VETERAN ACTIVIST/JOURNALIST MARK S. ALLEN
Associate Editor
The South Street Journal Newspaper
*Veteran Political activist with over 30 “straight”years in public service on local, state and national levels, including 7 years as a national staff member to the
Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr
*Former talk show host on the legendary Black/News Talk Station WVON
*Who’s Who Among African Americans
*Who’s Who In Black Chicago
773-392-0165

As a current community organizer and activist in Chicago’s Roseland community, the very community that President Barack Obama got his start as a community organizer, he could have done more to address the rise in crime and how his stimulus would reach the grassroots in properly addressing the social ill’s that plague urban communities across the country like Roseland. It was not long ago that Obama’s hometown of Chicago was known as “The Murder Capital Of The World.” While some leaders believe that the issue of stronger gun laws would significantly decrease the rise in crime, there are many others at the grassroots level who would argue that the lack of proven strong and effective crime intervention and prevention efforts has led to the increase in Chicago”s and other urban cities crime rates.

President Obama inherited the former administration’s lack of investment in proper crime intervention and prevention programs, so many expected that with his background in community organizing that the Obama administration would strongly take the lead restoring and providing more focus on financial investments in those proven crime intervention and prevention programs, but it was not mentioned. But on his website Obama specifically mentions how he would like to use the Chicago group CeaseFire as a model for how urban communities across the country can successfully decrease crime. Yet groups like Ceasefire and others today, are battling for funding to rehire workers and restore programs in areas where crime has increased which in Chicago are the same areas where they used to have effective programs and crime was down.

President Obama still talked about challenging the established banking institutions to make access to capital available to ordinary citizens while failing to mention how he could use new growing community based credit unions who work more closely with grassroots citizens in making funding more easily available to ordinary citizens and small businesses. If the President’s statement of “it’s not about the banks, but about the people,” then he missed an opportunity to indicate his commitment to actively engaging the community financial institutions as a means of empowerment to ordinary people and small businesses. In addition, he could have also made a commitment to the use of these credit unions and other community financial institutions as specific community development banks to empower the many grassroots community organizations, which could in fact create thousands of new community organizing jobs in the urban areas of our country.

In Chicago for example, there are still thousands of ordinary people and hundreds of community based organization’s who were not connected enough to the established political processes to know where to go to get their local organizations and communities empowered through this current stimulus dollars. The process of more transparency is still needed at the true grassroots levels in urban communities like Chicago’s Roseland community and others like it in Chicago and across the country.

Because of The President’s experiences in community organizing, he must know that with all dies respect to government officials and his personal words of commitment, people at the grassroots level would believe in the process more when they actually see themselves, their organizations, and the people and issues they represent at the true grassroots level, clearly transparent and see themselves in the stimulus process. Far too many poor people have yet to see themselves touched directly and preparing to be lifted up by this current stimulus process.

I have known The President from the very beginning of his career and know that he would welcome this input and work to see that the people of his first organizing community in Chicago -Roseland and other urban areas like them in Chicago and around the country will truely see themselves in his urban agenda.
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Prejudice behavior is dying in America. With the first black President and various black political positions, the prejudice population is dying off. Soon this country can grow and be the great country it was intended to be. The worst thing you can do to a prejudice person is to exist and ignore. That hurts them more than anything. The name-calling and other tactics they use will someday be of the past as a new era begins. Ignoring ignorance is an awesome weapon. While there are those out there that dislikes a person because of race, you can only pray for them because their opinions do not affect you or your life. So what’s the harm? Thus, they are hurting because you exist. Praying for them is all you can do.

The only thing President Obama can do is what he is doing right now. Reaching out to Republicans and keeping his eyes on the ball. There are people who will never like President Obama because of his race. When the economy rebounds and things begin to look positive they will find something else to hate him for. But history will show what a great man President Obama was. That is what’s important.

The one thing I never understood was why African Americans are hated more than any other race. After all, they were brought to this country against their will and forced the serve the white man. So, they are here because of the white man. All other races came here by choice.

Soon, all this will not matter. Prejudice behavior is taut and the teachers are dying.

Not taking anything away from the contributions made by most listed, as most have made the sacrifices and contributions required to be held in such honor. But Micheal Jordon?…Not.