King Darren Seals was right...
This goes without saying at this point but BLM ain’t shit. Since we found out they were gatekeeping the movement bag in 2021, it seems like every month we find another house that they purchased with the peoples’ money. The latest shindig was found in Canada, in the name of disgraced BLM co-founder’s wife Janaya Khan, for the tune of 6.3 million dollars. This makes 5 houses in counting. It’s no secret that the masses are fed up with their movement, leadership style and organization, which looks more like CashApp hustle than a movement fund.
The referendum on Black Lives Matter started way back in 2015 with Ferguson activist actually calling out Patrice Cullors and other leaders from the Movement for Black Lives at the first Convening for Black Lives in Cleveland, OH. The following year, it was an BLM chapter in Indianapolis, IN, who actually wrote a manifesto as a parting shot as they severed ties with the organization for what they called an commodification of the movement. For years, we would hear chirps about the scammers of the movement. From Deray McKesson to Sir Major, there was always a name or an organization who would come up as the people who were profiting off of the pain of families and protestors who were doing the real work while the people with the best twitter fingers were milking us dry. The funny thing about all the movement hustlers was that it was one person who always saw them and their hustle coming before it ever hit. The person was King Darren Seals. A budding rap mogul, former drug dealer turned Ferguson frontline activist, he saw the tricks coming from a mile away every time. It didn’t matter if it was a non profit or a politician, he could never be pimped. And more importantly, he would never let the people be pimped if he could do anything about it.
You see, this man was the one who let me know about the grifting that Deray McKesson and his crew were doing to us in Ferguson. No one on the ground organizing even knew who Deray was but Darren did. By the time we found out that they even existed, McKesson, better known as the the fraud in a blue vest, had been exposed, confronted and banned him from ever setting foot here in Ferguson again by Seals. And in true D Seals fashion I might add. This no fly zone continues on til this day due to his powerful and convincing words and actions. It seems somewhat prophetic that these people and their entities are now being called out and dismantled in such a public and demonstrative way for their unapologetically exploitation of the resistance. This is some what of a redemption story for slain Ferguson activist King Darren Seals. Why? Because he predicted all of this to the tee.
You see back in our Ferguson days, Darren was the person I could talk to about what was going on at the national table. My role as one of the leader organizers in Ferguson coupled with my ability to speak to the media from a Pro-Black perspective, landed me a spot to help build the movement. But the movement that we see today is vastly different from the one we attempted to create back in Ferguson in 2014. And Seals role in all that was that he had an ear to the streets as well as a vision for Black Freedom. We would meet all the time at the Ferguson Burger Bar, chowing down on some of fire double melts and fries, talking about Black revolutionary ideas and strategies. For the most part, our visions aligned. We agreed that voting did very little for our people because we were not unified enough for a collective action like that quite yet. We knew that though marching was never the end all be all, we saw that the Ferguson way of civil disobedience gave us an opportunity to disrupt business as usual, address the masses without mainstream media and instilled the sense of courage against the system. That courage was more important than a website or a hashtag because we knew that the revolution would not be televised.
My brother in struggle never pulled any punches when it came to those that opposed these ideas either. Letting any and every one have it if he thought they were getting out of line of what we secretly called the “Ferguson Plan.” Our plan was one part, the spook who sat by the door, one part BMF, and one part Black Panther Party. Our plan was to bring our Black brothers and sisters from the streets to corporate America to the jails together under one umbrella for the liberation of our people. Essentially, building the much needed unity that a grassroots movement would need, in order to unify beyond class or individual identities. He understood better than the so called inter-sectionalist, that we as a people, despite our differences had to become so committed to the struggle that we would look beyond each other’s petty disagreements and get to the revolutionary work that is needed to free our people. Our shared vision would link and utilize one another’s skill sets to best serve and empower our people towards freedom. Imagine the movement infrastructure we could’ve built with this level of Black unity. I mean Tik Tok would be a Black app that empowers black content creators and influencers for the benefit our community. And that’s just one example.
