Making a way: Never mind the movie boycotts and hip-hop celebrities, Tammy Johnson calls for real vision and change. (Politics & Bling Bling).

When I channel-surf on a Sunday afternoon with Moms and sister Stephanie, we are as likely to pause to hear what Farrakhan has to say, as Jesse Jackson or Mos Def. But it's a better bet that we will skip them altogether and move on to other things. They might be on the money about the source of our problems in the black community, or just plain entertaining. But when the leaders of a generation cannot articulate a vision of progress or move a political strategy; why bother? Leading a movement is itself a struggle, for sure. But why does it seem that whether they are civil rights old guard or hip-hop young bloods, the brothers keep half-stepping when it comes to moving a program to action?

Delorse, Stephanie, and I are three women whose collective lives represent the cultivation and promise of the civil rights movement, as well as the future of a people in constant struggle. My mother, Delorse, knows a little something about struggle. While my grandfather hitchhiked to Florida to pick oranges, she helped feed six mouths at home by picking cotton in the Tennessee sun. She walked picket lines, challenged "Whites Only" mandates and grieved for Martin and Medgar as part of the rites of passage required by the times. Now, Delorse often ponders how all of the sit-ins and marches have come to this.

Perhaps it is because our leaders have lost their way, putting personal beefs before a greater vision. Take, for instance, the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson Sr.'s condemnation of the movie Barbershop. In the flick, Cedric the Entertainer's character disses several civil rights leaders--including Jackson. Legitimate or not, Jackson's attack on black filmmakers doesn't gets us any closer to the promised land. Worse yet, the dispute overshadows more relevant issues. Just days before, the Rev organized a "March to Justice," an event that got very litre ink or airtime. The misson of the march, as a Rainbow/PUSH press release put it, was "to declare that America has more urgent priorities in the fields of civil rights and liberties.

But evidently, even the march would have to play second fiddle to responding to an offhand quip in a movie. One would think that after a few decades of wrestling with the corporate media machine, the Rev would have known better. There is no way the spin doctors would miss an opportunity to blow up some internal grumblings among black folk, thus evading real issues like poverty and the war on Iraq. Ray Charles could have seen this coming. Meanwhile, we continue to struggle with under-resourced black schools that face massive state budget crises. And we must move on without a national voice to trumpet the greater good.

There is a 10-year difference between me and my sister, Stephanie. My ...