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Need To See A Lawyer On Immigration Matter and Concerns? JNBS Provides The Service Of An Immigration Lawyer FREE OF COST To Our Customers. On The Third Friday Of Each Month Commencing FEBRUARY 20, 2004 The Representative Office 5039 N. State Rd. 7 (Sunshine Plaza) Call 1-800-390-7850 or    954-485-0444

EGGELLETION SPEAKS OUT AGAINST
BLACK’S POLITICAL APATHY

                                        

By Rovan G. Locke

The well-attired guests at the Pearl of Fort Lauderdale Lodge N019, Annual Dinner Dance on Saturday night, June 14, 2003, were caught off guard by the stinging address by Broward County Commissioner, Josephus Eggelletion. Certainly, no one seated in the main hall of the Lauderdale Lakes Municipal Complex expected such a penetrative analyses on Black’s political apathy and the deleterious effects on empowerment for this ethnic group in the County and the rest of the country.                Perhaps Commissioner Eggelletion saw this predominantly middle aged Caribbean audience as the most appropriate opportunity “to reconnect” with this ethnic group from which he has been invisible for a very long time. Furthermore, he is fully aware of the Garveyite orientation of the majority of the guests at this well attended function, and he proceeded to reclaim his “Garveyite credentials.” This was a long overdue occasion for this embattled Afrocentric County Commissioner, who used the story of the “chained Angus bull” on the cattle farmer’s ranch close to his parents’ home in Jackson County in northern Florida, who couldn’t take advantage of its freedom when the chain was taken off its foot. “We have to take off the chains off our minds because sometime I believe our minds have been shackled very much like that bull.”
Mr. Syd Brown
    In an autobiographical vein, Commissioner Eggelletion captured the racial oppression of his people over the past half-century. In an aggrieved tone, he pointed out that he is not an angry black man, but a realist who has watched intensely as the Reagan Agenda has rolled back the clock of progress for people of African ancestry in this country. “The economic empowerment of the African Diasporas should never be seen as another New Deal program. Those types of reform have fallen into despair today. I want you to understand that the Republican agenda in this country was set under the Reagan administration.” With the George W. Bush Administration having a hard time finding weapons of mass destruction (wmd) in Iraq, the Commissioner felt it safe to engage in a harsh criticism of the war on global terrorism. In a bold and defiant tone, he reminded his attentive and a bit surprised audience of the role of the Reagan White House in buttressing regimes that President George W. Bush now sees as the Axis of Evil.
     It was the Reagan regime that got caught trading weapons to Iran to get money to pay for guerrillas in Central America in the Contras Affair. It is the same Ronald Reagan who trained the Iranians that the Bush Administration is daring today. It is the same Ronald Reagan who trained Saddam Hussein and taught him all of his terroristic tactics. It is the same Republican Administration who wants to tell you and I, “he is a threat to us.”
    Commissioner Eggelletion drew upon his political science background at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) in Tallahassee to remind this lodge fraternity members and their guests of the centuries of genocide against Blacks in Florida, which is still in the deep south - and the rest of the country. He exhorted, “As a people, we know terrorism. As a people, if you don’t think we know terrorism, I would advise you to drive to my father’s home in North Florida where in the mid 1950’s, I saw the head of a Black man which was placed on a bridge. There was a note, which stated ‘This is what we do to niggers who get too smart.’ If you think we don’t know terrorism, ask those four little girls who were bombed while in the basement of the church in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama. If you don’t think we know terrorism, ask Medgar Evers who is no longer with us, or ask Rosa Parks.”
    He turned his attention to the Florida’s political landscape and he was merciless in his critiques of the governor.     He declared, “The Reagan Revolution continues today under the Bush Administration. There is this widening economic disparity between the rich and the poor.     Educationally, we are transformed into two separate societies.”
    The controversial issue of the FCAT received special attention in this agonizing discourse on the future of the Ethnic Black Minority within the State. He sees the FCAT as a deliberate plan by the Republican Party to deny people of colour a fair share of the American economic pie. He relied on the African American Sage, W.E.B. DuBois, who in 1903 in “The Souls of Black Folks” warned that the problem of the twentieth century would be the problem of the colour line. To Commissioner Eggelletion, the deplorable performance of African-American students within the inner cities of Florida was a systematic plan by the Republican Party more than a decade ago. In a sweeping statement, he argues, “In 1990, the Republican party as a part of its platform, unleashed a program of destruction against our public school system. They designed a system that would systematically starve the public school system of its meager resources. Their goal was to starve it to death. Their goal, now and then was to create an elite system of private verses public education. If you don’t think that FCAT demoralized these children, you are sadly mistaken. As a people from the Caribbean, you are fully appreciative of tests in your school system. In our case, our children are tested for things they haven’t been taught in the schools.”                              In his conclusionary remarks, the Commissioner made it clear that the press is not a friend of Black people and Black politicians in the State of Florida. This is such an unfortunate statement from such a “committed politician.” No doubt, he is still angry that the media had him under a microscope in the earlier part of his political tenure downtown. The surprising news that there was a secret investigation by the State’s Attorney General’s office located in Fort Lauderdale against him no doubt is a major contributing factor in his new and overt radicalized oration. Hopefully, he will make a sharp distinction between the Afrocentric media in South Florida and the mainstream newspapers. 

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