A lot has been made of the low voter participation in Greensboro's recent primary and most of it is blamed on the voters who failed to take time away from their jobs, families, and lives to show up at the polls and cast their ballots but haven't you ever wondered if perhaps this is exactly how the system is designed to work? Even if by accident?
Young people working long hours to make ends meet while raising young families are pitted against retired people who already have theirs and intend to keep it. A common argument in Greensboro is young families want more amenities for children such as parks whereas old people wanting lower taxes argue against more parks.
And in a city like Greensboro where the brain drain constantly draws the best and brightest young people away from our city at a time in their lives when they could be making the greatest contributions to our community the problem is only compounded.
City council meetings are at 5;00 on Tuesday nights at the Melvin Municipal Building. Or maybe it's 5:30? During all my years of working blue collar jobs I never had a job that ended before 5:30 on a week day. To tell an employer you are leaving work early to go to a city council meeting is a sure fire way to get yourself fired without cause. Generally speaking, employers neither need nor want politically active employees unless said employees are promoting the same agendas their employers wish to promote. And for the most part, politics at the work place are discouraged as it often results in productivity losses.
But do we toss up our hands and shout, "We can't do anything about it?"
Not if enough people write-in Billy Jones for Mayor of Greensboro, we don't.
I can't make your employers let you off of work earlier but I can make it easier for blue collar working classes to attend city council meetings by moving the meetings into your communities, starting the meetings later, and restructuring the meeting agendas to get rid of a lot of the BS.
And I put these things in print so you can hold us to it. No one else does that.
You see, that talk about getting citizens involved in the democratic process sounds nice but it really is all just talk.
Take Participatory Budgeting for example. Now don't get me wrong, I love the idea of citizens having their say but Greensboro's Participatory Budgeting is fraught with problems. For starters, who are the people who are participating in Participatory Budgeting? Well, for the most part they are the same white collar workers who were already participating in everything else. Participatory Budgeting didn't draw a lot of new people into the democratic process. Bur worse that that, Participatory Budgeting as is currently practiced in Greensboro is a farce. If Greensboro's status-quo had really been interested in real Participatory Budgeting then the decision to build the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts would have been presented to the voters.
You see, we only get Participatory Budgeting when they want us to have Participatory Budgeting and then we only get to play with a tiny piece of the budget.
That's why, when enough of you write-in Billy Jones for Mayor of Greensboro, I will make all of the contracts for the Steven Tanger Performing Arts Center online and available to the public so that everyone can look for breeches of contract that will release the City of Greensboro from financial responsibilities for building, maintaining, and operating the performing arts center.
If Greensboro's status-quo wants to build a memorial to themselves then let them pay for it.
Never give up as long as you are still breathing. That's how I will do things differently. I've survived poverty. I've survived homelessness. I survived 9 days snowed-in living inside the cab of a tractor-trailer near Buckeye Lake, Ohio in the Great Blizzard of 1978. I survived the death of my only child-- my son, Jason, who was my only reason for living. And now I'm here for you.
And when the people begin to see they actually have a voice in government-- when blue collar workers can be elected to become Mayors, then people will become more involved in governing themselves.
