Opinion: Identity Politics in Leadership

EDITORIAL TEAM - T. Tyler Jackson

The media deems me a civil rights leader, activist, businessman, philanthropist, urban planner, intellectual, thug, Islamic Moore, radical, agitator, and enemy of the state. I embrace most of these rhetorical labels as footnotes to my royal lineage. For in this lifetime I have transcended the steps of my spiritual paramours through humility and contrition; for all the deaths we failed to stop in pursuit of justice by Blacks.

As civil rights leader It has been a tumultuous time. We embarked on a mission, rooted in Black sovereignty, ownership and economic influence. The South End Grocery (SEG) succeeded where no one else has; by existing. We served 10,000+ residents with over $75k of farm fresh groceries and products including local farms like Soul Fire Farm and Forts Ferry Farm. We donated over $20k worth of produce to the neighborhood and invested over $1.3 million of cash over three years for BlueLight to lead the charge for Black empowerment at the African American Cultural Center (AACC) and equity urbanism across the Capital Region. Leveraging my personal assets and relationships, we built partnerships and influence across institutions that have shaped the landscape of Downtown Albany and established longstanding cases studies for inclusive economic development. No one will forget the work we have done here. Unfortunately, it was built on three lies that I unknowingly believed and propagated:

(1) The Center was never Black-owned. The property, in fact was a liability bounded to the influence of private individuals and third-parties under a hidden, no payment mortgage. Colonists disguised as benefactors secretly ordered the footsteps of our elders.

(2) I never believed in passive advocacy. The resistance began when we reopened the dormant South Pearl building to progressive Black ideas from the L.O.C., NAACP, ISUPK and South End residents including documentary screenings, self defense classes, panel discussions and more. The shadow council of elders and colonizers bristled at efforts to prioritize our Latin, Spanish and Caribbean family in the spirit of Dr. Arturo Schaumburg. We received rebuke for inclusion of LGBTQIA allies for adult prom, drag brunches and fundraisers. There was resistance to my lectures at Beth Ohav Shalom in solidarity with our Jewish contemporaries. I was rejected for fellowship at the Arch Street Protest and for paying legal fees of Black Lives Matter protestors. I was ostracized for physically defending my life against white supremacists, unjust police actions and domestic terrorists. Albany Police Department has held viewing parties of their surveillance footage of me, pulling in city officials to watch and engage in the COINTEL operation while praying I succumbed to harm.

(3) My personal platform is important. Captivating silence will not make me a more palatable leader. The mystique of a Morehouse Man, while impressive, bears no witness to the vocal character necessary to stand under our crown. While I have been strategic and utilitarian with words – I have lived quite loudly for anyone watching. Onlookers bristled at my decision to start a family and stand present as a rejection of martyrdom prophecy. I would stand in enjoyment of our work with healthy and fruitful loved ones – uplifting Black women and children. I believe Black women should be first and have offended many men, funders and women with public and private demands for jobs, annual funding, office spaces, leadership positions and safe places to celebrate this missive. I reject police involvement inherently due to their chattel slavery history, while possessing a distinct empathy and understanding for service in the streets with poor quality of life as the payment. I am sex positive and reject respectability politics thinly veiled by vagina-insecure fear mongering from toxic men who do not truly like women as a species. Our school of thought and ideologues were tolerated commensurate to my success procuring reparations from private and commercial sources. Alas, capitalism always demands to show the money and the cost of our altruism was private surveillance, public mystique and COINTEL targeting.

As activist, I am proud of our history coordinating the Albany Juneteenth Festival and announce that our coalition will no longer host the festival on South Pearl Street. From 2018 to present we have hosted over 20,000 people, including peak attendance of nearly 7,000 people in 2021 when the federal holiday was adopted. We have also supported Juneteenth Celebrations financially and logistically across the region as the holiday has grown, including those hosted uptown and by LGBTQIA communities. We are proud to now see multiple celebrations throughout the city; a stark change from our isolated missives over the years. I am grateful to have supported The Inaugural African Heritage Parade and Brother Orville Abrahams. The African Heritage Parade, through partnership with our coalition, the Downtown Business Improvement District and South End Neighborhood has hoisted this holiday to premier heights. While we will not be involved in organizing this year, many excellent committed people are. Please look to The African Heritage Parade for future Juneteenth Celebrations as we acknowledge 20 years of celebration in Summer 2025.

