Four years ago I launched my first GoFundMe campaign. Since then, I have created seven more, asking for a total of $340,308. I have successfully raised $34,173 which is 10%. This does not include money that family and friends have given to me privately during this time. Here is my latest campaign,
Swimming In Guinea Bissau: Hope For The Nation
Some people in my networks are now starting to feel donor fatigue. “Why are you always begging for money?” they ask.
Well here is my answer:
Global wealth inequality forces me to.
In 2010, 388 billionaires controlled as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity. This number came down to 277 in 2011, 159 in 2012, 292 in 2013, 280 in 2014, 62 in 2016, and it shriveled to a mere 8 in 2017 and in 2018 it is 5. The March 2016 data was that the six richest had $343 billion and by the next year they had $402 billion.
2. United States wealth inequality forces me to.
I was born and raised in the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the world followed by China. Compared to other countries, the concentration of wealth concentrated in the top 1% is far greater in the United States than anywhere in the world.
THIS MEANS THAT MORE THAN ANYWHERE, IN THE UNITED STATES, A FEW PEOPLE HAVE MOST OF THE WEALTH AND THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE ARE COMPETING AGAINST EACH OTHER FOR WHAT IS LEFT OVER.
In fact, the 400 richest Americans have $2.34 trillion while the entire black population of the United States and one-third of the Latino population combined have just $2.17 trillion.
3. Black wealth inequality in the United States forces me to.
There are 47.5 million black people in America. 4.75 million own 75.4% of all black wealth.. These are mostly the celebrities and entertainers. THE REST OF THE BLACK PEOPLE - 90% - HAVE JUST 25% OF BLACK WEALTH. IN FACT , THE BOTTOM 50% OF BLACK PEOPLE IN AMERICA - MORE THAN 23 MILLION PEOPLE - ARE WORTH LESS THAN 1 DOLLAR.
4. I was taught that the destiny of my race was my responsibility and depended on committing class suicide.
In my young days as a devout Rastafarian, I believed that Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of Judah was exactly who his title declares him to be. To me, every word of His Majesty was the word of God. So I took very seriously such statments as:
“We remind you, therefore that you utilize all your thoughts and knowledge to the ultimate objective of moral satisfaction and the pride of your countrymen, regardless of your personal interest. Your job takes care of you and there will not be any need to concern yourselves with your personal affairs.” H.I.M. Haile Selassie I, January 23, 1963.
“To those who contribute willingly, to the best of their abilities, who, in sweat and toil, work for the good of the nation with little thought of self, to them will much be given, even to the governing of the land.” H.I.M. Haile Selassie I, November 17, 1965
So, therefore, I never thought about making money, buying a house, personal investments, etc. All I had to do was WORK FOR THE GOOD OF THE NATION and I need not concern myself with my personal affairs. And that is what I have done ever since I left Yale….. First I worked for the Rasstafari “Nation”, then I worked for the “African Union Sixth Region” and now I work for Guinea Bissau.
5. The failure of my community to practice the Nguzo Saba forces me to.
I was taught that practicing the seven principles of the Nguzo Saba, celebrated during Kwanza, would solve my and my community’s problems.
NGUZO SABA
(The Seven Principles)
Umoja (Unity) To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.
Kujichagulia (Self-Determination) To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.
Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) To build and maintain our community together and make our brother's and sister's problems our problems and to solve them together.
Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.
Nia (Purpose) To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
Kuumba (Creativity) To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
Imani (Faith) To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.
While I can talk about the failure of each of the seven principles, since we are talking about money, I’m going to focus on the failure of Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics). The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University did a study that found less than 3 percent of our (African America’s) $1 trillion in buying power makes it back to our community via our spending with our businesses and the companies that engage our businesses. FEW CITIES HAVE ENOUGH BLACK OWNED BUSINESSES TO BEGIN WITH AND THE RATE OF AFRICAN AMERICAN BUSINESSES FAILING TODAY IS AT AN ALL TIME HIGH. 80% OF BUSINESSES CRASH AND BURN WITHIN THE FIRST YEAR. BLACK-OWNED BUSINESSES NATIONALLY AVERAGE ONLY $58,000 IN ANNUAL REVENUE COMPARED TO $546,000 FOR WHITE-OWNED BUSINESSES AND ARE OUTPERFORMED BY MOST ETHNIC GROUPS.
The major problem is this: To have a successful business you need customers who want and can afford your product or service. Because of this racial wealth gap, black owned businesses who’s business is targeted specifically for the black community have a very small customer base compared to America as a whole. Thus, if a black owned business wants to compete with white business, it must produce products and services tailored for white Americans. This can present a problem for some black businesses that want to serve their community. For example, when I write health articles for the white community, I get paid well. When I write articles for the Balanta community or the African American community, I don’t get paid at all. The Balanta community and the African American community needs the educational materials more than the white community. So I have to make the sacrifice and work for free in order to serve my people.
