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Turn “East Of The River” Into Our Own City(Reparations)
“The Northern ghetto had become a type of colonial area. The colony was powerless because all important decisions affecting the community were made from the outside”
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1966)
This article is the second part to the previous article “A United States of Africa On American Soil”.
In the article I stated what I viewed as Black liberation:
“If we won’t move back to Africa, we must create “A United States of Africa”, within America. In order to form your own country you need land. In nearly every city in America, Black people are isolated and segregated to a section of town, that we call “the inner city, the ghetto, or the hood”. These isolated black communities all over America can be formed into our own states, united under our own Black nation.”
That being said why not start with DC, which was known as the original “Chocolate City.”
East of the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. is:
- 90 percent black.
- The poorest section of DC.
- The most neglected part of DC.
- Systematically isolated and cut off from the rest of DC, due to 295.
- 160,000 people strong, which is a higher population than multiple cities in America.
When speaking about the slums of Chicago during a housing campaign in 1966, Dr. King stated that “Every condition exists simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum.”
This is still the case in inner cities in America, including D.C. The issues in our communities exist because there are colonizers profiting off of them.
For example, the horrible housing conditions in many black neighborhood in D.C.
What Dr. King stated below is still relevant today.
“Slum Landlords: Slum landlords find a most lucrative return on a minimum investment due to…