Charting A New Course

It becomes quite frustrating to learn that so many people can’t get on the same page these days; even with the growing mountain of issues facing those living in Urban America… you can’t miss any of them.  Beside the need for affordable housing, there is gun violence, high unemployment, health care, quality education, health insurance, crime, equal treatment and poverty.  And these are just some of the top vote getters.

It is also hard to believe that people can grow up in the same neighborhoods; attended similar schools; work in the community and yet be so different in terms of what they know is needed to make the community and schools better.  How can it be, that even with so much in common, backgrounds, religious beliefs, best in education and upbringing, things continue to turn out the same way?    

The portrait of urban America all across our great nation is not a good picture.  More cities are facing a steady decline in the quality of services, resources, jobs, safety, and reinvestments.  Each day the task is becoming more and more challenging to keep things up and going…as the way thing were.   It is especially difficult, when most people are expecting different results while doing the same things over and over again.  Of course there are some pockets of success in every city, but there are the other sides of the city no one wants to really talk about.   

All of us have heard the saying… “you don’t have to reinvent the wheel…” in order to make a change.  That may be true, but perhaps the wheel just needs some more air in it, or realignment.  May be…just maybe… what is needed is that we need to chart a new course for urban America…to boldly go into uncharted territory, a new frontier, a new direction and perhaps to envision something greater.   So, I suggest that we stop assuming what our urban communities needs and start with the people who live in those neighborhoods and get their view of what is needed… and thereby assume nothing.   Let’s see where that take us!