Brother-Brother

Only in Hollywood would a script like this play out. Two brothers
supposedly fighting for the same causes but at the same time trying
to prove to Mr. Gilmore that there can be only one star on the stage
of black activism in LA. Neither one in my opinion paid any attention
in school during history class. To be divided on the issues is one
thing but to be divided by ego that sad indeed. Check out the article
below and please let me know your thoughts.



After making the rounds of news reporters, the garrulous black man stepped before a phalanx of television cameras lining the sidewalk outside the courthouse in Long Beach."Everybody ready?" he asked, hands clasped, as if in prayer. "I'm Najee Ali. N-A-J-E-E. A-L-I. Director of Project Islamic Hope." Then he launched a blistering tirade, lambasting not only the black teenage defendants in the recently concluded Halloween hate-crime beating case but their parents and self-appointed advisor, fellow civil rights activist Eddie Jones.

Jones' "grandstanding [is] embarrassing the black community," Ali said. "He has no following in the black community." An hour later, Jones took his turn behind the bank of microphones. With a backdrop of a bright, hand-painted poster promoting "fairness, justice and equality," he called the hate-crime trial "the biggest case of the century" and assured reporters that "civil rights leaders … are working as a unit." What about Ali's personal barbs? "It's not about I, it's not about me, it's about we," Jones repeated as the cameras rolled.

Privately, though, Jones was fuming. Ali, he said, had tried to take over his "peace march" in the violence-plagued Harbor Gateway area the month before. Now he was horning in again."He never sat through one day of the trial," Jones complained, out of earshot of the microphones. Ali's appearance as the hate-crime case wound down last month was "straight insecurity and straight jealousy." Long Beach was the latest stage for Ali and Jones, who seem to turn up whenever issues of race or violence converge with reporters and television cameras.

When racial fights rocked Los Angeles schools, when a Mexican postage stamp was deemed insulting to blacks, when a Latino gang in Harbor Gateway was blamed for a black teenager's death, Jones and Ali were there to convey their outrage with sound bites tailor-made for TV. Their views don't always mesh, but their tactics are the same — staging protest marches and news conferences and, if they are able, controlling media access to victims and subjects of controversy. Their climb from relative obscurity to being described as "black leaders" reflects an era of grass-roots activism that relies more on media savvy than intellect or moral stature.

"We have a colossal leadership void here in the black community," said author and commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson, another of the new breed of black activists. "When there's a vacuum, something must fill it…. When you don't have the traditional activists — the gatekeepers — that opens the field up for independents of a newer type; perhaps even opportunists."



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