North Charlotte Today

Instead of trick-or-treating on Halloween, Unite 2 Fight 4 Economic Rights took its Revitalizing Our American Dreams (ROADS) bus tour to Charlotte. The initiative aims to promote racial harmony and financial equality.

“We assembled to educate minorities about capital that is potentially coming down the pipeline and also to help minorities in underserved markets to connect with people, which will accelerate the education process so that they will be prepared when the capital is disbursed,” Vonezell Pittman, founder of Pittman Financial, a capital market consulting firm, said. “That’s what’s prompting me to look under the hood.”

The Charlotte-based Pittman was among the panelists speaking at the Saturday morning event.

“It's about policies and, at the end of the day, you’ve got to put differences aside, sit down, talk and figure out how do we distribute capital into our communities,” Pittman told North Charlotte Today. “Others have different feelings about it. I represent a small portion of Charlotte. A lot of people are open and then there's a small percentage that's not open.”

Lead by Kareem Lanier and sponsored by CommCap America, the ROADS tour emerged out of COVID-19 and its resulting shutdowns. 

Lanier is also chair of  the National Diversity Coalition for Trump with Pastor Darrell Scott, who co-founded the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

“We're looking to put individuals and especially small businesses from minority communities on equal footing financially with funding, whether it be through the government, banks or private investors,” said attorney Antonio Burries, an organizer of the Unite 2 Fight 4 Economic Rights ROADS tour in Charlotte.

According to media reports, Unite 2 Fight 4 Economic Rights was created to prepare Black and Brown individuals and business owners in underserved communities to receive investment capital.

“Socialism is gaining in attractiveness due to the historic trend where minority communities lack access to capital to take advantage of traditional capitalistic opportunities,” Lanier said in a statement online. “Lack of access to capital is creating a new breed of socialist-driven legislation, civil unrest and dangerous extreme un-American ideology that is being driven by leveraging the huge economic disparities that exist in this country.”

A U.S. Chamber of Commerce study found that 66% of minority small businesses are concerned about having to permanently close due to COVID-19, compared with 57% for non-minority small businesses. Also, 35% of minority-owned businesses were denied when they applied for a loan with 19% planning to apply for a loan compared to only 6% of non-minority businesses.

“We're in the body of injustice but we also know that in order to help and to serve, we need to be able to fight through our emotions so that we can really see change manifest,” Pittman said.