Politics: The Ability to Move People and Money
All Politics is Local
You made it through an exhausting election cycle. The world is still standing. Your conditions haven’t miraculously changed overnight. Honestly, conditions for the black community have been relatively the same since Reconstruction. Progress towards liberty has been a slow steady uphill century plus long battle that will not be realized in one election result. It takes more. Not an impossible amount of more. Just more engagement, more accountability, more unity, and more succession training.
All politics is local is a slogan used every election cycle and is credited to former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill. There is so much power in this statement, and it needs to be fully realized in the black community.
Your immediate condition is a representation of your surroundings, and is controlled by your local politicians. They determine the usage of the federal monies given to your area based on the census count that you just completed. It is their job to fight for the betterment of the communities they represent.
Many black communities are blighted in spite and because of these representatives that you select. Why? Lack of engagement. We have to take the time to get to know our local officials, their specific role in government, how that role affects our daily lives, and their fight to achieve goals on our behalf.
Once we have the knowledge of the job, we can have expectations. As a community we can identify failures and successes based on these expectations. If these local politicians do not satisfy the needs of the community then they need to be voted out.
We have to be present in the fight WITH them, because our representatives are fighting an uphill battle as well. They are trying to secure resources that are FOR us, but wanted elsewhere. If they do not yield enough power within the system, they are forced to play politics.
Politics is the art of compromise, and if you have nothing to give you get what you can. Powerless politicians get told what they can bring back to the community. So part of the blame for the conditions in the community is a result of us having powerless politicians represent our interests.
Power in politics comes from two sources, the ability to move people and money.
In our community money is the main power source. People are moved by the money. Campaigns are financed by the money, and propaganda messaging is paid for by the money. Since there is so much disengagement, the money dictates to the community who and what is good.
If the money isn’t coming from the community, then it represents someone else’s interests. It is usually the interests of those very people that want the resources for elsewhere. Their intention is to use that money to buy our representatives in order to compromise their ability to secure resources based on their powerless position. Some go fight for us alone because the community is disengaged beyond the ballot box. The community overall believes that once elected, the battle is over.
Actually the uphill battle just started. How do we break this cycle? Unify to finance our representatives, so that they are beholden to us and not the interests of others. Unify to hold them accountable to our identified universal needs. Unify to stand with them as they fight battles for us, so that they are independently powerful giving them a stronger position to do political bargaining.
If they have more failures than successes when fighting for us, we need to have others ready to replace them. This should always be a reality, because having the next leader ready means the baton can pass without a stumble. Consistent leadership training creates the opportunities to have think tanks that connect to action plans that better the conditions of our communities.
The next couple of years are critical in changing the landscape of Chicagoland as we elect officials for City, County, and State government. Engage, hold them accountable, unify, train new leadership, and let's use this system rather than allow the system to use us to benefit everyone but us.