Brotha Ford,
I received news of your transition a short while ago but couldn’t find the right words to demonstrate my condolences.
When I first found you Mr. Ford, you were a lone voice in the wilderness. That voice was permeated by powerful notion of love and respect for those of us who didn’t quite understand the depth of the situation at hand or exactly where you were coming from.
In 2008 I first read a article of yours discussing what President Obama wasn’t doing for Black people. I’ll admit, as a young jr high schooler who’s parents raised them to believe that the Black business class always had the best interest of the group, I was initially astounded and slightly upset at your rhetoric. Specifically, your relentless critique of a man that I and no doubt millions of other Black Americans felt had achieved some sort of victory merely by being Black and making it to the highest office in the land, was harsh and filled data driven figures meant to further reiterate just how far behind we were in the economic landscape.
When it came to calling out the treasonous Black Congressional Caucus you were tactical and shrewd, routinely tying them to the atrocities committed against Black people domestically and abroad.
You seared John Conyers and Maxine Waters when they refused to speak out on the white supremacist terrorist attack now called the Flint “water crisis” and ad hominem verbal attack in itself.
Using your battle tested publication, the Black Agenda Report, you made it your mission to attack white supremacy and its collaborators on the daily. The ferocity you demonstrated in your critiques would serve as the intellectual foundation for our own news publication and many other news entities in the Black community.
However, you were abandoned by a large majority of your community when you stood up to then President Obama when he attempted to shame Black citizens for fighting race soldiers in the streets.
You acted as ideological parent to a new generation of freedom fighters.
You had the foresight and most importantly, the will to fight white supremacy no matter what face it decided to wear this era.
Even though i was a young Brotha among many searching for voices to assuage my anger, in retrospect you brought me something much more valuable; Resolution.
You gave concise answers to complicated and often convoluted problems. You went out of your way to monitor white supremacy and it’s brainchild, global imperialism. You made it your personal mission to fight for the release of Black political prisoners from the very gulags are ancestors were forced to build.
I would later receive the pleasure of meeting a few of your associates in my travels as a young adult, and they would eventually inform me to the reason why you knew all of those political prisoners by nickname, and it made me respect you all the more.
You understood that Black empowerment has no borders, and it adheres to no rules except it’s own.
You were a soldier in all aspects of life and didn’t need to brag about.
And the greatest gift i can give to your memory, is to honor it by continuing if not outright finishing your fight with this hellish monster known as global white supremacy.
Till the ancestors permit us to speak once more,
Your fellow soldier,
Barrington Williams
–Barrington Williams, Sylvester Loving, B1Daily
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