Forcing Black Leaders to Panhandle For Points

Please, I need only $12 to Win the Election

Friend, just a few more dollars and I catch them in the polls. Selling out Civil Rights Dignity for Papa Joe. Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

It’s disgusting and embarrassing. There I said that, too. Hear me out. When I gave my money free willingly after writing about black women, I didn’t regret it, but I also didn’t expect what would happen next. I started to get a few texts from Senate candidate Val Demmings of Florida, first thank me, then asking me for $20 more dollars, because she had to meet goals before the weekend. If she could have $50 dollars, she could catch Senator Rubio in the polls. Then I got texts from different phone numbers from Senator Warnock saying he was catching up in the polls and could hold on, if I could just give $25 dollars. (Full disclosure: he’s the one I gave to.)

The text barrage didn’t stop there. I got some more Stacy Abrams running in Georgia. She too it turns out was running neck and neck and needed $15 bucks to put over the top. And Val still needed those $30 bucks because Rubio was running his mouth saying he has all kinds of money, but is desperately begging on CNN.

Finally, I gave in. I was waiting for the tow truck to get my broken-down truck in the sweltering summer heat of Texas when an older black American man in a red hoodie over his head approached me at the Starbucks in the doorway, sweating bullets I guess from his sweatsuit, and he asked for an orange juice because he needed to take his medicine. I said, what the heck to myself, Sure, I’ll do that. Then he said two would be better. Why not? I went the counter and got him two juices for almost $12, expensive stuff and my donation money.

This older guy sat down not he curb outside and started drinking, blazing one hundred and six degree sun on his face. I said to him as I left, he could move to the shade. I don’t think he got what I said and said maybe I could come back in a bit and get him a water. He had issues, but at least his needs were real. I just hope he survived and didn’t dehydrate. That kind of slipping is not in the polls but into death. His panhandling taught me about the Democrats messaging problem.

There is no way that Martin Luther King would change America and had any impact had he asked for $20 more dollars to defeat racism. If Malcolm X stood in front of the microphone and said he needed $12 more dollars and he could get…