How Bad Do You WANT Change?

Who wouldn’t “want” to see positive change in their neighborhoods? I find it safe to assume that most families wouldn’t mind living in a community free of drug and human trafficking, violence and poverty. Who wouldn’t want to live in a community that continues to aid the youth in higher education and provides programs for diverse learning? How often will you run into a person that will say, “I enjoy living amongst high numbers of criminal activity” “I enjoy watching drugs tear apart my community”? I’ll cast a wide net, generalize and say that there aren’t very many people with such an attitude.  

Quite often I sit back and wonder what it will take for families in the inner city to seriously stand up together to restructure, reprogram and revitalize their communities.  Folks have become completely disillusioned with the steady decline of their communities BUT most haven’t taken the necessary steps to challenge the direction in which their communities are going. I often hear people say “my community will always be the same” or “crime rate has always been a problem here”. My follow up question always remains, what have you done to change this situation?

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out." - Robert Collier

There are so many small tasks that we MUST do to revitalize our communities. Small efforts that often times are overlooked. Parents participating in parent teacher meetings, older siblings telling their younger siblings the importance of education and pastors regularly house visiting their members who are struggling with drug addictions.  These are just a few things that MUST continue to happen regularly to reprogram our attitudes of complacency. I truly believe these small efforts can and will result in huge victories for our communities. Some kids drop out of school simply because no one was there to tell them the importance of staying in.

As an organizer, every day, I talk to citizens about standing up for their rights, the power in collective action and most importantly the obvious, “if you want change you have to be the one to take the necessary steps to create it.”  Growing up in the inner city and coming from an unstable single parent household, I do realize there are pot holes along the way.  Often times there are economic disadvantages amongst other handicaps that hinder the lifestyle restructuring of families. However, if pot holes are continuously used as a reason for not trying, then many communities and families will in fact remain in that disadvantaged position. Furthermore, there are politicians who must be held accountable and it is up to the families in those communities to do so!

Folasade Omogun