it has become since the ouster of Baba Eng.

Yes, we do remember that Baba Eng was asked to resign from our Corrections Specialist Advisory Board for telling an elected county official, Tom Howard, I mean Howard Johnson, to tell the truth at a public forum. Yes, the same corrections specialist advisory board that now turns a blind eye to the brutality and death at the Holding Center that they were created to monitor.

Just like when we found out that Cindi McChachon, the head of peace prints, former member of the advisory board, resigned after it was being revealed that not only did she have an office in the county jail, but she was also getting nearly a million dollars a year from the sheriffs’ office.

Well, my people, it is again time for our collective voice to be heard. We must tell our elected county legislators that we don’t approve of nor accept all of the murders and mayhem that continue to go on at our county jail. Also, hear this: we don’t accept the corrections specialist advisory board as it currently exist!

We ask our legislators to go back to the drawing board and create a real corrections specialist advisory board that actually does its job of monitoring the jail and letting the community know when things ain’t right.

Now, we definitely have not forgotten our local, overwhelming commitment, as expressed at two local community forums, held at our Merriweather Library.

The no new jail round table was able to bring out over two hundred of our community people, black, white and in between who said that we must stop any building of a new jail; a new jail where we know ain’t nothin gonna change but the location.

(To be continued)