It is very disconcerting sometimes when you think about people of the city of Birmingham. There seems to be a shift from substance and understanding of its place in history to a place of wanting fools gold and debauchery. In my 37 years of existence I have witnessed unprecedented history for African Americans. My father's generation would have never thought they would live to see the United States of America elect a man of color as president. We are at a crossroads. Birmingham must remember that its strength in the fight for Civil Rights for African Americans, laid the foundation for President Obama's historic run to the White house. As I look out over this city, it appears to me that there is a lull or spirit of mediocrity when it comes to its leadership going forward.
Birmingham has an energetic person as mayor who is progressive and espouses his visionary ideas for making Birmingham a premier city in this country. However, we must question his tactics and his motives when it comes to putting forth his lofty goals. We must not forget that he is currently under indictment for his activities as county commissioner. We also must not forget about the serious debt and financial discombobulation he left his home city of Fairfield. It worries me when every time our mayor puts forth one of his visionary ideas that there are never any details on how we are going to pay for it.
It is my belief that Birmingham must do an accurate, strategic assessment of itself considering the economic conditions of our country. We need a so called "stimulus" in thinking and prioritization for the citizens of this city. We could list a number of issues that plague this city that should be addressed(that would be an extremely long list). However, it is my belief that our focus should be changing the mentality of its citizenship, young and old. We can no longer continue to sleepwalk daily as we watch our economy erode, education system crumble, and infrastructure fall apart.
The question becomes: Where is the true leadership in our community?
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The Birmingham World was established in 1930 by the Scott family as one of the few black newspapers in the Birmingham area. The paper stresses education because the paper's philosophy is that its duty is to educate blacks in Birmingham.
Birmingham World
Why did people read the Birmingham World
Blacks turned to it for reports, announcements of community happenings and for an angle on local and national news missing from the majority paper....
1 comment:
"true leadership in our community"--i love your post. we share a lot in common. i too have a concern for what is happening in bham.
my concern however, is that the media (mainstream and grassroots) often blindly criticize the leadership of the city of Birmingham without contextualizing the real story. Let's be real here...the politicians who live in the "city" can only do so much. it's not a cop out....we should definitely hold the "community leadership" to a high standard, but we should also question the ethics of people (corporations, private investors, etc.) willing to work in a city, drain it of resources, and then take their money and education and use it to set up camp pseudo "communities" outside the city. birmingham is a microcosm of the state of alabama. lumber, auto, and land companies do the same thing to us and our state leadership, i would argue is equally as inept.
i have a question:
how do you define community? birmingham will always have problems...until a majority of the people who make up the region are willing to make an effort to connect with other members of their "community."
there's a reason why we don't have efficient mass transit. there's a reason why we have like 15 different school districts in the area (and that's not including the private schools). there's a reason why about 250,000 people live in the city and another 750,000 live OUTSIDE the city.
Our current city government is a problem, but so too is the regional structure of our municipalities. let's talk about that. i would argue that the de jure system of economic segregation that we allow to exist in the region is hurting us more.
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