This commentary goes out to those
who know me and have followed me through the years. I need your help. You see,
my greatest strength is also my greatest weakness. If I’m passionate about
something, if I think I have a solution to an urgent need...Damnit, I’ll just up
and try to do something about it. I started a magazine in the late 1980s
because I thought the region needed a black Riverfront Times. In 2010, I tried
to create a massive Internet data base so blacks could easily tap into
government funds and grants to improve communities. Two years later, I founded the
Sweet Potato Project because President Obama announced that he was directing
federal funds to help rebuild metropolitan areas through agriculture initiatives.
I thought a program that teaches kids how to grow food and become entrepreneurs in their own neighborhoods was desperately needed.
My friends and supporters know I’ve
spent my adult life creating, struggling, failing and maintaining those
concepts. No complaints. It’s been an incredible journey shared with benevolent
and like-minded people. The most rewarding part for me has been gaining access to
the minds, hearts and potential of urban youth, hence the title of my book, “When We Listen: Recognizing the Potential of Urban Youth.”
This Saturday (Feb. 8th)
starting at 3 pm, I’ll be making a presentation at Afro World Hair & fashion about a new
concept, “Own-a-Lot/Own the Block.” You see,
I’m antsy again. I feel that poverty, crime, death and hopelessness is killing
black communities and robbing young people of their inherent potential. And I
want to do something about it.
New developments like the National
Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), will no doubt follow the predictable path
of gutting “undesirable” neighborhoods, displacing residents and replacing them
with gentrified neighborhoods and newer more “desirable” populations. Nary a
thought will be given to transforming disadvantaged lives or reinvigorating the
neighborhoods that have purposely gone fallow.
New developments like the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), will no doubt follow the predictable path of gutting “undesirable” neighborhoods, displacing residents and replacing them with gentrified neighborhoods and newer more “desirable” populations.
For the past 50 years, at least, local
politicians and city leaders have happily provided tax-payer resources to
majority white, already stable neighborhoods and gifted millions upon millions
to already rich developers. Yet, when it comes to black people and black neighborhoods,
these same leaders (black and white) seem to only offer stale, outdated
solutions; more police, tougher laws, job-training for youth and efforts to help
them merge into corporate America.
These efforts have merit, but it irks
me that none seem to center around solutions that will enable black people to help
themselves, their children or empower them to create jobs and revitalize blocks
in their own neighborhoods.
Here’s the rub: We have
everything we need to do this, now. I touched on
this last
week. The necessary community entities are already doing the hard work...just not together. Secondly, narrow-minded, visionless politicians tethered
to the rich are reluctant to draft legislation that can provide funding for a
collective grassroots movement that can spark sustainable, positive change in majority black areas. It's easy to punish the poor for being poor.
This crazy
idea of owning our own land and rebuilding our own communities isn’t mine.
It’s been emphasized by athletes like Marshawn Lynch, lyricized by Jay-Z, T.I.,
Queen Latifa, Nipsy Hustle and Akon. It’s
been proselytized by icons like Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X,
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Minister Louis Farrakhan and other black leaders who preach controlling
our lives and destinies.
The
“Own-a-Lot/Own the Block” proposal is based on community
investment and nonprofit collaboration. Agencies like Better
Family Life, the Urban League, Gateway Greening, Good Life Growing, Inc. and the
Sweet Potato Project (SPP) already have affordable housing, youth empowerment, urban entrepreneurism and agricultural
programs. Harris Stowe State College (HSSU) offers an urban agriculture program where young people can earn a bachelor's degree in Sustainability and Urban Ecology. St. Louis has a plethora of abandoned land and buildings. Alderman have already passed a $1 home buying initiative. Everything and everybody is already in place.
New York
University Professor Patrick Sharkey is among scholars who argue that the community investment
model-investing in nonprofits as opposed to overinvestment in the criminal
justice "punishment" model-is more effective in reducing crime and
improving lives in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
What if all these organizations and their initiatives were combined
under one umbrella? What if we kicked off a savvy, culturally relevant campaign
aimed at challenging and empowering young people to use their inherent gifts in
their own communities? What if this collective demand that city leaders provide the same kinds of resources to this
grassroots movement as they do to rich developers and majority white
neighborhoods?
What if we kicked off a savvy, culturally relevant campaign aimed at challenging and empowering young people to use their inherent gifts in their own communities?
Last year, SPP secured two vacant lots through Grace Hill
Settlement House in the College Hill Neighborhood. Those lots were gifted to a
young mother, Tara Blanchard, who plans to grow food on her land. I then
reached out to Gateway Greening to serve as the resource agency for Tara and other new
landowners. Our 2020 goal is to work with more nonprofits and gift more land to
individuals to establish a model that may inspire city leaders to expand, fund and replicate the effort.
 |
| The Sweet Potato Project awarded Tara Blanchard (pictured above with fiancé, Raymond Hawkins) two vacant lots in the College Hill neighborhood to grow food this year. |
I’m hoping you can help this naïve optimist. In my mind, stipends to help young people and city residents own and transform vacant lots into
food-producing land is a no-brainer. I see this demographic benefiting from
economic incentives to own and rehab abandoned buildings. I see a program that
trains and employs at-risk youth to rebuild houses. Empowering burgeoning
entrepreneurs through the “Own-the-Block” part of this movement can easily
compliment the NGA’s expansion plans. Imagine their 3,000-plus employees
shopping at diverse and eclectic businesses, enjoying art and cultural spaces
and dining at neighborhood eateries just north of downtown St. Louis.
Empowering burgeoning entrepreneurs through the “Own-the-Block” part of this movement can easily compliment the NGA’s expansion.
The Beloved Streets of America's initiative to revitalize MLK Blvd. could coincide
within the NGA imprint. I’m inviting its founder Melvin White to join me on
Saturday. I’d like Orlando Watson, owner of Prime 55 Restaurant and local
concert promoter to help bring local and national hip-hop artists into the
fold. I can already hear the music and lyrics, see the billboards, T-shirts,
bumper stickers, lawn signs all promoting the “OWN-A-LOT/ OWN THE-BLOCK” narrative.
I’m silly enough to believe St. Louis can advance a national template for innovative,
robust, sustainable, positive inner-city change.
Is this an outlandish proposal? Not
in my imagination. That’s why I’m inviting local politicians, nonprofit
directors and you to help me figure this out. If Saturday’s event goes well,
perhaps we’ll take it to another level at a larger venue. What I don’t want is
to get trapped in “talk, talk, talk” mode. I’m old. I’m impatient. I want action...NOW!
Please join me this weekend and
help an old dreamer make sense of another dream.
************************
Sylvester Brown, Jr. is a former columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, founder of the Sweet Potato Project, an entrepreneurial program for urban youth and author of “When We Listen: Recognizing the Potential of Urban Youth.”
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