Okay I stole that title and if you can figure where I stole it from give yourself 50 points.
The Friday before Martin Luther King's holiday I got to attend the MLK award banquet here in Dallas, Tx. Strange, but true. This was a really good evening overall. I am not going to say it was a super eye opener, but still much was learned. The keynote speaker is new to the Dallas political and African American political scene and had some things to say and I will get to that in a moment.
First of all; the event was held in the new Dallas Omni hotel which is the convention center hotel the city put up. If you are coming to Dallas, yeah this is worth looking into as a place to have a convention or just stay. To be honest I am not a world traveler, but have traveled enough to know they did a great job with this new hotel. I would need to get out the thesaurus to find adjectives to describe it to give it justice.
Second it was a well attended event. There were many speakers. The Mayor spoke, many of the established local African American politicians either spoke or introduced people, there were representatives from four local high schools doing various performances which did a good job of breaking up the speakers and giving entertainment and variety to the program. Some of the performances were really good and one young man stood out. This has been over a week now and I cannot find the program to see his name, but some mention somehow should be done. He was one of the young men who did speeches from MLK. His was I guess the longest reenactment, it was dynamic,held your attention the whole time, well I cannot do it justice right now, just a remarkable performance by a fine young man that deserves better mention than these last few words.
Many of the adult speakers were chosen because they were able to tell first hand stories from the MLK era and the Alabama marches. Some excellent stories were shared. One of the speakers was expecially animated not in style, but in storytelling and also presented some questions for today's world. Many other speakers stepped up about the need to develop Southern Dallas. (aside,,,, I don't follow local politics with a huge fervor, but the term southern Dallas seems to be the correct way to talk about an area long underdeveloped in this town. You can go to any big city in this country and find an area comparable. The phrase Southern Dallas hasn't been the historical way to refer to what I would have said South Dallas up till very recently. So it was interesting to hear this slight shift in the way people are trying to address this historically underdeveloped part of the city.) The Mayor started off the evening and mentioned the development of Southern Dallas, the next speaker did a slight rebuff of the Mayor and the City's commitment to this development. More of a we will believe it when we see it statement. Most of the speakers spent the evening relating MLK stories, but the theme of Southern Dallas was always present. This leads me to the keynote speaker.
Eric Johnson is new to the political landscape to all of Dallas and is becoming a star within the African American community from what I could tell. As a speaker he did fairly well, but really had a better message, but I do have some thoughts I will share in a moment. First of all his speech dealt with the history of the civil rights movement and worked to put the MLK era into perspective for the audience ( another aside and more to this in a moment, but I felt he felt the need to put this into historical context for some of the audience). He divided the civil rights movement into three movements and the one thing I didn't like was he did get one definition from Wikipedia, okay a good one though. He mentioned that wikipedia said the civil rights movement was really civil rights movements. He described each for the audience and said the MLK era was the action era of the Civil Rights movement. And he spent a good portion of his speech breaking all three movements for the audience.
He then moved on to describe or put forth the fourth era or what he would like to see become the fourth era. And this is where a new person needs to step up, find the next part of the fight, define it, and put people to action to achieve the next goals. He talked about justice and broke it down to financial or economic justice, social justice, education justice ( another aside), and like I said it has been awhile and I think there were some more specifics he touched on. This message seems to be missing at least to a larger audience outside the African American community or is not getting out very well to the nation as a whole. I think as a casual observer of civil rights problems in this country you are not hearing a strong new message to recreate the energy of what someone like MLK did. So do I think Eric Johnson is this person, well I don't know right now. Again I heard a new fight trying to be developed in this speech, I don't know if it was the event or what, but Mr Johnson seemed a bit casual about trying to energize the crowd towards his goal. He is definitely passionate about it, that you could tell. All in all it was a good speech, had its moments, but was missing something, actually for me two somethings. One I can address, the other : is Mr Johnson a very intelligent man who needs some oration practice or is it hard to emulate a passionate speech on a night dedicated to one of our country's greatest orators? So this second one I don't know, but I hope the Mr Johnson can find a voice because he seems to understand the next beginning.
So what point can I address, well basically my two cents. And frankly not a stretch compared to what I was hearing throughout the evening. Again the development of Southern Dallas was a side topic. There were speeches with specific examples of Southern Dallas not getting the help needed to grow or where they felt taken advantage of were pointed out. But as with all politicians hard bullet point ideas were missing. I don't fault the speakers, it seems to be the way of politicians nowadays. The Republican Presidential candidates all seem to be in the same boat. All talk and no new ideas, at least with Mr. Johnson he is putting forth a new campaign to address some very old and lingering serious problems for our country. He defined the fight, but what next. Well one specific idea comes to my mind.
And okay here goes a quote that seems pretty vivid so it was probably said by someone somewhere.I googled it but nothing exact came up. More or less the thought is to quit being a slave you need to become the owner. And this seems to be the problem in my eyes for Southern Dallas and probably the many areas in large metropolitans like Dallas that the development is not owned by the people who need the development. It is time to quit using resources outside the community and use the resources within the community to develop the area. Yes there are some programs already doing this, but the action is to get the whole community to buy and own. The specific example is to recreate the old Savings and Loan concept into something new for the 21st century, but the ownership is like a credit union. Everyone deposits into the new entity from the area. So as the area grows so does the ownership of the whole area. Now this needs some incubation and would have to start out slow. I don't know if you are familiar with the organization NACA. They help people achieve the goal of home ownership, but they do it with some very practical step by step procedures so people can get into a home that they can truly afford. This new banking entity would need to do these types of steps to help develop new businesses by the people in the neighborhood. So impatience could become a problem because you need to make sure each new business is set up to succeed. The community then needs to accept the business and patronize it. Each new business becomes the first choice for that product for the community. This has to be ingrained into the thinking of the community.
Many things are accomplished with this type of slow build up. One jobs, two individual wealth, stakeholdership of the community, shared pride, and then expansion to name a few. Southern Dallas needs to own Southern Dallas, not expect others to build it for them. This won't be easy, but will truly create Mr Johnson's dream of financial justice. I am a big believer that a democracy thrives when the wealth is spread out and this could be a beginning of a whole new wealth system. If you owned the bank that made the loans to your neighborhood would you not want the success this could bring. Too many big banks loan money soley to make money for themselves, maybe in our modern world we need smaller banks that have a strong tie to the community and ownership by the community. Yes some serious discipline would be needed and for any community this would be hard so the leadership in Southern Dallas would need to do things that no one else in this country seems willing to do, but if done could be an example of true capitalism and development for a country sorely in need of new ideas. (yes this is really an old idea reborn but with of course a 21st century flair.) Yes the above is the simple idea and much would be needed to get all this put together, but hopefully people like Mr. Johnson can find the energy and people to create this dream.
And for the aside on education justice. I am sorry to say Mr. Johnson, but public education overall in this country is in need of help. Not just for minorities, so if you want to fight for education justice we need to fight for education across the board. An educated public which includes better education for ALL is a goal that needs to be fought by everyone. It is time to quit dumbing down the process so when you go back to the state legislature, take up that fight and you are taking up your fight.
So are the winds of Southern Dallas really changing, lets hope so, they actually could be the winds that does good for more than just itself.
And to tie up the education point, Mr Johnson's speech did cover a great deal of history and with his comments on the need for education justice I am wondering did he think his audience needed a real good history lesson. Maybe way out of context here, but watching the audience listen to him it was interesting.
And for the the title the hint is it wasn't the winds of Southern Dallas changing, go back to the National Review and seriously search the archives. I still owe you a blog.
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