As businessman, I am an experienced finance professional. Analytics and underwriting, specifically of debt financing are my core strengths. Hence my resistance to the mortgages present for SEG. Debt is a tool to transfer rights of ownership in exchange for protection from independence. Interest is the cost we pay to not be true owners and for the privilege of insulating ourselves from accountability. I am adept at fundraising and market making despite my radical inclinations and affronting Blackness. In a ten-year career I have touched over $1 billion of transactions.

I am a Black philanthropist. I donated my first $1 million to establish BlueLight and covertly buoy AACC as an institution. I built my philanthropy around lessens learned from investment banking: never catch the falling knife, equity over interest, time is more valuable than money et. al. My ability to independently fund and secure partners eye-to-eye with men much wealthier and whiter than myself became alluring. How does this young Black man have the means and balls to wield power in such a way that demands equal respect while admitting, openly, that we are flawed with unequal resources and capabilities? Answer: skills, courage and faith. As an individual economic engine, I have shown that Black people can outperform prejudice and wealth with our minds. This makes me deeply dangerous to the white power structure as there is no “room” of people who can usurp my Black determinism, through intellect, manipulation or force.

As urban planner, I recognize the fundamental flaws in Albany. The fight against urban sprawl has been appropriative, establishing a natural development trend as red herring deuterantagonist companion to white-supremacy and redlining. Not only are these disparate, distinct factors of positive growth, establishing them as tainted stanchions of prejudice erases their viability in smart growth applications. Deterministic urban sprawl suggests that people go where they can act in their best interests. Written against limited urban geography, resource scarcity and capitalism, the MSA (metropolitan statistical area), megapolis, or giga/regional metros become key to any futurist examination of urban planning, not just Black futurism. We will run out of space to pit foundations and grow. Cyberpunk, Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, Wakanda and Ender’s Game all posit humanities’ urban growth beyond 3-D landscapes. City borders become the cutting edge for poor and Black peoples’ determination to buy affordable land in outlying suburbs and exurbs. This opening gambit directly confronts the nearly 50-year old premise of modern cities:

White, political, oligarchy successfully captured urban centers throughout the United States as tools for expansion of capitalist democracy. These bastions to representative idealism are rooted in lucrative private interests who farm consumers in these centers for ideas, social experiments and profits. Westward expansion and manifest destiny were still conducted as parochial fiefdom missions, particularly before urban planning doctrines caught up to smart urbanism principles in the 21st century.

As intellectual I made mistakes. I allowed idealism to mystify the intelligence bestowed on me. Naïve bliss to imagine unyielding determination and faith could force the ideals we dreamed. No proselyte had ever been better. I repent for this willful blindness to the ultimate universal power. For this, I have been called arrogant by some. Others and myself refer to me as flawed – human. Here too is my mistake – leaning into the mystique of a flawless figure of inspiration. Because I believed in the idea. I bestowed this status on brother Malcolm X. Jesus Christ – the Black political prisoner. My grandfather. Is it better to yield and win than to stand and fail? Capitalism says yes. This is not an allegory. Black intelligentsia in present and historically challenged the zenith of culture and ultimately the hypothesis for Black advancement. SNCC and the NAACP found the event horizon in organizing and advocacy. The problem is their memberships’ willingness to jump through the doors they manifested. My youthful naiveté and exuberance led me to reject compromises on behalf of my faith in Black people standing together. Present thinkers like Bakari Sellers encourage solutions. Writers like Octavia Butler vision societies that grapple with Blackness with courage in all forms, including vampires and science fiction. This nadir of utopic visioning fueled by dynastic fear of a dystopian future is a taxing microcosm of the matrix. The Black intellectual collective, the “Niggerati”, were set ablaze by the intellectual pursuits of an ideal society. Niggerati Manor hosted Zora Neale-Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Langston Hughes and many others while producing “Fire!! “ and “Harlem” magazines. Despite the Avengers style team-up of Black intellectuals of the era, social conflict and interpersonal resentment eliminated a unified front of support for these publications beyond a single issue each. This history has always guided my steps as a public, Black intellectual. The Niggerati allowed me to understand clearly that intellectual rigor, charisma, and courage as a troika of Black determinism is sometimes most offensive to other Black people. W.E.B. Dubois and Marcus Garvey’s personal slights instigated by the public pressures of propagandized whiteness spoiled a fervent union. I aim to stop this sentiment.

