But, I will give you everything that I have.
When someone is having an event, they come to the page to post, because they know that we will do whatever it is in our power to make the event successful. Even if that is simply a share, a like, or a comment.
At the heart of what we do is promoting Black businesses as well as community events.
Which is why I am extremely frustrated. Frustrated that no matter how hard we work, there will still be folks who feel as if their damaging agenda is bigger than our unifying agenda. Frustrated that the agenda that can be used to tear us apart, supersedes the agenda that is working to hold us together. When will we learn that together we are mightier than when we are divided?
My thoughts;
Before you let the narrative of someone on the outskirts of OUR community influence what you feel about issues that are taking place inside of our community, check yaself. Realize that outsiders will, and successfully have, used US against US while they sit back from the outskirts and watch it all unfold. We have to be smarter than the average, we have to be strategic, we have to be loyal to one another and agree on a cause, and we have to hold each other accountable, on our own terms though, not on the terms that outsiders have placed upon us.
– Tinicia Co-Founder of Black San Diego
WE STILL DON’T OWE YOU SH*T..
Sunday, we each received a message from Eric Bartl with the san Diego reader. Great right? I mean we’ve done a bunch of interviews regarding Black San Diego but nope, not this time, he didn’t want to do a story on us creating a platform for black owned businesses, or how we started with a directory of 20 and now have over 300 businesses or an App that we created to bring everything black in San Diego right to your fingertips. He didn’t want to write a story on how our platform has created connections for people who didn’t have jobs, who were homeless, or who just needed help that 211 wasn’t going to provide. He didn’t want to write a story on the phenomenal women who have created this system to circulate the black dollar in the community, to grow businesses, nor did he ask what our plans were for 2020. Instead he asked, “Do you know why the story about the female Lincoln victims was being blocked from the group? Did Shane Harris, Nick Cannon, Jason Crawford or Anthony Bell exert any pressure or influence to get it blocked?” Tuh! What! Talking about offended. How did an honoree award turn into this? How did our hard work turn into this? We allowed the article to be posted multiple times, yet it wasn’t good enough. We were accused of silencing the article for a hidden agenda when the only agenda is fighting for Black owned businesses and our community.
Growing up, my mom always told me and my younger brother, we were not allowed to fight in the house because there were so many things to fight outside of the house. Your home should be your peace. I didn’t fully understand it until I got older. I didn’t fully grasp the concept until I received that message from Eric. We have to stop fighting within our community because we have people like Eric waiting to strike and tear down our own community. We have spaces like The Reader waiting to create their own narrative of our community. A tip? It wasn’t our tip. This is The reason why The San Diego Monitor exist, the reason The Voice and View Point exist. We have to create our own spaces. There are so many other places to fish, The San Diego Unified School District, Lincoln administration, Summer Stephs, the DA, etc but yet you come fishing in the smallest pond.
We do too much work, scratch that, we do too much free work to allow someone to come in and water down our efforts and hard work in the community. Searching for a story within us that doesn’t exist. They say “all publicity is good publicity and there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” I say the only publicity we need is from our own CommUNITY… We still don’t owe you shit.
– Sheri Co-Founder of Black San Diego
Eric Bartl, San Diego Reader 619-235-3000
