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BLACK EXPO: MATRIX OF THE DESIGN FOR UNITY
J.H. O'DELL

OUR MOVEMENT has entered a very critical period in its life as is true of the nation's history. The signs of crisis in American society are all around us and the mass media daily remind us that to say the least all is not well. The ghettos of Afro-American imprisonment all across the country are faced with economic problems, growing unemployment and permanent joblessness, especially for our youth, on a scale unequalled since the years of the Great Depression in the 1930's. 

This special economic circumstance shows signs of already beginning to wipe out job opportunity gains achieved by Civil Rights and labor struggles over the past twenty years. This seriously depressed economic picture has been further aggravated by the Nixon administration's wage price freeze which was supposedly designed to curb inflation. Yet the prices for food and other necessities which are already inflationary in Black ghettos and Spanish speaking barrios are excluded from the price freeze and continue to rise even beyond present inflationary levels. Yet the freeze on wages which does apply, has been imposed with maximum support from the politicians of both political parties; the Democrats who have learned to take the votes of the Blacks and the poor for granted and the Republicans, who are implementing their philosophy of benign neglect. 

At this moment, therefore, there arises the need to take a national inventory in the Black community so as to be able to effectively identify the resources and strengths we can mobilize and the alliances which are possible to resist and ultimately reverse this situation. The truth that is dawning in the social consciousness of the Black community and its leaders is that the USA is a society in the early stages of protracted civilizational crisis. This maturing social consciousness is rooted in the daily life experiences with plunderous taxes imposed upon the working public primarily to support the military, declining social services, chronic unemployment and under 

J.H. O'Dell is an Associate Editor of the FREEDOMWAYS. This article was written in October.

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