Saturday, February 24, 2007

Black Entrepreneurs Should Emulate Joe Kennedy

Joe Kennedy cut a $100 million advertising and oil deal with evolving dictator of Venezuela Hugo Chavez. You've seen the television commercials. Poor people getting served by Kennedy's Citizen's Energy, based in Boston, Massachusetts. AAEA's president visited the operation 25 years ago. Kennedy is providing a great service to people having trouble heating their homes. Hugo Chavez is also having fun advertising his company all over the USA. If Kennedy is planning on running for office soon, these are great commercials to get his name back out in front of the public.

Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover and Cornel West visited with Hugo Chavez and instead of cutting a Kennedy-type of deal to advance African American ownership of energy infrastructure and product, they denounced President Bush. If AAEA had the opportunity to meet with Chavez we would try to negotiate some sort of equity deal. The Black consumer market for energy products in America is huge; we just do now own any of its tools. So next time a "prominent' Black gets in front of Chavez, please try to at least broker a tanker deal, drilling deal or refinery deal. Something. Anything besides just screaming insults at Bush. (Wash Post)

UPDATE: Props to Danny Glover who DID cut a $30 million deal with Chavez to finance his movie about Toussaint L'ouverture.

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