Black masculinity in the school of Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Kobe Bryant, Jawanza Kunjufu, John Boyega, The Alabama Boat Defenders and Darwin Joels ground me daily in pursuit of this goal.

Black femininity in the school of Zora Neale-Hurston, Josephine Baker, Harriet Tubman, Shirley Chisholm, Audre Lorde, and Octavia Butler ground me daily as I balance my Ankh.

Black determination will not erase the handicaps of America, but fight them tirelessly with performative successes. Reparations are still due as justice for chattel slavery: full stop. True equity comes from higher education at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU) like Morehouse College; the alma mater of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Spike Lee, Samuel Jackson and myself. Local and regional banks gate keep economic opportunities rightly due to Black people. Our efforts to form a Black-owned bank in Albany was suppressed by the white non-profit industry who co-opted the effort for Black financial liberation and used it instead as a fundraising tool for their balance sheet.

Our efforts to support Black and Brown medical care including expansion of pharmacies, doctor offices and urgent care practices were usurped by splashy insurance company sponsorships that yielded more new subscribers than tangible health outcomes for Black people. Education at parochial schools, private academies and Black institutions is key to countering the prejudices inherent in opposition to our intellectual primacy and general praxis. As said by Michelangelo: “[We] are still learning.”

As a thug I reject gangsters;

Liars who peddle hype;

Pretend imaginary players.

Stood on my own.

These gangsters never do.

Tell lies about me.

I tell truth ‘bout who?

Investigating me?

Who we telling truth to?

Fed hypocrisy, busy clocking fees;

Informants with passive hater philosophy.

Violence is essential to protect Black life.

Thugs and hoodlums protect daughters when police ain’t right.

Make scammers take flight;

Demand respect for elders.

Make YNs stay in class;

See hip hop as key to progression.

Elucidate dichotomies standing penthouse pavement or curb.

Universal ghetto life; spicy Black wife.

You heard?

What it is?

Present fathers as models for their kids.

True hustlers out the garbage;

Building businesses to live.

Don’t disappoint Allah or make excuses for Christians.

Use tools to fake news.

Refuse to stand on business.

Hustled hard for everything I ever touched.

Staked by Montreal Canada add it up.

Good at flipping books and talking tall.

Lysistrata, Marvel, pop culture – I read it all.

Excessive charity from dollars? How am I a robber?

Whole time, hate outside besiege prestige. Insight due restraint from white lines.

Overpaid to escalate platforms prime time.

Vicious in self defense;

To relent is a false missive.

Forgiveness and humility is the antithesis of dismissive.

Building bridges belittles solo travel;

When the sounding bell is rebel yells instigated by saber rattles.

Concepts and spirits they could never imagine. Public critique for algorithms and motifs.

I pray for the success of our Black masses. Sheep are not to be discarded belittled or bleed.

They are flock, recognized by God; clean, fed and led.

To salvation, perhaps, but thug dreams ain’t painted in plaster.

Michelangelo would be first to blow if he grew up in South Troy, Iraq, or other ghetto disaster.

To greener pastures, at least, for sustenance and spirit.

For a thug, it’s tepid overlooking threats from predators, climate and self division.

Our kindred spirits preclude physical fission – Blacks find envy where a flock finds divine mission.

To fly south or clear fields, build churches world-wide.

Gangs are redundant to thugs when Black flocks embrace our pride.

Not in humanity, the church or hem of Jesus’ belt, but in loving each other as God so loved our broken, sinful selves.

In this, a thug can find peace and wish everyone well.

