The Erosion of Civil Rights: Free Speech Under Attack

Framing the Problem:

Hypocrisy: The same people who spew hate call their words “free speech.” But when we speak the truth, it’s labeled “hate speech.” The rules bend depending on who holds power.

AG Bondi’s statement on “hate speech”

After the murder of Charlie Kirk, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said her administration will “absolutely target” people using hate speech. Critics responded that the laws, as they stand, do not permit punishing non-threatening speech just because it's hateful.

• Lies: They twist language itself — freedom becomes control, patriotism becomes exclusion, and dissent becomes dangerous. This is narrative warfare.
• Exploitation: Our communities are targeted, surveilled, and punished first. Employers, schools, and courts enforce silence by threatening livelihoods. The system profits from our silence and disunity.

• Violence: When speech isn’t enough, the system escalates — from policy violence (housing, healthcare, policing) to literal violence, whether abroad in the empire or at home in our neighborhoods.

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  Recent adverse actions affecting Black communitiesFrom The Washington Post (2 days ago):

• The Trump administration has cut or cancelled nearly 22 projects aimed at helping Black communities in the South — environmental justice, sanitation, flood protection, etc. The Washington Post
• Examples:

I want to be transparent: I’m not rich, I’m not a politician, and I’m not coming to you with all the answers.

I’m just like you — retired, on a fixed income, living paycheck to paycheck. I know the feeling of confusion, of worry, of doubt. I experienced Jim Crow firsthand.

I’ve asked myself the same question you may be asking right now: What power do I have as one person?

For me, it was writing my solution to the problem.

The truth is, alone, not much. But together, everything. That’s what the Black Infrastructure Trust is about. If each of us puts in just $1 a week (there are 20 million of us), we transform that doubt into action, that confusion into clarity, and that paycheck-to-paycheck struggle into collective strength.

I’m not asking you to believe in me. I’m asking you to believe in us. This is our way to liberation.

In just the past two days, nearly two dozen federal programs meant to protect Black communities from environmental harm — programs fighting pollution, sewage, flooding — have been cancelled or downgraded. Projects in Alabama, Virginia, and Louisiana — some of the most neglected places — are now left exposed.

This isn’t a small administrative shift. It is violence by omission: when the state removes protection, abandons regulation, erases historic land designations, it is saying: your health, your safety, your dignity — all optional. Yet these are the same communities that have borne the burden of environmental racism for generations.

And what we see now is the hypocrisy in sharp relief: talk of free markets, free speech, individual liberty — but in practice, government chooses which lives get protected, and which are not worth the trouble.

I see a way forward. A way that is only “too good to be true” if Black people continue to do nothing but beg and complain. Twenty million Black people giving $1.00 a week each is not a fantasy. It is a concrete, achievable, and powerful act of collective responsibility. This is not about luck or waiting for the benevolence of our oppressors. It is about building our own infrastructure — our own power, our own community, our own future.

Because the truth is: the time for performative outrage is over, and our window to liberation is closing.

What I’m here to do is connect with the ones ready to move—ready to think differently, build differently, and live free on our own terms. This is about one thing:

Liberation under Black management.

Until the next episode:

Stay sharp. Stay Building. And stay Black on Purpose.

Recent adverse actions affecting Black communities