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When you have four and, at one time, five black members
on Toledo City Council and the best that they can achieve is
the recent debacle regarding the political musical chairs,
it is time to reassess whether or not those players are even
remotely familiar with how to use political power and create
alliances.
In my humble opinion, the charade of Steve Steel
becoming council chairman and the unknown Josh Hughes
becoming the local Democratic honcho and the “independent”
Scott Ramsey getting appointed to the vacated District 4
seat is a political scandal to say the least.
In my gut of guts the current crop of negro members of
City Council are scared of their own shadows when pulling
the levers of political and economic power so that they can
maintain and not lose what they have gained.
For the life of me I cannot fathom why five and now four
black City Council members have not sat down behind closed
doors and did the “wink” move.
You know, that is when you plan your move and then you move
your plan and when everything is in place, the cabal simply
winks or gives the “ghetto nod” to their fellow member and
BOOM… it is done!
When you’ve got a competent black mayor in place who
needs to get the vocal and visible support from the local
Democratic Party and her fellow council members but instead
what you have is each person creating their own political
sand castles of voting as if they are cross-eyed, nothing
gets done and the voting power of the Big Four is woefully
diluted and pretenders can creep in the vacuum and take
power.
Not good. Don’t lose what you have already. That is
basic political power 101. When the negro council members
try to be too cute and vote as if this was a garden tea
party with no consequences, they exhaust their use on
council and they need to be replaced with more aggressive
and politically-astute black members from the community who
are not afraid to be seen together in group photo shops.
Don’t apologize for your power … use it.
As far as “replacements” go, this is a weeping tragedy
of the past 10-20 years due to the old black political
Democratic guard not doing their homework and developing a
cadre of up and coming politicos who could be groomed for
times such as these.
Years ago, I wrote columns about that “old” guard who
were more delighted in getting judicial and political
offices for their own aggrandizement and resume building
that they forgot about nation building.
Those are losses that can never be recouped due to
pride and personal foolishness. You know their names. Simply
think back 10-20 years in Toledo politics and which
African-Americans occupied judicial and political positions
but did nothing of substance with those positions other than
garner a paycheck and get goose bumps when they were invited
to rubber chicken dinners at tired and snooty “negro” social
events? Sharp Tux! Great dress!
Yeah, that name you just thought of and a dozen others.
But, I digress.
What is at hand is that unless the members of City
Council who are of the “negro” persuasion are able to rally
the troops who have expressed in past elections a lack of
zeal and willingness to get their lazy rumps out and vote
and vote smart, any accumulated political power will be a
vapor haze that is fit only for future tall tales around the
dinner table or boring NAACP luncheons.
My expectations? Very simple but direct:
(1) The current negro membership of city council and the
mayor need to circle their wagons at a private meeting or
meetings and hash out a sound strategy for winning future
elections.
(2) The black wards have to be mobilized to show that if
they do not vote and vote in large numbers, they will be
relegated to the dust bin of not being needed or
acknowledged when it is time to count the votes and pass out
the city money when budget time comes around.
There is not a worse political sound to hear than a
negro who does not vote but when something does not go right
in his community or the city money gets funny when it is
time to pass it out to the various districts, he howls and
protests and wants to throw down the race card. When you ask
him, “Sir, did you vote?” If the answer is no, then you need
to say to him, “Then shut up and go away!
(3) The negro council members are going to have step out of
their comfort zone and devise specific economic empowerment
programs that target the central city and they need to do so
in concert with the many local corner banks that sit in the
black community, aka: the black churches that are on, “every
street corner.”
I know….I know…black pastors over the years have been
shown that they are loathe to share any money outside of
their own stain glass walls. If you ask them to come
together to strategize and formulate economic plans, they
break out into a cold sweat; and will not come to the
meeting because their love of keeping their own money
overrides their sense of community even though that same
community is the source of those funds! Go figure.
My advice? Run, Paula, run! And watch out for THE
Johnny-come-lately politics of Sandra Drabik-Collins who has
seemingly had a conversion of heart and she wants to run and
now run with the name of Collins and run with a social
conscience?
Question? Can a Taft/Voinovich dyed-in-the-wool Republican
have a social conscience (?).
Contact
Lafe Tolliver at Tolliver@Juno.com
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