The British African Diaspora must now be strategic and responsive as opposed to reactionary
Updated: Oct 13, 2021
As 3 million British African Diasporans we have the collective economic clout to hurt corporation who think they can silence our celebrities and keep them rich slaves
We are the solution we have always been looking for, however we are not a homogonous group and have had many splintered cells based on island, nation, class and sexuality. Unfortunately these exact divisions are what have made African Diaspora people globally easy prey.
The saying hindsight is 20:20 couldn't be any more relevant than it is today. After 11 weeks of self isolation in this global phenomenon we have come to realise with absolute clarity that we are all we have ever needed. We can rely on our community to rally round and organise in a time of need and it's this organisational energy that we must remain in.
Power isn't numeric it's organisational and we have merely been out organised since the Windrush generation arrived naively believing the British promise of welcoming her subjects to rebuild the motherland, which was destroyed by the Second World War, which was a European power struggle over economic resources and territory.
Having the hindsight of wisdom we can now move forward with the clarity that Britain has no respect for us based on the illegal targeting of our parents and grandparents from the Windrush generation on the 70th Anniversary of them arriving here and building the NHS and the London Underground amongst other staple British institutions, all the while not organising their own under the belief they were equal British citizens
We must also take control of our own narrative at this time as we come into our own and support the #AAME not #BAME campaign
Moving forward to 2020 their children and grandchildren are equally targeted by institutional racism that affects our education, employment opportunities, access to finance, judicial abuse, police brutality and prejudice, access to housing and a raft of other areas too numerous to list. With this in mind it behoves us to genuinely organise for and on behalf of the interests of the British African Diaspora.
Many proactive grassroots organisations and professionals have been quietly and consistently doing this for the last couple of years, slowly building our power base and collaborating to establish a robust series of solutions that exclusively serve the African diaspora community from nursery to the grave.
ADPAC through our national leadership who span the expertise of Economic, Education, Employment, Politics, Health, Housing, Trade & Industry and Media are now collaborating with Taking the Initiative Party (our own independent representative party) and many grassroots delivery partners to ensure that we are not only represented but also celebrated by culturally competent service providers.
As 3 million British citizens who've never thought to organise as a nation within a nation we have tremendous spending power and economic and political influence that must now be harnessed for the purposes of acquiring our due portion of public funds as tax payers, which currently isn't the case. being obligated to uphold, promote and preserve our culture and not confidently having done that over the past 70 years is why we have succumbed to the oppressive situation we've collectively found ourselves.
Anthony Joshua giving a level headed and responsible address with peaceful protestors on the march to demonstrate against the barbaric muder of george Floyd by US law enforcement
We aren't past the point of no return and are internationally connected with similar institutions that are aligning and establishing our own protected trade agreements, economic and employment opportunities. We are taking a number of national census to quantify our true population, eligible voters by borough and county, business ownership, professionals by industry and our true financial contribution to the UK.
Its imperative in these emotionally turbulent times to keep our heads and wits about us to avoid being used as reactionary political tools by Non-African Diaspora groups and African Diaspora groups funded by external interests who we don't know or understand as a community. we must protect our vulnerable, especially our young people and provide pathways for them to make sense of everything which is going on today.
What does this look like? It is generally termed as the public health approach, which is the interagency collaboration to create wrap around service for a number of vulnerable sectors within our community. ADPACs first joint initiative is the Schools to Industry Pipeline, which was established to deliver wrap around care for youths from 3-21 with an all agency approach who are all in constant communication as a catch net.
We are now establishing the effective umbrella that the British African diaspora have always required when previously we've looked to everyone to serve our interests who've only come to siphon funding granted in our name only to cut the top slice and trickle our pennies to grassroots delivery organisation who then couldn't build robust operations to serve us.
Getting behind collective campaigns is also a great way of connecting us digitally to support our interests
The net result of that is the gross figures are quoted when that capital didn't touch the sides and thereby made no impact on our community. Then we are blamed for wasting resources and seen as untrustworthy by the same providers who know exactly how the cookie crumbled.
This is the game but it isn't child's play and must be put to rest as a practice, which is why we are now addressing central government and local authority at an institutional level. As a body that represent the interests of 3 million British citizens now collaborating with Taking the Initiative Party we are more organised and robust in terms of advocacy and lobbying than we have ever been.
We have a duty of care as a community to protect our lions who use their platform and speak up on our behalf. We have an economic fist that has never been effectively coordinated and harnessed to create a blow at an institutional level. We are proud of Anthony Joshua and John Boyega for using their powerful voices to give volume to our pain and context to our frustration. Let us as 3 million British African Diasporans definitively come together and solidify or socio economic eco system.
By Dean Okai Snr
