1. No Party Affiliation (NPA)

Those who would join the OMCCBCV movement are requested to register to vote as not having any political party affiliation whatsoever. In many, if not most, jurisdictions this means registering as "No Party Affiliation" (NPA), or whatever is its equivalent in a particular state or other subdivision of government. Do not register as "independent," because in some jurisdictions, this may be an official political party. The objective here is to assure that OMCCBCV member loyalties are to the collective Black community, and not to some externally-controlled, partisan, political party committed to the maintenance of white supremacy and racism.

2. “Blackonomics” Activism

Our public protests against political issues, as well as deadly misconduct by police, oftentimes result in economic windfalls to some of the very people and institutions being protested against. Police are often cozy with and enjoy free benefits provided by hotels and motels, bars and restaurants, retail stores, and other venues frequented by marchers and the media when they gather for a protest in a given community. OMCCBCV strongly urges protesters, to the fullest extent feasible, to use Black-owned bus companies for transportation to and from the protests, Black-owned lodging and food establishments, and purchase promotional material (t-shirts, etc.) from Black vendors. By doing this, the protesters will contribute economically to our own people. Unfortunately, when we march and demonstrate we count the people; White folks count the profits.

 

For more than twenty years the term “Blackonomics” has been the clarion call for Black people to move from psychological enslavement to economic freedom by implementing the examples of our ancestors and acting appropriately upon the knowledge we have attained. This plank is of primary importance in that it directs us to our responsibility and obligation to be self-reliant, self-determined, and economically self-sufficient.

 

THE One Million is about “activism,” not empty rhetoric; we know that economic progress comes from economic activity on our behalf, and we are willing to be among the first responders to this truism. Therefore, this internal plank calls for Black people, starting with THE One Million, to make a concerted effort to redirect One Billion Black dollars to Black owned businesses during each year, thereby creating more “Conscious Black Millionaires” and paying “Internal Reparations” to ourselves with part of our $1.2 trillion aggregate annual spending power. We call it “THE Billion Dollar March.”  

 

Make it your business to spend a minimum of $1,000.00 each year on Black-made products and services. You can get a jump on that commitment by going to our “Products” tab and buying a few bags of Sweet Unity Farms Coffee, and then go to the links we have provided and buy something made by Black folks. That is the essence of “Blackonomics Activism” to be conscientious of our spending in creating real economic power. We owe it to ourselves to practice Blackonomics Activism. The onus for our economic freedom is on us.

3. Juneteenth Observances

The OMCCBCV supports the effort of the Juneteenth Observance Foundation to establish "Juneteenth" as a "National Day of Observance" in America; and the corresponding effort of the '150Years.net' group to designate Juneteenth as an official day of observance in the State of Texas. Juneteenth is recognized as a state holiday or special day of observance in forty-three (43) states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Congress.

4. Cooperative Economic Empowerment

 The OMCCBCV endorses and supports the "Us Lifting Us Economic Development Cooperative" (ULU), based in Atlanta, Georgia, as a model of a cooperative approach to economic empowerment for African-Americans. ULU "marts" are envisioned for Black communities in every metropolitan area in the country with a significant population of people of African descent. The ULU website is www.usliftingus.com.

5. Think Tanks

The OMCCBCV endorses and supports the efforts by our brothers and sisters to conduct a series of discussions to study the feasibility of establishing an official independent Black political party and to execute bloc voting by Black people in their local areas, nationwide. We must garner momentum region by region, wherever Black people can influence elections with our numbers & dollars. The proposed party [to be named at a latter date] would build on the ill-fated efforts initiated in Gary, Indiana and Chicago, Illinois in 1972.

6. Black Bank Partnership

The OMCCBCV supports and endorses the efforts of the National Bankers Association (NBA) to serve distressed communities plagued by social and economic challenges, and to provide employment opportunities, entrepreneurial capital, and economic revitalization in neighborhoods which often have little or no access to alternative financial services. We will also 

advocate with NBA for the nation's Black-owned banks on legislative and regulatory matters concerning and affecting its members and the communities they serve. Additionally, in alignment with the NBA's mission, we desire to see an increase in the number and impact of Black-owned banks and their branches, to see growth in individual and business accounts, an expansion in the variety of financial products available to better serve our communities, and additional jobs as a result of that support. To that end, our individual members will support our banks by opening new accounts, especially long-term savings accounts, and encourage others to do the same.

7. Misconduct Insurance for all Law Enforcement Officers

All duly sworn law enforcement officers and their administrative superiors should be required at their own expense, or with assistance from their unions, to purchase and maintain in effect, misconduct insurance similar in nature to the malpractice insurance that is required of doctors and other medical professionals, so that they are held financially accountable to whomever they wrongfully harm in violation of rights assured by the U.S. Constitution, or financially accountable to family members of anyone they murder or brutalize without due process of U.S. Constitutional provisions.  

