Our interest peaked in a St. Petersburg, Florida, mayoral primary scheduled for August 29 with word that Republican Rick Baker, former mayor and current business developer, was challenging incumbent Democrat Ric Kriseman and gaining ground. Gaining the biggest donations from private PACs, too. The two men accrued a total of $1.5 million for their non-partisan mayoral campaigns, said the Tampa Bay Times.
Non-partisan, schmartison: In a show of support (and opposition to a potential Republican take-over of the city) we set off for a forum at the local Hilton. We secured seats midway in the packed meeting room. That was to be the most normal part of the evening.
Fireworks started when eight candidates for the City Council representing District 6 filed in for their forum. Given the wide swath of property the district covers - from the shops, cafes and tony condos overlooking Tampa Bay to center-city gentrifying and predominantly black neighborhoods bordering Tropicana Field, the candidates represent the interests of the city’s most -to-least privileged residents.
This fact did not sit well with protesters from the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement. When the strident 20-year old candidate Eritha “Akile” Cainion launched her assault on the status quo, she appeared like the figurehead on an old sailing ship, defiantly striking out to sea. The tumult that followed was tectonic. The Uhuru crowd’s approval of Cainion’s diatribe rose as if from a crack in planet Earth, denouncing slave ships and years of slavery and years of economic disappointment.
Her bitter pronouncements could have been (and were) made at Black Power press conferences in the last century. Indeed, this would be a long night spent mocking moderate black men and women candidates as “Boot Lickers” and Aunt Toms,” calls for “Reparations” and fists stabbing the air.
The frustration expressed by mostly young and explosive protesters ruled out polite discourse. For too long, neighborhoods lacking the housing, stores and services that make a thriving community mock democracy for them. The protesters reeled off losses since the upheaval of carving out room for Tropicana Field. A community of 800 lived and worked here – replaced by the stadium and a parking-lot wasteland.
It’s a situation that might prompt corporate language such as “Mistakes were made.” Too many mistakes for too long to catalog. That’s a problem for people living in our nanosecond world. Thinking in terms of the next news cycle, it is hard to compute a disheartening impasse affecting generations.
The winning mayoral candidate (likely either Kriseman or Baker) must represent nearly 260,000 residents over 237 square miles of land and water resources. Yet the fiery Uhuru-affiliated mayoral candidate Jesse Nevel just egged on the outrage over one beleaguered neighborhood. But, if years of Uhuru Chairman Omali Yeshitela’s raging failed to achieve enough gains in affordable housing and business development to enrich the community, such outbursts ultimately go nowhere.
How unfair to the young people who deserve true leadership rather than divisive sound bites. The whole exercise betrayed a lack of imagination to think beyond the buzz that comes from alienating fellow citizens, some who sympathize with valid demands that untenable conditions be addressed. Certainly, for the Uhurus, these lyrics for Simon & Garfunkel's My Little Town fit all too well:
"...And after it rains
There's a rainbow
And all of the colors are black
It's not that the colors aren't there
It's just imagination they lack
Everything's the same
Back in my little town ..."
The lack of imagination extends beyond the apoplectic Uhurus. We need a charismatic community organizer like young Barack Obamas. With $1.5 million devoted to electing someone to run my much-loved St. Petersburg for all its citizens, I must use my imagination to picture who will ultimately right this wrong.
by Reggie Morrisey
Patriot Dream, a pastel by Vincent Mancuso