The question of all questions has been sufficiently asked, “Where do we go from here?”  Suffice it to say, there are many roads to Champaign, which causes one to choose how to get into the city.  The present debacle has not gone unnoticed by the feeble-in-thought to the most eloquent summarizations, all of which are as valid as a Federal Reserve Note.  However, the Silver Certificate has greater value.

We know what we know not because someone has ground our noses into the dirt of everyday politics, but because politics runs our daily lives, one is either a borrower or a lender.  Oh the ambiguity of language!  It’s like the wheel-of-fortune, where it stops no one knows.  How can we all “just get along” when there is continued spin after spin.  Someone does not like the radio or television spin and fewer still, the newspaper spin.  It is becoming a web of confusion—this complexity of continuums.

It does not matter the color of a person’s skin, fear and frustration breed outrage and outcomes are the future we cannot see.  It is difficult to wait for them.  Yet, we must anticipate that the answers are not just “blowing in the wind.”   When the real truth is sold, who will dare to buy it?  What will be its worth and to whom?

We are plodding along with various statements of concerns and proposals with the legitimacy and validity of that coveted Federal Reserve Note, yet we do not know how to make it as valuable as a Silver Certificate without offending and marginalizing or galvanizing each group against the other.  Where much is given, much is required.

The cry of the community cannot endure extended complexities.  If there is to be a continuum of anything worth its salt, there cannot be diversion after diversion.  The City must respond with first things first, otherwise all bets are off, and then we get back to business as usual.  The City of Champaign deserves more than that and the people deserve more than that.

Whether we call it whining or complaining, the issues are not written in black or white nor are the issues socio-economic within themselves; they are: What will people tolerate?  We have had one crisis forum after another and the answers are just as vague as ever, because the value of human life is determined by rules of engagement.  However, it does matter who draws first blood.  Both sides of the spectrum must learn how to cope.  We must learn from our past or we will surely repeat the present, denying ourselves a future.  We are all victims.  Enough talk, let us go to work and help to save our survivors.  Enough is enough!

From health to housing, from crime to criminal justice, from education economic parity, African Americans in their indigenous communities continue to face devastating disparities on nearly every level.  However, the time has come for us to shift the conversation continuum from talking about it to being about it.  We must go from talking about our pain to talking about our plan.

Posted in community, President