The Movement To Save Our Youth And Community Must Start Now!
By Betty Jean Grant
Betty Jean Grant
The former Buffalo Police Officer and respected Community Elder, Ted Kirkland’s much quoted, famous words: “Black folks like to party Before the work is done.” This summer was party-hearty, but with a community in dis-array. I had a blast, but after this last Fri day Night Live tonight, it is time for us to get to the task of saving the few black businesses and dwindling black homeownership. Go down any residential street or travel down once black businesses or commercial districts like East Delavan, Fillmore, William, Broadway, Bailey and Kensington? Tell me what you don’t see? Black businesses!
We, as an ethnic group, need to be ashamed of the economic and political conditions of our communities. Nobody stole our opportunity for maintaining gen erational wealth; we sold or gave it away! We do most of our shop ping online or in the malls around the city. Some of us only patronize black stores or vendors when we are short of cash or when we ‘want a deal’!
We sold our much-needed neighborhood community centers like CRUCIAL Community, on Moselle St, to a charter school, while another one, the Hope Center, on Paderewski Drive, is being turned into a shooting to practice on how to use their weapons more accurately. Our children have no sports facilities with indoor Physical Ed. classes or gym equipment, so they wind up exercising or running in the streets, scaring some of the older folks half to death.
Now, our Black community has regressed to the point of allowing the Erie County Democratic Committee’s Czar or Chairman, (you choose) designate who will be supported and elected by a corrupt process of allowing suburban party members, who can’t vote in Buffalo, choose our political candidates. We allowed a corrupt political system to be declared as the winner and then award a senate seat (63rd NYS Sen ate, November General Election, 2012) to a candidate who was only ahead by 139 votes, with 425 ballots remaining to be counted.
This period we are in, right now, is the worst I have seen manifested in our community since I arrived here, in 1970, from Tennessee. Even during the illegal and legal drugs epidemic of Crack, Cocaine, Heroin and Methadone, in the 1980s, the community was able to maintain and navigate around most of the destruction by having strong parents, interactive neighborhoods and dedicated civic & political leaders. Think about William L. Gaiter, George K. Arthur, Eva Doyle, Rufus Fraizer, James W. Pitts, Mary Johnson, Horace “Billy” Johnson, Leroy Coles, Louise Bonner, David Col lins, Minnie Gillette, Arthur O. Eve, Rosa Gibson and numerous others, with a Community First mindset.
This city’s current and past leaders (including this writer) have failed our young people. Instead of stability and a positive environment, they have been left with a wounded and disunited community with no real efforts made, or with the resources to heal itself. With escalating dys functional households, only a few recreational facilities open in the evenings and weekends, with even less jobs opportunities. Maybe our youths feel that all they have left is their ability to run!