Reject geo, neo or respectability politics for the love of a hug on a block in hell.

A thug can put fiends in they place.

Keep 10 cameramen safe by putting fist to face.

Chokeslam scary mans following women ‘dem round.

Detain child molester, dearrest protestor and stand strong with boots on the ground.

Thug tell you scuff yo timbs and keep your limbs;

Make sure you brush your teeth.

Pediatric action duck ass-kicks in the hat trick.

Gretzkey to my besties with the lefty rout.

I never duck fades, coulda been crashed out.

Never name dropping opps; squid games; numbers won’t give them clout.

Divas camera phones ain’t worth play in the streets.

A thug lives inside Black people, endlessly. Because to be a thug is to experience trauma and violence without dying or quitting – genuinely.

In respect to survivors we embrace all strides, taken in pursuit of being alive.

Here is where the essence of thug is.

Gangsters fight to die.

Thugs would rather fight to live.

As Islamic Moore I believe in Jesus as Black man, political prisoner and child of god. I cherish Allah and turn towards Mecca five times daily. I proudly proclaim my royal dogma and bloodline. I am entitled to rule by birthright and blood allegiance to diasporic struggle for liberation. I embrace Judaic religious history as the underpinning for Black Jews’ spiritual journey towards the promised land of God. I believe, that our destiny manifest on Earth in God’s image will be fractitious. It is on Earth as it is in heaven, therefore, where any two are gathered in agreement so shall God be present with them sayeth the Lord. Meaning, that Black people in unison not only call forth righteous presence of God, but show us on Earth, the heavenly beauty of melanated servants to the universe in fellowship. In this spirit, cleanliness and regalia become signets of faith in God’s presence. This inherent power, derived from diasporic Blackness is why slave masters rejected groups of Negros wholesale. For even the most evil spirits, are finely attuned to the powers of manifestation inherent to those imbued by the divine promises of God, as Black people have been since God let there be light.

As radical I call for sovereignty among Black peoples in the diaspora, with localized rights and powers. Control of the means of production as a direct rejection of consumerism is necessary to organize, learn and share culture unburdened by the police surveillance state and privacy infringement. I broke the police line of June 3, 2020 during the fire bombing and militarized encampment of South Pearl Street. I cleared an intersection July 4, 2021 from domestic terrorists. Topps Supermarket mass-shooting hate crime in Buffalo cast a pall over business negotiations in 2022. I almost lost my life defending myself against attacks on our building deemed retribution for our unapologetic Blackness. This was not only an attack on our flag and beliefs, but a saddening truth about the lack of support for armed forces members including medical treatment and economic vitality. I stand with the tradition of armed forces for sovereign defense abstractly and personally. My families’ service includes the Army, Navy and Marines in Vietnam, North Atlantic and South Asia Sea. I am present as a Black father while maintaining my will to fight and nerve to let courage in united family usurp fear of loss.

As agitator I called for wholesale questioning of the food system and corporate responsibility as a solution to hunger. With no direct experience and lacking the necessary operating partners, our team succeeded at the impossible. Posing the question: How much better could this model be when operated by an experienced, private well-capitalized corporate business?

Our hypothesis: All things are possible with courage in the face of risk. Early adopters experience struggles in service of educating the market. Our work with groups like Honest Weight, The Food Pantries of the Capital Region or Capital Roots proves: yes, this model can excel.

As enemy of the state my elders participated in civil rights as members of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, NAACP and black intellectual discourse. I made substantial progress toward a physical Black state in the South End of Albany using reparations and private corporate fundraising. Under the veil of hope for a Black messiah, magical Negro, or media lighting rod, I manifested my true intentions. I now face the backlash for my dedication to Black determination and sovereignty underpinned by reparations and corporate influence. I believe a multigenerational Black diaspora is entitled to claims in America and reparations to build an independent Black state that cooperates and exists alongside all in the global community. Blacks can choose not to participate and allies can choose to participate. We embrace true cooperation and recognize differences among Black people. I will stand proudly in the canned humiliation rituals and bear witness to the love inherent in our coalition.