Pittsburgh is blessed to have a politically astute leader such as Rick Adams in our mist. His political savvy is above and beyond a politician’s narrow focus. He says of today’s political scene, “unfortunately, unless a political change is made, we can expect more of the same oppression, but we’ll always continue to progress on many fronts. We, who have been arguably subject to the most complete ubiquitous and sustained assault on our names, family, culture, religion, personal and collective freedoms, continue to survive, overcome, and still fight while Black and Proud, and will not be stopped because the Creator is on our side!”
The Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson Sr. inspired Adams to become involved in the Civil Rights Movement. He was a student at Westinghouse High School in 1967 when Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, which catapulted his activism. “The fact they killed a nonviolent advocate for peace enraged me. I was aware of the Black Panther Party’s birth; I watched Fanny Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Party fight at the Democratic Convention in 1968; I saw Alabama Governor George Wallace run for President; I opposed the Vietnam War; motivation was everywhere. Reverend Jackson filled the void following the murder of Dr. King. He was the chief proponent of nonviolent civil and human rights and progressive political action informed by progressive Christian religious principles.”
Carrying the torch of activism, as a student at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, Adams co-organizer the Maine Black Political Convention; in 1972, he was a delegate to the historic National Black Political Convention (NBPC) in Gary, Indiana. In the late 1990s, he and Rev. Thomas Smith (Monumental Baptist Church) revitalized The Allegheny County Black Political Organization, which was defunct but operated previously under the leadership of Sala Udin, Phil Carter, and Rev. Leroy Patrick. “Currently, we don’t have membership but are supporters/volunteers who will work with whoever believes in building an independent Black political power structure.”
Engaged in the most powerful era of activism, on the national level, Adams worked with Mayors Dick Hatcher and Marion Barry and respectfully with Maxine Waters, Donna Brazil, and Ron Daniels, to name a few. We say their names; local leaders include Mattie Stone, Oliver Montgomery, Alma Fox, Nate Smith, Mayme Lee, Jake Milliones, Bouie Haden, Barbara Sizemore, Charlie Kindle, Harvey Adams, and Bill Robinson. In 1984 he was the Western PA Coordinator of Jesse Jackson’s Campaign for President; 1995, the Pittsburgh Mobilization Coordinator for the Million Man March, “close to two million men attended, I looked out from the back of the capital and saw the many red, black, and green flags, I saw Marcus Garvey in the ‘whirlwind’ smiling down on us.”
Adams urges organizations to have civics instruction on why it’s important to vote, how government works, and how citizen action can impact and change public policies. “Organizations can collaborate with the Western Pennsylvania Black Political Assembly (WPBPA) to develop permanent political but not partisan structures that act like a ‘quarterback’ to coordinate the entire Black community’s efforts. To gain political power, we must organize the community, social, religious, educational, labor, and cultural groups into a unit that support voter registration and mobilize GOTV (Get Out The Vote) structures. We must also host non-partisan conventions to develop a united political, economic, and social development Black agenda; train a pool of our people on how to run for office and lobby for public policies that will improve the quality of life in our communities.”
The election of President Obama gave Black people a reprieve; however, it was far from the illusional post-racial America. “It was a major accelerant that set today’s political unrest. The counter-revolution started with the election of Ronald Reagan and the re-emergence of the oligarchs who put profit before the social and material needs of people. A serious restructuring of the US and World economy is fueled by transformational technology-driven changes on what work is, where, and how work will be done coupled with unparalleled amassing of wealth among a historically small group of oligarchs. This has allowed the equality index to be wider than any time since the days of Teddy Roosevelt. Reagan launched this in 1980 with his tax, economic, and anti-worker policies, but presently has now reached a point where the so-called logic of these policies has collapsed. Democracy has never been a reality for people in the United States. It has not ever been close to being a republic except for the brief Reconstruction Period. The pendulum is swinging, and the proverbial elephant in the room is the growing Black and Brown populations.”
Recently Adams put out a call to stop the plan of gerrymandering the state court system, HB38. A Joint Resolution proposing integrated amendments to the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, organizing the Judiciary into representative districts, and further providing for residency requirements. “This dangerous idea would reduce the power of Black voters by having the PA Supreme Court elected by large regional districts instead of allowing all citizens to vote for all the judges. The result would be for most Black voters to have a major say in two maybe three districts and effectively left out of meaningful participation in the other six comprising the nine-member court. To prevent the stacking of local governmental agencies, school boards, city councils, and magistrates, we must organize, organize, and organize as Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) advised, organize, organize, organize! We must run our candidates and defeat the MAGA group. If the DOJ doesn’t protect voting rights, the people, led by Black and Brown people, must take over the US House and Senate and make voting a constitutionally protected right! QAnon is a powerful component of the contemporary Republican Party; rational political organizers feed and encourage them for their selfish political reasons. It’s a dangerous cult that uses bizarre themes to agitate the more unstable elements of the US electorate to act out of fear and paranoid conspiracies.” Despite the backlash, Black and Brown folks must keep on pushing.
“To keep our issues relevant, we must put/keep our consciousness with our art. Some people thought only Eminem kneeled because the Black people couldn’t risk it. That’s ridiculous, Snoop and Mary are Millionaires; 50 Cent got hundreds of millions. Jay Z, whose company produced the Super Bowl LVI Show, and Dr. Dre are billionaires. Be serious. Who is going to do what to who?”
Stay tuned in, follow Brother Adams on Facebook / email: theradioactivist@prodigy.net.
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