If you knew him, you would know he was all about institution building. King Seals knew that if we controlled the institutions in our communities then we could restore and influence over our people’s cultural practices that have been offset by the centuries of whitewashing our people have went through. Darren, like many others, had one main issue. Money.
Considering that BLM racked up over 90 million dollars in 2020 alone, this movement doesn’t have that problem. And guess what? Seals predicted that too. He said that because it was no Black people from the streets was leading Black Lives Matter, that the white funders would be comfortable with white minded Negros begging for money and give to to them. He knew that BLM’s lack of connectivity to the everyday working and non working Black person would be a blind spot so without someone like us in the room they would forget about us. So I stayed in the room as long as I could until I couldn’t take the lies, deception and anti-blackness in the space where Blackness should’ve been centered at all times. You got remember that your favorite misinformed blogger or YouTuber might’ve said that millions was coming into to Ferguson but it wasn’t getting into the hands of people like us. By default and because other people weren’t good at it, I became the fundraiser for the authentic side of Ferguson. I could go to talk Black rappers and techies to get a little money here and there but never in the millions though. The biggest we got was $250,000 from Jay-Z but as soon as it hit, Black Lives Matter and the local movement scammers got jealous and attacked. And they made it clear that we weren’t supposed to get that type of funding to do the real work. That made us targets to the system and the hypocrites of the movement. BLM was so envious of the grant that they put out a press release letting everyone know that though the grant was named after the movement/organization but the money had nothing to do with them. When D Seals saw that, he brought it to me like “Do you see your people?” After reading it, I went to them and was like “Why y’all doing this?’ And they were like “For clarity.” From then on, I knew what time it was and planned my departure.
When I brought their response back to Seals, it was like he already knew their answer. For having the ability to speak for ourselves on a real movement vision, we were blackballed by the movement and social media. Darren would post videos blasting people all the time but never getting thousands of views. Later we learned of the term of shadow-banning, where a tech company can limit who all can see our post to tweets as a form of control. Once we knew that they would keep us from the money and suppress of voice, we decided to go back to what we knew best, which was building with the Black people like us in the community. We wanted the people who knew that this system could not be reformed but only replaced by a new movement and system built in Black love, power and unity. We organized everywhere, he stayed home and held local meetings which consistently had 100s of attendees while I went across the country and sometimes outside of it to gather as many like minded Black people I could find to implement the Ferguson Plan.
One day at my house, we talked about the day that all this treachery would come to light and that the hypnotism that Black Lives Matter once held on our people would fade away. And that we would have to be prepared to recapture the mind, body and hearts of our people from the despair and heartbreak put on them by these movement scammers. This process had to restore them to a level where they then could also restore others so we can have millions of Black people building the last movement our people will ever need. And boy was he right.
Darren always had the voice that could move the people towards liberation. I know because it was his voice was the one that moved me further than I could ever move myself. Those early days in Ferguson showed me what Seals could do with a loud enough megaphone or platform to start a revolution.
His videos calling out Black feminist for loving Black boys and men when we were dead for a check but not loving us while we're still alive can be found on the internet. He called out Deray way before the 40 million that Campaign Zero pilfered from the movement came up short. He exposed Black Lives Matter years before their members and the media did. Too bad he never got to see those chicken come home to roost.
King Darren Seals body was found burned to death in his own jeep after being shot and driven miles to a dark spot just a few miles from Ferguson. He leaves behind no kids but many family members and an entire community of people who love and miss him.
King Darren’s uncanny ability to not only identify the house negro and their intentions but as well as expose them for the world to see was a god given gift that he used time and time again for the people. He predicted the hustlenomics that we are seeing from Black Lives Matter and others like them today like the hood Nostradamus he was. Your wisdom, courage and discernment is forever missed and so are you. Can’t wait to see you again. I still got some work down here to finish so I’ll catch with you in a little minute my dear movement brother.
Peace