Where is the Leadership?

Where is the Leadership?

By: Gayle Smaller

01/03/2008

We as black Americans in the Twin Cities are in a state of emergency and all of our citizens seem to be aware of this fact except the so-called leaders of the black community. We have old leadership and new leadership, but they all seem concerned with the same problem; how to get their organizations funding and their names in the news for some random act of mock leadership. We as blacks in Minnesota are under constant attack from the same sources that are supposed to be serving us.

We are under attack by the police department, miss-educated by the school systems (if educated at all), bounced around from agency to agency and pimped by social service…

So, I ask where is the leadership?

Minneapolis, over the past thirty years, has been a city that has hand picked the leaders for the community. Minnesota has strategically chosen who to fund, as well as whose face to put the microphone in. During this time, a great number of our so-called leaders have slipped on the pay off, and many act as snitches.

Where were these individuals when the police shot Abuka Sanders? Where were they when they were jacking Natalie's downtown district? Where were they when Code FORE was being passed? We have been dealing with these same sellouts over the last twenty years and nothing has come from it except a couple new programs receiving funding that nobody seems to have heard of in the community.

We need leaders that can stay in touch with the street and communicate with the young brothers and sisters, not these wannabe little Jesse Jackson's posing as pastors, educators and activists with one true motive—to pimp those in need of help and direction. We as concerned citizens can no longer allow these buffoons to be in charge of our communities, which have only declined since they have been in the positions to lead.

The community is a reflection of its leadership, and our communities are falling apart. The drug corners are over populated, the prisons and county jails are full of young black men who have no role models to turn to or leaders that they can count on for help or guidance. We are in need of programs that are concerned with more than funding. If we continue to let these house niggers lead us, they will lead us right back into slavery.

As fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, it is hard to find time to be active in our community but we must realize that if we do not find time we will have nothing to look forward to in the future. We must find time to be active because preserving the community is our responsibility. Although are leadership has been shady, it is our fault as well for not holding them accountable for their actions.