6. The current status of Guinea Bissau and its wealth and health inequality forces me to.
Guinea Bissau is the 4th poorest country in the world with a 69.3% poverty rate, the highest extreme poverty rate of all countries in Western Africa. Over 75 percent of employment in Guinea-Bissau is in the informal sector. The informal economy often generates little to no government revenues. Agriculture comprises 69 percent of GDP, with over 90 percent derived from cashew nut exports that provide direct or indirect income to 85 percent of the population who are living on an average of $1.60 per day. Meanwhile, Guinea-Bissau has one of the most unequal distributions of income, with a Gini coefcient of 0.51 in 2022 (ranked 1st among countries in Western Africa and 6th highest among small island developing states).
FOR ALL OF THESE REASONS, IF I WANT THE MONEY TO DO THE THINGS I WANT TO DO - NOT FOR MYSELF - BUT FOR OTHER PEOPLE, FOR MY COMMUNITY AND FOR MY COUNTRY, I NEED TO GO TO THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE MONEY AND ASK THEM TO SHARE IT.
This is the conclusion made by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based research center that is calling on international donors to directly fund African humanitarian organizations, which are severely underfunded despite being the ones that respond best and fastest to crises on the continent.
According to the report, the current localization movement gained traction at the 2016 world humanitarian summit, when then-UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for humanitarian action to be “as local as possible, as international as necessary”.
At that time, representatives from 18 donor countries and 16 aid organizations committed to directly allocate at least 25% of their humanitarian funding to local and national actors by 2020.
However, in 2020, the percentage of funding allocated to local and national organizations remained at the same 3.1% as in 2016, the report recalls.
BUT WHY CAN’T I GET A REAL JOB AND WORK LIKE EVERYONE ELSE????
I did, but that didn’t solve my problem. Let me explain.
In 2012 I started working for the trucking company Prime Inc. as its Driver Health and Fitness Coordinator implementing the Driver Health and Fitness 13-week program that I created. In 2012, I made $38,532, just barely escaping working class poverty. This increased the following year to $49,019 and to $57,307 the year after that, solidly in the black middle class which meant I was still really struggling to make ends meet. Then, in 2015, I went into business for myself and earned $109,699. This moved me, for the first time at the age of 44, into the black upper middle class, but just barely.
In 2016, my income from running my own business was $107,017 and the IRS demanded that I give them $33,441. I refused. I needed that money to build my family’s and my community’s dreams, not the American Empire that had just waged a drug war against me and my community and transferred billions of dollars from the informal cannabis trade in my community to America’s prison industrial complex, and then after that, LEGALIZED the trade and started making billions from the very activity they criminalized me for.
In 2017 my income declined a little more to $98,528, pushing me back into the black middle class. However, I beat the statistic that 80% of black-owned businesses crash within the first year! In 2018, my income declined a little more to $93,090. Then in 2019, I lost my flagship client Prime Inc. and my income decreased about 45% to $59.919. Then COVID hit in 2020 and my income dropped to just $10,606 with an additional $12,690 in unemployment. So in nine years time, I went from working class poverty to the black middle class to the upper black middle class and back down again to working class poverty.
And what did I do in 2019 and 2020 with no income? I changed careers, did what all the business and “self-help” gurus say to do - I pursued my passion by reconnecting with my ancestral heritage and homeland. I did genealogy research and wrote books. I started helping other people reconnect with their Balanta ancestral heritage and homeland. This became full-time work and I became President of the Balanta B’urassa History & Genealogy Society in America (BBHAGSIA).
BBHAGSIA is a non-profit organization. Now consider, The average salary for a nonprofit president/CEO is $118,678. For non profits with an operating budget less than $499,000, the average CEO salary is $60,206.
Thus, as the BBHAGSIA, my work this past year (2021) is valued at between $60,000 and $119,000.
In the past, as a Driver Health Editor, I wrote bi-monthly articles for a magazine client (Road King magazine). In the first three years, they paid me $600 for 600 words. The last three years, they paid me $300 for 600 words. Since September of 2019, I have written 81 articles for the Balanta website that average more than 2000+ words.
By this calculation, the 81 articles I have posted to the BBHAGSIA website for free is worth between $72,900 and $145,800.
Now I have another client that started paying me $353 for a 2000+ word article. After 15 articles the pay increases to $470. After another 15 articles the pay increases to $588. After another 30 articles the pay increases to $706 and after another 15 articles the pay increases to $1,177.
