Although I never tried hiding my past, plenty of trolls and critics love to remind people who read my columns that I was once a homeless crackhead.
I guess the purpose of a troll bringing up my past drug use and homelessness is to cancel and discredit me. Even as I turned the page from those dark days and have written a book, created blogs, been published in the Washington Examiner, Big Issue, Washingtonian and American Compass, been invited to the White House, angry trolls still love to remind me that I was once a homeless guy who smoked crack.
Nothing is off limits to these self-proclaimed “compassionate” trolls. They have attacked my personal struggles with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) as proof that I’m mentally ill. But, instead of laying on my pillow crying because of these mean-spirited people, I put myself in the company of Abe Lincoln, Vince Lombardi and Edgar Allan Poe. They used their insanity to do something these trolls will never accomplish.
A message to my critics: your cruelty will never deter me.
I know the root cause of their hate. I’m a Black man that doesn’t sip from the well of victimhood. I have been called the n-word and was once attacked by Neo-Nazis. I had a policeman arrest me for having a white woman in my car. But, instead of being aggrieved and looking for reparations, I moved on and forgave them.
Unfortunately, the same trolls, angered by racism, have become no different than the bigots they attack.
Really? I’m collaborating with white supremacists because I don’t vote for Democrats? Did you know Joe Biden’s best friend in the Senate was Robert Byrd, a former Exalted Cyclops of the KKK?
How dumb are these trolls? Everything from slavery to the forced removal of Native Americans from their lands, Jim Crow, segregation, lynching and denying African Americans the right to vote had also involved Democrats! If you hate racism, then why would you support people that hire and fire people based on their skin tone and gender?
While being attacked by trolls hiding behind a computer doesn’t bother me, I find it bizarre how trolls try to take the moral high ground with a straight face. An angry troll likes to post a column that I’ve written about my past as if this will make me lose followers.
Haven’t the champions of the homeless argued that drug addiction and mental illness are not the root causes of homelessness but it’s instead a lack of affordable housing? Still, when no one is looking, they love to trash me about my past experience of once being homeless.
I”m not intimidated by the trolls’ viciousness, nor do their temper tantrums move me.
I’m not put on this Earth to make friends, and it’s time to tell these trolls the day of reckoning is coming. To the trolls, I came to DC with absolutely nothing in my pocket. I’m not ashamed of my past. If anything, I’m tough.
If people want to mock me for selling Street Sense, keep it moving. The last time I looked, I’m not committing a crime or breaking the law. I spend little time with people who don’t support me, so I won’t lose any sleep about how you feel about me. Nobody pays anything for me. I sold newspapers, managed to save my money, and live in the country’s wealthiest ZIP code, so eat that!
I’m probably the only guy in D.C. that washed dishes and bussed tables, sometimes for as little as four hours a week, and still managed to pay for a $ 1,000-a-month apartment. I never sat around blaming others or playing the victim. No matter what obstacles came my way, I said I would conquer them.
Why do you say one thing in front of your liberal buddies about how you care about Black and brown people, then while nobody’s looking to try to kneecap me for selling Street Sense?
They can’t stand that I am winning, and they are behind their computer envying me. Yes, I was a homeless crackhead. So what? Yes, I lived in a shelter, but now I live in a wealthy zip code, selling newspapers and part-time bartending. I like to thank these trolls for attacking me because it makes me more determined to defeat them.
