BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW
Abuela and I were seated on the couch as we gazed at the mud-soaked bodies on the television screen.
Charlton Heston, the actor playing the biblical character Moses, in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, swashbuckled onto the scene and crouched down next to a frail brown man stomping into the mud pit.
Heston’s character caught the man’s attention and sarcastically complimented his ‘dancing moves,’ as he was stamping his thin legs into the mud.
“We’ve been dancing in it for 400 years,” the old man replied.
This scene from DeMille’s 1950s Hollywood epic is symbolic of what is unfolding in New York’s growing cannabis ecosystem.
The white savior moseys over to those of us who have been mired in the mud and clay to dismount from their perch. They then remark on how talented our dancing abilities are while offering limited amounts of capital, incomplete knowledge-sharing opportunities, all while gesticulating to appear to others to be making an impact.
In reality, these “saviors” like Charlton Heston, Gary Cooper before him, and most recently like former Gov. Cuomo, who signed the marijuana bill in law, have only come to visit the proverbial mud pits to lament about the latest mandates from the ruling class. They have not come to point us toward the path to freedom.
Similar to the film's depiction of the woes of slavery, Black Americans today are faced with the similar challenge of making bricks without straw.
Neither the SAFE Banking Act nor the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act or the MORE Act has been able to pass in the U.S. Senate. These critically important bills intend to end the federal governments’ prohibition of cannabis, provide access to secure banking for legal cannabis entrepreneurs, and provide restorative measures to uplift people and communities who were most impacted by America’s decades long War on Drugs.
The government's inability to provide access to secure capital renders hundreds of thousands of hopeful entrepreneurs incapable of incubating successful companies. Not because of our lack of intellect or lack of talent but rather our elected representative’s inability to rally the votes to unshackle this population of Americans and give us access to seed capital. Capital access that has continued to escape us:
Lack of access to historical capital that we’ve lost from years of free labor where we did not bear the fruit of capital inheritances which were never passed down.
Lack of access to private capital because we have been excluded from all wealth developing policies and business communities to master the craft of American capitalism.
Lack of access to local, state, and federal capital because of outdated and racist laws that inhibit the Black community's access to seed money while Big Cannabis profits heartily from the sales of legal cannabis flower in over thirty states.
Black Americans need those that are in power to provide access to capital without undue burden given that we are a community that is working to arise from the rubble that has been left behind in the wake of 500 years of capital bondage.
Yet in good faith, the State government announced a $200 million dollar fund that will effectively “mold bricks for Egypt” by generating billions in tax revenue while thousands of us still agonize in prison cells all over the nation.
Again and again, we see Uncle Sam fatten and line his pocket with tax profits while thousands of our lives have been changed from lethal engagements with law enforcement and the prison industrial complex.
Again and again, we see one America thrive while Black Americans are forced to starve for seed capital.
Black Americans know what’s coming. The cannabis capital markets offer limited cash options. When they do offer cash options, they are often at unfavorable economic terms.
We can already hear investor communities begin to shout through legal terms, “dance straw into the mud, you dogs” as the crack of the whip sounds.
For some Black Americans, Big Cannabis will reach into the mud pits to nurture the mud flowers that have thorns. But we know this only to be a facade of freedom to give a limited few the sweet taste of hope but not quench the thirst of millions who remain in bondage.
At the end of the scene, Abuela and I both watched as the frail brown man spoke truth to power about the divinity of his manhood and paid the price of his words with his life.
The old man’s final dying words are a vibe that continues to give me hope:
“Before I close my eyes, that I may behold the Deliverer to lead all men to freedom,” he whispered in his final breaths.
Despite being a first-generation Black American, I too, deserve equity before it's too late — like the millions of Americans that have come before me.
I have toiled and danced in the mud pits of capitalism for long enough. And like James Baldwin also once realized, when he said:
“It comes as a great shock…to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance…has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, and although you are rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians are you.”
We can no longer root for Gary Cooper or Charleston Heston. And we can neither be slaves nor Indians anymore.