By this calculation, the 81 articles I have posted to the BBHAGSIA website is worth $64,115.
Currently, I am consulting with two foreign governments, and I have diplomatic experience going back to 2003 when I worked at the African Union and negotiated immigration and citizenship issues in Ethiopia on behalf of the Rastafari community in Shashemane. In fact, my experience as an Ambassador for my people began when I was ten years old when, as a state champion swimmer in an all-white sport, my father groomed me to be an ambassador for the race since I had such high visibility and profile. Now, the average salary of an early career Diplomat with one to four years experience is $81,077. For a diplomat in the United States, the average salary is $105,511.
Thus, the value of my diplomatic work this year, which has included meeting with the President of Guinea Bissau, the Ministers of Culture, Tourism and Sport in two countries, as well as organizing COVID-19 food distribution, should earn me a salary of $105,511
Finally, I am a consultant to another start-up venture which, at this time, doesn’t have the money to pay me. Nevertheless, I have put in 58 hours of work for them. My normal consulting fee is $100/hr but I am only invoicing them at $50/hr.
Thus, I have done another $5,800 worth of work.
Now add all of that up:
NGO President $118,700
Content Creator $72,900
Diplomat $105,511
Consulting $5,800
TOTAL $302,911
In addition, in 2019 I wrote and submitted 14 grants for a total of $581,804. If I received 10% to 20% of that as administrative fee/salary, that’s another $58,000 at least added to my salary.
So, since 2019, I have legitimately done $360,000 worth of work, yet I have no money. WHY?
THE ANSWER IS WEALTH INEQUALITY.
THIS IS THE REASON WHY I AM ALWAYS FUNDRAISING (aka BEGGING). IF I WANT TO WORK FOR MYSELF AND BUILD MY COMMUNITY, HELP MY PEOPLE, DEVELOP MY COUNTRY, I MUST COMPETE FOR THE MEAGER RESOURCES ALLOTED TO ME/US OR ASK THE PEOPLE WITH THE MONEY TO SHARE IT.
I tried to become a black celebrity and move into the black upper class by competing in the 2021 Olymics in Tokyo. When the Guinea Bissau Olympic Committee and The Guinea Bissau Swimming Federation first announced their support to place me on the Guinea Bissau Olympic team for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, a global phenomenon started. I made the cover of Sports Illustrated and was featured in an eight page article. This magazine has over 12 million readers each month! Shortly after that, I appeared on the popular American tv show NBC’s Access Daily. For the first time, Guinea Bissau was receiving positive media attention in the American press. I signed a sponsorship deal with the Association of American Retired People (AARP). We started negotiations for a major Hollywood movie! Guinea Bissau was well on its way to having its own Jamaican-bobsled-movie-global phenomenon. And then, just before the Olympics, I was blocked from competing by the Fédération Internationale De Natation (FINA). The Guinea Bissau Olympic Committee refused to file an appeal or support me, so I filed a case at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. While my case was being decided, I was held in detention in the Narita Airport in Tokyo for five days. During this time, no official of the Republic of Guinea Bissau contacted me or intervened for my release. To make matters worse, the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled against me and stated that its decision was in part because of letters that Mr. Ioia and the Federation’s Secretary General, Aniceto Berardo, wrote to FINA alleging that I had hacked the Federation’s email account and submitted a fraudulent Olympic application! These officers of the unregistered Federation - my own people - lied to the court and sabotaged my chance to represent Guinea Bissau in the Olympics. Why they would do this to their own athlete is a question that hasn’t been answered and deserves an investigation. This is the story that until now, I did not tell. And there’s more to it, but I will save it for some other time. But as a result, I lost the endorsement and sponsorships, I lost the Hollywood movie deal, I lost everything including about 150 million XOF! (US$240,000).
THIS IS ANOTHER REASON WHY I AM ALWAYS FUNDRAISING (aka BEGGING). THE DISUNITY OF MY PEOPLE.
From men like Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Amilcar Cabral and many others, I was taught that serving and sacrificing for my people, black people, African people was the historical imperative of my generation and the greatest and most honorable thing I could do. I was taught that the vast majority of African Americans would not have the courage or consciousness required to commit class suicide in order to do what was necessary to lift the black race into its rightful position in the world. I was taught that integration into America and black capitalism were no solutions to our problem and that self determination and revolutionary Pan Africanism were the only path for true collective freedom and dignity. So while the rest of my peers were trying to find good jobs in America, I was traveling the world seeking consciousness and practicing the Nguzo Saba to be able to be of some real benefit to my people on both sides of the Atlantic. I know what needs to be done, what I need to do and how to do it. I just need the resources now. And this is ultimately the reason why I am always fundraising (aka Begging).
