Call to Arms

Foundational Black Americans on Code

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Call To Action: A Memo for Black Economic Self-defense and Coalition Building

Authored by James A. Hall

A CALL TO ACTION (ARMS)

A Memo for Black Economic Self‑Defense, Coalition Building, and the Protection of a Lineage‑Based Identity

This Is Not a Moment. This Is an Emergency.

There are moments in history when moral clarity is unavoidable. This is one of them.

Foundational Black Americans (FBA) did not arrive at this crossroads by accident. We are here because capitalism, racism, and colonialism have always operated as a single system — one designed to extract Black labor, Black land, Black culture, and Black life, while denying Black people lasting power or protection.

From chattel slavery to sharecropping, from redlining to subprime lending, from mass incarceration to algorithmic discrimination, the mechanism changes, but the objective remains the same: control without accountability, extraction without consent, and wealth without repair.

This memo is not symbolic. It is strategic. It is a call to organize — not emotionally, but structurally.

I. Why Organizing Must Look Different Now

Black people have always organized. That is not the problem.

The problem is that our organizing has too often been reactive, fragmented, or absorbed into coalitions that dilute Black‑specific demands in favor of vague “diversity” language that produces symbolism without power.

The current threat is institutional, coordinated, and transnational. Financial institutions, media corporations, political parties, and NGOs work in alignment — not through conspiracy, but through shared incentives.

To confront this reality, organizing must operate at the same scale.

That means:

• Moving beyond protest alone

• Moving beyond celebrity leadership

• Moving beyond moral appeals to institutions that profit from Black dispossession

We must organize for power, not permission.

II. Foundational Black Americans: Identity as Political Infrastructure

Protecting a lineage‑based identity is not exclusionary — it is necessary.

Foundational Black Americans are a distinct historical people forged through:

• Slavery on U.S. soil

• Jim Crow apartheid

• State‑sanctioned economic exclusion

• A unique cultural, spiritual, and political tradition of resistance

Without recognizing this specificity, Black political economy collapses into abstraction.

Identity is not merely cultural. Identity is infrastructure. It determines:

• Who is owed repair

• Who benefits from policy

• Who speaks for whom

• Who is targeted when systems fail

Any coalition that demands Black labor but refuses Black specificity is not a coalition — it is extraction.

III. Capitalism Has Always Had Partners: Racism and Colonial Logic

The Wells Fargo example is not an aberration. It is a case study.

When banks targeted Black elders, churches, and neighborhoods with predatory loans, they exploited:

• Trust built over generations

• Cultural institutions meant to protect the community

• A racial wealth gap created by prior policy violence

This is how capitalism functions in racialized markets: it turns survival into a profit center.

Fines do not change behavior. Only power does.

IV. Strategic Objectives (What We Are Organizing For)

This movement must be disciplined, measurable, and long‑term.

Core objectives:

1. Black Economic Self‑Defense

   • Support and expand Black‑owned banks, credit unions, cooperatives

   • Coordinate mass consumer withdrawal from predatory institutions

   • Establish community credit alternatives insulated from corporate capture

2. Legal and Policy Pressure

   • Demand lineage‑specific data collection and enforcement

   • Challenge discriminatory financial practices through coordinated litigation

   • Reject race‑neutral frameworks that erase historical harm

3. Coalition Building With Conditions

   • Build strategic alliances with labor, Indigenous, and international justice movements

   • Maintain FBA leadership and agenda control

   • No coalition without written commitments and measurable outcomes

4. Narrative Control

   • Build independent media platforms

   • Train community spokespeople grounded in political economy, not sound bites

   • Expose corporate misconduct without relying on corporate media validation

V. Discipline, Codes, and Collective Responsibility

Every successful liberation movement operated with codes of conduct.

Not respectability politics — discipline.

That includes:

• Strategic messaging

• Internal accountability

• Protection from infiltration and co‑optation

• Economic boycotts executed with unity and patience

Movements fail when they confuse expression with strategy.

VI. The Moral Line

We are not asking corporations to be kind.

We are demanding that they be constrained.

We are not appealing to the conscience of capitalism.

We are building alternatives to it.

The question before us is not whether injustice exists — that has already been answered.

The question is whether Foundational Black Americans will continue to be managed, or finally become organized at scale.

History is watching.

And this time, symbolism will not be enough.

Final Word

This is a call to arms — not of violence, but of coordination, clarity, and courage.

The system is not broken.

It is functioning exactly as designed.

Our task is not to beg for entry into it — but to build power that forces transformation or renders it obsolete.