In Part 1 of A Real Greensboro Economic Recovery Plan I laid out the basics. To date: not one single person has given me a single reason as to why the plan will not work with the exception of several saying privately that those in power do not want it to work. Why would they not want it to work? Because it takes power and profits away from them and gives power and profits to the people.
Enough rhetoric, let's get down to business.
Adopting A Real Greensboro Economic Recovery Plan would usher in a new way of running non profits. Instead of being dependent on the government for funding, non profits operated under the plan would need little or no government funding. It's not a new idea. Greensboro native Martin Eakes did the same thing when he founded the Self Help Credit Union using proceeds from bake sales all those years ago. Today, Self Help is one of the largest credit unions in the world and owns several smaller credit unions across the nation.
One thing I want to get straight is that the non profits don't necessarily have to be those I first picked. There are some suspect non profits in Greensboro whose names won't go into the hat but there are many more deserving non profits that can and will be considered should Greensboro get behind our plan.
This plan would turn helping the poor from what many believe to be a drain on the economy to being an actual contribution to the economy by putting the poor to work, adding to the tax base, revitalizing neighborhoods, raising standards of living, raising property values and thus city and county tax revenues and reducing crime. And because it would be done with money that has already been stolen from Federal and local coffers it won't cost us any more than we're already paying out.
So who will be against this plan? There are 3 types.
1. People who simply can't understand the plan.
2. People who are invested in the current way of doing things and stand to lose money and power should things change.
3. Mayor Robbie Perkins and the TREBIC developer cartel who currently own every member of the Greensboro City Council with the exception of Councilwoman Smalls, and are planning to put that 1.25 $Million Dollars into more empty office and industrial parks at your expense.
Employee owned for profit businesses could be spun off from the model I'm proposing. The chosen non profit could act not only as a non profit but as a business incubator and source of loans for small businesses as well as home loans to the newly employed homeless. It could be anything Greensboro wants it to be because it would become the means by which we break TREBIC's strangle hold on Greensboro and North Carolina politics and put an end to crony capitalism locally by digging into the very pockets of the same people who have had their hands in your pockets for as long as you can remember. As State Legislator Pricey Harrison said in, The Unofficial lobbyist: TREBIC & the building industry, "They may need some nudging from the state, and they may need a citizen’s uprising.”
It's time we had that citizen's uprising. Join us on Monday, October 29th 6-8 PM at Dudley High School for The Gathering of the Trolls and tell Mayor Perkins and the rest of the Greensboro City Council that we demand Real Economic Progress For Greensboro, the Billy Jones plan and not more empty office and industrial parks.
Or stay home and keep getting ripped off by people who build downtown monuments to themselves using your money and calling them performing arts centers.
