As I write this I have to really be prayerful. It is my desire to be as open and honest as possible. Please know that these words are an outpouring from my heart…My journey as a young politician and community activist started only a few years ago, although it seems like a lifetime. I was going through a very painful divorce from my children’s father and high school sweetheart. It was a very confusing time in my life. I had been a house wife, was uneducated and did not have a strong support system at that time. I thank God for the mentors and friends that He sent to help guide me on my journey. As lost as I was, young, naïve and inexperienced in most things, my heart was in the right place. My heart bled for the tragedies I saw and heard about in my neighborhood continuously, including the tragic death of my cousin Mannie.
I knew I wanted to do something, be a part of the movement. I found my footing in places like the Detroit Election Commission, Detroit Downtown Inc., Detroit Parent Network, NAACP, Young Dems and in people like Derek Blackmon, Brenda Jenkins, Edward Foxworth, Ken Harris, Raphael Johnson, Akindele Akinyemi, James Ribbron, Glenn Plummer, Malik Yakini , James Tate, Gloria Williams, Jackie L. Currie, Lynda White-Hodges, Barry Hubbard, Monique Lancaster, Sam Doyle, Shika Hamilton, and Weusi Olusola. There are so many more people and organizations that I could name, those are just a few that really took the time to nurture my dreams, my ventures, or made a great impact on who I am now as a young leader, as well as guided me when I was going in the wrong direction. Good or Bad they opened my eyes to so many things. If you see your brother or sister going down the wrong path, as we all do at times, or are just discouraged, I hope you do what so many of my mentors and friends do for me, give them sound direction.
What I found is in the “real world” most people will cut you before they help you. They will smile in your face after having stuck daggers in your back. I don’t know if it’s more painful when I’ve had people do it to me or when I know they are doing it to one another. I have been lied on and lied to more times than I can count. Yes, even by leadership. Most of the time I don’t even let people know, I don’t try to hurt them back, I just keep on moving. I let people believe the lies because I don’t have time for foolishness or pettiness. I know what and who I am, most importantly I know who’s I am.
We are all working together to forge a better, safer more prosperous Detroit. Everyone has their own reasons. But as long as we cannot trust one another as leadership, support one another, as long as we stab one another in the back, talk about one another behind the back, blacklist or blackball one another, set one another up to take a fall and are just flat out disrespectful to one another, then we are not saving anybody. We are the ones who need to be saved. Those things say a whole lot about our morals and values. Everyone has their reasons for that behavior as well, whether it’s someone rubbed you the wrong way, jealousy or the continuation of the crabs in a barrel mentality. “I don’t want you to have anything, because I don’t want you to have more than me.” I believe that advancement and increase comes from God, not man. Man may be the instrument, but he is not the source.
How does all of this tie into the fall of a city? A city, a nation, a home is only as strong as the head. If the head of the household is not together, the household is in disarray. The leaders of a city, is its collective head. If those leaders, young and old are so caught up in “playing the game” and getting ahead, instead of creating solutions; being an island unto himself or herself instead of realizing you have to work with others who don’t look like you or act like you or think like you to actually be a community; disagree with someone without feeling the need to destroy them; then the community will continue to shrink and fall. If that happens, you will have no one to follow you anyway!
This has been on my mind for a long time and I just needed to share this and I hope that it becomes a benefit to someone. We are Detroit! We need one another and our hearts need to be right! Only then can we have a stronger Detroit!
Rom 14:19
19 Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another. (KJV)
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