8. Class-Action Lawsuit Against Anti-Constitution States

OMCCBCV and our collaborators will file a class-action lawsuit against all states in the union that have passed laws granting law enforcement officers legal authority to murder or brutalize U.S. citizens without due process as guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States of America. A variation on this theme which we heartily support is the groundbreaking legislation to help stop police killings and brutality proposed and drafted by the organizations ONUS, Inc. and Black Communities United for Progress. The proposed legislation is titled: "Uniform Reporting Law Enforcement Improvement Act" (URLEIA), and is posted on the website: www.ChangeIsOnUs.org. 

9. Unlawful Stop Recording

Many involved in the Black Lives Matter protest movement advocate that in addition to the use of dash-cams in police vehicles, law enforcement officers should be required to wear devices on their uniforms to record encounters with citizens. The OMCCBCV contends that having police control the recording of their confrontations with citizens is bad policy. Police cannot be trusted to decide whether or not an incident they have with a citizen should be recorded. We oppose police having the authority to deny citizens' the right to use devices of their own—be it their cellular phones or otherwise—thereby interfering with objective recordings of deadly encounters, the number of which are escalating at an alarming rate. We urge citizens to familiarize themselves with the website www.UnlawfulStop.com to view a variety of wearable devices soon to be made available to the public. 

10. Community Control of Police

 The OMCCBCV is calling for the re-establishment and use of Civilian Police Review Boards to monitor misconduct by police. As all branches of the U.S. military are subordinate to civilian authority and oversight, domestic law enforcement officials should be under the control of the citizens they are supposedly sworn to protect and serve. We further contend that members of such police review boards should be elected on a non-partisan basis, rather than appointed by elected officials who often owe allegiance to or are fearful of police and their politically-active unions. Toward these ends, we support the National Coalition of Law Enforcement Officials for Justice, Reform and Accountability (NCLEO) efforts to reign-in the out-of-control police establishment in America.

11. Neighborhood Self-Defense

 The OMCCBCV supports the efforts of Black Americans to organize for neighborhood self-defense against violent, criminal activity visited upon the Black community, especially by those who victimize our youth, older citizens, and women. This includes, but is not limited to rape, assault, murder, and abuse. Therefore, the OMCCBCV supports such neighborhood self-defense groups that cooperate with law enforcement individuals who RESPECT the human and civil rights of Black Americans, and work closely with advocates of community control of law enforcement to prevent such crimes, and swiftly bring to justice those individuals who commit them. 

12. Amend the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

 The 150th anniversary of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was celebrated in December 2015 by President Barack Obama and Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, who said, "The 13th Amendment is just 43 words long. It is so short that you can almost miss its whole significance. Today we celebrate this 43-word amendment; this new birth of freedom. It is altogether fitting and proper that we do this."

Section One of the 13th Amendment states, "Neither slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Section Two states, "Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

This OMCCBCV plank calls for decreasing the word count of the from 43 to 29 by eliminating the exception in the 13th Amendment, i.e.; “...except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." Section One of the 13th Amendment should thus read, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist in the United States nor any place subject to their jurisdiction."

As Section Two states, "Congress has the power" to make this change and then to enforce it. Therefore, we call on the Congressional Black Caucus and the President and/or candidates for the any future Presidential election or congressional election to publicly support amending the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution via House/Senate Bills, resolutions, executive order, or through any other means at their disposal.

13. Student Loan Debt Forgiveness

 Insofar as both the current and previous federal administrations saw fit to "bail-out" Wall Street and certain major corporations after their own sleazy practices had brought them to the brink of failure, and American taxpayers were compelled to pick up the resulting tab in the trillions of dollars because those who controlled the government declared the subject companies were "too big to be allowed to fail," it would be just and fair for the government to extend the same type and level of courtesy to the public that pays the taxes that support the government's "too big to fail" friends. Therefore, we of the OMCCBCV movement call upon the U.S. Government to "bail-out" all American citizens who still owe any balance on student loans for education. This would give taxpaying citizens the same "fresh start" unencumbered by debt that was afforded Wall Street and major corporations during the 2007-08 financial debacle. Toward these ends, we support the "Campaign for America's Future" in its efforts to bring about the abolition of all student loan debt in America.

14. Restore All Citizens' Right to Vote

 The OMCCBCV supports the efforts of a growing number of organizations around the country calling for the restoration of voting rights to ALL American citizens, including those who have been adjudicated "felons," but have “paid their debt to society.”

