The Empowerment Experiment has progressed from the website and the media to the streets and suites, from the computer and TV screens to a growing following in the churches, conferences, wine-tastings, networking receptions, dinner parties, and university halls. Now that we have taken this turn–now that we are talking to more and more of you directly, learning and sharing with you face-to-face–we are really starting to feel, for the first time ever, what a movement feels like. Strangers are hugging and crying, some remembering the ’50s and ’60s, some hurting about the present-day, and others hopeful about future.
We started EE because we knew there are so many more out there like us. Folks who care and want to do more. We felt like our generation has fallen short of our duty, like we’ve recklessly, lazily dismissed our purpose, our place in the ongoing battle for economic opportunity and social justice. We are corrupting the legacy of our ancestors and the dynamism of our heritage. EE is a chance to make up for that. Through EE, we want to do something unprecedented and inspire something outdated. We want to inspire that now near obsolete feeling of empowerment, hope, and solidarity that we had in the Civil Rights Movement.
But how do you do that? Are we doing enough? And are we doing it right?
Some of you know that after college, I began my career as a speechwriter. And as a progressive, I often use quotes from famous civil rights leaders like President Kennedy, W.E.B. DuBois, and Dr. King.
So as I write these speeches about making a movement, I try to find the good ole Rev. Dr. King quotes to help me poetically and poignantly communicate that point. But maybe a quote isn’t good enough this time. I mean, if EE is the beginning of an economic empowerment revolution… If we are going to pull this off… If we are to truly make a difference… If more of my people will start thinking about how important it is for us to support one another… If Black people are going to gain control over their own fate and start proving, everyday, our magnificence to the world, instead of just reminiscing about it every once in a while… If we are going to transition into a movement manifested by actual results… then a Dr. King quote is not enough to make it all happen. His very spirit needs to consume me, my husband John and EE.
So I talk to him everyday. Dr. King tells me that even though he and Rosa Parks and all the other heroes did
so much, I don’t have the luxury of giving up, or giving in.  I no longer have the right to live the empty and easy life. I can not choose between Living his Dream and Fighting for his Dream anymore.King says EE needs to be much more than a call for increased awareness and pride. What we need now is something that goes beyond a call for more optimism, consciousness, and hope.
Dr. King says that patience and optimism alone will not get us to The Promised Land. He taught us to temper that patience with a little passion. Back those prayers up with some planning. Justify that optimism with some industriousness and results. Activate and hasten all those awesome hopes with some vigilance.
If Dr. King were here, I believe he’d want us to perfect our possibility by ensuring it and capturing it–owning it. He’d want us to just own what’s ours.
Dr. King says to me, “We either seize it or let it slip away.â€
Dr. King asks me, “When have we ever answered injustice, exploitation and despair with ‘It’s too hard. I don’t know where to begin. I am just one person?’ Or ‘The success of a few is good enough.’?â€
And now I ask all of you: Is this what you want? Is this really enough? Is this the plan? Is this what our ancestors and elders wanted for us? For this country?
Did they want us to fight for the vote, for equal rights, but then let poverty, crime and drugs, barred up businesses and boarded up homes become the new hallmarks of the black neighborhood?
Are we supposed to accept and overlook that we still have only one-tenth the transferable wealth of our white counterparts–a condition that has not changed since Reconstruction? Should we pay no heed to the fact that our businesses, in 1980, shortly after we became fully integrated into American society, lead the pack in terms of revenue growth and success rates, but now, 20-something years later our businesses are a very distant third behind Asians and Hispanics, and our community’s economic health continues to worsen at an even more accelerated rate.
Must we close our eyes to our reality (while the rest of the world depicts it) that, according to every measure of social and economic progress–incarceration rates, unemployment rates, graduation rates, incomes, home ownership, whatever–our numbers are the highest or lowest, whichever’s worse?
Now before y’all even start, no way am I comparing myself to Dr. King or any of those legends to whom I owe everything. But they all inspire me. Without him and all those who struggled
with him, there is no EE. We are not them and can never be them. However, everyday we do this–stick to our pledge, go without things we like and need, drive for miles and miles, take the flack, avoid the pain, feel the love–we do it with them in our hearts and minds. Every day in The Empowerment Experiment we recall another time in our history when our people came together because one black woman decided to take a stand.No, no. I am not Rosa Parks. And I won’t and wouldn’t insult her legacy my comparing my sacrifice to hers. But I will certainly dishonor it, if I don’t learn from her and her sacrifice. And we insult her–we all do–when we give up on her fight.
So I do this in her honor. And just like her, I seek and listen to Dr. King, and hope to make him proud.
Maggie Anderson, a business consultant, and her husband, John, a financial advisor, have been buying black made-products and services for all of 2009. They call their pledge The Empowerment Experiment (EE). Their experiment will serve as the foundation for a landmark study on self-help economics in the Black community. They live in Oak Park, Illinois, with their two daughters; Cori, age 2, and Cara, 4.