This is Week Two of the Cost of Freedom Voter ID App campaign on Start Some Good, a crowd-funding platform for social good.
Although black folks have died for the right to vote, the post-civil rights generation is not dying to assume their responsibility to fight voter suppression. The last few days, I’ve heard just about every excuse for not pledging $10, including they don’t want to have to register at the site.
In response to my Facebook post in which I shared my frustration, Anna Renee, “an unapologetic lover of my black people,” wrote “Black People Refuse to Pay for Freedom”:
Do you believe you’re free, black people? How can you tell? Well you may be free, but freedom is not free, and never has been. There is a high cost to freedom. Blood has been paid to secure freedom. Your freedom cost somebody their blood, their lives. Martin L. King paid with blood for our freedom. Malcolm X paid with blood for our freedom. Numerous freedom fighters both white and black have paid with their sanity, their livelihoods, their sense of security, their dreams for your freedom black people. Your grandmothers and grandfathers have paid the price, and we as black people now have freedom.[…]
Faye Anderson is fighting against those who would try to take away your freedom with the Cost of Freedom Project.
What was the cost of our freedom back then? Marching in the streets. Attack dogs let loose on old black ladies. Children being bombed in churches. Mothers walking to work to avoid riding the back of the bus. Cleaning toilets. Burping Miss Ann’s babies, while hers went without. Young men getting beaten in the head with billy clubs. Students getting thrown in jail. Fathers being hanged from trees. Strategizing in the black churches. Artists being black balled. Blood spilled. Black History Month ended about 5 days ago. We call to our remembrance our black freedom fighters and all they sacrificed for our freedom. Has Black History Month become an empty exercise, where we pay false homage to what we no longer know? Have we forsaken our ancestors and disdained the sacrifice they made for us?
What is the cost of our freedom right now? It’s $10. The cost of dinner at McDonald's. Are you willing to pay for your freedom?
Well, are you? Free your mind and the rest will follow.
