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Radio Stations "Stop The Hits" - Start A Campaign To Stop The Economic Violence !

I used to get excited when our major urban radio stations would unite as they are tonight to "Stop The Hits" and deal with the issue in talking to millions of collective urban listeners about stopping the violence and as we can see in retrospect and maybe again tonight, these "Stop The Hits" efforts turn into the usual "paralysis of analysis" and we hear the same campaigns that are good but never deal with the "economic violence" at the root of so many of these illegal street economies, personal and family conflicts by which far too many of our people are hurt and die at alarming rates.

And so as another "Stop The Hits" program is set to air, I anticipate that we will hear the following examples as plans of action:

* Join the campaign to promote legislation to stop easy access to guns;

* Join the campaign to "Stop The Silence" where far too many people who have knowledge of criminal activity do not come forward for fear of retaliation

* Join the campaign to turn guns in and get them off the street and out homes where they can be used for violence

* Join the marches across the city designed to call attention to stopping the violence

* Join and support crime intervention and prevention groups like CeaseFire and others who work at resolving conflicts among those planning retaliations against one another

Now all of these themes are pieces to the puzzle that causes the rise in crime in our urban communities, but I continue to suggest that a program tonight that talks to millions of people can have MONUMENTAL impact if we could convince millions of urban listeners tuning in that the way they themselves spend their consumer dollars on en everyday basis ALSO contributes to the escalation of violence and that these millions of listeners can start a campaign among themselves to join a campaign to Stop The Economic Violence internally and externally in our urban communities.

The way that these millions of urban radio listeners could start tomorrow at changing their own consumer spending patterns and direct actions that could put thousands and thousands of our urban youth and others to work in legal jobs and economic opportunities and began to erase the draw that the illegal street economies and desperate economic conditions in our urban communities.

For example, in Chicago's Chatham community a legendary Black owned business like Reggio's Pizza could employ hundreds of community youth from the profits that could come from a major corporate store like Target who refuses to put Reggio's Pizza on their store shelves which blatantly violates the very essence of Dr. Martin Luther King's community economic program "Operation Breadbasket" (later a PUSH Economic Covenant Program) that says a major corporation should NOT be supported by community consumer spending dollars if that corporation like Target refuses to engage in a financial benefits agreements with the local businesses in that core community.  And so millions of urban radio listeners tonight could deal with this economic violence and challenge Target and others that is economically violence to sit in the heart of a Black community with double digit unemployment and make profits while blatantly contributing to the violence when hundreds of our youth could be working legal jobs when successful Black products like Reggio's are not on the shelves versus these youth and others forced back into battling over illegal street economies.

And as we celebrate this 91st Year Commemoration of the original Black Wall Street Of Tulsa that hundreds of thousands of Black listeners could be challenged to start tomorrow in teaching and practicing the spirit and example of Black Wall Street where they could immediately start to use their consumer spending power to redirect into the Black communities own community financial institutions to create, sustain and increase our own community businesses, jobs and institutions.  Yes, these hundreds of thousands of Black radio listeners could start stopping the violence tomorrow just by the way they themselves choose to spend their own consumer spending dollars. We would put 50,000 people to work and turn parts of Cook County Jail and Illinois Prison facilities into museums for 50,000 people can be working legal jobs in the community and not battling and dying over the illegal economies!!

So I anticipate that there will be those usually challenges on what The President and Government can do to create jobs in these urban communities but these hundreds of thousands of Black community listeners internally can do with their own consumer spending power to create jobs with their own consumer spending power.  So the challenge is not just on government, but directly on the individual shoulders of the millions of people who are listening. "They" are the leaders they have been waiting for, so they are either going to spend their consumer dollars and support direct consumer actions in a way that put our urban community to work OR they can do it in a way that continues to sustain the desperate economic conditions and the ongoing violence that will continue.

Lets solve a desperate economic condition with a desperate economic solution that the spirit and example of Black Wall Street helps provide.

Mark S. Allen

Chairman, Black Wall Street Chicago

Rev. Willie T. Barrow Consumer Education and Consumer Action Project

4655 South King Drive, Suite 203

Chicago, Illinois 60653

773-392-0165