Follow us at BlackMillion on twitter! We want to get a million twitter followers by 8 PM CDT, MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2011! With a million participants, we will announce the awards within the hour on Monday, Oct. 31, 2011. Email all your black male friends and family.
PLEASE READ TO THE END:
As black men, a lot of the odds are stacked against us. Look at TV and you'll see what Richard Pryor said is coming true: white people are counting on us not being around in the future. We are being stripped of our jobs, our homes, our women, our freedom.
American culture is based on TV programs, movies, the internet, magazines and so on. There are hundreds of TV shows, movies, magazine covers, major websites and we are not featured on any of them. We exist in a tiny, tiny little slice of it – playing sports and making music.
In politics, our president is under fire because he's a black man. Don't believe it? How many times have you heard white people call him “angry”? Now, when was the last time you thought President Obama was showing anger? That is how much some people hate us. They tell outrageous lies about us. They look at our elected leader's skin color and call him a liar, a socialist, a wimp, when they really just want to use the n-word. Their only job – and they've said it many times – is to make him a one-term president.
Our employment situation? Look at high finance – they are not hiring us. Look at science and technology – they are not hiring us. When they award venture capital – they don't give it to us. When banks give small business loans – they don't give them to us.
When the recession hit, we lost our homes, we lost our jobs and they blamed us for it, saying the reason for it is we bought homes we couldn't afford. Did you put a gun to the head of your mortgage broker and force him to give you a loan?
Now, more than one out of five of us are unemployed. Black women are encouraged to date white guys or explore lesbian relationships. A handful of us are doing fine, but the majority of us are in a war zone. And, when we try to make a living on the black market, the “justice” system makes money off of us by jailing us.
Who can help us? Just us.
But, it's a matter of trust. In the past, we have been like crabs in a barrel – anybody trying to get out of the mess, we pull back. We were used to fighting each other.
If you can drop that fight now, we can do what Asian immigrants do, what Jews have done in their history: we can help ALL of us financially by helping SOME of us. We can get ourselves out of debt, out of the grip of racists, out of this mess we didn't create.
In Ghana, they call it a susu; in the Ivory Coast, it's called a nago; in Togo, it's called a jojuma. It's microfinancing people in need. Here, in America, because of our numbers and the internet, we can do it bigger, faster.
Try it once and if it works, we can do it weekly. We can get money to black men and businesses who need it – and make one person a millionaire very quickly.
The way it can work is:
- A million black men – ONLY black men – follow and agree to participate via twitter at BlackMillion. Why twitter? A million friends isn't possible on facebook.
- After a million black men sign up, each agrees to pay $4.25 to a PayPal account.
- Before agreeing, you understand the terms are as follows: the $4.25 is a donation to helping black men; you tweet 'YES' if you want to be considered for the million dollar award 'NO' if you do not. Also, tweet “BIZ” if you have an existing business that you want to be considered for an award.
- Pay $4.25 to the PayPal account listed.
Out of $4.25 million, this is paid out:
- One black man will receive $1.35 million (he must pay taxes, which should leave him with a million or slightly more)
- Four (4) businesses owned by black men will be awarded $250,000 (they must use part of the money to hire a black man, preferably a man who donated)
- One-thousand (1,000) black men will receive at least $600 to use as they see fit.
- PayPal will be paid roughly $600,000 based on its published rates
- $148,000, or 3.48% will be used for administrative costs – awards paid, emails answered, checks written, website maintained and for travel/verification to make sure only black men are winners. This is the ONLY money we will receive and it will go ONLY to men we do not know and have no relationship with.
- Out of our million black men, one in a thousand (far better odds than the lottery and far better than getting a job in some cities) will receive at least $600.
After the trust is established, this could be done every week and the PayPal costs would go down and more black men could receive payments. We ask the following:
- You agree to acknowledge your award so everyone sees it was fairly given and you agree to help other black men as best you can if you are awarded any of the larger awards
- You consider continuing to donate after you've earned an award and tweet “NO” for future awards
But, there needs to be a first time.
If we ALL did this together for a year, that $4.25 would cost you less than three months of eating out for lunch – $221
But, the benefit of doing this weekly would be amazing: In a YEAR, there would be 52 new, black millionaires; 208 black owned businesses would receive $250,000 each and 52,000 black men would receive $600 each.
All for $4.25 and a little trust. Let's do this.
Step One: Be a black man
Step Two: Follow BlackMillion on twitter by 10/31/11 – tweet 'YES' or YES + BIZ to BlackMillion
Step Three: Pay $4.25 to this designated PayPal account by 10/31/11