15. Reparations for Enslavement & Restoration of Humanity

 The OMCCBCV recognizes the ongoing, debilitating effects of the abominable process used to convert African captives into human beasts-of-burden, commonly referred to as "slaves" in the western hemisphere, and that until those effects are reversed, it will continue to be difficult bordering on impossible, for us to fully regain all the traits and attributes that constituted our pre-European-contact humanity. We therefore support wholeheartedly the recently conjoined efforts of the Institute of the Black World (IBW), and the CARICOM Nations' Reparations Commission (CRC), “...to achieve reparatory justice for the victims of genocide, slavery, slave trading, and racial apartheid.” 

16. Support for Black Farmers

 After a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) historic acknowledgement of widespread, systemic, intentional discrimination against Black farmers, the situation remains unsettled, despite headlines to the contrary. The USDA is poised to seize the remaining Black-owned farms and the fertile, virgin land on which they sit. By way of a series of legal maneuvers, lawyers for the farmers have hit a bonanza in U.S. Government payments, but the farmers are yet to be made whole for the generations of discrimination and persecution that they have endured. The situation is even worse now because the very same employees who committed the acts of discrimination against the farmers are still at USDA. Our demand is that the USDA debt owed by Black farmers be relieved in its entirety, and that the accelerated foreclosure process that has been initiated against many of them be terminated immediately. 

17. African-Centered Education for Children of African Descent

 We must compel parents of students in pre-K to 12th grade to take a proactive role in the effective education of their children. Toward that end, the OMCCBCV urges the development of critically thinking, economically productive, contributing citizens, first to the African-American community, and by extension, to the larger global society. Given the current environmental changes in neighborhoods and communities, Black parents must be given vouchers equivalent to the total per capita amount allocated for educating students in any given jurisdiction. This will allow parents to choose appropriate Black-controlled educational options for their children, and assure that such institutions have adequate financial support for the long term. It is imperative that parental choice in their children’s education and development be protected. Vouchers must be able to be used at private and independent schools.

Parents must not be coerced into vaccinating their children as a prerequisite for them to enroll in school. Vaccinations are not guaranteed safe, and Black parents must not be forced to subject children to modern-day versions of “Tuskegee-type” experiments as a condition of their being allowed to attend public schools. 

Additionally, “special-education” programs are woefully inadequate, and as they exist today, must be eliminated. Curricula should be designed in such a way that it can be differentiated to meet the needs of all students. Their current design contributes to the destruction of Black children’s minds, and the public school system routinely uses drugs to “adjust” the behavior of Black children to force them to conform under the racially biased system. 

18. Support for Black Physicians

 The over-prosecution of Black physicians by law enforcement, medical boards, and regulatory agencies has led to the closure of many Black medical businesses and services in our community. Black people continue to be the sickest, medically underserved communities in the nation, and suffer from the highest death rates of any ethnic group in America because of the legacy of enslavement. 

The OMCCBCV recognizes that a "medical Ferguson" exists in the Black community that must not continue to be ignored. Government agencies must address this problem, and effective public policy needs to be implemented to combat the extinction of Black physicians providing access to healthcare in our community through viable private and public Black health care initiatives.

19. Support for African-American Media Ownership

 When the media watchdog group Free Press released its first report on the state of TV ownership in 2006, there were only 18 African-American-owned and operated, full-power commercial TV stations – representing just 1.3 percent of all such stations in America. By December 2012, those 18 had shrunk to just five (5). In 2013, they were ALL gone, and there are ZERO Black-owned and operated full-power TV stations in America! Deregulatory changes (1996 Telecommunications Act) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are responsible for changes in TV ownership regulations.

The OMCCBCV supports the efforts of media watchdog groups such as Free Press, the Maynard Institute (a nonprofit organization that advocates for more African-American media ownership), and Opportunity Agenda in their efforts to raise awareness of the state of media ownership, and actively pursue measures to increase African-American ownership of media operations. Expansion of Black ownership of communications media is important to the OMCCBCV because of its inherent power to shape perspectives and ideologies regarding the African-American community collectively. The OMCCBCV adamantly supports moguls in Black media, namely Carl Nelson of The Carl Nelson Show, Elliott Booker of Time for An Awakening Radio Show, and Scotty Reid of Black Talk Radio Network.

