Channel 28 on cable within Wilmington is a public access channel that is the locus of African American politics (and gossip) on Sundays. This is a segment from a recent Community Crossfire segment where Mayor Dennis Williams discusses the state of the city and the state of the Mayor’s race with Sammy Congo, Sam Guy, and Pastor D. If you can spend the 30 minutes or so to take a look at this, you can see how Wilmington’s African Amerian leadership speaks to its African American (mostly) audience. It’s pretty disappointing all the way around, really. If you read this blog regularly, you know that one thing that I like pointing out is how Republicans are particularly good at getting their victim on as a way to bully people into their POV. Even though they aren’t victims of anything, other than their own mismanagement or their own failure of messaging or leadership. You can see exactly the same thing here. Wilmington’s “leadership” is being victimized by Purzycki (called out by name), or others running for Mayor who — according to Williams — he has helped and who are now somehow displaying serious disloyalty in now running against him. Pastor D calls out Kelley in a particularly despicable fashion — denigrating his involvement and friendships with the families of crime victims, wondering why Kelley doesn’t bring jobs to these communities. You are quite welcome to wonder which of these gentlemen have brought any serious jobs to their communities.
This is Wilmington’s old guard — an old guard who are clearly more invested in their own interests than the interests of the people of Wilmington. Dennis Williams specifically pooh poohs the common complaint that no one sees him, but noting that he is always in “the hood” and anyone who wants to see him can visit him there. Got that? Mayor Williams is the Mayor of “the hood” and apparently not all of Wilmington. Pastor D claims that the violence is going down — even though that is clearly untrue. Both Williams and Pastor D claim that they are deeply involved with Wilmington’s children — even though neither one of them are on the front line of the fight for education here. And Sam Guy has the victim story of all victim stories — and even if the Riverfront Corp was able to unseat him to put Mike Hare in Council, that can’t say much for Sam Guy, right? Because even according to their own logic here, that story means that the community didn’t even bother to come out to support Guy. Which has been true for him for every office he has run for as long as I’ve lived here.
It’s a mess, really, and this is the kind of lack of real leadership that is Wilmington’s key problem now. I doubt that Jim Baker would be caught dead spinning up this kind of BS — he’d be too busy at least taking care of the city’s business. But this Administration thinks that they can hide their lack of leadership behind this tale of white people trying to put an end to African American leadership in this city. Of course, if the African American leadership was actually functional, they wouldn’t have this fight on their hands. It doesn’t make it any less painful to watch people try to justify incompetence behind all of the race cards being played here.
One of the many reasons why I am supporting Eugene Young for Mayor is that he is not a part of this. If he gets elected Mayor, he will owe the City of Wilmington, not these purveyors of fake victimization. It will mean that the politics of the city gets upended, with a real chance for real progress and good to happen in this city — without the keepers of the status quo standing in the doorway looking for their piece. Time to pass the city’s politics to the next generation, since the current generation doesn’t mind embarassing themselves in trying to hold power.