By Chauncey Bailey

Black leaders discussed the future of the nation and East Bay concerns with broadcaster and author Tavis Smiley and over 1,300 African Americans at Oakland’s Allen Temple Baptist Church Family Life Center on Saturday.
    Smiley recently published The Covenant with Black America and has been hosting town hall meetings across the country to make the case that black America has the talent to change the nation.
    Smiley was accompanied by a panel of leaders, including Mayoral Candidate Ronald Dellums; Congresswoman Barbara Lee; Angela Glover Blackwell of PolicyLink, an Oakland social policy research group; and Princeton professors Cornel West and Eddie Claude, who was tenured at age 30 at the Ivy League school where he now heads the Department of Religion.
   “When we make black America better, we make America better,” said Smiley, who has secured promises from both the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee that 2008 presidential candidates will address points in The Covenant with Black America during separate sessions.
   “All of our leaders must be held accountable, even black leaders,” said the PBS talk show host who had worked for BET and now has a Los Angelesbased foundation.
    Chapters of the book outline how blacks are now impacting, and must continue to change the nation’s systems of health care, education and criminal justice, along with affordable housing, community policing, employment and environmental justice.
   “We don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel,” said Smiley. “We have programs, but they have not been exposed to all of us.”
    At one point, he urged the attendees to recite passages from the book. Several hundred attendees had been given free copies.
   “How can I get more blacks to support my business?” asked one woman who was among many to pose questions to the panel.
    Smiley said supporting black businesses is vital, and that is why he went to a black publisher with his book.
    Another woman asked how blacks can prevent illegal immigrants from getting jobs and benefits that are denied to blacks.
    Glover Blackwell said the real issue is addressing conditions in other countries that force people to leave and come to the U.S.
    Dellums said, “We have to avoid the trap of scapegoating others.”
    Asked how young people can be inspired, West and Claude said they must first be motivated.
   “We have to have faith in them,” said West.
    Claude said the book will be made available as a curriculum for high school and college students, and adjustments can be made for students in elementary schools.
   “Liberation requires ongoing political educational, and we have young people who are ready to play a role,” he said. “Each generation must say ‘this is our movement. We are willing and able, and you have our backs.’”
    West, who Smiley called “the smartest Negro I know,” said blacks have been the victims of white supremacy. West was also critical of the White House and President Bush for the “colonializaiton” of the Coretta Scott King funeral. Singer-activist Harry Belafonte, who paid for the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr., had been invited to attend the widow’s funeral but was then asked not to come after he called Bush a “terrorist” during a speech in New York.
    For more information about The Covenant with Black America visit www.covenantwithblackamerica. com.