20. Pay College Athletes for Their Labor

 According to the U.S. News & World Report, the college sports industry generates $11 billion in annual revenues, which are passed along to NCAA executives, athletic directors, and coaches in the form of salaries. The Washington Post reports that two (2) sports bring in virtually all the revenue in college athletics -- football and basketball. The University of Pennsylvania's Center for the Study of Race and Equality in Education found that 57% of football players, and 64% of men's basketball players in the six biggest conferences were Black, though Black males make up less than 3% of the overall student population. Meanwhile, athletic administrators and coaches are overwhelmingly white. Nevertheless, NCAA member colleges continue to vote to forbid sharing of revenues with "student-athletes." By hiding behind a "veil of amateurism," the wealth of college sports is maintained in the hands of a select few administrators, athletic directors, and coaches. This "veil" not only ensures great wealth for athletic directors and coaches, but it also ensures sustained poverty for many of the athletes who provide their labor. 

 According to the U.S. News & World Report author of the Jan. 6, 2014 article, "Not only are the NCAA rules that prevent colleges from paying student-athletes immoral, but they are also likely illegal" under Section I of the Sherman Anti-trust Act. The author concluded that "...the argument against allowing pay to student-athletes arises mainly from greed and self-interest." The author of a Washington Post article of January 10, 2016 concluded "...by refusing to pay athletes, the NCAA isn't just perpetuating a financial injustice. It's also committing a racial one;" and further, "The few players who do go on to NFL or NBA careers give up years of potential earnings, risking injury in the process. Most athletes, of course, don't make it to the pros."

The OMCCBCV agrees with, and supports enthusiastically, the March 26, 2014 ruling by a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Regional Director that Northwestern University football players qualify as university employees, and thus, can unionize. We further contend that the ruling should be upheld despite the university's appeal of it, and should be made to apply to all student-athletes in all revenue-generating sports at all colleges and universities throughout America.

21. End Mass-Incarceration of American Citizens

 The OMCCBCV demands an end to the unconstitutional and immoral material support for the mass-incarceration of American citizens in the United States by local, state, and federal government entities!  

Too often, officials at all levels of government law enforcement and the governmental judicial process purposely target Black Americans for mass incarceration, for the dual purposes of racist attacks against Black Americans, and to feed the prison economy, building up the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC). These entities use the PIC to unfairly target Black Americans in various forms: from the modern day "debtors' prison"/debt slavery system as shown by illegal and excessive court fines and fees in Ferguson, Missouri; the school-to-prison pipeline practices defined by excessive and unfair zero-tolerance policies in the public school system (including excessive use of School Resource Officers), and further defined by Gestapo police practices in various Black communities; and the harassment and criminalization of citizens for imagined and trivial matters (as described by researchers like Dr. Michelle Alexander, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and many others). Our demand includes an immediate end to funding of private prisons by state entities, as well as an immediate end to the legalized, financial contributions that owners and builders of private prisons make to political candidates (e.g., Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rick Perry, etc.). 

22. Support Posthumous Presidential Pardon of Marcus M. Garvey

 In recognition of his lifelong and substantial contributions to society, his efforts to uplift peoples of African descent the world over, and his work to promote economic independence as a means of social progress, the OMCCBCV stand in support of the descendants of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, who now seek a posthumous presidential pardon on Mr. Garvey's behalf.

Marcus Garvey lives in history as one of the first leaders of what has come to be known as the American civil rights movement. In the early 20th century, he was an advocate for the social, political, and economic independence of those of African descent across the world. Garvey staked his name and his movement on the development of economic opportunity as a source of Black empowerment. To unite his followers toward a common goal of social progress, Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), which even his detractors acknowledged had upwards of six (6) million members in forty (40) countries. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "He was the first man on a mass scale and level to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny, and make the Negro feel that he was somebody." 

Because of these achievements, Garvey was viewed by the U.S. Government as a threat to the established order. Decades before Dr. King would become targeted for his activism, J. Edgar Hoover led the Bureau of Investigation in its surveillance of Garvey and actively sought methods to disrupt and destroy Garvey's self-reliance movement. In 1923, based on allegations provided by undercover agents posing as Garvey supporters and aided by judicial proceedings that have largely been condemned as factually unsound and politically and racially motivated, Garvey was falsely convicted of mail fraud and sentenced to five years in federal prison. In partial recognition of the unsettling facts underlying the prosecution of the case, President Calvin Coolidge commuted the sentence in November 1927, but deported Garvey from this country. 

The posthumous petition now filed on Garvey's behalf seeks to exonerate him from the stigma of that wrongful conviction. Following the commutation of his sentence, efforts to fully clear Mr. Garvey's name have been ongoing and concerted on the part of members of the U.S. Congress, civil society organizations, cities, state, and international groups. More than 90 years after the imposition of that injustice, it is time to exonerate Marcus Mosiah Garvey and let history reflect on the true nature of his legacy.